Ice Baths and Field Conditions

The initial research asked how buildings can foster or reject the feelings of belonging, stress, and focus. The uncomfortable transition from the pavement to the bath, and interactions with other people, close and far, could be an opportunity for mediation through continuous form.

The greatest realisation of the project was that ‘continuous’ did not have to be limited to form, and was actually moving towards a design methodology. At this point, the project consulted Field Conditions, the theory that underlying functions for space, guided by research and intuition, can generate architecture that respects each element’s individuality while uniting them in common fields.

The design process can become too idealised, and often centred on the designer (me). The uncertainty of physical processes, especially in casting glass, can provide some much needed grease to the moving parts of the project.

The title of the project ‘Ice Baths and Field Conditions’, as read for the first time, describes the tension between an easily intuited concrete programme and the infinite possibilities of spatial logic; a tension which the project aims to resolve by escaping the theoretical and learning from a design process.

Field Conditions as a key theoretical grounding were discovered as a result of trying to define a continuous architecture, where elements ‘arrive’ from shared banks of knowledge, established through research. The idea of ‘arriving’ suggests that the spatial withdrawals are out of the hands of the designer and therefore more true to the knowledge. Allen initially interpreted Field Conditions as a way of understanding how geometry can be perceived as beautiful to the human eye. By moving from geometry to spatial experience (cold, warm), I have tried to prove that the conditions can belong to other dimensions. Intersecting fields can have thoughtful connections, and the site can attract or repel elements.

While I am excited to push the idea further, in architecture, music, and film, there needs to be a reflection that Field Conditions are, to some degree, a rationalisation of not just beauty but also creative decision making, and therefore might cloud a more intuitive, uncontained understanding of the world, one that doesn’t require any theoretical basis.

Ground floor, block plan, 1:50
The glass fragments alone are cold and intentionally disorienting. They can be interspersed with warmer, timber elements that are designed for the comfort of the user. These include timber floors, benches, doors, and registers. The registers (see detail on previous page) are short timber columns that sit at shoulder height. They hug the corner of the glass block to provide tactile hand- holds, cushion accidental barging, and most importantly allow users to better gauge depth down the hall.
The ‘warm’ elements are emergent from a new field condition. Jackson Pollock’s work, while seemingly random, could be decoded as a series of field conditions without a start or end; expression made tangible through colour, frequency, and density. While painting has no requirements for either mechanically interlocking these conditions, or a site (except for the canvas) to limit them, when applied to architecture, there becomes an opportunity to design these overlaps and site response.

Section, cyanotype on acrylic with painted engravings
Contact Print from a negative composed from line work and glass prints. The final printed glass is second generation cyanotype, and is therefore inverted once more than the line work. Traditional drawing provides the architectural element while the printing process provides its quality. The back of the acrylic is engraved and painted, layering the timber field with the glass field.

Stress and Focus
The transfer of mental stress to mechanical (formal) stress could also be cyclical. I recorded my stress while working through different tasks by deforming balls of mouldable plastic. The results aren’t intended to prove anything, but instead allowed me to consider a material’s tactility, surface, and interaction with light as a mediator for stress.
Extending the critique of my own working habits, I looked to negate stressful conditions by reducing distractions in my field of view. The Cyclorama Desk is a 1:1 test for ‘continuous space’. The most prominent excerpt from the physical research is that the placement of a ‘void’ within a more human ‘mess’ amplifies the edge condition, and establishes a clear territory within that border. The smoothness and cleanliness is productive, but perhaps hostile to its immediate surroundings.
Considering Van Doesburg’s refinement of the surface composition, my research began to hint at a possible node for design theory. Space is designated by the beginning and end of surfaces in plan and section

Ground floor, fragment model, 1:50
Cast Glass, resin, acrylic, silicon, ash, cedar, steel.

First floor, fragment model, 1:50
Cast glass, polished plaster, resin, cedar, sand.