emily tozer

The car races down the road, and the red fox darts under a nearby car just in time. His eyes are wide, and his breath is shallow. During the day, he leaves his family, and ventures to the nearby town in search of food. The town is new and has cut through the fields surrounding his den. The fox has never ventured to this area before, and every sudden movement and noise startles him. The car provides necessary cover from the cold blasts of winter, however, he knows better than to sleep under it. It wasn’t designed for his protection, more so to harm him. Around him, repeating murmurs of car engines keep the fox alert, preparing him to run at any moment.

Composing himself, he crawls into the open, under a dark sky filled with millions of stars. The area surrounding him used to resemble something like his home, with luscious fields and forests filled with trees. Now, he feels lost, unable to track his way home. Houses tower upwards, blocking his view of the sky. The tarmac under his paws feels rough and cold, very uninviting. Yet, the tarmac supports the fox, giving him a place to stand, walk and sit. Small patches of grass remain, yet they do not provide any sustenance.

The fox knows that humans are a lot more powerful than foxes as they seem to have built on every field surrounding the fox’s home. It’ll only be a matter of time until the humans build on his field too. But don’t they ever think of his home? Or what is important to any of the animals who live there? The fox’s family have always lived in the corner of their field, generations and generations of them. The field contains layers upon layers of scents that help the foxes track their way home. Humans have disrupted this, believing that their way of life overrides all other beings. Why don’t they consider the animals? Or the trees? Or anything in that field? The humans have a kind of incomprehensible power, that other animals, beings and objects simply aren’t able to match.

Blinding lights shine out from above, in an organised pattern, casting long shadows with the fox’s every step. These lights are unnatural and confuse the fox for daylight. Ever since the humans have lived here, the fox has become disorientated easily and has mistook car headlights for the sun. 

He is hungry and just wants something to eat. In this unfamiliar territory, food is harder to come by, and the fox must be quick and fast to secure a meal. Aromas waft towards the fox from a window of a house nearby, and the fox begins to saunter over. As he crosses the road onto the pavement, a large figure appears to his right, which alarms the fox. He jumps over the wall to his left, scurrying away from the figure.

Once over the wall, the fox surveys his surroundings. He is enveloped in a canopy of trees, leaves and long grass. The fox begins to relax, as the environment feels similar to home. Had this been designed for him? He questions this but notices how ‘structured’ the garden is, this is for humans. He surveys the vegetation around him, some of which he recognises from home. His nose picks up the same scent he smelt earlier, and he quietly begins to follow it. 

Under his paws, the soft carpet-like sensation of the grass gives way to the cold, tiled patio of the house’s garden. He hesitates at first, then continues towards the house. As he gets closer, he can see into the large windowed doors at the back of the house. He sees figures, many of them, all huddled together surrounding a central table. The table is a simple structure, as the fox has observed them from time to time. The table affords the possibility of a gathering like the fox sees before him. It also affords the possibility of storage, a place to rest, and a place to work. The fox has used tables himself, for when they are outside in gardens, he uses them to shelter from the rain. The fox imagines what it would be like to stand on the table, if the humans can use it for anything they'd like, then why can’t he?

Laughter emanates from the house, as the warm glow from within slowly dances across the patio. The fox doesn’t know what is going on inside the house, but he sees the group of people sharing food and talking to each other. The fox has seen houses before, with their many windows facing into the human’s version of a den. The fox only ventures out at night, and so it is unusual for him to see so much life inside a house. The humans seem to be celebrating something, as a ball of light sits in the centre of the table. Suddenly, the light disappears, and the humans start to cheer loudly, slightly startling the fox. He is confused but accepts this as something humans do. The inside of the house seems warm and inviting, but not inviting for the fox. Why wasn’t he allowed to go inside? The fox had spent many nights in the cold, rain and snow, but had persevered. 

Next to the door, the fox spots a half-eaten sandwich, and he slowly makes his way towards it, using his nose to guide himself. It’s not fresh, but it will do for now. He is about to bite into the sandwich when suddenly, a tall figure emerges from the glass doors. The fox’s sensitive ears are deafened by the man’s loud, booming voice. He didn’t know what the man was trying to say, but he did know he didn’t want to be near that man anymore. The fox felt very unwelcome, even though the land these houses were on had been his home long before these homes were built. He glances at the open door, pausing for a second to consider going towards it, but humans don’t seem to be as open to sharing their space as other animals are.

He scurries away to the back of the garden, preparing to jump over the fence. Back home, the fox does not need to jump such heights, as the land was designed by nature for animals such as himself to run through. However, he feels ‘boxed in’ to the garden, the tall fence panels leading up to the sky and blocking his view of the moon. Before he jumps up and over, he takes a look back at the house. He looks through the glass once again, noticing how the people inside are happy and cheering. He is reminded of his own small, family, with their own celebrations. He marvels at how two different species both make a space, which is not dependent on the objects or materials that surround them, but the very individuals themselves.

The fox then wonders what his life may have been like if his presence had been accounted for in the building of these new houses that surround him. Maybe they would have left some of the grass open, to give the fox somewhere to forage. The fox thinks about the other animals that he comes across, and how their presence had not been considered at all.

The fox scales the fence, giving way to the field that will take him back home. He darts home, eager to see his family. His den is quite small, but it is home. The den keeps himself, his mate, and their five small cubs safe from the outside world. He hopes for a better future for his cubs, that they get to experience a world designed for them or even just a world where their presence is considered. The fox wonders what the humans would think of his den, would they look in admiration as he had at the house? Or would they dismiss it, ignoring it simply because they hadn’t designed it or made it? 

Using a piece of string, I dropped this onto a page and began to draw and highlight the voids of the string on the paper.

I then created a web of string between my fingers, by knotting and weaving it. This created a cradle that could be used to hold something. However, it requires to be attached to my hands in order for the cradle to have the capacity to hold.

I compared these drawings to how each individual will create something unique, due to the set of circumstances the environment throws at them, as well as concepts such as gender and race. Design is a very personal experience which cannot be replicated. One may be given a see of plans and sections and told to build a model of the building, but each model will not be the same. Design allows personality, opinion, subjectivity and experience to shine through.

The final movement we created, we performed as a group. Cultivating all of our knowledge, we each created movements which channelled our verbs (mine being to duet, to authorise and to homogenise) to create a movement around the studio. I decided to push the boundaries this time, and move in ways that I had not known how to before. We each had a chair to move, and I used mine as a slide, a hat, a baseball bat, a perch to sit on, and a vessel to push against the ground. I also used the legs of the chair in unique ways, by walking the chair on its legs, and other ways.

I found this to be the most explorative movement session I had done, I felt like I had let go from being self-conscious about the way I moved the chair and leant into what the chair afforded me to do.

Below is the score I created to note the different movements. I used different colours and brushes to note which movements corresponded to which verbs were used.

From Andrew Pickering’s ’The Mangle in Practice’, I took the point of how you can always add more layering to a site plane, to add more and more information. The drawings above note the stages in which I initially thought I'd layered as much as I could in the site drawing, and how in the second drawing I used the pen more, not taking it off the page to produce a heavily detailed drawing. I found that there was always another noise I could draw (as my eyes were closed), as well as movements around me and outside. I experimented with using different colours and dense use of pen work, to differentiate between different types of noise/movement I was drawing.

This week's reading was pages 1-14 of Andrew Pickering's 'The Mangle in Practice'.

The main points that I picked out from this text were:

You can always add more layers to a site plan, it is never finished. There is always more detail to be added.

The original form of 'town planning' was used by using the Mississippi River, and when Europeans came over, more towns were plonked down, ignoring the landscape. When the levees were constructed to control its flow, they ignored how the river wanted to behave. Once the levees failed and flooded the area, the government imposed itself in charge when there should have been scientists and engineers put in place beforehand to prevent the flooding and disaster from happening in the first place.

Interfering is still part of the assemblage of an object.

Mondrian's art represents the unspoken rules we follow because we feel we have to, and de Kooning's art is the freedom from those rules to see the world exactly how it is and its entanglements.

Only experts in their field should be responsible for an issue in their field, not government departments. The government is allowed to allocate and manage, but shouldn't assume knowledge of a field.

In comparison to climate change, going against the way the planet wants to exist will only result in further complications. Our cities are concrete jungles that water struggles to escape from without sewage systems. If we lived more in harmony with the planet's systems, then less input would be required on our end to create a habitable ecosystem. We find ourselves battling global warming, with temperatures increasing every year. We increasingly use fans and air conditioning, all of which further the damage by using electricity and power. We are in a perpetual cycle of damage that will crash and burn unless we make major changes to the way our society functions. And this will be difficult to achieve due to the power the coal, oil and gas industries hold over every major company and government.

The words I have chosen are:

Dualism - to duet

Control - to authorise

Standardised - to homogenise

This week's reading was pages 39 to 46 of Lawrence Halprin's 'The RSVP Cycles: Creative Processes in the Human Environment'

The main things that I took from the text are detailed in my presentation I gave, attached below:

The words I chose from the text are:

Communication

Context

Visible

The verbs I have formed from these words are:

To communicate, to express

To contextualise, to place, to situate

To visualise, to highlight

First, a visualisation of the RSVP Cycle.

The verbs that my object's design was influenced by were:

To confuse

To embody

To separate

References (from assemblage mind map)

admin. (2019, May 28). What’s the difference between a varnish and a stain? Sadolin Ireland. https://sadolin.ie/blog/whats-the-difference-between-a-varnish-and-a-stain/#:~:text=What%20is%20a%20Varnish%3F

Antique Side Tables For Sale - Antiques World. (2023, April 16). https://antiquesworld.co.uk/antique/tables/antique-side-tables/#:~:text=The%20earliest%20form%20of%20antique

DEBRA. (n.d.). DEBRA | For people whose skin doesn’t work, we do. Www.debra.org.uk. Retrieved November 21, 2023, from https://www.debra.org.uk/

Hampshire County Council. (n.d.). Ash Dieback Disease. Retrieved November 21, 2023, from https://www.hants.gov.uk/landplanningandenvironment/countryside/ash-dieback-disease-old#:~:text=Ash%20is%20a%20very%20common,wildlife%20and%20for%20wood%20products.

NHS. (2019). Overview - Epidermolysis bullosa. NHS. https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/epidermolysis-bullosa/

Pine marten breeding confirmed in the New Forest | Hampshire and Isle of Wight Wildlife Trust. (2022, December 1). Www.hiwwt.org.uk. https://www.hiwwt.org.uk/news/pine-marten-breeding-confirmed-new-forest

South Hampshire Forest Plan. (n.d.). Forestry England. Retrieved November 21, 2023, from https://www.forestryengland.uk/forest-planning/south-hampshire-forest-plan

Terrapass. (n.d.). Terrapass: Buy Carbon Offsets to Reduce Carbon Footprint. Terrapass. Retrieved November 22, 2023, from https://terrapass.co.uk/

This week's reading was pages 6-27 of Henri Lefebvre's Rhythmanalysis: Space, Time and Everyday Life.

Through reading this text I was made aware of how detailed an object can be looked into. Rhythms appear in everything on Earth, although they may be represented differently.

Rhythms appear both in STEM disciplines, as methods to get to a specific answer, as well as through a 'humanistic' approach, taking all aspects into account.

We often forget there is an organic aspect to rhythm, and instead focus on the man-made, mechanical aspect.

Money provides a rhythm for products and workflow.

Rhythms are often superimposed on top of both each other and the natural rhythms of the body.

Rhythms can be measured, but the 'unit' in which they are measured depends on the profession of the rhythm analyst.

To be a rhythm analyst, you must be very attentive and use all of your senses to decipher a pattern.

In the field of philosophy, the body is often neglected and forgotten about, which removes a layer of information that is very important to analyse.

The 7 words I chose were:

Rhythm

Predominant

Mechanical

Analysis

Measure

Superimpose

Attentive

I then turned these into verbs and chose 3:

Rhythmise

Predominate

Mechanise

Analyse

Measure

Superimpose

Attend

Using these verbs, we were tasked with creating a plan drawing of studio, taking into account the idea of rhythms, as well as channelling our chosen verbs.

In my drawing, I noted the paths that light took to get into the room with arrows. I also noted the sounds of footsteps with large ovals. I noted the pattern of overhead lights with a hatched pattern. I layered everything on the same plane, unlike a traditional plan, as the overhead patterns interact with the floor level patterns as much as other patterns do. I found it interesting seeing how many natural and man-made patterns existed in the space.

For the workshop sessions over the next two weeks, I have decided to turn an old, stool-sized chair into a space detector.

I sourced this table from a local charity shop in Southsea. It was as tall as my thigh and made of solid wood. It had no particular markings underneath to tell me where it was made, or who by.

I started by dismantling the table into its constituent parts. There was a tabletop, two adjoining pieces of the main support, and a smaller circular part to which the three legs connected. There was also a small screw-like washer that held the smaller circular part onto the screw of the main support. The screws in the legs and support beam were not able to be removed, as they started to damage the tools i was using. I wanted to preserve the parts without damaging them either, so I chose not to remove them.

I then sanded the larger pieces of the table to remove the varnish. I personally dislike the varnish, but can appreciate its value and addition to the table. Therefore, I kept some of the varnish, to provide contrast between the sanded sections and the varnish.

I then started to attach the chain to the main support of the table. I attached it in such a way that it is permanently attached at two points, and then one point that can be taken off and reattached so that the length of the arm can be extended and minimised.

Throughout the making process, I deliberated on what my piece would be. At first, I wanted to create a 'useless umbrella' but by the time I was nearly done I felt that the finished object did not convey this 'affordance'. Using my words from Jane Bennett's Vibrant Matter and looking at my finished piece, I decided this object would be a 'space detector'.

When the handle is held in the user's hand, the 'tabletop' drops towards the floor. The small legs protrude at various angles, defining space that is extended from the user's arm. The chain is only permanently attached to the handle, meaning that the distance between the end of the handle and the table top can be increased to the user's wishes.

I wanted to create a poster to demonstrate how my 'Space Detector' works. I decided to use inspiration from a Space Invaders poster, as I believe my space detector helps people detect space that they can then use. Due to the design of the detector, it can be swung at any angle and has flexibility with the distance it is swung from the body.

This week's text was Jane Bennett's Vibrant Matter: A Political Ecology of Things, Chapters 1 and 2.

The key aspects I picked up from the text were:

Objects have their own power in their own right.

The use that an object/material has often overpowers its initial presence.

The sense of sight tells us very little in comparison to the combination with other senses.

‘Vibrant Matter’ is the earthy, not quite human sense of extensiveness.

The life cycle of our waste is not over when we put it in landfill, we are simply ignoring it.

Human emotion plays a large role in the contexts of objects.

The 7 words that I chose from this text are:

Materiality

Embodiment - to embody

Agentic Capacity

Bourgeois

Dilemma - to confuse

Constituent - to separate

The following drawing is not a site drawing, it is instead a perspective drawing of the space that details the noises, furniture, space and movement from the atrium of Eldon. I chose a view that has a lot of foot traffic and also focused on shading the drawing to represent the direct and indirect light that reached the space. On the left of the drawing, I had drawn squiggles which represent the void. Voids are often left blank in architectural drawings, but they are a part of the space nonetheless. Just because they do not contain any furniture does not mean they don't have any potential or affordance.

This is the second video of our group's movement from this week, taken from a different angle. In this version, it is the final outcome of the movement.

I used my words from the de Certeau text to create movements around the studio space. Due to the location of our movements, I found that we often had other people walking through and around the space while we were rehearsing. I mainly focused on the verb 'to project' and created corresponding movements. I also created movements which juxtaposed with my colleagues' movements.

I created a map which detailed my group's movements and noted where our movements conflicted with each other. I wrote our individual three words down so that we each had them in our minds while we created our movements.

This week's reading was Chapter 3: 'Making Do' of Michel de Certeau's 'The Practice of Everyday Life' (De Certeau, 1984, pp. 29–42).

It looks into the term 'la perruque' which directly translates to 'wig', and is 'a French idiomatic expression meaning work one does for oneself in the guise of work done for an employer' (Strategies of the Powerless: Michel de Certeau and the Perrugue, n.d.).

Some of the thoughts I had during reading this text were:

We think of end of production as the end goal, forgetting that the user has their own thoughts and experience on a product after its in their hands.

Representation of something can be 'flattened' into a simple shape or sentence which the brain may misread, whereas the individual data is more important and the details should be looked at.

Having space allows for the powerful to become more powerful, whereas if you struggle for space you will find it harder to acquire power. it defines the scope of power through physical mastery over a space.

Can't have power without space, and vice versa. Even protests make use of space for a certain period of time, even though it may not be permanent.

'tactics are procedures that gain validity in relation to the pertinence they lend to time'

All activities are derived from rules put in place from those in power, who own the land.

Major power across the globe is defined with a physical space that is designated as theirs.

Everything must be calculated and structured in order for there to be order.

Strategy - what you use

Tactic - when you use it

The seven words I have picked out from this text are:

la perruque

tactics

schema - to represent

methods

consumption - to consume

use

trajectory - to project

This drawing represents the first bullet point of how every product has an end of it being on the production line, but that isn't the end of that product's lifespan.

De Certeau, M. (1984). The Practice of Everyday Life (pp. 29–42). University of California Press.

This week's reading was 'Only Resist - a feminist approach to critical spatial practice' by Jane Rendell. I found this text quite hard to decipher.

This key parts I picked out from this text were:

Architecture as a profession was historically ‘masculine’ and male dominated in the early 1900s and before, due to the lack of women’s right to work.

Identity is an important aspect of the human condition and so should have the space to exist.

Representation is important when making spaces.

From the text, I picked out the 5 main qualities that characterise the feminist approach to critical space practice:

Collectivity - the importance of collaboration in the creation of something. Women's voices must be heard during the design process of anything, as women are often ignored and not considered, or designed for without being consulted.

Subjectivity - life is often thought about in binary opposites, whereas most things in life are subjective and rely on contextual clues. Historically, architecture has been a men's profession and interior design was a woman's. However, this is not the case.

Alterity - the state of being 'other' or different. Intersectionality is the combination of race, class and gender and how they overlap to create further discrimination and disadvantage. It is important to consider everyone when designing something so that no one is disadvantaged.

Performativity - the interdependent relationship between certain words and actions. Using text as a platform to create performance and action allows a deeper understanding of the text, and has been developed through feminist practices.

Materiality - an object being composed of a material and its qualities. It is important to think about where materials are sourced from, and the processes that take place for that material to be where it is today. It is also important to think about what using a particular material in a design means for the human and non-human actants of the space.

The 7 words I picked out were:

Radical

Marginalisation

Historical - to archive

Critique - to critique

Intersectionality

Theory

Contribution - to provide

The task was to create three different drawings with different conditions, all with my eyes shut. I chose to draw my drawings from the South side of the Eldon courtyard, facing the cafe and North side of the building.

The first drawing was to draw the view and the sounds, smells and other factors present in the space which may not have been obvious from a single drawing. In this drawing, I didn't pay too much attention to the physical structures around me and instead focused on the sounds that existed in the courtyard. There was an annoying air conditioning unit on the side of the building which I could hear rattling away, and I made note of it by drawing the squiggly line in the top right corner. I also made note of the 'streams of travel' which existed in the courtyard, as people tried to make their way from one side to the other. I could hear the chatter of people walking by and fading into the distance, so I illustrated this by drawing arcs in the directions I heard sound.

The second drawing was a drawing of the same scene, just with my eyes open. I only had 5 minutes to do this drawing, and I spent a lot of the time trying to get the perspective of the building right.

The third drawing was a drawing where we drew the scene through 3 of the words we had chosen from the text read earlier in the day. My three words were:

Negotiate

Local social networks

'Meanwhile'

We then turned these words into verbs, and my words became:

To argue

To connect

To withstand

I found it difficult to do this, as my words weren't easy to draw. I tried to emphasise parts of the scene that corresponded to these words, such as the 'arguing' between the organic trees and bushes in the courtyard with the 'coldness' of the building.

Using inspiration from 'Space is Always Political' by Melanie Dodd, my group created a series of interconnected movements. The movements were also heavily influenced by our verbs, which we used to interact with each other. My verbs were to argue, to connect and to withstand. Me, Sina and Abdul attempted an argument, at the beginning of the video, where I was trying to get through and they were blocking my path.