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Dealing the Fragments of an Architectural Landscape

Alessandro Magliani Diploma 9 2016-2017 Architectural Association London

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Contents:

1........................Fragments 2...............Wunderkammer 3.....Collage and Miniature 4............Dealing the Cards 5.........The Site of the Table 6.............New Landscapes

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1. FRAG

MENTS

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The premise of the project is a parallel between the practice of architecture and the medium of the drawing as a way to reflect it.

We have in recent times witnessed an individualistic model of practice, where hierarchy and the view of a single character play a fundamental role in the creation of architectural products.

However, the creative process in which architectural projects are born is becoming increasingly collaborative and dependent on a set of different figures.

As a result of this, the architect is gradually becoming a mediator between different people and inputs, rather than the solitary figure behind a design.

As the process of creation is becoming more and more an expression of different impulses combined together, it brings forward a new figure of the architect, who is assuming the role of a binder of disparate conceptual fragments.

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2. WUNDER

KAMMER 13

By working with fragments, the architect firstly needs to measure himself with the figure of the collector, who takes pieces extrapolated from their context and neatly arranges them in his cabinet.

The juxtaposition of the objects in the cabinet adds further layers of meaning to them, allowing the viewers to stitch their separate narratives together, while creating unexpected results and endless possibilities of rewriting their origin and meaning.

The project will make use of both literal and conceptual fragments to create a shifting landscape where they will be rearranged into endless recombinations.

These actions will take place on the site of the table, which represents the ground onto which the landscape is going to be built over and over again.

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3. COLLAGE AND

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Upon seeing the mutilated torso Belvedere, the Roman scholars firstly tried to understand it and analyse it through drawing.

This is one the most immediate methods for working with fragments, because it gives us a way to directly postulate and represent the original composition which ideally hosted them.

However one tries to imagine this moment, it is inevitably lost, because once the fragment is removed from its original context it will gain the status of an independent piece, which is what enables it to constantly readjust to different settings.

The removal of a context stimulates the creative process, emphasising the infinite recombinational opportunities that the fragments as independent pieces allow.

Moreover, drawing not only allows us to imagine a potential context for one or more fragments, it also facilitates the process of inventing sequences to link them together.

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By arranging two small scale objects in different views on the same surface, the drawing illustrates how we are able to visually connect them through an imaginative process.

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The drawings shown in the previous pages show speculative visual connections, which can only be read in a singular way and with a specific orientation.

In order to remove this singularity, and return the objects/fragments to their decontextualised condition, the next works were developed to take a step back and remove the orientation of the drawing, as well as its background plane.

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4. DEALING

THE CARDS 41

A single composition of fragments, however, can never be completely satisfactory, as it also shows only one arbitrary arrangement.

In this state, the drawing is still one fixed outcome, that can’t continuously expand or update the meaning of its different components.

In 1920s Paris, Tristan Tzara and William S Burroughs were rearranging cut out words from newspapers into new sequences, seeking a new method to obtain an endless proliferation of unique pieces.

The words were placed in a bag and picked up at random, facilitating the creation of original pieces, while at the same time fuelling their infinite multiplication.

In the same way Burroughs composed text using the cut up method, I decided to split my drawings into sections in order to facilitate their recombination into different sequences.

To further emphasise the collaborative nature of the cut up method, I decided to transform the drawings into playing cards by adding a numerical value.

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Wether a group of people will decide to play Dominos, Gin Rummy or, like in this case, Machiavelli, is irrelevant because the predominant aspect of any of these games is the collaborative way of creating a diverse and heterogeneous landscape of cards on the table.

The cut up drawings, which in their card format become suits, depict several natural and man-made landscapes, constructed with different drawing methods. Each suit is drawn according to different existing rules of composition.

Wether they are drawn in planar view or parallel projection, the sets are developed as singular drawing units..

Once the cards are on the table, however, the juxtaposition between the different suits and their drawing methods offer the opportunity to break their compositional rules.

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Jungle In the early 900s Henry Rousseau was painting exotic jungle scenes, even though he never left Europe in his lifetime.

His inspiration came from looking at illustrations in children’s books, as well as from several visits to the botanical gardens of Paris. His idea of the Jungle was mediated through a human reconstruction, whether physical or pictorial. The relationship between the natural and the artificial is expressed in the different ways in which the jungle and gardens set are constructed. On one hand we have an illustrative way of depicting a jungle, in which the emphasis is on the over saturation and layering of the image. The layered view is meant to directly express the immersive feeling of the natural landscape, which grows without apparent order and surrounds the viewer, who is incapable of projecting any order onto47 it.

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Gardens On the other hand, the garden suit is drawn in parallel projection in order to emphasise the extension of the human mind into the natural realm. The suit is developed around abstract and rational interpretations of natural themes, like floral patterns and french formal gardens, as well as man-made imitations of ideal landscapes, like English and hanging gardens.

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Desert In the same way Rousseau experienced the feeling of being in a Jungle without leaving the city, today we are more than ever able to explore the different environments of our planet through an extremely diverse set of media. One of the most important changes in the history of seeing and perceiving the world happened during our lifetime. The satellite view is now a tool that anyone with an internet connection can access from anywhere, allowing us to explore the most remote corners of our planet without leaving the comfort of our homes. The satellite view and the oblique view are the centre of two other suits, which display deserts and mountains. In the first case, the satellite view is used to create a continuous landscape of vastness and bleakness, which characterise the environment of the desert. From this point of view, the landscape gets reduced to a patterned two dimensional surface, 55 which allows for a panning motion to happen.

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Mountains The oblique view used in the mountains set allows us to maintain a distance from the landscape, yet understanding its depth, which is emphasised by the alternation of peaks and valleys. This view helps us to understand the landscape in three dimensions, without, however presenting the optical distortions of a perspectival representation.

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City The oblique view used to depict the landscape of the mountains is deployed again under the form of an axonometry on the suits on cities and infrastructures.

The subject of these suits is the absolute built environment, therefore the parallel projection is used as the most appropriate way of depicting a rigorously planned space.

The axonometric projection used in these suits is meant to represent the realignment of drawing to scientific disciplines such as mechanics, mathematics and geometry. As the drawing increasingly starts to be used as an analytical tool, the necessity for an accurate way of representing three dimensional space becomes fulfilled by the axo.

The city set is developed in a density gradient: the lower cards represent a suburban setting, gradually growing into the crowded 63 environment of the European city at first and later into a dense forest of skyscrapers.

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Infrastructure The set on infrastructures also develops around a gradual increase of scale. From the scale of a computer chip to dams and power plants, this set specifically emphasises the technical origin of the parallel drawing, which originated from the necessity to represent space in its effective dimensions rather than how we perceive it through our eyes.

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Interiors The methods of representation used in the other suits were always developed around the idea of a reinterpretation of the way we see the world in order to deliver a particular aspect of it.

The parallel projection in particular represents a departure from a physiological understanding of how we perceive our world, since it focuses on a mental process of abstraction, or on the action of our so called inner eye.

In the suit depicting interior spaces, the parallel projection is faced with its physiological counterpart, which is embodied by the perspectival view. This view is foremost relevant because for the first time it introduces the singular viewpoint into the conversation. While the parallel projection allows a space to be simultaneously drawn from different points of view, the perspective is a static form of representation, which can only be seen from a specific angle. This discrepancy between the fluidity of the parallel projection and the immobility of the perspective serves as a base for the unfolding of a series of interior spaces, which are assembled together to form a continuous interior.

The perspectival views act as fixed nodes around which a series of parallel 71 projections interlock through extended surfaces and elements

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5. THE SITE

OF THE TABLE 75

The sets of internal relationships and potential conflicts between the cards-fragments take place on the surface of a table, rather than within the walls of a cabinet.

The table functions as a commencement point, a tabula rasa that allows any scenario to find its beginning.

The game begins on a site deprived of a context, which allows each player to determine the initial premises of the landscape.

The table is also a mapping tool to understand and relate geographically the cards and objects contained within its area. Its gridded surface allows us to read it in geometrical terms, locating axes and intersections within its perimeter, and projecting an order onto the apparently chaotic associations that gradually form on its plane.

Piranesi uses a ruined stone tabula as a site for his Campo Marzio, and by doing so he consciously inflates it with a layer of fictional history, which precedes the drawing itself and locates it within the realm of a fictional past.

Similarly, when the table transforms itself from a tabula rasa into a complex heterogeneous landscape, different layers of information can be projected onto its surface.

From geometrical relations, to narrative connections and drawing techniques, the different readings of the table transform it from a static surface into a shifting background that is able to influence the reading of the cards.

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Game #1

Machiavelli 5 Players Jungle, Desert, City, Interiors

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Game #2

Machiavelli 5 Players Mountains, Desert, Gardens, Infrastructure

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Game #1

Machiavelli 5 Players Jungle, Desert, City, Interiors

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Game #2

Machiavelli 5 Players Mountains, Desert, Gardens, Infrastructure

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6. THE NEW

LANDSCAPES

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The maps in the next pages were drawn as an analysis and further exploration of the table at the end of a game.

The sharp edges that form when different suits lay next to each other on the table are softened in the maps, which start illustrating possible interpretations of the heterogeneous landscape created by the players.

The one in the next page is centred on the expanse of the desert and the way it physically and conceptually influences the other suits on the table.

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The second map transcends the original table combination even more, as it focuses on all of the suits at the same time, while also showing connections between them.

The maps are direct outputs of the fragmentary process used in their creation.

Different instances and drawing techniques coexist within the same space of the paper, openly manifesting their fragmented nature, while at the same time providing a form of mediation between the different pieces.

The smooth connections drawn in the maps are further explored in the views in the following pages, where the suits come together in the form of a perspective, that allows a seamless connection between the different environments to take place.

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Desert + Gardens + Infrastructure

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Interiors + Jungle + City

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The aim of the project is to be an machine for an endless creation of these whimsical landscapes, which emphasises the fragmented nature of the creative process.

The project defines through the drawings a more contemporary way of understanding the practice of architecture, which relies on an act of collaboration, rather than on the input of single figures.

The collaborative aspect of the project allows the drawings to retain a heterogeneous quality, which more accurately reflects the fragmentary and sometimes irrational process of creation.

In the same way as the drawings are mediating between different techniques and subjects, the contemporary architect transforms itself into an editor, who is not afraid of expanding the subject of the discipline, by including fragments of different backgrounds into the creative process.

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