The space is imagined as a re-incarnation of itself, the JR Watkins Apothecary.
The behavior of the elevators reveal the buildings occupation and use by transforming into the actuators for a unique composition of light, sound and space. The architectural interventions and programming, which re-shape the building, take point of departure from the abnormal behavior of the elevator cabs and from the historical use of the building. The grotto-esque features: the gaping maw, the descent into the unknown, the technological secrecy, and the elusive niche—is embedded in the design of each intervention.
The elevator emerges as a unique character in fiction and film. It is made increasingly inviting because of its ubiquitous necessity beyond the screen in daily life. The elevator has made possible the vertical architecture so familiar in our cityscapes. The system of the elevator is controlled and regulated by computer programming language and logic that appears as an incomprehensible jumble to most of us. I am interested in the story of the elevator, in the elevator’s persona, which is embedded in each slice of computer-executable code. Manipulating that code changes the behavior of the system and it becomes “open” to interpretation, intervention and imagination.
Two elevators were constructed as characters for my design development. These elevators utilized the stepper motors programmed using an Arduino micro controller and Wiring language to perform the familiar functions of typical elevators.
They were also programmed with 8 aberrant behaviors, 3 of which were used to inform the architectural interventions on site. The 3 chosen programming functions (referred to from now on as behaviors) are:
A. elevator_love_letters Brief: The notion of being mythically fated for one another. The ups and downs of love merge with the to and fro of traffic in the big city. The hero and heroine fear to loose sight of one another. The chase with the taxi no longer exits, only up and down from floor to floor.
B. coordinates_of_social_space Brief: The skyscraper is a social microcosm revealing the deformations of its residents. The floors become rigidly separate levels of a social hierarchy, connected by the elevator alone. The elevator maps coordinates in social space. The system is made up of lower floors with oppressive ceilings and spacious upper floors of the executive class.
C. pages_from_a_diary Brief: The experienced urbanist views the journey upward without danger, getting stuck is a harmless, erotic moment.
Each behavior references a particular elevator cultural construct revealed in contemporary fiction and film. The selected behaviors were then interwoven into the historical tapestry of an existing site and building in North Point Douglas.
Photo: JR Watkins Building (1913) view from freight elevator
Photo: JR Watkins Building (1913) elevator lift mechanism
Photo: JR Watkins Building (1913) view from freight elevator
Photo: JR Watkins Building (1913) Gearless Traction Elevator mechansim
Joseph Ray Watkins founded Watkins Incorporated in 1868 from the kitchen of his home in Plainview, Minn. He began selling red liniment from a horse-drawn wagon, bringing home remedies to rural areas where few doctors practiced. Watkins traveled the world gathering ingredients and spices for use in his natural concoctions.
JR Watkins Drug Factory and Medical Co. warehouse was built at the corner of Anabella Street and Higgins Avenue in 1913. The CN Trans Canada rail line passes directly behind the building, which allowed for shipments of white cream liniment, camphor oil, turpentine spirits, cinnamon, cleaning solvents, pepper and vanilla to be shipped with ease. Two massive parallel elevators, one for freight and another for passengers, transported JR Watkins products, ingredients and supplies throughout the unique eight-story warehouse.
From 1909 to 1913, Annabella Street (then Rachel) and McFarlane Street made up Winnipegs’ semi official “Red Light” district and the Watkins head offices and distribution centre was right in the thick of it. “Mrs. Watkins frowned on this behavior and ordered the removal of several brothels between the Watkins building and Higgins and replaced them with the current garden. In this act of moral enforcement, Mrs. Watkins effectively quarantined a slice of Point Douglas for her and the Watkins employees. The overgrown trees, bushes and perimeter fence define two worlds: inside the garden and out”.
The JR Watkins Apothecary is a result of the stories about elevators and people, events and characters that make up my particular impression of the Watkins brand, the building, and its site. I imagine the Watkins family to be eccentric pioneers, a bit like the famous Willy Wonka from Raold Dahl’s Charlie and the Chocolate Factory – fiercely independent, innovative, and prone to lunacy from overexposure to potent ingredients.
The elevator code trials made use of several online tutorials and expertise from forum members in the Arudino Online forum, the Ladyada Forum and the Maker forum. The above PDF demonstrates over 3 months worth of continuous research and revision- testing code, inserting code libraries, learning and tweaking. It's still not perfect. The elevator motion began with a hunch-- that is, I could move the elevator using stepper motors controlled by push button switches on a shift register. The idea of the shift register came from the SHIFTIN tutorial written by Carlyn Maw and Tom Igoe.
The last pages of the .pdf contain the final code used to run the elevators.
UPDATE:
The elevators preform based on these evolved behaviors which have been programmed into the elevator code and into the elevator's interface. The following pseudo-code depicts the behaviors most interesting to me and most relevant to the site.
A. elevator_love_letters Baudelaireʼs poem “ A une Passante” illustrates the essence of modern love, one which is no longer dependent on the notion of being mythically fated for one another, but rather, on a chance encounter within the bustle of the big city. The ups and downs of love merge with the to and fro of traffic. The hero and heroine fear to loose sight of one another. The chase with the taxi no longer exits, only up and down from floor to floor. Charles Baudelaire: Les Fleurs de Mal et autre poemes, Paris, 1964. P 114
Elevator Function: if switchvar2== n do move both freight and passenger elevator in a game of tag. Move passenger to floor 2 then freight, then pass to 3 then freight to 3 and the 4 and so on until they both stop at the 6 floor , delay 500ms, and return to the first floor check the shift register for next call
B. bureaucratic_prostition In the pre-lift age the blue collar worker occupied the poorly furnished attic room. High society, on the other hand, resided in the lower storeys of the building. That gravity could be comfortably overcome by lift led to a re-evaluation of these physical constructs. The person who was “on top” could live at “the top”. The vertical polarizations of social hierarchy and of the real world became synchronous resulting in a new topsy-turvy world.
C. Co-ordinates_of_social_space. The skyscraper is a social microcosm revealing the deformations of its residents. The floors become rigidly separate levels of a social hierarchy, connected by the elevator alone. The elevator maps coordinates in social space. The system is made up of lower floors with oppressive ceilings and spacious upper floors of the executive class.
Elevator Function: if switchvar== passenger elevator go to floor 3, delay, go to floor 3.5, delay, go to floor 4, delay, go to floor 2, delay. Continue cycle 3 times and then return to ground floor. check the shift register for next call
D. make_nice Elevators have become ubiquitous. Not only are they a functional necessity, but they pervade our social and cultural life as well. We have developed extensive social conventions as a way of dealing with them, from where to stand in a crowded elevator to where to stand when only a stranger is present. Elevator Function: If swichvar2= Passenger_motor go to floor eight and stay there and loop forward one step and back one step (like a hover) for 300 loops check the shift register for next call
E. the_fear "I hate to say this, but this place is getting to me. I think I'm getting the fear" The tendency towards free-fall as a catastrophic occurrence.
Elevator Function: passenger_motor increase rpmʼs move fast to top floor, delay, move fast to bottom floor and reset rpm's to normal check the shift register for next call
F. gateway_to_the_soul Juxtaposition of the banal and the metaphysical trans-dimensional portal. "Welcome to the New Jersey turnpike".
Elevator Function: if switchvar = passenger_motor floorcount 7.5 check the shift register for next call freight elevator== go to missing floor 4
G. We_have_a_situation_here The breakdown of lift systems offers the opportunity to occupy areas of the building meant for machines. Building penetration and invasion occurs through the labyrinths of shafts that offer protection by their darkness. The urban jungle as an interior space.
Elevator Function: If switchvar = Send passenger_motor to basement, send motor_freight to floor 8, then reverse it so that passenger_motor goes to 8 and motor_freight goes to B.
I. The_end_of _the_world Nowhere is the dependency on the function of everyday mechanics as invisible as it is in the elevator building. Technology runs amok.
Elevator Function: If switchvar = Motor_passenger and motor_freight Go to basement then up a bit, then to basement, delay, then up a bit, then back to basement—keep going for 3 minutes—keep looping for 3 minutes
J. Pages_from_a_diary The experienced urbanist views the journey upward without danger, getting stuck is a harmless, erotic moment. Disturbances and confusions in the vertical can delay the course of love but never ruin it
Elevator Function: If switchVar2= Motor_Passenger and Motor_Freight travel to floor 5 and hover and pulse up and down a few steps 5 minutes. Delay [long time?] Check Shift Register for next call.
The stepper motors are required to lift the elevator cab to the correct floor. The stepper motor's precision makes it an ideal device for achieving accurate precision. A few trial and error tests were required to determine the number of "steps" between floors. A stepper motor does not spin freely on it’s own when connected to a current. It is a motor controlled by a series of electromagnetic coils. The center shaft has a series of magnets mounted on it, and the coils surrounding the shaft are alternately given current or not, creating magnetic fields which repulse or attract the magnets on the shaft, causing the motor to rotate. The current is regulated by the Arduino micro controller which is programmed in Arduino programming language (based on Wiring). Like other motors, stepper motors require more power than a microcontroller can give them, so a separate DC power supply is required. Typical voltages for a stepper might be 5V, 9V, 12V, 24V.
Preliminary Shift Register Test utilizing push button switches.
More digital input than the 13 pins of Arduino board can readily handle were required for the elevator interface. Using a parallel to serial shift register allows information to be gathered from 8 or more switches while only using 3 of the pins on your Arduino. The shift registers can be daisy chained together to create an "unlimited" number of switches.
Elevator Interface Prototype utlizing three Shift Registers
"In Goethe's phantasmagoric Faust II, the good doctor's assistant Wagner has created "Homunculus" a miniature alchemical golem, in a glass beaker. This "dainty little man" possess the trait of complete memory of the world's history." The Secret Lives of Puppets. 2001 To speak of a puppet with most men and women is to cause them to giggle. They think at once of the wires; they think of the stiff hands and the jerky movements; they tell me it is a "funny little doll". But . . . these puppets. . . are the descendants of a great and noble family of Images, images which were indeed made "in the likeness of God". E. Gordon Craig quoted in The Secret Lives of Puppets. 2001
Elevator in Film and Fiction Blog
A collection of clips, passages, and images which reflect the role of the elevator in film and fiction. Check here
The space is imagined as a re-incarnation of itself, the JR Watkins Apothecary.
