Lousiana

Lousiana is the only state in the U.S. with political subdivisions called parishes, which are equal to counties. Jefferson Parish is the largest.

South Louisiana has mostly alluvial land: low swamps, marsh, beaches and barrier islands. These are mostly near the Gulf Of Mexico, while North Louisiana has higher land and hills. Driskill Mountain is the highest point in the state at only 535 feet above sea level.

This is an aerial view of some of Louisiana's wetlands.

The Southern coast of Louisiana is among the fastest disappearing areas in the world as it loses about 30 football fields every day. Hurricanes contribute to this problem when they come through and cause the waters to rise.

Here is a diagram of the storm tracks through Louisiana. As you can see, it is prone to have many hurricanes come through:

To see the legend go to http://www.csc.noaa.gov/hez_tool/states/louisiana.html

This map shows important areas of LA and some of the natural resources:

There are a few quarantine areas in the state of Louisiana and they are in the Baton Rouge and New Orleans area.

My Aggregating

[a] OPERATIVE WORD

Derived from the previous two assignments and our midterm discussions, define an operative word that describes your concept/strategy. This word will be the syntax for you to develop a technique for embedding difference, variation, activity and gradation into the Quarantine Unit. Begin this assignment by drawing this word as a vector or series of vectors: lines, polylines, curves, or splines

Relationships

[b] OPERATIVE TOOLS

After illustrating your concept as a vector element, you will need to aggregate this element in order to begin to visualize how your operative word can begin to transform spatial conditions. You are to choose one of the tools specified below to focus on in order develop a method for aggregation of these vectors. Choose your tool thoughtfully – the tool you choose for vector propagation should reflect and not conflict with the concepts of your operative word. The PT tools are paneling tools which is a plug-in for Rhino. Information on these tools can be found here in the Paneling Tools Manual.

Array Along a Path Polar Array PT Translate

Flow PT Rotation PT Mean

Blend PT Scale PT List

Offset PT Scale 1D PT Shuffle

close up:

progress

I've been working in sketchup on the form of my building. Here are a few images:

Frustration!

So, I've been struggling in trying to visualize the form and orientation of the space within and without my quarantine unit. In order to get some ideas, I will be diagramming the activities that are happening in the environment of my site. Hopefully, this will give me some good ideas...

Possible Diagrams:

Movement

1. workers loading ships
2. civilians
3. ships/boats
4. visitors of the quarantined
5. parking area/drivers

Existing/Quarantine Conditions:

1. the "fence"
2. parking lot
3. walkway
4. dock
5. working tools (vehicles, lifts)
6. the port (building)

Site Picking: Port of New Orleans

This week we will be focusing on strategically grafting your internal spatial concept for the quarantine unit to the site. The site is the territory surrounding the Erato Street Cruise Terminal at the Port ofNew Orleans. This is not a specific building footprint but rather a territory for you to investigate and determine where and how to situate a quarantine unit.

After investigating the site, I decided that the site would be best placed close to the terminal facing the river. So this is the site that I chose..

This is a distant view. The specific site chosen is from the corner of the existing building then extending to the river. It will act not only as a quarantine unit but as a sort of gate as well. There is a fence at the end of this walkway that acts as a form of security, so the unit will replace this fence connecting to the building for medical resources and the river for its water source. Here are some other pictures I took:

And these are some pictures I found online:

Informative Process Models

For this new project, we started with an assignment of forming ten models. This is one of the first five that I made. I based the form of it from the diagram of the activities and patterns I recorded earlier. This model was helpful because it was the first one that started to show the movement; it is a "vector model".

After talking to Seth about my first set of models, we both decided that I should begin focusing more on modeling the activities themselves (eating chips & salsa, sleeping, cooking, getting ready). Then I could begin to incorporate them into each other by connecting them somehow and distinguishing between public and private. This is the model I ended up with...

Lazaretto

The Gehry House

Diagrams

Project 2a: Research Pamphlet

This short assignment involves researching and diagramming revolutionary precedents for dwelling in relation to historical case studies for quarantine/containment/isolation. Select from a research matrix of architectural houses vs. quarantine facilities one house and one institution of quarantine/containment and diagram the differences or similarities between the two. Diagrams should analyze spatial organization, private versus public, isolation versus collective, solid versus void, thickness versus thinness, control versus freedom, light versus dark, etc.

The house that I chose from the list is The Gehry House and the lazar house is the Lazaretto Islet in Greece. Here is some of the research that I did...
After doing this research, I decided that I want to diagram the relationship of the building to its surrounding environment because it is different in most ways but similar in others, and control versus freedom will most likely be another diagram.

Diagram Exercise

Measure and map the daily rituals for human survival - eating/drinking/sleeping/defecating/communicating as an expression of energy/space/sound/weight/time. You are to rigorously measure and map two of your daily rituals related to human survival with two of the units of measure. This exercise is not meant to criticize anyone’s habits but rather should aid in the comprehension of human activities as they relate to energy, space and time.

Process

Ring around the Rosy...

Just remembered:

There is another interesting thing about the disaster agent called the plague.

Remember that nursery rhyme "Ring Around the Rosy"?

Definitely about the symptoms/death caused by the plague.

check it: http://www.scaryplace.com/ringaround.html

Early Days of Quarantine?

While reading the Black Death Website, found this diddy and thought it was pretty interesting:

on the attempts to cure or protect from the plague...

There were methods that did work. "Cities were hardest hit and tried to take measures to control an epidemic no one understood. In Milan, to take one of the most successful examples, city officials immediately walled up houses found to have the plague, isolating the healthy in them along with the sick. Venice took sophisticated and stringent quarantine and health measures, including isolating all incoming ships on a separate island. But people died anyway, though fewer in Milan and Venice than in cities that took no such measures. Pope Clement VI, living at Avignon, sat between two large fires to breath pure air. The plague bacillus actually is destroyed by heat, so this was one of the few truly effective measures taken." (Knox pg. 9)

Fact & Fiction

Some facts I have learned have been from this website: file:///Users/Rebecca/Desktop/Plague%20Facts.html

So, my Narrative begins to form:

Carrier fleas can infect cats in rural areas which causes outbreak of plague in the house.

After learning this, I've decided to focus my project on the relationship between the animal and the human:

• Pet owners are at high risk in this case. Their pet may be infected with carrier fleas without them even knowing.
• Children are also very vulnerable. Being young and unknowing of potential dangers, most children are fascinated by any animal and long to touch, pet or hold them. With infected animals, this poses a problem.

The most vulnerable parts of the body in these two situations are the hands (when petting the creature), the arms and the chest area(when holding an infected close to you). I have chosen my site accordingly. Now I will begin to model it. Wish me luck!

Quarantine and The Body

For the first part of this project: given a list of disastrous agents, we are told to choose and research only one. After this, we are to create a protective device that provides protection from the disastrous agent and allow for movement. Catch: While it provides protection it will also need to be worn to a ballroom dancing event.

This is some of the research I did on the plague.