surface.SITES
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surface.SITES | exhibition is the first in a series of exhibits exploring conditions and ideas essential to architecture. The surface sites seek to exhibit elements as a method to explore sites to determine a notion of place. Place being a sense beyond merely physical forms and textures. The place is the extension of sensibilities that synthesis cultures, histories, economies enabling patterns and forms to become. The collective tissue that binds place is a notion or thought that can be concisely expressed as an ambiance. The ambiance is a mood or feeling that is derived from one’s (designer’s) sense regarding a particular environment. In order to design a responsive proposal to any given environment one of must engage in a process that seeks to determine the temporal existence as a moment of recognition. This moment identifying ambiance is requisite for one to make a determination positioning ideals as a derivative force for potential phenomenological forms.
What is architecture? Why do we question that which is assumed but rarely known? What is architecture if not a singular determination of place that emerges from a strategic study of elements? Then what do we study in order to make said determination that allows architecture to exist beyond functional voids conceptualized by minds long ago dispersed into the fluids of time? Why ask why what and how? Because we seek to become more than simple mindless vessels allowing our mindfulness to wither before our senses...
surface.SITES | exhibition seeks to address the primary question regarding architecture which is what is (existence) in order that what is possible (potentiality) can become. Architecture is not a philosophy seeking to resolve questions of being. Architecture is not art seeking to express simply for the sake of. Architecture is not science seeking to answer that which is truly not factual but rather an assumption. Architecture is a parcel of many things allowing architecture to become a response that exists as a response to what we sense. Humanity as a sedentary collective of dwellers forms textures upon surfaces as a means to function. Beyond merely functioning dwellers mark surfaces to express a sensibility that situates their unique essence within the fabric of collective patterns and forms formed by humanity.
The surface.SITES | exhibition will simply exhibit three design projects utilizing elements that can be used to determine a sense of place. The design projects exhibit eight simple design elements as physical and mental stimuli along with a site model to determine what exist at a moment. The elements assist the design mind to interpret what is sensed when one is studying a proposed site. The projects will not seek to explain how the design elements are interpreted by the designer. The SITES exhibition will only exhibit a variety of elements that can be used as stimuli to begin to form a sense of place. A sense of place is not a static notion. Moreover, it is a fluid concept that allows for a diversity of internalization to exist whilst emerging as an interpretive identification. What is identified is a mood or feeling called Ambiance. The ambiance is a singular determination that allows one to communicate what is sensed. This sense or mental phenomena is an interpretation of one’s feelings regarding place one has experienced. The interpretation allows for the identification of existing conditions. We seek to identify what ambiance is in order that we can express thoughts bound to a concrete understanding which can inform how one designs potentials. The potentials we seek to foster an awareness of our ideas that are rooted in the ambiance as experienced. Ideas are knowledge or resolution of one’s sense of place as an identified ambiance. This knowledge is situated as a directive or motivating factor in design that allows all forthcoming to exist as a coherent expression of thoughts. If one cannot communicate how one senses a place thru media, then one cannot claim to understand the relationship between the place (site) they are charged with and the proposed expression put forth. The surface.SITES | exhibition reveals one way to begin to design based on sensing a place using elements and text to communicate feelings. Collectively the assembly of elements is considered to reveal the first corresponding moment utilized to express thoughts in form.
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Site analysis is the interpretation of place. The place is a collective texture of patterns and forms…
surface.POTENTIALS
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surface.POTENTIALS | exhibition is the second in a series of exhibits exploring conditions and ideas essential to design. The potentials exhibit seeks to reveal how the design of sites as identification of AMBIENCE becomes the exploration of potentials as the recognition of AMBIENCE.
The surface.SITES | exhibition posited the awareness of SITE is derived or emerges from awareness as a sense of place. This notion of place is an identification of feelings and/or thought sensations. The identification of said sensations allows for the interpretive act as an action recognizing potential forms. Potential ambiance designed phenomena can evoke a feeling derived from sense experiences of a particular place. We are interpreting place as an identified texture of patterns and forms. That which is interpreted, ambiance, as a mood or feeling becomes via interpretation as a way of thinking regarding potentialities ambiance as designed phenomena.
Potentials as the exploration of one’s sensibilities regarding forms become a way of redrafting or reconstituting surfaces. Why do I posit surfaces as something essential? Or might I posit is surface essential? What does it mean to reconstitute surfaces?
Surfaces are the conceptualization of forms that allow for a moment of touching. A moment of touching °™ sensing or noticing °™ is a sense of one’s thoughts actualized as affects or a phenomenological experience. The essence of material formations (designed things). Allows for an experience of textures. Textures are a collection of diverse thought expressions (system of ideas) regarding surfaces. Surfaces constitute the identified ambiance of a particular place. Therefore, if surfaces are the textural conditions of place then the patterns and forms constituting the implicit tapestry or fabric must be essential to a comprehensive interpretation regarding.
Architecture as an experience of designed sensations. What are sensations? Sensations are the conceptualization of patterns and forms experienced textually. Textually as a way of sensing surfaces. To experience surfaces is to experience the expression of thoughts as a determination of design principles and elements. I would posit the first principle of design is FORM. FORM being more than the physical object of a subject’s gaze. Herein form is the essential nature or essence of a thing. The thing in question is the way of thinking or idea as a mode of intentionality directed toward the designing subject. The list of potential forms studies includes the IDEA (surface model), the IDEAL FORM, the FORMATION, the FORM (schema) and TEXTURE.
The first potential of a given work resides in the idea which is the form thought as an expression of thoughts regarding AMBIENCE. IDEAS are the resolution as a continuum of thought that seeks to resolve how, the potential of the identified feeling can be resolved as an in-form mode of intentionality. The surface acts as a tool to craft mental phenomena into an agent communicating one potential article of thought while utilizing known strategies as a means of articulation.
The second potential is the IDEAL FORM. The ideal form seeks to generate the raw or unmitigated potential of any form. The ideal exhibits an awareness of place, program, and typology while allowing the form to eclipse the bounds of functional requisites. The ideal reveals the existence of sculptural freedom often unexplored. The experience of surfaces we touch — determined FORM — as the mass (exteriority) of texture that typically become the first moment as surface phenomena. That which is seen as a body or textural article on the surface of the site. The exterior is occupied by energies and flows that form the textural surfaces that condition voids and volumes as moments of flows or dynamic movement — ideal FORMATION.
The third potential is the IDEAL FORMATION. The formation is the interior surface the site of energy and flows called dynamic forces we experience via motion or bodily movements. These movements are moments of touching surfaces of light, color, and any other sensual phenomena. Phenomena meaning to experience via the senses.
The fourth potential is the determined FORM. The determined form differs from the ideal form in that it is concretely derived from knowledge of a place, typology, and program. The form is a directed response to all known stimulant conditions. The determined form exists as a potential effect of exterior surface formations.
The final potential of thought is the form of texture. Textures are material formations that reveal a particular sensibility about a place. An awareness of textures that allow an essence to become a sensation.
The surface.POTENTIALS | exhibition will exhibit four design POTENTIALS utilizing FORMS that can be used to determine future AMBIENCE. The design projects framed by corresponding moments along with four potential forms. Design minds (not architects) design specific conditions (moments) that are beyond program (function). These moments are to be experienced as if to notice (felt) not utilized. Programs are not designed but surfaces that absorb human energy are designed a series of moments.
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What are things? Things are mental images that affect how we imagine potentials.
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Potentials are that which is once imagined becoming textural as an experiential AMBIENCE...
surface.FORMATION
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surface.FORMATION | exhibition is the third in a series of exhibits exploring conditions and ideas essential to design. The formation exhibit seeks to reveal how the design of focused interior environments reveals inversion of the typical form void dichotomy. The use and development of design elements foster an awareness of what can be termed an essential element. An essential element is a form within the designed formation that allows expression to materialize as a phenomenological experience. The preceding works will reveal formations that seek to illuminate the internal form of surfaces that reveal what formed elements become as a response to energies and flows.
Herein the relationship between form and void will be discussed via the conceptualization of the term Atmosphere. This exhibition will reveal conditions that allow a for an understanding of atmosphere which is distinctly different from the term Ambience. Ambiance as elaborated in the surface.SITES | exhibition is the recognition of patterns and forms experienced in a particular place (environment). The identification of the collective fabric was established as an interpretation of one’s (designer) feelings derived from the experience absorbed. This understanding of place as an Ambience bound within time as a historically continuous moment becomes via reflection, recognition, and interpretation of the potential as determined. Potentiality as elaborated within the introduction of the surface.POTENTIALS | exhibition allows for the ambiance as a conceptualized mental phenomenon to become a generative form/formation derived within a continuum of thought.
To begin, what is ambiance as situated within this framework of thought? Then what is atmosphere as framed within and beyond the argument framed herein. Within the continuum of thought, what differentiates conceptual ambiance from the conceptual atmosphere?
ambiance |ˈambēəns| (also ambiance)
noun, plural ambiances [am-bee-uh n-siz; French ahn-byahns] (Show IPA)
1. the mood, character, quality, tone, atmosphere, etc., particularly of an environment or milieu:
The restaurant had a delightful ambiance.
2. that which surrounds or encompasses; environment.
Origin
French, equivalent to ambi(ant) surrounding (Middle French, also ambient < Latin; see ambient) + -ance -ance
From the French ambiance or ambiance defined as the quality and tone via the ambient. I shall state it to mean a feeling or mood evoked from the direct experience of a particular site. The site being requisite but not a static entity with physicality only being a contingency. The feeling as experienced is an internalized sensation that guides one’s (designers) thoughts as reflected toward the determination of any potential design formation as such. I suggest a design formation allowing the term formation to render an expanded terrain of existence beyond merely one-dimensional phenomenological objects. The use of formation as the conceptualization of not only the forms as determined but the process of actualization as well as the energies and flows that oft time determine the experiential nature of that which is formed. Ambiance while existing as a temporal phenomenon emanating from moments past projecting itself in time as an interpretation once recognized as an object of intentionality. The object is a formation that is the reflective nature or essence of the phenomena as experienced. The term ambiance accounts for the totality of the idealization of conceptual formations that embody the internalization of stimuli as identified — 1st thought — and recognize — a way of thinking or idea. Conceptual ambiance accounts for the that which is oft unknown to be identified — phenomena, as experienced via patterns and forms — in order to become an assignable identification of what potentially can become a, lived experienced. Once determined the potential for phenomena to exist vacillates from mental to physical phenomena potential.
atmosphere |ˈatməsˌfir|
noun [usually in singular]
1 the envelope of gases surrounding the earth or another planet: part of the sun’s energy is absorbed by the earth’s atmosphere.
• the air in any particular place: we couldn’t breathe in the dusty atmosphere of his apartment.
• (abbreviation atm) Physics a unit of pressure equal to mean atmospheric pressure at sea level, 101,325 pascals.
2 the pervading tone or mood of a place, situation, or work of art: the hotel is famous for its friendly, welcoming atmosphere | this crisis further compounded the prevailing atmosphere of gloom.
• a pleasurable and interesting or exciting mood: a superb restaurant, full of atmosphere.
ORIGIN
mid 17th century: from modern Latin atmosphaera, from Greek atmos ‘vapor’ + sphaira ‘ball, globe.’
Then what is atmosphere as situated herein? In order to understand the conceptual atmosphere, I suggest we unpack the constituent parts forming the whole. The word is composed of atmos from the Greek meaning vapor or air. In addition to this from the Greek — sphaira or ball globe — a sphere is derived. The essence of the term is the air or vapor that surrounds a form. If atmosphere via it’s etymological origins means air (space) and sphere (form) then my argument is that any conceptual atmosphere derived architecturally would be situated as an acute understanding of form and space or more precisely the typical form | void dichotomy. This is in contrast to the collective body of architects who assert the term atmosphere to mean quality or mood regarding designed forms. I would assert that the term is used blithely and out of context. If one understands the collective meaning of the term, then the design and development of works could more appropriately reveal a depth of awareness regarding the place as a generator of phenomenal potentials.
So atmosphere, as form and formation allows for the co-existence of meaning regarding formation is the interior surface condition of the form. They are one together or formation is the spatial condition of the form. The experience of Surfaces we touch — FORM — as the mass (exteriority) of texture that typically becomes the first moment as surface phenomena. That which is seen as a body or textural article on the surface of the site. The exterior is occupied by energies and flows that form the textural surfaces (light, color and/or noise) that condition voids and volumes as moments of flows or dynamic movement — FORMATION
The difference between the two conceptual terms lies in the interpretation of the word origins. Both terms have been used to convey similar meaning with the atmosphere being more readily used in the English language. I think the term has been used without meaning and context. The use of the term within the discipline of architecture ushers an expanded meaning that is beyond the scope and range of its constituent parts. The nature of the term connotes the physical conditions that exist. If we simply base the word in the context of its elements the term relocates itself within the language to an appropriately. This does not seem to occur regarding the term ambiance which is derived within context to mean that which is beyond the physical to the emotive.
The emotive or sensual quality inherent in the term renders it more appropriate for use when attempting to convey the visceral qualities of designed forms. The forms as designed reveal an inversion of the form | void dichotomy. The inversion is revealed within interior environment formation — energy and flows — typically determine form. Form and formation as the conceptual model of thinking regarding energy and flows. Typically, the form is regarded as the generator of formation bound to forms. If one is to contemplate the potential of various sited conditions one could surmise that formation -- energies and flows -- generate the formed surfaces that are experienced as phenomena. This occurs because the form is no longer that which is seen from a distance moreover form is that which exists in energy or voids. This is a dynamic awareness of forms and voids that allow both spatial conditions to exist as itself or as the other depending on that which is to be experienced as an inversion.
The existence of forms within energies marks the emergence of the essential element. The element is a simple awareness of a form within the designed formation that allows expression to materialize as a shared phenomenon. The essential element is the embodiment of a given works idea which is derived from the experience of place termed herein as ambiance. The form or forms as designed are the inheritors of meaning that gives rise to potential phenomena. If a potential is to be experienced, then an element must exist to embody the substance of thought.