Making Part 1

Methodology - part 1

In attempting to define my methodology last week, I realized that I have no idea what my end product will become.  And in looking ahead for that past assignment, I completely lost site of what I should be doing now.  I know that I don’t want this project to be related to urban planning or the ‘prettying up’ of these abandoned spaces, something which the case studies I have chosen seem to be focusing on.

I do know that abandoned sites and derelict landscapes fascinate me and some reasons why.  (1) It is the aesthetics that dramatically contradict the pretty renderings of my case studies.  (2) It is the void, empty spaces with no program or people.  (3) It is the allowance of unregulated movement.  (4) It is the structure that limits its transgressions.

So why not begin here with my methodology and see where this takes me, instead of trying to define where I’m going to end.

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My methodology is going to be an ongoing course of action; one in which I will never look towards an end product.  But instead look towards the process and allow it to inform me of my progressions and where I should be going and allow it to take me to where I will end.

One (3) Three Nine

~1 (plus 2)

Abandoned buildings within neighborhoods reveal the enormity of our capacity for ruination; with decline as a societal construction.  The problem is that neighborhoods today are defined as either an economic space or a social space when it is the case that a neighborhood must be both.  Abandoned buildings, or vacancies, serve as neither, progenerating the gap between economic and social space.

+3

The increasing rates at which vacancies have been produced across the urban landscape disclose a narrative of society that has become overly concerned with financial gain (economic space), rather than social networks (social space). Building today has surrendered itself to the circumstances of accelerated markets, technologies and developments. As a result, building has grown into something that has become more global, generic and market driven, leaving behind that which is no longer of any use.

+9

These vacancies do not provide the results we expect from architecture, but instead act as spaces of disorder that serve as a critique of regulated urban space. Spaces in which the interpretation of the city becomes liberated from constraints which determine what should be done and where.  Instead, the aesthetics of abandoned sites offer a unique perspective that stand in contrast to commodified social ways of being. There is no economic space. They create an alternative world in which we as spectators, with our assumptions and expectations, are strangers. Thus, there is no connection between the barren structures and their communities, since they have never fulfilled their intended function. There is no social space.  Spaces of disorder can critique the highly regulated urban spaces which surround them, as sites which can combine both the economic and social spaces into one. They are indispensable eyesores.

 

methodology - an unsuccessful try

One Three Nine

~1

Abandoned cities and buildings reveal the enormity of our capacity for ruination.

+3

The increasing rates at which ruins have been produced across the urban landscape disclose a narrative of society that has become overly concerned with time and movement, rather than place and permanence. Building today has surrendered itself to the circumstances of accelerated markets, technologies and developments. As a result, building has grown into something that has become more global, generic and market driven.

+9

These abandoned sites do not provide the results we expect from architecture, but instead act as spaces of disorder that serve as a critique of regulated urban space. Spaces in which the interpretation of the city becomes liberated from constraints which determine what should be done and where, indoctrinating the city with meaning. Instead, the aesthetics of abandoned sites offer a unique perspective that stand in contrast to commodified social ways of being. They create an alternative world in which we as spectators, with our assumptions and expectations, are strangers. Thus, there is no connection between the barren structures and their communities, since they have never fulfilled their intended function. And in the case of abandoned cities, the connection has been lost altogether. Nature has claimed them instead. By challenging and deconstructing the imprint of power on the city, the social life and connections of undesired buildings and cities can live on. Spaces of disorder can critique the highly regulated urban spaces which surround them. They are indispensable eyesores.