Sitelessness: Spatial Policies of Vacancy and the Void

Architecture resides in the precariously delicate position that dictates the way buildings are posed while simultaneously altering to fit what they become. The way a space is articulated becomes a source of friction. It is able to slow down or speed up time, alter thoughts or nuances of movement. Ephemeral and phenomenological degrees exist within layers of architecture as liminal skins. Architecture is a network, the intelligence of the smallest unit dictating the overall system. Layering sensory curiosity and intimacy creates social by products of social experience that we, in turn, use as building blocks of the memories we construct. My studio practice studies movement as it translates to the surface. I am concerned with the event of a place, the anatomy of a space and the extension of a building. The third space within the environments we occupy. The ethnomethodological senses of pressure, stability, density and rhythm are inherent to the body’s physiological make up. Using this reasoning, temporal semblances are created and recreated over time. By delineating traces, translating material memory and recording the forces at play, I am able to locate the tension between space and matter; the physical and metaphysical boundaries of compounded architecture. I aim to define the corporal relationship of body to space by using figure congruent structures that facilitate and alter movement based on their proximity to the physical body. My work intends to illuminate the monumental inadequacy of creating city efficient buildings at the deficit of our bodies. Ideas of entropy and atrophy are addressed in my work through notions of societal and personal disarray and decay of body, materiality and surrounding landscapes. As users or architecture, we do not have a direct responsibility to care for our buildings. Ruins will rupture long after we are gone and new structures will tower in their place. The maintenance of architecture feeds its restorative qualities. A perishable shelter that must be watered and maintained will only survive as long as it is used and useful. These impermanent structures turned fallen ruins can be built upon again and again. I pose that there are three conditions of place: the natural place that transcends time and change, the named place that is influenced by the effects of time and change and the transformative place that harbors associative qualities of memory and attachment. The tensions between these conditions are what alter the discourse of architecture and the dynamics of its extended community. By turning spatial vacuums into volumes and peripheral architecture into an appendage of architecture, we can carve third spaces that do not conform to traditional constructs of occupation. By challenging ideals of public and private space and the security of interior versus exterior, we can create narratives that allow the interchange of architectural archipelagos. Installations in which we can dwell and make room for alternative change in large scale social behavior. Shell to structure, skin to bone. Through material exploration, I continue to format tools and methods that translate, amplify and incite indirect movement of the body in space. Using simple forms, my work converges on ideas of temporary structures, their haptic reactions and their transitory effects.The installation ‘Sitelessness: Spatial Policies of Vacancy and the Void’ is perpetually fluid. Interior and exterior space in flux. The peak and ebb of liminal and physical boundaries create a space that exists as secure, yet exposed, solid, yet concealed, forceful, yet still, spatial, yet undetermined in space, spatial, yet nowhere in space.