Essay Part 1: The Form in Between

    
    As I read about Cooper Union’s history and Stan Allen’s development as a student there, I questioned whether, or to what extent, his “Theater of Production” thesis had an effect on the school moving forward. The recently built academic building, designed by Morphosis, does not seem to take into account Allen’s idea that “Form matters, but not so much the form of things, but the form between things.” Yet, to what scale can this thought apply to? Allen does not define the “things” he’s referring to. Could the form between things mean something besides buildings? What about forms between paths of circulation and movement? Forms between individuals inhabiting that building? The change in scale alters the meaning behind Allen’s thought, in such that one can find the relationship between Morphosis’ design and Cooper Union’s thought process. It’s not so much the form between the buildings on the street that matters, but the form between the individual students occupying the building, particularly the public staircase. It definitely “sets a stage” and is a “site for action.”  
     When talking to Sarah about the framing of experiences, we agreed that our travels reiterated this immensely. There was no way we could capture Sagrada Familia in a picture frame. Sarah said, "the closest thing to capture it would be a video, but even a video still doesn't capture the other senses besides vision." There is no way to frame the feeling of the lofty heights, the sun hitting the stained glass, the sound of echoes reverberating throughout the space. Looking back at our experience, it's even difficult to frame it in my mind. I understand that even my memory of Sagrada Familia, much less the framed pictures I took, will never do that space justice. The only way to truly know it, is to experience it. In the article, Hays states that "Allen insists that its very lack of determinacy, its doubt, produces its own frame, or better, a field condition." Perhaps that is what Sagrada Familia does best. It is unable to produce a frame, but it can produce a field condition. A field condition consists of intersecting and conflicting rhythms and relations.