Ped­a­gog­i­cal Palimpses­ts and Cos­mic Landscapes

Robert M. MacLeod

This essay offers an overview of a recent advanced grad­u­ate design stu­dio at the Uni­ver­si­ty of South Flori­da School of Archi­tec­ture and Com­mu­ni­ty Design. The stu­dio began, as do most col­lab­o­ra­tive efforts, through con­ver­sa­tion and cor­re­spon­dences between the col­lab­o­ra­tors. An inter­change of ideas mapped through phone calls, emails and com­mon aspi­ra­tions. Rather than a defined project or build­ing typol­o­gy, the stu­dio was orga­nized around a spe­cif­ic place: Mar­fa, Texas. Mar­fa served as a place of work, a phys­i­cal locale, a sen­si­bil­i­ty, and a pur­vey­or of things myth­i­cal, won­der­ful and unusu­al. The essay also address­es ped­a­gogy in terms of the inter-loop­ing nature of an archi­tec­tur­al edu­ca­tion: the nec­es­sary redun­dan­cy and lin­eage across edu­ca­tors and academies.

Harry Dean Stanton walking into the desert
1

Harry Dean Stanton walking into the desert

Context

The 1984 Wim Wen­ders film, Paris, Texas, is a beau­ti­ful, if dif­fi­cult, tale of loss. The open­ing sequence is set in the Texas desert. A bound­less land­scape with an end­less sky. Motion­less clouds hang as if strung from cables. The tiny fig­ure of Har­ry Dean Stan­ton emerges, walk­ing with some pur­pose through the arid land­scape in suit and tie and red base­ball cap. The lacon­ic Ry Cood­er sound­track echoes the vast empti­ness of the sur­round­ings; though emp­ty only in the sense of set­tle­ment. In real­i­ty, the land­scape is one of great, jagged dra­ma lit­tered with the detri­tus of habi­ta­tion: rail­road tracks, two-lane high­ways and lines of tele­phone poles project a sense of the infi­nite. Rust and ruin dot the rugged red earth. Aban­don­ment and melan­choly align our pro­tag­o­nist with his con­text. [ 1 ]

Paris, Texas was par­tial­ly filmed in the Trans-Pecos region of Far West Texas”, a place of unsub­tle inver­sions: arid deserts and dra­mat­ic moun­tain­ous; vast lands (over 31,000 square miles) and mod­est pop­u­la­tions (27 peo­ple per square mile); the lush Big Bend Nation­al Park and east­ern edge of the Chi­huahuan Desert (the largest in North Amer­i­ca); and ele­va­tions rang­ing from Guadalupe Peak (8750 ft.) to the Pecos and Rio Grande Riv­er Con­flu­ence (984 ft.).1

Mainstreet Marfa from the cupola of the Presidio Country Courthouse
2

Mainstreet Marfa from the cupola of the Presidio Country Courthouse

Pre­sidio Coun­ty is a tri­an­gu­lar shaped ter­ri­to­ry bor­der­ing Mex­i­co by way of the Rio Grande Riv­er, flow­ing from the north­west to the south east. The coun­ty seat is Mar­fa, home to the strik­ing sec­ond empire influ­enced Pre­sidio Coun­ty Cour­t­house (1886−87), ground­ing the town with great flair. Indeed, it seems to pin down all that could oth­er­wise drift away. The night sky hosts (unveils, reveals) a celes­tial feast. It is no won­der that the renowned McDon­ald Astro­nom­i­cal Obser­va­to­ry is locat­ed near Fort Davis in the Davis Moun­tains of near­by Jeff Davis Coun­ty, Texas. [ 2 ]

Marfa and Judd

“Dear Mom, Van Horn Texas. 1260 Population.
Nice Town Beautiful Country Mountains
– Love Don 1946 Dec 17 PM 5 45.”2

West Texas landscape
3

West Texas landscape

	Giant film poster
4

Giant film poster

Along the road from art crit­ic to artist—so-called min­i­mal­ist, a moniker dis­liked by Judd—and after many years based in New York, Judd returned to West Texas in the ear­ly 1970s and pur­chased a 45,000-acre ranch and sev­er­al build­ings in the town of Mar­fa. Through­out his life, Mar­fa served as one of three pri­ma­ry res­i­dences for Judd as he migrat­ed between Mar­fa, New York and the Swiss vil­lage of Küss­nacht on Lake Lucerne. 

Don­ald Judd and the West Texas land­scape by way of Mar­fa are now inex­orably inter­twined. Mar­fa is a kind of bespoke vil­lage embed­ded in the rugged and arid West Texas land­scape. Fine din­ing and high art com­fort­ably reside with bur­ri­tos, mules and cac­tus. The mod­ern Mar­fa clings to both its recent and dis­tant past while grap­pling with a dis­tinct­ly eccen­tric present. In Mar­fa, place is his­to­ry. The his­to­ry of Mar­fa is ever present by way of its atmos­phere: a pow­er­ful land­scape, rolling and hor­i­zon­tal, bound­less until bound­ed by moun­tains and cou­pled with the thin air prof­fered by its 4800 ft. ele­va­tion. [ 3 ]

The near dis­tant past of Mar­fa is ren­dered through the west­ern epic film Giant.3 Released in 1956 and direct­ed by George Stevens, it stars Rock Hud­son, Eliz­a­beth Tay­lor and James Dean (who died pri­or to the release of the film). Par­tial­ly filmed in and around Mar­fa, the region served as the expan­sive ranch of pro­tag­o­nist Jor­dan Bick” Bene­dict, Jr. (Hud­son). The film’s nar­ra­tive medi­ates between a grand mul­ti-gen­er­a­tional dra­ma of famil­ial fric­tion and tran­si­tion, as big oil invades the tra­di­tion­al Tex­an ranch­lands, and, for its day, dar­ing­ly con­fronting the region’s per­va­sive racism as wealthy Ang­los con­de­scend toward ser­vice class Mex­i­can Amer­i­cans. [ 4 ]

Ruin of Reata
5

Ruin of Reata

Beyonce at fake Prada
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Beyonce at fake Prada

Today, the shad­ow of Giant looms more mod­est­ly in Mar­fa. The El Paisano Hotel, home for the cast and crew for sev­er­al months, still stands, ren­o­vat­ed in 2004 after years of decline and safe­ly secured on the U.S. Nation­al Reg­is­ter of His­toric Places. Judd’s eccen­tric­i­ties have made Mar­fa a town eccen­tric unto itself. The ruin of Rea­ta, the lone­ly estate owned by Bick Bene­dict, stood for many years, a derelict bill­board of a one-time pre­tend man­sion. The ruin is now gone. How­ev­er, in a Mar­fa appro­pri­ate inter­sec­tion of con­tem­po­rary art and the Tex­an land­scape, artist duo Michael Elm­green and Ingar Dragset erect­ed a fake Pra­da store in 2005, some 30 miles north­west of Mar­fa on US 90. A bill­board turned muse­um by way of the Texas Depart­ment of Trans­porta­tion (orig­i­nal­ly clas­si­fied by the Texas DOT as an ille­gal bill­board, the build­ing was reclas­si­fied as a muse­um and remains stand­ing), the Pra­da store is min­i­mal­ist art, a cri­tique of con­sumer cul­ture, and a road­side attrac­tion, in addi­tion to serv­ing as a ground zero for self­ies and social media posts. It serves an an out­post, a pre-wel­come sta­tion for inquis­i­tive vis­i­tors and offers a sneak pre­view of what lies beyond. One might argue the fake Pra­da holds a dis­tant kin­ship to (if not an obvi­ous exten­sion of) Judd’s solemn cast con­crete box­es. Both for­eign but odd­ly at home and wel­come in the West Texas land­scape. A land­scape, it seems, capa­ble of absorb­ing vir­tu­al­ly any­thing. The pre­tend Pra­da prof­fers a cul­tur­al correspondence—one per­haps, of irony and dissidence—between Mar­fa and the out­side urban­ized world. [ 5 ] [ 6 ]

Thresholds

The Greek God Janus serves as a cat­a­lyst for the Mar­fa Stu­dio. Janus is two faced. Each face look­ing in the oppo­site direc­tion, one fac­ing the past and the oth­er peer­ing into the future. Janus is a thresh­old and, as are all thresh­olds, a cor­re­spon­dence between and across two realms. The theme of cor­re­spon­dence pro­vides a didac­tic struc­ture for the stu­dio work.

Material Culture

In The Crafts­man”, author Richard Sen­nett speaks of mate­r­i­al cul­ture and offers a read­ing of the val­ue of skilled work where the desire to do a job well done for its own sake” encour­ages indi­vid­u­als to learn about them­selves through the things they make”.4

The con­cerns of mate­r­i­al cul­ture reside in the design stu­dio. That is, the val­ue imbued in the mak­ing of an object or set of relat­ed things. Mate­r­i­al cul­ture binds the corporeal—the phys­i­cal­i­ty of materiality—with intel­lec­tu­al pro­duc­tion and sit­u­ates the result­ing work in a ver­nac­u­lar, place-based log­ic. We explore the intrin­sic con­nec­tion, cor­re­spon­dence, if you will, between the eye, the mind and the hand. One seeks to make” as a means of inqui­si­tion. Mak­ing is con­sid­ered an intel­lec­tu­al act, a form of thinking. 

The stu­dio serves as a pre-the­sis think tank and pre­sumes a the­sis of some kind is essen­tial to all projects. The­sis sem­i­nar is both a self-dri­ven design stu­dio con­clud­ing one’s for­mal aca­d­e­m­ic train­ing and an intel­lec­tu­al tra­jec­to­ry for mak­ing archi­tec­ture. The­sis as a for­mal project stands at the thresh­old between con­clud­ing an aca­d­e­m­ic career and begin­ning the jour­ney into prac­tice. A Janu­sian moment. The­sis is pre­sent­ed as both an end and a begin­ning. The Mar­fa Stu­dio seeks to engage ideas and serve to clar­i­fy the participant’s intel­lec­tu­al tra­jec­to­ry toward the­sis and beyond. Stu­dio par­tic­i­pants dic­tate stu­dio dis­course and direc­tion. Ambi­tions and doubts estab­lish the arc of the work. The begin­ning of the term is spent uncov­er­ing the foun­da­tions of the student’s search and, more impor­tant­ly, prepar­ing a method­ol­o­gy that is both ques­tion­ing and generative.

Palimpsest drawing
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Palimpsest drawing

Pedagogical Palimpsests

The term palimpsest orig­i­nates in ancient Greek as palimpses­tos with palin (again) com­bined with pses­tos (rubbed smooth or again scraped). This trans­lates as scraped clean and ready to be used again” and describes the process of eras­ing and smooth­ing wax coat­ed writ­ing tablets and repeat­ed­ly writ­ing upon the sur­face. The Romans referred to this process as wash­ing papyrus”, a com­mon­ly used sur­face that was cheap­er than the parch­ment pre­pared from ani­mal skins. This wash­ing or era­sure is more often a prod­uct of pre­serv­ing the afore men­tioned and stur­dier parch­ment.5 The palimpsest, then, is a ghost­ly struc­ture with lay­er upon lay­er, writ­ten and erased, writ­ten and erased. A kind of rit­u­al dis­place­ment of knowl­edge, a priv­i­leg­ing of one order over anoth­er [ 7 ].

The Palimpsest is, per­haps, the most direct and inti­mate of cor­re­spon­dences. The process of era­sure and re-writ­ing yields a den­si­ty of ideas and infor­ma­tion, col­lapsed into one place and await­ing dis­cov­ery and inter­pre­ta­tion. A dis­junct cor­re­spon­dence of col­li­sions over time yields a dis­junct over­lay­ing of knowl­edge. This dense map of acci­den­tal­ly inter­twined cul­tures and bod­ies of knowl­edge sug­gests an appro­pri­ate­ly spec­u­la­tive ped­a­gog­i­cal struc­ture for the Mar­fa Stu­dio. Arche­ol­o­gist Geoff Bai­ley out­lines a palimpsest typol­o­gy as follows:

True palimpsests

True palimpses­ts are palimpses­ts in the strict sense of the term in which all traces of ear­li­er activ­i­ty have been removed except for the most recent.”6 A true palimpsest is an actu­al real time record­ing device. Era­sure presents each suc­ces­sive mark as new and com­plete. Era­sure yields an absence where­by his­to­ry remains a mystery.

Cumulative palimpsests

A cumu­la­tive palimpsest is one in which the suc­ces­sive episodes of depo­si­tion, or lay­ers of activ­i­ty, remain super­im­posed one upon the oth­er with­out loss of evi­dence, but are so re-worked and mixed togeth­er that it is dif­fi­cult or impos­si­ble to sep­a­rate them out into their orig­i­nal con­stituents.”7

This palimpsest is also most com­mon­ly ref­er­enced with­in archi­tec­tur­al dis­course. The over­laid, simul­ta­ne­ous cir­cum­stance of coin­ci­dent his­to­ries. This palimpsest is an exquis­ite entan­gle­ment of lay­ers, imprint upon imprint, invit­ing dis­til­la­tion and interpretation.

Spatial palimpsests

“…spa­tial palimpses­ts, a vari­ant of the cumu­la­tive palimpsest but dis­tinct from it and defined as a mix­ture of episodes that are spa­tial­ly seg­re­gat­ed but whose tem­po­ral rela­tion­ships have become blurred and dif­fi­cult to dis­en­tan­gle. … the bound­ary between cumu­la­tive and spa­tial palimpses­ts is not a sharp one. Both may be char­ac­ter­ized by a vari­ety of loca­tions of activ­i­ty and by dif­fer­ent degrees of spa­tial and tem­po­ral integri­ty. The key dif­fer­ence is rather one of geo­graph­i­cal scale.”8

Indeed, in the expe­ri­ence of a build­ing we see, feel and encounter the build­ing in rad­i­cal­ly dif­fer­ent ways over time (or even in a rel­a­tive­ly short peri­od of time). The time of day and year alters the dis­po­si­tion and char­ac­ter of light enter­ing the spaces, yield­ing very dis­tinct expe­ri­ences, impres­sions and memories.

The very expe­ri­ence of archi­tec­ture emerges as a mul­ti-palimpses­tic con­di­tion, altered by time, mate­ri­al­i­ty, sea­son, the weath­er­ing of sur­face, and cos­met­ic changes to a space. Each expe­ri­ence is influ­enced by a pre­vi­ous expe­ri­ence, mood, expec­ta­tion, or pre-con­cep­tion. The ran­dom­ness of the imme­di­ate envi­ron­ment shapes one’s mem­o­ry: a near­by train, a car horn, a dis­tant jack­ham­mer, and/or a pass­ing con­ver­sa­tion col­lide to form an inter­twined het­ero­topic spatial/aural con­text. Con­text sways per­cep­tion, and per­cep­tion emerges from an ever-chang­ing palimpsest of experience.

Temporal palimpsests

A tem­po­ral palimpsest is an assem­blage of mate­ri­als and objects that form part of the same deposit but are of dif­fer­ent ages and life’ spans. On first descrip­tion this sounds like a cumu­la­tive palimpsest by anoth­er name. How­ev­er, in the cumu­la­tive palimpsest, the asso­ci­a­tion of objects of dif­fer­ent ages is real­ly an aggre­ga­tion due to the effect of mix­ing togeth­er what were orig­i­nal­ly dis­tinct episodes of activ­i­ty or depo­si­tion.”9

Think of tem­po­ral events such as rain, snow­fall, wind act­ing upon and alter­ing either imme­di­ate­ly, tem­porar­i­ly or slow­ly over time the geog­ra­phy of a place.

Palimpsests of meaning 

A palimpsest of mean­ing can be defined as the suc­ces­sion of mean­ings acquired by a par­tic­u­lar object, or group of objects, as a result of the dif­fer­ent uses, con­texts of use and asso­ci­a­tions to which they have been exposed from the orig­i­nal moment of man­u­fac­ture to their cur­rent rest­ing place…”

“…whether in the ground, a muse­um, a text­book, an intel­lec­tu­al dis­course, or indeed as objects still in cir­cu­la­tion and use. It is dis­tinct from all the oth­er types of palimpses­ts so far dis­cussed in that it can apply to an indi­vid­ual object, and because it brings us more obvi­ous­ly into the domain of sub­jec­tive time expe­ri­ence.”10

In Peter Eisenman’s for­ward to Aldo Rossi’s Archi­tec­ture of the City he dis­cuss­es Rossi’s notion of spe­cif­ic place, or locus: “…thus, while the locus is a site which can accom­mo­date a series of events, it also in itself con­sti­tutes an event… Build­ings may be signs of events that have occurred on a spe­cif­ic site; and this three­fold rela­tion­ship of site, event and sign becomes a char­ac­ter­is­tic of urban arti­facts. Hence, the locus may be said to be the place on which archi­tec­ture or form can be imprint­ed. Archi­tec­ture gives form to the sin­gu­lar­i­ty of place, and it is this spe­cif­ic form that the locus per­sists through many changes, par­tic­u­lar­ly trans­for­ma­tion of function…

This rela­tion­ship sug­gests a dif­fer­ent lim­it to his­to­ry. His­to­ry exists so long as an object is in use; that is, so long as a form relates to its orig­i­nal func­tion. How­ev­er, when form and func­tion are sev­ered, and only form remains vital, his­to­ry shifts into the realm of mem­o­ry. When his­to­ry ends, mem­o­ry begins. …His­to­ry becomes to be known through the rela­tion­ship between a col­lec­tive mem­o­ry of events, the sin­gu­lar­i­ty of place (locus solus), and the sign of the place as expressed in form.” And Eisen­man goes on to say, “…the new time of archi­tec­ture… is that of mem­o­ry, which replaces his­to­ry.”11

The palimpsest of mean­ing inter­sects with the palimpsest of his­to­ry. His­to­ry piv­ots to mem­o­ry and over time we wit­ness a scrib­ing of events upon the place. This is the palimpses­tic over­lay of events; the cre­ation of mem­o­ry. The process is a kind of mem­o­ry machine. And the pro­duc­tion of archi­tec­ture (the process of mak­ing archi­tec­ture) ref­er­ences one’s his­to­ry, as if frozen in time, and cou­pled with one’s mem­o­ry of events, of dis­course, of experiences. 

Final­ly, the­sis is from late Mid­dle Eng­lish (via late Latin from Greek), lit­er­al­ly plac­ing, a propo­si­tion’, from the root of tithenai to place’.12 To place; to make a place; a place as the­sis. The the­sis of the Mar­fa Stu­dio is to make place, or rather, an essence of place. And sure­ly a sense of place drew Don­ald Judd to West Texas.

Contextual Correspondence

Trav­el to Mar­fa is some­thing of a pil­grim­age and, in this instance, intend­ed to chal­lenge and strip away the famil­iar sur­round­ings of the stu­dents’ imme­di­ate con­text. In oth­er words, to expe­ri­ence the near oppo­site of the known. In this cir­cum­stance, the known is the lush, wet, humid land­scape of Flori­da. With 1350 miles of coast­line, a frag­ile karst topo­graph­ic under­lay, and ris­ing sea lev­els, Flori­da has both a tem­po­ral and iron­i­cal­ly pri­mor­dial char­ac­ter. It is pri­mar­i­ly a land­scape of canopy, shade and shad­ows inter­wo­ven with high­ways, a mish-mash of archi­tec­tur­al pre and post war devel­op­ment, and var­i­ous water bod­ies col­lec­tive­ly blan­ket­ing urban­ized regions in end­less sprawl. It is a state defined through tourism, vio­lent storms, the tem­po­ral, and the mythical.

Much of Flori­da is delin­eat­ed by the lim­i­nal line between water and land; the sun­rise and sun­set of east and west; and the devel­op­ment and demo­graph­ics of north and south. In many ways it is two states, rur­al and urban, wealthy and not, new set­tlers and increas­ing­ly rare natives. Its strange­ness rev­els in con­tra­dic­tions and mis-align­ments. The east-west dis­po­si­tion of the Inter­state 4 cor­ri­dor bisects the state north to south. It is said the Inter­state 4 cor­ri­dor decides nation­al elec­tions, such is the diver­si­ty of opin­ion, race, eth­nic­i­ty and cul­ture. The cor­ri­dor is a place of fan­ta­sy and the fan­tas­tic, home to mass tourism, amuse­ment parks, minia­ture worlds, and filmic nar­ra­tives retold as themed rides. Defunct attrac­tions are mod­ern day ruins as gen­er­a­tions of enter­tain­ment venues die and are reborn only to die again. It is a state both of youth and exu­ber­ance, yet, for the elder­ly, serves also as God’s wait­ing room. 

Provost project
8

Provost project

Our con­tex­tu­al cor­re­spon­dence is one of oppo­si­tion and con­tra­dic­tion. Con­text means to weave togeth­er, from the late Mid­dle Eng­lish (denot­ing the con­struc­tion of a text): from Latin con­tex­tus, from con- togeth­er’ + texere to weave’.13 Con­text is equal­ly com­mon­place and elu­sive; mul­ti­far­i­ous and par­tic­u­lar; con­crete and abstract. The famil­iar jux­ta­posed by the for­eign. [ 8 ]

Place and Space

In his cel­e­brat­ed writ­ings, Chris­t­ian Nor­berg-Schulz speaks at length of genius loci, the spir­it of place that we con­sid­er in the cor­re­spon­dence between these appar­ent oppos­ing land­scapes. Although vast­ly dif­fer­ent in cli­mate, land­scape and alti­tude, Flori­da and West Texas align through cer­tain rubrics of place, as defined by Nor­berg-Schulz: “…it is an exis­ten­tial con­cept which denotes the expe­ri­ence of mean­ings.” 14

His four modes of under­stand­ing nat­ur­al sys­tems offer an exis­ten­tial read­ing of land­scape as idea more so than an object or arti­fact:15

Things: The forces of the nat­ur­al land­scape are relat­ed to con­crete nat­ur­al ele­ments or things.

The Sun: An abstrac­tion of the cos­mic order, as defined by the pres­ence of the sun as form giv­er and shapeshifter.

Char­ac­ter: The char­ac­ter of place, tied to human presence

Light: We under­stand light as a thing, an idea, and a sym­bol. In reli­gious tra­di­tions, light is linked direct­ly to the spir­it, Devine pres­ence, and a deep cos­mic order.

Nor­berg-Schulz pro­vides a typol­o­gy of nat­ur­al land­scapes: Roman­tic, Cos­mic, Clas­si­cal and Com­plex. Flori­da is a roman­tic land­scape: The sky is hard­ly expe­ri­enced as a total hemi­sphere but is nar­rowed in between the con­tours of trees and rocks, and is more­over con­tin­u­ous­ly mod­i­fied by clouds.”16 The dense canopy of Florida’s inte­ri­or is near pri­mal, fil­ter­ing light, cre­at­ing shad­ow, and pro­vid­ing respite from the relent­less sun and humid­i­ty. The sky is sure­ly fast mov­ing as Atlantic and Gulf winds criss­cross the state yield­ing a com­plex and tem­po­ral sky pat­tern. The earth is ever-present: we sense, feel, smell and all but taste the rich­ness of the earth. Inter­est­ing­ly, Nor­berg-Schulz specif­i­cal­ly defines the Nordic Roman­tic land­scape as chthon­ic”; of the earth; belong­ing to or inhab­it­ing the under­world.17 Florida’s under­world quick­ly shifts from a shal­low lay­er of earth to a water world of aquifers, under­ground caves, rivers and frag­ile limestone. 

The West Texas land­scape is Norberg-Schulz’s cos­mic land­scape: In the desert the com­plex­i­ties of our con­crete-life world are reduced to a few, sim­ple phenomena…In the desert, thus, the earth does not offer man a suf­fi­cient exis­ten­tial foothold. It does not con­tain indi­vid­ual places, but forms a con­tin­u­ous neu­tral ground.”18 The West Texas sky is defined by the sun and, alter­na­tive­ly, by the moon and stars. It is a place of absolutes, at times form­less. Nor­berg-Schulz fur­ther notes its exis­ten­tial char­ac­ter through the Ara­bic proverb: The fur­ther you go into the desert, the clos­er you come to God.”19 As with the reci­procity of sun and shad­ow, Florida’s roman­tic land­scape offers coun­ter­bal­ance to the cos­mic land­scape of West Texas.

The Marfa Studio Format: the familiar made unfamiliar and the suspension of disbelief

The studio format is tripartite with an epilogue that also serves as a preface.
Part 1 From Artifact to Palimpsest
Part 2 The Provost
Part 3 Fiat Lux
Part 4 Epilogue/Preface

Part 1 / From Artifact to Palimpsest

We begin with the famil­iar and strive to ren­der it unfa­mil­iar. The stu­dent is asked to select an arti­fact of some per­son­al sig­nif­i­cance. These items includ­ed a chess set, cuf­flinks, pho­tographs and sewing pat­terns. The arti­fact was rep­re­sent­ed and trans­formed through a series of hand-made draw­ings. It was redrawn, shift­ing scales and modes of rep­re­sen­ta­tion. The nature of the draw­ing emerges as a muti-lay­ered inter­pre­ta­tion of the orig­i­nal arti­fact. It is a real time palimpsest assem­bled through scalar shifts, jux­ta­po­si­tions, inter­pre­ta­tions and re-inter­pre­ta­tions. The result­ing doc­u­ment is a dense­ly lay­ered map of ter­ri­to­r­i­al over­lays result­ing in a two-dimen­sion­al, yet spa­tial palimpsest. 

Provost project
9

Provost project

Provost project under construction
10

Provost project under construction

Part 2 / The Provost: the Overseer 

The resul­tant dia­gram is used to con­struct the Provost, a spec­u­la­tive vol­u­met­ric con­struc­tion that serves as a vehi­cle to deter­mine and exper­i­ment with the archi­tec­tur­al edge”. Bounds mark the loca­tion of space and edge defines its char­ac­ter. The Provost is a 24” square cubic vol­ume with only three require­ments: one ver­ti­cal sur­face must be 2” thick and built with an opaque mate­r­i­al; an inter­sect­ing ver­ti­cal sur­face must be a thin, tec­ton­ic assem­bly par­tial­ly con­struct­ed with Plex­i­glas. Any sense of ground must float with­in the 24” vol­ume. The inter­sec­tion of thick and thin, trans­par­ent and opaque, tec­ton­ic and stereotom­ic force a didac­tic cor­re­spon­dence, a mate­r­i­al, spa­tial and expe­ri­en­tial dia­logue pro­grammed through a min­i­mal, even lim­i­nal, con­di­tion of occu­pan­cy. The scale of one inch equals 1.5 feet yields a 36-foot scalar vol­u­met­ric cube [ 10 ].The pro­gram is sim­ply a place of arrival and exchange; pur­pose­ly left open-end­ed to pro­mote a sense of spec­u­la­tion and poet­ic habi­ta­tion. The arti­fact draw­ing exer­cise is used as a pro­gram­ing tool to devel­op a spa­tial log­ic with­in the con­fines of the Provost. [ 9 ] [ 10 ]

Curricular Correspondence

The Uni­ver­si­ty of Texas at Austin, locat­ed in the state’s capi­tol city, lies 429 miles east of Mar­fa. In the mid 1950’s the School of Archi­tec­ture at UT saw the con­ver­gence of anoth­er set of giants, though at the time, no one could fore­see the sig­nif­i­cance of this gath­ered faculty.

Under the guid­ance of School Direc­tor Har­well Har­ris, Bern­hard Hoes­li, Col­in Rowe, John Hej­duk and Robert Slutzky con­verged in the Texas hill coun­try and com­menced con­struc­tion of a new archi­tec­tur­al ped­a­gogy. Impec­ca­bly detailed in Alexan­der Caragonne’s, The Texas Rangers, Notes from an Archi­tec­tur­al Under­ground, the cur­ric­u­lar map of the archi­tec­ture school both bor­rows from and rejects the trap­pings of both the beaux arts and mod­ernist edu­ca­tion­al tra­di­tions. His­to­ry and prece­dent were reval­ued, con­text recon­sid­ered and archi­tec­tur­al space forged ahead of archi­tec­tur­al form. An over­lay of the fash­ion­able and influ­en­tial gestalt psy­chol­o­gy priv­i­leged visu­al per­cep­tion and paved the way for see­ing” archi­tec­tur­al space in two and three dimen­sion­al con­structs.20

The advent of the deeply influ­en­tial nine square grid” project estab­lished a Carte­sian point grid pro­vid­ing for­mal struc­ture while invit­ing inter­pre­ta­tion of rules and for­mal order. The nine square exer­cise priv­i­leges plan over sec­tion and presents a Miesian inspired space of infi­nite expanse along the x and y axes. Hej­duk even­tu­al­ly inter­prets this in a more lit­er­al col­umn and beam struc­ture. We see this through his five exper­i­men­tal Texas Hous­es devel­oped dur­ing his brief tenure in Austin.21 There is we learn, an authen­tic sense of dis­cov­ery and inven­tion through pedagogy.

Hej­duk thus began a career in teach­ing with a pat­tern that would repeat itself over the years, teach­ing oth­ers not what he knew” but instead what he was in the process of dis­cov­er­ing.”22

This nine square exer­cise is lat­er extrud­ed to an 18-square grid, thick­ened to per­mit an increas­ing­ly com­plex spa­tial order through a more ani­mat­ed sec­tion. Even­tu­al­ly a 27-square grid, essen­tial­ly a cubic vol­ume, makes the exer­cise far less two dimen­sion­al than the orig­i­nal nine square project. The nine square gen­er­at­ed any num­ber of relat­ed begin­ning design exer­cis­es: the kit of parts, the cube, the space box, and so forth.23 The Provost exer­cise con­tin­ues this lega­cy, not as an intro­duc­to­ry exer­cise, but as a project ask­ing the stu­dent to begin again”, to revis­it fun­da­men­tal rela­tion­ships, to invent pro­gram as expe­ri­ence, to re-con­sid­er tuto­ri­als and re-shape strate­gies of making.

Per­haps the most impor­tant fea­ture of the nine-square exer­cise and its myr­i­ad descen­dants is the clear sense of order that can be quick­ly act­ed upon and cri­tiqued. Of course the nine-square ref­er­ences Le Corbusier’s free plan and Mies van der Rhoe’s pre­cise grid based plans and uni­ver­sal space, but it also echoes the pow­er­ful sym­me­try of clas­si­cal archi­tec­ture. The addi­tion of a line or, in three dimen­sions, a plane, quick­ly mod­i­fies the order of the scheme and cre­ates a lan­guage of rep­re­sen­ta­tion and a means of dis­course. Alter­ations and addi­tions induce asym­me­try, ten­sion, re-cen­ter­ing, and re-order­ing through a more com­plex tar­tan grid. The imme­di­a­cy and acces­si­bil­i­ty of the nine-square inspired exer­cis­es is essen­tial to cre­at­ing a place to begin mak­ing archi­tec­tur­al decisions.

Part 3 / Fiat Lux: Light catalogued and cast

Marfa’s high alti­tude and intense sun­light yields a dra­mat­ic play of light and shad­ow. Stu­dents are asked to assem­ble an archival cat­a­log of light through care­ful­ly com­posed pho­tographs. Vin­cen­zo Scamozzi’s 16th cen­tu­ry trea­tise, L’Idea dell”Architettura Uni­ver­sale serves as a point of depar­ture as he out­lines six cat­e­gories of light:24

Intense: from direct sun on a clear day
Lively/perpendicular: as received in court­yards and domes
Hor­i­zon­tal, free: as received frontal­ly or diag­o­nal­ly as in rooms or por­ti­coes
Lim­it­ed light: obstruct­ed by a place’s nar­row­ness, like a street
Sec­ondary light: as it enters from an adja­cent direct­ly lit space
Min­i­mal light: reflected

From the project out­line:
Each of Scamozzi’s light types depends on an encounter with an archi­tec­tur­al body or space. In oth­er words, the light is altered as it enters a space by first being inter­rupt­ed (or gath­ered) by a roof, wall, or oth­er sur­face. The verbs are rev­e­la­to­ry: light enters, is received, obstruct­ed, reflect­ed… The adjec­tives, intense, live­ly, hor­i­zon­tal, lim­it­ed, sec­ondary, min­i­mal, are like­wise infor­ma­tive. Lit­er­a­ture and poet­ry pro­vide us with oth­er descrip­tives: light can shake, pour, sput­ter, and flow; it can be caught; it can be false or deceiv­ing, divine, ancient. It can affect the sens­es: it can blind and burn. Keep in mind we can­not per­ceive heav­en­ly light inde­pen­dent of its earth­ly twin, shad­ow, which gives rise to mea­sure and time.”

Light/Shadow study
11

Light/Shadow study

A palimpsest of light and shad­ow is dig­i­tal­ly con­struct­ed using over­laid images to col­lapse the tem­po­ral pho­to­graph­ic doc­u­men­ta­tion into a sin­gle frame. An accom­pa­ny­ing nar­ra­tive describes the light qual­i­ty of each image and, in turn, serves as a pro­gram for the con­struc­tion of light ves­sels”. [ 11 ]

Vessel project
Vessel project
Vessel project
Vessel project
12

Vessel project

The Vessels / Seriality and Light as Program

Inspired by Don­ald Judd’s Mar­fa works and guid­ed by the afore­men­tioned light stud­ies, stu­dents designed and cast (using plas­ter or con­crete) a series of light ves­sels. Cast­ing the arti­fact neces­si­tates an inver­sion of spa­tial log­ic, a dance between sol­id and void. The cast­ing of arti­facts designed to cap­ture the cast­ing of shad­ows sug­gests an intel­lec­tu­al cor­re­spon­dence between con­cep­tion and con­struc­tion; light and sur­face; time and space. The ves­sels emerged as a ser­i­al assem­bly inter­act­ing through prox­im­i­ty, jux­ta­po­si­tion and locale, vis-à-vis, the reg­is­tra­tion of ground as datum. [ 12 ]

The ves­sels, through their cast forms, cor­re­spond and invert the Provost project with its roots in the tec­ton­ic, Carte­sian world. The ves­sels, each in char­ac­ter a more-or-less cubic vol­ume, revis­it the figure/ground inter­play of space and form, so appre­ci­at­ed by the Gestalt the­o­rists (lit­er­al­ly from the Ger­man Gestalt, form, shape’)25. From some dis­tance, the ves­sels revis­it the nine-square project of the 1950s with­out the strict for­mal order and, instead, pro­mote the emer­gence of space over the super­im­po­si­tion of log­ic. The ensem­ble of ves­sels has a some­what urban char­ac­ter, mark­ing neg­a­tive space both between objects and with­in each arti­fact. Forms nego­ti­ates between one anoth­er for pres­ence and relevance. 

The ser­i­al nature of the exer­cise echoes Judd’s alu­minum box­es and con­crete land­scape frames. Seri­al­i­ty sup­ports the inher­ent repet­i­tive and redun­dant nature of archi­tec­tur­al edu­ca­tion. To be made redun­dant is, in the most lit­er­al sense, to be cast off or super­flu­ous. Yet, redun­dan­cy is also rhetor­i­cal, repet­i­tive, and exces­sive. Ped­a­gogy is inher­ent­ly rhetor­i­cal, as is true with any lan­guage includ­ing the lan­guage of archi­tec­ture. We address com­po­si­tion, tech­nique, and expres­sion in order to deliv­er, con­vince and argue for an archi­tec­tur­al (formal/spatial) propo­si­tion. Bricks can, and indeed, must be as rhetor­i­cal and con­vinc­ing as words. Space is expres­sive, nuanced, fig­u­ra­tive and final­ly, negotiated.

Thesis Palimpsest (Residue of Transformation, NYC)
13

Thesis Palimpsest (Residue of Transformation, NYC)

Part 4 / Epilogue/Preface/Toward Thesis

The last por­tion of the stu­dio is devot­ed to each participant’s the­sis-borne agen­da. While the first three design exer­cis­es reveal ideas and strate­gies, the final project brings these predilec­tions and sen­si­bil­i­ties direct­ly to one’s research and design work. This project is the Januse­an thresh­old between design stu­dio and the­sis pro­pos­al; between the­sis project and begin­ning again in the pro­fes­sion­al realm. The­sis projects (remem­ber, plac­ing a propo­si­tion”) in an aca­d­e­m­ic set­ting are invari­ably ambi­tious, opti­mistic and even naive. Stu­dents dwell – as they should – in an ide­al cir­cum­stance of mak­ing, where­by an archi­tec­tur­al pro­pos­al can address things extra­or­di­nary, com­plex, unfa­mil­iar, per­son­al, and even strange. With­in the acad­e­my lies the hope of clar­i­ty. [ 13 ]

His­to­ri­an Charles Jencks famous­ly timed the death of mod­ernism to the destruc­tion of a sin­gle pro­found­ly failed hous­ing project. The demo­li­tion of the Pruitt-Igoe project sure­ly marked a dark moment in the opti­mism of archi­tec­ture as a social project. But was Jencks cor­rect? The mod­ern project, it seems, is alive and well. Stu­dents inher­ent a world lit­tered with prob­lems, short­ages, threats and obsta­cles. It seems they often wish to cre­ate impact and offer con­crete respons­es to often abstract prob­lems; mat­ters that are some­times not so much solved as theorized.

In the exquis­ite essay, Weak Archi­tec­ture, Igna­sius Solà-Morales cri­tiques architecture’s instru­men­tal mon­u­men­tal­i­ty and insis­tence upon the self-def­i­n­i­tion of the mon­u­men­tal as phys­i­cal per­ma­nence (per Rossi). Solà-Morales calls for anoth­er kind of mon­u­men­tal state­ment, one steeped instead in mem­o­ry. In his words, “…as a ves­tige, as the tremu­lous clan­gor of the bell that rever­ber­ates after it has ceased to ring; as that which is con­sti­tut­ed as pure residu­um, as rec­ol­lec­tion”.26

Solà-Morales con­cludes his essay in search of anoth­er kind of permanence:

In con­trast, the notion of mon­u­ment I have sought to put for­ward here is bound up with the lin­ger­ing res­o­nance of poet­ry after it has been heard, with the rec­ol­lec­tion of archi­tec­ture after it has been seen. This is the strength of weak­ness; that strength which art and archi­tec­ture are capa­ble of pro­duc­ing pre­cise­ly when they adopt a pos­ture that is not aggres­sive and dom­i­nat­ing, but tan­gen­tial and weak.”27

The archi­tec­tur­al the­sis an an aca­d­e­m­ic endeav­or has fall­en out of favor in many insti­tu­tions. The spec­u­la­tive, open-end­ed the­sis has been dis­placed by var­i­ous vehi­cles includ­ing the ter­mi­nal project, a care­ful­ly orches­trat­ed dis­play of com­pe­tence, the research stu­dio, echo­ing larg­er uni­ver­si­ty inves­tiga­tive agen­das, or sim­ply a final design stu­dio of no par­tic­u­lar focus, except pro­vid­ing a pro­fi­cient, if mod­est, con­clu­sion. We see a renewed inter­est in the archi­tec­ture of cri­sis, priv­i­leg­ing focused prob­lem solv­ing over broad con­cep­tu­al­iza­tion. Resilien­cy, sus­tain­abil­i­ty, hous­ing, and addic­tion serve such a tax­on­o­my. The aca­d­e­m­ic the­sis project is a labor inten­sive endeav­or, requir­ing a com­mit­ted fac­ul­ty cou­pled with a cur­ricu­lum designed to antic­i­pate the leap into the­sis through a run­way of research and crit­i­cal think­ing opportunities.

As the aca­d­e­m­ic the­sis binds state­ment with prob­lem and propo­si­tion with project, the exer­cise might well learn from the notion of weak­ness pro­posed by Solà-Morales. Archi­tec­ture is an instru­ment of juris­dic­tion. We guide move­ment, stake ter­ri­to­ry and, dare I say, build walls. The sim­ple act of delin­eat­ing space neces­si­tates some degree of con­trol. And the con­trol of bound­aries, edges, and spaces is inher­ent­ly polit­i­cal. Hege­mo­ny is inte­gral to the act of mak­ing. We so often seek an answer when we are actu­al­ly in search of a ques­tion. Stud­ies of archi­tec­ture might chan­nel deeply per­son­al sen­si­bil­i­ties and the desire for answers into archi­tec­tur­al pro­pos­als that inter­ro­gate, doubt and ulti­mate­ly con­tribute to a larg­er social project of porous intel­lec­tu­al bound­aries con­tribut­ing to a mul­ti­far­i­ous, palimpses­tic query of the very dis­ci­pline itself.

  1. 1

    Wikipedia con­trib­u­tors, West Texas”

  2. 2

    Telegram home from Don­ald Judd trav­el­ing to Cal­i­for­nia by way of Texas for mil­i­tary duty in 1946, Judd and Mur­ray, Don­ald Judd Writ­ings, 424.

  3. 3

    Wikipedia con­trib­u­tors, Giant (1956 film)”

  4. 4

    Sen­nett, The Crafts­man, 20

  5. 5

    Wikipedia con­trib­u­tors, Palimpsest”

  6. 6

    Bai­ley, Time Per­spec­tives, Palimpses­ts and the Archae­ol­o­gy of Time,” 203

  7. 7

    Ibid, 204

  8. 8

    Ibid, 205

  9. 9

    Ibid, 207

  10. 10

    Ibid, 208

  11. 11

    Rossi and Eis­n­man, The Archi­tec­ture of the City, 7

  12. 12

    Oxford dic­tio­nar­ies, online

  13. 13

    Ibid, online

  14. 14

    Nor­berg-Schulz, Genius Loci, 23

  15. 15

    Ibid, 24–32

  16. 16

    Ibid, 42

  17. 17

    Ibid, 42

  18. 18

    Ibid, 45

  19. 19

    Ibid, 45

  20. 20

    Caragonne, The Texas Rangers, 5–12

  21. 21

    Ibid, 190–194

  22. 22

    Ibid, 192

  23. 23

    The vari­a­tions of the nine-square project have been devel­oped at myr­i­ad insti­tu­tions by count­less faculty.

  24. 24

    Borys, Lume Di Lume: A The­o­ry of Light and Its Effects,” 7–8

  25. 25

    Oxford dic­tio­nar­ies, online

  26. 26

    Solà-Morales, Dif­fer­ences : Topogra­phies of Con­tem­po­rary Archi­tec­ture, 71

  27. 27

    Ibid, 71

Bibliography

Bai­ley, Geoff. 2007. Time Per­spec­tives, Palimpses­ts and the Archae­ol­o­gy of Time.” Jour­nal of Anthro­po­log­i­cal Archae­ol­o­gy 26 (Jan­u­ary): 198–223.

Borys, Anne Marie. 2004. Lume Di Lume: A The­o­ry of Light and Its Effects.” Jour­nal of Archi­tec­tur­al Edu­ca­tion (1984-), no. 4: 3.

Caragonne, Alexan­der. 1995. The Texas Rangers: Notes from the Archi­tec­tur­al Under­ground. Cam­bridge, Mass.: MIT Press. 

Fel­lows, Jay. Janu­sian Thresh­olds.” Per­spec­ta 19 (1982): 43–57.

Jencks, Charles. 1991. The Lan­guage of Post-Mod­ern Archi­tec­ture. New York : Riz­zoli, 1991. 

Judd, Flavid and Mur­ray, Caitlin, eds. 2016. Don­ald Judd Writ­ings. New York: Judd Foun­da­tion and David Zwirn­er Books.

Nor­berg-Schulz, Chris­t­ian. 1988. Archi­tec­ture : Mean­ing and Place : Select­ed Essays. Archi­tec­tur­al Doc­u­ments. [Milan] : Elec­ta ; New York, N.Y. : Riz­zoli Inter­na­tion­al Pub­li­ca­tions, 1988, c1986. 

Nor­berg-Schulz, Chris­t­ian. 1980. Genius Loci: Towards a Phe­nom­e­nol­o­gy of Archi­tec­ture. New York: Rizzoli. 

Oxford Dic­tio­nar­ies @ Oxford Uni­ver­si­ty Press, online

Rossi, Aldo, and Peter Eisen­man. 1982. The Archi­tec­ture of the City. Oppo­si­tions Books. Cam­bridge, Mass. : MIT Press, c1982. 

Sen­nett, Richard. 2008. The Crafts­man. New Haven : Yale Uni­ver­si­ty Press, c2008. 

Solà-Morales, Ignasi de, Eulalia Ser­ra Budalles, Cyn­thia David­son, and Gra­ham Thomp­son. 1997. Dif­fer­ences : Topogra­phies of Con­tem­po­rary Archi­tec­ture. Writ­ing Archi­tec­ture Ser. Cam­bridge : MIT Press, 1997.

Wikipedia con­trib­u­tors, Wikipedia, The Free Ency­clo­pe­dia