BLOOMING VACANCY
BLOOMING VACANCY
The remnants of a past society, the obsolete and decaying. Vacant buildings are easily and often overlooked. In our society, an unused building is hidden from our gaze by a fog of obsolescence. Doomed to apparent oblivion, abandoned buildings can be left to themselves. Finally the buildings begin to flow and underneath this silent fog, life slowly creeps and crawls. Uncontrolled and free, the building exists in harmony with nature. It bends to its will and succumbs to destruction. This ability to loose control is this obsolete’s biggest strength. For even though it is cracked, torn, crumbling and bent, the perforated structure is now capable of letting nature in. When the barriers between nature and man begin to collapse the building is reborn into an unbounded and absolute wilderness.
Throughout the country there is forgotten land that is abandoned by society and left to nature. These seemingly hurtful wastelands are overlooked by our consuming society, making them the ideal space for a new form of public’s for the surrounding communities.
The city of Cleveland, ohio is a part of the rust belt and for good reason. With the middle of the city riddled with abandoned buildings and vacant lots, the center of a metropolis is a wasteland of rust and brick. Scars of a past life that signify a better time for Cleveland. I city that was born built and abandoned by industry, specifically car and steel. Within half a century Cleveland’s evolved from the 7th largest city in America to a city of depleting resources and of the past: what was once shiny and beneficial is now obsolete and rusted.
The abandoned buildings that cover Cleveland, are viewed as damaging to the city because they resist new development and attract crime. However, I see these spaces as an untapped resource for those left behind and struggling.
In Victoria Dipalma’s book Wastelands, she recounts an old English publics called the commons. “A commons is a resource, most often land, and refers both to the territory and to the ways people allocate the goods that come from that land. The commons has traditionally provided food, fuel, water, and medicinal plants for those who used it—it was the poorest people’s life-support system”. Besides the commons being a wasteland being a resource for those in need, it is also overlooked, ungoverened and therefore a freer space for new thought, “In fact, the wasteland offers an ideal space for all kinds of civil disobedience for reasons that are intrinsic to the concept of wasteland itself.” The wasteland is “wild and uncultivated regions, lands outside of opposed to civilization”. These wastelands could range from all different types of wild nature but Because wasteland is defined “by their relation to notions of use” then Cleveland’s obsolete and abandoned buildings can be seen as such.
Within this new wasteland, I propose that an artisan collective be created to give people a space to learn a new trade and start small businesses that will revitalize the surrounding impoverished community. However, the space is so beneficial because of the lack of human control so how can the space be used again without it loosing its sense of wilderness and freedom?
Architecture could be seen as someone trying to control nature, push it out, or ignore it. In a very literal sense, the forces of nature, as well as organic materials, are not allowed within architecture. Architecture is a barrier between the inside and the outside, nature and human. Because so much of architecture has such a clear boundary of what’s exterior/interior it disconnects people from the surrounding nature and in doing so makes nature seem like the intruding enemy instead of an ally.
What happens when we allow nature in and cohabitat?
Most renovations in architecture take what is broken in the building and fix it to make it usable again. Organic material was allowed in but when people return it is killed and the barrier between inside and outside is restored. What makes the architecture once again usable is that is has removed nature. However, not only to maintain the appearance of abandonment but also in respect of the newly created wilderness, the broken bits of the building are not repaired but are the starting point for new spaces to be formed. The holes in walls are the new guidelines which vertical and horizontal elements are derived from created new spaces. I even use the forces of nature as a method, the leaks in the roof create vertical apertures that cut through the existing and new structure. .
In order to have certain control over how the spaces will be created as well as the program of the building being used, ceramic canals will be made in order to redirect the water and create new apertures where needed. The water is redirected to water plants growing within the building. The plants are located in double heighted circulation and social spaces as well as the periphery edge of the building. This promotes nature to grow as well as conceal what’s happening within the spaces. This act of bringing the water into the building, of not repairing past damage, and allowing nature within the building blurs the lines between inside and out. There is now this semi-exterior and semi-interior space of nature, socialization, and circulation that simultaneously promotes human, animal, and plant life. This is the creation of a new unique architectural space where nature and people have a more mutually beneficial relationship. In this building the nature hides the people while the architecture allows nature to exist and grow
The handmade tiles that allow for the water to be redirected are a literal example of how artisans who will be making this public space and how they can use the material that they create to reclaim the space just like nature, through self-production. Ceramic tiles
are waterproof and so the people can use this material to work with the forces of nature to create new spaces in a co-beneficial relationship. The artisans making these materials allow the artisan to become apart of the construction and the design process. Artisan’s have a control over materiality that is incomparable and there are philosophical ideas that suggest artisans work in unity with nature unlike the architect. By incorporating artisanal strategies of how to use materials, the architecture could be incorporated with nature even more.
The way artisans and architects handle materials are vasly different. Where the artisan uses the material to guide them towards a form, the architect imposes materials onto predetermined forms in his mind. The philosopher Gilles Deleueze speaks of the idea of machinic phylum, material flow. This idea is that all matter has a flow to it, a dynamic movement that is fundamental to it. It’s flow is the way it is built, the way it moves, reacts, and breaks, etc. etc.
because artisans work with materials and understand them so intimately that they have the power to follow the flow of matter, bending the entity and building it into a new form and therefore creating a new entity. To delueze this ability to create new entities is capable because it is the unity of man and nature when they flow together. By trying to flow with the materials I use instead of constrict them, the new building begins to have an irregular and uncontrollable texture that is almost like it’s growing on top of the building, slowly consuming it. Instead of trying to control the materials I use to fit the shape I demand, I use the materials to create the forms they what to form into. The main materials I experiment with are insulation foam, ceramic tiles, repurposed brick, and cement. Since the existing still building needs to be remedied, I apply layers of materials to the existing building as a type of bandaid to heal its cracks and faults. The insulation foam is allowed to flow where it’s is applied and is not smoothed down but is undulating. In order to make thr remedied floors walkable, cement is poured which naturally wants to be flat when in its liquid state. I am using the materials in ways that it wants to move, flowing with them instead of against. This new artisan public’s is the unity between humans and nature.
I define Nature as an uncontrolled harmony of different entities flowing. A very vague definition but thats because it encompasses a lot at all different scales, Nature is flowing life, i, it’s the forces of nature, it’s living matter (foliage), it’s the flow of matter, machining phylum. Nature has a flow to it and the goal of my project is to create a cox beneficial space for man and nature to help one another. To flow with nature, not against it. To not control but to let go, succumb, and see what have happens.
A French gardener named Gilles Clement, invented a garden type called the third landscape.
He states
“The Third Landscape designates the sum of the spaces where man abandons the evolution of the landscape to nature alone. It concerns urban or rural neglected areas, transitional spaces, wastelands, marshes, moors, peat bogs, but also the edges of roads, banks, railroad embankments, etc. reserved. Compared to all the territories subject to
the control and exploitation of man, the Third Landscape constitutes the privileged space for welcoming biological diversity.”
The third landscape takes land pushed aside by humans, and reclaims it to promote bio-diversity just by being uncontrolled and left to grow. This concept is a large facet of my project. Not only is the building in Cleveland allowing the nature to remain in its new home to grow but it is promoting biodiversity as well. The third landscape is not only the set aside space for foliage in potters but its the grass in the cracks. It’s allowing nature to seek its resources, to flourish and flow freely.
If an abandoned building was transformed into a public space to promote life, to give the community and environment of Cleveland a space to produce work, have grass-root businesses, and promote communal values, then Cleveland could transcend its declining population, poverty, and inequality to be reborn. Abandoned buildings will be the new public space to uplift the neglected communities of the eastside of Cleveland.
Cleveland has been victim to declining population, poverty, and inequality since deindustrialization, so it seems fitting for the program of the new publics to be a craft collective. Crafts are anti-industry. They don’t focus on efficiency and quantity but on technique and quality of the products. A co-op ran by the people also goes against corporations that housed the industries. Hopefully if the jobs are created for and by the people, the past is less likely to happen. The craft-collective will promote community, imperfection, quality over quantity, and self-reliance. This collective with foster four different workshops for different materials: ceramics, textiles, woodworking, and metalworking. The space will also have residential, social, agricultural, and commercial spaces. The abandoned building will house this craft-collective which will hopefully be a starting point, a step in the right direction. If the space can start a wave of new thought that can one day transform the city all together. Abandoned Buildings will be a new public space for the community to be uplifted and the city to be reborn. Following nature’s lead, the people in Cleveland can reclaim abandoned land through self-production.
