Bodies in Space

K e v i n V a n M e t e r

A Portfolio of Creative Works

2012 — Initial Layout

Lighthouse Montessori Preschool opened in January, 2012. From that point on I have managed development of the backyard. We are transforming this grassy patch into a rich environment for children’s play, work, and engagement with natural process.

Outdoor Classroom(s): Lighthouse Montessori

2014 — Current Layout

Design ProcessObserve for problems and possibilities. Generate and Collect ideas from the community. Discuss. Plan. Build with everyone’s help. Observe...

Plan for Future Development

(1) offers a brief respite from movement and visual access to the inside classroom; (2) is an internally oriented space for small groups; (3) is a playful work space; (4) is an enclosing respite from open space; the seat at (5) is a hidden retreat; (6) is a more sedentary work space; down the hill (7) is seclusion and the tactile stimulation of sand; the climbing platform at (8) offers seclusion and visual access.

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The central channel invites rapid movement and many bodies. Tangential pathways eddy into spaces distinguished by their particular visual and ambulatory access:

Circulation

Visual AccessMultiple levels, semi-transparent plant screens, and occasional roofs differentiate spaces along gradients of visual accessibility. Access to the sky, the horizontal, and the indoor classroom define private and public space.

Section Elevation of Future Development —West

Sketches

Observations on space

The invisible: life—inside these windows, down the street, a season ahead. People walk out of sight, walk indoors, leaves bud and unfurl. Buildings come and go. In twenty years the trees will have grown. Buildings age and are born. Time, in the static of a picture frame, in the grandeur of a landscape... Two hundred years?

The leaf reaches toward you. It’s not trying to impress. The strong, sensual ribs curl like fingers at leisure. A few careless stains do not interfere. Its skin is ancient,textured and radiant in the light. Nearly translucent; its veins pop. It beckons you to its inner self. You seek the intimacy of darkness and confinement.

These openings are mere tricks of light and shadow. They pull you in hard and fast then they run aground. But their circumferences are interesting. I forget the dead-end and am lost in the intricacy of unraveling them. Following this line out into the light…

What is it? My eyes cannot rest. Ice spikes on a gridded abstraction. The tidy lines of brick and the comfortable billow of a tree-in-the-distance are not enough to soothe me. This disorientation is appalling and fascinating. I cannot rest here.

MusicListen to me play St. James Infirmary here

Photograph by Jean Fong

DanceWatch me dance in a Shook Twins music video

Photograph by Lori Shook

Dear Body

1My body is unaccustomed to stillness.It is sustained by movementand discourages my attempts to sit still like Siddhartha. I think of Odysseus who favored ropes over discipline when securing his body against the beauty and the terror of his sirens. I think of Jesus who preached the narrow path of paradise that courses through our lives, a path the mind walks through time and I wonder if your weight, dear body, tips the scales on that balancing act.

motionless pressing clay on a spinning wheel;dancing and forgetting.We live leaning into our deathinseparable.

2One timewe ran a path through woodsconsciousness dissipated and left our breath,the sensation of you coursing over the land, our visionof the path ahead.

Bodies in Space: A Portfolio of Creative WorksKevin Van Meter, 2014For admission to MLA 1, Fall 2015UW College of Built Environments