EDGE CONDITION
2011 - 10up Competition - Atlanta, GA
As a practice of the temporality Edge Condition challenges the material, assembly, process and effect of public space. The act of the installation presents architecture at a different physical and temporal scale. A short existence of the experience replaces the density of architecture as a permanent object with the ephemeral sensitivity of a condition in time. The installation has become a means of participation by public and practice to work through ideas in iteration. Installations by nature has a plasticity, one which can transition and adapt. At the scale of occupation while nimble and tactile, it also allows the examination of questions in architecture through the process of making the conceptual.
Interrogating material as a device for design, wood edges were discovered as a standardized element which could aggregate to a series of constructions. While variable in length and width the wood edges are consistently one inch thick from the milling process. As the lumber mill planes and trims wood boards for inventory, the wood edges as off cuts become a residual material in the process. Edge Condition finds a way to extract the balance from the process to utilize its capacity in the practice of an installation. The conclusion of the installation also means the conclusion of the wood edges life, but rather than being disposed they are re-inserted to the milling process to be churned to wood chips as a new condition and anticipated capacity for the material. By operating on the edge of definitive material, neither board nor wood chip, the wood edge becomes the temporal object between two phases.
In the same light the pavilion offers the capacity to be an edge condition of construction. The methodical mode of stacking and maneuvering the edges is in itself on the edge of a mode of assembly. The flat stacking method gives way to opportunities for expansion and contraction of the volume between the material. The variable of stacking techniques allow for light to move into the pavilion only through the spaces between the edges transforming the edge condition into an ephemeral effect. The friction fit stack enables a rapid assembly/dis-assembly mode as a condition of the installation.
While in its first life, Edge Condition existed for a 8 day period, the expectation is that the texturized assemblage would transform over time as its exposure continued. In the short term of the installation the wood edges found themselves faded where exposed to sunlight and protected where two edges overlapped. In initial tests of the slatted surface through the seasons, finite particles move uninterrupted through the space while larger accumulations of snow and leaves began to seal and block the atmosphere of light and wind into the interior condition. Searching for the unexpected and anticipating surprising new conditions is the earnestness of installations, it provides what it is and to interrogate its result rather than its expectation is the value of continuing to work on the edge.
Sponsors: wood edges donated by Hardwoods of Michigan in Clinton, Michigan. Young Architects Forum of Atlanta, Octane Coffee Bar, AIA Atlanta, Modern Atlanta
Ann Arbor crew: Christopher Holzwart, Mary O’Malley, Sarah Petri, Kyle Shobe, Peter von Buelow, Robert Yuen
Atlanta crew: Emily Bacher, Keith Brockman, Jason Diehl, Adam Glenn, Nathan Koskovich, Carolina Montilla
