Memory and Loss Project
This Project was based in Cocodrie, LA- a community on the very edge of the Gulf of Mexico. Our class went down there for a day and canoed to our proposed site.
The land here is very different from anywhere I've ever been. It is basically marsh- no solid ground, except where it has been built up. The objective of this project is to build a center for Memory and Loss: remembering past hurricanes and their devastation and becoming more aware of the loss of the wetlands.
As a “chapel of nature,” my design is focused on the experience. The first experience, other than seeing the tallest structure off in the distance, is the trip there. The second is in the memory tower.
The visitor floats to the site by a pontoon ferry. This ferry is fairly small, about 16 sq. ft. The pontoons can be filled with water, adjusting how high the ferry sits on the water. The ferry is pulled down the channel by a diesel/electronic hybrid engine along a cable. Sitting low in the water, seeing the wetlands up close, and noticing the delicate life cycle all contribute to the “loss” experience.
Once the visitor gets to the dock on the other side, he is presented with buildings along an axis. The axis is a dirt path elevated about 8” above the rest of the “earth.” The buildings to the left and right are rectilinear and serve as bathrooms and mechanical spaces. The exterior of these buildings are made of reflective glass, exhibiting the environment around it. Of course, there are hurricane shutters to protect them during a storm. The buildings are arranged in a way to point toward the main feature, the memory chapel.
The memory chapel contrasts the auxiliary buildings by being elevated off of the ground and its rotund shape. A visitor can access the chapel by stairs. Once on the deck, the visitor must complete almost a full circle before going “inside.” Once inside, the visitor will look down a 8’ corrugated pipe into a “tomb.” Inside this tomb are the remnants of a house that was in the path of a hurricane. It sort of paints a scene, one that gets people’s attention and brings them back to when they discovered their house nearly demolished.
This scene isn’t lit very well as the only light is the light coming in from outside. However, the visitor can close the blinds and a whole other world is revealed. Camera obscura is a visual phenomenon where a lens is placed in a wall of a room, inverting the exterior scene and projecting it onto the opposite interior wall. The trick is having a blacked out room – the effect will not work on a room full of light. The corrugated pipe will have two (or 3) of these lenses on the corrugated pipe. When the visitor closes the blinds, the destruction scene is suddenly well lit by the inverted projections of the wetlands.
To download the PDF of this mini-set, click here.
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