02.01.07

Let's see here... there are 100 days until graduation and to celebrate, our 5th year class has decided that nothing says celebration like a pub crawl. Tonight bar goers beware the college of architecture, planning and design will be roaming the streets of Aggieville! We've traded in our mouse’s and sketch books for more of the liquid kind of inspiration.

Don't be fooled, it hasn't been all play and no work for us here at CAP+D we have been working pretty diligently thus far... and trust there is more of that coming down the road.

At the beginning of the semester my studio of 12 budding architecture students plus one willing professor made the trek all the way down to Marfa, Texas. Home of modern sculptor Donald Judd and the Chinati Foundation. The Chinati foundation is located on the former Fort D.A. Russell in the small south-south-southwestern city of Marfa. Since the purchase of the old base, back in 1979, it has been transformed into a "museum" of contemporary art, large scale installations of a rather small collection of artist. Here visitors can mill around the various installations with a guide to explain the intentions of the artist and also clarify the no touch policy.

MARFA [CHINATI]

Most of the artwork was designed and created with the intentions of being placed in its current location. This gave new meaning to the art work, as it was speaking of it's context and the artist opinion, rather than what one might normally see in a museum, where the meaning of the art can be lost among various other works of art, which don't so much relate to the context in which they hang. I suppose this suggest that these works of art, the ones in which relate to their specific context, wouldn't communicate the same idea if were moved from gallery to gallery as some framed pieces of art work. Site specific artwork, is what the Chinati foundation is all about. Even the town itself spill at the brim with Judd artifacts, his house, his studios, and the architecture offices in his name, scattered across town.

Donald Jud exhibit, 90 some milled aluminum boxes they were really interesting to see how light would reflect of the sides, each box was different, and had to be looked at in different ways

Marfa isn't what you would picture in your mind if someone started off their description with: small Texas town with a population of 500 people on a good tourist day. Marfa is very... interesting, the people were very welcoming, just as you would expect from the south, but they are all very artsy, trendy and pretty much looked like they could be from a hip little section of New York. So in short it wasn't like being in Texas at all.

Concrete boxes in a field, cooler than it sounds, there were about
10 groups of three scattered along a path in a field

light installation by Dan Flavin

Marfa my have been the reason that we decided to hop in the 15 passenger van and drive an ungodly amount of hours, but it wasn't our only stop. We left Manhattan Kansas at 6 am on Thursday morning the 11th of January. Now, you may be asking your self: “why Laura, wasn't that the first day of classes for the spring semester?" And i would say to you, "why yes it was, and let's face it I was going to skip at least a few [or more times] this semester so why not start the year off right" Not to mention this road trip was for class anyway.

sitting with all the guys, go figure... Some of my classmates and i at dinner with our professor.
I think this was after we were served a free round, because they lost our dinner reservations,
during the hour we were waiting for the table, we were at the bar... good idea

Our first stop in Texas was in Dallas at the Nasher Sculpture Center, Designed by Reno Piano, with landscape architect Peter Walker. It was absolutely beautiful, and I wish that it could have been there in spring, because there are so many trees and flowers that it must look wonderful while everything is in bloom. I highly suggest seeing it if you are ever in Dallas. The building is a very cellular, meaning that the pieces of the buildings are identical, and a modular bay sort of system. The building a series of very thick dense walls covered in travertine and between each of these thick heavy walls is a suspended barrel vault that reflects natural delighting into the space, so there is a soft glow about the ceiling. The landscape looks apart of the building, and extension of sorts. Various trees such as cedar elms and live oaks serve and the extensions of the massively thick walls, by outstretching lengthwise across the sculpture garden. In this exterior space there are some nice water features that drown out the noise of the city beyond the garden walls, a stepped garden with pansies and what may be daffodils in the future is at the back of the exterior space and serve as a great place to reflect and take in the entirety of the garden as well as the building in the background. It was a very serene and comfortable place... where one could really escape the city.

sculpture garden

Nasher Entrance

Next on our list was Fort Worth home of Tadao Ando's Modern and Louis Kahn’s Kimball Museum, and after a series of wrong turns and an impromptu tour through the stock yards we arrived at Andos concrete masterpiece.

Ando, one of my favorite architects, has a style about him. He creates the most beautiful spaces and tricks and temps light into washing the surfaces of his silky smooth concrete walls, bending around corners and creating spatial illusions of depth. Nothing is like it. Every time i have been in an building that Ando has created I can't but help slide my fingers across the grey smooth surface, the feeling is similar to running my hand over smooth clean sheet of vellum. The building was laid out with clarity and sophistication. Little nooks were created, highlighting single pieces of art work, which made it feel more personal than standing in an oversized gallery with many paintings cramped together like Chiclets in a small cellophane wrapper.

Ando: The Modern in Fort Worth

The Kimball [built in 1972] was a project that I did a building analysis on when I was in second year, so I was very excited to see the building that I had done so much research on before hand. Upon entry into the museum the viewer walks through a densely packed grove of trees. After making it through the trees the view of the buildings is spectacular you are faced with a three bays of barrel vaulted spaces. In the uppermost top part of the barrel vault there is a narrow slit cut straight down the center lengthwise. Light is reflected off a mounted device, allowing the light to be reflected onto the ceiling and illuminated the space indirectly. Kahn created a wonderfully daylight space, however there was some much artwork crammed into the space that it was overwhelming.

Entrance of Kimbal

After five days on the road, driving through and ice/snow storm that blanketed most of the Midwest, and doing donuts in the parking lot of What-a-burger, it was good to be back in Manhattan and… ehhem… start classes

Oh yeah did i forget to mention that we almost ended up in Mexico after driving 2 hours in the wrong direction.... it only took us three hours and a dead white owl to find Marfa at 1:00 AM.