Artist Prompt: Soft Structures
At Dia, our education department works closely with artists. These artist-designed prompts encourage people of all ages to connect with their surroundings as they relate to the body and find ways to be creative within the home.
Soft Structures
Designed by Diana Mangaser
Inspired in part by John Chamberlain’s monumental Thordis’ Barge (1980–81) as well as the play of soft/hard materiality in Lee Ufan’s Relatum (formerly Language, 1971/2011), this exercise explores ways to shape space using soft, unstructured materials. Things found around the house—towels, pillows, and sweaters—take the form of bricks, logs, and rocks as building materials to construct soft structures for the indoors.
1. Gather as many of the following materials as you can find: towels, pillows, cushions, sweaters, T-shirts, pants, skirts, scarves, socks, etc.
2. Clear a large enough space indoors to construct a soft structure.
3. Form the soft building materials:
bricks - fold materials into compact, rectangular shapes
logs - roll materials into long, linear, cylindrical shapes
rocks - bundle or bunch materials into rounded shapes
pavers - fold materials into flat, rectangular shapes
swatches - open materials wide into their full shape
4. Build a soft structure. Here are a few ideas to get started:
Mound
Imagine a mound-like structure that is wide at the base, slowly rising, rounding at its highest point, and sloping gently back toward its base.
Using all the materials you can find—soft bricks, soft logs, and soft rocks—make your structure tall and big, but super approachable; a shape you could drape your whole body across or climb and sit comfortably on top of.
You can cover your structure with large swatches of color or stick to one color to cover the whole form.
Crater
Imagine a crater-like structure that is wide and open, creating a shallow resting place inside its sharp walls.
Start by sitting in the center and begin assembling a circle of large, soft rocks all around you. Stack more and more—add medium-sized, small-sized, and tiny-sized soft rocks—until you feel surrounded by softness.
Spread a large swatch across the hollow of your circle so that you can hide inside.
Barrier
Imagine a barrier-like structure that will separate one space from another or mark a difference between two spaces.
Stick to one form of soft material—bricks, logs, or rocks. Line up your materials to form the length of your barrier.
Carefully arrange more materials layer by layer, lifting the horizon line of the barrier up, up, up. How tall will your barrier be?
You can also create an opening or passageway within your barrier as you construct it or by slowly deconstructing part of the soft structure after it’s complete.
Trail
Imagine a trail-like structure that will connect one space to another and guide a path through different spaces.
Using swatches and pavers of soft material, start at one point, think about where you want to go, and lay the material in front of you.
Step onto the newly laid material and repeat. Think about where you want to go next and lay the next material in front of you.
Continue laying materials and building your trail until you reach your destination.
We would like to see your creations and add a selection of them to the blog. Please share images of your work by emailing submissions@diaart.org.
Diana Mangaser is an artist-architect whose work employs architectural processes to mine the potential of interstitial and situational spaces, shaping and inhabiting these gaps in the built environment. Mangaser is an artist educator at Dia Beacon, where she works with the Arts Education Program. She is based in Newburgh, New York, where she directs Artist-In-Vacancy, a program which situates artists and their work within vacant properties in the Newburgh Community Land Bank.
