WEERKAS by JOHAN VOORDOUW

Page 1

Johan Voordouw

WEERKAS März 2018

Weerkas versteht sich als ein ironischer Kommentar

dar. Die Darstellungen drücken eine Verschiebung der

zu den sich verändernden klimatischen Bedingungen

Wetterbedingungen aus und spekulieren über deren

in den Niederlanden. Jede Zeichnung der Serie stellt

mögliche soziale und wirtschaftliche Auswirkungen

sowohl einen bestimmten Ort in einer der zwölf

auf

Provinzen der Niederlande, als auch eine mit ihm eng

maßstäblichen

verwobene Wettersituation eines bestimmten Monats

als didaktische „Follies“, die auf die zunehmende

die

niederländische

Landschaft.

Die

Weerkas-Interventionen

klein-

fungieren

Disparität zwischen historischen, normativen und

den

klimatischen

Zyklen

Auswirkungen

aufkommenden

eines

Klimawandels

hinweisen. Die damit verbundenen Wetteranomalien dramatische

werden

Auswirkungen

auf

die wirtschaftliche und kulturelle Zukunft der Niederlande haben: Wasser gefriert nicht mehr, der Wasserspiegel damit der

auch

ändert die

sich

Landschaft.

Die

Darstellungen

in

den

eingesetzte

CAD-basierte bezieht

und

Beschaffenheit

Zeichentechnik

sich

direkt

historischen

auf

die

niederländischen

Landschaftsradierungen aus dem 17.

Jahrhundert

und

dadurch

verbindet

zeitgenössische

Narrative des Klimawandels mit historischen Ausdrucksformen der niederländischen Landschaft. Die Zeichnungen erhalten in Wien eine

neue

räumliche

Wirkung,

indem sie analog auf einen neuen Raum und für eine neue Zeit übertragen werden.

Durch diese

mediale Übersetzung werden die Darstellungen Form

greifbar,

in

einer

nicht

als

neuen Bilder

architektonischer Formen in der Landschaft,

sondern

als

archi-

tektonische Linien, die Raum bilden.



W e e r k a s

April acts like a large air conditioner, taking in cold canal

The Weerkas is an ironic commentary on changing

water to absorb ambient heat and dumping it back into

weather patterns in the Netherlands. Each of the

the water. A warm April is poor for the Dutch cut flower

twelvedigital drawings expresses a shift in weather

industry, which is an integral part of the Dutch identity

conditions, and speculates the social and economic

implications of climate change on the Dutch landscape.

that will adversely affect delicate ecosystems through

The portfolio of drawings expands across Dutch space

harmful windstorms. Here the interior sand dunes of

and time. Each image illustrates a specific geographic

theLoonse en DrunenseDuinen are protected from the

location in one of the Netherlands’ twelve provinces, in

worst of the inclement weather through a series of

one month of the year.

protective barriers that illustrate the harmful effects of

wind erosion

The project title – Weerkas - loosely translates to

May expresses the increasingly volatile weather

‘Weather-house’. This is not a ‘house’ in a domestic sense

(huis),but a translation of the word ‘kas’ (greenhouse). The

Bilt, building a large scaffold with a barometer for each

greenhouse was an importantinspiration for the project.

of the Netherlands’ 36 weather stations showing historic

Greenhouses construct the country’s ground plane and

barometric pressure as oppose to the present conditions

represent the modern Dutch landscape par excellence.

It is this set piece, and it related sense of environmental

increased prevalence of summer storms, building

June is located at the KNMI headquarters in De

July deals with volatile weather and the

control that is subverted and called into question in the Weerkas project. Because of climate change the Dutch landscape is undergoing enormous undesirable change. The overtmanagement that the country exerts over of its land and waterwill in the coming decades become increasingly variable and difficult to predict and control. The small Weerkas interventions act as a didactic ‘follies’, expressing the increasing disparity between historic, normative climate cycles and emerging weather conditions. Given the homogenous geography of the Dutch landscape, these weather anomalies will have a dramatic affect on the country’s economic and cultural future.

The drawing technique used in the drawings

references the historic landscape etchings produced in Holland’s Golden Age of art in the 17th Century, tying the contemporary narrative of climate change to historic expressions of the Dutch landscape. The environmental and cultural function of each structureis underscored through

textual

research

of

academic

journal

articles,and, in particular, the documents published by the Koninklijk Nederlands Meteorologisch Instituut (KNMI) – Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute). Each image considers different aspects of the weather:

January is the Ijskas. It considers ice making in

Groningen, a realization that with a small increase in winter temperatures the historic cultural phenomenon of skating on the frozen canals will become an activity relegated only to memory

February is the Windkas. Increasingly winter

wind patterns are shifting from the cold northern winds

a reflective screen that re-directs sunlight onto a

of Norway to warm winds from Spain. This folly takes

bandstand in Maastricht’s Vrijthofplein.

warm winter wind, cools it in its large funnels and flips

its directionto become cold northernly winds

hub, Rotterdam, noting the affect of changes in

March is the Sneeuwkas. This folly forms a

waterlevel either due to flooding or drought. The ‘pool’

square meter of snow on the ground on the three days

in the center of the harbour moves up and down via

in March when snow ought to fall. In this image the tree

a system counterweights maintaining a historic water

is already in leaf as spring has yet again arrived a couple

level to counterpoint the current water level affected by

weeks early

climatic anomalies 3

August moves to the Netherlands’s economic


J a n u a r y


Joh a n Vo o r d ouw is a registered architect (ARB, UK) and Assistant Professor at the Azrieli School of Architecture and Urbanism at Carleton University, Ottawa. He studied his Bachelor of Environmental Design, Architecture at the University of Manitoba in Winnipeg, and completed his graduate studies at the Bartlett School of Architecture in Unit 20 under the tutelage of Dr. MarjanColletti and Dr. Marcos Cruz. He has practiced and taught in the United Kingdom, Canada and the Netherlands.

Johan’s work has been extensively published

and exhibited including the Silver Linings exhibition in Vienna (2015), ‘Urban by Nature’ at the International Architecture Biennale in Rotterdam (2014), the Royal Academy Summer Show in London (2010 & 2011), the Venice Architecture Biennale (2010), and Digital Architecture: Passages through Hinterlands in London (2009). Johan’sresearch by design interests are related to digital design practice, and their connection to emerging modes of architectural representation and hybrid fabrication techniques. His theoretical interests study how these new digital design ideas are contextualized within established fields of architectural theory.

C o nv e r s a t i o n w i t h Joh a n Vo o r d ouw In late February, members of the curatorial team sat down with Johan to have a conversation about the

September speaks to the initial inspiration of

history of the Weerkas, and his interpretation on the

the project. Located in a greenhouse it places two tomato

new installation in Vienna.

plants outside. Shrivelled under the intense heat, they stand in stark contrast to the lush plants that are

Matthias Moroder

fertilized and watered inside

With the March drawing, you applied for the Rotterdam

Biennale [2014]? You did March for the open call?

October shows the affects of urban wind

tunnels. The whiskers constructed along the building facades indicating the wind speed out of town, the gust

Johan Voordouw

indicating how the affects of the city change local wind

I like the fact that March is the month of the exhibition.

patterns

March was the first one that was made; it really was the

November is located inside Haarlem Train

drawing that started off the whole project. I did March

Station. These large bladders collect and rain water on

for the open call and part of the proposal was to say

unsuspecting travellers to indicate typical monthly

that I was going to do 11 more. So the funny thing about

rainfall. November is one of the wettest months in the

March is that it is the only drawing that really was ever

Netherlands. Here it rains inside the train station, as the

changed because I had not fully figured out the project

outside is dry with drought

yet. What actually happened for March was that, as soon

Lastly the month of December is located in the

as it was accepted and I realised that I needed to do 11

string of islands along the North coast of the country. The

more, I needed to find a place in Holland that looked

island of Vlieland has 90% cloud cover in the last month

like that. It is the only one that I have made up totally

of the year. Here inflated panels act as clouds on days

on my own. And so I went to the Dutch monuments’

when the sun’s rays pierce down from a cloud-less sky.

website and I looked for all of the tea houses in the Netherlands and where those tea houses were on Google

Project Assistant: Aisha Sawatsky This text is a synopsis of previous text published at both the International Architecture Biennale Rotterdam 2014 and the eCAADe conference in Newcastle 2015. Completed for an open call to the ‘Urban by Nature’ International Architecture Biennale Rotterdam, the images were exhibited along the main ramp of Rem Koolhaas’s (OMA) Kunsthal Rotterdam in the summer of 2014

Earth. I needed to find one that was along a little stream; that had kind of a forest around it, but was out in the open. After a couple of hours of searching, I finally found that little tea house. Originally I had modelled 5


F e b r u a r y


something completely different, something actually

architecture there that gets you inside is something that

far more baroque, because it was made up. And then I

is already existing. So that is the reason why I am careful

deleted that one and put in the little tea house that you

to call them structures, or follies or those things but I do

see there [in the March drawing], so it is actually of that

not really call them architecture per se, because they are

place. And that was the thing that kicked off all of the

not spatial or programmatic. They are functional, but

other drawings.

not programmatic in the same way that architecture is programmatic. It is not that someone is living there, or

Matthias

working there. They work more like machines. In some

The nice thing is that you basically developed the

ways the February drawing might be a perfect example

drawing technique on this March drawing?

of that: it has to take hot air that comes from Spain that gets pushed into one of those funnels. It needs to cool it

Johan

down and then it needs to re-direct it to become cold air

Yes. When I first submitted it I did not really give it any

from Norway. As you are walking your dog on the beach,

month’s name, I had not completely worked out what

it is kind of a warmish February day, and then you walk

the project was going to be, I just said I was going to do

in the front of this thing and you get a blast of cold,

11 more, one for each month . I realised a little bit later

polar air from Norway to remind you that it should be –

during the process that Holland also has 12 provinces;

for one – much, much windier in February than it is, and

that was incredible. Had Holland had 8 provinces, what

the air should be much colder. And so you are designing

do you do? Or even worse, let’s say 13, what do you do?

a machine to have a specific function at that point, and

As soon as I realised that, that’s when it slowly started to

that is where all these formal characteristics come from.

come together. I never had a cohesive plan for the pro-

They become a little bit of a game of how do you capture

ject, where I wrote out what each place was going to be.

wind and how do you re-direct light, how do you store water, so it can rain all of a sudden on train passengers

Eva Sommeregger

– because it should be raining in November, but it is

It grew through the process of making it, that is beautiful.

actually drought outside. In that sense, the functions of them are very, very simple. There is just a re-direction of

Johan

what needs to be happening.

If I am honest about it, April is my least favourite one, I think it is the most boring. April is the last one I drew, and I was just completely out of ideas. I knew what I wanted to do from kind of a folly-standpoint. I just could not design it anymore. I needed it to look different from the others and I could not come up with the formal ideas anymore. It was kind of done. I think it is interesting that there is kind of a peak for me with the November one, November was maybe the third-last, and December was the second-last, and then there is a big cliff. Matthias How do you judge them? I find it interesting that, in a way, the follies are architectural projects conceived for one image only – and that is a completely different way of designing something than when you design a whole building, where you go through etc. It seems to open up judgement on the level of the image itself and on the level of the actual possibility of judging the design. Johan The trickiest thing was that each drawing was done individually, but I knew that, because they were months, they would sit in chronology to one another and so they had to sit beside one another as well. And then, from an architectural standpoint, I would say that they are formal, but not entirely spatial. If we look at November – the Haarlem train station –, or the Greenhouse, the 7


M a r c h


Matthias

what’. Two centimetres sound like absolutely nothing.

What I find interesting is that the pedagogical level

But if you are going into the Rotterdam harbour, and

seems to be on the level of the image, and then – as a

you just see that the water level in one little patch of the

question for later – how successful is it? But you have a

harbour is five centimetres lower than the others. First

second level, which I kind of realise now, through your

you might not even notice it, but then you might go:

narrative: there is a pedagogical level in the machines, or

‘hey, wait a second, that is really strange, what is going

in the follies themselves, and in their function. There is

on there?’ And then you come back five years later and it

no dimension of actually changing climate conditions,

is a little bit higher and a little bit higher – this is where

they are only pedagogical interventions.

you start realising that this is not just in the harbour, but this is everywhere.

Johan The thing is: can architecture solve climate change? No.

Eva Going back to what you were saying earlier, that you do

Matthias

not directly call them architectural interventions – I do

Probably not.

not quite agree, I think they are highly architectural. The small follies might not hold program in themselves, but they repair or animate processes that were part of that cultural landscape in the past. Johan They are highly architectural. But because there is no program, I am considering what the next set of drawings might be in the future. In that sense I would like to get inside the space, not of these machines per se, but of the next project. In this project you stay very much on the outside, and these are very much situated in the landscape as functioning machine-like objects with many architectural qualities, but without a conventional architectural program. That is how I always saw that project. Yes, they have all the other requirements for architecture that they are structural, they are material, they are situated, they are very much in the context of place, dealing with contemporary societal issues, like you would imagine other architectural projects to do. It was very important that they serve a didactic function and that they do that sometimes in a very subversive way, other times in a little bit of an ironic, humorous way: the fact that you now need machines to make ice, so that you can simply go skating on the canal, because global warming has prevented that from happening. Eva That is January, right? Johan That is January. You go to your grandparents’ house

Johan

and they always talk about how wonderful it was, back

The thing is: can architecture start to be used as a lens

when they were kids; that they could go out onto the

or as a foil by which people can understand all the

ice and skate... It really stemmed, too, from Dutch art,

differences that are happening in their natural and built

those winter landscapes, Breughel; those really capture

environment? Yes, absolutely. If we start understanding

the public’s imagination of the Dutch landscape. That

these as installations that physically start to showcase

landscape simply does not exist anymore. It does not

what is the difference of a sea level rise of ten centimetres.

exist anymore just simply because of development; it

I always think about it, when people say ‘the sea level

just does not exist because it never snows, it does not

is going to rise by two centimetres this year’ and go ‘so

freeze enough. These machines are done in etchings to 9


A p r i l


capture that Dutch technique of landscape etchings, but they also speak to the landscape to recapture or recreate these historic norms that allow people to function in the landscape in the same way that they did in centuries past. Eva I think there is something very powerful happening in your project, it blurs the way in which we imagine and picture space with the actual space. It blurs image with space. Maybe that is a bit of a Bartlett thing? We are all infected with this ‘virus’, I cannot take myself out of that either. I would say images are space. Johan I would agree with that. What gets picked up from the Bartlett, is the importance of a narrative. Which is funny, because I never saw myself as that person while I was there. There are other units that are far stronger on that front, like Jonathan Hill’s or CJ Lim’s. Unit 20 is not particularly a strong narrative unit. But somehow you get out of that school and out of that program and you realise that by default, it is there. Even if you are only a little bit of a Bartlett narrative student, you are still probably a little bit more of a narrative architect than you are if you maybe got to another school, like the Architectural Association or something like that. But I would also say that it was important to layer the drawings in that way of putting them in a specific place, in a specific month, with a specific weather condition

this time is very interesting, because it is projected – and

and a particular architectural intervention. It gives

because of that it skews that place anyways. I think it

multiple entry routes for people to see the work. So

turns it into a far more dynamic virtuality, so that people

sometimes, people like the drawings, but they do not

now can occupy it. So it does not really matter anymore,

like the architecture. Other people like the architecture,

that it is originally in ‘Groningen’. It is now ‘Groningen’

but they do not know the place. And other people look

projected over a ceiling and two walls and you can stand

at it and they go ‘oh wait, that is “Haarlem treinstation”,

in and under it. What is interesting about this current

that is where my aunt lives, that is cool.’ They just go

intervention is that it is no longer simply an image that

through the work, because there is a personal connection,

is flat on the wall that you look at, but it is now covering

because they recognise the location because either they

multiple surfaces, so you can stand in it. That now starts

have family there, or they live there themselves, or

to lessen the importance of the specific location and it

that’s where they work. In that way I think it captures

starts to make it more experiential. People can actually

a broader sense of the public’s imagination. If they

find the one that they can stand in.

were all totally made up, then it is harder to enter into the image. Because they are a recognisable spot people

Eva

gravitate more towards it: they want to see what was the

This leads to how our intervention of drawing it onto the

location that I picked for the province, in which they live.

wall actually furthers the project, or the ways in which you have conceived it. It really plays with the question

Matthias

of how the image or the imagination of a space informs

For an Austrian public it is slightly more difficult to read

and controls a specific space.

the locations. Last time we talked, you explained they are all very well known iconic places that are pictured.

Johan

So from the first moment on, one sees the difference

Yes. The original idea was that these were etchings, and

and the intervention.

as etchings they spoke to a historic way of representation that is not unique to the Netherlands, but it does define

Johan

a very important time in its cultural history. Now, as

This is where I actually think the way it is being presented

a projection... what is interesting is that you take the 11


M a y


drawings out of the Dutch context, and because of that,

another way of how to read into the project – from the

you are taking it out of the time that the images speak to.

dis-tortions that lead you to the theme of the whole series.

You are changing and updating both at the same time. If you think about the idea of projection, and the way that

Johan

they first developed perspective drawings and the way

What is interesting about it is that the distortions

Philibert de l’Orme, a French architect, came up with

are really done and developed by you, and so there is

these really complex geometries in the 16th century... It

maybe a different type of preciousness to the way that

was all done though projection. So we are updating it, we

the distortions happened. If I was doing it I might be a

can update it, because it is a digital image. It allows us

little bit too tentative, or too gentle with the distortions.

to do a number of really interesting things with it, and

Some of the images were really elongated, as they get

yet at the same rate, we are also doing still remarkably

cast along the ceiling. That is what is becoming quite

old-fashioned things with it, it is just not Dutch etching

exciting about it. It manages to take something, for

anymore, it is almost perspectival projection casting of

example, that has to do with wind, and really stretch it

it. There is still this strange link that drawings might

out, as if it is just being blown across the wall. It does

become almost anamorphic in certain locations and it

not matter anymore that it is about warm Spanish wind

still speaks to the same era, but to a completely different

being converted to cold Norwegian wind. What matters

type of thought.

is that it is the wind. Yes, it distorts, but it also makes it more physical. What I am hoping is, when we stand

Matthias

underneath these drawings and stand in them, that they

What I quite like in the distortions seems to be that, if

become almost more tangible and more spatial.

you place them in a context outside, in Vienna, the shift, or this distortion in the weather conditions is much

Eva

more difficult to read. So you have almost a kind of

That is a beautiful thought. The way we approached it

actualisation of the distortion in the image itself, which

was a lot about how it would look in the space, whether

is an underlying theme of the whole series. It becomes

we would align drawings at the bottom, and we were

visible in the images that get distorted. That becomes

thinking about the choreography of how people would move through the space, which one they would see first, etc., to create a spatial sequence. Johan What I think is very interesting is that by projecting landscape back on top of a three-dimensional surface, they do turn into an almost immersive landscape. Landscape etchings being projected onto surface to become landscape again, I think is exciting. Eva With people animating them, zigzagging through space. Johan And people scaling it. I think this is why these kind of collaborations are really important because everyone sees work a little bit differently. That is what I do think is really exciting about digital work - is the idea, because it is a mode that is so flexible, it allows for a far broader sweep of interpretation. If this was a painting on a canvas, there would be no other thing you could ever do with it. At that point you can only read that work in one way, and all the content has to come from within the image. But this is an image that can be reworked in multiple different ways, so the interpretation can change for different publics.

13


J u n e


Matthias

up with special rules to make it look like an Auto CAD

The interesting thing to me seems that it not only relates

drawing that tries to look like an etching.

to Dutch landscape etchings, in a kind of loose sense. I would much more say that it simulates the hand drawn

Eva

lines through these kind of polygons. If you did not do

And the thing is we cannot zoom in, we are working with

a simulation with it in this absurd precision, it would

the projection that is dependent on the HD resolution of

turn into something completely different. It seems that

the projector, which is 1920 pixels times 1080. One can see

in a way there is no interest from your side to do a direct

the pixel squares on the wall, and we are trying to figure

innovation in the technique of drawing, in what the

out where the lines are that you initially constructed. In

result is, and that is implied through the dimension of

areas of high density it becomes difficult.

simulating something, where you kind of simulate the hand drawing of a line – but the line is not a hand-

Johan

drawn line, it is a set of polygonal lines.

This jumps into my interest anyways of the digital line, and of the hybrid of digital drawing with analog making.

Johan

I think it is so incredible: it was a digital line drawn in

It took a long time to figure out what the best way was to draw this. The backgrounds are drawn on Auto CAD, all the follies are either modelled through Rhino, 3ds Max or Grasshopper, and they are brought into Rhino, and they are contoured – that is how you get that overlapping you would imagine to get through etching. We tried lines and all kinds of other things, but the problem was that when you export it into Illustrator, the lines sometimes corrupt. So the only thing that we could do was the poly line tool. The fragments, or the length of the line was solely dependent on how zoomed in we were in the drawing. If you look at let’s say May, and you look at those pine trees, all of those needles are made up with three or four tiny fragments of a line, that are half a millimetre in length, because when we were drawing that, we were so zoomed in, that those fragments felt like a big part of the computer screen. But when you zoomed out, they were minuscule.

And then when you look at the sky, the sky

sometimes is also only made up of three or four lines, but because it crosses the entire canvas of the sheet, those lines are centimetres long. There is a distinction; each line is made in the exactly same way, using one tool. So what we do not have with these types of etchings is that we do not have any pressure. All line weights are exactly the same. So to be able to get depth, it is not about pressing the stylus into the medium any harder, but you need a lot more lines closer together. That was a small change of technique. Yes, it is a simulation, it needed to look like an etching. Also, when I was drawing, I had to turn off snaps in Auto CAD, because I did not want lines or corners to match up perfectly, I wanted the lines

Auto CAD that then gets etched for the original set of

cross each other, and sometimes they did not meet up. I

drawings, and now is projected and is actually turned

consciously designed mistakes into the drawings so that

from the line into a pixel. The idea is oscillating between

they look more drawing-like.

these different modes of making, and because of that, you are now working with a completely different, but still

Matthias

computer-based virtuality: this is a raster image opposed

Our translation into the space is again a simulation,

to a vector line drawing. Because of the projector, you are

and again, has problems. We do not simply draw a line;

getting to see this actually as the lines being made up of

we draw a poly line with the ruler, so we need to come

a series of points, which are pixels as opposed to – a line. 15


J u l y


came to Carlton University and started teaching there – in some ways because of what I had at my disposal that I want to work again at how the computer can start to expand the breadth of architectural drawing, to look back at representation. Even though I do it myself, I do have a bit of scepticism about renderings and I see renders being more proto-photographic than being an extension of drawing. That is the other reason why I am interested in continuing with drawing and trying to figure out new drawing techniques for architecture.

Technology, I really see as this strange double-

edged sword. We have to start to use it, but particularly for this project, there is a very subversive comment on the technology here. To make ice on the canals to allow people to skate on them would use an enormous amount of energy. There is a larger question of what are we using our technology for? In this project, we are using the technology to maintain a type of identity, which is actually clearly on the way out. It is just not feasible, it is not viable, it is not sustainable. The question is ‘is this a good, responsible, intelligent way of using technology?’

We might find ourselves at a cusp of recognising

that with self-driving cars and all those type of things, there might be technology that might be able to make better decisions than we do. For a lot of people, that is a really scary thought. And yet at the same rate, we deal with the problems that we have to deal with: it is becoming increasingly obvious that the computer, and computation and technology are really able to, at times, Eva

affect very serious debates and change. It puts us into

..or as opposed to how it is defined in the program.

an existentialist crisis sometimes. But it is an important conversation to have. And I think that at the moment,

Johan

architecture is not really joining in that conversation.

..or how it is defined in the program. That is always

We are very good at building things. We are using the

interesting about doing this kind of work. It clarifies the

robots, 3D printers to do super-interesting projects, but

limitations of all of these different ways of working. The

from a societal standpoint, from a cultural standpoint,

fact that you have got a line to turn into pixels is that

which I really see as a foundation for architecture

you are working at the very limit of what these lines

and for its theory, and for how we see the world, I do

are able to do. For you they are actually starting to break

not know if we are joining that conversation as much

down into its constituent parts.

as maybe I feel that we should be. There is a bit of a subversive act, or thought, to the technology in this

Jerome Becker

project. It is doing things that, on the face of it, or what

I am still interested in how you would describe your

you would expect the Dutch maybe to want to reflect

general approach to technological innovation – this

their historical milieu, but at the same rate it is also

seems to be the main theme of your 12 drawings, not

going to be incredibly energy-intensive, it is going to be

only on the level of technique of how you draw it, but

fraught with all kinds of other environmental questions.

also within the image itself. Matthias Johan

But let’s say for Austria, or for Alpine and skiing regions.,

This is a larger reading of what computational

we have had artificial snow for probably at least 25 years,

architecture is now – this whole line of thinking has

making skiing possible. You have raised a lot of questions

shifted very quickly to fabrication, to making stuff, which

that are within that timeframe already. We have snow

I think is fundamentally important and very interesting

cannons, and no architectural snowing machines.

myself. But it is also something that I simply do not have the facilities to be able to explore. So I realised when I 17


A u g u s t


Eva

provinces... they actually use the residue from penicillin

It is the most normal thing to have in the landscape.

production [Biosol], left over from the factory, as a

If you compare the actual ratio between ski-resorts and

fertiliser, because the slopes are brown after the snow

the total area of the mountainous region, Austria has

is molten, because of people having skied there. So they

the largest sum of slopes within the Alps – compared to

put it there as a fertiliser, and then everything is green

Switzerland, Italy and France. Austria’s ski-resort land-

again. It is an invisible process.

scape is kept intact by all these snow machines, and by people preparing the snow each evening for the next day.

Johan What is so beautiful about these things is that this is

Johan

where you realise that truth is almost always stranger

The idea that you would look at the mountains right

than fiction.

now, I think it is so amazing, particularly in February and March, to see these rivers of snow tumbling down

Matthias

the mountains, which are the runs. Beside that, you just

I completely agree.

see the rock and the ground of the mountain, because everything else is molten. It is just cold enough to make

Johan

snow... you would see at that point almost the perfect

The Dutch are quite a conservative bunch, so they saw

map of the ski-resort, because it is just the path where

these drawings and said ‘well, aren’t you being a little

snow and ice is. In that sense, the commentary that is

bit silly here? It is kind of funny, it is subversive, there

made through the project is something that is playing

is humorous moments in it’, that is all really quite nice.

out everywhere, but in different ways. It is because

But then you hear stories like this and you go ‘man, I did

I am Dutch, so I understand those issues a little bit

not even get close to being far enough’. I do not know

better than I understand those in the Austrian context.

how you would even draw that. The idea of penicillin-

Because it was a Biennale in Rotterdam that I did the

by-products being used as fertilisers to make green grass

drawings for, all of those were more strategic decisions.

where invisible snow machines make snow... Who makes

It is something that is playing out in real terms and in

this stuff up? It is kind of wild.

real time everywhere. Matthias If we look closely at this example, there are a few interesting things. One, if we look at the development of snow cannons, they used to be super-massive. Now, within a timeframe of let’s say 20 years, they have become almost invisible. There is a tendency not to turn these things into architecture... Where is the representation of what makes it possible? So I would say that there are all these visible absurdities, like the artificial lakes that come with them... but the cannons, they are no cannons anymore. Eva They almost look like lighting. Johan It is those real instances where I think that technology does super-interesting things. By architecturalising it, by turning it into these follies, you make people aware of it. It starts to serve some form of a didactic function. By starting to hide it, by miniaturising it, it really starts to make the landscape work like ‘look, everything is normal here, we are perfectly fine.’ Eva Your project does not just visualise it, but uses architecture for it and makes the architecture itself visible. If we compare it to what happens in Tyrol, one of the Alpine 19


S e p t e m b e r


Matthias

but I get the impression – maybe it is just a bias of our

Bas Princen, I guess he is Dutch, is visualising a lot of

generation – that these stakes seem pretty high. So, what

these absurdities in his photographs.

is the follow-up-act?

Johan

Matthias

Sometimes

I

find

that

more

adjacent

fields

to

You

consider

using

the

drawing

technique

as

architecture are having more nuanced, sophisticated

disconnected from this specific relation to the Dutch

conversation about it. The problem I find myself in now

landscape? Because I think one of the most amazing

– I am quite happy with the commentary that these

things is the technique you kind of re-invented...

drawings delivered, they do spark really interesting conversations, and this was even asked a couple of years

Johan

ago – so what is now the follow-up-act? What can be that

So I do think that your comment earlier about the

next thing that you set up? It is not really that I feel that

simulation is the important one. It simulates kind of

architecture should be like a mercenary for hire, that

an etching technique that speaks to a historic way of

it takes the most topical thing and then does a couple

image production, which was really popularised in

of drawings on it and comments on it, and feels that it

the Netherlands of these landscape etchings. The big difference is that mine are vertical as opposed to the Dutch ones which were horizontal, and the idea that the Dutch ones are horizontal is that because they were more of a historic landscape, and these are vertical because they speak of the city. They speak of today’s present times. But beyond that, there has to be some form of intention – they are very different drawings than they were a couple of hundred years ago. They used different technology, they are done under different circumstances, they deal with different conditions. There is a disconnect there, but what we said earlier of it being a simulation is probably the closest to the way they can be characterised. Matthias I have the impression that architectural representation is in deep crisis. It has to do with what you were saying about being sceptical about renderings, an answer are this type of drawings that are called post-rendering drawings, which are done from the more analogue scene from Milan to London – these really naive collages. Then you have got hand-drawings. And then I think your drawing technique kind of stands out completely, doing something that I have never seen, which I thought was amazing. Johan At the moment I find this conversation about hand drawing and computer drawing so incredibly unhelpful for the profession. So you get this kind of old guard

somehow has contributed. But at the same rate I also

that feel that quality can only be found back in this...,

feel that architecture has a larger ethic responsibility

as if there is a one-to-one relationship that because

to take a look at the issues in the world. Because a lot

someone is good at hand-drawing, that somehow they

of these problems are so large and so complicated, they

are a good architect. And someone that works on the

cannot be solved by buildings alone, but we should at

computer is a draftsperson. It really gets under my skin.

least try that architecture at least illuminates it or makes

So what I try to do here too is that I put a little bit of

it visible by actualising a structure for it, so that people,

a marker down, to say: ‘You can draw in AutoCAD, and

as they go about their daily lives, there are moments

you can make really expressive, complex compositional

where they can become aware of what is at stake at

drawings,’ using software and programs that people

the moment. We have always had stakes in the world,

would otherwise consider to be used by other things. 21


O c t o b e r


To use Rhino, which is a 3D modelling program, as a drawing tool, starts to show how resilient, broad and sophisticated these programs are. You can use them what they are not intended for, it is perfectly fine. As far as the workflow was concerned, Rhino was never the problem. Bringing Rhino into AutoCAD was never the problem. Bringing AutoCAD to Illustrator was never the problem. I think representation is going through a rough patch at the moment. I find there is one camp that is really disingenuous by not accepting the fact that the computer is really here to stay. So I find that camp is like a torch flare for architectural representation, while I find that there are lots of other people doing super-interesting work, but they might be focused at other parts of architectural production. So I sometimes look at the drawings coming out of this, but they are simply diagrams, which are being used to facilitate fabrication. When you look at some of these images, they are actually incredible images. They should really be celebrated as architectural drawings. But because they are diagrams that speak to the G-code for the CNCmilling of a piece, we do not see them as architectural drawings. If you really think about it in the future, those are the new plans. They will become the new sections of stuff. There are now projects being made where you look at traditional orthographic drawing and it really makes no sense to cut a plan from this. It would not really help us to understand how this might be built, because it is so sophisticated, it is so topological, it breaks down in so

As a first initial step it is important that they remain as

many constituent parts – the only way you can do it is

recognisable drawings. For people that have worked in

to send it to a 3D printer or a robot. I think that drawing

Rhino and AutoCAD, it seems to be more surprising to

at the moment is expanding in a really big way, but we

them when they find out where it was made. It seems

just need to recognise that the ideas of orthographic and

to have some resonance with people that have worked

those things, they simply need to expand. The typical

with that program often. The next step is how we can

toolkit for architects using axo, perspective, plan-section-

further that even more.

elevation, needs to open up a lot more to starting to understand what 3D modelling can start to do, and how

Eva

we get other forms of drawing to inform architectural

I am just not so sure whether simulation is the right

practice.

word, because simulation points to similarity and to the

So these drawings do not do that, but they at

idea of re-presentation; whereas I think your drawings

least have a relationship with the computer that I am

are not re-presentations, they are presentations, they

hoping starts to break out of what I otherwise find a

also become things in themselves.

really unhelpful hand-drawing / computer-drawing , and computer-drawing is almost always rendering, kind

Johan

of debate.

Yes, that is true.

Matthias

Matthias

It steps in a space in between, maybe through this

But if they are only presentations, how do you explain the

dimension of simulation, which always relates to both.

relationship? Then, they would be a kind of invention. Yes, they are things by themselves ...

Johan

Eva

Exactly. Moving forward, if I am starting to think ‘What

They certainly relate to the history of etching, to the

is the next project’, I am trying the next project to explore

history of drawing, to the history of architectural

those ideas a little bit further. This was a first, initial step.

production and all kinds of technologies that we use, 23


N o v e m b e r


but representation does not really do it, for me. Or

Matthias

simulation. Simulating something means you try to get

On a level of technical language, it works – when you

as close as possible to something, to a known outcome,

were describing before how you technically do it. But it

like you simulate how people flee the building. I think

seems difficult to find a word that compresses what it

the drawings try to mimic something, and then do

does into one term.

something else with it. They rather subvert than simulate. Johan Johan

I see this work as a hybrid on many different levels.

I think the issue of subversion is an important one. But it

I am fine with it living in a space between that uses

also speaks to the architectural lexicon at the moment. It

3D modelling, drafting software and traditional image

is really based on a language that stems from the Beaux-

making techniques. It lives in a world of existing things

Arts and Modernism, so it is a hybrid language that really

that overlay functional machines. It lives in a world

was formulated in the 19th/20th century and we are now

of 16th/17th century Dutch history with contemporary

trying to do this new work and categorise it, using old

environmental

terms. Even the idea of simulation and simulacra, you

boundaries. It tries to be many things.

issues

and

so

it

stretches

those

know all of that, that all comes from theory that is now 40 years old, so we are trying to describe work that might

Eva

actually not be coherent or cohesive for it. How do we

What could actually be a follow-up-project? That is last

move around that without making up a whole bunch

question. What would you like to do next, after this project?

of stuff – what does that then do for us, then we start to talk in a language that even less people understand.

Johan

It is simply true. If someone were to say that it is just

For one, the next project has to get inside. It has to start to

a representation of ‘Haarlem treinstation’... I would

speak to space, and make space and try to see what kind

like to think that it is a little bit more, but I would not

of a space this might look like. These were line-drawings.

necessarily be able to figure out what that word is that

I have almost been very interested in a Kandinsky-like

gives me that little bit more.

thing, the point, the line and the plane. So I am actually starting to look at points. Because points are really interesting at the moment in computer-modelling, the idea that you can have pixels and voxels, and that we use points on topological surfaces for deformations and all of these types of things, to see if we can make points into design elements, into drawing elements in the same way as, let’s say, the Fauvists used them for colour or the Pointillists – to see, if you can turn that into an image element.

The theme is actually the one that is most

difficult. Again, what I said about these drawings, is that people can approach them from many different directions; because they live there, people are going to know that place; they like that activity; or they think the technique is interesting, or whatever; this now becomes the next question. What is the theme, what is this going to comment on? I have some initial ideas, but it is very much work in progress. The initial idea is how architectural photography represents architecture in the first place. There is only a limited set of activities that ever gets shown in architectural photos, a lot of pictures have people that are blurred, so they are kind of walking through the space, not really scale-figures, but they are figures of movement and action. If you go to architectural blogs, like Dezeen, Arch-Daily or Designboom, and let’s say you are looking at projects that are housing, rarely they will show the apartments furnished. Social housing units never really get inhabited, but single family homes do. But you never see family photos, 25


D e c e m b e r


you never see whether these families are religious, you

Eva

would never see iconography inside this all. The idea

You will get there, I am sure. And then we are going to

that architectural photography hides an enormous

have another exhibition, in 10 years time. In a big space.

amount of stuff, that these houses are staged, gets me inside a program, inside a space and it allows me to,

Matthias

again, have a commentary on something – where I now

400 square metres.

need to figure out the next technique of how that might be played out. That is slowly where I am going to head

Johan

towards. It has been frustrating that it has been taking as

That would be wonderful.

many years as it has, trying to figure out something else to do. When I first finished these drawings, I thought

Eva

‘Wow, I can do something like this every two years.’ And

It has been a great conversation, I have enjoyed it very

then you sit down and you think about it and realise I

much, thank you.

am not ready at all to do the next one. ‘Maybe next year.’ And then ‘Maybe next year.’ And then you go ‘Hey, this cannot be the only thing that I do. I really do have to do something else.’ Matthias In our first conversation, you talked about this immense work load in these drawings. The interesting thing is that what you are describing seems also connected with this, and it shows clearly that if you do a shift in the programs that everyone uses, and you do something which is not in this work flow, the amount of time is absurd. But it would be easily imaginable that you have some friends that script a tool of a technique that you find amazing – a plugin for Rhino. And you pop out images in a day, with this density of lines. Johan This is where these things are so interesting. I always roll my eyes on the hardship of the starving artist, that trope, yet at the same rate I do feel that if these drawings were immediately possible, someone would take a look at the work and go like ‘I know how they did that.’ To me, there would be something lost. So there is this wilful desire for difficulty. What is this about? Is this about the commentary, is this about the work, is this about being able to situate yourself within a larger architectural context? Or is there also a little bit, or quite a bit of ego involved? That it needs a certain type of virtuosity that someone goes ‘How was that done?’ Eva But it is also about how this subversive nature of the theme translates into a subversive nature of the actual making of the thing. Johan Exactly. So that there is a sort of alignment between the two things. That is another thing. Like many things, there is a little bit of ego involved that the next project needs to be able to meet those criteria, which unfortunately is harder than I thought it would be. 27


M A G A Z I N . Ausstellungsraum für zeitgenössische Architektur. Weyringergasse 27/i A- 1040 Wien info@architektur-im-magazin.at architektur-im-magazin.at

Das

MAGAZIN

ist ein Ausstellungsraum für zeit-

genössische Architektur in Wien, den der Verein für zeitgenössische Architektur betreibt und der 2018 von Jerome Becker, Matthias Moroder, Clemens Nocker, Florian Schafschetzy und Eva Sommeregger gegründet wurde. Das MAGAZIN fördert vor allem junge Architektinnen und Architekten aus dem In- und Ausland, die dabei sind

sich

im

eigenständig

zeitgenössischen zu

positionieren

Architekturdiskurs und

in

deren

Architekturprojekten bereits ein eigenes Arbeitsprojekt abzulesen ist. Das MAGAZIN präsentiert die Arbeit dieser vor allem jungen Architektinnen und Architekten in eigens für den Ausstellungsraum konzipierten Einzelausstellungen und rundet diese mit dazugehörigen Publikationen sowie Vorträgen ab.

gedruckt auf Fabriano Copy Bio Schriftarten: modum, RNS Miles Breite Gasse Publishing Wien 7,. Breite Gasse 3/2 ISBN 978-3-9504111-1-9


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