1. HEARTH
Brattleboro, Vermont.
7 m2 / 21 ft2
A simple solution within a gamut of restraints. Geometry and materiality dictated by code: what is allowed in the space around a wood-burning stove, what distances from what materials. Volume to tile to wood. How to use that space within the outer constraints: two doorways, passages to other spaces. The whole array becomes a spatial anchor in a large kitchen; both an important shared communal space and a transitional space from outside to in. A place to take off shoes, coats, gear. A place to linger and warm up. Also a space that needs firewood, lots of it. By virtue of this stove the space is warm, inviting. Despite the generosity of the rest of the house, visitors often end up congregating here.
2. SACRIF(ICE)
Welcome to the Anthropocene, Vitruvius.
The structure draws from an ancient architectural typology: the temple as primative hut, an enclosing device to denote a place of shelter and worship. This hut reflects its environment, its four columns and lintels disappearing, mirroring the sky, the snow, and the installation's visitors; reminding those who pass of their own role in the sacrifice.
The stages of Lake Agassiz, from 16,000BCY to 11,000BCY, showing drainage paths and events. ...FORGOTTEN TOPOGRAPHIES... 11,000 years ago, Winnipeg sat at the bottom of glacial Lake Agassiz, along with a large portion of the central North American continent. Over 4000 years Agassiz’s extents fluctuated as the surrounding ice sheets melted and reformed. At various points the Lake burst its boundaries, sending rivers of fresh water into the oceans, in the process sculpting valleys and rivers, altering sea level and salinity, and effecting climate world-wide. In addition to the geologic and paleoclimatic evidence of this, we have anthropologic evidence in the form of flood mythologies found in cultures throughout the world.
Sacri(fice) provides an accelerated encounter with glacial change, encouraging reflection on the acceleration of climate change provoked by human actions.
Water and Salt... Over three-hundred clear plastic vessels hang in rows between the lintels, exposed to the sun and elements. The vessels contain a saline rose water solution, fed by a bladder system supported within the lintels. Rose water is chosen to evoke the scent of a warmer season and latitude, its coloring contrasts with the ice block. Bottles at the periphery are pure water, thaw begins at 0˚C. Working inward, the rose water solution in the bottles becomes more saline, in the center thaw begins at -18˚C. The daily temperature shift, cloud cover, and sun angle dictate the amount and location of saline drip onto the ice block below, melting, or building up its surface and staining it magenta. UV rays further degrade the block, creating pinholes that will receive the magenta stain.
Day-by-day extents of dripping on the top surface of the ice block for the month of February for years 2011-2015, in response to temperature shifts shown below.
The Sacrif(ice) installation is recurring, with each year’s ice block cored and stored for display the following year. The cores become a unique record of climatic changes over the course of years, each core containing different degrees of melt, freeze and stain.
Winnepeg, Manitoba, Canada
15m2 / 150 ft2
Sacrif(ice) is a proposal for a seasonal installation in Winnipeg, Manitoba. Colloquially known as "Winterpeg" for its extreme cold, Winnipeg has experienced warmer and warmer winters, as climate change accelerates.
This installation references Manitoba’s climatic and geographic history and projects forward to offer a physical document of present and future climate change.
Glacier (accelerated)... Beneath a minimal temple structure a large block of ice receives the traces of day-to-day changes in temperature, incrementally transformed by drips from vessels above. Over the course of the winter installation the Sacrif(ice) ice block thaws and reforms, with saline rose water staining, deforming, and impregnating its surface.
3. SPECTRAL WALL
Washington DC, USA
Gallaudet University
10 m2 / 107 ft2
Project realized at Studio 27 Principal in Charge: Todd Ray
Design Architect: CM Cook
Team: Ray Curtis, Raul Montalvo
A mill-work screen spanning a two-story atrium in a collaboration space at the Hall Memorial STEM Building at Gallaudet, the preeminent university for the deaf in North America. The form is inspired by the legacy of Annie Jump Cannon and Henrietta Swan Leavitt, two deaf astronomers working at the Harvard University Observatory at the turn of the 20th century.
The screen is an abstraction of Annie Jump Cannon’s classification system for stars based on their temperature. Cannon and Leavitt invented a method for determining the distance between two celestial objects by measuring the difference in their luminosity. The also came up with the mnemonic device for remembering the spectral class system of notation:, O, B, A, F, G, K, M... “Oh Be a Fine Girl, Kiss Me.”