Faux-cal Point |FA 2020-CURRENT
This project is in collaboration with Aaron Miranda
Magic can be defined as willed action leading to intended change. Our proposition is that Magic provides a unique set of lenses through which to reframe architecture as critical practice of material and social action.
The term “magic” resonates with many meanings. The DP Magic research seminar focused on “natural magic”, i.e. ritual actions and practices of power performed by magicians in order to influence ecological and human relationships. Focusing on such practices allow us to explore the blurred ontological territory between thought and matter, where magicians (and architects) produce phenomenological effects, evoke psychological affects, and negotiate boundaries between community and the Other.
Building off the above brief, our research was centered around Parafiction, Digital Bricolage of false architecture and methodologies surrounding Hyperrealism.
mechanism n°18- Strange Object Provocation
mechanism n°22- Strange Object Provocation
Project Proposal
As opposed to housing in the 1900s that usually met the needs of the community rather rapidly, the current housing market has transformed into a House always wins situation. The architectural manifestations of big developers establish a hierarchy that suppresses authentic community voices and rather foregrounds luxury development. Architecture is now sold as a fictional lifestyle rather than an equitable domicile, as a result the needs of the community are deemed illicit in the eyes of the developer. In the current real estate market there is no economically feasible way in which new housing is translated into equitable architecture that meets the needs of communities.
With new architecture in American urban spaces more commonly being read as symbols of unaffordable hot markets, and the potential displacement of vulnerable communities, there is an earnest need to propose a new system of urban development that eliminates the separation that exists between new architectural investment and middle to low income long term residents in a way that translates into real equity. Real estate speculation and neighborhood desirability though are largely economic markers based on the perception of a given space and trust in its future value.
Considering the entirety of American urban history, communities of color have mostly been fenced into newly redlined but pre constructed urban cores. there is no well-established architectural vernacular of what a prosperous, culturally expressive populous is.
Architects and architectural photographers alike have sparked an emergent trend of representing embedded fiction within the real. y leveraging the power of the digital, mythical thought now takes precedence over scientific reasoning. We now live in age surrounded by imagery created purely for affect and spectacle; the wow factor fuels the ego of the creator and the naïve without proposing a concrete solution to the very problem at hand.
The project proposes an architecture that articulates a new meaning with regard to the spaces and people it serves. It operates between the lines of fiction and veracity (doubt and value) within the context of urban, cultural and spatial decay. Not as a means to deceive and manipulate but rather to solidify crafted speculation and surreal juxtaposition for the sake of manifesting a novel cultural order.
