'Oxford Pasture'_1

'Oxford Pasture'_1 from Jun ZHU on Vimeo.

Rockplug - David Greene

Modern city life is strongly influenced by the impact of Industrial Revolution. Once people become unsatisfied with the present situation and expect to make it better, one would choose between looking forward or looking back. David Greene trys to pull the city scene back to nature by his project Rockplug and Logplug.

In Rockplug, 'the fake lump of rock that hide a high tech network node and power supply', David intends to make people still enjoy the modern life with electricity and other technology in a man-made wild environment. This project aims to get people out of those architectures designed mostly from the aspects of engineering and structure.

As a result, people would live in a city which looks like pasture or forrest, in another word, the city would pretend to be nature. However, it is not changed into nature but still a city, because it's merely a visual but not virtual nature, where people freed out of these iron prisons yet live in the usual way. The imformation they get passitively is in conflict with what they're doing. In my opinion, only when one believes a space as nature in his mind subjectively, would the space become wild to him. So what I attempt to do is just on the contrary, finding the place pretending to be dull, where man could act free and simple like a horse galloping on a pasture.when he believes as nature in his own will.

Wheatfield-A Confrontation

These two acres of wheat, known as Wheatfield-A Confrontation, 1982, were planted and harvested in Battery Park landfill in New York by Agnes Denes, an environmental artist. Denes believes her "decision to plant a wheatfield in Manhattan, instead of designing just another public sculpture, grew out of a long-standing concern and need to call attention to our misplaced priorities and deteriorating human values." (Oakes, 1995, p.168)

There are stark contradiction and strong contrast between the wheat and the surrounding environment in color, material, height etc. While the golden wheat was softly swinging in the wind, showing the beauty of life, the cold iron skyscrapers stood statically without emotion. The coexistence made the differences between countryside and city obvious.

Long before financial exchange in New York Stock Exchange or World Trade Center, Being self-sufficient is the original life style for human, which could be partially found in countryside now. Dislike in city as the battle for modern life, living in country doesn’t need to face the pressure and has a gentler pace and a more peaceful attitude. That’s why city people always have an illusion that country life is somehow superior to town life and look forward to it.

Agnes with two assistants and some volunteers represented the circles of growth and regeneration, “After harvesting, the hay was fed to the horses stabled by the New York City Police department and some of the grain traveled around the world in the exhibition” (Matilsky, 1992). But if she invited real farmer to join the project, behind the French window, what would appear in an office lady’s mind with the scene of cultivation? What’s more, if a farmer peddled the hay and grain in the Wall Street, what kind of the communication would be between he and a suited manager? It would be more interesting to see people’s act and thoughts in a real ‘City Pasture’. The contradiction and contrast in this act would be illustrated as the key points of my project through imagining these unusual feelings of city people.

PS: As Stuart said, actually the two acres were so small that were no competitive with Manhattan. It’s the photo that makes it exaggerated.

Outside or Inside the City__Brief 2.0

My project is about the space that is inside the city but could be regarded as outside.

In the first term, I focused on a crossing and illustrated a certain walker’s trace and the space which was created by the other walking people in the certain walker’s perception.

Then I found that people who were crossing the street wouldn’t walk into each other just like a flock of sheep wouldn’t run into each other. And of course the trace of man’s walking looks mundane because there is little social communication during the walking. The man is like the sheep and the crossing is like the pasture.

As said in Space and the Architect by Herman Hertzberger, ‘city means space for trade, culture and entertainment and therefore the best possibilities for social exchange. The more people, the fuller the city, the better.’ But the people living in city have to face pressure, pollution, noise and so on, they always dream of getting out of the city. People need a place to ‘clear your head, take a break from networks and congestion’. They ‘ want to be alone’. We describe this kind of places as ‘nature’, that is partly because we don’t have to face unnecessary social communications as in office.

In Wheatfield-A Confrontation, 1982, by Agnes Denes, a pioneer of environmental art, two acres of wheat were planted and harvested in a battery park landfill in New York. The existence of both swinging golden wheat and static iron high building in the same frame showed strong contrast between countryside and city. The work not only shows the damage which people have done to the nature, but also reveal the citizens’ eager for the nature.

It is not difficult to figure out that there is similarity between a crossing inside the city and a pasture outside. So if we could regard the crossing as a place where we may relax and be alone in our mind, in another word, a new kind of ‘nature’, there are several ‘natural’ places hiding inside the city. I’m interested in these places as ‘City Pasture’ and try to find them out and draw them down.

Term 2__Brief 1.0

I’m interested in the interaction between man and the surrounding environment. In the first term, I focused on a crossing and illustrated a certain walker’s trace and the space which was created by the other walking people in the certain walker’s perception. As a result, I found both man and the surrounding environment were shaping each other.

Therefore, I try to create or regenerate a space which would renew automatically according to the actions of people inside. And the change of the space brings people a more comfortable spatial experience. The changes of people and space would move circularly.

For example, I’ll add equipments including a receptor system and an output system in some crowded places, such as plaza, crossing and lobby. The receptor system could record the space by visual, auditory and thermal data. Then in light of the man’s social sense in the particular environment, the output system would transform into screens, walls or chairs of different sizes in order to reconstruct the space and influence man’s behavior.

In conclusion, the project is to find a method to control the interaction between man and environment and lead the molding of each other to a direction which may result in a better spatial experience.