A Beginners Mind

PROCEEDINGS
21st National Conference
on the Beginning Design Student

Stephen Temple, editor

Conference held at the

College of Architecture
The University of Texas at San Antonio
24-26 February 2005

A Beginners Mind
PROCEEDINGS
21st National Conference
on the Beginning Design Student
Stephen Temple, editor
College of Architecture
The University of Texas at San Antonio
24-26 February 2005

Situating Beginnings
Questioning Representation
Alternative Educations
Abstractions and Conceptions
Developing Beginnings
Pedagogical Constructions
Primary Contexts
Informing Beginnings
Educational Pedagogies
Analog / Digital Beginnings
Curriculum and Continuity
Interdisciplinary Curricula
Beginnings
Design / Build
Cultural Pluralities
Contentions
Revisions
Projections

Offered through the Research Office for Novice Design

Education, LSU, College of Art and Design, School of
Architecture.
Copyright 2006 University of Texas San Antonio
/ individual articles produced and edited by the authors

Printed proceedings produced by Stephen Temple, Associate Professor, University of Texas San Antonio.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without
written permission of the publisher.
Published by:
University of Texas San Antonio
College of Architecture
501 West Durango Blvd.
San Antonio TX 78207
210 458-3010
fax 210 458-3016

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Temple, Stephen, editor
A Beginners Mind: Proceedings of the 21st National Conference on the Beginning Design Student /
edited and compiled by Stephen Temple
1. Architecture - Teaching 2. Architecture - Design 3. Design - Teaching

ISBN 0-615-13123-9

Site as Motion Assemblage

CLARE ROBINSON
Iowa State University
Learning from the existing landscape is a way of being revolutionary for an architect.1
This paper presents the design of a Motion Assemblage as one of five related projects in
a second-year architecture studio. This studio addressed relationships between the body,
environment, and culture and focused on the design of public transit-related architectural
interventions in Ames, IA. At the end of the semester, these interventions, including a pedestrian
conduit, transportation hub, and art installation, are part a coherent circulation diagram
connecting Ames and Des Moines. The Motion Assemblage preceded the design of the specific
interventions, followed initial site observation, documentation and analysis, and served as a
mechanism for students to visualize and construct a dynamic diagram of the site.
Compared to the preceding second-year studio, this studio placed a greater emphasis on
phenomenology, phenomenological method, and spatial practices.2 Such emphasis demanded
that students engage the physical and ephemeral contexts of place and space while also working
iteratively, revising each transit-related intervention such that each part actively participates in the
larger context.3 In this way, each student was as an integral part of articulating site phenomenon,
describing the everyday landscape in which we live, and translating space-producing patterns of
inhabitation.
Site and Assemblage
Before the design and construction of a Motion Assemblage, students observed,
documented, researched, and analyzed the existing landscape of downtown Ames and engaged
various strategies of experiential research and visual representation.4 This process combined
issues surrounding observation and experience with those of visual communication. While
individual strategies of observation and representation could differ, strategies were
characteristically analytical and coordinated, designed in such a way that the information was
accessible to all members of the studio.
The physical and ephemeral site elements, including edges, spatial boundaries,
neighborhoods, and districts, the type and location of building materials, roadways, sidewalks,
and plantings, building orientation and infrastructure, signage, and history, served as clues to
spatial sequences and patterns of inhabitation. And elements, such as bus stops, parking
meters, trash receptacles, newspaper stands, benches, power lines, and fire hydrants, were
relevant things with characteristics, properties and positions that inferred the situation of each
object.5 Space was conceptualized as not merely the setting in which objects exist but the
medium through which object positions are possible.6

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Fig. 1. Composite map of all elements (left), map of all pedestrian and road signs (center), and
map of pedestrian lighting and green places (right).
All of the observed and documented site elements (Fig. 1, left) resulted in a map of a
place, a totalizing view of downtown Ames. This totality, the sum of all parts, impedes analysis
and phenomenological comprehension. An element in isolation however, (Fig. 1, center)
illustrates aspects of place, specifically the location and direction of signage, and aspects of
space, the inferred difference in scale and speed of inhabitation above and below the railroad
tracks. Similarly, a group of site elements, including a pedestrian lighting and green spaces (Fig.
1, right), reveal potential patterns of inhabitation and an apparent disjunction between the location
of lighting and potential recreation spaces.
Such findings demonstrate relationships and/or disjunctions between the formal order of
place and the inhabitation of space and informed the design and content of the Assemblages.
Assemblages were therefore, synthetic interpretations of site, diagrams relating the complexity of
various physical and ephemeral aspects of the existing landscape.
Site interpretations grew from careful consideration of patterns of inhabitation, systems of
transportation, and motion, including space and speed of movement and the time, duration,
frequency, and character of inhabitation. In this way, Assemblages negotiate tours of space and
maps of place, narratives and spatial totalities and, as a consequence, did and do not
necessarily resemble the physical characteristics of site but perform in a manner analogous to
elements and phenomena observed on and around downtown Ames.7
One such Assemblage illuminates the phenomena of interruption (Fig. 2). Specifically,
the student observed that the railroad line, which participated in the establishment and
development of Ames, is the same railroad line that carries trains that periodically stops
automobiles and pedestrians throughout the day and night. Here, the train tracks are
constructed of wood and enclosed on all four sides while the roads are built as open threepronged tracks and sidewalks as two tracks with side guards. Several large silver ball bearings
represent the train, dozens of medium-sized ball bearings are the automobiles, while several
dozen small ball bearings are pedestrians. The system utilizes gravity to generate motion and a
lever to halt vehicular and pedestrian motion before a train passes on the train tracks.

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Fig. 2. Motion Assemblage demonstrating interruption (Benjamin Foth, 2003).

While the Assemblage is comprised of roads, walkways, and a rail line, it ultimately
demonstrates how the train interrupts pedestrian and vehicular traffic. It also operates as a visual
palimpsest, revealing spatial productions as visible interdictions between pedestrians, vehicles,
and trains and the production of space.8
Another Assemblage also situates the train as a significant entity downtown Ames (Fig.
3). Here, the interruption of pedestrian and vehicular traffic caused by passing trains, is
conceptualized as a pause. Small, hanging pendulums, fabricated of plastic, medal rod, and
magnets, represent the vehicular and pedestrian traffic downtown Ames while a larger, single
magnet concealed in plastic represents the train. The train is designed to slide back and forth
along the bottom of the Assemblage in a track. The sliding train causes displacement of the
pedestrians and automobiles above.

Fig. 3. Motion Assemblage demonstrating pause and displacement (Christopher Behrens, 2003).
The second Motion Assemblage translates the concept of a temporal pause, the initial
experiential phenomenon, into displacement. This displacement of pendulums situates
pedestrians and automobiles as secondary and yielding to a larger and periodic force. The train,
pedestrians, and automobiles, therefore, share a rhythm but not space and are hierarchical in
relationship to one another. Like the first Assemblage, the second illuminates potential patterns
of inhabitation. The second, however, ultimately reveals a motion that is dependent, rhythmic,
and changing, showing stable relationships and instable spatial states.9

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Another Motion Assemblage dealt directly with mechanization and the impact
mechanization has on the land (Fig. 4). Rather than mobilizing pedestrians, vehicles, and trains,
the student represented a process and eventual outcome of development specific to the place
and culture of Ames, IA. In this instance, mechanization served as a metaphor for the values of
engineering and agriculture, values that shape the physical and social landscape.
In appearance, the powered mechanism is analogous to farm equipment, circling around
a track in a slow and methodical manner, while the substrate below is analogous to the land,
fragile and mutable. Performatively, the slow and persistent motion of the machine contrasts with
the operations of mechanical equipment its impact on the rubber substrate is seemingly
unpredictable and, more importantly, the outcome amounts to destruction rather than construction
or growth.

Fig. 4. Motion Assemblage demonstrating destruction (Joseph Bednar, 2004).

In the third Assemblage, the relationship between the mechanism and substrate
represents the manipulation of land and environment. The affect of the Assemblage is dependent
on time and is cumulative it allows us to observe motion and also view a physical, rather than
ephemeral, representation of produced space.
Outcome
The pedagogical outcome of the Motion Assemblages is twofold. First, Assemblages
convey that students are able to be observers of phenomenon and are able to translate physical
and ephemeral properties and characteristics of the site into a performative motion assembly.
Significant aspects of this translation involved careful observation, analysis, and representation of
downtown Ames. This process, negotiating the difference between forms used in a spatial
system the buildings, fire hydrants, and signs, for example and ways of using a spatial system
patterns and orders of inhabitation that may or may not align with place, interrogates potential
and changing relationships, situations and/or differentiated positions.10
Second, concepts guiding later transit-related interventions emerged from the spatial and
physical manifestations of the Assemblages. The first Assemblage, for example, facilitated the
conceptualization the conduit as a path that can enable the movement of objects. Within this
system, conduiting occurs as a combination of continuous movement and pausing. When
objects grouped together, they are collecting or hubbing, which happens during pausing. The
concepts of a conduit and hub are therefore interrelated and inseparable such that the spatial
production of conduiting and hubbing occurs in relationship to one another, oscillating
continuously between conduiting and hubbing, conduiting and hubbing, and conduiting
again. A routine.

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The second Assemblage demonstrates that pedestrians, automobiles, and trains have an
interdependent rhythm and while the entities share a rhythm and space, cannot occupy the same
place at the same time. This Assemblage, therefore, facilitates the conceptualization of a
conduit and hub, as locations of orchestrated displacement and accommodation. In contrast,
the third Assemblage conceptualizes conduit and hub as relevant to the process of mending.
This approach reflected the students observation of the apparent physical and social separation
between the town and campus. Later projects sought to sew places and people back together
again, conceptualizing the transit-related interventions as aids to existing social and physical
disjunctions.
In the end, the Motion Assemblages framed the conceptual potential and performance of
hub and conduit and, based on spatial production where inhabitation actualizes spatial order,
caused space to exist and emerge.11 In addition, the project and processes helped students
anticipate the design and function of transit-related architectural interventions, and most
importantly, demanded each student be an integral part of articulating phenomenon, learning from
the landscape, and translating site into spatial production.
Notes
1. Robert Venturi, Denise Scott Brown, and Steven Izenour. (Learning from Las Vegas. Cambridge: MIT
Press. 1972. Page 3.)
2. Phenomenology and phenomenological method refer to the work of M. Merleau-Ponty (Phenomenology
of Perception. Colin Smith, trans. London: Routledge. 1998.) and his predecessors, Edmund Husserl and
Martin Heideggar, in which a dialectic between perception and object are central to discerning space and
spatial relationships.
3. The terms place and space are used in reference to Michel de Certeau who carefully distinguishes one
from the other in his essay Spatial Stories (The Practice of Everyday Life. Berkeley: University of California
Press. 1988. Page 115-130.). Here, place is defined as an instantaneous configuration of positions
while space exists when one considers vectors of direction, velocities, and time variables (de Certeau,
p117).
4. Specifically, students read and examined Kevin Lynch (The Image of the City. Cambridge: MIT Press.
Reprinted in 1997; The View From the Road Cambridge: MIT. 1964.), Robert Venturi and Denise Scott
Brown (Learning from Las Vegas. Cambridge: MIT Press. 1972), and Mario Gandelsonas (X-Urbanism:
architecture and the American City. New York: Princeton Architectural Press. 1999.).
5. The things with characteristics and properties refers to Merleau-Pontys description of objects. While
certain aspects of objects are stable, it is important to consider that such stability does not define things
entirely perception of size and shape will vary as our relationship to things change (Merleau-Ponty, p299),
hence the importance of distinguishing between the position and situation of objects (Merleau-Ponty, p244).
6. Here, the position is distinguished from the potential situation of an object, implying situations are social,
vector based, or dialectical (Merleau-Ponty, p243-44).
7. Michel de Certeau describes a tour as a circuit, an itinerary, or series of paths with implied or actual
spatial vectors. While a tour pertains to acting or going, a map pertains to seeing and/or comprehending a
totality of fixed place relationships (de Certeau, p119).
8. This Assemblage exemplifies Michel de Certeau assertion that space is composed of intersections of
mobile elements, including pedestrians on foot and in automobiles, buses, and trains (de Certeau, p117).
9. This Assemblage illustrates how spatial production is a dialectic between bodies (Lefebvre, p183).
10. Michel de Certeau makes the distinction between forms and uses in Walking in the City (The Practice
of Everyday Life. Berkeley: University of California Press. 1988. Page 91-110.) in the context of spatial
actualization. The core of this distinction is that the space of place implies relationships between different
positions (de Certeau, p98.)
11. Michel de Certeau situates the concepts of spatial existence and emergence as the result of a walker
appropriating a topographical system (de Certeau, p97-8).

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References
Appleyard, Donald, Kevin Lynch, and John R. Myer. The View From the Road. Cambridge: MIT. 1964.
De Certeau, Michel. The Practice of Everyday Life. Steven Rendall, trans. Berkeley: University of
California Press. 1964, reprinted 1988. Pages 91-110 (Walking in the City) and p115-130 (Spatial
Stories).
Gandelsonas, Mario. X-Urbanism: architecture and the American City. New York: Princeton Architectural
Press. 1999.
Lefebvre, Henri. The Production of Space. Donald Nicholson-Smith, trans. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers
Ltd. 1991, reprinted 2002.
Lynch, Kevin. The Image of the City. Cambridge: MIT Press. 1960 (reprinted 1997).
Merleau-Ponty, M. Phenomenolgy of Perception. Colin Smith, trans. London: Routledge. 1962, reprinted
1998.
Venturi, Robert, Denise Scott Brown, and Steven Izenour. Learning From Los Vegas. Cambridge: MIT
Press. 1972.

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