4500 public ghosts

“…no structural or nonstructural damage was found that would reasonably warrant any cost-effective building demolitions…"

A month after Hurricane Katrina wrecked the Gulf Coast, the city of New Orleans reopened its confines to allow residents to return home. My article discussing the impact this had on residents and how the Housing Authority of New Orleans responded to the situation was published in Post Magazine last spring. The zine's new website launched over the weekend and includes access to all previous publications. Find my article under Latest From Polemic.

mardi gras masquerade

The masked form hides identity and often allows for a transformation of the self as well as a coordination of the ritual.

King Louis XIV sent the Le Moyne brothers, Pierre Le Moyne d'Iberville and Jean-Baptiste Le Moyne de Bienville, to establish French settlements in the Louisiane territory. Coincidentally, the expedition entered the mouth of the Mississippi River and settled a camp March 3, 1699, Mardi Gras. In honor of the Catholic holiday, Iberville named the spot Point du Mardi Gras.

During the 18th century while New Orleans was under French rule, the upper class established pre-Lenten masked balls and festivals. Simultaneously, the free men of color established the Place de Negroes as a Sunday meeting place. The historic site, now known as Congo Square, was a location where African Americans could recall their music and dancing traditions. It also became a place where they could celebrate Mardi Gras openly and among themselves.

While the French colony fell to the Spanish and eventually was traded to the United States, the public celebration of Mardi Gras transformed parallel to the racial perception of the masqueraders. In 1781, the Spanish prohibited black persons from being masked, wearing feathers and attending night balls. In 1804, after controversy about whether to play French or English music at the Carnival balls, an ordinance passed requiring the presence of policemen at celebrations. A few years later, the American rulers banned masking and balls altogether (fearing possible covers for spies of Aaron Burr). Creoles held private parties instead, ignoring the bans. Although the prohibition was eventually lifted and mule-drawn decorated wagons paraded through the streets, it was not until the formation of Krewe Comus in 1856 that Mardi Gras lost its controversial reputation.

The mask has always held a significant role throughout pre-Lenten celebrations. The debate about its origin continues, but many believe they are meant to drive away the forces of winter and allow for the coming of spring. In Central and South America, Carnival celebrations yield allegorical characters. In the African-influenced Caribbean, masks hold spiritual significance as they are widely used with rituals of the dead. In Italy and New Orleans, the Venetian masks allowed people to move freely between the social classes, outside everyday convention.

bird in a box

Birds love wine.

Wineberry has designed these pine boxes to reduce the carbon footprint of a glass of wine. The wood is sustainably grown in the same region the wine is produced (Bordeaux). Not only does the shape and weight of the box requires far less energy for production and transportation, the design also prevents oxidation of the wine. Once the wine has been consumed, the box can be reused in other practical ways, i.e. winehouses.

roof run

The largest indigenous HIV/AIDS support organization in Africa, TASO provides HIV/AIDS-affected children with chickens and support to develop sustainable, small-scale poultry holdings. The Poultry Project addresses the persistent poverty and malnutrition plaguing HIV/AIDS-affected children in Uganda. In 2010, the Poultry Project called farmers, designers, thinkers, architects, artists, and locavores to design a chicken coop for use in urban or suburban backyards. The ideal coop would integrate aesthetics with utility and make creative use of local materials.


Roof Run (RR) takes precedent from the vertical programming of cities. As an urban coop, it must fit into the dense urban fabric, i.e. a patio. In order to minimize its footprint yet still provide sufficient space for the birds, it was necessary to consider vertically stacking the program. The result is a series of perches that lead to a rooftop run.






Like a roof garden, the run provides food, temperature control and recreational activities. With a rooftop run, the chickens and compost access more sunlight. This is a concern in locations where tall buildings limit the daylight and therefore the egg production. Hens also want access to grass and soil. RR creates a protected space where the birds can dig for bugs. As a composting site, the urban farmer can place food scraps on the roof. What the chickens do not consume will attract bugs for further decomposition. The soil becomes fertilized with the manure of the birds. Eventually, this peat can be used for vegetable production. A cyclical system is born.

As a prototype, RR is a flexible system. Reclaimed wood is fastened to a steel structure and ventilation holes are drilled for air circulation. If necessary, insulation can be installed and the holes plugged as the farmer responds to his particular climate. The simple design can be commercially manufactured or handmade in Uganda. RR responds to diverse climates and their local materials, hoping to produce a sustainable home for hens in any part of the globe.


Understanding that a coop must be convenient for an urban farmer, Roof Run allows easy access for egg collection, food and water replenishment, and coop cleaning. The design even includes a droppings drawer with a removable tray.

palett palate

A banquette with more diversity than a NYC subway car.

Of all the benefits accrued from using salvaged shipping palettes for cladding, the least expected was the quality of the found lumber. However, sure enough, the diverse species of wood extends from ash to walnut.

they still exist

Hydro+Logic was an installation at the Columbia Waterfront District's Urban Meadow in Brooklyn. Intended to continue the dialogue concerning the wasted resources of bottled plastic water, the project arranged thousands of discarded bottles into an area of respite.


The vast majority of all plastics ever produced still exist, somewhere. Consider your ecological footprint when you drink bottled water versus tap:

The plastic water bottle that takes just 3 minutes to drink can take up to a 1000 years to biodegrade.

We pollute nearly 7x more water to make the plastic bottle than it actually holds.

Bottling increases water extraction in areas near plants, leading to water shortages that affect local consumers and farmers.

About 1/3 of tested* bottled water contained levels of contamination, including synthetic organic chemicals, bacteria and arsenic.

Bottled water produces up to 1.5 million tons of plastic waste per year (47 million gallons of oil) and over 80% are NOT recycled.

Corporate bottlers like Dasani (Coca Cola) and Fiji are stripping developing nations of their self-determination, environment and natural resources.


*Results published by the National Resources Defense Council after a 4-year study of the bottled water industry.

Move to Dialog

“…meanwhile, organic entities…begin to display a new vitality, each coaxing the breathing body into a unique dance. Even boulders and rocks seem to speak their own uncanny languages of gesture and shadow, inviting the body and its bones into silent communication.”
[David Abram, Spell of Sensuous]

If we consider the body with its surrounding entities, are we then concerned with a sensuous dialog that surpasses oral communication? Texture incites tactile exploration. Movement of shadow illustrates reciprocity of observer with observed and fluidity of form. Echoic tones imitate surfaces with translated reflections. These external entities provoke and stimulate a multiplicity of conversation. Although results remain relative to particularities, stimuli motivate response. Therefore, understanding the body’s correspondence requires understanding one’s self and the significance of its context: from the ground to the heavens.

The sun announces its existence and orientation with heat and light energy. All beings simultaneously obstruct the radiance and project a shadowed assertion of their own identity. The rock intercepts the incidence and its profile casts to a surface beyond. A passing ant discerns the darkness and instinctually perceives the presence of the mass. As the insect advances back into the sunlight, in turn, it interrupts the lit passage. The ant’s profile casts onto a pebble beyond. These shadows endure with light, yet transform with time as all beings revolve and weather with every aurora. As such, the sun unites and illuminates the exchange of the earth’s phenomena. It vibrates the phenomena into being. Oscillating back and forth from volatile to restrained postures, these bodies collide and transfer their fed energy with one another.

Bodies want to move. An embryo begins to beat its heart within three weeks of fertilization; it pursues motion before it receives nutrition from the mother. Throughout development, the inherent expression of manual gesture evolves. Beings begin to imitate audible sounds to complement kinesics. Although spoken language tends to succeed gestural communication, words remain only to represent these physical manifestations. The tongue articulates kinein and yet exploration of such only transpires through palpable activity. (Perhaps the attempt of writing about motion is the greatest paradox.)

As a body slides through space, it manipulates the medium with each action. As witnessed by a swimmer, the cupped stroke of the arms, the alternating torsion of the body, and the flitter of the feet propel movement through water. The body displaces the liquid as it would elements of air. The body wants to move. Even a seemingly static posture pushes and pulls its surroundings with every in- and exhalation. The perception merely exists at a smaller scale. These involuntary systems collect a repertoire of internal rhythms and sequences of motion. Perhaps these natural cadences influence our personal evolution toward patterns of speech or gait. Perhaps the heartbeat has held more significance than just controlling blood. Perhaps it persists as the primary pulse, influential of all fashioned rhythms.

A collective effort recorded electric signals from human hearts, both healthy and diseased. Mapped from the data, the musical notes transformed from anatomical pulse to song. The Heartsongs ranged in complexity according to the health of the heart. Heart signals normally have a subtle variability between beats as the nervous system fluctuates in speed. This resultant plasticity offers a complex frequency with the mathematical structure of a fractal of self-similar sequences . Once translated to music, healthy hearts provide a sound with interesting note sequences while diseased hearts translate to a monotonous repetition. The Music of the Heart Project validates the complexity of natural phenomena and offers further inquiries about one’s perception of the natural order. Insight about the body’s variability and our accord with these internal sounds continues to support the mind/body cohesion. The body wants to move. It pulsates and alternates motion. It dances.

Honeybees dance to announce sources of nectar and birds perform mating dances during breeding seasons. Animal expression pervades aesthetic constraints. These dances have an objective, but with a priority of species’ survival. The physical expression of humans, however, varies from the synchronization of gesture invoking rain to the subconscious sway of comforting an infant. The range of motion varies as great as the intention. Perhaps our comprehension of existence stretches the ability, the composure, and the implication of movement. Our multiplicity of identity (national, political, local, gender, sexual, and religious) conditions our movement. Traditional Balinese dances burst from restrained postures and return to realigned composure while the traditional Chinese dances sustain the fluidity. Mexican tradition emphasizes the regular rhythm, but choreographs around the foot as an instrument. Our exchange with our self and our surroundings conditions our movement. Sound influences motion while motion inspires sound. Instruments may give and take according to a dance, while the dancer claps, taps, pants, and chants in response.

At any particular essence, its body contains natural intuition and rhythm. It becomes an ever-changing collection of past experiences and influences. It simultaneously coordinates with our sensory organs to formulate thought and action. Neuroscientists are currently observing the human brain’s response to architectural stimuli, hopeful of the appreciated strategies once we have more information about spatial psychology. While science understands efficient methodology, architectural design must consider a range of factors that should not be simplified by statistics or formulaic insertions. Patterns will emerge, but may only be particular to a region or similar demographic. The analysis of dance demonstrates this complexity of provocation. A personal introspection about our exuberance or anxiety about dance suggests the intricacy of our development and the environmental factors involved. Should an architect consult an anthropologist and a neuroscientist through the course of design? Perhaps these scientific fields can integrate with analysis derived from other built precedents.

The infinite possibilities retract with every design decision and with a termination at construction. Beings occupy and employ according to their own intuition. An architect predicts his/her influence, but only returns to observe the actual interaction. Designed for the education and administration of Cal Poly’s architectural student population, Building 5 subsists with a variety of aliases: storage, think tank, dwelling, lap-top plug station, as well as: dance, in situ. Perhaps the scent of resin, spray paint and Red Bull hypnotizes dancers to coordinate movement. Perhaps the glow of the sodium vapor bulbs and the illuminated desk lamps coax choreography. A building with substantial covered, exterior space for movement may be a significant explanation for the draw of these dance groups. Regardless of the motivation, the concrete contains memories of design through and through: from the intended architectural studios to the guerrilla-like dance surfaces that have since arrived. Preposterous for an architect to assume his institutional enclosure to give life to salsa rhythms and hip hop-influenced body manipulation, but yet it exists as such. An exact replica of the building in a different context, however, would yield different results. Perhaps this leaves the sculptor of space with some humility about design intention. We know the body will move. We know the movement will be capricious. We must then design for the improvisation of being, with the silence for the body to speak and be heard.