Program Typologies

The veterens museum is almost an integral part of any previous federal columbaria

The library functions as a segwey between the museum and the veteran's affairs office . . . it can also be a touchpoint between the (proposed) homeless shelter asnd the rest of the structure.

These top three program diagrams are definately going to be used in the columbarium . . . they form the BASE of the building - I also have multiple other "possible" programs ready to be used if the diagrams of the building provide a necessary requirement of any of the proposals The homeless shelter seems to be a very viable option for the columbarium - it adresses one of the major issues facing many veterens in the city today (also touches on the idea of slippage within the heirarchies of society mentioned in a previous slideshows)

Initial Diagram

This first image is the first draft of the program list and square footages. The verbal data was then transferred visually into a barcode (used in Koolhaus's Seattle Library) and assigned catagories of space. The barcode on the left is simply the list on the right, with the widths of strips referring to the square footage. The second barcode is of the consolidated catagories of different space numbered from 1 - 7 according to the lighting needs of each space.

The barcode was then abstracted and expanded (vertical lines = barcode & horizontal lines = lighting levels 1-7) spacing to form this drawing in which the vertical placement of each individual program coincides with it's respective need for light.

*the seventh line got cut off while scanning

Finally, this sketch attempts to show the adjacencies of the public (black) and private (green)

programmatic elements. This is just a rough outline . . . the idea is to start manipulating the thresholds of public/private to eventually create either more homogeneous or disparate conditions within the space of the columbarium.

Kyle Pollara - Site

Kyle Pollara - Precedent

The Igualada Cemetery offers a different approach to engaging the site than the previous examples. The morphological study nestles itself within the landscape and creates an indistinction between the territory of the living and the spaces of the dead.


The site BECOMES the structure, and the structure is sculpted to engage the user along a serpentine walkway that burrows below the grade of the surrounding city, offering a temporary escape from the urban typology of the Barcelona.

Kyle Pollara - Precedent

Sorry about the first image . . . it won't load properly???

The key concept in the Berlin Memorial was to separate the external "field of experience" from the internal "structure of memory."


By maintaining this distinction, Eisenman creates a place that represents nothing, a zone of social production that invites playfulness, rather that conjuring the harsh realities of the past.


As individuals wander deeper into the field, the growing height and instability of the stelae recreate the oppressive experience of the holocaust.


The holocaust memorial offers licence to the user to engage the landscape as they see fit. By instigating social production, the structure ensures an architecture of permanence not unlike that of Rossi's Modena Cemetery.

Kyle Pollara - Precedent

The Modena Cemetery, located in Italy, is a working example of an "Architecture of Permanence" set forth in Aldo Rossi's book "The Architecture of the City"


The main concepts are:

• typology
• social content
• urban artifact
• scales of reference
• locus (historical reference)

These are the plans of the cemetery


Rossi uses typology and repetitive formal elements to dislocate the urban artifact from it's historical context, creating a condition that offers multiple textual readings of a singular element


The result is an inversion of interior space that challenges the part - to - whole relationship of the courtyard and the function of the columbarium and ossuary.

Kyle Pollara - Program

The program i chose as an example of political architecture is the columbarium. The proposed columbaria is a building in which to store the cremated remains of US war veterans ranging from the Gulf War to the present.


The program plans to address issues pertaining to the role of the soldier within the political sphere of the bios. What is the relationship between the soldier's personal life - and their duty to his or her sovereign?

Some of the issues engendered in the columbaria are:

• social roles of the military service
• elevation of status (internal and external to service)
• symbolism and memory
• integration of landscape
• biopolitics

The proposed columbaria will attempt to redefine the characteristics of funerary architecture, making the structure primarily a space for memory and reflection, but also as a catalyst for social production leading to a more personalized integration of the bios and polis in American society.

Kyle Pollara - Installation

The purpose of the following installation is to reveal the unseen forces that guide individuals as they travel across Pratt Campus.

The process of data collection was simple; beginning at the two main gates located on opposing sides of the campus, I followed random participants as they made their way to specific destinations.


As a side task, I also noted a series of general statistics and monitored any significant stops they made along their trip.


The mapping determines territories engendered on the campus by first marking the intensity of deviations along individual paths.


As one looks at the destination points, there are specific sovereign zones, and also places in which the members of the bios have claimed agency. Furthermore, there are common spaces that neither the sovereign or the bios have dominant control (common). As the main territories are revealed, alignments of unclaimed space create a structure seen as the Zone of Indistinction - a place which offers opportunity for slippage between the hierarchies of territory.

The final proposal for the installation is to provide signage along the points of deviation that will instigate activity amongst the unclaimed spaces. By overtly exemplifying the subliminal tendencies of the bios with signage, the hope is to release individual paths (or localizations) from the pressure of sovereign control - rendering the individual free from the dogma of the sovereign destination.

Dutch Embassy (Ethiopia)

Mapping + Installation

Overlay of all Mappings

Temperaute Mapping

Touch Mapping

Sound Mapping

Sight Mapping

Installation

Dutch Embassy in Berlin

The Dutch Embassy is greatly articulated within a limited, strictly cubic space. It continually twists and turns upon itself. “It constructs explorations of pleasure and a controlled chaos.” Within a zig-zag trajectory that folds back on itself several times within a perfectly modest-looking glass block; an intriguing contrast between the internal vitality and the tranquil expression of the façade is created. “almost like a diplomat”

The embassy is somehow a distant response to a political situation and a historical context, but also to two national images, in which one of it is tormented. On one hand: openness of modernity, transparency which is suppose to characterize the Netherlands, on the other a reunified Germany dealing with a haunting trauma palpable everywhere in the city.

The embassy is an unprecedented combination of block and independent building :

-It doesn’t sit directly on the ground instead it’s partially on a pedestal, a kind of piano nobile or terrace

- It doesn’t share a wall with the neighboring facades, but remains isolate.

- It is not made of stone but glass.

-It is entirely covered by a sheated grillwork of perforated aluminum plates which renders it slightly abstract.

-Its transparency plays with the light, depending on the time of the day, it allows one glimpse the shadow of many of the interior spaces’ structure.

In plan the glass cube is slightly skewed, as though the Berlin grid was relaxing.

An orderly visit to the embassy would start with: the most public place the consulate installed in the ground floor like a showcase. The cabinets are made of a translucent lime green resin..

At either sides two narrow staircases lead to the first floor which is the real reception. Above a deformed square whole, that one can hardly see, opens up an essential tool of the device, guiding ones eye through the trajectory hollowed into the cube and television tower, the symbol of communist Berlin.