You may be asking me, ‘What’s studio like in New York, Angela?’ Well, dear reader, I’ve got to say my studio thus far has been full of writings, feelings, and introspection. Gabriel Smith and Thomas Phifer of Thomas Phifer & Partners are the dynamic duo orchestrating this studio. We have been engaged to build a chapel in Greenwich Village. The students stand divided: half of us at the intersection of Hudson and Bleecker Streets, and the others at Washington and Charles Streets on the west side of Manhattan. We started off with an exploration of our site—one that was not totally conventional but rooted in humanistic qualities; feeling, sense, and memory.
We were subsequently prompted to create embodiments of the site—expressions of the site in architectural terms. We went from the simplest components which comprise architecture, to the most complex in terms of spatial and material qualities. We started with defining ‘surface,’ then moved to ‘aperture,’ and we have just finished creating ‘a room.’
All the while, we’ve been encouraged to work back and forth between synthesis and introspection through writing. Never before have I written so much poetry, reductive and concise linguistic which seek to embody a feeling or place. Neither have we been pushed to all ends of the spectrum with our research and investigative stages. With all these studies under our belts, we’re well equipped to move into the schematic stages of our chapels.
