Tuesday, April 30, 2013

The Dandelion Building concept: a self-regenerating, culture disseminating structure.




When I sleep I often dream of architecture.  In these dreams I’m typically wandering around empty spaces of all types, from run-down theaters to unfamiliar homes, or sometimes it might be a desolate gas station or an abandoned office building.  No two structures are ever alike and I only visit them once.   Rarely do I see other people in these architectural manifestations.  My buildings are vacant (except for my participation and observation) and they all tend to inhabit mysterious landscapes as well. 

Not too long ago, as I descended into my dream world in my bathysphere of sleep, I reached the bottom layers of my dream strata and found myself standing before a tall white tower. It reached as high as any skyscraper, and it breathed and regenerated, as if it were a living thing.  In fact, it was a living thing.  The tower grew from within and layers of glass and stone emerged from its surface, ultimately shedding.  As they dried, the near weightless stone and glass fragments fell lightly into the windy current and were carried away. These “seeds” traveled for miles, eventually landing, taking root, and new buildings (even cities) would sprout again.  To my surprise, these exfoliated parts not only held the physical attributes of the structure itself, but they also contained the ideas, cultures, and human experience of the building’s occupants.  This is the truth; I saw it all with my own sleep-laden eyes. 

Architecture can be defined as the physical definition of space, but without human participation, a building exists only as a shell. In a way, we occupants are the souls of buildings and we do seed the world outside with our grand family histories, our diligent work, and with an accumulation of day-to-day experiences.  Our perceptions are born and nurtured in our homes and in our places of work.  We proclaim our own humanity to the world through our voices, our mobility, and of course, through the internet.  The spaces we inhabit are the incubators of our dreams.  These are the environments we build in which to rejuvenate and contemplate our lives. 

The Dandelion Building model expresses this idea of a self-regenerating building.  Internal layers of the building’s core move toward and breach the surface in flat planes, eventually breaking off, and are then swept away with the wind, disseminating all that comprises that building and its occupants to the far reaches of the globe.  The challenge with this design was to depict a sense of motion on a static form.  The chiseled corner and its adjacent narrow side depict the primary source of the building’s exfoliation and striking point of a head wind. This wind slowly erodes the corner, moving the building’s core fragments down along the broad sides where they break off and are carried away to their new destinations.







5 comments:

  1. Extremely cool post and what a dreamscape you have!

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    Replies
    1. Thank you, Donna, I always appreciate your point of view on things~

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  2. Thanks for a fascinating post Denny. Your dreams are far more interesting than my own! I think your building demonstrates your ideas very effectively.

    I'm pleased to see you blogging again. So many of the artists I've followed in recent years seem to have neglected their blogs in favour of the immediacy of Facebook. While it's nice to stay in touch on FB, I do miss the opportunity to read accounts of their ideas, processes and triumphs in greater detail. In a world increasingly obsessed with sound bites and instant gratification, it's refreshing to be able to dwell a little on some more carefully expressed thoughts, such as those you've shared here.

    Best wishes, Pete

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  3. Pete, I couldn't agree with you more on this. I felt I needed to expand some other creative muscles that were atrophied and get back into some in-depth writing on this blog- even if it only reaches a few eyes. I'm even writing letters again! You know, the kind you send through the mail! My goal is to get something onto this blog every week or so that is more than just some picture posted. Stay tuned and thanks, pal!

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