Matthew Wagstaffe   |   writing   editorial   exhibitions   |   info

Haunted Wall
In a nod to accreditation boards and its own self-regard as an institution that values the practical as much as the theoretical, the Yale School of Architecture mandates that its second-year students take a fabrication course, during which they are required to build a full-scale mockup of a either a wall sample or small spatial design. My team, seeking to truly understand the basic materials of architecture, wished to construct a simple wall made of brick and concrete masonry units. Our bank accounts already denuded by tuition and the high cost of model-making supplies, we could not have been happier when we came across an abandoned lot full of the exact materials we needed. We did not hesitate. After a perfunctory glance around, we quickly loaded the materials into my minivan and carted them off to school in order to execute our assignment.

Our victory, however, was short-lived. As we were attempting to build our wall, we were beset by inexplicable disturbances: fully-charged drills stopped working; we’d put an object down on a ledge only to have it immediately fall off; we all swear that we saw a brick rise up off the ground. Could our pilfered materials be the culprit? Had we inadvertently brought cursed objects into the hallowed halls of our school? Greatly troubled, we investigated the history of the abandoned lot only to discover, scrolling through archived New Haven Independents on the library’s rickety micro- film reader, that our worst fears were true: the site had a ghastly past. The bricks and CMUs we’d taken had once made up of the home of a young New Haven family rumored to practice the dark arts. Under mysterious circumstances—seance gone awry? Hell’s flames brought too close to the earth’s surface?—the house burned to the ground, taking the life of every family member with it. There was no way around it: our salvage was cursed; we were building a haunted wall.

Unfortunately, we arrived at this conclusion too late—the review was the next day and we had no choice but to keep building. Though our materials continued to hinder us—CMUs would suddenly burn hot, bricks seemed to repel their mortar—finally, through sheer determination, we were able to finish our assignment. We went to sleep tired and afraid, not knowing what tomorrow’s review would bring.

We awoke to a gloomy, overcast day. The design jury wore outfits of all black. We stood before them with complexions sallow from lack of sleep. Our minds feverish with fatigue and fear, we nervously narrated our project—its dimensions, its materials (leaving out their grim provenance), our construction methods. As we droned on, the wall stood silent. We shared hopeful glances with one another: perhaps we had hallucinated the whole thing? Let our stress-addled minds get the better of us? A bit calmer, we settled into our performance, now peppering our speech with the architecture buzzwords design critics devour. The intrigued jury leaned forward when suddenly a spirit attempted to escape from the wall! All of its parts shook with the might of a being whose anger at having his life burned from him was still fresh! The jury screamed! The wall’s fury crescendoed and then suddenly stopped. As we caught our breaths we all felt a deathly cold pass over us. Its spirit escaped, our haunted wall was haunted no more.

[Sadly, none of the above is true. We actually carved CMUs and bricks out of foam and then glued them to fabric sheets pulled taut between frames of 2x4s. In between these panels were two rods adorned with offset cams. The rods were connected to a motion-sensor-activated drill. When someone approached the wall (say, the intrigued jury), the drills would activate, rotating the cams and making the fabric sheets ripple as though possessed. We hope to sell this product to HauntedProps.com one  day.]

A collaboration with Kate Fisher, Iven Peh and Ethan Zisson.