Dirty art

Abstract

Sandwiched between the Maumee River, an active railroad, and an abandoned set of factories; this project holds the subcultural identities’ of many art forms and creatives that often go overlooked. Some of which include graffiti, local live music scenes, breakdancing, skateboarding, and aggressive inline. This project seeks to appropriate my personal art style and approach that has been subconsciously infused in all my past projects, to be used in the built design. This approach often includes many iterations of form massing, that influence the form, that then influences program, that influences the form, and so on. This project also questions the traditional process that we use when designing buildings and creates a new vocabulary of design moves derived from graffiti forms and letter structure. What balance must be found in order to translate dirty art into dirty architecture? As well as allow these subcultures to come together and thrive in a place that both honors the history of these art forms as well as pushes for a new lens to view these subcultures within. Dirty art can happen anywhere, has been happening everywhere, and will continue to happen everywhere without permission. But what happens when these subcultures are allowed their own space to exist, grow, and come together to create.