Karina Rac

Captured by the overwhelming sensation of fear and fascination, provoked by Kiefer’s towers, that rise high above the visitors tenuously, bearing a threat of collapse, I approached my final year project, exploring precariousness. 

Translating Kiefer’s towers, as a tectonic interpretation, into an initial installation, the towers were embodied through wire frames hanging from above. The wire frames as a skeleton of the body, holding up sparsely placed plaster sheets, portray a sense of loss, and decay, illustrating ephemerality. 

To document precariousness, a film offers moments of imbalance, which ultimately is controlled and equated, as the stone tower turns into an arch to resist the shaking, the hand holds on to the bar to counterbalance the stumbling feat, while the wire resists the wind through its flexibility.

Reflecting upon all, the film was reimagined in images assembled on long paper strips (mimicking film strips), that at last became part of the installation. The three hanging wire frames were completed with four film strips making up the seven towers of precariousness.

The site, the stage

The project is set in Dundee, a city to the north side of the River Tay. The prominent red sandstone building of the King’s theatre sits on Cowgate, the north-east entrance corner of the Inner City Ring-Road. As one enters on Cowgate looking down St. Andrew’s Street the embellished front of the Fly Tower emerges towering over the neighbouring building.

Turning the corner, the three facades of the Fly Tower take on a distinct appearance. A distinctiveness, which originated from former financial decision of only embellishing the street facade and was over the years enhanced by the different weathering conditions of the different orientations.

The elevations - untreated and neglected - throughout the years have collected signs of weathering, scars and patinas, imprints of use and misuse. Their surface - as all material surfaces - have become a material disposition, where memories of past events reside. On them as the signs of decay emerge one can read the passing of time and evoke a historic sensation, encountering a connection to the time of the past.

As mobility is a key contributor to wellbeing and active aging the program will embrace movement and dance. Given the height of the flight tower, the existing container offers a space well tailored for arial dancing.

Within a framework of a movement workshop Janice Parker, a choreographer foregrounded the importance of bodily experience and the city’s role within it. She introduced Richard Sennett’s Flesh and Stone and the desire to retrieve back from the contemporary smooth and pristine city to privilege messy, rough, and spontaneous. To privilege an open ended city, that offers places for unplanned encounters, giving agency to the inhabitants.

The project’s objective, (Janice’s book), Not Brittle, Not rigid, Not Fixed, dwells on these ideas through an experience moving along the Union Canal in Edinburgh. Through her logs, one becomes aware about how the body moves through the city, the necessity for change, and how there is a lost sense of embodied experience within our contemporary way of life.

The friction underneath our feet takes us out of the state of mind of distraction and into the state of mind, that is focused on embodied experience. As you focus on your feet you become part of your body.

Performance within precariousness is to design with an environmental thought. That is to acknowledge all the embodied labour and energy of matter, while also recognising the provisionality of the use of the space. Thus the aim is to retain the brick envelope, that possesses with a high embodied energy, and only make surgical incisions to create an adept space for the proposed use. The envelope will then be inhabited with a light temporary structure.

Inhabiting the envelope a light frame structure will allow to create spaces of varied dimensions. Within the frame, interrupting the grid sits a circular core, that allows the dancers to leap into the notion of dancing. Within the core opening create insides to the spaces at different levels creating a cinematic experience.

To elevate the buildings performance, while keeping the brick envelopes exposed, the project proposes a new insulated roof and the replacement of the old windows. As these are the elements,  responsible for the majority of heat loss the building with an already thick envelope and thermal mass will offer the public a more comfortable gathering space.

Within this gathering space the room of performance inhabits the frame, which is an insulated wooden box, that offers prominent comfort.

Proposed is additionally floorheating for both dance floors, and insulating curtains, which not just help with decrasing heat loss, but also allow the effortless conversion of the space.