spring 2008
ARC 560R/696 / ARI 560R:
THE LIVING MUSEUM camouflage and display
Instructor:
Elizabeth Alford
This studio will focus on the analysis and description of process, and how it can be used to shape an architectural space in relation to a particular site.
The Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center, now a part of UT, will be the basis of our investigation. The Wildflower Center is currently planning a major redesign of its exhibits, a new children's garden and a new arboretum. We will have access to the Wildflower Center staff, facilities and grounds (please note that Wildflower Center grounds extend well beyond the area typically visited.) Student projects will be displayed at the Wildflower Center and will serve as catalyst for ideas in the evolution of this important and unique institution.
Activities at the Wildflower Center encompass multiple kinds of research, collecting, disseminating and recreation. It is a 'living museum', a regional archive of native plants, a seed bank, an herbarium (archive of pressed plants), a laboratory for botany and landscape restoration, a demonstration of gardening techniques and a national center for dissemination of information on plants and gardening. Processes include:
collecting, photographing, sorting, identifying, labeling, storing, archiving, comparing, cultivating, digging, planting, watering, weeding, walking, viewing, picnicking, recreating, playing, digging, drinking, demonstrating, teaching, showing, testing, comparing, mowing, burning, pruning, grafting, hybridizing, disseminating......
Students will begin by studying, analyzing and drawing these various processes. The analysis will lead into design of an architectural element or space that manifests and demonstrates the process experientially. Students will work at or near 1:1 scale to develop these assemblies. Working at this larger scale, students will engage material, scale, tactility and detail.
In the final project of the studio, students will locate a site for their project within the buildings and grounds of the Wildflower Center. Projects will evolve to take on issues of site-specificity, which is potentially paradoxical in a place that is a kind of museum. Students will study different ways to respond to a 'natural' setting, including investigations of camouflage, or concealment through articulation of a surface, mimicry and frame.