STUDIO OVERVIEW
In his 1989 book, The Three Ecologies, Félix Guattari suggests the adoption of an ‘ecosophical logic’ which dissociates from the top-down status quo by embracing emergent subjectivity, singularity, counter-normal, irreducibility, precarity, and intensive given(s), for its potential to “open-up” progressively from praxis. Emphasizing this logic as a rigorously creative act, he states “…it resembles the manner in which an artist may be led to alter his work after the intrusion of some accidental detail, an event-incident that suddenly makes his/her initial project bifurcate, making it drift (dériver) far from its previous path, however certain it had once appeared to be. There is a proverb ‘the exception proves the rule’, but the exception can just as easily deflect the rule or even recreate it.” In turn, this studio seeks to critically explore the subjective towards the (re)singular, and its penchant for ‘opening-up’ as both a design methodology and ecosophical approach to building + dwelling. Imparting praxis through participation in the ACSA 2025 Concrete Masonry Firehouse Competition, the design process will be scaffolded by three (3) territories of ecology and divided into three (3) inductive design phases, with each moving from analytic to synthetic experimentation in conventional modes of representation and written text.
The first phase commences from the traditionally irreducible drawing within the domain of architectural practice, the detail. According to Edward Ford the architectural detail is a “…result of the conscious act of creating the inconsistent, imperfect, or exceptional part, and while often done with an eye toward reconciling the conflicting perceptual demands we make of buildings, it is more likely to be the act of making these differences readily apparent… The good detail is not consistent, but non-conforming; not typical, but exceptional; not doctrinaire, but heretical; not the continuation of an idea, but its termination, and the beginning of another.” As a basis, we will explore ubiquitous concrete masonry assemblies in detail scales to understand their standardized formal types, constructional relations/constraints, and material processes and compositions. Then, utilize investigative drawing projections and physical models to defamiliarize7 the detail through its theoretical classifications, developing a subjective conceptual locus around the exceptional part to partial-whole system.
A second phase takes us out of autonomy, deploying the emergent conceptual focus derived from the detail as an inductive analytical framework for understanding a post-industrial site located in the Westside Atlanta neighborhood of Grove Park. Poised to contain a supplanted Station 22 of the Atlanta Fire Rescue Department, the site is a robust social-ecological nexus in its immediate adjacency to Proctor Creek, Bankhead MARTA station, Beltline, and Donald Lee Hollowell Parkway. Its extended landscape is comprised of dramatic topographic change, variably aged forests, vast electrical infrastructure clearings, underserved single family neighborhoods, and once-Bellwood Quarry turned water reservoir and park. A recent subject of corporate divestment, the site historically hosted one of many in a local network of processing facilities for granite material extracted from the former quarry. Through on-site observation, research, and analytic + synthetic mapping techniques, we will develop a subjective reading of the site as a heterogenous landscape; one comprised of a diverse range of unique but interrelated social-ecological site details.
The conclusive phase involves transformation into architectural assemblages or wholes through the introduction of the fire station type in an experimental articulation of interrelated parts: the architectural detail, the site detail, and the partial program. While the contemporary fire station is techno-specific, standardized for optimal access and egress, and authoritatively determined, it remains singular in its primal connection to the natural elements and cultural necessitation concurrent with urbanization. Embodying a historical legacy of civic obligation, it functions as a cultural symbol for collective safety + preservation. Uniquely transprogrammed as public, workplace, and housing, the fire station is at-once beholden to intermittent activation by the external event and its own internal logics of dwelling. We will use productive tensions between the singular and homogenized typological qualities of the fire station, to progressively work towards a coherent architectural proposal which critically, and inductively, situates in the social-ecological system of Grove Park as a viable submission to the ACSA Concrete Masonry Fire Station Competition.