Project Three, Final Review/Curation: Katie Felton

URBAN INTERVENTION: DESIGNER’S STATEMENT

My proposal for the location of Giuseppe Penone’s open-air gallery is outside of McCowan subway station in the North Scarborough suburbs of Toronto.
I believe part of what the suburbs may be missing is a deep connection to art and culture, particularly in the form of spatial representation. As well, a natural variety is not apparent in these areas and nature is not given the space or the freedom to be creative itself, by evolving or expanding.
By placing an open-air gallery on the expanse of grassland nestled between Scarborough Shopping Center and a quieter, more corporate pocket, I am proposing that Penone’s work can bridge all disconnects from nature, urban culture, and the environment to the occupants of the area.
It can also serve as a monument to the future the Scarborough suburbs; a more soulful and more livable community, with less emphasis on the corporate elements and more on the ribbon on nature that cuts through the area.
The proposed location for the gallery is one which is visible and accessible to a heavy traffic of people coming to and from the buildings and shops in and around the McCowan RT station, so it will be a perfect showcase for the selected piece of art.
Penone’s work consists of pieces of worked natural materials expressing poetic principles and values inspired by wooded areas and natural bounties, such as the ones the artist became accustomed to growing up in a small village in the Maritime Alps.
The gallery is designed like a gateway and so observers will be given the simulation that they are being transported from their surroundings. The portals in the walls have been offset so that only a beam of light passes through to the entrance, alluding to what lies at the end of passage—a spiritual transformation.

PLAN 1:100

SECTIONS 1:100

ELEVATIONS 1:100

PERSPECTIVE 1:100

MODEL 1:100

Project Three, Part One: Katie Felton

<<<EXHIBIT>>>

Giuseppe Penone, Peau de feuilles, 2000.

Where: Open Air Gallery, designed by Katie Felton

Location: McCowan Rd. and Progress Ave, Scarborough

Exhibit Site Photos:

Exercise Seven: Katie Felton

Giuseppe Penone

Cedro di Versailles, 600x170cm, 2002-2003.

"Penone's works demonstrate a persistent commitment to the Arte Povera obsession with the body and nature. His actions of the '60s and early '70s uniquely combined humanist empiricism with a sense of craft, a European artisanal approach crossed with avant-garde actions. Penone insists that he now works in bronze because the oxidation process (over time) mimics the ability of water to change the surface of stones in a river. His interventions are personal and intimate, with a druid-like commitment to the earth and its fallen trees. For this reason, Penone continues to inspire reactions of nostalgia for a time that was best described by the avid collector of Arte Povera, Ingvild Goetz: "art was brazen, revolutionary and poetic." 

-Sculpture Magazine, "The Poetry of Art and Nature." December, 2004. 

Giuseppe Penone Online

Exercise Six: The Exquisite Corpse: Katie Felton

Project Two: Part One: Katie Felton

SITE: NATHAN PHILIPS SQAURE/ CITY HALL PARKING LOT


The most important part of my section is the City Hall Parking Lot below ground level.


The lot is four levels deep with, I estimated on my visit, eight foot cielings (1-1/2) of my height) alloted for each level.


View of City Hall in the distance and the information booth.


The building in the distance, Old CIty Hall, will be the background for my drawing.


This is my site from a center view, above ground. The width of this scene is 74 of my paces wide and I have a pace of about a foot. I am going to crop the selection of space to show a 50ft section, depicting the bell tower and Old City Hall in the background and 3/4 of the fountain in the foreground with a section of the four level parking lot below the ground.

Exercise Five: Katie Felton

COMMERCE COURT BUILDING WEST-located at Wellington and Bay St.



1. Last winter, initiating the fall of capitalism (literally), a piece of the CIBC sign fell onto Bay Street, thankfully, injuring no one.


2.On site Commerce Court Health Centre offers, chiropractic, physio, acupuncture art, massage, naturopathy, and psychotherapy. Obviously, its hard to stay healthy/sane, when the market is crashing around you. Stressed investment bankers can read about the full body and mind health opportunities in the health centre's quarterly Body Health, or look at their website www.commercecourthelth.com. The clinic director is Dr. Shannon Dales.


3. During Scotiabank Nuit Blanche, the building complex oversaw the projection of Winnipeg-native and film maker Noam Gonick's short flim, Commerce Court. The film depicted the psychological breakdowns of CEOs and investment bankers inside the walls of the building during the week and featured a series of expressions used in market-jargon. It was played 240 times from dusk to dawn and ended with the echo of the Wall Street protest, "you broke it, you bought it."
The wife of the CIBC Wood Gundy vice president even turned out among the viewers, once she learned how long the film would be, quoted saying, "oh well, we all have three minutes."

Project One, Part Three. Anna Totska. Katie Felton, Alanna McFarland

McCowan Station.

Katie Felton. Greenery.

Transportation. Alanna McFarland

Base Map. Anna Totska

Human Occupatin. Anna Totska

Project One/Part Two: Katie Felton

Exercise Four: Game Board and Rhizomes

GAMEBOARD MAPPING

-presented like a game board of contested territory with drifting and layering-the analytical seperation of different agendas and issues.
-Raoul Bunschoten-London based architect- developed a system fro mapping agents and players that draws out the urban potential. -different frames over the map represent conditions )ie: socio, economic,...)
-Rauol's plan for Bucharest can be shown on a larger scale relative to around cities situated around the Black Sea, depicting a sort of cartographic stage which shows grand scale relationships.

-Bunschoten memorized four fields:

TOPONYMY(masque) cultural plan of an ethnic society)
FLOW(market) new influx and regulatory mechanisms
BASIN(urban flotsam) regeneration of ecological environment.
INCORPORATION(liminal bodies) design of institutions for conflict and negotiation.

-He then created steeping stones between the four fields. mapping all possible scenarios between parties.
-the MAP evolves and is drawn and redrawn often by planners.

RHIZOME

-point to point connections arranged in hierarchal systems expanding outwards from a mid-point.
-milieu-defined as the urban center.

-difference between MAPPING and TRACING:
-MAPPING allows innovation, TRACING is redundant and often just repetitive overlaying.
- key is INTERCONNECTION-body of connections, graphic and notational systems depicting even the "unmappable."

-See: Joseph Minard's narrative map of the fate of Napoleon's Army-sythesizes relationships using geometric forms, vectors, etc. to tell the story of the terrain.-it is essentially a framework, a "data-scape" that may be read.
-frameworks such as these can use anything from images to infra-red photos of an aerial view-field plots to show agriculture.

-MAPPING should be a creative and immaterial representation of a multi-faceted world, free of hierarchal relationships, and depicting ideas that are able to affect change. -making logical but possibly fictional constructs- similar to a good argument.

"All perceiving is also thinking, all reasoning is also intuition, all observation is also invention." -Rudolf Arnheim

Exercise Three: Katie Felton

Project One/Part One: McCowan Station/Katie Felton

STREAM/NATURAL BELTLINE: Nature is plenty in certain spots and the hum of crickets can be heard almost everywhere over the traffic. A small stream cuts through the suburb, accompanied by a marsh-like natural habitat that permeates the urban landscape.


RELIGION: Down a single block linking Bellamy and Ellesmere, there are at least half a dozen churches representing different religious groups and sects.

CONSTRUCTION/TEAR DOWN: There is a lot of construction happening on every corner of this suburban stretch. This is a photo of a sign notifying local residents of the pending tear-down of old buildings and an area renovation...now long since heeded, it stands rusting in the shade of a tree behind a mall parking lot.

CORPORATE TAKEOVER: The streets have names like Progress Rd. and Corporate Ave. There are many new corporate buildings such as the one in this photo, and even a local baseball field is owned by Toyota. However, small businesses can be found in a small effort to diversify some of the commerce such as a bakery, a music school and an organic food shop.


REPETITION: Buildings, shapes, materials, rows of trees and shrubs have all been placed into like arrangements.
Rows of identical benches, condos, cars, churches, houses and so on, everything felt like a planned pattern.

Exercise Two: Katie Felton

1.my apartment and surroundings-site plan
2.floor plan for the apartment
3.balcony/garden detailed plan