Asma Chaudhary

AVT 620-001

Professor Mark Cooley

Spring 2010 Final Project

Investigating the Role of Museum and Gallery Spaces in Regards to a Collaborative Outdoor Installation:
“The Passive Solar Room”

Groundbreaking: Summer 2010
Implementation/Cultivation: Fall 2010 with AgriART course

Through an artistic collaboration featuring furniture designer Asma Chaudhary as well as fellow artists, landscape designer Olivier Giron, and shadow puppetmaster Amir Shahlan Amiruddin, an eco-friendly outdoor installation will occur in fall 2010 on the Fairfax campus of George Mason University. This community project has been titled, “The Passive Solar Room,” which will encompass the small patch of woods outside of the School of Art Building and feature artworks from other graduate and undergraduate students.

The project stemmed from a conversation on how to better incorporate the surrounding Fairfax community with the art and design projects of Mason’s students while providing an environment that nourished its users and viewers. By implementing large bands of translucent, stretchable fabric, the students will delegate a space for which artmaking will occur and also be showcased to the public. An inspiration for the project came from fabric artist Ernesto Neto who defies gravity by filling his fabric forms with various materials like sand and stones. In addition, Neto has displayed his large-scale installations throughout the world, specifically at the Museum of Modern Art (MOMA) in New York City.

By using this particular space on campus, there is a high traffic flow of students and members of the Mason community who walk through, around, and drive by this wooded area. This encourages more interaction between the natural environment and the people around it. Furthermore, this space invites more opportunities for eco-friendly behavior and learning tutorials for other course studies such as sustainability, engineering, as well as other science and aesthetic applications.

The Passive Solar Room space will serve several purposes such as a meeting ground for students in between classes and lectures. Due to current landscape priorities and construction projects on Mason’s Fairfax campus, there is no outdoor space available around the School of Art building for art students to mingle and collaborate on projects while engaging with nature.

By involving both undergraduate and graduate students from the upcoming fall 2010 AgriART class, students will understand the importance of the space as an experimental studio, gallery space, and edible vegetable garden. With having the ground plane remain in a natural state, the overall feel of the space will remain beautiful while surrounding plants and shrubbery flourish. Furthermore, natural compost will be added and the edible plants will be watered by a system of rainwater reclamation set up to collect water and store it until needed. The artists will strive as much as possible to collect and reuse found and recycled materials.

Within the room area itself, the exterior walls will serve as projection space, which will be made of the translucent, white fabric, which will cause an exciting magnification of light throughout the woods. In addition, throughout the day, since the sun sits at different points in the sky, it will project light onto a different side of the room, aided by mirrors that can be adjusted for the different seasons. The west side of the room will be illuminated at 0900 in the morning, the north side at 1200 at mid-day, the east side at 1500 in the early afternoon, and the south side will be illuminated at 1800 towards the evening. By having this solar spatial arrangement, this will allow the space to alter with the change of light and wind depending on the sun, weather, and passing of time.

Proposed Materials:

• Steel Frame (the main structure)
• Translucent material (fabric)
• Cistern to harvest rainwater
• Hardware and material to attach to trees to absorb rainwater
• Wood for the walkway (possibly from found wooden pallets)
• Edible and low-maintenance plant material (ferns, moss, etc.)
• Metal stand for mirror
• Reflective, glass mirrors to direct sunlight.
• Funds needed: as much as possible and community involvement

An example of an artwork for display would be from digital artist Amir Amiruddin who will project his Malaysian shadow puppets onto the large, fabric screens. In doing so, his large black cutouts will come to life to the general public located outside of the woods. Amir’s work focuses on the rapid urbanization of simple villages in Malaysia that have now become towering industrial hubs and have removed natural landscapes from view. This is a great collaborative for Amir because his shadows are often in darker tones such as black and brown and this will have a high contrast against the white, translucent fabric.

By investigating ideas set forth by authors Carol Duncan and Alan Wallach in their essay titled, “The Museum of Modern Art as Late Capitalist Ritual: An Iconographic Analysis,” the observer of a museum or gallery space acknowledges that these spaces serve as areas of “ceremonial monuments” due to their architecture and blueprint layout. Both authors call the difference between the doors of the MOMA and the street side as “glass membranes” back into reality. By applying this concept to the Passive Solar Room, the space may serve as a “fabric membrane” between the natural environment and the manmade sculptures manufactured nearby at the School of Art building.

Rather than provide palatial steps and temple-like façades, the collaborative group wants to encourage students and the Mason community to enter the space on unobtrusive moss and low-maintenance plants. This way, the newly-generated space is enhancing the area and without harming the wildlife. In comparison, authors Duncan and Wallach mention that the shape of the MOMA itself is in a Bauhaus-style similar to the large businesses located in the area with its simple and clean exterior walls since its post-World War II construction. The concept for the Passive Solar Room is to also adapt to the natural landscape to reflect how the space is being used.