GROUND CONTROL
Zachary Schumacher
2025 Spring Residency
ABOUT THE PROJECT:
The grid has long been a foundational tool in architecture, shaping how we see space and how we build. But its influence goes beyond geometry—it organizes circulation, consolidates land, and often turns space into property. Truly grasping the grid’s hold on architectural thought means reckoning with its legacy of appropriation and partition.
At the same time, architectural design has traditionally relied on static representations—plans, elevations, sections—to convey spatial relationships. Yet there’s untapped potential in exploring more dynamic, performative ways of understanding space. Choreography, like geometry, is a system of instructions unfolding through space and time. It shares geometry’s focus on proportion, sequence, and spatial coordination—just without fixed form.
By analyzing choreography, we can uncover the underlying structures that guide movement in architectural construction, offering new ways to think about the relationship between land, labor, and design. This project explores the shared harmonics of geometry and choreography by transposing the perfect square plan of the IPA Block House into both a rectangle and a circle. What emerges is a framework that links the grid to embodied knowledge of construction—bridging measurement and movement, inscription and instruction.
At the same time, architectural design has traditionally relied on static representations—plans, elevations, sections—to convey spatial relationships. Yet there’s untapped potential in exploring more dynamic, performative ways of understanding space. Choreography, like geometry, is a system of instructions unfolding through space and time. It shares geometry’s focus on proportion, sequence, and spatial coordination—just without fixed form.
By analyzing choreography, we can uncover the underlying structures that guide movement in architectural construction, offering new ways to think about the relationship between land, labor, and design. This project explores the shared harmonics of geometry and choreography by transposing the perfect square plan of the IPA Block House into both a rectangle and a circle. What emerges is a framework that links the grid to embodied knowledge of construction—bridging measurement and movement, inscription and instruction.
PERFORMANCE:
12-minute video of performance using survey equipment, bodies, and geometric harmonics to transpose a circle to a rectangle to a square of equal area, across a field. This 17-minute “construction site ballet” was choreographed by Zachary Schumacher and performed with Rebecca Pappas and Alexx Shilling.
COLLABORATORS/SUPPORT:
Choreography and Dance, Rebecca Pappas, Alexx Shilling, Ella WS
Video, Deborah Garcia and Erkka Nissinen
Video, Deborah Garcia and Erkka Nissinen
People
