August 2015

Calvin Tsao in Open City: Existential Urbanity

Open City: Existential Urbanity is an anthology of architecture created by the students of The Irwin S. Chanin School of Architecture at The Cooper Union in studios conducted by the architect Diane Lewis with a team of colleagues from 2001-2014. Calvin Tsao taught a studio with Diane Lewis on the principles derived from the work of artist Lucio Fontana.

In his essay for the anthology titled, “Art/Architecture: Invitation & Intention,” Tsao writes:

“Limits, self-imposed, situation-based, or contextual, focused the critical process of the studio. Principles and limits, individual or collective, provide constraints. This concept is liberating, embodied in Fontana’s definitive punctures and piercings of the canvas…That move – the cut – is an example of how restraining conditions within an art can hone a work. The constraint versus the possibility is open; constraints expose opportunity. If the constraint generates the possibility, one must discover how to define it and how to reveal it.”