soft monstrosities final exhibition: "Swoops of Glory"

I won't publish the entire body of research here, but what follows is a brief description of the research conducted in Marcelyn Gow's "Soft Monstrosities" seminar.
Through a sampling of work dating from the late 17th century to the present, this exhibition builds an argument for atmosphere in design through the lens of Jean Baudrillard’s text, “The System of Objects”. This provided a background for the exhibition through its discussion of materiality, color and form as applied to what Baudrillard calls, “the system of objects”, that is the creation of atmosphere through the relationship between the objects composing the environment. Atmosphere as object level cultural connotations, becomes a holistic composition of parts in which each elements identity works towards developing a compositional identity.
The Swoops of Glory updates The System of Objects argument to include modern work, materials and techniques. Functioning both chronologically (time based) and categorically (relationship based), the entire exhibition is organized into five primary categories: relationships in the home, relationships of form to the body, materials and form, ornamentation and immersive environments. The first two rooms in the experience sequence present self-contained environments, designed to build up the historical background for the form/object relationships presented in the main exhibition space. The main gallery pivots around an open central space, surrounded by display nodes, allowing visual connections between projects located in separate nodes. Lastly, the rooms and corridors housing the “Immersive Environments” peel away from the floor surface of the exhibition as a spatially enclosed series of micro-environments presenting projects in a setting isolated from the rest of the exhibition.

Excerpts from the Exhibition Catalog:
Relationships in the home

Modernism marked a revolution against the strict hierarchy seen in classical architecture and design. The development of the open floor plan paved the way for an era of multipurpose rooms, folding dining furniture and hide-a-bed couches. Rooms no longer served one specific function, but had the capability to evolve throughout the day. Baudrilliard writes that the freedom of the modern interior “is accompanied by a subtler formalism and new moralism: everything here indicates the obligatory shift from eating, sleeping and procreating to smoking, drinking, entertaining, discussing, looking and reading. Visceral functions have given way to functions determined by culture”. The referential values held by color and materials were diluted as designers sampled from a wide range of stylistic options to create moods and themed rooms. Furniture and art were chosen not for the value of the individual artifact, but by how they fit into an overall composition.


Relationship of form to the body

As the formal organization of architecture relaxed into less-hierarchical spatial flow, furniture and other objects were designed to accommodate a multitude of positions and users. Coinciding with the hierarchical relaxation in architecture, came advances in fabrication techniques and materials such as plastics, fiberglass, and plywood allowing for a fluidity of design and a closer relationship to the human body. Objects have a use value or, objectness, associated with them, for example to distinguish a dining chair from a chaise lounge or a bed from a couch. The closer relationship of furniture to the human body allowed for more relaxed interaction between humans and generated objects which blurred the traditional use values.

Materials and Form

New social relationships led to new formal manifestations in design. The strict Cartesian sensibility of classicism made way for more formally expressive work. The traditional gestural system of effort has been replaced by a system of control. Humans no longer carve wood and stone through physical labor, but now control automated systems for shaping materials. New materials came into use, and more traditional materials were used in new ways.
Heat formed plywood and molded plastic later led to computer aided design and fabrication. Techniques for working with metal alloys and petroleum based composites became accessible enough that formerly space-age materials could now be used for everyday objects.
Through the work of installation artists such as James Turrell and Dan Flavin, light was treated as a material and served to generate and reinforce form. Transparent and translucent materials captured light in new ways. Techniques of casting, milling, rolling, or punching increase latent material potency and allow light to be reflected, diffused, bent, filtered, or collected by materials in new ways.


Ornamentation

Modernism's austere simplicity was partially a physical translation of the design techniques of the era. Designing through orthographic projections (plans and sections) was later innovated on by architects such as Peter Eisenman and Daniel Liebeskind, who layered drawing upon drawing, thus building up a linework richness implying spatial enclosure. The final design exposed the process. These sectional based techniques have further evolved into a design fluidity stemming from the use of computer modeling programs that display information three dimensionally rather than as flat linework. As the hand of the designer becomes less evident in the final product, many designers began to use traces from the fabrication process such as toolpaths, fasteners, or repetitive elements to convey physicality and reinforce form.
In a parallel fashion, applied ornamentation and materiality are another aspect of ornament which do not serve to display process, but embed substance into surfaces. Ornamentation differs from the classical idea of decoration: decoration is applied elements which carry the value of objects and function independently from form. Ornamentation serves to reinforce form, whether carved into the surface, or applied as a secondary graphical system. Pattern and texture take on the value of materials. The repetition of individual objects to create a larger form functions as a scale shift, blurring the distinction of object into a larger composition.


Immersive Environments

Baudrillard's text, System of Objects, describes atmosphere as "a systematic cultural connotation at the level of objects." The previous examples of architecture, art and design build upon each other towards the creation of immersive environments. Atmospheric design removes the individual nature of objects into a cohesive whole in which each elements works to develop a larger idea.
The notion of transitioning from objects to form takes place through a conceptual, and sometimes physical, scale shift. From a distance, the Limousine Yatai project by Atelier Bow Wow has the characteristics of a food cart, but when seated around the yatai, the user is enveloped in the atmosphere of a restaurant: the bustle of servers, the smells of food and a feeling of shelter. The yatai becomes immersive in that the individual characteristics of seating, counters, and food preparation space are integrated cohesively into the creation of a culinary experience surrounded by a changing urban milieu.

Exhibition Layout: