Patricia Potter

Intro: My early training and experimentation was based on the material.

Helvetica I continue to have this interest but now am also interested in replacing the material with an associative network of immaterials -- from matter that is considered waste, useless and too poetic, to text and light, and in seeing that both the unimportant and that without body or form are seen to be capable of operating in a material way.
For a long time my interests have focused on multiplicity, uncertainty, the status of line, point and surface in a multidimensional space, the inclusion of time and movement in the work of engendering architectural space, the importance and use of scale etc.. My interest in "holes" began with a study of quantum physics. Although scientific viewpoints are still of interest , particularly in the way that they influence what we see, direct relationships and understandings are now rejected, and fuzzy, undefined areas are pursued to be defined by non-scientific methods.
The gesture is favored over the formula.
Rigorous passion is favored over precision.
"Other methods" thought to be dead ends are pursued.
Gravity and geometry are still of interest but in relationship to the gesture, to passion, as well as point and line.
Vanishing points are no longer as interesting as the space between.
In an earlier project, "skinning the CATTt", one of the areas explored is the multi-dimensional space that is between the projector and the projected object. The vanishing point is seen to exist only as a point to push against in this space of resonance, of absorption and emergence. Boundaries are variables, the object exists only because of the angle of projected light , the angle of the observer, and the angle of arrest.
My passion is not to further knowledge but to open spaces to possibility, to open possibilities between our preconceived notions of space, its voids and its edges, and to visualize resonance. In a spatial, textual, and collaborative way I am interested in opening the space(s) between.

In addition to teaching architecture and working with all of you, my current project is the design of a studio to be constructed in reality on a lake in Alabama and virtually on an internet site. The research is generating an interest in the virtual within the real, and in the complicated relationship between things/worlds where the container and its contents are in a state of transformation one into the other. I suppose this goes back to my fascination with physics and the leidenfrost layer, the fuzzy boundary between matter and anti-matter. Our logics seem to be overlapping in and logically creating such a space.

"In order to get...to a place, you have to...blow it apart...you have to look inside it and find the seeds of the new."

Peter Eisenman's motto, reported by Tadao Ando CONSTRUCTIONS John Rajchman


Patricia P. Potter Dep. of Architecture - Office 590 - Fon 515 294 7132- Iowa State University

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