Andrew Schroeder

One of the many perks of my job is getting to go on random treks through the two buildings that make up the college. Yesterday I had the pleasure of traversing through the underground vaults of our building on Hennepin Avenue in MPLS. It was a very creepy and smelly place… but the abandoned bank vaults were too good to turn down. Take a looksy.

Via US National Archives via Flickr

Beginning to dwell

Gaston Bachelard’s The Poetics of Space has been filling my imagination as I work through the most intense nesting instinct I’ve had in years. His focus on the lived aspects of architecture over the historical and formal are the imaginative quirks that served as inspiration for my work as an artist and as an apartment dweller. At the moment, I am gazing over my apartment as it lays in the throws of a passionate clean-up, updating, and general sprucing.

Peeling back the layers...

I didn’t really expect the archeological findings of my new apartment… however, so far I have fought my way through about 15 layers of paint. Each decade is accurately represented:

• 1980′s: multi-colored pastel wallpaper
• 1970′s: citrus yellow
• 1960′s: light green
• 1950′s: light yellow
• 1940′s: back to the light green
• 1930′s: original light butter-nut squash brown…

Ah… time travel.

Daylight Savings Chart

As I was walking into work this morning, I realized that living in the far north of the continental US has its benefits. While I may complain that the city is often unpopulated and boring at times, it is almost always a great place to turn to for a healthy dose of surrealism. For example, my early morning schedule (arriving to work at 6:00 AM) means that I encounter downtown Minneapolis under a heavy drape of darkness. This in itself is not strange… but there is this odd liveliness to the downtown, which continues despite the pitch black sky outside. It is roughly the same vibe as living inside of a space station, moon base, or other outpost like environment.

Again… rambling.

MSP - Modern Gem

Everyone has photographic fetishes. And, I have a thing for airports. Maybe it is the intersection of private desire to travel with very public, non-descript, and functional architecture. Or maybe I just like photographing in places where I know my film may be confiscated.

MSP - A Sign of Life

On a recent trip to New York I had the distinct pleasure of flying out of the old, Lindbergh terminal at Minneapolis-St. Paul Airport. It is exceptionally unfortunate what time has done to this ultra-modern, mid-century diamond in the rough. It has been added to seemingly endlessly to the point that one cannot see the front facade through all the parking garages and overpasses. Inside the airport, depressing gates and shopping mall corridors make it seem like a bad 1980s theme park. (Remember the movie Planes, Trains, and Automobiles – like that)

October 13, 2009

I’m not sure if I am caught in an atemporal vortex or if Minneapolis is hitting some sort of built-environment equilibrium. While walking home yesterday, humming various bits of soundtrack to myself, I noticed that my city is engaged in a process consisting of equal parts renewal and equal parts decline. As the first image testifies, the elements of renewal tend to be laden with a heavy handed, pig-wearing-lipstick aesthetic.

In true wabi-sabi fashion, while the parking garage is being turned into a disco-vomit-colored monstrosity, the businesses across the street are slowly being ground away…

October 13, 2009

Utopian Slumps - Ed Rucha

This morning has been a particularly productive one for me. I went to bed with Curtis at 8:30 AM and proceeded to sleep soundly for the first time in about a month. If there is one undercurrent to this blog, or my life in general, it is that I love to be unconscious… by whatever means necessary. Anyway, I’m finally to work, doing my little office-cockroach tasks and gazing out at the snow.

ROR (Revolutions on Request)

The white blanket that is dropping over the city at the moment makes me believe I could be anywhere at the moment.  And, why not take a second to think about being in a utopia of sorts. Back in 2003, I had the chance to see the “Utopia Station” exhibition at the Venice Biennale – a great exhibition of posters and designs relating to one of my favorite subjects.

Be sure to check out the project’s website for PDF downloads of all the posters.

For those of us who do not remember what it is like to live in a city… here is a brief how-to.

From time to time I have nothing really great to write about. Ok most of the time… so I’ll draw inward and recount some little tidbit of my day.

After several Sapporos and a delicious veggie feast, I fell asleep on my sofa last night around 10:00 PM. Apparently I am becoming a Golden Girl after all. I wasn’t anticipating going to bed that early until I was at least 75. But, oh well.

Every now and then it seems like I dream with my eyes open. I can accurately see and understand the room surrounding me, but I am very much unconscious. While I can take note that I left the lamp on, have dirty clothes on my floor, and my foot is almost in my veggie Tikka Masala, I cannot move. That is what happened last night.

As I was laying there, dreaming away in a glassy-eyed coma, I could feel myself adding and subtracting rooms to my apartment at will. It was like being inside of a Gegor Schneider installation – rooms open onto duplicated rooms; a wall may appear to be normal thickness, when in reality it is so deep that it makes the next space chokingly small. In the dream I had, rooms were arranged similarly, but had completely different functions – my desk drawers were filled with water for bathing and my sofa was a covered in terry cloth turning it into a huge towel.

I felt like I was living out Gaston Bachelard’s Poetics of Space… that I was able to override the practical abstractions that made my apartment the way it is and actually make it work according to the experiences I have there…

Happy Wednesday.

I am very lucky to have the friends that surround me (even if they are on the other side of the country). I might even say I am exceptionally lucky. For example, my friend Andrea sent me this great card from the Cooper Hewitt Design Museum in New York. At first glance it is simply a blank slate, ordinary piece of paper. But with a few twists… a pristine new architectural space is created. I have had this thing sitting on my desk… taunting me for the last few days. Taunting you say? How can paper-turned-space taunt someone?

Well, it is taunting me in the “unrealized potential” sector  that is located at the back of my brain (next to the part that craves the delicious muffins from Dunn Brothers).

Perhaps because of the city I live in, my view of architecture is becoming more and more static by the day. Instead of seeing architecture and buildings as sites of potential energy and social exchange, I’m too focused on the restraints, pathways, and barriers that are presented. How does one rectify this situation? Ah yes… by sneaking away to Mexico City again and photographing the informal architecture which shifts, like a sand dune in the sahara, over the city daily.

Wishful thinking… for a very busy Tuesday.