BETWEEN THE WEST AND THE WESTERN |
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Creating spaces of active engagement for a Contemporary West.
Carly Gertler / University of Michigan Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning
A CONTEMPORARY WEST
As the frontier of the American political and theological imagination,1 the West and its history remain largely misrepresented today through the timelessness of the Western film genre. Alongside this idealization of the West exists another West: that of the Native Americans as occupants rather than invaders, of an economy dependent on federal handouts rather than individualism,2 and of a natural environment overburdened with man’s misuse rather than a land ripe for occupation. This is the contemporary western situation, lost between the extreme foreground and background shots of the Western film genre. No more explicit is this situation than in the physical place of the Navajo Nation of northeastern Arizona. From the expansive CinemaScope views of Monument Valley to the tracking shots of Gregory Peck on horseback in Canyon de Chelly, the Navajo Nation is a place mainly experienced through its continuous representation by outside sources. What is lacking from this external representation is an experience of the physical place itself, the experience of a contemporary West. Constituting the project of the Contemporary Western, Between the West and the Western is composed of one architectural intervention separated over three sites in the Navajo Nation, proposing architecture’s ability to intervene within and around political, cultural, and ecological issues of the present west.
SETTING THE STAGE—THREE SITES Intensely controversial, the Peabody Energy-owned Kayenta Mine provides electrical power for much of the American southwest (Arizona, Nevada, and California), constitutes the main source of air and water pollution in the region, and is the primary site of employment and revenue for the Reservation economies. Its reclaimed land, once held culturally sacred to the Navajo, serves as the architectural ground of Scenic Transportation. The mine’s coal is hauled 75 miles by railroad to the Navajo Generating Station, a power plant located near the border of the reservation and Page, Arizona. This border land, framed by the three 775 foot tall gas stacks of the Navajo Generating Station, is the site of Consumer Motel. Fast Infrastructure, as the third architectural intervention, is sited north of the Kayenta Mine in Monument Valley, a region specifically imaged in John Ford’s 1956 film, The Searchers, and layered with representational significance.
As the frontier of the American political and theological imagination,1 the West and its history remain largely misrepresented today through the timelessness of the Western film genre. Alongside this idealization of the West exists another West: that of the Native Americans as occupants rather than invaders, of an economy dependent on federal handouts rather than individualism,2 and of a natural environment overburdened with man’s misuse rather than a land ripe for occupation. This is the contemporary western situation, lost between the extreme foreground and background shots of the Western film genre. No more explicit is this situation than in the physical place of the Navajo Nation of northeastern Arizona. From the expansive CinemaScope views of Monument Valley to the tracking shots of Gregory Peck on horseback in Canyon de Chelly, the Navajo Nation is a place mainly experienced through its continuous representation by outside sources. What is lacking from this external representation is an experience of the physical place itself, the experience of a contemporary West. Constituting the project of the Contemporary Western, Between the West and the Western is composed of one architectural intervention separated over three sites in the Navajo Nation, proposing architecture’s ability to intervene within and around political, cultural, and ecological issues of the present west.
SETTING THE STAGE—THREE SITES Intensely controversial, the Peabody Energy-owned Kayenta Mine provides electrical power for much of the American southwest (Arizona, Nevada, and California), constitutes the main source of air and water pollution in the region, and is the primary site of employment and revenue for the Reservation economies. Its reclaimed land, once held culturally sacred to the Navajo, serves as the architectural ground of Scenic Transportation. The mine’s coal is hauled 75 miles by railroad to the Navajo Generating Station, a power plant located near the border of the reservation and Page, Arizona. This border land, framed by the three 775 foot tall gas stacks of the Navajo Generating Station, is the site of Consumer Motel. Fast Infrastructure, as the third architectural intervention, is sited north of the Kayenta Mine in Monument Valley, a region specifically imaged in John Ford’s 1956 film, The Searchers, and layered with representational significance.
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ACTORS—THE VERNACULAR Within this construction of the Contemporary Western exists a catalogue of vernacular architectural and landscape elements that combine to act as middle programs, creating a human scale in a place where no sense of something larger than self is evident. These found everyday elements, such as the scenic overlook or the gas station, constitute the body of the Contemporary Western experience.
PRODUCTION ANALYSIS—THE MIDDLE From the understanding of the frontier as the middle territory of America to the gap between the panorama and close up of the Western film genre, middle appears as a consistent measure and means by which to engage within the dialogue of the West. The production of the Contemporary Western focuses on an architectural grasping of this middle, varying between each of the three sites according to formal movements, views, and concepts of occupation.
PRODUCTION ANALYSIS—THE MIDDLE From the understanding of the frontier as the middle territory of America to the gap between the panorama and close up of the Western film genre, middle appears as a consistent measure and means by which to engage within the dialogue of the West. The production of the Contemporary Western focuses on an architectural grasping of this middle, varying between each of the three sites according to formal movements, views, and concepts of occupation.
THE HORSE: CONSUMER MOTEL The horse constitutes the material basis and sphere of action for the Western film, engaged actively by the lead as a supporting actor by which to foreshadow against. As an architectural analogue of the horse, Consumer Motel responds to its highway adjacent site between Arizona and the Navajo Nation by embedding within the ground, aggregating, and rotating, thus constituting a new landscape of form by which to frame issues of consumerism, territory, and boundary. Consisting of a combination between motel, trading post, and street market, Consumer Hotel brings together local Navajo traders, outside buyers, and temporal residents as a place of democratic congregation and meeting. An ambiguous middle space is created through a disruption of these usually linear programs, emphasized by an embedding within the earth to create a new relationship of the individual to land. Inhabitation of the interior occurs at midground level as occupants experience a changed horizon line favoring a framing of land rather than landscape.
THE LANDSCAPE: SCENIC TRANSPORTATION The Landscape is omnipresent and passively engaged within Western cinema. It acts as a foil character, there to make explicit the situation at present. Scenic Transportation takes the landscape as a referent to compose a passive space engaged through sight and movement on the reclaimed land of Peabody Energy’s Katenta open pit coal mine. Here, land is constantly in motion as the act of mining moves, removes, and replaces what was once held culturally sacred. Combining vernacular programs of the scenic overlook, gas station, and airport, Scenic Transportation facilitates a visual middle ground through taking the ground and roof as architectural primitives for generating a space of occupation. Visually creating juxtapositions and oppositions through varying rhythms of reflective surfaces and varying understandings of ground, the architectural form explicates the notion of excavation and the temporal value of land.
THE GUN: FAST INFRASTRUCTURE The Pistol acts as a form of communication and active engagement within the Western film. As an architectural analogue of the pistol, Fast Infrastructure combines the typical water/wind infrastructure found within the frontier space of the Navajo Nation with a fast food restaurant typically found at most highway junctions, facilitating a dialogue of consumption and production. Sited on the entry to Monument Valley along US Highway 163, multiple exterior views are collapsed through cinematic analysis of aspect ratios shaping both form and aperture. Much like cinema, architecture here acknowledges its power to allow or deny views through the manipulation of building form in response to the highly represented landscape. Inside, the walls are clad in a water membrane, constantly shifting as water is taken by local farmers, creating a vacillation of space and awareness of resource use while people order, diners sit, and toilets flush. Akin to Richard Slotkin’s idea of the promise of “regeneration through violence”, where we constantly remake ourselves, remake our myths, and reassert our privileges through violence,4 the architecture of spontaneous infrastructure finds a more constructive and peaceable way of occupying land and realizing promise.
FOOTNOTES
1 Turner, Frederick Jackson, 18611932. Rise of the New West, 18191829. Volume 14 Vol. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1906. Print.
2 Solnit, Rebecca. Storming the Gates of Paradise : Landscapes for Politics. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007. Print. Referenced from the chapter The Postmodern Old West, or the Precession of Cowboys and Indians.
3 Slotkin, Richard, 1942. Regeneration through Violence; the Mythology of the American Frontier, 16001860. [1st] ed. Middletown, Conn. Wesleyan University Press, 1973. Print.
1 Turner, Frederick Jackson, 18611932. Rise of the New West, 18191829. Volume 14 Vol. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1906. Print.
2 Solnit, Rebecca. Storming the Gates of Paradise : Landscapes for Politics. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007. Print. Referenced from the chapter The Postmodern Old West, or the Precession of Cowboys and Indians.
3 Slotkin, Richard, 1942. Regeneration through Violence; the Mythology of the American Frontier, 16001860. [1st] ed. Middletown, Conn. Wesleyan University Press, 1973. Print.
Carly Gertler
Carly is a student at Harvard's Graduate School of Design studying for her concurrent Masters of Architecture AP and Masters of Landscape Architecture AP degrees. For now, she resides in Basel, Switzerland, where after completing a semester of research as part of ETH Studio Basel Contemporary City Institute, she has paused her academic studies to work with Herzog & de Meuron. Carly received her B.S. in Architecture with a minor in Art & Design from the University of Michigan's Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning where she won the Wallenberg Thesis Prize. Her winning project, "Between the West and the Western", can also be seen in the annual Taubman College journal of architecture Dimensions 27 .