Hello and welcome to Inside UNC Charlotte.
I’m Meg Whalen, I’m the Director of Communications for the College of Arts and Architecture.
A team of students and faculty from the UNC Charlotte School of Architecture recently
won a competition sponsored by the American Institute of Architects.
And here to talk to us a little bit about the project is a professor in the School of
Architecture, Marc Manack.
Hi Marc!
Hi, how are you Meg?
Fine, thanks.
Thanks for sitting with me and talking a little bit about this project.
It’s been a really exciting endeavor.
So you created a pop-up, small projects pop-up installation, that has been at the National
Conference for the AIA in Orlando.
Tell me a little bit about that project, what it was, and who created it.
Well, it was, initially it was a response to a competition solicitation that the AIA,
American Institute of Architects, put out looking for…a pop-up is basically a temporary
installation or construction…for their National Conference in Orlando.
And so in response to that, our team, we put a team together of faculty, students, and
staff to think about how we might approach the project.
And initially when we thought about the competition, and the theme of the competition was reflection.
So with this idea of reflection and it being in Orlando, immediately we thought about the
Pulse Nightclub shooting and how we might begin to think about memorializing that event
through architecture in a temporary construction.
So as we started to think about that, a couple ideas came to mind.
One was how do we use the architecture to create some sort of memory or, you know, to
really yeah simply memorialize the event.
But also how do we begin to recognize those that are alive and sort of celebrate the lives
not only of those lost but of those that might engage this piece.
So we really wanted to develop a project that wasn’t necessarily a designed object per
se, but was more of an event or an experience, which led us to the way that we approached
the project.
So the name of the project is Effervesce, and why did you choose that name?
Well Effervesce means to give off bubbles.
And so the memorial itself is a mechanism that produces bubbles.
And each of those bubbles are generated from 49 vials of fluid representing the victims
of the event.
And so people, when they encounter the wall, they see the vials, they see these mechanisms.
And through interaction, they actually produce and can blow a bubble in memory of each of
the victims.
Tell me how Effervesce was constructed.
What’s it made out of?
What are the materials and what was the process of getting it together?
So we wanted the, we wanted the architecture to feel very light, very ephemeral, very ethereal.
Almost it’s becoming or disappearing in a way.
So it’s made of laser-cut acrylic and laser-cut aluminum, which work together and kind of
fade out as one approaches the wall toward the middle.
And so by the time you get to where the vials are located and the bubble mechanisms are
located, you can actually see the person standing on the other side of the wall.
So it goes from thick to thin and from sort of material to immaterial.
And tell me a little bit about the team that did the design and the fabrication.
So we had a team, myself, faculty colleague Rachel Dickey, Alex Cabral, and McKenzie Canaday
who work in the Fabrication Lab at the School of Architecture.
And then two students, Jonathan Warner and Claire Shue.
Jonathan’s a third year student and Claire is a second year student.
So we worked interactively through brainstorming and then developing the design.
Initially we developed the competition submittal, which is a competition board.
And once our project was selected, then we all worked together to actually figure the
thing out.
What was it like, particularly for the students to win a, an award like that?
To be chosen.
I think for both of them it was the first time they won something this significant.
And for it to be in a national venue and also to be something that they would get to then
realize.
You know the students don’t always get the opportunity to realize the things that they
designed.
So this was, it was a great opportunity I think for them on multiple fronts.
Yeah and I guess the award from AIA actually was to have money to be able to put this together
as well as the opportunity to display it.
That’s right.
So they gave us some…they gave us an honorarium which was some funding for material cost and
also some travel expenses.
So the students were able to work on and develop and prototype the design here in Charlotte
using our facilities.
And then we actually took the, took the piece down to Orlando and then built it at the Convention.
And what was the response in Orlando to it on the AIA conference floor?
You know there’s a lot of architects there, thousands of architects there.
And I think people came by it multiple times.
Probably the first time they passed there was curiosity, and then as people started
to engage it and the students were there during much of the Convention blowing bubbles and
things like that.
And once people saw the bubbles it was sort of magnetic.
And people came in wanting to learn more.
And it really did, it really created the effect we wanted which was to raise awareness about
the, about the Pulse Nightclub shooting.
In the context of a Convention which is really about new materials and sort of architects
learning, getting, you know, continuing education and things like that.
I mean I think this was an opportunity for there to be a moment of reflection and depth
in the context of the Convention.
Tell me what the future of this piece is.
I know it’s back on campus for a little while, and then what happens?
So yeah after the Convention, we brought it back here I think so everybody could see the
finished product which is nice and also for us to do some fine tuning on the construction.
And then some time this summer, we’re going to return it or return it to Orlando and to
the Center in Orlando, which is an organization that’s helping the victims of the Pulse
Nightclub shooting.
So it’ll live on.
So even though it was conceived as a pop-up or temporary thing, it’s gonna live on for
quite some time really where it should be in Orlando.
Great.
And, and just tell me a little bit about sort of your thoughts about the role of architecture
whether it’s small scale like this or large scale in, you know helping people process
events like that shooting.
I mean I think it’s a really interesting thing to think of structures as playing a
role in the processing, the grieving, the healing.
You know, architecture is something which is pretty permanent in most cases.
And, you know, increasingly we have shorter attention spans and memory lapses and things
like that with the influx of just information we’re bombarded with on a daily basis.
So the power of architecture and memory is just to get people to pause for a second and
to think deeply about a particular event.
And even something as small as this piece, we think, contributes to that in a very profound
way.
Well great.
Well thanks so much for telling us about it and thank you for watching Inside UNC Charlotte.