M. Arch. JENNIFER L. HARMON

The Perfect Structure is Incapable of Casting the Perfect Shadow
Pine, Cyanotype on Paper, Hardboard, Gesso, Graphite, Projection
Installation Size 200 × 250 × 300
2024

Wardenclyffe is a part of a series of works created by developing scale replica models of iconic industrial structures lost to demolition. While each industrial monument is gone, they are still alive in memories of the people who worked inside them and created social bonds with other workers or live silently in the shadows of cultural development.  

Using the earliest form of photography, the cyanotype becomes a record of the shadows cast by the wire frame scale replicas. The distortion of the shadows is representative of the memories people have which recal a different reality than that which existed, memories changed by atmosphere and emotion. 

Wardenclyffe Tower was located on Long Island. It’s namesake comes from James S. Warden, who in 1901 supplied land for the construction of this tower. With JP Morgan’s financial support, Nikola Tesla constructed a tower that would provide wireless communication between Shoreham, Long Island and England. During his research he discovered a method that would enable the transmission of power without cables. JP Morgan balked at the idea that power could be provided as a free service and withdrew his financial support. With no funding the project sat idle until 1917 when the tower was demolished. The only remains of the tower is it’s octagonal foundation, which is still present on the Long Island site. Nikola Tesla, resident of New York City (New Yorker Hotel) until his death in 1943. A prolific and genius inventor, his most notable invention is the alternating current electrical system that we use today. A similar technology, like what was invented at Wardenclyffe is now in use worldwide, we know it as our cell phone network.

Kentile is a part of a series of works created by developing scale replica models of iconic industrial structures lost to demolition. While each industrial monument is gone, they are still alive in memories of the people who worked inside them and created social bonds with other workers or live silently in the shadows of cultural development.  

Using the earliest form of photography, the cyanotype becomes a record of the shadows cast by the wire frame scale replicas. The distortion of the shadows is representative of the memories people have which recal a different reality than that which existed, memories changed by atmosphere and emotion. 

The Kentile sign was a prominent icon in the Gowanus Brooklyn skyline. Kentile, a company that once manufactured asbestos laden floor tiles quickly folded when asbestos was identified as a cancer causing agent. The lights went dim in 1986 and stood for nearly 20 years until it was dismantled in 2014. 

A young child spent a year battling a severe illness in Bethesda Naval Hospital. Weakened by extensive treatments, she was confined to her bed allowed to leave only when medically necessary or on special occasions. On one such evening, her mother took her to thank the recovering soldier who made her an angel and to see the hospital's christmas tree. The journey through this art deco monument lead her to rooms filled with stars and a towering lobby space filled with a twinkling christmas tree that must have been a hundred feet high surrounded by the numerous balconies of the elevator landings on each floor. Above it a filigree facade and glass ceiling that revealed the constellations in the night sky that slowly drifted with time.

The child carried and replayed this magical yet haunting memory in her mind for over two decades since she left the hospital.

As an adult her illness threatened a return and she made her pilgrimage to this place she had been happy to leave so many years prior. The building possessed a powerful aura of pain that greeted her as she approached the building. Memories forgotten or repressed flooded into her consciousness - an overwhelming inundation of raw emotion crippled her as she cautiously approached her nemesis. 

But upon entering the building,  she found the lobby with a christmas tree to be a mere shadow of the magnificence that she had written to memory. The true identity of the reality overpowered the vision that gave her security and sanity during her extensive recovery. Glittering gilt railings turned to dull unpolished brass. The heavenly loft of stars were a faded hint of a sparse celestial map painted against a dull slate blue slightly domed ceiling lifted 18 feet above foot. The christmas tree also fell victim to reality - a drab pathetic artificial tree adorned with cheap plastic red ornaments, tattered fake gifts wrapped in wrinkled and delaminated red foil and no twinkling lights sat listlessly in the center of the lobby. An unimpressed woman in uniform sat at the reception desk - almost as if it were her punishment for lack of performance - asked out of obligation if we needed help...

How could this possibly be the same place the woman had visited as a young girl?

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This work was generated by a series of drawings that represent Bethesda Naval Hospital as remembered. The impossible lobby is accentuated and constructed from carbon steel wire. Multiple cyanotype compositions generated by shadows of the wire model of the building attempt to reveal and decode the mystery of the exaggerated memory. 

Tom Tjaarda is a legendary automotive designer. Educated at Taubman College of Architecture, his visionary ideas about automobile design earned him the chance as a young designer to work in the automotive industry in Torino, Italy. He has designed automobiles for Ghia, Pinafarina, DeTomaso, and FIAT to name a few.

Tjaarda was honored with the Taubman College Distinguished Alumni Award in 2014, a distinction that comes with a retrospective exhibit of the designer’s life work.

The content of the exhibit was organized around a continuous loop of space that touched on significant moments in automative design. A timeline of his career was catalogued through a chronologic index made from the profiles of every automobile that he designed. These car profiles were produced using various CNC modes of produciton. Each profile included the name, date and monochromatic photo of the automobile. The exhibit was accompanied by a pristine 1971 DeTomaso Pantera, one of his most popular designs.
 

2014

Exhibition Director : Mary Ann Wilkinson

Lead Designer : Jen Harmon

Design Team : Matthew Jensen, Adrian Lopez, Troy Hillman

Fabrication Assistance : Wes McGee

Automobile Assistance : Brian Joseph, Classic & Exotic Service, Troy, MI

Photography : Peter Smith

During one of my first job interviews in Germany, a potential employer explained to me that german culture can be easily described by a simple tagline found on the back of Germany’s favorite chocolate bars, the 9 x 9 cm wrappers clearly declare;

“Quadrattisch. Praktisch. GUT.”

“SQUARE, PRACTICAL, GOOD.”

The visual record of my first two years living in Deutschland is provided through 9 x 9 cm portholes. Within these pages I have organized the images and my thoughts according to the conceptual lenses that have filtered my experiences. The book is organized into various typologies of function and space and attempts to organize my personal expansion as I began to understand the history, culture and architectural landscape in southern Germany.

There is no special photography employed, nor any spectacular feat of Photoshop. Only the small format that my ever present iPhone camera provided as my faithful visual recorder.

DE
Mit Blick auf den Himmel wird das Sternbild Draco innerhalb der nördlichen Hemisphäre als dauerhafte Entität erkannt, denn im Laufe des Jahres setzt es niemals ein. Draco ist heute wie seit Jahrhunderten eine ständige Position am Himmel. Als solche haben ihre Sterne als Navigationsführer über Ozeane und weite Landschaften gedient.

Obwohl die funktionale Bedeutung von Draco in Unruhe geraten ist, werden die Konstellation und die anderen Strichfiguren in der Nacht immer noch an einem wahrgenommenen, "flachen" Himmel erkannt. Die Domebene über unseren Köpfen ist jedoch eine wahrgenommene Abstraktion, denn innerhalb dieser Konstellationen existieren die Sterne in unterschiedlichen extremen Entfernungen von der Erde und voneinander.

Starfield untersucht die Querschnittsverhältnisse der Sterne im Gegensatz zu der scheinbaren Ebene des Abendhimmels, einer Gegenüberstellung der Konfiguration gegenüber dem Raum eines städtischen Innenhofs. Es stellt nicht nur die räumliche Beziehung der Sterne dar, sondern kontrastiert auch den einst sichtbaren Himmel, der jetzt durch die kontrastierenden Lichter der Stadt verblasst wird. Um diesen Moment des Kontrasts zu schaffen, besteht die Installation aus einer beleuchteten Rahmenmatrix aus verbundenen Sternpunkten, die über den Köpfen der Öffentlichkeit hängt.

Das Matrixdesign positioniert die Sterne in Bezug auf die typische Art und Weise, wie sie normalerweise gesehen werden, zweidimensional, sie sind jedoch innerhalb einer maximalen Schnitttiefe von drei Fuß verschoben. Die erhabene Länge ist proportional zum Abstand zwischen der Erde und jedem einzelnen Stern. Sterne, die weiter von der Erde entfernt sind, werden höher angehoben, während sich nähere Sterne näher am Hofboden befinden. Diese Punkte, die durch Aluminiumrohrelemente trianguliert und physisch gemacht werden, erzeugen ein dreidimensionales Delauney-Netz. Um das Starfield weiter darzustellen, hält jedes Glied oder Sternpunkt eines Mitglieds ein LED-Licht. Dracos Sterne sind weiß, während die umgebenden Punkte blau sind, um die Konstellation zu identifizieren.

Durch das Füllen der dachlosen Leere des Innenhofs wird das abstrahierte Bild des wahrgenommenen Himmels durch eine dreidimensionale Darstellung ersetzt. Während sich die Besucher unter der Installation bewegen, wird Dracos Konstellation von seinem erdgebundenen Image befreit und stellt seine räumliche Konfiguration wieder her.

EN
Looking to the heavens, the constellation Draco is recognized as an entity of permanence within the Northern Hemisphere, for as the year passes, it never sets. Draco holds a constant position in the skies today as much as it has for centuries. As such, its stars have served as navigational guides over oceans and vast landscapes.

Although the functional significance of Draco has dithered, the constellation and the other line drawn figures in the night are still recognized on a perceived, “flat,” sky. However, the domical plane above our heads is a perceived abstraction, for within these constellations, the stars exist at varying extreme distances from Earth and from each other.

Starfield investigates the sectional relationship of the stars in contrast to the apparent flat of the evening sky, a juxtaposition of the configuration against the space of an urban courtyard. It represents not only the spatial relationship of the stars, but also contrasts the once visible sky that is now faded by the contrasting city lights. To create this moment of contrast, the installation is a lighted frame matrix of linked star points that is hung above the heads of the public.

The matrix design positions the stars with respect to how they are typically seen, two dimensionally, but they are shifted within a maximum section depth of three feet. The raised length is proportionate to the distance between the Earth and each individual star. Stars farther away from Earth are raised higher, while closer stars are located closer to the courtyard floor. These points, triangulated and made physical by aluminum pipe members create a three dimensional Delauney mesh. To further represent the Starfield, each member joint, or star point, holds an LED light. Draco’s stars are white, while surrounding points are blue to assist in identifying the constellation.

By filling the roofless void of the courtyard, the abstracted image of the perceived sky is replaced by a three dimensional representation. As visitors move under the installation, Draco’s constellation is released from its earthbound image and reclaims it’s spatial configuration.

2011

Concept + Project Leader: Jennifer Harmon

Design Team: Joshua Kehl, Spencer Kroll, Cathy Pyenson, Ben Thomas

Assistance: Peter von Buelow, Maciej Kaczynski, Missy Ablin, Will Martin, Logan Wiedman, Wencan Xue, Michael Glenboski
 

Made possible by the generous support of the A. Alfred Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning at the University of Michigan and the New Orleans AIA DesCours

This small promotional piece was submitted for the prestigious Gabriel Prize Competition. The portfolio of work and project proposal were neatly enclosed in an aluminum box and secured with a contrasting jute cord. Understated design with minimal typography and generous white space allowed the content to be evaluated independently of the submission design but maintained the aesthetic of the artwork enclosed within the package. Digital submission was provided on a CD and a Flash Drive in duplicate.

These handouts were produced for a course taught at the Taubman College of Architecture at the University of Michigan. The intent of the course was to give architecture students a six week "crash course" in the fundamentals in graphic design. Each handout represented a daily theme that was extensively documented in a hybrid newspaper/cheat-sheet format. The design neatly compartmentalized information, photos and diagrams representing sub-themes within each lecture and general topic while providing useful links and resources fur future practice. 

The course was taught for three years, each year was printed on a unique sheet manufactured by French Paper Company that called attention to the materiality of the paper. The course focused on the materiality of graphic design. Students learned how to combine digital practices with physical methodologies. Three field trips demonstrated on the physicality of the production of design beginning with a trip to French Paper Company, followed by a trip to the letterpress Signal Return and bookended with a trip to Edwards Brothers where the students observed Offset Web Presses and a fully functioning bindery.

The students worked during the course of the semester learning how to serigraph (silkscreen) their own wallpaper for an architectural installation. The project was documented and formatted into unique booklets that were collectively bound. 

The worlds that lay beyond our perception of the night sky's image of brightly specked lights presents vast galaxies, solar systems and other celestial bodies. These heavenly lights have provided gateways into fantasies, led our ancestors across the varied terrains of our own planet. 

The Starcatchers are a cluster of physical hemispherical objects with complex non-euclidean geometries informed by the arrangement and relative distances to our eyes. They cluster to catch light from beyond our own world, and reflect it back onto our bodies transforming atmospheres into spaces of scintillating light.

Medium: CNC Routed Plaster with gold leaf

Lead Design: Jen Harmon

Assisted by: Joe Chemello

Jennifer Harmon's graduate thesis, Retreat from Consciousness was an exploration into the relationship between gradients of consciousness and spatiality. The work emerged from a study of locations that were once filled with lively industrial populations and sought to find traces of the stories imbedded within the remaining structures. Early site visits included; ghost towns (Rhyolite, NV) and hospitals (Bethesda Naval Hospital, MD) and were combined with extensive research from other sites such as Chernobyl, Ukraine and Wardenclyffe, Long Island, NY. Each site revealed a unique history within an abandoned landscape where abandonment was defined on varying scales of collective to individual experience. 

The project situated itself on an offshore oil drilling complex, Ekofisk located in the center of the North Sea. Ekofisk is a dynamic settlement that sustains industry, life and culture in an extreme environment that is isolated from any normative environmental condition. Through Ekofisk's construction and decommissioning of platforms, places are created or lost, left only to exist within the memory.

The architecture of the Retreat from Consciousness mediates individual's experiences with their consciousness by relating to the horizon spatially. Consciousness is defined by an individual's spatial relationship to the horizon. The visible area creates a spatial limit which is immediately available as consciously accessible space, everything else, unseen or memorized exists within a level of the subconscious. Memories are elements of the subconscious which are drawn into our consciousness, acting as lenses that distort our perception of our world.

Ekofisk exists between consciousness and subconsciousness where the surface of the water and the horizon define the limit between consciousness and memory (subconsciousness). The retreat that inhabits and repurposes the decommissioned industrial structures acts as a monastic resort where people can immerse themselves into a contemplative journey of the subconscious.

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Models represent the site in various scales of engagement. 

Guests arrive an immediate bathe and participate in full abluition ceremony. Enormous pools are suspended and cantilevered over the rough ocean and serve as chambers where guests submerge themselves into varying degrees artificial subconsciouness.

Sleeping chambers are a parasitic network of submerged vessels attached to the platforms' structure. Expansive viewports allow the occupants to become physically present with their dreams while suspended underwater.

Burntowers are transformed into eating galleries and are distinct due to the social activity where guests feast together.

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The sketchbooks serves simultaneously as an index of research and thought exploration and a representation of the various programmatic elements.

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This work has served as the foundation for the majority of Jennifer's creative practice and was awarded the prestigious Thesis Award at Taubman College of Architecture + Urban Planning. 

The Tenneryly Barn is located on the MacDowell Colony property that was first acquired by Marian and Edward MacDowell. These exposures were made at full scale, capturing the distortion of the shadows we so often see and experience within and around the spaces we inhabit or used to inhabit. The ghostly images capture a moment within the temporal and transient path of the sun that brings space to life.

Made possible by the generosity of the A. Alfred Taubman College of Architecture, the MacDowell Colony and the Graham Foundation

Invisible views of the sky are rendered with astronomical accuracy revealing territories of constellations and planetary positions. Meaningful dates are used to derive the views. While rendered in acrylic paint, these representations utilize drafting techniques to generate the geometries.

Inter Active Corporation is owned by the internet mogul, Barry Diller. IAC is located on the west side of Manhattan adjacent to the Highline in the epicenter of the starchitect cluster of buildings. IAC's building is known colloquially as the 'iceberg" but those in the design industry recognize the building as Frank Gehry's first New York City Commission. 

The buildings stark white interiors are beautiful but left Diller wanting more color. A series of artists were commissioned to generate distinct moments within the building that would serve as significant navigational points throughout the building. 

The design of the wallpaper located in each elevator lobby was generated using scripts that produced a randomized background triangle pattern. IAC logos flock in the foreground, shifting and migrating between the nine elevator lobbies.

Firma: A+I Design

Team: Jen Harmon, Emily Fischer

Photography © Magda Biernat

This book was designed and produced for a month long study tour for architecture students. Because of the ambitious itinerary of traveling to multiple countries combined with organizing 22 students, a traditional syllabus deemed insufficient. Each location was sequentially organized as a discreet chapter that included maps, a brief history of each location, a schedule for required tours and course meetings as well as a list of recommended sights for the students to visit in their time off. Large images relevant to the course topics were paired with interesting facts.

The cover design was generated by plotting point locations of each continent which were expressed by two colors, orange and magenta. The jewel-like islands represented the cities in Europe and North America yet are divided by the green oceans of color between. These brightly hued abstract faceted forms served as iconic visuals that were deployed across other forms of collateral that were used by the students and translated into plaques made of dichroic acrylic given to our hosts for their generosity.

http://bbtravels13.tumblr.com/

Keep Calm and Wobble On was the motto of Gowanus Studio's 2010 Jell-O Mold Competition. Wobble on we did. On the hottest day of the year in July 2010 we presented our edible Jell-O Wallpaper. 

Cyanitecture joined forces with Haptic Lab and digi-fab guru Maciej Kaczynski of Studio Gang, to create an inspired, fast-paced experiment mixing culinary science, graphic design, and digital fabrication. The stratified elements within the pattern of our edible wallpaper were generated using generative scripting (rhinocerous + grasshopper) and translated into unique dimensional tiles. Jell-O molds were made of food grade vacu-formed polystyrene that took the shape of the 12 CNC routed MDF tiles.

The Jell-O Wallpaper was presented along with 17 other Jell-O creations at Gowanus Studio located in Brooklyn, NY, July 2010.

Between the shadows of the Manhattan and Brooklyn bridges lies a post industrial neighborhood known as DUMBO. The Roads are layered with time and reveal a thin geologic strata scared by heavy use, erosion and deterioration. Asphalt patches yield themselves to forgotten sidewalks, rail lines and vast expanses of pitted cobblestone streets. Walking across these spaces is like walking back in time, the industrial history of this neighborhood is palpable. 

Between the site of an old box and tobacco factory rests a large patchwork of cobblestones and asphalt. Our intervention utilized a chalk and water mixture to create geometric patterns of boxes between the patchwork of roadway strata.

2009

Team: Golnar Adili, Emily Fischer, Jennifer Harmon

Five copies of this hand bound portfolio chronologically documented work produced between 2002-2005. The cover was crafted from laser cut hand polished book board. 

5" x 7" x 1/4"

Detroit is experiencing a new era of economic growth which is attracting large businesses to reinvest in the city's infrastructure. Known primarily as the automotive manufacturing capital of the United States, its is also formerly famous for its role during World War II for producing the "Arsenal of Democracy". Large automotive plants were swiftly converted into factories that produced weapons of war, including tanks, land vehicles and airplanes. Willow Run, located in Detroit's suburb of Belleville rests between Ann Arbor and the Ford River Rouge Factory. This is where the iconic image of "Rosie the Riveter" was born and where the most prolific factory produced the B25 Liberators. 

Willow Run is currently occupied by various companies. Namely, Ford Motor company has occupied the massive B24 assembly facility, while various other aviation companies have utilized the large runway and tarmac system to ship goods or create a secure and private location for private business jets can land and take off without the hassle of negotiating with commercial airlines and the general public.

In recent years, Detroit has been exploring various options for expanding public transportation that would enable the public to move freely between Detroit, Ann Arbor and Detroit's International Airport. They have proposed using existing rail and busses and have begun construction on a light rail system that will extend the city's existing inner loop monorail. 

This speculative project proposes adding 10-15 miles of new passenger rail that provides direct access to both Detroit International Airport (DTW) and Willow Run. It also proposes the addition of a multi-use corporate center that combines a corporate meeting center, and enhanced private jet terminal with an intermodal shipping facility. 

As Detroit seeks to rebuild itself and reshore industrial production, it can begin to reutilize and rehabilitate and expand the functionality of its extensive infrastructural network. Constructing the Aerotropolis of Willow Run will allow the city and the surrounding area will improve the current proposal of The Rapid Transit Authority's link between Ann Arbor, Ypsilanti and Downtown Detroit by making more robust opportunities for business growth. 

The Brittish multinational telecommunications firm Cable & Wireless operated globally. The Washington DC office served as the American headquarters. During the height of the Dot-Com boom, this office would host elaborate parties in various locations across the United States. 

The two illustrations were produced under extremely tight deadlines. Each invite project was initiated four hours before the files were sent to be produced via offset press. Which meant, as the creative lead, I would conceptualize the theme of the party into a "cheeky" hyper-local invite. The two represented were generated for a Roaring 20's themed Martini Party in Hawaii and a Wine Party held on the lawn near the Lincoln Memorial in Washington DC.

Maryland based Firefly-Farms' Artisanal Creamery was one of the first to open shop at the dawn of the foodie/gourmand/locavore movement that has swept the upper middle class of the educated American demographic. Upon acquiring their farm and the many goats, what was once a hobby quickly developed into a business. Firefly Farms needed to develop a brand that reflected their ambitions as worldwide travelers and adventurers who wanted to bring international styles of cheese craft to the United States market.

The illustrations and labels were designed after vintage luggage tags that hotels used in the early 20th century to mark the destinations of steamer trunks. While each cheese was developed based upon regional recipe abroad, they championed the local flavors of the Allegheny Mountain Plateau.

The creamery has expanded since these original labels were developed in 2000 as more products have joined the menu. Firefly Farms has won many awards for their distinctive products. Having tasted many of their cheeses and especially their Caprine Caramel, I can personally vouch for the quality and flavor of their product.

www.fireflyfarms.com