Portfolio_Manuela Sancho

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Manuela Sancho Sánchez

The caRbOn and The TeRRITORy

2022 . ACADEMIC PROJECT MASTER OF ARCHITECTURE THESIS. ETSAM (SCHOOL OF ARCHITECTURE OF MADRID)

Links to full publication:

Short film: https://youtu.be/eNwwWaq6LhA

Book: https://issuu.com/manuelaclementina/docs/libro_tfm_issu_digital

This project addresses the problem of global warming at its largest scale, that is, how to effectively reduce the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. A new paradigm is proposed: the repurposing of existing infrastructure into a global carbon capture system, destined to sustainably remove CO2 from the atmosphere across a 150-year years time span, restoring the carbon levels of the atmosphere to healthy levels. The project looks at the footprint that this long process leaves on the landscape.

This project proposes a carbon capture system informed by state-of-the-art climate studies and existing technologies, like BECCS. The BECCS system is based on the capture of CO2 through perennial crops, that is, the combustion of biomass. This process ends with the injection of CO2 deep underground, removing it permanently from the atmosphere.

This process is replicated in other 30 areas of territorial transformation around the world. We’ll focus on area number 5, which encompasses the cities of Zagreb, Graz

and Vienna. The CO2 capture capacity of the area is determined by the surface for biomass crops that this area can hold. To efficiently capture and transport the CO2 to all injection points, the local industry and existing natural gas pipeline network are used, which are scattered across the territory.

The highway acts as the spinal cord which links together all the elements of the project. As we travel along this highway, we notice special areas in the landscape, which we’ve called “weird spaces”. Weird spaces appear in areas of greater intensity, where several elements within the negative-emission system converge. Around these hot spots, edges are drawn with a strong formal condition, taking advantage of the highway as a showcase of the territory, making visible the infrastructure enclosed within them. This spaces are a place of strangeness, where the infrastructure becomes arterial. On deeper levels, the CO2 capture systems became visible and evident. Aesthetics take on special importance in these places.

Zagreb-Viena_km 187

Zagreb-Viena_km

Zagreb-Viena_km 99

Zagreb-Viena_km 62

Zagreb-Viena_km 89

The OnTOGRaPhIc MachIne dIGITaL aesTheTIc exPLORaTIOn OF weIRd ReaLIsM

2021. ACADEMIC PROJECT

FINAL UNDERGRADUATE PROJECT. ETSAM (SCHOOL OF ARCHITECTURE OF MADRID)

Links to full publication: Book_Part1: https://issuu.com/manuelaclementina/docs/libro_tfg

Book_Part2: https://issuu.com/manuelaclementina/docs/letan_a_de_fragmentos

This research explores digital reality from the aesthetic dimension, under the theoretical basis of object-oriented ontology. The work reflects on the potential of video game design tools like 3D modeling and rendering engines, that are able to absorb and represent a reality much more complex and detailed than the one captured in traditional architectural tools. The project proposes strategies that produced estrangement over digital objects, alluding to aesthetic qualities and relation that otherwise would escape our perception.

This is a philosophical current of speculative realism initiated by Graham Harman, whose main approach is that objects (and an object can be a table, but also a building or a city) exist by themselves, independently of our perception. In addition to their sensual qualities (detecta-

ble through the senses) objects have a number of hidden properties that escape our perception. If ontology is the theory that explores the nature of existence, ontography is the technique that reveals the existence of objects and their relationships, going deeper into their underlying reality. The weird is that which should not exist, which should not have to be there and which prompts us to look more closely. Weird realism refers to the allusion to this deeper reality of the object through estrangement.

The result of this work is an ontographic machine, a set of aesthetic alteration strategies that seek to produce estrangement; an exploration of digital natives that aims to reveal material qualities of objects that only exist in the digital dimension, objects as real as those we can touch and that configure a reality in itself.

weIRd ReaLITIes

2021. PRACTICAL WORK

OPEN CALL PORST-DIGITAL LANDSCAPES MMMAD

Links to full video: https://youtu.be/vcmNdsezhHU

Weird is that which should not exist, which should not have to be there and which prompts us to look more closely. Weird realities borrows from the philosopher Graham Harman the term “weird realism”, which refers to the allusion to certain aesthetic properties of objects that escape our perception and become visible only through estrangement. The concept of landscape is linked to an absorption of

the aesthetic dimension of the natural environment. Landscape appears with the “artification” of the territory, when the environment that surrounds us surpasses its material existence. Landscape emerges as a result of estrangement, and from estrangement comes aesthetic discovery. This work intends to perform the same

operation on the virtual environment. Digital reality is not only a tool for the representation of the physical landscape, but is itself a landscape. Virtual objects must also absorb the literalness of their existence as objects.

In this work we experiment with the construction of a digital landscape from objects extracted from the internet. Scanned models of a fire hydrant and a stone bust are taken and transformed to reveal material qualities that arise from the tension between the represented object and its virtual existence. The pieces are presented as a litany of fragments, avoiding the automatic recognition of the models. The digital object becomes strange to the observer’s gaze, and only then does it become landscape.

PInk ecOnOMy

cOMbusTIOn and exTRacTIOn

2022. PRACTICAL WORK

Exploration of the latest AI imagers as tools for visualizing possible futures and alternative realities. All images have been created with a promt-to image AI model.

This photographic work visualizes the landscapes of extraction and combustion derived from our carbon-based economy. Pink is used to create an estrangement derived from the tension between the material consequences of the indiscriminate use of fossil fuels and the innocence and optimism connoted by this color.

ReenchanTInG The beasTs OF The L aGOOn

2022. PRACTICAL WORK GROUP PROJECT. MEDIALAB MATADERO

This is one of the collaborative projects of the three-day workshop “Re-enchanting the beasts of the lagoon”, within the framework of the research “Wetland Crypto-Mythologies”, coordinated by artist and researcher Carla Alcalà Badias. It is an intensive workshop that includes a collective immersion experience in the Lagunas de Velilla de San Antonio (Regional Park of the Southeast of Madrid) and two working sessions in El espacio de la Nave 17 of Matadero

Madrid, where we sought to give representation to the non-human beings that inhabit these wetlands and speculated on their interests through the creation of physical and interactive pieces.

This project sought to insert an anthropic landscape, such as this lagoon that appeared as a result of extractive activities in the area, into the collective imaginary, generating myths in an artificial way. In our group we worked with the environmental sound of this ecosystem. Through special image-to-frequency translation software, we manipulated these audio recordings so that the lagoon images appear in the audio recording spectrum when visualized in a spectrogram. As a result, we conceived the legend of this new entity that manifests itself only in sound. When visualizing the frequencies, distorted fragments of the landscape appear.