Project Four: Found Structure

Click here to download Project Four as a PDF.

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Project Four: Found Structure

DESCRIPTION

I was invited to create an installation about urban garbage and recycling. I collected twelve discarded and broken chairs as positive resources. I repaired the furniture using common materials and invented a variety of solutions for the patches and restoration. New solutions emerged and the furniture became more interesting than the original.

-Allan Wexler

Find your own broken chair. Rehabilitate the chair: drawing inspiration from the nature of the site, the chair, and the damage, create a new “more interesting” form. Employ a narrative strategy, from the inital discovery through the final proposition, to bring your chair back to life.

Part 1: Due Monday, November 16 at 4:30PM

Locate a broken chair. Document its condition as found. Begin to develop a physical and existential proposal for your chair’s rehabilitation. Be prepared to present structurally plausible solutions to your chair’s physical rehabilitation, and a compelling narrative trajectory culminating with your chair’s existential rehabilitation.

Part 2: Due Monday, December 7 at 4:30PM

Physically and existentially rehabilitate your chair. Ensure that the chair is returned to a fully functional state, and choose repair techniques that support your narrative. Employ metaphor, symbolism and allusion in support of your narrative, animating it through reference, analogy and suggestion (perhaps to its past, present and future life, role and experiences). Illustrate your narrative through a single composite drawing that incorporates a photograph of your chair in its as-found condition, as well as orthographic and isometric information describing your intervention.

Part 3: Due Thursday, December 10 at 4:30PM

A single blog post, containing: a curated selection of process material; three representative photographs of your rehabilitated chair, and a scan of your composite drawing.



EVALUATION

Part 1:

Discovery and Ideation (location of suitable chair; visual and verbal evidence of process and evolution): /4

Part 2:

Physical Rehabilitation (quality, suitability and expressivity of the intervention): /6

Existential Rehabilitation (creative use of a narrative strategy to bring meaning to the artifact): /6

Impact (physical and rhetorical presentation; subjective and transcendental qualities): /6

Part 3:

Blog Post (comprehensiveness and curation): /3

Total: /25