DEANNA BARIS
My room is located on the second floor of a two-story townhouse and accessed through a 30” door (CMR/IRC 1010.1). One wall is lined with a built-in bookshelf and closet that can be partially obscured from view by two sliding doors. A dresser (Ikea) and bedside table (Target) provide additional storage. The sleeping area is composed of a bed frame (secondhand from Jules Yun) and mattress (Sealy). A 5’-6” x 2’-4” window (CMR/IRC 1204.1) looks out onto a neighborhood park, providing natural light and improving air flow. Underneath the window, there is an AC unit (General Electric) built into the wall. In the corner, a desk (Ikea) and rolling chair (Ikea) function as a work space.
The built-in bookshelf holds a collection of books, as well as a handheld vacuum (Black + Decker), a candle (Trader Joe’s), and a set of Bananagrams (Bananagrams). The space underneath is used to store large art equipment such as a portable easel (Studio Designs) and blank canvases (Blick). Inside the closet, there is storage for clothes, sporting equipment, and linens. The floor of the closet contains a drying rack (Target), ironing board (secondhand from Caroline Hegg), and a backpack (North Face).
This actor-network map traces actors and processes involved in the material transfers of a secondhand Samsung monitor. It tracks the flow of gift-giving from the monitor’s original owner to myself, as well as the flow by which I passed my old monitor on to a new owner. The path of materials obtained, manufactured into a product, and sold by Samsung is also displayed. In order for the monitor to function, it requires electricity. Electricity is supplied through Eversource, a regional utility company with a history of aggressive political lobbying against renewable energy. However, Eversource also participates in the Cambridge Community Electricity Program, in which the city sources renewable energy and Eversource delivers that energy to residents. These actors range from interpersonal to corporate and government scale, and from the local to the global.
The organizational diagram is composed of activity zones and circulation for the variety of activities that occur in this bedroom other than sleeping. Two rectangles highlight zones of activity, with red representing work space and lavender for dressing. Air flow moves through the room from the door and window along the dashed brown line. The actions required for laundry – folding, drying, storage – occur along the dotted purple line. The blue arrow represents space used for other movement such as exercise and dancing.
This graphic composition is composed of five lines. The dressing zone becomes a dashed line with circular fills at two opposite corners, and the work zone expands into a dashed line of varying thicknesses with overlapping corners. The blue active movement line thickens and adds circular volume at each node to intersect with both the work and dress zones. Air flow circulation forms a dotted line of expanding and contracting radii. The laundry line breaks into dashed squares at alternating intervals.
The three-dimensional model plays with the linear rigidity of grids by experimenting with skew and subtraction. Along the central intersection between the two core grids, the movement axis carves a negative space out of the work zone on the left and shapes a positive cylindrical volume on the right. Rectangular columns along the laundry line are rotated horizontally, with some subtracted out of the cylinder and intersecting grid lines. The collection of columns shaping the air flow line are subtracted at some of the overlaps to create more columns and break up the massing.
This view shows horizontal movement through the composition and emphasizes the changing spatial rhythm. The intersection of the airflow columns creates the most complex layer, contrasting with some of the other simpler and denser sections. In the left corner, one piece of the shape from the original work zone is copied and rotated vertically, creating vertical volume and maintaining the rectangular shape of the original room. Inside the dress zone, there are rectangular columns rotated to lie on the ground. Throughout the composition, components are moved up along the Z-axis and left floating.
Moving from top to bottom, the variety of internal positive and negative spaces are exposed. The large cylindrical volume on the right is hollowed out by some, but not all, of its intersecting forms. Along the column lines formed by the air flow and laundry lines, some of the shapes are subtracted out with Boolean differences. However, the negative space still functions to continue the column path.