High Voltage

Excerpt from an Interview with Ratan Tata:

"We can go on and on talking about whether you can beat Reliance in the marketplace or whether you can stand up to them in the corridors of power. But answer the larger question: Do corridors of power matter as much as they did during the licence quota raj? Or they don’t matter at all?

They matter because we are still not devoid of the impact that these places have, but they don’t matter as they much as they used to.

But do they matter more than they should have after so many years of reforms?

They matter more (than they should have). Because the people in these positions of power still expect — as a hangover of the past — people to call them up, change or modify policies based on personal appeals that I call vested interests appeal. And so it is there."

Exceprt from an Article on Carlos Slim:

"He now owns stakes in more than 220 businesses but says he has never forgotten the lessons of his youth. "Buying well is a discipline," he told The Arizona Republic in a rare interview, noting that trading cards was "the first type of business negotiation you do as a child."

The domination of large Mexican conglomerates such as Slim's chokes off growth of smaller companies, says Celso Garrido, an economist at Mexico City's Autonomous Metropolitan University who studies Mexico's business dynasties.

The resulting shortage of good jobs drives many Mexicans to seek better lives in the United States, says Roderic Ai Camp, author of Mexico's Mandarins, a book about the country's power elite.

Even Slim compares his business model with that of another company often accused of monopolistic practices: Wal-Mart."

Excerpt from an Article on Zhang Yin:

"Zhang does not go into detail about how she made her fortune. In a society known for close ties and hidden deals between government officials and business leaders, she says simply, "I'm an honest businesswoman."

There were occasional threats from competitors, but being a woman was not a problem, Zhang said.

"Actually, I didn't find it difficult," she said. "I found men respected me.""

A Mausoleum of Air

"From within an improbable mausoleum of air, a nightingale's song charms another heart of stone out from its morbid cavity."

1: View of Nightingale laboratory space with custom textures.

2: This image captures what was being expressed by "an improbable mausoleum of air"; a structure that bears a grave presence with a sense of vitality.

3: The area adjacent to the client meeting space has a very grave presence, but the lighting and energetic texture prevent it from being too forbidding.

4: A view of Darwin's laboratory space and the ramp leading up to it.

5: The opening to the sky addresses the Electroliquid quote's main concerns of collaboration and discourse ("...a nightingale's song charms another heart of stone...").

Unreal, Filefront

My Unreal2004 model is online at: http://hosted.filefront.com/pavslovova/

Axonometrics

The two sets of axonometrics above provided the initial inspiration for the design of the laboratory spaces.

Texture Quilt

Second Draft

1: A view of Nightingale's laboratory space.
2: Detail of the ramp descending from Nightingale's space to the client meeting space.
3: A view of the slope inclining from the client meeting space up to Darwin's laboratory space.
4: A view of the ramp leading up to Darwin's space.
5: A view of Darwin's laboratory space.

My design of Nightingale's space was informed by hospital aesthetics: clinical, austere and legible. I wanted Darwin's space to be stimulating in its admittance and use of light, in its shape and scale and to have a composition that gradually revealed the space and gave it a sense of vast openness. I also included an opening in the cliff face that has an aspect looking over Nightingale's space, asserting the design's primary intention of encouraging collaboration and discourse between the spaces.

How to Reconcile a Man to his Death

"Asceticism is the trifling of an enthusiast with his power, a puerile coquetting with his selfishness or his vanity, in the absence of any sufficiently great object to employ the first or overcome the last."

~Florence Nightingale


"A man's friendships are one of the best measures of his worth."

"In the long history of humankind (and animal kind, too) those who learned to collaborate and improvise most effectively have prevailed."

~Charles Darwin

"Bridges and ramps are diplomatic."

~Tarik Ahlip


The phrase 'an improbable mausoleum of air' occured to me when I was thinking about how improbable a 256 by 256 concrete cube projecting out of a cliff would be, and I was immediately taken by the strong metaphysical connotations of the image that phrase conjured. It seemed to perfectly sum up the dual contrasting qualities of gravity and vitality that I feel are evident in the quote from Florence Nightingale. So I decided to try and design a space for Nightingale around this idea, a space that would be very open and benefit from lots of natural light, but would also give a feeling of gravitas and sombre propriety.

Reading the quotes from Darwin I got the impression of a deeply committed humanism and I decided to construct the spaces around the principle of collaboration. I felt that considering the quote from Darwin regarding the scientific man's 'heart of stone' on its own would lead to the creation of a space that was too ascetic and isolated.

I imagined a series of spaces that would enable collaboration and engender a sense of optimism and gravity at the same time; that would enable a dialogue between Nightingale's 'mausoleum of air' and Darwin's 'morbid cavity', engaging Nightingale in the capacity of diplomat and reconciliator.

The following links lead to the original sources of these quotes:
Florence Nightingale - Charles Darwin