Concept According to Mr. Palomar observing a zen garden, “... and between mankind-sand and world-boulder there is a possible harmony, as if between two nonhomogeneous harmonies...”. Little Five Points is a palimpsest, visible through it’s actions of weaving, cutting, folding, sculpting, revealing, and layering. This results in nonhomogeneous, often opposing dialectics: old/new, space/void, function/circulation, public/private, materialize/dematerialize, and tectonic/stereotomic that when interlaced together exist in harmony. Harmony is achieved not through the alteration of the vibrancy and creative energy of Little Five Points, or the residential, cozy impression of the community music center, but through the addition of a layer to the palimpsest, only with the intention to enhance the already existing conditions.
Collaging Existing Conditions Inspired by Gordon Matta-Clark’s violent interventions into existing structures, while also trying to understand the existing conditions of the site, these composites were made from all modes of site research: a base drawing set created from measurements taken from the site, text written through observations, narratives, and meditations, and photographs. The collages represent existing conditions, but in trying to understand the existing conditions, I am already intervening. Ultimately the collages depict the acts of intervening and understanding existing conditions: tearing, ripping, folding, cutting but simultaneously revealing, layering, and weaving.
Ground Floor A wall creates the façade of the café, extends along the private side of the site to retain the earth, acts as a ledge to the porch and retains the courtyard and the addition. The 1905 four-square house is improved with a proper performance area, that could seat 72 people, inserted into the existing building.
Second Floor A café where a vacant commercial building used to stand, now opens into a courtyard, with stairs to the front entrance of the house. Fellow apartments are added to the residential side of the site.
Composite Section basswood and digital media A once vacant commercial building in front of the music center, is now a courtyard, where a café overflows, and stairs to the main entrance act as outdoor amphitheater seating for impromptu performances. Here students can perform to cafegoers and the creative patrons of Little Five Points.
Homage to Matta-Clark
basswood section model Much like Matta-Clark’s violent architectural interventions exhibiting building fragments in museums, this model exists as an object, cut through the site in two directions: through old and through new.
Intimate Performance basswood and digital media composite perspective Entering into the old community center house, one is met with a double height space, offering views down from the second floor mezzanine. Here, students can have small informal performances for their families. Breaking through the floor, there’s an opportunity to reveal the timber floor construction behind a glass railing.
Performing Inside a Piano In the new small, tiered, arena type performance space, the audience can have an experience with each other and the music being played while floating above the performer. To see the performer better, the seats themselves rock and tilt forward, like drums inside of a piano. Meanwhile, wood slats improve acoustics, filter light, and enhance the verticality of the space all while looking like the wires inside of a piano. The entire space becomes a music vessel like the inside of an instrument.
