Expanding Design: Interior

EXPANDING DESIGN: INTERIOR

Seminar Arc-M-402-104 Title Expanding Design: Interior University HafenCity Universität Hamburg Term SS 2020 Lecturer MA (Arch) Daniel Springer

INTRODUCTION

Collage by Fala Atelier

Expanding Design: Interior This year’s theme of Expanding Design will explore conceptually the notion of the Interior. Because one thing the current global pandemic reveals at large are our interiors in various aspects.

Just to speak in architectural terms, one emphasis is now shifted towards the interiors of our homes by speaking to more and more people through the cameras of our digital devices. This means, the façades are now turned outside-in and make our interiors the new facades. In the Belgian Pavilion of the 14th Architecture Biennale in Venice, the curators decided to focus on Interiors, specifically Belgian Interiors, and presented a systematized catalogue on the architecture of Interiors: “The concept of the interior is fundamental in architectural design. Yet there are very few studies that approach it as a separate field of inquiry. Behind the permanence of buildings’ façades, all sorts of transformations, adjustments and modifications are carried out. From this perspective, a study of our interiors provides valuable information about the new challenges to which architectural practice must rise. Obliging us to counter the notion of modernity as an all-consuming phenomenon, it reveals a vernacular architecture in which modernity itself is being consumed and absorbed.“ ( www.interieurs-notes-figures.be) Concerning this aspect, Expanding Design reverses its notion and expands towards the inside, the “Interior”. By reversing the outside and the inside, we will look at ideas of revealing and excavating an interior in various different aspects. Our discussions and actions will be herewith enhanced through aspects of transgressing borders. This could mean for example, transgressing the border of a house, transgressing objects to reveal their interior or also the transgressing of a body could fall into this category. Specifically interesting hereby is first and foremost the notion of a border, which relates in architectural terms to a shell or a container or simply a body. There are various interesting examples in architecture, art and theory which will be then discussed accordingly – probably through our webcams.

Lecturer: daniel.springer@hcu-hamburg.de

SEMINAR FOCUS

Expanding

Art

Fiction

Expanding

„Applied Theory“

Architecture

Theory

Diagram: Daniel Springer

TIMETABLE*

21.04.20

*changes might be possible

Welcome „Expanding Design: Interior“ Quick Intro + Exercise presentation

28.04.20 PART I

INTERIOR I – Thematic introduction

GROUP

Exercise I: Open Call Copenhagen Architecture Festival 2020

05.05.20

GROUP

INTERIOR II – Collective Presentations of your „Interiors“ Upload of Exercise I (your participation for CAF 2020)

12.05.20

PART II GROUP

INTERIOR III / TRANSGRESSION I – Thematic introduction Excercise II: Transgressing of objects & Desktop Essay Film

19.05.20 INDIVIDUAL

TRANSGRESSION II Individual Reviews Group 1st Part (Present your approach)

TRANSGRESSION III Individual Reviews Group 2nd Part (Present your approach)

26.05.20

INDIVIDUAL

- one week break 09.06.20 GROUP

TRANSGRESSION IV

Collective Discussion

16.06.20 GROUP

TRANSGRESSION – Collective Presentations

Upload of Exercise II (Desktop Essay Film/Photos/etc)

23.06.20

PART III GROUP

DESIGNING INTERIOR I Exercise III: Section based on the transgressed object Decision on a common drawing/collage style

30.06.20 INDIVIDUAL

DESIGNING INTERIOR II Individual Reviews Group 1st Part

07.07.20

INDIVIDUAL

DESIGNING INTERIOR III Individual Reviews Group 2nd Part

14.07.20

GROUP

DESIGNING INTERIOR IV Collective Discussion

21.07.20 – GROUP 28.07.20(+)

DESIGNING INTERIOR – Collective Presentations Upload of Exercise III + DIGITAL EXHIBITION

PART I INTERIOR

Photograph of Eames House 1958 EXERCISE I In the beginning every student will reveal a part of their interior, meaning from the interior of their formerly private now turned public environment. This first exercise is part of the Open Call for the Copenhagen Architecture Festival 2020 as presented on their website and below: „Share a photo and your thoughts/ reflections on your home during this life-changing time.

Copenhagen Architecture Festival wants to focus on how the character and meaning of home have changed in the midst of a global health crisis, where people have to isolate themselves at home either alone, with their families or among friends in collectives or colleges. For many, the home has become the setting for the workplace, school, kindergarten, care, and many different needs at once. How does this new reality manifest itself in the homes? Eg. details in the home that have become more important – for good or for bad? Or new design solutions adopted to meet the new reality? We would like to see and hear your take on that.

Sharing a photo on Instagram of your home e.g. a room, an object or a spacious detail that has changed the meaning and put a few words on how the home has transformed and has been given a different meaning in this corona time, max. 50 words. Use the hashtags #CoronaHome, #CAFx2020 #Stayingathome and #CopenhagenArchitectureFestival and mention us in your post or story.“ Source: www.cafx.dk UPLOAD INSTAGRAM: 28.04.2020 – 03.05.2020 UPLOAD DEADLINE NEXTCLOUD: 05.05.2020

PART II TRANSGRESSION

You-tube video: „Björk talking about her TV“ EXERCISE II The exercise and the method of Transgression is the Revelation of interiors. In order to do so, the interiors of objects are going to be excavated. In order to transgress the boundary of found objects and things, cutting and slicing (or to find a way or tool to open objects) will be essential in this part. The attention should be placed on choosing an object with assumed special and interesting interior qualities. These qualities should be judged and presented through photographs and videos and uploaded in the form of a Desktop Documentary.

1. Find objects of which you assume to discover interesting interior qualities.

2. Find a way to slice the objects; make a section or sections.

3. Document the cutting/destruction/transgression with photographs and videos.

4. Choose the object with the most interesting interior qualities.

5. Read through the reader and extract textual references of interest to you concerning Interior/Transgression.

6. Make a Desktop Essay Film through which you reflect the documentation of your actions connected to theoretical input from the reader and elsewhere.

Delivery: Sliced Object(s), Video(s), Photograph(s), Desktop Essay (Video: 5-10min) UPLOAD TIME NEXTCLOUD: 16.06.2020*

*changes might be possible

PART III DESIGNING INTERIOR

Section taken from the book „Interior Tales“

Section drawing of „Arcosanti“ by architect Paolo Soleri

EXERCISE III The section of the chosen sliced object will be drawn and interpreted in an architectural scale. By doing so, you are reflecting on interior aspects and qualities by starting to think from the inside and expanding towards the outside, its body, shell or container. This exercise focuses on interior spatial qualities and expands on the two exercises before by adding the aspect of fiction. Please imagine a potential function for the interior and draw/collage it accordingly (in detail). This approach reflects in a way an anti-formal attitude, where the final architectural form results from interesting interior spatial potentials.

1. Draw the section of the chosen sliced object (in your prefered software).

2. Decide on the architectural scale.

3. Decide on a fictitious function which fits best your spatial interior.

4. Collage/draw your section in detail in order to represent your imagined spatial approbriation.

(5. Collage of an interior situation might be added) tbd.

Delivery: Drawing of a section based on the chosen sliced object, Collage

UPLOAD TIME NEXTCLOUD: 28.07.2020*

*changes might be possible

DIGITAL DELIVERY DESKTOP DOCUMENTARY/ESSAY

Screen capture of ‚Grosse Fatigue‘ by artist Camille Henrot (2013) ADDITION FOR EXERCISE II (evt. extension possible to exercise III) The Desktop of your Computer Screen illustrates another form of Interior space in relation to the expanding digital environment and life. In this regard, the computer screen with all its digital tools and software will serve as an important tool for the seminar starting with the 2nd exercise.

In order to do so, please get acquainted with the idea of „desktop documentaries“ or „desktop essays“. Because as the current digital semester unfolds, also the possibilites of digital presentation formats are expanding. A recent artistic and experimental approach are the above mentioned formats, where creators have the opportunity to intermingle photographs, videos, spoken word and texts. The researcher Luka Beslagic argues in her essay „Computer Interfaces as Film: Post-Media Aesthetics of Desktop Documentaries“ about desktop documentaries: „[t]hey explore the paradigmatic shift in media construction of reality when the old platforms of content distribution – not only theatres and TV receivers but also books, newspaper, radio, etc. – have mostly been replaced by the Internet as a primary archive and source of human knowledge and the technology of interactive digital screens. We perceive reality through the ‘lenses’ and via the ‘logic’ of a computer interface with its typical simultaneous multitasking and multiscreen activities, and the new variant of the video essay critically investigates such a new social, economic, and cultural paradigm.“ For the delivery of the second exercise you will craft such a desktop documentary (film). In your film it is essential to generate a narrative with the videos and photographs of the objects you have opened and investigated, and the documenation of the actions you have undertaken in order to open objects and demonstrate their interior qualities. As a further step reflect your actions and findings – as presented through photographs and videos – with theoretical material from the reader, your own reflections and/or further researched material based on the concept of Interior and/or Transgression through spoken words or any other potential textual layer/software to visually or aurally embed in your film.

Delivery: The films should be 5 –10 min in length and formated in a popular video format (mov, mpg4, avi, etc.).

READING LIST 1/2* GENERAL Krauss, Rosalind,

Sculpture in the Expanded Field,

in: October Journal No 102, Spring 1979.

Papapetros, Spyros; Rose, Julian, (eds) Retracing the Expanded Field: Encounters between Art and Architecture MIT Press 2014.

INTERIOR

Barat, Sebastien Martinez; Dubois, Bernard; Levy, Sarah; Wielander, Judith, (eds)

Intérieurs. Notes et Figures / Interiors. Notes and Figures,

Published on the occasion of Belgium‘s participation in the 14th Venice Architecture Biennale 2014.

Jasper, Adam, (ed)

House Tour: Views of the Unfinished Interior

Park Books, 2018.

Published on the occasion of Swiss‘ participation in the 16th Venice Architecture Biennale 2018.

Perec, Georges,

Species of Spaces and Other Pieces,

Penguin Books 1974.

De Certau, Michel,

The Practice of Everyday Life (engl.), Kunst des Handelns (dt),

University of California Press 1984 (engl.),

Merve Verlag Berlin 1988 (dt.).

Colomina, Beatriz, X-Ray Architecture,

Lars Müller Publishers 2019.

Colomina, Beatriz,

Privacy and Publicitiy: Modern Architecture as Mass Media

MIT Press 1994.

Axel, Nick; Colomina, Beatriz; Hirsch, Nikolaus; Vidokle, Anton; Wigley, Mark, (eds)

Superhumanity: Design of the Self,

e-flux 2018.

*changes might be possible

READING LIST 2/2* TRANSGRESSION

Mosley, Jonathan; Sara, Rachel, (eds)

Architectural Design 226: The Architecture of Transgression,

John Wiley & Sons 2013.

Rice, Louis; Littlefield, David, (eds)

Transgression: Towards an Expanded Field of Architecture, Routledge 2015.

Tschumi, Bernard,

Architecture and Disjunction,

The MIT Press 1996.

Hollier, Denis,

Against Architecture: The Writings of Georges Bataille,

The MIT Press 1989.

Hudek, Antony, (ed) Documents of Contemporary Art: The Object, Co-published by Whitechapel Gallery and The MIT Press 2014.

DESIGNING INTERIOR

2A+P/A, Interior Tales,

Black Square Press 2015.

Fala Atelier, 2G,

Kรถnig Books, 2019.

FILM / MEDIA / DESKTOP ESSAYS Krauss, Rosalind,

A Voyage on the North Sea: Art in the Age of the Post-Medium Condition,

Thames & Hudson 2000.

Beslagic, Luka,

Computer Interface as Film: Post-Media Aesthetics of Desktop Documentary,

in: AM Journal of Art and Media Studies No 20, 2019.

*changes might be possible

CONTACT Daniel Springer

Wissenschatlicher Mitarbeiter HafenCity Universität Hamburg

Architektur und Kunst, Prof. Dr. Mona Mahall Email: daniel.springer@hcu-hamburg.de Skype: mail@danielspringer.cc Instagram: opening_hours_

Daniel Springer Research Associate HafenCity Universität Hamburg

Architecture and Art, Prof. Dr. Mona Mahall Email: daniel.springer@hcu-hamburg.de Skype: mail@danielspringer.cc Instagram: opening_hours_