OPEN SPACE

………………………………. "Only dull and powerless artists defend their art by reference to sincerity" —Kazimir Malevich……………………………………..

South facade of the Morphosis-designed Federal Buiding in San Francisco

When I was an architecture student in Pittsburgh 20 years ago, one of the first vanity monographs I bought was about Morphosis, the Los Angeles firm started by Thom Mayne and Michael Rotondi (who moved on  to found Roto Architects in 1991). Their fractured forms, rendered in meticulously inked drawings and gritty models, were eye-opening to us budding designers studying in a city not known for its architectural adventurousness.

This memory came back to me as I toured—with fellow columnist, Adrienne Skye Roberts (see her related post) and Open Space editor-in-chief, Suzanne Stein—the Morphosis-designed United States Federal Building that looms large over the South of Market neighborhood like a giant, modern-day aerie of government regality. As an architecture school graduate and brief practitioner, I admire the building for its sheer creative chutzpah, especially considering the client is the federal government. The Morphosis tics, that two decades earlier rarely expanded beyond southern California and the scale of a modest private home or restaurant interior, are now super-sized with this work. So while my architecture aficionado side can’t help but be thrilled, the American citizen in me is left a little uneasy.

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Architecture, Federal Building, LEED, Morphosis, Obama, Thom Mayne

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In May, Joseph Del Pesco and I posted a critical reading of the Art and Education Papers archive, which had then just been announced. In it, we contrasted that project with a site whose constitution we liked better, called AAAARG. AAAARG is many things, but is probably known best these days as a kind of digital library and radical public amenity, devoted to the history of art, architecture, theory, political writing, and pretty much whatever else its community’s members decide to scan and upload. Based in Los Angeles, artist Sean Dockray is the principal of AAAARG. What follows is a dialogue on the history and ideas behind the site, followed by links to several readings relevant to its origin.

JD: Can you say something about the history of AAAARG? When did it begin, and with what impulses or ideas in mind?

SD: Generally speaking, it has always been about sharing knowledge in the form of text. Currently the web address for AAAARG is a.aaaarg.org (2009); before that it was just aaaarg.org (2007) and before that it was aaarg.e-rat.org (2005, with Aaron Forrest). Before that, there were a couple more that didn’t even have any A’s in the title (beginning around 2001).

JD: Have there been significant changes in direction or shifts in concept?

SD: Originally it was kind of a proto-blog, with people able to write essays and have discussions through a message board and possible even work on projects together. I think the library part of it first started informally in 2004 because discussions and projects often referred to texts. Now most people see AAAARG purely as a library, which I’m not opposed to.

JD: So it began as something more discursive?

SD: I think it’s still discursive. If you’ve ever tried to get your friends to read or listen to something you know that that act of sharing is a kind of communication and it almost compels reciprocity – so I think there is still a discussion happening, but it’s not really in the words. Most people describe AAAARG as a “resource” and I think that’s appropriate. I find that I’ve spent a lot of time working on things (alongside AAAARG, The Public School, Distributed Gallery and Berlin; and some more bounded ones: Games for 5 Joysticks, The Fundraising Show, and Chung King Common) that might be described as infrastructures or resources. In a way, I think it is in the same spirit as that restaurant Food (started by Gordon Matta-Clark and Carol Goodden in 1971), in that it provides something that we as progressive cultural producers need, while at the same time supporting the social generation of ideas. (more…)

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AAAARG, Architecture, Berlin, design, Distributed Gallery, Food, Gordon Matta-Clark, library, reciprocity, scans, Sean Dockray, The Public School, urbanism

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In response to my recent post “This land wasn’t made for you and me”, my fellow columnist, Anuradha Vikram asked me for examples of humanizing green building projects to compare to my critique of both the San Francisco’s Federal Building’s “public” plaza and the houses built by Brad Pitt’s Make It Right Foundation (MIR) in New Orleans that I wrote about back in June. Over the past couple of days I’ve been trying hard to think of green building projects in the Bay Area that incorporate a functional shared public space.  Due to my lack of expertise in architecture, I’d like to open up Anu’s comment as a question for others to respond to:  What are good examples of humanizing green building projects in the Bay Area?

In contrast to building projects previously discussed, I’d like to briefly mention The Heidelberg Project started by Tyree Guyton in Detroit, Michigan. Back in 1986, East Detroit struggled to recover from the aftermath of the Detroit riots and faced a depleted economy and racially segregated neighborhoods. Guyton, a resident of Heidelberg Street since the age of 12, began cleaning up his increasingly abandoned and blighted neighborhood with an enclave of children who lived nearby. With the materials they gathered from the vacated residences and lots, Guyton and the neighborhood kids collaborated to create art environments and installations in the vacant lots, on street posts, and the facades of homes. The city of Detroit resisted, of course, demolishing a portion of the project in 1991 and then again in 1999.  However, The Heidelberg Project persisted and now operates as a non-profit arts organization, hosting a series of year round workshops and educational programs for schools and youth in the area.

The Heidelberg Project, installation of discarded vaccuum cleaners in a vacant lot on Heidelberg Street, Detroit, Michigan

Clearly, the context of The Heidelberg Project and the public plaza of the San Francisco Federal Building or MIR differ greatly and the comparison is a stretch, at best. However, I mention The Heidelberg Project as a way to push the possibilities of our collective spaces and as an example of a community-driven public art project that not only functions in the context of an urban neighborhood facing poverty and disenfranchisement, but employs the creative reuse of material and space—a thread that runs through many of my recent blog postings.

On that note, I look forward to hearing from Open Space readers about green building projects and public spaces in the Bay Area.

The Heidelberg Project, decorated home on Heidelberg Street, Detroit, Michigan

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Anuradha Vikram, Architecture, Make It Right Foundation, Public Art, San Francisco Federal Building, The Heidelberg Project

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I am very eager to respond to Eric Heiman’s observations and experience so far at Project M and The Rural Studio which he discussed in his June 20th post “Dispatch from Alabama #1: Cynics Need Not Apply.” The issues of housing, the ownership of space, and the role that artists play within sustainable and community based projects are all very dear to my heart.

There is an endless amount of housing issues in the Bay Area from foreclosures, to redevelopment, to tenants rights violations—issues I have become more familiar with recently through my work with the San Francisco Housing Rights Committee. However after reading Eric’s post my thoughts immediately turned to the rebuilding efforts in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, specifically Brad Pitt’s project called the Make It Right Foundation (MIR). This comes as no surprise as I spent the past two years researching and writing about housing politics and the concept of home in New Orleans through my graduate thesis project entitled, “Homesick: The Search for Belonging in New Orleans’ Landscape of Loss.”  This project was inspired by my experience as a volunteer with the organization Common Ground Relief and focused on the presence of the non-local volunteers in post-Katrina New Orleans, the majority of whom are young, white activists from middle-class backgrounds and whose long-term presence in the city, while hopeful, contributes to New Orleans’ changing racial demographic.

A home built by Brad Pitt's “Make It Right Foundation” at 1809 Deslonde Street in New Orlean's Lower Ninth Ward. To the left of the house is the volunteer center for the organization “Common Ground Relief.”

While the issue of non-local people, particularly students, working within economically disadvantaged areas is relevant both to New Orleans and Greensboro, Alabama, what I’d like to consider here is the relationship of MIR to Eric’s discussion of beauty and utility within architecture and design.  Pitt developed MIR after observing the damage of New Orleans’ Lower Ninth Ward neighborhood and meeting with local residents to hear their concerns and assess their housing needs.  MIR aims to build hurricane-safe homes with “an emphasis on a high quality of design, while preserving the spirit of the community’s culture.”  MIR has completed eight homes, however it is unclear to me if the residents who now live in these homes owned the property they were built on before the storm, nor is the affordability of the homes apparent.  What MIR does make clear is that their homes are green and designed to withstand storms through elevation, roof access, hurricane proof windows, and durable materials. (more…)

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Architecture, Common Ground Relief, Make It Right Foundation, Musician's Village, New Orleans, Project M, The Rural Studio

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