ECOLOGY OF AFFECT 2013 

Invited Distinguished Professors:

Eric Goldemberg,

Niccolo Casas, 

 

Coordination: Gabriel Esquivel

 

Team: Hugo Ochoa, Carlos Garza, Callie Friesenhahn, Starla Schmidt, Melissa Lewis

 

Ecology of affect is a decadent architectural system that explores the creation of delaminated objects originating from a fleshy core to create atmospheres that are in between desire, sensuality, the erogenous, and the abject.

 

Precedent Studies - Hard & Soft Objects

The explorations of senescence in time/duration and senescence in motion were undertaken and observed through a soft object--artichoke--and a hard object--crab leg. The artichoke revealed the radial emergence of geometries through the process of delamination as well as movement in time and senescence. The crab leg demonstrated the sequential emergence of components that made up the whole and movement in space.

 

The two objects exhibited changes in surface geometries through two systems--interior vs. exterior--working as a whole. These changes show a reversal in the original condition of the objects as hard-soft-hard to soft-hard-soft.

 

Encapsulation - Diagrammatic Studies

The study of delaminated geometry begins to create an interior or core. The delaminated surfaces begin to join in an elastic sense; as they merge together they harden. The solid-void relationship is also changed through degradation. The change in the interior is in relation to the exterior of the contraction of the model.

 

The development of an object system affected through gravity is derived from these studies. Gravity has an effect of decay on the object where the delamination of layers from a fleshy core through gravity begin to create new objects as a result of delaminated layered geometries. These layered geometries begin to condenses into fleshy cores.

 

System Development & Decadence

The development of the system that expresses decadence begins through the conjunction of cores. These conjunctions create a spinal system that begins to determine the number of delaminated objects.  The proximity created between each of the delaminated objects as well as the ground begins to establish different atmospheres. The ground is no longer a passive subject to the architectural system but begins to react in an elastic and erogenous sense.

 

Ecological Dichotomy

The architectural ecology developed through the diagrams explores two potentials of the system. On the one hand, it can perform autonomously, prioritizing the relationships of the components within the ecology itself. On the other, the new ecology can be inserted into existing environments such as the infrastructure of post-industrial cities. In this situation, the project argues the connections of areas of possible affect--decayed infrastructure--and real affect--the inserted ecology. The two work together to amplify the affect of senescence through the conjunction of two systems that operate at different scales. The infrastructural network with possible affect operates at a larger scale while the new ecology functions as a microcosm of the larger scale, condensing the rhythms of the larger network. The condensation of rhythms collapses the spatio-temporal periods between each moment allowing for the affect of senescence to be amplified. The affect of the ecology works in both desire and abjection. The affect is at an 'in-between' state where the subject is unsure of whether to want/desire/be aroused by the object or be in a state of abjection/repulsion to the object. The reduction of intermittent periods between moments allows for the affect to be both subtler through the decay of materiality as well as overwhelming because the spatio-temporal field has been concentrated/condensed/fused.