Final Essay

Bayyinah C. Pierre

Prof. Sacha Frey

Intro Lit/Crit Arch I

December 17^th, 2012.

Mapping what is not there: My Final Project.

As I am written this paper, I think about the wise words of James Corner. Corner writes in the first couple sentences of his essay: “Mapping is a fantastic cultural project, creating, and building the world as much as measuring and describing it. Long appreciated with the planning and design of cities, landscapes and buildings, mapping is particularly instrumental in the construing and construction of lived space.” Since my created embodied spaces don’t have an actual space on a traditional map, I decided to map what is not there; what is missing; what is essential. With the help of two different, but relevant landmarks in the United States, I embodied my spatial spaces and experienced what others would experience in the practiced spaces. One of the landmarks is right here in Brooklyn, NYC, The Brooklyn Bridge; the other in Colorado, the Grand Canyon Skywalk. My final project is based on the verb “to gather”, the spaces become the noun gathering, and the verb reflects to numerous activities performed in space.

A lot of activities are to be performed in the overall space. People can walk with their families, listen to music, seat and have lunch in the second space. Overall the site and the building are public. Public but private at the same time… When one walks the scared slabs in New York City, you often find yourself in your own place. You feel lonely when hundreds of others are walking the street as you.  With that in mind, I wanted my space to be sanctuaries, spaces you practice and embody. I wanted people to feel important, the world belongs to them by creating a space where the connections between humans were turned off to emphasize the connection between man and nature.  Most of us have lost that connection, we forget about our environment, the community we live in. We forget about the mapping process, we simply trace. We put things in their designated spaces so we don’t have to look for it. We simply overlook our actions and its impacts on other generations.  Many architects use the word interaction in their concept for their design. I personally think it’s an excellent idea to try to reconnect man, but they are going about this the wrong way. Before a man and another man can interact, the men need to interact with nature first.

            Re-visiting the process I had gone through to create my spaces, the first thing I did was create a ground plane. I had the freedom to create my own ground plane, we all did. I could have been simple meaning flat or slanted. It all depended on what concept I was going to go with and honestly, timing. Stuck between two choices, I went back to my roots. I was born in the United States and raised in Haiti. I have learned a lot there, I’ve acknowledged: jazz, drums, mountains, and water were a part of your daily life.  “Why not included my roots?” I said, excitedly.  I wanted my project to be different, to have something no one had. My ground plane involves my lofted model from a previous assignment. The lofted model is embedded into the rock which is a cliff. The lofted model is also penetrating the water.

My first architectural piece, my secondary space was created by meeting together every paper model at the corners or ends. At the end, it created a “Y” structure. In Rhino, I floated the structure without even remembering the consequences. In Rhino, there’s no gravity. Any object can float, it is very easy to move something upwards and forget about its weight. When I assembled the model outside of rhino but in the physical world, it was very hard to float the space. It’s was too heavy even though it was constructed out foam, balsa (some type of wood), basswood sticks and plexiglass.  It was a place where people can walk on the skywalk look at the beautiful view, and hopefully they would take something out of the experience. This is where; my landmark, Grand Canyon Sky-walk helped me again. People visit and travel to Arizona to take steps on the glass pathways. Most walk on the side for security and others break-dance in the middle of the glass. Even though I have never been there, I know what it feels like, I’ve read people’s opinions about their experiences and the structure itself.

My second structure architectural structure, the hybrid space is in an area where you could seat, eat, or relax. There are added steps so people can sit. The hybrid space is just a scaled version of my partner’s paper model. We had to take one of ours and one of theirs to create space that people could embody. Just like the last one, this space was created physically with the same material as the last one. The hybrid is the biggest space in my model, a good number of people could be up there.

My third structure, my tertiary space is the entrance of the site. It is where you enter or exit by boat. Although my other spaces were floated about ground, it was floated on sea water. As you enter, you see musicians playing as a sign of welcome. It is also made out of foam, balsa, plexiglass and basswood sticks. It was created by attaching two of my own paper models in Rhino.

The three spaces were very different from each other; they served their own purpose which is why I created different skins for the three. The skin of the space is determined by the number of triangles and the length of the base of the triangles. Ex: If the base of a larger triangle equals six. Six is divided by three, the number of sides, equaling to two. Conclusion: two triangles now sit within the bigger triangle. The skin relates back to one of my original hand-draw point drawings. The triangles were drawn by joining the 3rd trial of pencil drops together on an 18 by 18 grid. I translated the drawing by creating a gridded frame, inserting triangles at the intersections, and trimming down parts of the triangle. The stripped horizontal skin allows light to penetrate through, opening the small qualitative space even more. The overall skin will produce incredible shadows at night. The plexiglass are one inch tall.

The most essential auditory experience created by architecture is tranquility.  Architecture presents the drama of construction silenced into matter, space and light.  Ultimately architecture is the art of petrified silence writes Pallasma (p51).  My spatial qualities were created to fit the landscape and its echoes.  

Bayyinah C. Pierre

Reflection and Cover Page.

I enjoyed going to class every day even though I wanted to sleep. I wanted to do much better for this, but design and technics was put in front of it. More time to read and comprehend the texts more would have improved my understanding of the course and Design. I’ve learned so much from this class. Thank You Prof. Frey for helping us understanding Design I better, those discussions helped in terms of the language I wanted to use when I presented my project. Thank You for understanding my grammar, giving me an opportunity to fix my essay.

 Thank You so much, Bayyinah