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Winner of the Director's Choice Award The HOME Competition 2021 Arch Out Loud
"There is little difference feeling lonely and actually being alone."
Isolationism is increasingly becoming a palpable part of our society, and all indications are that this custom will not be waning anytime soon. Given the current trajectories in global health, the logic of the future may likely view reclusion as way of avoiding potentially unhealthy interactions and illness, though this practice will certainly be accompanied by strong feelings of alienation. The home has always been seen as a shelter, and even a haven in troubled times, but now it is also becoming our only intimate friend.
The story of the Lonely Hearts Clubhouse is that of a companion who will join us on our journey to redefine our relationship with ourselves, our homes, and each other. Photographer Gregory Crewdson has famously explored themes of personal despondency in a way that may be resonating with us now more than ever. It therefore seemed pertinent to represent the Lonely Hearts Clubhouse within a Crewdson depiction of an alienating moment in American life. The beauty of this imagery comes from a timeless rendering of momentary despair, wherein the Lonely Heart Clubhouse fits perfectly.
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Commissioned by Dillon Pranger, RA Client: Rocco Design Build
Constructed in 2022 (Ithaca, NY): This outdoor sauna features a board formed concrete body that is built into the hillside which lines the shore of Cayuga Lake. The interior is clad with cedar boards and enclosed by a pivoting glass wall.
Competition: LAGI 2020 Fly Ranch a multi-disciplinary design challenge that will create the foundational infrastructure of Fly Ranch
Deep in rural Nevada, on a large plot of land known as Fly Ranch, lives a natural oddity that looks like a surreal water park attraction is melting in the desert sun. Geysers and hot springs are relatively common in this region of the country, but something about this one stands out as more science-fiction than real-life. According to Burning Man, the perennial festival emcee who purchased the land in June 2016, this volcano-looking thing is supposedly “a unique and iconic geothermal geyser that constantly releases water reaching five feet in the air, depositing minerals and multi-colored algae on the terraces surrounding it.”
…Sure it is…
How gullible do they think we are? Perhaps the Fly Geyser is a legitimate freak of nature, or maybe it is just another creative art installation used to drive visitors to the Burning Man festival. As history shows us, it is always easier to fabricate a marvelous phenomenon than to stumble across one naturally. The showman P. T. Barnum once famously exhibited a fraudulent 10-foot-tall “petrified man” as an authentic fossilized giant, which attracted crowds of paying visitors despite its obvious statue-like appearance. Unfortunately, it looks like the Fly Geyser is most likely another such hoax.
"There's a sucker born every minute”
To convince the nonbelievers of the Geysergate Conspiracy, our design proposal provides a demonstration of how an artificial version of the Fly Geyser could be designed as an authentic festival attraction in the Nevada desert. If the geyser is fake after all, this speculation could serve as either a foundation for the inevitable investigation into the fraud or as a scheme for future iterations to be built on the site. The project begins with an analysis of the colorful mounds that have been amassed by the algae and minerals deposited by the erupting water. These forms were recreated with terracotta clay using sculpting techniques that mimicked the additive process by which they were created. The final sculpture was then photographed and processed with photogrammetry software to create a 3D model which could be further analyzed digitally.
The vibrant colors and dynamic patterns that wrap around the surface of the geyser create a truly uncanny aesthetic. This unique skin estranges the viewer from a clear reading of the geometric forms that it covers. It was therefore a goal in this project to create a colorful texture map that would be equally surreal wrapped around the geyser as it is represented in a 2D drawing. Where estrangement was the desired effect in both cases, techniques of abstraction were deployed to achieve the same brilliance witnessed in the original geyser. Dark and light, digital and natural, geometric and organic: these were the tensions being explored within this visual study.