Sunday, May 15, 2011

Announcement #2

From the Department of Public Design
RE: Found objects, materials and arcane constructions

Council of Architects MEMO
From:  Member Roehr

This project has grown out of a conversation amongst a specific group of working architects interested in exploring new ways of working together that might leverage their particular (sometimes peculiar) skills and collective energy to new and unforeseen ends.  The project itself is an effort to tease out that ever mystifying and primal relationship between things and meaning - how meaning imbues a thing; how a thing embodies meaning.  This is a perennial question in our practice, and the question that holds the potential to open architecture well beyond itself.  As a group effort, the project has also become an exploration of the relationship between the realms of highly personal and collective meaning.  It has taken a group of people who are typically engaged in the controlled, detailed, orchestrated manipulation of the environment into a highly ambiguous situation in which the very ground rules for what we are doing together are in constant flux and negotiation, pushing everyone beyond their comfort zone.  The conversation is fundamentally unstable, and is constantly going meta; the danger is to tumble through an infinite regress of reflection about what we are trying to achieve.  But that is also the thrill, and cuts to the heart of the balance we are always seeking as architects and artists, and presumably as humans - a provisional equilibrium between order and chaos - an equilibrium that momentarily suspends negotiation and allows us to act.  The resulting artifact will be less an artwork or installation per se, and more the record of this process, manipulated to highlight and clarify itself.
Arcane assemblage 1 -Zone 5

 Arcane assemblage 2 -Zone 4

Monday, May 2, 2011

Announcement #1

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

THE DEPARTMENT OF PUBLIC DESIGN: INTERIM REPORT
RE: Found objects, materials and arcane constructions



The Department of Public Design announced today that an ambiguous assortment of seemingly unrelated objects recently uncovered in Zone 5
, will be assessed by the Council of Architects to determine their nature, origin, and meaning.  The Council will attempt to assemble these objects in order to apprise their adherence to the Department's current Standards of Dogma for the public domain.

The Council's
findings will be on display this summer at Form + Content Gallery in Minneapolis, MN.  The public is invited to view this presentation and encouraged to respond with alternate explanations and interpretations for consideration by the Council, after which a final report will be prepared for the Department's purview.

While the Department cannot be reached in any manner for information or questioning, the findings of this ongoing investigation can be found at the a designated project website@

http://thedepartmentofpublicdesign.blogspot.com

Details to follow
-The Director

Curated by Jay H. Isenberg and Lynda Monick-Isenberg.

The Council of Architects:

Alchemy
ALTUS Architecture + Design
CITYDESKSTUDIO
Locus Architecture
RoehrSchmitt Architecture


Select Images:


Excavation - Zone 5

Found construction-Zone 5

Found object - Zone 5

Artifacts - Zone 5

Found Materials/Objects - Zone 5

Arcane construction - Zone 5