For this assignment focusing on the ideas from the Tschumi and Eisenstein readings, I chose to deconstruct the Berlin Memorial. My initial concept was based on the idea that each person who walks through the building will take a different path through it and this will affect how they experience the memorial. I started by drawing lines to represent various “passages” through the blocks.
In this way, some blocks were “activated” by the path while some remained inactive. The inactive, “hidden” blocks are represented by the dashed lines, while the activated blocks are solid. The black line represents an example of passage.
I then randomly scaled the blocks to introduce some variation and allow for overlaps between blocks to occur. These overlaps resulted in merging of spaces. This is the aspect of my design which I think most represents the concept of “montage.” When multiple “moments” or “events” collide a montage is generated.
Here I hatched in the spaces in different shades of blue- the areas where dark and light combine are where the overlaps of the blocks occur. These certain spaces represent individual frames/shots that can be focused on within the context of the entire montage. This also again shows the blending and merging of individual spaces into larger combined spaces.
This is a floor plan showing the columns, walls, and volumes. Columns exist where intersections of blocks occur, while volumes exist where spaces remain separate and enclosed. You can see rhythm here in the patchwork of solid spaces mixed in with the merged spaces.
Finally, I differentiated the “activated” vs inactive spaces by extruding the inactive spaces downward rather than upward and making them open (wireframe). This is to emphasize the activated spaces as being more essential.
The following are rendered views of the design to better understand the forms and interactions between forms.
