WATERFORM

IMPERFECT WATERS

In the opening paragraph of The Book of Tea, Okakua states that Teaism, the practice of the tea ceremony representing the adoration of the beautiful recognized within the ordinary, is principally “a worship of the Imperfect.”[1] In relation to water, these words may be interpreted in two seemingly contrary ways. When considering water in its most pure state, simply hydrogen and oxygen, there is an absence of any informative matter that could taint or provide evidence of context. Yet water is said to have memory, particulates of past flavors and experiences that may be described as imperfections. We find that water is not truly one or the other, but a happy juxtaposition of both.

The process of design is inherently a process of enjoyable investigation. During the time of the T-House study, as we explored these conditions, much tea was drunk and much observation of leaves and powders and cloudy residues was performed. Most of the time we were adding substance to the liquid with expected results of increased color and opacity. Left to rest, heavier particulates settled out in accordance with the rules of gravity, but enough resided within the body of the liquid to make visible the flavor – iced tea in the summer.

But stepping back, it was the investigations of the “pure” water that most informed us of the nature of the imperfect. In its agitated liquid state, the solute particulates dissipate evenly throughout the molecular material. Assuming a low level of saturation, this imperfect water appears clear. However, by exploring the contrasting thermal processes of steaming/boiling or freezing, water’s beauty as seen by its compositional imperfections was revealed.

Desalination is a purification process that removes particulates, particularly salts and other minerals, from imperfect waters. There are a number of techniques that may be used from vapor-compression distillation to ion exchange to reverse osmosis. Following simple measures, we examined some of the most primitive methods that could be performed domestically. We set target thermal extremes as our first parameters, experimenting with reduction via boiling and steaming (≥100˚C) and material isolation via freezing (≤0˚C).

Increasing the temperature of the fluid object speeds up the natural process of evaporation where the lighter, less affected molecules of pure H20 are released into the air in the form of vapor or steam. In our studies, the steam rose as sensual translucent ribbons that overlapped as layered veils of atmosphere. If acquisition of the pure substance was our goal, we would have contained this gaseous material and condensed it. However, it was the reduced fluid that inevitably held the greater aesthetic promise related to the imperfect. Trapped air was the first to leave the bath, violently emerging from the floor of the heated vessel. Faint strata of residual minerals formed along its vertical surfaces marking the absence of the departed liquid. Prior to boiling off the entire contents, we observed a subtle hint of murkiness as the heaviest solutes gained greater influence. For us, this was the point where the water took on its most imperfect and beautiful character.

Decreasing the temperature slows the water molecules more gradually and creates a more stable end product for observation. We started our process with cold water tainted with dried herbs and tea powders. By placing the vessels immediately in the freezer, we had hoped to capture the evolution of the tea infusion, expecting to witness a color range with the greatest intensity radiating from the particulates. The result was less than optimal. Any promise of this subtle staining was obscured by the intense white that developed in the icy core. We began again, this time using pure water ice cubes, and changed our method of observation from unaided visual examination to viewing via photogrammetry.

We used standard store-bought ice sourced from regional waters. The cubes were not completely transparent – their cores were marked by a translucent white. Mounding the ice in an area four foot square, we took a series of photographs and ran them through a photogrammetry software that generated a digital surface model and wireframe. With the physical eye, the photographs presented the expected geometries of angular solids and voids. Through the lens of the photogrammetry, however, we discovered new ice topographies. The software’s digital eye was blind to the clear outer layers but could accurately decipher the minute detail of the ice’s inner disturbances. The aggregate form of trapped veins of air and diluted solutes, pressured to the center as the outer shell of pure ice formed, offered great aesthetic and spatial consequences. So unlike the traditional wireframe that mimics some infinitesimal thickness of the earth below, this newly created digital surface defined a territory that had no clear inside and outside. It was as if the dream of Piranesi's Pianta di ampio magnifico collegio had been realized through fluid dynamics.

This digital exploration helped us visualize potentials for a new topographic and atmospheric strata. We sought views within the wireframe that exploited characteristics specific to the molecular qualities of ice and exported these as flattened images in a series of plates. These abstracted images reinforced the concept of the Unsymmetrical, as the visual similes activated our imaginations. We performed similar processes of digital abstraction on liquid tea and on steam to capture each state of matter that further informed the design process.

[1] Okakura, “I. The Cup of Humanity” in The Book of Tea, 3.

T-HOUSE

In the Sphere and the Labyrinth, Tafuri states, “The collegio… constitutes a giant question mark on the meaning of architectural composition: the ‘clarity’ of the planimetric choice is subtly eroded by the process with which the various parts engage in mutual dialogue; the single space secretly undermines the laws to which it pretends to subject itself.”[1] In our experiment with ice, the building blocks (cubes) created an artificial stability and required a new dialogue between the physical participants. This conversation acknowledged time and temperature, crack-lines and mineral veins, and most eloquently the reciprocal agreement forged between various blocks to accept either the inverse or converse spherical form that resulted from accelerated thermal and geological processes. To watch these relationships play out through photogrammetry analysis was what it must have been like to watch Brancussi construct his Bird in Flight. “Simmel, on the basis of a partial reading of Nietzsche, recognizes this in his Metaphysics of Death: ‘The secret of form lies in the fact that it is a boundary; it is the thing itself and at the same time the cessation of the thing, the circumscribed territory in which the Being and the No-longer-being of the thing are one and the same. If the form of the basic structural element stands for a boundary, there then arises the problem of plurality of boundaries – and the calling them into question.’”[2]  It is our position that the physical state of water either accentuates or blurs internal divisions and its reading as simultaneously pure and imperfect adds even greater complexity to Semmel’s study of boundary.

These premises of simultaneous boundaries and the unsymmetrical inform the important reciprocal relationship between visitor and environment in the design investigation. While the idea of the collegio challenges traditional reading of poché in favor of a more atmospheric and changing zones of occupation, Teaism’s assertions regarding the unsymmetrical prompt a more interpretive and interactive phenomenological intent. We tested these assertions in the T-HOUSE, a conceptual experience-based intervention located on the tip of Hains Point in Washington D.C. The name of the work derives not only from the base ritual acts of tea preparation and consumption, integral to the site’s history, but also from key physical and phenomenological conditions associated with water, these fundamental “T” forces being transformation, temporality and the rhythmic structures of time, and multi-sensory tactility.

Conceptually, the three physical states of water – gas, liquid, and solid – translate the archeological as well as environmental realities/fictions of the place. They relate in scale and association to the design elements of the proposal, a new productive landscape and a series of T-HOUSE environments that together represent a critical jump from abstract analytical exercises to resultant form.

pROJECT TEAM

Brian Ambroziak + Katherine Bambrick Ambroziak