Figure

Studio project at The Southern California Institute of Architecture (SCI-Arc), instructor Anna Neimark, 2013

This project extrapolated from formal analyses of Chandigarh’s Palace of the Assembly, by Le Corbusier, to the ends that it extracted a moment from the decomposed plans from which a three-dimensional model would be extrapolated.

The project then analyzed the figurative properties of the moment. In turn, it spoke to the essence held in the plan. All regulating geometry was to be taken without interruption from an abstract understanding of the plan, though its transposition into the third dimension opened the possibility of misreadings or bastardizations of its form. In particular, the extraction emphasized the interaction in Le Corbusier’s plan between the circular assembly hall and the rectangular envelope. This ‘thing within a thing’ relationship produced the plan-based properties of the figure, while its distinctive shape in elevation was achieved through an intentional misunderstanding of the two-dimensional geometry.

Philosophical ties extruded from the meanings within Chandigarh’s design. As this goes, the lifted underbelly spoke to Le Corbusier’s obsession with raising his buildings from the ground, freeing them from the earth’s weighted connotations.

Finally, from this one derived figure, three other variations were produced. These dealt with alterations to the regulating geometries inherent within the original, creating similar yet eerily different designs.