DISRUPT/DISPLACE
Exhibited at the 15th Biennale Architettura Di Venezia
Published in JAE 72.1: A/To Project and DATUM No. 8: Sex(y)
8 weeks | with ARCH 436: Advanced Digital Design, Fall 2016 | under Shelby Doyle + Leslie Forehand
Responding to Aravena’s call, a critical examination of our surrounding conditions was undertaken. The Jeffersonian Grid, rigid democratization, is under siege. The Dakota Access Pipeline seeks to carve through the grid, cutting corner to corner through Iowa. This process of disruption was brought to Venice as an abstraction.
Story County, IA, USA
Division of the Jeffersonian Grid into Townships
Division of the Jeffersonian Grid into Sections, Quarter Sections, Checks, and Plots
The Grid Abstracted
The Grid Abstracted
The Unit aggregates into The Grid
The disruption of the physical grid caused by pipeline construction is mirrored within the abstraction. The abstraction was progressively altered over the course of the exhibition, creating permanent deformations that exist in parallel with the pipeline construction methods.
The units, arranged as a field, form the abstracted Jeffersonian Grid that the pipeline seeks to alter. The unit design models the motion of growing corn, a major agricultural commodity within Iowa, as well as the subdivisions of the gird, square-mile sections.
First the field is assembled, setting up the base condition for future alteration. Next, a path is cleared by systematically disassembling units. Finally, the units are trampled flat, permanently disrupting the field.
