ABBY SCHWAB

table of contents.1.1 visual communications

2.1 design-build .2 sketch with wood

3.1 eno hammock stands .2 boathouse .3 artist’s residence .4 faculty spa .5 sustainability center

4.1 graffiti .2 plop architecture

5.1 graffiti booklet .2 331 booklet

6.1 various oddities

During my freshman year, I was required to take a Visual Communications course that focused on the skill of hand-drawing. Right: A final drawing of the Weissenhoffsiedlung Apartments in Stuttgart. Bottom: Villa Stein by Le Corbusier. Next page: Hand-drawing of Vasari’s Uffizi in Florence.

VISUAL COMMUNICATIONS

DESIGN/BUILD

Designed for the Center for Sustainability on the Penn State University Park campus, this structure was built to accomodate groups and guests visiting the gardens. Planned, designed, and constructed by myself and fifteen other students in my first-year Architecture Studio course, the structure included poured concrete footings, a brick patio (laid by hand), and a water collection system tied to the metal roofing (not pictured).

SKETCH WITH WOOD

This project, required by a Materials class, provided groups with a kit of wood and bolts to build a structure of our choosing. For our project, we designed new connections (pictured here on the obtuse angles of the ship) and built a working pirate ship ride. The structure allowed the ship to swing freely when pushed.

In conjuction with Eagles Nest Outfitters, or ENO, and a Digital Fabrication course, this structure was designed as a solution to group hammock lounging. The design, based on a set of poles and connectors, needed to be extremely portable but also sturdy enough to support the weight of the users. The structure also had the ability to congregate and accomodate large groups.

ENO

BOATHOUSE

Designed for the Penn State Crew Team, this boathouse needed to accomodate the team locker rooms, a team lounge, and housing for the 30ft. team boats. The design was based on the dual curves of waves created during the rowing motion of the crew team.

To provide housing for artists in the State College area, this home was designed using old shipping containers and structural steel beams. The artist in this residence, a destructivist artist, required an industrial design aesthetic to match his work. The structure uses thick glass to emphasize circulation and openness, the home.

ARTIST’S RESIDENCE

Based near Washington Square Park in New York City, this project was to design a faculty spa for the professors of New York University. In conjunction with the National Concrete Masonry Association, my design focused on a combination of concrete fiber panels and the use of glass to bring light into lounging and exercise areas.

FACULTY SPA

Centered in the Philadelphia Naval Yard, this project required a design for a Sustainability Education Center. My design focused on social sustainability, and featured a vast, open public space flanked by two brick corridors of offices and classrooms.

SUSTAINABILITY CENTER

Born out of the anger and roughness of disadvantaged communities in New York City and Los Angeles, graffiti and street art are now widely accepted by the public as viable artistic expressions. Artists publicly display their work without fear of repression, simply because they know too well that their art pales in comparison to strength of the larger public voice. Furthermore, with the advent and growth of the internet, texting, Twitter, Facebook, and other forms of instant communication, this style of art, with a personality described as “‘in your face’, anti-authoritarian, irreverent, irrepressible, wise, ironic, a voice for the powerless and the have-nots” has the potential “to spread like wildfire”.

And, to an extent, the contemporary art world has accepted the legitimacy of this art as well. With modern “street art” and “urban art” paintings selling for upwards of half a million dollars in today’s market, many art critics consider the graffiti and street art scenes to be the biggest art movements since the Pop Art movement of the 1960s (which is impressive, considering graffiti is still illegal in most states and countries throughout the world).

OWN THE WALLS

A Study of the Graffiti and Street Art Movements Abby Schwab (2011)

Despite worldwide growth and interaction, our news cycles today are still filled with stories about major global debts, increases in job loss and homelessness, and antigovernment protests throughout the world. Clearly, with flourishing political movements popping up in the United States, Egypt, Russia, and China, to name a few, global resentment towards the greater governmental, social, and economic powers throughout the world has grown substantially.No wonder there has been such a growth in graffiti and street art in the past twenty years.

Furthermore, the influences of graffiti and street art stretch much farther than just the art world. In fact, graffiti and street art have impacted everything from sports to photography and film to dance, music, and fashion. With its political undertones, street art now impacts governmental policy on a regular basis and allows young people to easily access political information. Finally, with its roots tracing back to disadvantaged New York neighborhoods and failed housing experiments, graffiti has greatly influenced urban planning, and, of course, architecture.

Some may say that graffiti and street art allow vandals to get away with destroying public property. Some may say that graffiti and street art taint the urban landscape and visually destroy our cities.

However, even those graffiti writers without the strongest artistic motives show the spirit of graffiti art.

A poster, created by street artist Jenny Holzer in the early 1980s, reads:“You think I don’t know what’s going on. You think I’m afraid to react. The joke’s on you... I’ve been planning while you’re playing. I’ve been saving while you’re spending. The

game is almost over so it’s time you acknowledge me. Do you want to fall not ever knowing who took you?” This exemplifies the fiery spirit of the graffiti movement.

And, as Henry Chalfant, famed photographer and documenter of the underground culture of New York reminds us,

“Own the walls that surround you!”

This style of art, with a personality described as ‘in your face’, anti-authoritarian, irreverent, irrepressible, wise, ironic, a voice for the powerless and the have-nots, has the potential to spread like wildfire.

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GRAFFITI

In the 1960s, the art world witnessed a number of artists rising up against what they viewed as an injustice and lack of meaning in public art. These artists, dubbing themselves part of the “plop art” movement, called for the removal of sculptures from public squares and plazas, arguing that the artwork lacked site specificity and meaning and acted merely as decorations for the major corporations in the skyscrapers towering over them. Without meaning, they said, the sculptors sold off their artwork and “plopped” them down wherever they chose... Ironically, the Architecture world faced a similar set of arguments as those

for and against the plop art movement... All of these movements discussed whether buildings should or should not respond to their environment or act on their own as individual pieces of artwork.

But with the recent creation of the Deconstructivist and Pop Architecture movements, buildings have taken on lives of their own, as seen in the works of Frank Gehry, Zaha Hadid, Daniel Libeskind and many other well-known architects. Although their projects “test the boundaries of design” as “brave explorations, kinks and all”, these architects, in an attempt to become iconic, focus almost solely on form. However, Architecture is not only art, just as it is not mere structure and functionality. Whether “form follows function” or “function follows form” does not determine “good” architecture. Good architecture exists within the tension between form and function, as if function and form work in tandem with each other. As Robert Venturi stated, “Architecture is form and substance – abstract and concrete… These oscillating relationships, complex and contradictory, are the source of the ambiguity and tension characteristic to the medium of architecture”. Because function and form should not come

FORM vs. FUNCTION“Plop Architecture” and The Failures of Contemporary Architecture

Abby Schwab (2012)

separately, many of the buildings constructed within this purely artistic mindset have faced a multitude of structural and functional issues.

Previous arguments in Architectural theory focused on the function of ornament and the benefits of utilitarian design. Today, in a strange twist on “less is more” and “wit, ornament, and reference”, contemporary

architects subscribe to a theory that ‘permit[s] the architect to be ‘highly selective in determining which problems [he wants] to solve,’” not “how the problems should be solved’” (Venturi 24). If an architect chooses not to address the site or users of the building, his or her theoretical beliefs deem it permissible, simply because the project focuses not on site specification or user

interaction but the form of the building itself. Architecture today seems focused on an argument of form and artistic expression versus functionality, as if one could exist without the other. However, form and function cannot survive separately and buildings that focus on only one side of the argument will not and do not last very long. Without recognizing this tension and building within it, contemporary architecture, while seemingly iconic, will not last. If we do not demand respect and consideration for the ambiguity within this profession, Architecture will exist just as the sculptures of the plop art movement did: in the middle of a public plaza surrounded by disapproval, except from those above it.

This desperate need to create contemporary iconic buildings threatens the future of Architecture because it only recognizes the artistic expression of the building instead of dealing with the technical issues and essential function of its construction.

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PLOP ARCHITECTURE

This booklet was designed to convey the site specifications for the Faculty Spa project near Washington Square Park. The color scheme was based on the color of the taxis in New York, and the layout was designed to fit in a strict grid system, much like the area where our site was located.

NCMA BOOKLET

This booklet was created to show the site specifications for the Sustainability Center at the Philadelphia Naval Yard. Using an analogous color scheme focused on the “green” in sustainability, this booklet featured historical site information, geographical and climate conditions, LEED ratings and building sustainability options, and precedence for green design. The booklet was also formatted to fit to an 11”x17” page size.

331 BOOKLET

This booklet was designed to accompany my thesis entitled “Own The Walls” about the growth of graffiti and street art in modern society. It features full spread images as well as graphic comparisons between the styles found in graffiti and street art.

GRAFFITI BOOKLET

These photos were part of a set of images honored by Morpholio and the International Center for Photography as an Honor Award winner in the 2012 Eyetime Competition under the Emerging Talent subsection. These photos were chosen to show the beauty of urban decay in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. They were taken in an abandoned Cadillac dealership currently under renovation.

GRAFFITI BOOKLET VARIOUS ODDITIES