Gremlins!
The Architecture of Elements: Object-Oriented-Ontological Approach
Building Type: Library
Location: Philadelphia, PA
Class: AR 672; University of Michigan
Professor: Andrew Holder
Date: Fall 2014
Program Requirements:
- Storage
- Stacks
- Water Closets
- Lobby
- Vestibules
- Vertical Circulation
- Offices
- Board Rooms
- Galleries
- Digital Imaging Center
- Reference / Lectures
- Library
Project Intention:
Rem Koolhaas’ Venice Biennale “The Elements of Architecture” constitutes a totalizing picture of architecture and its constituent parts.
It is therefore necessary that the inversion of the elements of architecture as “The Architecture of Elements” constitutes an alternative
and as yet unprobed secondary condition ripe for experimentation. An architecture of elements seeks to reduce architecture into irreducible
elements outside the scope of platonic solids, and with a high degree of specicity towards their ambient qualities that cannot be reduced
without a loss of character. Through formal analysis, primitive forms were denatured and removed from their respective sources and through
formal development, the form is then cultivated towards a high degree of specicity that was lost in the analytic step. The result is an
idiosyncratic version of the original precedent element geared toward describing particular spatial relationships and conditions. The
individual elements were then explored through the style of Yves Tanguy as a way to dissolve the building facade and craft a continuous public space.
Moreover, this methodology supplants a traditional “systems approach” to architecture that tends to rationalize spaces in normative and
conventional ways. The goal was to reduce the number of elements on the table and probe them discursively. The goal of this method is to
arrive at qualities of character, pose, “awkward deportment” and plush casual-ity.
