los angeles CALIFORNIA
USC Graduate School of Architecture
Critic: Yaohua WANG
suckerPUNCH: Describe your project.
Jack STEWART-CASTNER: Operating on an assumption and growing out of a desire; Rend, Mend is a project that seeks the multiple. My interest in the multiple stems from an investigation of a precedent; the Ulster Museum located in Belfast, Ireland. The museum, completed in two halves, was designed in by James Cumming Wynne in 1929 and by Francis Pym in 1964.
- Jack STEWART-CASTNER, “Rend, Mend.”, Detail Axon
- Jack STEWART-CASTNER, “Rend, Mend.”, Detail Axon
- Jack STEWART-CASTNER, “Rend, Mend.”, Axon Drawing
- Jack STEWART-CASTNER, “Rend, Mend.”, Axon Drawing
- Jack STEWART-CASTNER, “Rend, Mend.”, Model Photo
- Jack STEWART-CASTNER, “Rend, Mend.”, Model Photo
- Jack STEWART-CASTNER, “Rend, Mend.”, Axon Section
- Jack STEWART-CASTNER, “Rend, Mend.”, Section
Inherent its image and construction, the Ulster Museum makes no apologies for its bipartisan nature. As it shouldn’t. While neither part of each building is particularly interesting on its own, the conflict and communication between the two create a dialog which speaks to a broader socio-cultural condition. This condition can be read as the difference between passive and active communication.
Evident in the symmetrical alignments, polite separation, and visible seam, the Ulster Museum fails to enter the realm of active communication. While the Brutalist extension visibly respects its neoclassical father, it clearly fails to engage and usurp its parent. This observation then begs the question; how do we create a projective architecture which still enables an active communication with history, context, and culture? Rend, Mend attempts to overcome this issue by exploring the condition of multiple ontologies.
By utilizing the language and positioning afforded in the found condition of the Ulster Museum, Rend, Mend explores multiple ontologies’ ability to produce a new active dialogue for the building. This new dialogue denies the privileging and segregation of one entity over the next while forcing the interaction of entities 1 and 2 to produce a 3rd, all containing the qualities and formal makeup of 1+2. Rend, Mend is a project which does not seek to produce a better, more efficient architecture, but rather embraces the opportunity to explore a quality afforded by a precedent and a desire.
++Recipient of the award for Mastery of Thesis++
