Habitat Hidroespacial, Maqueta N (Math)

Discussion through works of art encourage how to approach ambiguous and complex ideas, thoughts, and feelings. The MFAH offers a democratic space where students and teachers can develop, practice and articulate these habits of mind. Remember that the quality of the conversation is what is important, not finding the artist’s “answer.” Slow down and take the time to make careful observations. Talk about what you notice, and try to avoid jumping to conclusions and interpretations. Be sure to give enough time for silent looking and thinking.

Work of Art

Gyula Kosice’s drawing depicts a series of stacked circles connected by three thin calendrical towers. A large horizontal platform creates a bridge linking the two outermost towers flanking the structure.  Silhouettes of human figures traverse the space. The people appear to be miniature in comparison to the grand scale of the imagined structure that they are inhabiting. The emptiness of the blank paper serves as the background for Kosice’s envisioned habitat; it is suspended in space, rather than limited by gravity.

 

This drawing is part of a series of models (maquestas) that Kosice created for the ambitious and long-running project, The Hydrospatial City (la ciudad hidroespacial). Kosice first conceived of the project in 1946 with the publication of the Madi Manifesto, which posed that architecture should be created by forms and habitats suspended in space. Kosice was a charter member of the Madí Movement, which was established by a group of artists in Buenos Aires seeking to break from older forms in favor of invention by experimenting with new materials and concepts. Developing on the principles of this movement, Kosice created a series of ink drawings as models for the hydrospatial habitats that he would later fabricate as three dimensional forms using innovated materials such as acrylic, Plexiglas, and light. When the artist completed the grand project in 1971, it consisted of nineteen three-dimensional space habitats and seven two-dimensional light boxes coming together in an immersive, single-room installation.

 

Kosice described this utopian city as an alternative to Earth when, in the future, the planet’s food and its waters become contaminated resulting from the “persistent geographical and geological depredation.” Kosice’s The Hydrospatial City Manifesto (Manifesto La Ciudad Hidroespacial) from 1971 proposed:

 

“These are the many incentives for the radical changes we already anticipated as a biological necessity. We specifically propose the construction of the human habitat, actually occupying space at a height of a thousand and five hundred meters, in cities conceived of ad-hoc with a previous feeling of co-existence and a differentiated 'modus vivendi.’ Architecture has depended on the soil and the laws of gravity. These laws can be used scientifically so that hydro-spatial housing can be a reality, that is, viable from a technological point of view."[1]

 

Kosice created his body of work in Argentina; however, he adopted his artist’s name as Gyula Kosice in place of his birth name, Ferdinand Fallik, as a reference to his place of birth in Kosice (in current day Slovakia). The first exhibition of the Hydrospatial City was held in 1971 in the important gallery Bonino in Buenos Aires. The work received interest among both artistic and scientific circles in Buenos Aires. The Planetarium of the City of Buenos Aires (Planetario de la Ciudad de Buenas Aires) exhibited The Hydrospatial City in 1979, and the accompanying catalogue described Kosice’s work as “the manifestation of the human need to colonize space” [una manifestación de la necesidad humana de colonizar el espacio].[2] In 2009, the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston acquired Kosice’s Hydrospatial City (object numbers 2009.29.1-.26), which was purchased from the artist along with his drawings for the project. Although many of the individual components have been exhibited in the past, the MFAH is the only museum in the world to house the complete La ciudad hidroespacial, a fascinating and poetic discourse on the intelligent relationship between civilization and community in the near future.

Conversation

• What shapes do you observe in the drawing? How are they connected? How do the figures depicted in the drawing move through these objects and spaces?
• Describe the scale of figures, objects, and spaces in this drawing. If you were to create a three dimensional object based on the drawing, what would it look like? How would you represent the relative scale shown in the drawing?

• Read the excerpt from Kosice’s The Hydrospatial City Manifesto. How does this drawing relate to the concepts described in the manifesto? What technologies do you think would be needed to support the habitat envisioned in Kosice’s drawing?
• Like Kosice, imagine your ideal habitat or place to live. What would it look like? What materials would you use? Where would the setting or geography for this place exist? How does your imagined utopia compare with Kosice’s vision of an ideal city?

How do the shapes in this piece lead us to assume future? What in your brains correlates translucent material and rounded architectural structures with a futuristic setting? Really Take a steo back as an observer and notice how your brain almost runs like a computer program, when I see x, I assume y. But WHY? What has programmed your brain to think the way that it does? What have you been taught and/or subconsciously trained to make connections between ideas.

Subject Matter

• Observe the work of art.

• List geometric, organic, and abstract shapes. Shapes can represent ideas and feelings.  What feelings/ideas do the shapes in this work of art evoke?  If the artist changed some of the shapes in this work,  how might that affect the interpretation? How might this work of art associate shapes with time frames, thoughts, experiences, etc.?

• Habitat Hidroespacial, Maqueta N was a precursor to a larger scale 3-D installation entitled Ciudad Hidroespacial.  Using mathematical ideas and vocabulary, discuss how different areas of the drawing could be enlarged to a different scale. What scale factors might be involved?

• To observe the larger scale sculptural installation, visit  https://emuseum.mfah.org/objects/97271/la-ciudad-hidroespacial?ctx=8a4aa4e4fb624cbcfb67318adc5f1cf8a988b290&idx=45) on the Museum of Fine Arts website and/or go to the Nancy and Rich KInder Building located at the MFAH Sarofim Campus.

• To take an imaginary walk through the 3-D installation, visit https://vimeo.com/121505481.

• How does the difference in scale factor and dimensionality affect your perception?

Assessment

Creating a connecting to this object into a math classroom draws upon applying past knowledge to a current situation. It’s less about solving a problem with past information, which is often the objective in math. This object opens a window into a subjective discussion about mathematical ideas students may have learned through of scale factor and shapes, but allows them to connect their own thoughts, new and old. Students in a math classroom are always looking for the “right” answer and this object leads them down a path of truly analyzing, gathering conclusions, but never really getting an answer to their or needing one for that matter. 

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