Dylan Herrmann-Holt

About Archive

Heterotopia



Fall 2019
Prof. Zahra Safaverdi

Cleveland, Ohio

Heterotopia drawing from ideas of Michael Foucault, the German kunstkabinett, and Brooklyn-based artist Karine Laval, this project is broken into three main sections, the collection, the autotopia, and the building itself. It was also accompanied by a “Book of Evolution” detailing the process and analysis over time.


Featured in MASKS “the other” publication | Fall 2019
Featured in “the other” exhibition at Kent State CAED | Fall 2019
Featured in Kent State CAED Spring Student Showcase | Spring 2020
Featured in “All for the Best” lecture by Prof. Zahra Safaverdi | Fall 2020

the collection | Born from the idea of creating a kunstkabinett, the collection gathered a series of “worlds” that were situated in three solids; the cube, sphere, and cone. 

Each “world” was then populated with a scene based on a typical heterotopian space as described by Foucault. The scenes are; the garden, cemetery, storage room, aquarium, and mental hospital. Each space in and of itself exists as “the other” apart from the typical rules and logic of typical reality. This notion of “other” is then intensified as the worlds are mirrored on the interior, reflecting in on themselves. 

This optical game was conducted as a study, of the effects that can be produced by different shapes and sizes of mirrors, with the scenes themselves serving as the control and the shapes of the solids serving as the main variable. It is from this analysis that further spaces were designed.

Images produced were not altered through Photoshop but instead explorations in and direct outputs of rendering softwares.

the building | Situated as an infill project in an old warehouse, the building is filled with poche then slowly eroded by the geometries of the autotopia. The building serves as the vessel for the intense spaces, but more importantly as a reprieve. It is in the building that viewers can attempt to regain their bearings without the optical effects of the autotopia.

The representation is a take on the Venturi plan creating a "stitch" of the ground plan and sections of the proposed structure. The sections and plans begin to break against one another merging into one drawing as the poche becomes one. The drawing invites the viewer to walk across the poche looking into the spaces climbing in, if interested, and “code-switching” from plan and section as they move through.

The model exists as a re-spatialization of this "stitch" of plan and section. Creating a similar space to the original building but reimaging and estranging the typical volumes.

the autotopia | Following the collection a new series of spaces was created drawing on a series of rules written following the logic of the collection. These spaces begin to populate in the building, growing in the goo of the poche. The new spaces of the autotopia have geometric and finite domains but work through optic games to deny these confines. These new novel spaces trick the mind by appearing to behave in ways that are against their nature, breaking the determined domain visually. The spaces of the autotopia are geometrically and spatially normative but effectually and optically disorienting.

These autotopia spaces are subverted and paralleled against "normative" representations of their inspirations. These "normal rooms" are effectually and optically normative and spatially and geometrically estranged.
Dylan Herrmann-Holt
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    Linkedin Dylan is a designer from rural Appalachia. His work centers rural spaces, construction tectonics, community development and exploring visual representation. He did his BS in Architecture at Kent State University and M.Arch I at Harvard GSD. He typically finds inspiration in the architecture of his youth in Southern Ohio and whatever pop culture he is presently immersed in.