MAMA
Type: Research
Location: Manhattan, NY
Status: Academic
Year: 2021
MAMA challenges our perception on how earthen materials function, how they look like, and how they can act as active political agents in contested grounds.
Read the book here:
https://issuu.com/sarahhejazin95/docs/final
Object 1: Capsule
Capsule is derived from intuition. Take a chunk of clay and you’ll find yourself making a ball out of it. Take a metal bar and you’ll stick it into that ball. The result is an object with a mechanism; a capsule that can be opened or closed.
Object 2: Carpet
Carpet is the result of accumulating many layers of clay and soil and reinforcing them with metal bars.
It is everchanging through people’s touch. When first placed on site, it acts as corridors that connect East (Harlem) to West (Columbia).
When transformed, it becomes a carpet that smoothens the blast scars of the Columbia University gym.
Object 3: Oyster
An object that mimics the qualities of a shell that is meant to open up and stand allowing me to see the messiness and the beauty of the void.
Placed gently beside the cliff to safeguard its rocks. It sheds a light on the architectural violence that happened to the cliff and allows people to examine the excavation marks closer. Its structure naturally provides a double interspecific amphitheater, one that is on the interior facing the cliff, and one on the roof of the shell, facing the pond and Harlem.
Object 4: Tower
A result of experimentation of movement through form. As we added rotating layers, the tower becomes like a spiral staircase that ascends, descends and moves but is also still.
As the tower registers 45 feet tall, it highlights the height of the proposed gym, and further accentuates the privilege of leveling up.
Facing the lafayette statue across the street, the tower questions the idea of monumentality. As we place this object closer to Harlem, but high enough for it to be seen from the Upper West Side, we see the tower as a form of resistance.