These three meter wide by three meter long rooms were part of a series of works built by Laura Stargala in 2019. They are located in Ithaca, New York, within a stream, a meadow, and a rock formation. 

 

Wanting a physical engagement with direct resources, Laura began building with what was available to her. Although no more than a meter tall in height, these outlines of rooms express an urgency to be engaged with rather than imposing upon. 

 

Laura lived in a small attic apartment at the time and would go on frequent walks with her dog. Coming across rock formations she often had the temptation to start rearranging them into intentional spaces. Passing by meadows she contemplated creating rooms within them. Eventually she made a plan and began executing her ideas. 

 

The rooms she built are part of a series. They are meant to be applicable to any chosen site. Similar to Sol Le Witt’s instructions, the task of building a three meter by three meter room out of readily avialable materials could be done anywhere by anyone. The result would be a space that emerges from its surroundings and is limited by the characteristcs of the available materials. These qualities would then influence the height, structure, and relationship of the room to its surroundings.

 

Laura began with the Room in the Field. She brought some scissors and cut a room into a meadow with very tall grass. The room had an entrance. As weeks went by the room began to change as new vegetation grew on the floor of the room. Eventually, as weeks and months went by, it disappeared all together.

 

Next was the Room in the Stream. The interior room was water, the boundaries stone. Laura moved rounded large pebbles to create a space as she stood within the creek. With time this room too would fall into itself and return to a pattern established by the water, fallen trees, and other unforsable events. 

 

Laura also built a Room in the Rock. This room was built in a rock formation from the surrounding slate. Laura’s dog would lie by the entrance as she worked: guarding the newly formed interior. She understood the space and was relating to it in similar ways as other spaces in her life. 

 

These rooms created tactile relationships between the author and her context. They were the beginning seeds of Laura’s investigation of hyper-proximal rearrangements, of a dialogue with pragmatic regionalism, and gesture towards a poetic environmental activism. This project was the beginnings of her achitecture of here.