Portfolio

Christopher Mattiucci

Spatial Design

Space is...

created through both the body and the mind, the interplay of the somatic and psychic, which makes sense since the space is experienced through

the actions of the body and perceived through the mind. In this sense, my intent has always been to render the com-

plexities of this interplay through the performance of the

user’s body-mind relation, to use ways of making through the hands to play with percep-tual concepts, and to view these

two supposed binaries as a whole existing within and creating space.

My Intent has been to ques-tion what space is capable of doing for this whole, this “in-between” state of bodily and intellectu-al intellect. I am still continually searching for the answer. Design is in the search.

Threshold Old Tobacco WarehouseBrooklyn, NY

Spring 2012

R.E.M.Sleep Complex

205 E. 13th St.New York, NY

Fall 2011

?TheatreSt. Ann’s Warehouse

33 Jay St.Brooklyn, NY

Fall 2012

Table of Contents

Boerum Hill Housing Project; First Floor

Metropolis MagazineICFF Installation

Housing WorksBookstore Cafe’

389 Atlantic Ave.Brooklyn, NY

Spring 2010

International ContemporaryFurniture Fair

Spring 2011

126 Crosby St.New York, NY

Spring 2010

Threshold

The Old Tobacco WarehouseBrooklyn, NY

Fall 2012

Collaborators_Jamie Perez_Tamara Sabler_Universitat Erfurt

Threshold is a conversation. It is banter between you, the on you were before and the one you will become. It is a moment in time which, like all moments in time, is ephemeral. The self is not only negotiating with their own body and space, but with the other. For when one crosses theshold one is rarely alone.

This interdisciplinary collaborative project which exists in the liminal space between architecture and perfor-mance asks the self who enters to trace the body’s movement while moving through threshold, to feel the weight of their own movement as well as the impacts those movements have on space, self, and the other.

The result is an unchoreographed choreography.

SITE:The Old Tobacco Warehouse

The Old Tobacco Warehouse is current-ly located in DUMBO’s Brooklyn Bridge Park. The Warehouse, once used for the production and distribution of Tobac-co, was a chosen threshold for its lo-cation and availabilty to spectators.

Initial Experiments in Elasticity and Motion

1/8” = 1’

EXISTING ARCH WOODEN FRAME FABRIC TONGUE AND GROOVE

Detail

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Examination of Motion, Opacity, and Color

Threshold’s Juxtaposition and Integration With Environment

? Theatre

“All that stems by way of awareness, should be held to be of it.”-Arakawa St. Ann’s WarehouseBrooklyn, NY

Spring 2012 Parsons Archive Spring 2012Parsons ID Thesis Representative

Instructors_Lee Altman_Nicholas Chelko

The experience of attending theatre has been socially scripted into society. Our bodies know how to expe-rience it: how to enter, sit, absorb, leave, and wake up the next morning for whatever monotonous activity life has to throw at us. This cultural attitude leaves the spectator lifeless, limp and complacent. The architecture of theatre has the responsibility to strip these aesthetic social demands and act as the mediator between the-atre and the body.

Within performance, we enter a very different reality. We, the spectator, exist within the liminal space between the conscious and the unconscious. This is what our body tells us. Our body should not be something that sim-ply sits and acts as a spectator but it should embrace, it should become something new. Architecture determines what body we are to become, theatre tells us how to be with that body. In theatre, we yearn for the invisible to become distinctly visible, to entertain our hidden impulses. Architecture is the manifestation of that invis-ibility, of that very something we are yearning for. Perhaps, architecture goes beyond the Tschumian event where performance does not just activate architecture, but architecture activates our ability to view performance.

Once someone is able to reconcile with the fact of having body, and recognize the physicality of that body, it becomes a resource to understanding the representation of life that occurs on stage. In order to shake this socio-behavioral coding, I have transformed St. Ann’s Warehouse into a careful curation of haptic experiences, which makes theatergoers aware of their own presence in space and time.

Analytique: REX_Wyly Theatre

In 1985, Richard Schechner declared performance as a lens by which to examine both ethnographic and anthropological inquiry in the essay, “Between Theatre and Anthropology.” This essay goes on to explore the twice transformative power of theatre; it being both transformative for the performers and transportive for the audience. The deer dancers of the american yaqui believe that when they adorn the deer mask they become neither deer nor man, they are transformed into an entity that is not representation and not not representation; a mediation be-tween the body and the character. The audience is endowed with the ability to transport consciousness, to be in and of their body but their mind becomes closed off to personal existence and enveloped in the world of theatre. Schechner goes on to site both the Tai and Yu of the Noh Shite, where the tai is what is seen by the mind and the yu is what is seen by the eye. The Wyly Theatre, completed by REX in Dallas mediates this trans-formative power; through spatializing everything that Schechner was grappling with. REX realized the inherent need for performances not to be just of the pro-scenium, but to spread where ever the artistic vision may lead. The fl exibility of the stage and seating, as well as the permeability of the facade facilitate this transformative power by allowing for a new world to be created with each piece, by becoming the catalyst.

Research: Meyerhold Biomechanics

Russian Constructivist Vsevold Meyerhold developed a particular approach to actor training, known as biomechanics, which sought to create a theatrical reality beyond the reach of the stanislavskian actor. Biomechanics, which took cues from Stanislavski’s work, is based on the idea that psychological and physiological processes are inextricably linked. Meyerhold argued that one could call upone emotions in performance through the use of movement and gesture and he developed a strictly codifi ed system of choreographic sequences (known as etudes, or “stud-ies”) used to express specifi c emotional and physical scenarios.

In depth research into Meyerhold’s Etudes became the framework for a spatial and experiential interjection throughout the theatre, to ask theatre goers to process through beyond muscular possibilities.

Analagous Models Exploring the Spatialization of Biomechanics

Procession and Indoctrination Into Theatre

Loss of Sight Loss of Site

Recognition of the Other Recognition of Self

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Plan

Forced Reconciliation with the Other.

Fabric Lanes:

Ask theatre goers to feel the weight of their own physicality as well as the subtle touch of the other.

Self-Serve Bar: Outfi t with crevices and plateaus. The bar is about tolerance and how much one controls themselves (or doesn’t.The crevices force one to understand their own body and its presence in space. The plateaus beg for the inib-riated to climb up and perform.

Performative Landscape:

Rubber: Resistance to the body.

Cushion: Give to the body.

Marley: For the body.

In both theatre and archi-tecture we are constantly confronted with the other. In architecture it is the other people we are pro-cessing with, in theatre it is both the spectators we are sharing the perfor-mance with and the others being represented on stage. In each case we see them, but they are not them, they are us. They are the very entities to which we endow our own self image, our own hopes of what we can possi-bly be, and the things that we are, and the things that we are not. The other is a mirror.

The Other

The Light Room: This is a full immersion in light, it eludes to the absence of space and all that is left is the body.

Oscillating Theatre:

The fl exible fl oor volumes both allow and ask for new typologies and topologies of theatre to be created.

Housing Works BookStore Cafe’

A Whole New Level of Reading

126 Crosby StreetGround Floor New York, NY 10012

Spring 2011Instructor_Alan Bruton

Research into the state of being of bamboo was the conceptual formwork for a renovation and redesign of the Housing Works Bookstore Cafe’ on Crosby St. The space was an attempt to recreate the experience of bamboo’s rapid regrowth, both horizontally and vertically on behalf of the user. In order to articulate this experience a sloped, circulatory system was implemented to emphasize a physical, postural growth for each individual. The sloped space was an exploration of the inherent dualities in the plant, the matrix of what is growing below ground in conjunction with what is growing above. This binary coincided with the inherent programmatic duali-ties in a book store cafe’. One program, the cafe’ is an open environment for both eating and socializing with others. The other, a bookstore is intended for the very privatized act of reading. These two almost paradoxi-cal entities are both independent and at the same time interdependent. There is a very tentative oscillation between the two in one space. This space is a conversation between these elements and their correlation with one another.

Bamboo Studies

Initial Research

Generative Patterns of Bamboo

Rhyzome Extrusions

Rhyzome Frames Bent and Repeated

Multi Dimensional Explorations

Recreation of the environmental ex-perience of bamboo using the board as a building block to replicate bamboo’s inherent qualities.

The Space of Bamboo

Line drawings exploring the multi dimensional explora-tions.

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Perceptual Examination of Sloped Space

These Pen and Ink drawings explore one’s experience traveling around the sloped space through fi gure ground.

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Boerum Hill Transitory Housing Project:First Floor; Transitory Living

Placing The Displaced

389 Atlantic Ave.Brooklyn, NY 11217

Fall 2010Instructor_Gabrielle Perez Rendon

The fi rst fl oor in this proposed three story brownstone was designated for impermanent residents. In an attempt to get a grasp on the creation of spatial forms that would create “good” relationships amongst these different families, I looked to Rudolf Arnheim. In 1976, Arnheim in his book, Visual Thinking, attempted to connect the way in which people perceive abstract concepts with form. He wanted to give form to concepts such as the past, present, and future, as well as good and bad relationships. These apartments were designed thinking about the spatial implications of Arnheim’s studies. The spaces which were broken up for varying degrees of privacy, overlap in some areas but remain consistently separate in others. The partitions were also put in place in order to promote a sort of “parallel” lifestyle for these families, so their relationships can begin to intertwine for their betterment. The Partitions were created through the abstraction of two parallel lines, which in turn create curved spaces carved out of the original volume in a way that is meant to be conducive to a continuous, fl uid existence.

Designed to connect the way in which humans percieve form in correlation to abstract con-cepts such as time and rela-tionships.

Rudolf Arnheim Studies

Formal Explorations

Using Arnheim’s studies as a conceptual groundwork, I began to look at the form of good relationships in order to articulate paral-lel spatial relationships.

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Bed Detail

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Section View Of Parallel Living

Depending on the duration of the family’s stay in the apartments, there was a certain need for mod-ularity. The beds could be swung around to create a single sleep-ing space, or swung out for 2 or 3 people.

Swiss Army Beds

ICFF Installation for Metropolis Magazine

International Contemporary Furniture Fair 2011

Spring 2011Instructor_David Stark

In a collaboration between 11 architecture, interior, and product design students the installation for Metropo-lis Magazine at the International Contemporary Furniture Fair was designed and fabricated. The design incor-porates all the program metropolis required as well as creating a Richard Cera-esque experience by funneling the users through the structure using stringed planes. The structure asks them to experience the connection between all forms of design, just as Metropolis has been doing for 30 years.

Initial Iteration

This iteration expresses the connective environment that Metropo-lis produces for all forms of design, utilizing the magazine it-self to funnel users through the space.

Formal Concept

Using the 30th anniversary logo in combination with the ideas de-rived from the initial iteration to create form.

Magazine Take Away

Next Generation Competition Display

Conference Table

Seating/Magazine Storage

Magazine Take AwayReception/Subscriptions/Storage

Seating/Storage

Program

Structure

18 pairs of 3” square steel tubes act as “ribs”, welded at angular connections and painted black.

Renders

R.E.M. Sleep Complex

The Architecture of Sleep

205 E. 13th St. New York, NY

Fall 2011Instructor_Natalie Fizer

After studying sleep in relation to psychology I began to derive spatial conditions which choreograph the concsious waking actions of the user’s quotidian experience up until the moment of sleep. Freud wrote of how it is our minute experiences that sift into the unconcious during sleep to produce dreams. He stated that con-sciousness is the experience of both space and time, while in one’s unconscious state all that is percieved is space. At the moment of sleep, the form of this zone takes on that of a “pure”space with no beginning and no end, while the rest of the structure ask one to be concious of their physical and mental contemplative states

to create habitual actions before the moment of sleep.

Analogous Models

Models examine Freud’s Theory of the unconscious, looking at a spatial model of the fragmented ac-tions of the quotidian in both space and time fi ltering into the space of the as a purely spa-tial experience void of time.

Fragmented conscious actionsin both space and time.

State of unconscious in space.

Form Finding Experiments

These castes explore form that like the uncon-scious, seek a spatial condition with no begin-ning and no end, a condition of pure space void of time. The form then became that of a pod to house the sleeping body.

Sleep Pod Detail

The sleep pods offers a sleep position that forms to the body optimal for breathing during sleep. The fenestration allows for light to enter the pod, while not directly hitting the sleeper.

Initial Iteration

The fi rst iteration of the sleep center, took the single sleeper’s experience and multiplied it for collective sleeping of 325 users.

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Ovoid spaces of mental con-templation

Stepped spac-es for bodily betterment.

Light wells for both the body and the mind.

Cave of men-tal contempla-tion.

Sleep Pods

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Third Level Plan

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Wax Carvings

In an attempt to choreograph the conscious somatic and psy-chic habitual actions of the everyday, I began to carve the space that the human body creates as opposed to exists within.

Plaster Castes

After carving the space the body creates, I caste plaster on top of the wax in order to articulate the volume of the space created.

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Cave of Mental Contemplation

This form derivative of the orignal form fi nding studies, is meant to be circulated around with small in-accessible openings to the inside where one can always contemplate what is inside, but never fully know.

Stepped Physical Space

The form of the stair is meant for one’s somatic experience through-out the space. The stair forces one to always concentrate on where their walking, to physically exert themselves.

Ramped Mental Space

The form of the ramp is meant for one’s psychic experience. The ramp allows one to take the focus off of their body and are fully able to dwell.

Crawling Circulation

The dropped cieling compresses the body asking it to enter a position close to laying while transition-ing closer and closer to sleep.

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