PDFS: DWELLING ACTS ENVIRONMENTAL ACTS SOCIO-POLITICAL ACTS BUILDING ACTS REPRESENTATIONAL ACTS RESEARCH IN ACTION
Push, Pull, Bend, Bind: Enacting Architecture Through Behaviour and Consequence
LANCELOT COAR, University of Manitoba
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Informality in Bogotá: Housing, Rapid Urbanization, and Public Space
JORGE COLÓN, University of New Mexico
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Poetic Action for Autism: An Intersubjective Approach
ALLISON DVORAK, MSH Architects
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Black Contemporary: Act of Construction
PETER P. GOCHÉ, Iowa State University
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Experiencing the Three-Legged Stool: Social, Economic and Environmental Education
Through the Mariposa Redevelopment
MARIANNE BELLINO HOLBERT, University of Colorado-Boulder
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Clouds of Action: Rethinking Urban Contexts as Differential and Participatory Fields
HANNAH HOPEWELL, Auckland University of Technology
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Inhabiting Difference: Integrating Rule Based Design and Cultural Ritual
JASON S. JOHNSON, University of Calgary
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Exposing Experiences: Research Based Placemaking
JENNY KEMPSON, Framework Cultural Placemaking (Seattle)
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Turbulence and the Creation of Home
GRAHAM LIVESEY, University of Calgary
Human constructed environments are subject to numerous flows, including those of people, information, energy, goods, food, waste, water, and air. Flows behave like fluids, and are subject to varying degrees of turbulence. Turbulence is generated by a variety of factors and are characterized by what J.A. Fay describes as vortical and cascading “regions of swirling flow.” Turbulence involves the loss of energy from a flow, and is typically seen as a sign of inefficiency. However, turbulence also has beneficial effects and significantly shapes the habitats of numerous organisms, including those made by humans. How can humans benefit from turbulence in the creation and maintenance of home?
Many organisms have adapted to existence within turbulent flow systems. For example, if we examine the behaviour of trout in a river, a particularly turbulent environment it is evident they are able to use turbulence to their benefit. Trout have evolved shape, fin performance, eating patterns, and swimming mechanics to continuously adjust to changing flow patterns. Organisms, like fish and birds, typically benefit from the effect of “vortex capture,” where energy is harnessed from the turbulence in the environment. By harnessing the energy from turbulent flows, and continuously adjusting to the flows in the environment, they are able to achieve a dynamic balance within a habitat.
Turbulence has been used to define various kinds of human behaviour from migration patterns, political systems, to homelessness. For example, homeless urban populations can be described as being continuously buffeted by the forces of turbulence in cities. In their efforts to adjust and adapt to turbulent conditions, both actual and metaphorical, the homeless engage in various forms of “material survival strategies” that involve the expenditure of energy, such as casual labour, peddling, panhandling, prostitution, theft, street performing, and scavenging. Further, the homeless adapt to the turbulence of the city by hiding, by moving constantly, and by adopting nomadic approaches to sourcing heat, clothing, food, and shelter.
In this paper the notion that the creation of home is a continuous activity that involves managing flows is explored against Kobo Abe’s novels The Box Man and The Woman in the Dunes. In the first novel Abe describes the life of a photographer who chooses to abandon conventional living to live in a cardboard box. Abe describes how the box man selects a suitable box, the modifications he makes to it, and the various indispensable objects that can be hung inside of the box, these are essential for his survival. In the second novel Abe’s protagonist is a teacher and amateur entomologist, who ends up trapped in the bottom of a sand pit with a woman and her house, he is drawn into her daily struggle against the flows of sand that constantly threaten her survival.
As Jean Baudrillard points out in his book The System of Objects, objects employed in everyday life embody various forms of energy, he writes: “We cannot help but admire scythes, baskets, pitchers or ploughs, amalgams of gestures and forces, of symbols and functions, decorated and stylized by human energy and shaped by the forms of the human body, by the exertions they imply and by the matter they transform....” The objects we employ and make in the creation of habitat help negotiate our spatial and social relationships, these involve continuous energy transfers, much like that of a trout in a river. The effects of turbulence on home are part of the patterns, behaviours, structures, and processes of habitat, and the creative harnessing of energy in the creation of home is vital.
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Heaven on Earth: Transient Dwelling and Adaptation in Downtown Houston
GREGORY MARINIC, University of Houston
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Digital Surrogacy in Ephemeral Sites
URSULA EMERY MCCLURE, Louisiana State University
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Returning Anew: Sequential Experience in the Jewett Art Center
KEVIN MOORE, Auburn University
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Patterning Temporary Atmospheres: Installations for the Experience of Sound and Light
CLAY ODOM, University of Texas
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Photography as a Phenomenological Tool in Architectural Representation
ERIKA PETRIC, Technical University of Graz
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Apocalyptic Architecture: Designing Within Resilient Detroit
ZIAD QURESHI, Iowa State University
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Free Zoning: Designing a Framework for Typological Evolution and Continual Building Acts
GEORG RAFAILIDIS, State University of New York at Buffalo
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Blind Spot: The User Usurps the Dwelling Act and the Designer’s Attention
NATALIJA SUBOTINCIC, University of Manitoba
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Toward Anonymity in Architecture: An Augmentation of the Historical Project of Autonomy
JOSHUA M. TARON, University of Calgary
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Call Before You Cut! The Importance of Tree Protection
ANNA THURMAYR, University of Manitoba
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AARON J. WEINERT, Wentworth Institute of Technology
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The Architectural Lessons of Anselm Kiefer’s La Ribaute: The Material of History and the Space of Dramatic Representation
STEPHEN A. WISCHER, North Dakota State University
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PAOLA ZELLNER, Virginia Tech
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Atmosphere is generously supported by the Faculty of Architecture Endowment Fund and the following professional associations: the Manitoba Association of Architects (MAA); the Manitoba Association of Landscape Architects (MALA); and the Professional Interior Designers Institute of Manitoba (PIDIM).
Aspects of Atmosphere 2014 ACTION are being presented in collaboration with StoreFront Manitoba and aceartinc20