The project’s initiation ran through the translation of the phrase, “The stair to there, the stair to nowhere” into a physical object of no particular given scale. As a means to understand and distinguish conceptually the ‘there’ and ‘nowhere’, the project takes the position in distinguishing the distinctions between what is place vs. what is nonplace. Place is identified through the employment of activity while “non-place” is defined through its anonymity when uninhabited, only inhabited by the memory of its existence. The mechanism of the stair begins to define or delineate both types or categories of ‘place’. In order to do so, the stair is a means of connection as well as a means of breakage. The volume is organized by its split interior in which it is composed of 5 separate joints that each interlock as well as deploy away from one another. Assembled completely, the joints create a purely defined volume and the stairs that connect them remain unseen, inaccessible, and exist under the category of “nonplace”. As these joints slide apart from one another and are removed, slivers of space appear with the shifting stair-like interior. This is the configuration of place. The duality of how place is defined in the model is determined by the interaction between each monolithic joint piece.
MODEL AND MATERIAL EXPLORATIONS
