SOPHIE PACELKO

The warehouse location is Planet Rock, an indoor rock climbing gym in Ann Arbor, Michigan. I chose this space as it houses the juxtaposition of recreating a natural, outdoor activity into an indoor space comprised of man-made materials.
The building is comprised of a large scaffolding system with multiple ventilation systems and piping, facilitating the movement of air, water and chalk. The walls are white panels and the ceiling is metal.

When modeling the space, I focused on one half of the building. This space is comprised of the bouldering section, a couple of coaching rooms, and an upstairs training area. I removed the bouldering walls and pads to show the open floor plan with the overhanging loft. The steel scaffolding and lighting runs east to west while being balanced by piping running perpendicular.
The entrance to the space is in a lower section with an air duct above and a toilet on the left.

This diagram pulls apart the buildings’ materials and objects and creates a sheared kit-of-parts. Materials used include glass, steel, concrete, paint, and other metals while the objects laid out show various pipes, HVAC system, doors, lights, and bulbs.

The Actor-Network Theory Map explores two topics; outdoor stuff and construction stuff. As the space is a rock climbing gym, I narrowed my focus of the two contents onto the objects found in this space and its outdoor counterpart.

The ‘outdoor stuff’ tracks the way nature is commodified through manufacturing materials specifically to enjoy it. The map forks here, following the path of people, politics, and branding verus the path discussing the materials found in indoor and outdoor climbing. Here, I focused on materials that could be correlated into the construction of the facility and the necessary objects to participate.

On the other end of the ANT map, ‘construction stuff’ is examined. Here, I focused the construction materials of the warehouse and equipment to recreate an indoor facility. The map tracks the environmental effects of these objects as they are mined, produced, and manufactured as well as possible site restoration.
To connect the two maps, I created an impact bar where each category is grouped into their respective places.

This diagrammatic sequence shows the unfolding layers of the outdoor and construction objects, shelving, and density. The building is set in 3 spaces; upstairs, the mining site, and downstairs. The left side component, consisting of the upstairs and downstairs is the natural site while the right side is the mining site that is comprised of four individual rooms. The areas in focus are highlighted with a gray box, followed by a focus on shelving and then objects. As my categories were dense and shelved, I focused on creating dense structures with a repetitive fill of objects while building shelves into the model.

This plan video tracks movement through the warehouse, beginning at the Rock Wall. This wall serves as the juxtaposition for the project; creating a stark difference between the natural environment that is recreated internally for an indoor climbing experience. As the video pans, it highlights outdoor objects needed for climbing. It then transitions into the smoke stack, indicating the beginning of the mining portion of the project. As it moves downstairs, the dark space is brought into view. This space was created by modeling a rock climbing wall from Planet Rock, inverting it and then cutting out areas for scaffolding and shelving to fit in. The closed, dark space is an indication of density.
Upon entering the spaces, that are grouped by material, objects are positioned in a repetitive sequence, again, highlighting density. These objects correlate to one of four construction categories, plastic, wood, concrete and steel. These sites show a mining of resources, where the objects used for climbing are directly pulled from the source.
The plan continues down the hallway where it once again enters the rock wall, however, this time at the base. This area shows a green plastic wall partition that enhances the separation of viewer to nature, creating a more deliberate path to purchase commodities that are harming the environment at record rates.

The parallex flows along the large rock wall. As it pans across, opacity is applied allowing the viewer to visualize what is on the inside of the walls. At the top of the moving image is a diagram showing the location the changing layers are located. The long rows show the 12 areas that are transitioned between throughout the parallex, the black horizontal bars correlate with the space that is changing, and the white columns delineate a timeline. The parallex transitions from left to right showing the objects in their respective spaces from back to front.

The space is not only differentiated by alignment of materials, but also colors. As the transition enters the mining site, the structure moves away from the white material that was present in the initial structure into a dark marble materal. The mining site is structured to observe the materials inside, creating an interactive space to explore.
These images show an isometric view and a plan that is seen in the parallex. Once going inside the building, the hallway is pictured followed by an image of the strong juxtaposition between dark and light. The other images show built-in shelving and the dense alignment of outdoor objects.