CATALOGING AND PROTOTYPING BAROQUE EFFECTS
 
My project Cataloging and Prototyping Baroque Effects organizes my architectural study of Rome as a process of inquiry and action. Motivated by questions of what architecture can do (effects) and how it does it (strategies and techniques), this process draws on observation, translation, and testing as a means to model both real and alternative realties. 
 
CATALOGING
The cataloging part of my project is based on my own observations of the city, parsing the constructed environment into architectural fragments and spatial hybrids outside of familiar typologies. By estranging these components from their assumed roles and histories, a new understanding of their particular powers and effects emerges. Whether perceptual, organizational, formal, or programmatic, these effects are studied in relation to the components, operations, and techniques that produce the individual example as well as more general loose-fit model which can be adapted to other sites and contexts. The format of the catalog, where each study has a descriptive text, a spatial drawing, and a series of diagrams, provides a basis of consistency for an otherwise varied and multi-scalar collection. Blending analytical documentation with imaginative speculation, the catalog is in pursuit of possible worlds through critical inquiry into our natural and constructed ones.
 

Cataloging and Transforming


Cataloging and Transforming


 
PROTOTYPING
My cataloging efforts are brought to bear on the production of physical things to be introduced to the world. The catalog becomes a tool for design, digital modeling and physical prototyping at a variety of scales furnish testable structures and relationships. Both anticipated and unexpected effects — perceptual, organizational, programmatic — can be evaluated in terms of effectiveness, and intermediate results feed back into the design process. Current prototypes include:
  1. 1. Too-large furniture-objects
  2. 2. Too-small room-objects
  3. 3. Untethered roof/ceiling-objects
  4.  

  5. Prototype: Balloon Domes


  6. Prototype: Balloon Domes


 
BAROQUE / EFFECTS
The Baroque provides an entry for my studies in Rome. Baroque strategies for activating the senses (individual scale), organizing bodies in space (architectural to urban scale), and orchestrating flows in the city (urban and infrastructural scale) provide a wealth of material for study, as does the multitude of highly-developed techniques. On a more abstract level, the Baroque process of extreme transformation through continuous variation guides my own design processes. When doggedly pursued, one meticulous and plausible step at a time, the consequences of an idea or design decision lead to surprising but rigorous results. End-game transformations can alienate everyday objects, our relationships to them, and our understandings of their capacities and limitations. Under this rubric, the object of architecture is ambiguous, and while possessing specific characteristics and qualities, has open-ended applications and implied rather than expected utility. These processes of ideation and prototyping are in pursuit of what architecture can do, not in terms of prescribed functionality, but as a general condition of soliciting engagement. 
 

Prototype: Tavolone (project with Jesse LeCavalier)


Prototype: Public Facility (project with Jesse LeCavalier and the help of David Rubin)


Prototype: Public Facility (project with Jesse LeCavalier and the help of David Rubin)


BIO

Angela Co is an architect and an educator. She is the principal of Studio Co, a design practice concerned with the pursuit of ideas and their consequences, with unlikely but rigorous results. Her research into speculative architectural artifacts and their effects on space, bodies, and perception has been supported by the MacDowell Colony (Peterborogh, NH), the Festival of Lively Architecture (Montpellier, FR), and the Eyebeam Institute of Art + Technology (New York, NY).  Outside of Studio Co, she has worked with Bernard Tschumi Architects, Asymptote Architecture, and Atema Architecture. Co holds a MA degree in Architecture from Columbia University’s GSAPP, where she was awarded an Honorary Design Award and the Loewenfish Memorial Prize for Design Excellence, and dual Bachelor degrees in Architecture and Computer Science from the University of Pennsylvania. She has taught Design at Columbia University, at the University of Pennsylvania, and she is currently an Assistant Professor at the University of Kentucky. 

Back to Index