Floating Between Borders … or, Perhaps, an Earth Without Borders?

By Diana Guo (MLA I ’22) and Mingjia Chen Duration: 19 min, 26 sec Curators:  Hermano Luz Rodrigues (MDes ADPD ’21), Birdia Zuo (MDes ADPD ’21), Stephanie Lee Yeung (MDes ADPD ’21)   During the COVID-19 pandemic, the galleries in Gund Hall have been turned ‘inside out,’ with exhibitions shown through a series of exterior projections on the building’s facade.

Scalar Shifts: Two recent filmic studies of Jewel Changi Airport and The Clark Art Institute

AUTUMN + SUMMER : The Clark Art Institute As a year-long collaboration with Reed Hilderbrand, this film explores the variable seasonal changes of the Clark Art Institute’s reconfigured 140-acre campus located in Williamstown, Massachusetts. With an intricate network of walking paths and grassland passages, the film stitches together intimate moments of engagement between the rolling pastoral landscape and highly considered design strategies by Reed Hilderbrand. Through a combination of subtle camera motions, the film studies the varying scalar and spatial relationships as defined by vegetation, natural phenomena, materiality, artificial and natural light and sequencing.  Directed by Helen Han, Instructor in Architecture Duration: 1 min, 39 sec + 1 min, 27 sec Client:  Reed Hilderbrand    Garden of Wonder “Garden of Wonder” is a joint effort with the international architecture practice Safdie Architects based in Somerville, Massachusetts. The film depicts the nature and generosity of public space within Jewel Changi Airport while also portraying its multilayered spatial moments – interweaving both intimate and grand scale conditions. It captures the choreography and curation of light, which encourages direct physical engagement while also expressing Architecture’s aspiration to connect viscerally.   The project was shot over the course of 4 days in September of 2019 during the official opening of Jewel Changi Airport.   Directed by Helen Han, Instructor in Architecture Duration: 4 min, 05 sec Client:  Safdie Architects, Jewel Changi Airport    During the COVID-19 pandemic, the galleries in Gund Hall have been turned ‘inside out,’ with exhibitions shown through a series of exterior projections on the building’s facade. Watch a short clip from each film’s screening below:

Enfillade 01: Richter Scale, an Homage to Hans

The Bauhaus film experimentalist Hans Richter (1888-1976) raised the flat superposition and kinetic orchestration of simple forms to a strange gestalt art form. We propose an homage of sorts to Hans, adopting Richter’s graphic vocabulary but playing with the implied interpretation of these elemental spatial forms. Instead of a depthless plane, we imagine the infinite depth of an enfilade corridor. Its sequences of solid and void appear graphical but, through their slippage and parallax, the limn the shadow and light of architecture. In a final geometric inversion, the linear corridor wraps into a warped panoramic projection, completing a strange perceptual ouroboros. Certain Measures (Andrew Witt & Tobias Nolte) Design Partners: Andrew Witt (Associate Professor of Practice, Architecture) and Tobias Nolte Lead Designer: Olivia Heung (MArch 2017)

2020 Election Day at Gund Hall

During voting cycles, Gund Hall transforms into the polling station for Ward-Precinct 7-3 in the City of Cambridge. Typically, the Harvard Graduate School of Design sets up a small area within Gund, and voting booths are packed tightly and the life of the school continues as Cambridge residents visit the building to cast their ballots. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, a different and safer voting environment was necessary, and so the GSD’s Building Services team worked with Harvard’s Environmental Health and Safety team to redesign how voting happens inside Gund. Now, voters enter Piper Auditorium from Cambridge Street—Piper has been outfitted with generously spaced voting booths—and exit Gund onto Quincy Street. A graphic loop projected onto the east façade of Gund calls all residents of Ward-Precinct 7-3 to vote in the November 3rd election, and doubles as a wayfinding device that instructs voters where they should enter and exit the building. This projection highlights Gund as the only Harvard building that doubles as a polling location, but it also makes public a new venue for exhibitions at the GSD. Typically, the doors of Gund are open to the public, and visitors view exhibitions featuring the cultural production of the school in the Druker Design Gallery. During the COVID-19 pandemic, the galleries in Gund will be turned ‘inside out,’ and exhibitions will be shown through a series of exterior projections on the building’s façade. This projection, located along Cambridge Street, is one of multiple surfaces on Gund that will be activated in the future weeks and months. Projection designed by Chad Kloepfer. Text by Dan Borelli. Installed by Dan Borelli, David Zimmerman-Stuart, and Joanna Vouriotis.