Moscow Option Studio - FA 11

PEEPSHOWM O S C O W P A V I L I O N I I I

D I O R A M A S

Admittedly, we did not have a site or program, nor did we aim

to fix a problem in the world, or a city, or even a given building. All we knew was that an architect's education might benefit from opening itself up to a possibility -that of contamination, confusion, mis-reading and suspended disbelief- in order to shift beyond the now familiar paradigms of a

“If on a cage

of an elephant

you read “ox” –

do not believe

your eyes.”

-KUZMA PRUTKOV*

design studio that is somehow meant to emulate the processes that go on in the "real world."

Ugly and beautiful can be two sides of the same coin, just as superfluous and useful, critical and aloof, good and bad. We chose to go to Moscow because in that city the dualities of meaning are extreme- historically, and especially now, on the eve of the much dreaded election day, when the Russia we know, some say, is turning back to the Russia our parents (on both sides of the border) used to fear, while others suggest that it is spinning in place.

I N T R O D U C T I O N

* A mid-19th Century Russian literary phenomenon- an invented character that became the pen name for at least five different writers that wrote short stories, poetry and especially short aphorisms- sometimes collectively, sometime individually.

Perhaps it is moving on somewhere, in its own, strange sideway, that we simply cannot fathom from our own established modes of what life (or architecture) ought to be. We began this studio by calling it the Third Way with its premise, outlined below:

Formation of culture is often a non-linear process. Contrary to the dicta of history, it is circumstance, misunderstanding, side effect and hearsay, all synthesized via a medium (i.e. architecture) in a particular place and internalized by

a local population that make up a cultural identity.

Like the knight's move in chess, culture develops forward and sideways - and the established paradigms of "pro" and "con", "old" and "new", "right" and "left", "forward" and "backward", "A" and "B" are replaced by an amalgam of all of the above -it is "the third way."

These amalgams are really (mis)interpretations of history-ancient, old, modern and immediate. In some places in the world this phenomenon has produced exceedingly interesting

We chose to deal with pavilions - we called them small

buildings with large consequences. The first one - The Pavilion of Ignorance- speculated on the city and history yet unexplored. We decided to construct it as a short film, a walk through a place that does not exist that contains an exhibit on a subject one knows little about.

design artifacts. This semester we will study the design precedents of the third way, and then will attempt to generate one of our own.

traditional competition, and the grey shipping container that sat in a parking lot of Sibley Hall for nearly a year has attained a new life as a depositary of many individual reflections.

And now we are asking you, the visitor, to reflect upon this structure, look into the many worlds it contains, read between its many lines, and, periodically, not to believe your eyes.

Though ignorance was embraced as a pre-condition, the films were miraculously able to anticipate the Moscow we encountered.

There, with the help of local architecture students, we worked on the second project -The Pavilion of Impressions- in Gorky Park. Upon our return, we agreed that the third pavilion should be the Pavilion of Reflections.

The question of how to put collective memories into o ne structure was answered after several failed attempts at a

M O S C O W P A V I L I O N I I I

We have a site, an object( a container - which is not to be modified in any way), a modest budget for materials, we have our impressions, memories, and thoughts about what we have done and what we have seen. We were in Moscow, we are

F I N A L P R O J E C T - I I I

now in Ithaca. We are in a new building that references and interprets a history of architecture. We are surrounded by buildings that are history. We have just been in a place where multiple histories exist at the same time.So what do we do?

What should Pavillion III be about?

R A C H E L T A N

M O S C O W P A V I L I O N I I ID I O R A M A S

-T h e T h i r d W a y S t u d i o P a r t i c i p a n t s


V A R V A R A L A R I O N O V A

C O N C L U S I O NThis semester coincided with the opening of Milstein Hall, a new facility for the Department of Architecture. In a more pronounced way than in our prior facilities, this new building places all studios on a single

continuous plane, with a minimum of division between studio spaces. Across this seemingly unified plate, however, the endeavors of our group of fifteen were easily distinguishable from those of the neighboring studios.


I S H I T A S H I T W A L A

Amid a sea of students hard at work on advanced digital scripting and computational models, material experimentation, site analyses, or rigorous political research, there was an air of mystery about our studio, where the answer to :

“What exactly are you doing?” wasn’t always straight-forward.

And that was only one of many questions posed by curious (or incredulous) passers-by—

“You’re making scrolls about Russian History?”

“Don’t you have to do plans or sections?”


A N D R E S G U T I E R R E Z

“What is that thing you’re building outside?”

“What do you mean, you’re having a party instead of a final review?”


N A T A L I E K W E E

Though viewed individually, many of our semester’s efforts seem like disparate experiments, which beg more questions than they answer, seen together, our collages, reinterpretations, films, postcards, and pavilions take on a certain coherence.

Especially when seen through the lens (or the many peep-holes) of our final construction, it is possible to read a collective effort at cultural production, in all of its non-linearity, non-literalism, and confusion.

V A R V A R A L A R I O N O V A


Pavilion III, our Peep Show, is the means by which our memories, learnings, misunderstandings, projections, and fantasies coalesce into the ultimate object of architecture: the production of space.


R A C H E L T A N


L A U R E N G L U C K


N A T A L I E K W E E


V I N I T N I K U M B H


L A U R E N G L U C K


A L E K S A N D R M E R G O L D


A L E X A N D E R B R O D S K Y

M O S C O W P A V I L I O N I I I

Moscow Option Studio - FA 11

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