Second-Year Pole Project

Recently, second-year students in Professor Markus Breitschmid’s lab were tasked with creating a pole. 

The pole is one of the most ancient artifacts of human creation. It has existed in all cultures at all times and has been adapted for various uses: a hunting tool, weapon, ritual post, land boundary post, medicine object, religious/liturgical object, architectural element, communication signal, etc. 

For architects, the pole has numerous uses: constructing buildings, delineating space, or marking territory. Moreover, the pole, while typically tall and narrow, is nonetheless three-dimensional. Therefore, it has sides; it is not a line. It is not abstract geometry; it has a physical presence. It is material. 

Students were tasked with ornamenting a pole so that it can be used as an object. The primary media for its ornamentation are weather-resistant black, white, and red paint. These colors could be mixed in any variation. The pole had to perform on all sides; be visible (360 degrees). The pole’s function had to be either a ritual post, a boundary marker, or a communication post.