ARCH 2220/2620.

Material Manifestations. Archive and Exhibition Center for the Legacy of the Shakers.

Faculty: JEREMY CARVALHO, LONN COMBS, GUSTAVO CREMBIL, ANDREW SAUNDERS (Coordinator), FLORENCIA VETCHER

“The Shakers have lasted longer a gained more fame than any other utopian community this country has produced.”

“Do your work as though you had a thousand years to live and as if you were to die tomorrow.”

Introduction

Recent exhibitions including “Out of This World: Shaker Design Past, Present and Future” at the Shelburne Museum have aimed to shed light on the Shaker Culture not as a segregated culture but one of high innovation and savvy in its connection to and influence on American and International Design Culture. Shaker design has been extremely influential in contemporary industrial design most notable with pioneering Scandinavian designers Roy McMakin and Antonio Citterio as well as early American modernists such as Charles Sheeler. At the foreground is its inherent relevance to contemporary notions of design and manufacturing in terms of material craft, tectonics, performance and fabrication. Correlating with the recent global resurgence of fundamentalism as well as the current shift in couture fashion to focus on Americana, this studio will engage Shaker culture as a rich material, spatial, mystical and aesthetic context in which to develop an architectural dialectic.

Performance

As the culminating semester of the core design sequence at RPI, this AD3 design studio will focus on issues of analysis (interpretive and generative), material affects, tectonics, structural spanning systems, landscape and environmental strategies and programming all through the lens of performance. The concept of performance encompasses a wide range of organizational relationships. Performance should absolutely not be limited to function and should engage both ends of the spectrum from the conceptual (ritual and sensational) to the functional (utility and efficiency).

Analysis

Given this focus, the studio will start with a rigorous recording, documentation and analysis of Shaker design culture at multiple design scales including village planning, buildings and artifacts. This will serve as an introduction to a rich context of design culture that each student will be responsible for not only becoming an expert, but more importantly, developing a speculative thesis through drawing and modeling. In the context of this design studio, analysis is understood as an operative design technique to identify distinguishing organizational and performative logics intrinsic to the spatial, material, and tectonic aspects of Shaker culture. It is critical to understand analysis and design research as an exploratory process intended to penetrate beyond the iconography of the Shaker culture and focus on the latent spirit of the work.

Shakers

The Shakers (formally known the United Society of Believer’s in Christ’s Second Appearance) were a religious sect originating in 1747, that reached its height in the years just before the Civil War with 6,000 members (currently there only 3 members left), eventually decreasing due to many factors including their non-practice of procreation as well as the emergence of modern industrialization. Founded by Ann Lee (1736-1784), the Shakers emigrated from England and started their first colony in Watervliet, New York. From here, their influence spread throughout New England and further west in the states of Indiana, Ohio and Kentucky.

The Shaker society was dominated by the belief that they served God by approaching every task with care, manifesting itself at every design scale within the society including village planning, architectural design, furniture design, and textile design. They believed that no material was superfluous and that every detail had a purpose. This unique ideality of form and function transcended their closed society and led to the economic success as the Shakers as they profited by mass producing a variety of products including, seeds, herbs, furniture and textiles.

Legacy

In order to engage the design for the Archive and Exhibition for the Legacy of the Shakers, it will be necessary for students to formulate an informed thesis about the Shaker legacy. The legacy of the Shakers is very complex and difficult to define. How they will be remembered as one the truly unique American Heritages sparks controversy among Shaker scholars and curators. The influence of this rich material design culture is attributed to many contemporary designs as far away as Scandinavia. One could argue that even Ikea is somewhat derivative of the 19th century roots of Shaker aesthetics. The tenets of Shaker design principles bear an uncanny parallel to the proceeding tenets of early modernism and are no doubt the reason they have been the source of inspiration for many early modern American artists and architects. It is worth pointing out that their social agendas were not aligned and it is a mistake to draw too close a parallel.

Taken from the view of religious scholars, the immense popularity of Shakers today defined by contemporary consumption of Shaker aesthetics and artifacts often downplays or entirely overlooks the radical nature of the society, their religious ritual and spirituality, and the wide fear, hatred and persecution the society encountered as they struggled to develop as a religion. Stephen Stein argues that America’s current love affair for the Shakers arises out of the love for “things” rather than ideas. Marjorie Procter-Smith, a student of Shaker study, exerts that Shaker objects have transcended their role as artifacts to the status of idols, something greater than itself.

Site

In 2004, the North Family at Mount Lebanon was purchased for the future home of the Shaker Museum and Library. Mount Lebanon is located almost directly on the border of Massachusetts and New York, near Pittsfield and the Hancock Shaker Village. The Mount Lebanon site is currently in a three-stage process of preparation in anticipating the arrival of the Shaker Museum and Library.

The first stage is involved with public programs and public relations. Mount Lebanon was literally the epicenter of the Shaker Society. Mount Lebanon was the largest of all America’s Shaker Villages, originally with over 150 buildings housing up to 600 people, and was the governing “Vatican” for the Shakers in the US. Located literally only a few miles across the border from the much publicized Hancock Shaker Village, relatively little is known in the public eye about the existence of the Mt. Lebanon site and or its critical importance in the development and government of the Shaker Society.

Because of its proximity to the fully restored Hancock Village, Mt. Lebanon is not at all interested in replicating their format or competing with them. Instead, Mt. Lebanon would like to be seen a complimentary site to HSV, offering a different, contemporary understanding of the legacy of the Shakers. One of the key issues for the students will be to define what a museum should be after the museum boom of the Bilboa-effect 90s. Mt. Lebanon seeks to create a Museum that will be relevant in 2040.

The second stage of Mt. Lebanon’s development involves the Historic preservation and restoration of the remaining buildings on the site. Currently they have completed a rigorous documentation of the site and its buildings. A few of the buildings including the large stone barn are in major disrepair and will remain incomplete, but stabilized. The third stage will be the addition of a new structure to house the Shaker Museum and Library.

Programming

It is in this fascinating, mysterious, controversial, materially rich, historical and contemporary context that students will formulate a thesis to support a contemporary strategy for a built intervention to the Shaker village. As the next evolution of the morphology of the Shaker village, the challenge will be to design a structure that embodies the sprit of Shaker design culture and at the same time communicates to the current design culture of innovation.

The studio will be working with the curator of the Shaker Museum and Library to speculate on a new home for the Museum’s collection at Mt. Lebanon. The collection is currently housed in Old Chatham New York and includes one of the finest Shaker textile collections that include dresses, cloaks, men’s clothing, footwear, bonnets, silks, rugs, household fabrics, dolls, and accessories. The core of the Library’ collection includes manuscripts, imprints, and photographic documentation. The library is a critical resource for scholarly research on the Shakers.

The scope and scale of the project will be defined as a 10,000 s.f. addition. Students will be required to define the nature of the program based on their initial analysis and design research on performance, knowledge of the Shaker culture and engagement in contemporary architectural techniques and design strategies.

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