In Search of Spatial Scripts: Introspective Improvisations for Two Construction Sites: Parcel X Encampment (1994) and The Goodwin Memorial (2004)

In Search of Spatial Scripts is a re-collection of improvisational stories and stage sets and serves those interested in Spatial Tales of Origin Revealed through Specifications for Construction. Peter Waldman first recounts Mining Mica in the alleys of Manhattan only to initiate a resultant collaboration with a bunch of boyhood buddies eight decades ago. Other magical oases were later encountered with both Citizens and Strangers, mapped odysseys somewhere between Princeton and Peru.

This project traces two construction sites through the self-reflective eyes of generations of others. One encampment is found in North Garden Virginia and one student memorial is situated on the North Terrace of Campbell Hall at Mr. Jefferson’s University spanning a decade in the cross hairs of the Millennium. Located somewhere between Rebecca Solnit’s A Field Guide to Getting Lost, Eugene O’Neill’s A Long Day’s Journey into Night, and Pirandello’s Six Characters in Search of an Author, this collection of collages evolves into vellum scrims which promotes architecture as The Word Made Flesh, Lessons and Carols. Through the eyes of others, a Cast of Circumstantial Characters re-read Lessons From the Lawn and then repair Connective Tissues to set a stage for perhaps the seventh Memo for the Next Millennium.

Peter Waldman is an architect and educator who narrates Spatial Tales of Origin through Specifications for Construction. He has explored foundational curricula for five decades first at Princeton, then Rice, and since 1992, at the University of Virginia. His extensive built practice concerns Climatic Dwellings and Urban Precincts of Resilience with Surveyors, Nomads and Lunatics. Patrick Sardo is a designer and photographer in Boston and holds a Master of Architecture from University of Virginia and an undergraduate degree in architecture from Ohio State University. His research focuses on architectural typologies emerging from the digital industrial revolution. Sofia Kuspan is a designer in Boston and holds a Master of Architecture from University of Virginia and an undergraduate degree in architecture from Ohio State University. Her family’s restoration of a Usonian-style Frank Lloyd Wright apprentice home informs her explorations of preservation. These lessons contributed to her interest in alternative approaches to preservation, which contributed to her graduate thesis project, Wasteland Spolia. David Turnbull is an educator and architect and the President & CEO of the Cosanti Foundation. He is also a senior advisor at GRoW Oyster Reefs LLC and a Senior Research Fellow of the Urban Futures Lab in Las Vegas. He has led major international projects while working in the office of James Stirling, Michael Wilford and Associates and has held academic appointments at universities around the world. Additional contributors: Ben Small, Ann Hamilton, Henry Moss, Karen Van Lengen, W.G. Clark.