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Situated Objects

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Timothy Beatley | University of Virginia

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Iñaki N Alday Sanz | Tulane University

Stan Allen is an architect and educator who has won global acclaim, primarily for his work in town planning and his influential 1996 essay Field Conditions. In this insight Allen discusses the essay and his new book Situated Objects which shows a unique facet of his creative process: a selection of small buildings and projects on rural sites, most of them situated within the landscape of the Hudson Valley, New York.

Image courtesy of interviewee. February 21, 2024

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The speaker expresses a concern about being remembered primarily for a past article on field conditions, reflecting a desire for a broader legacy. They discuss their shift in focus from individual buildings to the relationships between architecture, urban context, ecology, and social dynamics. This video video evolution has led to the concept of "situated objects," suggesting that buildings, even as standalone entities, are inherently tied to their environments and the complexities within them. The speaker emphasizes the interconnectedness of rural and urban landscapes, particularly in the context of modern digital technology that dissolves traditional divides.

They also reflect on their architectural practice, highlighting the significance of drawing, particularly axonometric styles that abstractly represent buildings in their contexts. Furthermore, the speaker mentions their recent involvement with the Bard Project, which aims to create a teaching space that fosters student identity within the architectural field, mirroring the ideas of ecological systems that evolve organically.

Lastly, they discuss their new book, framed as a design project that consolidates various projects in the Hudson River Valley—and aims to unify the representation of architecture through black-and-white images and line drawings, projecting intentionality in both their architectural designs and the book itself.

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This has, been a longstanding concern of mine.

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Um, I, I, I'm afraid that,

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in my obituary I'll be identified as the person

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who wrote the article on field conditions,

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sometime in the middle of the 1990s.

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So, you know, that's,

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quite a, quite a few years ago.

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So, but basically for me, it represents a shift

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from a focus on individual objects

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and particularly buildings as objects

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and initially sprung from the idea

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of seeing buildings in their larger urban context.

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But I think it can be extended to a,

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a thinking about architecture and cities

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and then later ecology

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and landscape that's more invested in the relationships

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between things

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and the information exchanged, across the field than

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focusing on any single building or object

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or, entity within, within the field.

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So it, it can be extended, I think, to, to broader notions

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of, social relationships

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and cer certainly ecological relationships,

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if I have a history of having been focused on the field.

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And also, some history of having worked,

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at the scale of landscape with large scale,

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urban projects, even, even

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what was called in this country landscape urbanism.

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Um, focusing again on smaller individual buildings seemed

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like a bit of a shift in the sort

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of larger trajectory of my, my career.

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And, I devised this term situated objects,

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partly with a very self-conscious, reference

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to Donald Judd's, article, the,

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the Minimalist Artist article,

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very important article in 1960s called Specific Objects.

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So I wanted the, I wanted the term to resonate

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with Judd's idea of the specific object,

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and it was really a way of triangulating

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between my earlier concerns with the field

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and with the relationships between buildings,

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landscapes, and cities.

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And the idea that I was now working on individual buildings,

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mostly situated on rural sites.

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So buildings that were object, like to the degree that they,

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they sat on a very specific piece of landscape.

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So the, the use of the term situated was to suggest

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that even though a building is a kind of freestanding object

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or can be a freestanding object, it's always tied in very,

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very complex ways, to its site, to its situation.

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Um, and that could represent the specifics of landscape,

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of the local ecologies, of local building cultures,

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but also all of the social

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and political relationships that it,

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that it, slots into.

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So, so it was a way really of connecting the work

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that's concerned me over the past 10 years

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with this longer trajectory

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that had its origins in landscape ecology.

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I'm speaking to you from, about two hours north

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of New York City in the Hudson Valley.

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And although I'm in a rural location,

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I'm in a location in a larger community

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that's entirely dependent on New York City, two hours

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to the, to the south of here,

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even the Hudson River School painters, who

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sketched up here in the Hudson Valley

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and in the Catskills would take their sketches back

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to New York City to finish them.

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So there's a, there's I think, a much more complex

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and interdependent relationship between rural communities,

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particularly close to big cities and cities.

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Then we tend to think in term when,

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when we accept this very strong notion

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of a rural urban divide.

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Uh, and particularly with the emergence

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of digital technologies.

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And we, we saw this of course,

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after the pandemic, with all, all the people,

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moving out of cities in this country and,

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and working remotely.

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Um, the, the differences between living in a city

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and living in the country are, I think, less

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and less over time.

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So you can, you can in fact live in the country with all

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of the access to information culture,

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that you would expect to have in, in, in the city.

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So, all of the projects in the Situated Objects book,

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were designed with this sense of interconnectivity

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and inter interdependence in mind.

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Um, most of the clients,

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even though the projects are here in the Hudson Valley,

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had some, strong connection back to New York City.

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I, I think if we, if we look at the history

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of thinking about landscape and,

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and particularly in the late 20th century up to the present,

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with the strong impact of the environmental movement

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and a more sophisticated understanding of, of ecology, the,

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the, the ecological idea that everything is interconnected,

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and you simply don't,

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by seeing landscape purely in pictorial terms, let's say,

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as the Hudson River School painters did,

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you miss out on the, the sense of, of life

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and change,

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and all of the, the, the interdependent com complexity

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of landscapes and, and, and ecologies.

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Now, this matters

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because if we think of landscape purely in pictorial terms,

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purely in scenic terms, we tend to think of nature

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and landscape as something out there beyond us.

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Um, but if we think of, if we think of, nature

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and landscape as part of an environment

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of which we are very much a part of,

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then I think we understand our obligation

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and, are far better positioned

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to think about questions like climate change,

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that if we simply preserve some scenic spots

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off there in remote wilderness reserves,

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we will have done nothing to, to,

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effectively challenge climate change.

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When I think about the role

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of drawing in my architectural practice, it's, it's,

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again, another one of these things that has a long history,

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in fact, much longer even than my concern

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with landscapes and, and ecologies.

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It, it, it really goes back to my, my own education

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as a student at the Cooper Union in New York City,

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which was a, a school with a very,

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very strong drawing culture

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and, a, a, a school where we were trained

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to think about drawing in, in highly precise terms

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as the architect's most immediate

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and intimate, connection with what he

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or she was, was designing.

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And among all of the various forms of drawings, plans,

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sections, perspectives, for me, the axonometric is

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a very powerful drawing because it's a synthetic drawing.

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It shows Plano metric relationships,

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but it also shows three dimensional

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volumetric relationships.

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It, it approximates the, the relationship

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between the viewer and the object.

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Now, the cate, the very specific category

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of the 90 degree object, again, is tied back to that history

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of the Cooper Union,

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and specifically the figure of John Hayek who,

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90 degree accident metrics were, had been around

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for a long time, but it was really John Hayek in his,

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work during the 1960s around the wall houses, and, and then

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before that with the diamond houses, who was first,

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really, codified the use

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of the 90 degree accident metric in, in architecture.

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In his case, it had to do with relationships

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to cubist painting and the ality of the picture plane.

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But I sort of inherited that.

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And, I think for me, the,

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the 90 degree AP ex metric is the most abstract of the forms

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of axonometric.

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It's, again, it's less pictorial, it's more structural.

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So, now the last part

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of the question refers to, the idea of the,

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the relationship between axonometric

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and, model well, digital modeling in, in specific,

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but I would generalize that in, in terms of the relationship

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to, to models, accident metrics,

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again, tend to depict the building as object.

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Like, because an accident metric has no horizon,

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it doesn't fix the viewpoint of the viewer, it tends

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to depict an object floating in an abstract space.

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So accident metrics underscore the object like nature

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of the, building.

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And in that sense, they, they have a strong similarity

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to architectural models that are also tend

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to be object like a, you know, a small,

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diminutive object that you can hold in your hands.

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Uh, you know, that, that, that that has

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that character of an object.

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Um, but today, of course, we work, we work, with,

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digital technologies

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and, the, rather than starting

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with two dimensional drawings

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and moving towards a three dimensional object,

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we have the capacity to now

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to work directly on a three dimensional object.

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So in, in a sense, digital technology has brought

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the object back as the sort of central concern

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of the, of the designer.

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And for me, that has, been expressed

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through this connection with the use of the accident metric.

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I mean, look, the Bard Project is, is something that is,

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really, really very close to me and,

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and an honor to, you know, to work on this

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after a, you know, 35 year education, sorry,

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a 35 year history as an architectural educator

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to be asked to imagine a new space for, for, teaching

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and making architecture is, you know,

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a dream project, really.

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I mean, it's, it's a, something i, I,

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I feel like I've been preparing for,

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for the last 30 years of my, my career.

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So, it, it, it really brings together my concerns

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with education, my, my my history of teaching, and,

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because it is situated, in the Hudson Valley, all

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of this thinking about the relationship between buildings

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and their, and their, both local

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and regional context, come into, come into play here

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as an architect and in collaboration with Liam Turkel,

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longtime associate of mine.

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Um, I think we're trying to imagine this place as,

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a site where students can,

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can discover their own identity as, as, as architects that,

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we wanna create a kind of,

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open end space where there are many, many opportunities

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for learning, for engaging other people

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and for experimenting and making things.

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So, so yeah, it's a, it's a project that,

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I think even some of my ideas about ecologies where you,

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you need to think about, setting a kind

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of ecosystem into motion, defining the parameters of

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that system, but then letting the system unfold on its own,

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just as you, you want to let a student discover, his

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or her own identity in the field over time.

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The, the, the book itself is something

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that I had been thinking about for, for quite a while.

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Um, it, it really dates from about 10,

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12 years ago when I shifted my practice

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to the Hudson River Valley

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and shifted the scale of the work I was doing to these,

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to smaller scale buildings.

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Um, and I realized that I had a collection of projects

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that shared a geographic location.

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They shared a scale,

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and they shared,

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certain common elements of program.

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Most of them were either for artists

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or for people involved in the visual arts,

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art collectors for, for example.

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So,

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and the idea of collecting these projects together,

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not an entire overview of my career,

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but a very, very specific body of work,

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and finding a format for the book itself.

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So, in other words, the, the, you know, as an architect,

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the book itself is a design project.

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Um, it is ultimately an object.

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And, I had the privilege to work with a,

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a very supportive publisher, park books in, in Zurich,

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and a very talented graphic designer,

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Luis Valo in working in Madrid,

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and perhaps most importantly,

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a photographer that I'd been collaborating with for,

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seven or eight years at that point.

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Scott, Scott Benedict.

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And it was Scott really, who, kept,

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every time he photographed the project,

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he would send me black and white as well as color.

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And, I think the idea

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that the book could be exclusively black

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and white photographs, exclusively black

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and white line drawings, would give it a kind of unity,

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and push back at the usual glossy

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color photographs where sometimes I don't think you,

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sometimes I think you're more engaged

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with the image than you are with the specifics of what the,

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the photograph, represents.

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So, so the stars were kind of aligned on this book.

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And, Luis Vassallo, the, the graphic

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designer brought color to the book,

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but he brought graphic color to the book,

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and then he was very, very conscious of the, of, of

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what we would need to do

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to make the book itself very much a specific object.

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So, the, the,

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the cardboard covers the blue tape on the binding, all

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of those were decisions that were collective decisions,

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but, many of them originated

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with, with, with Luis.

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So, so yeah, I mean, I would just reiterate

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That idea that, that for, for an architect,

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I think a book is a designed object.

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It takes nearly as long as it takes to make a building,

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and it has, you know, hopefully all of that intentionality,

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all of that sort of vision of a body of work that you hope

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to see in a building now captured in a book.

Embracing Relationships in Architecture and Ecology

00:00:00 - This has, been a longstanding concern of mine. I, I, I'm afraid that, in my obituary I'll be identified as the person who wrote the article on field conditions, sometime in the middle of the 1990s. So, you know, that's, quite a, quite a few years ago. So, but basically for me, it represents a shift from a focus on individual objects and particularly buildings as objects and initially sprung from the idea
00:00:33 - But I think it can be extended to a, a thinking about architecture and cities and then later ecology and landscape that's more invested in the relationships between things and the information exchanged, across the field than focusing on any single building or object or, entity within, within the field. So it, it can be extended, I think, to, to broader notions
00:01:06 - and cer certainly ecological relationships, if I have a history of having been focused on the field. And also, some history of having worked, at the scale of landscape with large scale, urban projects, even, even what was called in this country landscape urbanism. focusing again on smaller individual buildings seemed like a bit of a shift in the sort
00:01:37 - And, I devised this term situated objects, partly with a very self-conscious, reference to Donald Judd's, article, the, the Minimalist Artist article, very important article in 1960s called Specific Objects. So I wanted the, I wanted the term to resonate with Judd's idea of the specific object, and it was really a way of triangulating
00:02:07 - and with the relationships between buildings, landscapes, and cities. And the idea that I was now working on individual buildings, mostly situated on rural sites. So buildings that were object, like to the degree that they, they sat on a very specific piece of landscape. So the, the use of the term situated was to suggest that even though a building is a kind of freestanding object or can be a freestanding object, it's always tied in very,
00:02:40 - and that could represent the specifics of landscape, of the local ecologies, of local building cultures, but also all of the social and political relationships that it, that it, slots into. So, so it was a way really of connecting the work that's concerned me over the past 10 years with this longer trajectory that had its origins in landscape ecology. I'm speaking to you from, about two hours north

Rethinking Rural and Urban Interconnectivity

00:03:12 - And although I'm in a rural location, I'm in a location in a larger community that's entirely dependent on New York City, two hours to the, to the south of here, even the Hudson River School painters, who sketched up here in the Hudson Valley and in the Catskills would take their sketches back to New York City to finish them. So there's a, there's I think, a much more complex
00:03:45 - particularly close to big cities and cities. Then we tend to think in term when, when we accept this very strong notion of a rural urban divide. and particularly with the emergence of digital technologies. And we, we saw this of course, after the pandemic, with all, all the people, moving out of cities in this country and, and working remotely. the, the differences between living in a city
00:04:18 - and less over time. So you can, you can in fact live in the country with all of the access to information culture, that you would expect to have in, in, in the city. So, all of the projects in the Situated Objects book, were designed with this sense of interconnectivity and inter interdependence in mind. most of the clients,
00:04:50 - had some, strong connection back to New York City. I, I think if we, if we look at the history of thinking about landscape and, and particularly in the late 20th century up to the present, with the strong impact of the environmental movement and a more sophisticated understanding of, of ecology, the, the, the ecological idea that everything is interconnected, and you simply don't,
00:05:23 - as the Hudson River School painters did, you miss out on the, the sense of, of life and change, and all of the, the, the interdependent com complexity of landscapes and, and, and ecologies. Now, this matters because if we think of landscape purely in pictorial terms, purely in scenic terms, we tend to think of nature
00:05:53 - but if we think of, if we think of, nature and landscape as part of an environment of which we are very much a part of, then I think we understand our obligation and, are far better positioned to think about questions like climate change, that if we simply preserve some scenic spots off there in remote wilderness reserves,

Drawing's Role in Architectural Practice and Ecology

00:06:24 - effectively challenge climate change. When I think about the role of drawing in my architectural practice, it's, it's, again, another one of these things that has a long history, in fact, much longer even than my concern with landscapes and, and ecologies. It, it, it really goes back to my, my own education as a student at the Cooper Union in New York City, which was a, a school with a very, very strong drawing culture and, a, a, a school where we were trained
00:06:59 - as the architect's most immediate and intimate, connection with what he or she was, was designing. And among all of the various forms of drawings, plans, sections, perspectives, for me, the axonometric is a very powerful drawing because it's a synthetic drawing. It shows Plano metric relationships, but it also shows three dimensional volumetric relationships.
00:07:31 - between the viewer and the object. Now, the cate, the very specific category of the 90 degree object, again, is tied back to that history of the Cooper Union, and specifically the figure of John Hayek who, 90 degree accident metrics were, had been around for a long time, but it was really John Hayek in his, work during the 1960s around the wall houses, and, and then
00:08:01 - really, codified the use of the 90 degree accident metric in, in architecture. In his case, it had to do with relationships to cubist painting and the ality of the picture plane. But I sort of inherited that. And, I think for me, the, the 90 degree AP ex metric is the most abstract of the forms of axonometric. It's, again, it's less pictorial, it's more structural.
00:08:32 - of the question refers to, the idea of the, the relationship between axonometric and, model well, digital modeling in, in specific, but I would generalize that in, in terms of the relationship to, to models, accident metrics, again, tend to depict the building as object. Like, because an accident metric has no horizon,
00:09:02 - to depict an object floating in an abstract space. So accident metrics underscore the object like nature of the, building. And in that sense, they, they have a strong similarity to architectural models that are also tend to be object like a, you know, a small, diminutive object that you can hold in your hands. you know, that, that, that that has that character of an object. but today, of course, we work, we work, with,

Transforming Architectural Education Through Digital Technology

00:09:34 - and, the, rather than starting with two dimensional drawings and moving towards a three dimensional object, we have the capacity to now to work directly on a three dimensional object. So in, in a sense, digital technology has brought the object back as the sort of central concern of the, of the designer. And for me, that has, been expressed through this connection with the use of the accident metric.
00:10:06 - really, really very close to me and, and an honor to, you know, to work on this after a, you know, 35 year education, sorry, a 35 year history as an architectural educator to be asked to imagine a new space for, for, teaching and making architecture is, you know, a dream project, really. I mean, it's, it's a, something i, I, I feel like I've been preparing for,
00:10:35 - So, it, it, it really brings together my concerns with education, my, my my history of teaching, and, because it is situated, in the Hudson Valley, all of this thinking about the relationship between buildings and their, and their, both local and regional context, come into, come into play here as an architect and in collaboration with Liam Turkel,
00:11:05 - I think we're trying to imagine this place as, a site where students can, can discover their own identity as, as, as architects that, we wanna create a kind of, open end space where there are many, many opportunities for learning, for engaging other people and for experimenting and making things. So, so yeah, it's a, it's a project that,
00:11:41 - you need to think about, setting a kind of ecosystem into motion, defining the parameters of that system, but then letting the system unfold on its own, just as you, you want to let a student discover, his or her own identity in the field over time. The, the, the book itself is something that I had been thinking about for, for quite a while.
00:12:10 - 12 years ago when I shifted my practice to the Hudson River Valley and shifted the scale of the work I was doing to these, to smaller scale buildings. and I realized that I had a collection of projects that shared a geographic location. They shared a scale, and they shared, certain common elements of program. Most of them were either for artists

Crafting a Book as Architectural Design

00:12:39 - art collectors for, for example. So, and the idea of collecting these projects together, not an entire overview of my career, but a very, very specific body of work, and finding a format for the book itself. So, in other words, the, the, you know, as an architect, the book itself is a design project. it is ultimately an object. And, I had the privilege to work with a,
00:13:15 - and a very talented graphic designer, Luis Valo in working in Madrid, and perhaps most importantly, a photographer that I'd been collaborating with for, seven or eight years at that point. Scott, Scott Benedict. And it was Scott really, who, kept, every time he photographed the project, he would send me black and white as well as color. And, I think the idea
00:13:47 - and white photographs, exclusively black and white line drawings, would give it a kind of unity, and push back at the usual glossy color photographs where sometimes I don't think you, sometimes I think you're more engaged with the image than you are with the specifics of what the, the photograph, represents. So, so the stars were kind of aligned on this book.
00:14:21 - designer brought color to the book, but he brought graphic color to the book, and then he was very, very conscious of the, of, of what we would need to do to make the book itself very much a specific object. So, the, the, the cardboard covers the blue tape on the binding, all of those were decisions that were collective decisions, but, many of them originated with, with, with Luis.
00:15:09 - That idea that, that for, for an architect, I think a book is a designed object. It takes nearly as long as it takes to make a building, and it has, you know, hopefully all of that intentionality, all of that sort of vision of a body of work that you hope to see in a building now captured in a book.

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