TWO
Architectural SYNESTHESIA
The killing of George Floyd re-unveiled a faulty system which from its inception has used productivity as the gauge through which to measure value and even worthiness to life. This system has informed the way we create our physical political and economic infrastructures it speaks of containment, division, exclusion, and categorizing in order to streamline and promote efficiency, it minoritizes and discriminates and those it cannot categorize because of its inability to extract profit from them are outside of even the consideration of this gauge with essentially no worth.
![Intensity 3 [Converted].jpg](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/60aedc72f206615de20a8606/1622092159084-Z4WRIVQRUC4D8DTKFFLX/Intensity+3+%5BConverted%5D.jpg)
But the a-material City, the real city is not informed or composed by the same structures, it is uncontained amorphous and congregates by resonance, intensities, and frequency it has a language a pattern not yet transcribed and those not within the faulty organizational system of the material world are figuratively and literally evenly represented here.
If we consider the few things untouched by the order currently shaping our paradigm we can see these intangible frequencies as an understanding of the city outside of that, one which is democratizing TROUGH its ability to be experienced.
This work seeks to transcribe these experienced frequencies, to negotiate with the material world and the city, a new form of knowledge lacking in fact also in the field of architecture. AN ARCHITECTURE OF THE CITIZENRY.
One form of frequency which needed transcription was the emotion around the police brutality through the us and more specifically New York City since, with the death of George Floyd as evidence no words or action were managing to change the social order.
One form of frequency which needed transcription was the emotion around the police brutality through the us and more specifically New York City since, with the death of George Floyd as evidence no words or action were managing to change the social order.
Noting specific shocking or emotion inducing details about the killings of these victims through the city I was able to transcribe one aspect of this emotional frequency, one which related to the story everyone knew and connected with. Amadeau Diallo shot 41 times outside of his apartment in the Bronx because he was believed to have a gun and to have committed a crime, Eric Garner yelled I can't breath 11 times before suffocating to death for selling loosies in Staten Island, Sean Bell shot at 50 times outside of a club in Jamaica queens as he was celebrating his bachelor party. I took these numbers and created circumferences with these numbers multiplied by themselves in feet apart.
These Frequencies converging in Crown Heights. What if we designed our cities based on these intensities? would the centers of current manifestations city come to crumble?
These intensities would pulsate, rearrange and converge.
I looked to transcribe these emotions in order to make and take space. These images show the plan elevation and plan section through some of these spaces. but to create space which was truly reflective of an emotion I could only look to the one I knew best. Using images reflecting parts of the stories I connected with, a sound was generated through software, which revealed a more specified description of this feeling, my feeling.
Further experiments came to reveal new languages and modes of understanding.
How can the intangible affect the physical?
How could this come to communicate the nuances of the human emotions and by effect come change the way we communicate and organize.
a Sound A part
When looking at the larger scale of the city, frequencies couldn't be transcribed without first being identified./ what were the stories in this case, of the multiplicity, of the people, the commonalities that I could use as an initial larger scale gauge.
I looked at the patterns in specific sounds which are reflections of culture including music and patterns in sounds of individuals. These Images bellow show a shape generated by a sound, on the left Chopan the right Nas and above an attempted representation at the physical space this can create.
What Happens when these combine?
What happens when they Isolate?
And what happens when they create?
With no way to capture the sound directly of the entire city I looked to capture other frequencies, the intangible bursts of energy that can be manifested in specific ways which when strategically layered , uncover manifestations of common emotions, angsts vibrancy and culture.
The gathered frequencies consist of layering data points plotted on a map of New York the points reflect 311 noise complaints, NYPD Arrests, graffiti removal calls, emergency management responses, NYPD complaint calls, and motored Vehicle collisions. These points reveal spaces of high intensity and high frequency. Crown Heights, not surprisingly based on previous investigation being one of the main epicenters of these frequencies.
![CODE [Converted].jpg](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/60aedc72f206615de20a8606/1622130663107-V7XY9DJBD1CDDRT1HF9H/CODE+%5BConverted%5D.jpg)
THE CODE
Taking a closer look to the crown heights epicenter where I walked and recorded some sounds, people and feel of the area, a grid is drawn to get a scale of the neighborhood. Taking the average block as a unit of density which is then divided into octaves, the amount of the block which is covered determines how much is to be shaded and what note it falls under. A if Within 1/8 is covered B if 2/8 and so on until back at A which is a completely covered block. Note each point is scale to the size of the average residential home of the neighborhood.
At the level of the individual on the other hand sound can be transcribed into pattern which could be used as a form, a representation of the individual through visual patterns, then through the combinations of these individual’s codes and layered with the code if the city, a form of syntax,
which through the use of virtual reality devices could be seen and experienced, this revealing gestures of the a-material, which can create a broader meaning of space representative of a citizenry, an altogether new form of knowledge that is equal in register but opposite in manifestation as the financial presidents which govern the material city.
