Translating Brutalism: Madison Park High School (2021)
This representation project explores various ways in which the architectural drawing can be used to edit reality based on different graphic tools and pursued aesthetics. Boston has a vast amount of post-war Brutalist structures, many from the 1960s and 1970s, that have been repurposed over the years and viewed by the public in a variety of positive and negative lights. All five of the individual projects work with a variety of scales and graphic techniques in which I explored my own interests in architectural communication and worked to develop my own personal aesthetic sensibility, all while portraying the Madison Park High School in Roxbury, Massachusetts, a vocational Brutalist structure designed by Marcel Breuer in the 1960s.
Rebrand: This project asked students to “develop a new graphic identity” for their buildings through the design of a poster or advertisement for Brutalism. Through two different compositions, I explore the use of the photographic collage to rebuild the different facades of the school in various imagined realities. In design, Marcel Breuer intended to use material changes on the facade to reflect differences in interior program, with spaces for systems, classrooms, circulation and gathering. I broke down some of these sections of facade, as carefully photographed from all four sides of the exterior, to reconstruct new facades of warped proportion and dimension through layering, stacking, and repetition. Each of the two flattened collages aims to highlight the variety of elements on each facade, eradicating the misconception that Brutalist buildings are monotone and standardized. Without limiting myself to a set of rules, I aimed to portray the original intents for a skyscraper building form and vertical materiality change, as Breuer intended with the different stacks of material expressed onto the existing facade.
Remix: This project asked students to “study the modular components” of their buildings, using these components in a digital collage to portray the building in a different format than intended by the architect. The front-facing facade of the Madison Park High School features a great deal of repetition and modularity, showing window units interspersed with ventilation systems and sections of exterior wall textured with small stones and concrete. I first reconstructed this facade in a digital format using Rhino, then using various techniques and softwares to apply nine actions, or commands, onto the facade to show the flexibility and malleability of the units despite the material usage of durable concrete. Using collage techniques of caricature, my commands are: Construct, Eliminate, Warp, Stretch, Rotate, Shift, Collage, Scale and Separate. I aim to use post-production editing to create effects of depth and repetition through use of color.
Animate: This project asked students to “focus on the temporal dimension of the architectural image as a living document.” Using the format of the GIF, I animated my idea in the Remix project, focusing on the Eliminate, Stretch and Shift commands to explore the use of line drawings in creating a live document. Incorporating ephemeral elements to my project, I used the idea of constructing and deconstructing my imagined facade after each action to break the modularity of the primary facade and dissolve the permanence of concrete.
Render: This project asked students to render their buildings in new lights, using elevations to “unpack all the different elements that make up concrete materiality: color, texture, patina and atmosphere.” I decided to use two different forms of rendering to detail my elevations: line rendering and “borrowed material” rendering, in which I use materials found online and materials scanned from an analog format. Choosing 1/2” to 1’ and 1/4” to 1’ perspectives of the primary facade, I drew four renders, one of each form of rendering for each scale. For the line rendered drawings, I developed a set of rules prior to drawing to outline the hatching patterns that I would use throughout the drawing at each scale, taking inspiration from Sol Lewitt and his design work. This idea is an evocation of the idea of all line drawings needing to follow a rule set – though these rules typically circulate around the idea of linework for representation, I wanted to erase all the lines framing the building form, exclusively using hatching to build the composition. For the borrowed material drawings, I sought to represent the blue and gray tonality of the building with a variety of textures and patterns, all of which reminded me of the variety of material expressed onto the four exterior walls. As with the line drawings, I intended to capture senses of depth, as each window bay was recessed into the building, working with the challenges and limitations of the flat elevation drawing.
Occupy: This project asked students to “illustrate the relationship between architecture and its inhabitants,” using a central narrative to detail a story of this relationship. Using selective framing, a set material pallet and a sparse usage of entourage, I made a story around the idea of abandonment. With the pandemic at its height throughout the winter and spring of 2021, the school was operating entirely virtually. At each site visit, I noticed how desolate the school and its grounds felt without students, faculty or any activity around the building. By creating compositions in a set circular shape, I intend to place the user on-site, viewing these scenes in the first person. The sequence of four compositions follows my own pathway around the building, viewing the gymnasium entrance, the ground level adjacent to the parking lot, the primary entrance and the connection between the primary facade and the attached performing arts center. Without incorporating people into my drawings, I show perspective through the use of signs, props and damage to the original architecture, all of which were visible on-site during my visits.
