[ware]house for lyle klein 01.1 1.98 ken r . koense randy brown architects 1 [ware]house: ware: 1. watchful, wary, or cautious. 2. aware; conscious. 3. to be aware of (usually used in the imperative). In today’s media dominated culture, society lacks a stable reference to reality. It is precisely this instability that leaves us with a pseudo-psychological condition of schizophrenia. Because of the endless tabloid talk shows we no longer have a sense of public and private. One’s private eccentricities, or sexual deviations have now been laid open for the public to witness and criticize. The once public has now been reduced from the realm of the openly scrutinized to the unwitting background babble that fills the recesses of the mind. Because of this cross-violation between the realms of the public and private, we are left with anxiety, overtly cautious, a[war]e with our immediate condition. This schizophrenic society forces one to disengage from the public realm, refusing to plug-in or download into a world, a society, a neighborhood that will try to denigrate or destroy one’s private self for the sake of fifteen minutes of infamy. Forcing one to recede from the public consumption of the soul, demanding one to become hermitized and disconnect from the once ideal sense of community. Due to this cognizant condition of dealing with a society that is addicted to knowing all about everyone, one becomes a[ware] of the need to restrain, the ability to control what is seen in this postmodern psycho-societal state of being. In controlling one has the capacity to lose control, and conversely control what is lost. “Control, control you must learn control!” This project then becomes an exercise in control, an experiment of one’s conscious ability to control his/her environment, and one’s cautious capacity to lose control, and control what is lost. The underlying theme of control is movement. Control exists only when there is movement, whether it is predictive or chaotic, control relies on movement in order to become active. It is here where we depart into the differing modes of control. Control of urban pattern: Omaha is a city based upon a Jeffersonian grid, a system for controlling how a city is to be laid out, a predictive grid system that to this day determines much of “Old” Omaha. The need to move away from this constraining, dictatorial figure ground system, is the need to lose control. The desire is to break from the norm, to be a[ware] of the order that binds, to search for inextricable movement that is anti-Jefferson. Control of zoning: Omaha, not unlike most other American cities is bound by certain zoning restric- tions, zoning pattern, and zoning laws. This ideal system for controlling where industrial, commercial, and housing is relegated to areas of the city is confining, and as has previously been noted elsewhere a device that has been criticized at length for failing to bring together differing types, programs and cultures into a mixed use format. The [ware]house uses the industrial zoning type against itself, exerting its own movement, controlling what program will exist inside the self-possessed building type. This controlled loss of control seeks to undermine the dictatorial zoning processes. Control of context or site: Further stepping into realm of control, is the idea of controlling the existing contextual issues. By using context against itself, we have the ability to undermine the external contextual meaning. The immediate environment suggests a rugged industrial fabric, filled with steel doors, corrugated aluminum panels, unfinished concrete, as well as unfinished and corroding metals and other materials. This iconography exists in the industrial world, and by using these materials in a domicile — [ware]house — it has the adverse effect on the way context is controlled. Control of space: In the existing conditions of the warehouse, materials, goods and functions are laid out according to the building envelope. Typically orthogonal layouts with the need for packing as much of product “X” in one space as possible, and with a total loss of awareness in terms of what the space should dictate. In the [ware]house, space is not relegated to the confining formal condition of the enveloping structure, the [ware]house seeks to “break the box,” or even “cut the box.” These two conditions suggest a violence inherent to relieving one’s self from the existent controlling factors. This premise is accomplished in a few ways, first by using planes of differing thickness, angles and materials to loosely define programmatic elements thereby allowing one’s perception of public and private to be understood differently depending on the position one takes relative to the desired space. Secondly, by using elements of protrusion and intrusion we have a different understanding of how the client wishes to maintain issues of control, and we can furthermore understand how the cross-violation of public and private effect the client. Examples can be found in the shower, an obviously private function that protrudes into the public realm, yet we realize that the protrusion itself happens on the most private side of the site, again the private becoming public becoming private. The example of intrusion in two areas, first we have the exterior walls of the South and west the public side pealing back and into the [ware]house private to reveal the exterior conditions or context — public, now the public intrudes on the private to reveal the public. These idea’s exemplify client’s ability to become a[war] e with his surroundings. Control of image: The ideal represen- tational type for a controlled project would be floor plans, sections and elevations, but this project type seeks to reflect the dual conditions of public and private, a[ware]ness and control. How do we represent a project that resides in this arena of thought?