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While researching the history of Green Hall and the surrounding landscape, I came upon reproductions of architectural drawings by Deborah Berke’s firm for the building’s 1999 redesign. I was struck by how abstract the representation of some plantings and notes were amid the specificity of the drawings’ primarily geometric forms. Though this abstraction is likely common practice — as a site’s socio-environmental and landscaping are an afterthought on many urban design projects — I found parallels in strings of research on maps and topography, the porousness of surfaces and a̲g̲e̲n̲c̲y̲ of living m̲a̲t̲e̲r̲i̲a̲l̲s, d̲e̲c̲o̲n̲s̲t̲r̲u̲c̲t̲i̲n̲g̲ human/n̲a̲t̲u̲r̲e̲ binaries through i̲n̲t̲e̲r̲s̲p̲e̲c̲i̲e̲s̲ ̲i̲n̲t̲e̲r̲f̲a̲c̲e̲s, multiplicity, d̲e̲e̲p̲ ̲t̲i̲m̲e̲ and artifacts of environmental histories.  

          

                                              

Location of Existing seeks to subvert forms utilized in urban planning by flipping the foreground and background from the built to the grown. Through site-specific installation, drawings and their placement build upon aspects of the surrounding environment’s conditions and history to offer a new view into everyday spaces. Reframing, deconstructing, perforating, Location of Existing weaves a loose narrative between the speculative and the real, architectural and archaeological, and the growth and decay of our built environment.

    Location of Existing
    2021
    Green Hall, Yale School of Art, New Haven, CT
    Laser print on water soluble paper
    Produced with Jeemin Shim
    Sources include architectural drawings by Deborah Berke, writing by Renee Gladman, and a lecture by Maren Karlson

ᴸᵃˢᵗ ᵘᵖᵈᵃᵗᵉᵈ ¹² ᴶᵘˡʸ, ²⁰²⁴