Response:

What resonated most in my mind about the installation was the entryway. It absolutely had a compressive affect on the entrance to the gallery. The small tunnel of visibility made for an almost claustrophobic feeling upon approach. I also thought that this was one of the more successful parts of the installation. Sophia Chang absolutely intended on creating this feeling and it echoed throughout her design.

            One thing that I wanted from the gallery was for the shape of the material to be more permanent. I thought the experience would have been more satisfying if those forms held their shape when you stood and leaned on them. I know that Chang intentionally avoided this because the installation was about “alienating people from what they usually experience”. It was about making people feel uncomfortable and lost, so while I would have liked it to be made of a soft, cushion-like material, it would have gone against all intentions of the artist.

            The areas of poche added a whole new dimension to the project and really took advantage of the negative space. It was a great experience to move through the elastic tunnels with the unexpected feeling of a solid floor beneath your feet. Overall, I thought the installation was very unique and a great example of how space can be manipulated to affect human comfort.

Suspense

 

            The installation we visited on Monday titled “Suspense” was very intriguing. It immediately strikes you as otherworldly once you approach the entrance. You become immersed as soon as you enter and lose connection to the outside you are familiar with. I liked how it was a very interactive entrance to the building/gallery and completely transformed the space into something you’ve never experienced before.

The most intriguing part was the concept, which was the very simple idea of poché. It was described as what is covered and what is left out. Meaning that when you are in the exhibit you miss out on the other parts of the room that it excludes. You have to go out of your way to experience what is left out in terms of used space.

            The one thing that I think could have been better would be the entries. I felt that it needed to be more labyrinth-like and there should be a clear distinction between what is in and what is out. As of right now you cannot reach the entire interior from one entry, but you have to go around and enter a side entrance to see the rest of the interior. However, the exterior compartments that are hidden (like the in-between of the poché) really create a different experience than being inside of the tubes while you are still enveloped by the material.

 

            

Despite my limited experience inside of Sophia Chang’s “Suspense,” I was still able to experience the central intention of the installation. My understanding of it has been further supplemented through online research and photographs borrowed from my peers. The artist sought to blur the boundaries between wall and room, articulating a space that seems to have been lost somewhere between the two elements. When I first arrived to the Invivia Gallery, I had no idea how I was supposed to enter the building. I could hear everyone else’s voices but I had no idea where they were coming from; I actually wondered at the time if I was imagining things. All I could see was this warped white tunnel that felt like it could lead to either everywhere or nowhere.

When I finally decided to enter this strange world, I injured myself and became highly disoriented, partially from the injury but mostly because I couldn’t find my way out of that place. I couldn’t tell whether I was inside the gallery yet or if I was still outside. Having learned that the artist had focused the installation on “poche,” the ambiguous black filler space within a building section, I can now more easily describe my experience inside the fabric web: I felt like I was trapped inside of a wall. I was lost inside the ambiguous “poche,” the throwaway part of the section that only exists to highlight the traditional spaces of a building. No matter how much I displaced the fabric by moving around, I couldn’t escape from its giant web.

Not until writing this analysis did I actually realize the total experience that I had within the gallery. Since it managed to affect me so thoroughly within a very short window of time, I believe that the installation was very effective in generating its intended atmosphere. If I had to critique more negatively, I would suggest recognizing the pragmatic dangers of inserting people into such a physically and mentally disorienting realm. Altogether, my experience at the Invivia Gallery was definitely a memorable one.

Response:

When I first approached Sophia Chang’s A Womb with a View, I was immediately intimidated. A group of four of us were practically paralyzed at the door in a “No, you first” battle. At first I thought the installation was solid, a kind of slide into the gallery, but after tentatively touching my foot to it (and jumping back in surprise) I realized; wow, it’s fabric. Once we knew the installation wasn’t going to hurt us, we awkwardly high stepped our way into the gallery. Once I was over the initial shock, I went back in and actually really enjoyed the space. However, I almost enjoyed standing in the “poshe” and watching other people move through the fabric, more than moving through it myself. It’s actually quite the oxymoron. It was a very alienating experience, but at the same time almost comforting. To use Sophia’s own words, it’s practical and conceptual. When I first arrived the last word I would have used to describe her piece was practical, but after hearing her thought process I think the word was actually very fitting. It was a conceptual, practical, experiential, alienating, and comforting, all at the same time.

The interactive-ness of the installation is what I liked the best.  The installation really engaged the viewers into the work, making us move through the project in various ways.  The deceptiveness of the project was also intriguing, as it was pointed out; there was a lot of hesitation with our group when it came to the initial reaction to the installation.  I like her ideas of poche and how the voids along the exterior are perceived as walls but they are inhabitable.  The space of the installation seemed to be well suited for her idea of the poche, and by that I mean the scale of the space was in my opinion appropriate; large enough to get the feel that this space is inhabitable but small enough that its not a space you would want to stay in long enough.  I don’t know if this was intentional or not, but she started with the structure of the installation and created the form based off that.  I however, feel that the form should have been created based on other parameters other then the structure and the structure then be formed around the created form.  The first reaction to the installation was a nervous excitement, the thrill of exploring but the hesitation of the unknown.  I believe that the nervousness was an intentional reactionary aim for this project, the fear of the unknown; where the path would take you, what the path was made of, for some examples. 

I really enjoyed exploring Sophia Chang’s installation, “Suspense: A Womb with a View.” As I approached Sophia’s studio and saw the tunnel-like entrance at the door and through the window, I wasn’t sure if I was supposed to enter the space despite the wide-open front door inviting people in. I spent a few minutes peering into the tunnel and then finally stepped onto the material, which surprisingly wasn’t solid. I immediately stepped back outside and reevaluated the material before exploring the evolving network of spaces inside. This initial entrance was my favorite part of the trip because I didn’t know what to expect and there was an exciting element of surprise in investigating the unknown spaces. Sophia intentionally meant to create something that alienates people from their natural environment that simulates the feeling of being lost that changes with human interaction. It had really great lighting and ventilation and the spaces successfully evolved to confuse and redirect the people inside. Something she could have done differently is made the installation larger and more complex. It didn’t take long to explore the spaces and start to understand how they work.

As a Boston based architecture studio, the goal of this semester is to take advantage of the design opportunities happening in our own city. Today, we visited INVIVIA, a gallery in Cambridge, to experience “Suspense: A Womb with a View” by Sophia Chang.

We were fortunate enough to meet with Sophia herself, who walked us through the design from conception to creation. A “sensory experience for your feet,” she described it, as we were all intimidated by the lycra funnel that met us at the front entry. Stepping into this installation, the unexpected feeling of first, the give of the material, and second, the cold of the concrete under it begins this experience. Walking in becomes less intimidating as you recognize the actual gallery space beyond. This recognition is due to Sophia’s framing of views within the installation. She explained that this design was a way of alienating people from what they usually experience. In this case, we expected the first step to be cushioned rather than concrete. She described a feeling of being lost, and the idea of “hidden-ness” both within the space and at its outskirts. These interstitial spaces relate to the poche of old Italian buildings, which contain space within their walls wide enough for passersby. To construct the installation, Sophia built an interior room with simple stud walls and stretched the fabric around the frame. I feel her intention at creating interior rooms and hidden spaces within the installation suffers from the practicality of the stud wall. These spaces were prevalent enough in form and I believe she could have configured the installation in a manner that allowed the stud walls to be omitted.

Overall, the mix of conceptual and practical, practical existing to function as an event space, work hand in hand. Sophia said it is these contrasting ideas that strengthen the project. And like Lauren, below, she feels it is best when people are experiencing it.

Based on the information received from our first visit to NuVu, I envision the new program being organized into different clusters. Everything is centralized around the studio, a large flexible space for collaborative learning, which can be subdivided into smaller and more private classroom areas. Each other program cluster is itself centralized around an open space, creating a sense of hierarchy throughout the building. Each individual office is centered around a collaborative conference area. Smaller shops are centered around a larger general workshop. Smaller A/V rooms are centered around a performance theater, which can also serve as a public interface. I view the public exhibition and storage spaces as being essentially the same thing; therefore, visitors will not only be able to view the final results of the projects, but also the various interations that were produced throughout the design process. These hybrid spaces could either be large interstitial areas, or they could simply occur in sequence along the circulation paths of the building.

I provided two slightly different iterations of the same basic program adjacencies. One is highly centralized while the other is both centralized and frontal.

FRONT SECTION

-Students sit in small clusters of 2-3 people, desks are loosely arranged

-Instructors sit directly beside students and have interactive conversations over their work

-Repetitive toned-down club music plays in the background to create an upbeat working atmosphere

-Writable/reversible white boards are used as partitions to subdivide spaces

-Large projection screen can block exterior windows to block natural light

-Workshop arrangement is highly similar to an architecture studio

REAR SECTION

-Corridor-like space bounded by custom shelving at one end and a flatscreen monitor at the other end

-Instructor sits near monitor but in the same loose desk arrangement as the students

-Informal atmosphere with non-hierarchical collaboration between students and instructors

FISH BOWL OFFICE

-2-3 faculty members in the space at a time

-Door is left open to the students’ workshop

-Laptops on makeshift tables, each person has custom chair (wheelie, bouncy ball)

-Inherent lack of visual privacy, voluntary lack of audial privacy

FISH BOWL STUDIO

-Visual privacy is needed for students who are shy to perform before an audience

-Room is ninety-percent soundproofed against outside noise

-Room is used as a quiet meeting place for the teacher and a group of 2-3 students

SITE OBSERVATIONS

-Mass Ave is a collage of traditional/institutional/historical brick buildings and modern/sheik/technological buildings

-Buildings are of smaller vertical scale at Central Square, larger vertical scale along Mass Ave to either side of Central Square

-Park/plaza near McDonald’s uses nature to provide a clear threshold between Central Square and the eastern biomedical neighborhood; the western boundary is loosely defined by the intersection of Mass Ave and Prospect Street

-Setback of NuVu building corresponds to alley/courtyard space adjacent to McDonald’s across the street; each provides a horizontal threshold to the building or space beyond

-McDonald’s parking lot holds potential as vibrant urban plaza framed on two sides by industrial Quest building

-NuVu construction site has windows and information signs for public interaction with the construction process