project 1- walgreen drama center

walgreen drama center

The inspiration for this project came from walking through the Walgreen Drama Center and noticing the very enclosed space of the second floor hallway. As I was walking down the hall thinking about this project, I noticed there were a plethora of benches lining the pathway that seemed to look at nothing. The architect created a space in this hallway that is small, cramped, and timeless, all of which I consider to be negative things. I examined the rest of the building and found that the architects had all the sitting people facing the wall or the interior of the building; you are forced to be in this building and be present no matter the time. I think it is also interesting to experiment with time in the sense that when time passes, the structure and the picture one is looking at is always the same. The two videos that are overlapped are taken at different times, one in the morning around 11 am and the other around 8 pm. With the overlapping videos I am showing that although time changes, the space doesn’t and one doesn’t notice the change in time. The simplicity of a lot of the shots is meant to challenge the viewer to question the architectural choices made in this building as well. I am experimenting and questioning Loos’s idea of ornamentation. He claims that it is slowing society down and only the most primal peoples have ornamentation, but I found when I was sitting in these seats for an extended period of time, I was bored. If there were more ornamentation, art, or something of that kind, maybe the seats would be more inviting to sit in. If I was to investigate time in an older chapel and looked at each seat and what its purpose was, I’m sure the things in my shots would create artistic, compositional pieces in and of themselves. If I were to do this project again, I would pick something in an opposing style to the Walgreen Drama Center and try to focus on the same topic. In conclusion, I am challenging the architect’s decision in regards to ornamentation, feeling the change in time, and the tight enclosure of the space of the second floor hallway.