Selected Works By Matthew Slingerland

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Dimensions TwenTy Three

nesTeD DoUBLe - LoADeD Living

ZeiTgeisT fAcTory

The miLLBAnk mysTery

DAnger Box

wUnDerkAmmer

noTATions, Lines, geomeTries, AnD oTher mArks

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Dimensions is an Architectural Book produced by the students with content from students, faculty, and guest lecturers. This Michigan publication is produced every year by a new group of students. As well as designing the logo for Dimensions 23, I was apart of a group of three other students whose focus was the comprehensive identity of the book (Typeface, Cover, Table of Contents, Landing Pages).

Dimensions TwenTy Three

33 Bottom Photos: illustrating the process of tagging the book

Top Photo: illustrating Title Page and Logo

Top Photo: illustrating Landing Page

5 illustration of spreads within the book

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In this comprehensive studio, we were asked to design housing for a diverse group of socioeconomic classes. Our site, known as PD-5, is located in Chicago. This is the former site of the infamous Cabrini-Green. By tearing down this complex of housing, the city lost 1,000 units of housing for their residence. Therefore, we were asked to provide for close to 1,000 residence, as well as addressing the park and school that already exist on the site.The implementation of a large scale perimeter condition was an attempt to invert the Chicago skyscraper typology. The perimeter of the project was designed as a porous membrane that responded to light, views, and movement. The density of units required by the brief and the desire to provide public green space to the surrounding communities led to the design of a nested double loaded corridor condition around the perimeter. Between the double-loaded corridor on the exterior and the single loaded corridor on the interior, a linear park was designed as a street connecting the residences. The linear park also acted as the membrane connecting the various programmatic elements together (resident entrances, office spaces, commercial spaces, farmers market, park space, etc.) nesTeD DoUBLe - LoADeD Living

Collaboration with Thom Affeldt

Right Page: Site Plan

Collaboration with Thom Affeldt

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commercial

3 bedroomsro

1 bedroom

2 bedroom

sytems voidswater retentioncirulationtrash chuteswinter/summer gardens

storage

13th floor/ vertical axis wind turbine field

24 circulation cores

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exploded floor diagram illustrating circulation and unit types

commercial

3 bedroomsro

1 bedroom

2 bedroom

sytems voidswater retentioncirulationtrash chuteswinter/summer gardens

storage

13th floor/ vertical axis wind turbine field

24 circulation cores

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11 aggregate plan of the units and their layouts

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First Floor12' - 0"

Second Floor24' -0"

Third Floor36' - 0"

Fourth Floor48' - 0"

Fifth Floor56' - 0"

Roof Level68' - 0"

Top of Parapet70' - 0"

3/4" wood siding3/4" wood batten/air spacevapor barrier 3/4" sheathing6" light gauge steel framingfiberglass insulation3/4" gypsum board

single glazed aluminum framed windowoperable panels and venting hardware

double glazed windowwood and aluminum frameextended sill threshold

3/4" hardwood flooringrigid insulation vapor barrier reinforced concrete floorrigid insulationdropped wood ceiling panel

Line of cantilevered truss behind wall

Concrete planters in void space

Recessed lighting can

Suspended wood panel ceiling

Cantilevered Unit beyond

Cantilevered Unit beyond

Line of cantilevered truss behind wall

12'-0

"12

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12'-0

"12

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2'-0

1/2

"12

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4" lightweight soilfilter fabricwater retention matsheet barrier over waterproof membranesloped rigid insulationvapor barrierreinforced concrete slabrigid insulationwood panel drop ceiling

3/4" wood sidingcantilvevered steel truss rigid insulation sloped insulation for drainagewood decking

Sliding glass door

Light gauge steel interior wall

INSIDE

INSIDE

INSIDE

INSIDE

OUTSIDE

OUTSIDE

OUTSIDE

OUTSIDE

OUTSIDE INSIDE

GradeVaries

Mercantile0' - 0"

13'-4

"

single glazed aluminum framed windowoperable panels and venting hardware

INSIDE

INSIDE

double glazed windowwood and aluminum frameextended sill threshold

INSIDE

WALL SECTIONSCALE: 3/4” = 1’-0”

1919 perspective of the linear park

2121 perspective of the market from a unit in the tower

2323 worm’s eye section from the street

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In a world of “Google, Wikipedia, and Twitter” the access to knowledge, around the world, can no longer be an issue. Unlimited access has born a more insatiable crisis, the organization of knowledge. The “Zeitgeist Factory,” a project focused on the exploration of how designers navigate and understand networks of information, enlists “relational thinking” as a mechanism for cultivating, participating, and ultimately registering the spirit and knowledge of today’s culture.

This imaginative project uses the Pantheon, with its classical understanding of knowledge, as an organization or black box for the project. This site becomes the hub for translations of networked thinking into a new understanding of space, as the Zeitgeist Factory begins to unmake the order of the Pantheon. The typewriter, an analogous mechanism to the Pantheon, is used as a catalyst for the project by utilizing its inherent structure, the abecedarium, as a way to cultivate and order issues of today’s culture.

ZeiTgeisT fAcToryAudio: wifi, hub, ho*eybee, virtual, dematerializatio*, radial, pa*theo*, flight patter*, hive, da*ce, commu*ication. Ballistic: flight, gravity, atmosphere, mass, barometric pressure, weather. Charlotte: social *etwork, binary, facebook, ‘catfish.’ Deity: 22, religio*, gods of culture, cultivator, idol, gold. Edi*burgh: black box, prophet, ostradamus, catastrophe, recordi*g device, bi*ary. Fresh: trend, water, fashio*n, desali*atio*, pop, i*dividuality, oil spill, co*sumerism, bp, radioactive spill, japan. Ge*ocide: tech*ology, eth*ic, outmoded, co*ce*tratio* camp, burial grou*d, fur*ace, toxic, chi*a. Hydroge*: eleme*t, water, periodic table, sea level, atom, fresh water, heavy, desali*atio*, *uclear fussio*. Jupiter: pla*et, ki*g of gods, house of gods, pa*theo*, god of thu*der, atmosphere, light*i*g, e*ergy harvest, astro*omy, orbit, gravity, mass. Ki*etic City: cruise, tra*sportatio*, sea, car, fluid, ford, political bou*dary, ww2, amuseme*t, eise*hower, escape, sprawl, dece*tralizatio*. Lexico*: relatio*al thi*ki*g, *etwork, google, broade*, co*cate*ate. Madoff: deceptive eco*omics, joel ostee*, califor*ia, religio*, leverage. N

* = N (nostalgia, the foil to zeitgeist)

Right Page: A detail of a drawing that explores the 4 recording devices inherent in an analogue typewriter

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With regard to its translational capacities, I understand the typewriter as 4 recording devices:

The keys: record through frequency of use. You can understand how often a key has been used, with respect to the others, because of the residues left from the touch of a finger.

The ink strip: is the purest record of what has been written. It moves one space as each key has been pressed, so if you want to strike a letter you have already written, the ink strip will record the strike after the letter being struck.

The paper: is the most legible and temporary of the recording devices. It is a projection of ideas that implies a single voice.

The platen: theoretically registers everything that has ever been written on this typewriter. It implies multiple voices, conflating ideas and producing possibilities for new reads.

A drawing that explores the 4 recording devices inherent in an analogue typewriter

29 Right Page: A composite drawing exploring the translations from “relational thinking” to indexical markings to spatial unmakings of the pantheon...and every explanation, thought, and influence inbetween

network cloud with Lexicon of marks and Paths of relational movement

spatial indexing in Plan

Unmaking the Pantheon in section

With respect to the typewriter, the Zeitgeist factory utilizes the abecedarium, which is an organization of things from a-z, as a structure for understanding culture. Each letter is translated as a machine, I’m calling a cultivator, which goes out and records specific aspects of culture and returns to the factory to deliver and register that information, making the factory a house of cultural knowledge. To name a few:

C is for Charlotte: referring to Charlotte’s web, C is interested in the weaving of connections and interactions we have through the use of social networking sites like facebook and twitter.

E is for Edinburgh: this cultivator has a specific site; it goes to the basement of a library in Edinburgh, where there is a black box that predicts catastrophes. The black box constantly spits out a series of random numbers. When there is about to be a catastrophic event, the numbers begin to make sense. (It predicted 9/11 and the Indian Tsunami)

S is for Stowaway: S goes into the ballasts of ships and tracks the movement or transportation of invasive fish.

This drawing began as the a list or index of culture form a-z, and by enlisting “relational thinking,” the list grew out to become more like a cloud structure. An example of this:

Y = YellowThe word yellow can relate to Beowulf. (the first recorded use of the word yellow in the English language appeared in Beowulf) This can relationship can then branch out into mythologies and fictions, which opens up many other possibilities.

Another branch from yellow can move into Journalism. (yellow is a type of journalism that uses eye-catching headlines with little research to sell papers) This might move into techniques of writing or commodities of capitalism.

As each of the cultivators are activated, they produce a residue or mark that registers their frequency of use. Due to how often they are activated and their proximity within the factory, they begin to influence each other. This creates new interests in culture and relationships with one another, which also begin to change their location within the factory. As they change position, their residues begin to transform depending on the proximity of other cultivators.

In the same way that the Abecedarium serves as a structure for seemingly disparate things, for this project the Pantheon serves on one level, a specific kind of understanding and order of knowledge, and on the other a structure to allow these cultivators to exist with one another. Through the cultivators residue, they begin to unmake the Pantheon and its order of knowledge.

Right Page: A composite drawing exploring the translations from “relational thinking” to indexical markings to spatial unmakings of the pantheon...and every explanation, thought, and influence inbetween Right Page: A composite drawing exploring the translations from “relational thinking” to indexical markings to spatial unmakings of the pantheon...and every explanation, thought, and influence inbetween

3131 Network Cloud with Lexicon of Marks and Paths of Relational Movement (reference page 29)

3333 Spatial Indexing In Plan (reference page 29)

3535 Unmaking the Pantheon in Section (reference page 29)

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The moments of translation and the sequence of production in this project hold an interesting relationship. At times I would move from designing a cloud of words to a mark, or a built object to a cloud of words and so forth. And in designing the build objects, the cultivators, there was a focus on technique. I really worked on dematerializing the objects or making the objects I worked on in some way precious, giving the technique of making agency in the object produced.

Top Photos: Images of Audiophile infromation

Bottom Photos: Interior images of the situational construct

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This construct, analogous to the black box (an infrastructure that holds all information and inner workings within), serves as a territory to situate the cultivators. The bends in the box allude to the effect these cultivators have on infrastructure as their residues begin to spatially index the information they are cultivating.

image of the situational construct

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This exploration acknowledges multiple voices and temporalities. The Creator, inspired by Calvino’s Count of Monte Cristo, seeks freedom from the Millbank Penitentiary. He begins to dig. After years of searching, he realizes his connection to the world he has created: His love for the dirt, for his network of tunnels, for his collection of objects. He has become the viceroy of a new

world. He has found his freedom, not in escape, but in creation. The Reporter lives in a time when the Tate Britain is being built on the site of the old Millbank Penitentiary. He passively observes and reports on a new world he discovers during the excavation of the prison. He links, and creates, the dialogue between the Creator and the Director. The Director belongs to the Tate Britain. He is a curator. He is a sensor.

The miLLBAnk mysTery

Right Page: the Creator’s journal, depicting his utopia through written word and drawing

4343 Creator’s site plan

45 Creator’s section

4747 Creator’s collection

4949 Creator’s curation

5151 Left Page: diagram exploring the relationships Aby Warburg uses to organize his library

ABy wArBUrg LiBrAry: coLLecTion AnD cUrATion

With inspiration from Sir John Soane, a space is created to house an Abby Warburg collection. Abby Warburg, an art historian who works in all three of these personalities, the creator, the reporter, and the director, requires a unique space of spontaneous order. With the use of light, reflection, and forced perspective, a world is created to house a library, a gallery (curation), and a collection that can be easily transformed and rearranged by Abby Warburg’s speculative ideas of relationship and order.

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Right Page: section of Aby Warburg Library, which exists below the Tate Britain

Left Page: model exploring the duality between the Tate and the Millbank Prison, curation and collection

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The event. An act not to be understood. This unrehearsed display can be distilled down to water, movement, and light. The water element, the catalyst, elicits a response from its condition, movement and light. The interpretation. The event is to be understood through discrete instances, a kinetic display expressed through a montage of static imagery. This is then scrutinized and in return reproduced, creating poetic form.

DAnger Box

Right Page: image of Danger Box...the event

5959 Left of Page: stills of the event

Right Page: perspective of Danger Box model

6161 perspective of Danger Box model

6363 theoretical collage of Danger Box

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This study begins with a precedent, Le Corbusier’s Palace of Assembly in India. Principles of this building are reduced to their essential elements. They are then manipulated through the principles of organization held by a Cabinet of Curiosity, creating a new understanding of organization. The Cabinet is constructed using these reinterpretations, a material language and the root ideals of curiosity. The design tenets created in the Cabinet are realized to various scales when applied to the site, the building, and the gallery display within. wUnDerkAmmer

Right Page: image depicting the Wunderkammer of the studio’s work

67 Right Page: diagram exploring the appropriation an unmaking of Corb’s organization

Left Page: plan of precedent study, Le Corbusier’s Place of Assembly in Chandigarh, India

69Right Page: diagrams of design at the building scale

Left Page: diagrams of design at the site scale

71 Right Page: plan of Wunderkammer Museum (level 3)

Left Page: model of material exploration and design at the site scale

73 detail of material study

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noTATions, Lines, geomeTries, AnD oTher mArks

noTATions, Lines, geomeTries, AnD oTher mArks

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