DISEMBODIED CIRCLE / A TWELVE STEP PROGRAM

DISEMBODIED CIRCLE

The objective is to represent an architectural idea at one-to-one scale. This is the architectural act in a compressed form… It is right that somewhere early in students’ education they come into contact not only with the conception of an object but the enormous and joyful responsibility for realizing it as well. [1]

Tod Williams, “OBJECT” from Education of an Architect

The exercise entitled Disembodied Circle [2] is part of a one-hundred level course entitled Visual Design Theory. The problem allows young designers to engage a highly personal three-dimensional space, one that makes the often more abstract processes of the design studio more tangible. The exercise provides a forum in which to examine the consequences of various physical conditions and question fundamental design decisions related to scale and site as well as appreciate various phenomenological determinants of place. The magic of this exercise lies in its absolute simplicity, its ability to emphasize how subtle shifts in dimension can profoundly affect one’s psychological reading of a space. In a relatively short period, students undergo a wonderful transformation from an interstitial state, that of the wall, to an external and then internal realization of an archetypal condition – the inscribed circle.

In describing the various architectural realities made possible by methods of re-presentation, the architect John Hejduk writes in his essay The Flatness of Depth, “Architecture can be observed both from a distance and internally (close-up): we can become internally ingested by it, become part of its interior. Instead of just being an outside observer or an outside spectator, we can become part of its very interior organism. We become physical-organic participators; we become enclosed. Architecture is the only art form that affords us the opportunity of being voyeurs who watch from the outside from the outside and also of being interior watchers.” [3] While Hejduk’s essay acknowledges the unique ability of architecture to be inhabited, he devotes only a single paragraph to the constructed reality of architecture. For obvious reasons, such as cost and time, the one-to-one reality of architecture  is seldom confronted in schools of architecture. The exercise Disembodied Circle is important precisely because it allows for an engagement with the external (the physical) and the internal (the psychological) complexities of design.

NOTES

[1] Tod Williams, Education of an Architect, ed. Elizabeth Diller, Diane Lewis, and Kim Shkapich (New York: Rizzoli, 1988), p. 63.

[2] The exercise was first conducted in 2009 with Ben Nicholson while on his campus visit to lecture on and exhibit his project entitled Labyrinths.

[3] John Hejduk, “The Flatness of Depth,” in Judith Turner Photographs: Five Architects (New York: Rizzoli, 1980).

CO-CONTRIBUTORS

Camille Lane and Macy McCarty