Tension and Tunnels by BEA&D

BIANCA DE ALMEIDA EGLINGTON

TENSION AND TUNNELS

BIANCA DE ALMEIDA EGLINGTON

TENSION AND TUNNELS

CONTENTS 3. INTRODUCTION 5. ART AND ARCHITECTURE 13. PUBLIC AND PRIVATE 17. SEX AND DEATH 19. REALITY AND FANTASY 21. CONSUMPTION AND WASTE 27. SPACE AND TIME 31. CASE STUDY: HOTEL MONA 35. CONCLUSION 37. NOTES

INTRODUCTION

What is the significance of art, in an art hotel? Is the architecture of a hotel simply the vessel for a brand of art, or can the distinction between art and architecture be suspended in a state of tension? The necessity for short-term accommodation on the Moorilla Estate, home to the Museum of Old and New Art (MONA) is the opportunity to test this proposition with some authenticity. The context of a rich indigenous cultural heritage and the very real situation of finite resources and rising sea levels, sites the planned hotel in a fertile space between the past and the future. Artist and architect as collaborators, exploring the tensions between sex and death, the public and the private, consumption and waste, space and time, creating a new language for the art hotel.

ART & ARCHITECTURE

Tension, as it is referred to here, refers to the relationship between one subject or state, to another. The experience of tension between these two states or beings involves a transition of energy, or as Derrida identifies, an interval, between space and time1. From this transition, or interval, sequence of events or series of flows emerges. Much like the energy produced by nature, this metaphysical tension too can be positively or negatively charged in its disposition2. An equal and positive relationship is mediated and strengthened by a layering of shared states. In the case of art and architecture, tension in their relationship exists in particular regard to function and utility3. Architecture, devoid or obscured of utility can be read as a work of art. The artist Callum Morton plays upon various tensions surrounding life, reality and time in his works that are architectural models of varying scales4. All themes of which can be expressed in terms of tensions. For example: the tensions between life and death, reality and fantasy, or between space and time. Under the guise of utility, art too can be interpreted as architecture5. Art has the opportunity to express the abstract utility traditionally reserved by the field of architecture, or science for that matter, such as in the expression of hyperrealism. Conversely, the transcendental function of art when applied to architecture can be understood in terms of contemplation, when it is an intervention open to contamination6. On the other hand, a negative association is marked by imbalance, with subjects adopting dominant and submissive roles. The resulting hierarchy between art 6 and architecture in particular lacks integrity, and

ART & ARCHITECTURE

manifests most prominently in the current branding of art and architecture, be it the marketable architecture of the ‘starchitect’ or the art hotel. Tensions exist between a wide variety of subjects and states, and can coexist within the artistic and architectural proposition - ideally not in hierarchical conflict to the other, but in mediated tension.

The ‘art hotel’ is typically characterised by the presence of reproduction art and themed interior styling within the walls of a generic hotel and room typology. The art themed hotel, motel or resort is expressed in the manner of a brand marketing strategy, either officially licensed or as an expression of fan-art. The rooms themselves offer varying degrees of commitment to the theme, whether it is within the standard hotel room, capsule or dormitory arrangement. Despite delivering on one key factor of ambience, ‘distinctiveness’, an outcome lacking a connection between the art and architecture throughout interior and exterior, fails to meet the second key factor of ‘genuineness’, or sincerity and integrity9. The unity of art and architecture throughout interior and exterior would in addition, remove the hierarchical disconnect between public and private.

Topics of social and spatial value such as public and private, sex and death, consumption and waste, space and time, are all fertile explorations of interdisciplinary processes and practices for the artist/ architect collaboration7. However the opportunity rarely arises for the execution of such propositions with any integrity due to the hierarchical structure of the modern capitalist society framework. Even if the intent of authenticity exists, the tension between subjects is normally imbalanced as a result of disparate forces of profit and power, as described by Juhani Pallasmaa as the tendencies of instrumentalisation and aestheticisation8. These tendencies are amplified in the art hotel typology.

The direct relationship between the interior and exterior form adds integrity to this connection. An unconventional and anti-rectilinear exterior form, such as the inherently structural tube, reads equally unconventionally from within the interior and establishes this connection. The exception exists, as in Callum Morton’s work Babylonia, where the exterior mountain-like form conceals within a corridor of a faceless hotel floor in an illusion of endless proportion10. Meaning explodes through the unrelated threshold space, removing the expected slack out of the tension between interior and exterior states. This work is shown in Figure1 overpage.

ART & ARCHITECTURE

Guy Dessauges thoroughly considered the tubular form type, producing plans and prototypes throughout the 1960s11. These are shown below in Figure 2.

Figure 1 Callum Morton, Babylonia, 2006.

Figure 2 Guy Dessauges vision for the tubular residential typology

ART & ARCHITECTURE

In a further development on the tubular form type the tension between public and private within the hotel and room typologies is enhanced, tightened. These typological arrangements are shown in Figures 3-5. Degrees of inclination and split-levels increase the complexity of the arrangement and limit the hierarchical distinction between spaces. The split-level arrangement of a high-density accommodation echoes the vertical pavilion design of Le Corbusier’s Unite d’Habitation, which challenged the regular and acceptable typological format. Importantly, it is a development on the work by Dessauges, who didn’t go so far as to tilt the volume in order to free itself completely from the conventions of the rectilinear floor plan.

Figure 3 Single Room Tubular Typology -30 Degrees

Figure 4 Single Room (PWD) Tubular Typology +5 Degrees

Figure 5 Six Person Room Tubular Typology +15 Degrees

PUBLIC & PRIVATE

The debate surrounding the subject of public and private, or the role of publicity and privacy, is one that concerns both the art and tourism industries and the niche category of art tourism. The production and consumption of art is today entrenched in the capitalist free market. This sets the issue of private ownership in tension with the needs of the public, which in the case of graffiti art, conflicts with the anarchistic original intent of the artist or conversely, contemplates the fundamental ethics of property appropriation, ownership and boundaries12. The commoditisation of art is touted as the impending death of originality. Considering the value of art in simply economic terms imposes restrictions on production and distribution and creates a dependence on broader cyclical conditions. The life and quality of the art is valued, acquired and traded on the open market according to a wealthy few, increasing the barriers of entry to the majority and obscuring the value of intent for the future artist. Considering the issues of public and private and their associated roles in the context of the tourism accommodation industry, of relevance is the characteristic transience of the occupant, the increased access to media and publicity and the division of spaces and their functions. An increasingly nomadic society is associated locally with an aging population, widespread communications, increasing levels of wealth and foreign trade, and on a global level with forces of economic, political and environmental migration. Charting new territory with unprecedented access to media and publicity including social media, new media and realtime uncensored publicity, architecture and the tourism 14 industry especially, need to deal with the displacement

PUBLIC & PRIVATE

of conventional tensions between public and private spaces13. To do this, the integration of technologies into a complex networked spatial arrangement can be used to enhance the user experience. Technological applications, ranging from sensorial to ethical, applied to an anti-hierarchy network plan increases the range and quality of paths, nodes and interstices for the transient occupant. The alternative, a simple tree plan, increases the hierarchical sequence and delivers privacy in an effective and economical manner, however it is limited in its ability to deliver complexity to the occupant experience. Applying a thin film of theme to this generic hierarchical hotel typology reduces the potential for an authentic experience, negated by efficiencies, economies and disguises. This type of planning strategy stifles flow and creates a distinctly isolating experience for the occupant without necessarily increasing the level of privacy. By stifling flow, the benefits of a fictional reality and its â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;fluid sense of identityâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; for the occupant are lost14. Instead, a contemporary spatial relationship free of hierarchy exposes all guests to encounters of chaotic and regenerative explorations, of reality and fantasy, consumption and waste, life and sexuality, and has the potential to drive an authentic architectural language for the art hotel.

SEX & DEATH

The incidence of sex and death in hotels, and the ‘Las Vegas effect’, is documented in academic literature and depicted endlessly in film, with higher suicide rates and incidences of ‘suicide tourism’ linked to ‘ecological’, ‘selection’ and ‘contagion’ effects within the social, virtual and built environments15. Accidental death by way of misadventure is common and difficult to mitigate beyond the adherence of an adequate building code, without removing particular liberties for expression and expectations of privacy. Death by more intentional causes, such as suicide or acts of violence, warrants active dissuasion through the deconstruction of the traditional organisation of space16. Reducing the level of isolation and disconnect in the plan, eliminating rigid parameters of repetitive normalcy and rational linearity, as well as opportunities of ‘long fall’, engaging with a mixed demographic of clientele, and establishing an open non-judgemental discourse on the topics of sex and death. From these descriptors one might think of the modest motel, however the perceived loss of identity, placelessness, and the absence of barriers for entry, financial and physical, all contribute to a negative association of this typology with heterotopian spatial theory17. Evidence also points out that the increasingly sexualised environment of Las Vegas is impacting on working women in non-sexual employment roles, in a negative expression of the tension between fantasy and reality18. The reality of sex and death is normally less glamorous than the fantasy within the mind of the beholder.

REALITY & FANTASY

Tension between reality and fantasy is a fertile ground of intention for the design of hotel accommodation, through immersive spatial and temporal sequences and pronounced scale and threshold experiences, beyond a thin veil of gimmicky perversions that obscure dysfunctional architecture. The integration of advanced systems technologies has the potential to extend the fantasies of the everyday19. These technological systems are ripe for engagement with the process of consumption and waste, both as a functional regenerative system and fodder for the ethically charged utopian fantasy.

CONSUMPTION & WASTE

The reality of consumption and waste in the tourism and construction industries is bleak, but not without hope for the architect with a purpose. The tension exists between the finite consumption of resources and the potential for recycling and adaptive reuse of waste products, including food, hard rubbish, energy, water and sewage waste. Waste is today largely considered without value, or with negative value. Yet, relative to time and dwindling resources, even waste becomes valuable.

CONSUMPTION & WASTE

The characteristic transience and public hospitality of hotel accommodation amplifies taboo sentiments towards reuse, despite its potential for collective efficiencies. To infer the value of waste, an architectural proposition might draw upon the tensions of waste and consumption and the urgency demanded by space and time, by unveiling the terror of waste and giving it presence. Through the regenerative occupation of a toxic wasteland, or the adaptive reuse and habitation of discarded industrial infrastructure, waste emerges from the past and adapts to near future conditions. After all, according to Kant, an “edifice” of metaphysics must be erected upon secure “foundations” that have been restored by the “clearing, as it were, and levelling of what has hitherto been wasteground”20. Guests are exposed to the value potential of collective action and prompted to look within for the infinite potential of this very moment in time. In line with the refuge and aspiration of Morton’s Babylonia, this is a place for escaping past transgressions and at once a place for emerging ideas and freedoms21. Expressed in a materiality of a chaotic and decayed concrete exterior versus the abstract reflection of infinite space within, a pipe dream in the dystopian present balances the burden of space and time, and of waste and consumption, as shown in Figures 6-7.

24 Figure 6 Materiality Study

Figure 7 Materiality Study of Tunnel Interior and Exterior

SPACE & TIME

Figure 8 Elenberg Fraser, 33 Mackenzie Street, 2012

The context of space and time, relative to the subjects of art and architecture, manages tension as a matter of intention, contemplation and transition. Considering the resources available, sensorial immersion can transcend the normal limits of physical and ocular boundaries, blurring the distinction between phenomena both fantasy and real. Sensorial responses can be triggered by audio, visual, tactile, taste, smell or emotional perceptions or deprivations22. Immersion is a more extreme response to the surrounding conditions by way of artifice and nature23. The artificial pattern scape is represented in the work of Elenberg Fraser, shown in Figure 824. And biological mimicry is exemplified in the work of Geoffrey Bawa, shown Figure 925. Though some, including Caillois, might argue that they are one and the same - â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;mimetic assimilations of the animate to the inanimateâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;26.

Figure 9 Geoffrey Bawa, Kandalama Hotel, 1991

SPACE & TIME

Approaching art or architecture that appears emerging from nature and quite possibly receding into the past, marks a moment of tension within the infinite trajectory of space and time27. The infinite trajectory, often depicted as the symbol in a similar form as the Mobius Strip, is more simply depicted as the circle. An extruded circle, or the cylinder, or tunnel, offers the opportunity of passage through space, the threshold experience sparking the moment of transition through time between reality and fantasy, the past and the future. It is the â&#x20AC;&#x153;socio-spatial dialecticâ&#x20AC;? of Lefebvre, an architectural language based on social and spatial interaction and feedback, in the specific context of a site28.

CASE STUDY: HOTEL MONA

Arguably the most titillating addition to the cultural landscape of Australia is the MONA gallery sited on the Moorilla Estate, Tasmania. MONA houses an astounding private collection of art and antiquities that convey the overarching theme of sex and death. It is a partially submerged garden of earthly delights and fantastical discontent, appropriate of a site characterised by such historic wealth and misfortune. It is this site that requires a solution for short-term accommodation that will also serve to contribute financially to the cost of running the museum. Tasmania in its entirety is rich in indigenous, colonial and geographical resources. Once Tasmania was separated from the mainland by the inundation of Bass Strait over 10,000 years ago, so too were the indigenous people29. The current and very real situation of rising sea levels and dependence on finite resources means that this situation could arise once again in the near future. The location of the Moorilla Estate on the tidal Derwent River means that this location will be susceptible to sea level rises and may lose access from Glenorchy by land. More drastically, the future could be imagined that Tasmania is once again largely isolated from the mainland of Australia.

CASE STUDY: HOTEL MONA

The fertility of the environment results in a complex web of environmental protection and resource extraction. The surrounding silt bed of the Derwent River is highly contaminated with mercury as a result of past industrial misgivings. There is evidence of the disappearance of endangered indigenous plant species from the entire area of Glenorchy, yet the most recent landscaping works on the MoNA estate involved remedial works to re-establish a promenade of postcolonial exotic tree species through the length of the site. In addition, the site features several middens of historical indigenous cultural significance and scores the location of a society once isolated, then persecuted, and now deserving to be respected. Details are shown in Figure 10.

CASE STUDY: HOTEL MONA

The publicly accessible art sited within the museum grounds includes a display case featuring a changing collection of art and antiquities, a crashed car between converging concrete walls, and an intricate gothic steel frame in the shape of a cement mixer. The only art, architecture or natural feature that has been defaced is the crashed car, which far from a negative, comments on the egalitarian relationship between the gallery and community. These respectful anarchistic contributions of the public add value to the dynamic life of the art in context; in a similar way as a memorial or guest book.

Figure 10 Moorilla Estate Section

CONCLUSION

These tensions of publicity, waste, death, reality and time, are all evident in the existing site conditions for the upcoming Mona hotel. As explorations, interdisciplinary in nature and nurtured by the artist and architect collaboration, they have the potential to make the art hotel experience much more than a veneer of brand marketing on the carcass of a generic hotel typology. Though the demands of the client and their guests may usually fall in favour of convention garnished with a trick or two, given the option and conditions, an authentic collaboration of art and architecture may be realised as a vital condition for the transient experience through space and time. The tunnel, as a symbol of this passage through space and time, represents the adaptive reuse of industrial waste and the departure from convention. The tunnel has the potential to transcend the traditional hierarchy between function and irrational utility, giving new life to public and private arrangements in response to social and spatial interventions. It is art and architecture in equal tension, creating a new language for the art hotel.

NOTES 1.

Jacques Derrida, Margins of Philosophy, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982, 1-27

12.

Rosalyn Deutsche, Evictions: art and spatial politics, Cambridge: Massachusetts Institute of Technology Press, 1996, 14-15.

John Sallis, Spacings of Reason and Imagination in texts of Kant, Fichte, Hegel, Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1987, 5.

13.

Malcolm Miles, Urban Avant-Gardes: art, architecture and change, London: Routledge, 2004, 174.

Jane Rendell, Art and Architecture: a place between, London: I.B.Taurus & Co, 2006, 3-4.

14.

Donald Albrecht and Elizabeth Johnson, New Hotels for Global Nomads, New York: Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum, Smithsonian Institute, 2002, 33.

Callum Morton, Callum Morton: more talks about buildings and mood, Sydney: Museum of Contemporary Art Limited, 2003.

15.

Matt Wray et al., ‘Leaving Las Vegas: exposure to Las Vegas and risk of suicide’, Social Science and Medicine, 67 (2008), 1882-1888.

Juhani Pallasmaa, The Embodied Image: Imagination and Imagery in Architecture, West Sussex: John Wiley & Sons, 2011, 101.

16.

Martin Heidegger in Mark Wigley, The Architecture of Deconstruction: Derrida’s Haunt, Cambridge: Massachusetts Institute of Technology Press, 1993, 120-121.

FAT, ‘Contaminating Contemplation’, in Jonathan Hill (ed.), Occupying Architecture: between the architect and the user, London: Routledge, 1998, 97.

17.

Sarah Chapman, ‘Heterotopia deserta: Las Vegas and other spaces’, in Iain Borden and Jane Rendell (eds.), Intersections: Architectural Histories and Critical Theories, London: Routledge, 2000, 206.

18.

Ann McGinley, ‘Urban Renewal: the Effects of Increased Sexualisation on Women Workers’, Law & Society Annual Meeting, 2006.

19.

Elizabeth Grosz, Architecture from the outside: essays on virtual and real space, Athens: Massachusetts Institute of Technology Press, 2001, 75.

20.

Immanuel Kant in Wigley, The Architecture of Deconstruction: Derrida’s Haunt, 7.

21.

Juliana Engberg, in Morton, Callum Morton: Babylonia, 5.

22.

Juhani Pallasmaa, ‘Hapticity and Time: notes on a fragile architecture’, Architectural Review, 207, no. 1239 (May 2000), 78-84.

Rendell, Art and Architecture: a place between, 6.

Juhani Pallasmaa, ‘An Archipelago of Authenticity: The Task of Architecture in Consumer Culture’, in Gregory Caicco (ed), Architecture, Ethics, and the Personhood of Place, 2007, 43

Morten Heide et al., ‘The design and management of ambience – implications for hotel architecture and service’, Tourism Management, 28, (2007), 1315 – 1325.

10.

Callum Morton, Callum Morton: Babylonia, Melbourne: Australian Centre for Contemporary Art, 2006.

11.

Guy Dessauges (n.d.), Maisons cylindriques de diametre 6 metres, http://www.guy-dessauges.com [accessed 14 June 2013].

23.

Mark Taylor, ‘Relentless Patterns’, Architectural Design, 79, no. 6 (November/December 2009), 42–47.

24.

Elenberg Fraser, 33 Mackenzie Street Melbourne, http:// elenbergfraser.com/#!/project/0810_33m [accessed 14 June 2013].

25.

Geoffrey Bawa, Kandalama Hotel Dambulla, 1991, http:// www.geoffreybawa.com/work/solo-contextual-modernism#, [accessed 14 June 2013].

26.

Roger Caillos, ‘Mimicry and legendary psychasthenia’, in Claudine Frank (ed), The Edge of Surrealism: A Roger Caillos Reader, Durham: Duke University Press, 2003.

27.

Pallasmaa, ‘An Archipelago of Authenticity: The Task of Architecture in Consumer Culture’, 43.

28.

Rendell, Art and Architecture: a place between, 17.

29.

Jared Diamond, Guns, Germs and Steel: the fates of human societies, New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1997, 295321.

Prepared 14 June 2013 BIANCA DE ALMEIDA EGLINGTON University Of Melbourne Master of Architecture Design Research Professor Dr Janet McGaw Tutor Cliff Chang