Poïèsis dans l’architecture
ÂŤMidway upon the journey of life / I found myself within a forest dark, / For the straightforward pathway had ben lost.Âť Dante, Inferno, lines 1-3.
CONTENTS
CURRICULUM VITAE 4 MEDICAL SPORT’S CENTER 5 LEARNING CENTER 15
SPATIALISATION DE L’INCONSCIENT 23 LUDOKEK 39 VILLA 55 BRAVOURE, SCARCITY, BEAUTY 73
Poïèsis in architecture Mihai Pop pop.misii@gmail.com
MEDICAL SPORT’S CENTER
11
BA2 (2015 - 2016) Enseignants: Marie Pierre Vandeputte Situé à Ganshoren à coté d’une école communale, la parcelle offre une des seules fenêtres sur le parc dans le quartier. L’intention de départ pour la construction d’un centre de médecine sportive était de préserver cette ouverture et de profiter du dénivelle du terrain. Ainsi, l’idée du départ est née, enterrer toute les fonctions en dessous de l’horizon visuel, offrant une série des qualités, en apportant des complexités conceptuelles, afin d’éclairer les fonctions, une vide apparaisse intuitivement au centre autour duquel la circulation et les fonctions gravite. L’âme du projet, le patio permet de retrouver un morceau du parc à l’intérieur, toujours ouvert et accessible. Pour structurer l’ensemble une grille émerge. Des alignements et des symétries, des pleins et des vides traversent l’ensemble. Cette trame définit aussi l’alignement des différents éléments structuraux, comme les murs et les colonnes qui font partie de l’expression du bâtiment comme un ensemble cohérent a l’extérieur mais aussi à l’intérieur. Une masse du béton, fondue dans l’épaisseur du sol, évidée pour créer des parcours, avec une pente prenant le flanneur et l’immergeant progressivement à un univers autre, dans une tranquillité et ambiance monacale.
LEARNING CENTER BA3 (2016 - 2017) Atelier: HISTOIRE, THEORIE et CRITIQUE Enseignants: Wouter van Acker, Iwan Strauven Projet de groupe avec: Laurane Gossart et Sébastien Bez Parcourir l’insondable immensité de la bibliothèque de Babel, c’est progresser dans un univers sans début ni fin, où le haut et le bas se renversent et dans lequel la gauche et la droite se confondent. Ce monde à :la structure informe et mouvante est pourtant régi par une mécanique précise et immuable. C’est dans ce juste équilibre que perdure le rythme binaire alternant apparition et disparition. Car dans cette immensité le plein devient vide, la cavité devient matière. C’est au coeur de cette masse que s’agglomère toute la connaissance, le savoir absolu. Plongé au sein de la caverne, l’esprit se confronte alors à la matérialité de cette science inexploitable. Inexploitable, car autour de lui les limites sont incertaines. Elles le condamnent ainsi à faire indéfiniment la seule expérience de l’espace immédiat. Ces méandres dynamiques ne lui permettent pas de se repérer. Il avance alors, à tâtons, s’interrogeant à chaque détour. Les parois étranges s’opposent au vide, lieu de l’imaginaire, où lorsqu’une idée émerge, elle disparaît de la masse dans laquelle elle préexistait. Un vide nouveau se crée alors, inattendu et aléatoire. Très vite, l’individu comprend que creuser directement dans ce savoir ne le mènera nul part. La connaissance qu’il vise ne doit pas entre extraite de cette paroi mais bien de son imagination. Alors il se met à penser, imaginer et concevoir. Lorsqu’il fait une découverte, il la classe minutieusement afin de rendre ces informations accessibles. L’errant sait que s’il veut s’extirper de ce labyrinthe, il faut le maîtriser, donc le comprendre et atteindre l’ordre par le savoir absolu. Ainsi, l’imaginaire s’appuie sur la connaissance. Le vide se présente à la fois comme façonné par la recherche de l’ordre parfait, et chaotique par le savoir imprévisible. Le peuple de Babel, perdu dans ce monde changeant, pense avancer en organisant ses idées. Cependant, il ne fait qu’alimenter le cycle éternel de la bibliothèque, répétant ainsi dans une périodicité infinie les mêmes mouvements de la pensée.
SPATIALISATION DE L’INCONSCIENT MA1 (2018 - 2019) Atelier: ART, PAYSAGE et ARCHITECTURE Enseignants: Patrice Neirinck, Julie Martineau, Emilio-Lopez Menchero. What is more deprived of meaning than the modern city? The modern city is a sea flooded with empty weightless garbage, because the “rocks” don’t float on the surface, you need to dive to the bottom to find them. The bizarre often signifies the new, the unexpected, the unaccustomed, but sometimes the new can be the long forgotten old, the unrecognisable, drawn to the bizarre, curiosity takes hold, possesses, drawing the individual out of the unconscious. Ascension, or the desire to ascend becomes the mother of sin. Desire nourishes action, it addresses our potential and shapes it in our imagination. The movement to the higher takes place through the lower (the serpent/the apple/the abandoned), (the forbidden fruit/the (forbidden) abandoned.) Once inside (the apple/ the abandoned), there’s blur, doubt, trees symbolise the fog, or transition to “sin”, the “skin” of the apple, from “unconscious” to “conscious”, the tower acts as a guide in the “fog”, it is the “landmark”, always the desire that draws, you enter but you will get changed by the place, you will not get out the same way, you will taste the apple without even knowing it, just as you do with great writings that restructure your psyche as you are reading them. The surface is the reflection of what is above and underneath. The tower symbolizes transcendence, becoming more than you are, seeing more than you see, greed. The concrete playground symbolizes limitation. The apple tree symbolizes restraint and hidden pleasure. The flowers symbolize remembering. The water cylinder symbolizes life and beauty through decay. The ondulating ground symbolises history, destruction and regeneration.
“The spirit of the depths even taught me to consider my action and my decision as dependent on dreams. Dreams pave the way for life, and they determine you without you understanding their language. One would like to learn this language, but who can teach and learn it? Scholarliness alone is not enough; there is a knowledge of the heart that gives deeper insight. The knowledge of the heart is in no book and is not to be found in the mouth of any teacher, but grows out of you like the green seed from the dark earth. Scholarliness to the spirit of this time, but this spirit in no way grasps the dream, since the soul is everywhere that scholarly knowledge is not” (Carl Jung, Red Book I, 2, “Soul and God”) soul (noun): Old English sāwol, sāw (e)l, of Germanic origin; related to Dutch ziel and German Seele.
1. the spiritual or immaterial part of a human being or animal regarded as immortal. 2. emotional or intellectual energy or intensity, especially as revealed in a work of art or an artistic performance. “Their interpretation lacked soul.”
The Mirage in the Desert. The image of the soul can be a mirage in the meaningless desert of existence, but it happening is as real as anything. When starving for meaning, meaninglessness can disguise as nourishment, how can we then trust our senses during our existence in the desert? What oasis should nourish our thirst? We might die of thirst chasing meaningless shadows of what’s real in empty lands, should we not dig our own well then, and nourish ourselves in its riches? He who chases the shadow is the one who spills his own blood to settle his thirst, but he who digs a well in the middle of the desert, grows a garden from his blood and makes the mirage a living thing.
The Place of the Soul. Where is the beautiful, the possessive, the good and the transcendent to be found? Inside or outside? Inside the outside or outside the inside? Who should be your guide? Maybe what is an easier answer, light is omnipresent, its colours suffocating with meaning. Maybe the smell, or nothing of the above but the fact of bringing to life something long dead, like making a garden in the desert, that’s where the soul lives. But what is the soul? Is the image of what you most desire and least want to look? Is it what you cast away as a child? A child in the desert, hungry for pleasure and play, the birthplace of meaning, is that the image of your soul? What is most deserted of meaning than the modern city? Where is our childish self-hiding? Where do we least want to look?
The Abandoned Inside and the Saturated Outside. We are drawn to what is no longer among us, we are drawn to what is dead and has a life of its own, hidden, forgotten, abandoned. Is it to kill what it is or to bring to life what it was? Maybe to kill what it is with what it was and drown the pain of our existence in its blood. But how can we kill what never was, or bring to life what always is? Maybe through innocent play, death becomes a mother and meaning and beauty are her children. Children grow, and play and forget, and they kill in order to grow, and they forget in order to live, but they always play, is that what justifies and gives meaning to their existence? Is that what allows the rivers of blood to keep flowing? Maybe blood is the only thing that can make a garden grow in the desert.
The Place of the Garden. We know the place of the garden, and the flowers it grows, but we’re unwilling to provide them nourishment. Life kills in order to live, unwatched, unattended, in its blind ambition, the beautiful become its victim. Seeds for growth are not to be found in meaningless sacrifice, and yet, death makes a void for the garden and for the smell of its flowers. But children and gardens do not go well together, play is disinterested and cruel, the beauty falls its victim. What is it then that should die, for beauty to live ? From its ashes what often rises is a beautiful yet meaningless existence, an adult walking among the flowers, a child playing on concrete, an endless pit separating them, yet play acts as a bridge.
Desire is a window into the future, often covered by the image of the present. When not, it is devoured by the present in a cannibalistic indifferent, ignorant, narcissistic way. The remains, ruins of the unborn sparkle in the urban landscape, a last hope of reincarnation. And yet the past with its corporeal presence stands between the present and the future, often lying itself on the table of sacrifice, what should be done when time itself surrenders itself to you ? It speaks to your weakest instincts, unformed, untouched, unaddressed in the de-materialized present. Its voice appears silent, it’s meaning transparent, its body like water, impossible to take grasp of, but to take hold of water, you must transform it into ice, and so does the past. But stagnation is the mother of decay. Its presence announced by a veil of dust, slowly covering what is, the present becomes a cocoon and through stagnant metamorphosis, it transforms into unexpected beauty, devouring marble columns, brick walls, metal beams, all reversing into formless slums. Everything can become everything, and everything new attracts the soul, unattended and unwatched, the ruin becomes a temple of madness. A temple of colors, a temple of light, waiting to be stumbled upon.
Experience is a child of the past, continuously growing and in the search for play. But children, in their playful indifference transform and create the present into the future. Creation is positioning yourself, an irreversible act of acknowledgment, your existence becomes a reality in between. You realize your existence as a moment after something is and before it becomes, your choice, the only act of “control” over your existence and over existence itself evaporates in the heat of desire that transforms what is into what it could be, but what something ought to be? A question born out of uncontrollable desire and anxiety. It’s answer, in the simplest and most profound form, presents itself in a courageous act of surrender. That’s when, things unknown to you, unknown to everyone, yet known, burst into existence. Matter takes a life of its own, gently guiding your hands, an idea searches for body, you release it into being by imprisoning yourself in the act of creation. By surrendering yourself, you gain your freedom, exposed to the danger of choice again, you understand the indifferent nature of reality, and you are her object of desire, your needs, your wishes devour you slowly so as to expose your remains to the world, and yet, that’s the best we can offer and what we most desperately want.
Love opens the window from the present into the future, a good future is a child of love, and what future does not come from love is not a future worth encountering. Love guides, reveals, and justifies, never satisfied with what is, we wonder into the unknown, indifferent of expectations, we liberate ourselves from conventions, we step into the unexplored. Indifferent to everyone’s pretensions, nature lives and dies, it’s existence, an ethereal meaninglessness springs forth the most indifferent of beauties, almost in a cruel and playful manner. Willing to know ourselves we act, almost in a cruel and playful manner, driven by desire and experience, we decide to exist, when tired of playing with ourselves and knowing others, we decide to play with others and know ourselves.
Vacillation consumes the body and paralyzes the soul, nascent ideas linger into hibernation, life ceases to flow, widening the rift between the body and the soul. From the desert into the forest, that’s the fate of the one that dares to create, from blinding sun to overwhelming shadow, pain is the price of creation, vacillation is it’s womb, hope appears as a comfort; yet it can be poison once overdosed. Hope is nourished by the things existent, seen, perceived and felt, a warm breeze of fresh air. Hands sliding in the shadow, searching for varied shapes, can anything brought out from the shadow be called creation? It would seem only in as much as it can fill the emptiness left by the hope that preceded it. We’re either empty and the world is full, so we search to fill our emptiness with the world, but our emptiness is a bottomless pit, things fall in, never to be seen again, their echoes heard again from time to time. Sometimes we try to empty our emptiness into the world yet the world is full and cannot receive what it already has, when we are full and the world is empty, we roll and twist and break the emptiness of the world into pieces so that we can build with it. Emptiness is full of itself.
Abandonment is the fate of all creation is the price for its freedom and the road to its eventual destruction. How can a thing be, and have a life of its own if it’s not abandoned? Abandoned to fate, abandoned to time, entropy takes hold and consumes, transforms and creates, abandon creates a void inside that needs to be filled, abandon fills the outside which needs to be emptied, entropy moves the matter from one place to another, from outside inside by creating the unexpected, by deforming the expected, by twisting and biting into what we once thought finished. Potential emerges out of entropy, seed of abandon, nourished by time, growing in the shadow.
THE DREAM: Z: For many years I have pretended not to see you but now, you come to me grinning, and you don’t think I can see what you are doing? Setting of the dream: Date:10.09.2019 Hour: 04:01 a.m. (Date of writing)
CONTEXT:
I have been writing the memoir for some time now intermittently while thinking about Zumthor’s architecture process. I have been in architecture for a few years now exploring his architectural process, but never fully realizing it, never fully, truly sticking to it but mostly combining it with other processes. I found myself throughout the dream in different spaces, sometimes in a church a new church which I was only imagining again in the dream (so a second layer of imagination), and I wasn’t happy of it completely, the image was that of the Oblaz Monastery, and during the image, a voice appeared saying: “This is the most real fake I have ever seen.” (Concerning one of the monasteries/ interiors of the churches.) It seemed as if we were in the old church, in front of the altar looking at it, with the new priest, I, and talking about it, while P was there, behind the altar and then he came out to join us. I was speaking with I about the “real” and the “fake” aspects of the new churches and what they were lacking compared to the old ones in experience. Fast forward we found ourselves somehow in a bus, traveling around, going seemingly nowhere and talking, it was I there with whom I was still talking and having the conversation, and somehow Zumthor was also with us, and the other guy, M that I have met with T. It seemed as if I was having a conversation with I and suddenly the bus made a turn, and I recognized we were in Basel, just under the Thermes de Vals. For a weird reason, I confounded it with a museum inside, it did become a museum inside, although I was somehow well aware they were Thermes. I excused myself from I and quickly run to admire the Museum of Vals and I was struck by its appearance, it looked as I remember from photos, solid rock on the outside, a part of the mountain, yet a new element has appeared, loose, between the rocks, in the joints, close to a window, and it also became a part of the building and for some reason they decided not to take it off I remember admiring its exterior appearance and standing in awe, while looking behind and seeing Zumthor with his wife Lisa also looking at it and thinking something to themselves, it seemed for me as if he was happy with how it aged. I didn’t see nor recognize his wife Lisa, (I never saw her even in a photo) so he was there but I a distance, so I couldn’t see her. I went inside the “foyer of the museum” and instantly I was greeted with two “artistic objects” exposed at my right and to my left. I was immediately strung by the beauty of the “object on the right” and I started to admire it, it was either a painting of a mosaic, or a photo of a mosaic, a kind of Byzantine mosaic but never really Byzantine, which was somehow weirdly attributed to Raphael. It was a Virgin Mary, sitting in Jesus’s pose from the last supper, his body was made like almost out of squares (mosaic) of beautiful blue light and golden and pale red colors, she appeared like an angel and then transformed into the Christ figure through her posture, I can’t remember the face, it is because only a vase on top of a body, a round object, a face which felt of ceramic (conceptually) slightly turned on the right from my side of view and then with pale blue and white stripes running around it to the top. I can’t remember precisely the background but it was lightly colored, almost a landscape but certainly a golden background as in orthodox icons, the light blue, golden and red colors represented clothing. I remember admiring it and stepping back looking further cause I couldn’t figure out if it was a mosaic or a painting or a photo of a mosaic, or maybe in the dream I realized which one it was but I was admiring its beauty, so I was stepping backwards and then suddenly I felt a presence sticking to my back, and somehow the surface of the other object on the expo was like glued a little bit and it stuck to my back and I dragged and it came a little off the wall but didn’t fall, and I managed to take it off me but I know I may have ruined it or something, and then people around me have turned away and someone who didn’t look like but felt like L came to me and started shaming me, for two reasons, it
seemed clearly I was appreciating more the figure on the right than the one on the left which was in a red-terracotta impressionistic Jackson Pollock style, and she also started shaming me that I’ve entered inside and started to participate in the exhibition but was stupid enough not to know to run in a separate building to buy the ticked first. I started explaining that I was only admiring the other “painting” and was slowly backing away for other people to have space to enter and navigate the hallway while it happened and I touched my back to the other painting and that it was their fault that they didn’t delimit a protective area around it, the argument seemed to have ended in a draw and I run outside to take money from my wallet to buy the ticket, I knew it was late so the museum might have not let any more visitors. I run and saw I (the monk) with the M guy at the table around a beer talking, I think there might have been P with them also (the priest). But I didn’t manage to resume my discussion with I because I quickly run away to try to buy the ticket knowing Zumthor has also entered inside while I had the incident with the painting and I might not get another occasion to speak to him. I ran to buy the ticked but it was already closed as I expected and the museum was still open but it looked empty, as people left already the expositions, I managed to have a look at the walls and was terribly surprised to find out they were inside made of crepy like the one we did outside on the buildings which I disgusted and I almost thought it didn’t look that bad, white, in a brutal manner (which is completely anti-Zumthoresque) and sometimes it was only filled at places like in a very brutal manner, yet from the inside it was that perfect execution and precision, on the inside this layer was the one we were always, I was always criticizing but turned inside. I looked around sad that I wasn’t able to see the other spaces cause I knew we will go away in the morning, then I saw him coming with a hat on his head, I knew they let him stay a bit later in the expositions, it was his building after all, so I waited for him to join me and we walked outside, me constantly in awe and with a big smile on my face happy to meet him, enthusiasm radiating everywhere, while preparing to ask him what’s the deal with the crepy inside and how he decided to do it, it seemed an innocent question, born more of a conceptual interest than a judgment of his work, at least in my conscious mind in the dream, when he just said this: Z: For many years I have pretended not to see you but now, you come to me grinning, and you don’t think I can’t see you? I’m still not sure with what offended him, I felt completely shocked, stunned in the dream and I didn’t know what I have done to make him feel that way, but I remember thinking that he thought he knew something about me.
LUDOKEK MA1 (2018 - 2019) Atelier: ART, PAYSAGE et ARCHITECTURE Enseignants: Patrice Neirinck, Julie Martineau, Emilio-Lopez Menchero. Ruine, atmosphère, espace, fonction. Une fois les différents espaces positionnés, la qualité du projet résulte du mouvement et des séquences. On y entre dans l’espace d’accueil ou les parents peuvent déposer et attendre leurs enfants et le regarder en jouant. Ensuite on fait l’expérience de la salle à manger entre la librairie et l’espace de travail manuel adjacent. En prenant l’escalier, il nous amène sur une plateforme qui tourne autour d’un seul point pour connecter l’espace des jouettes et l’espace lego, la salle ronde ou les enfants peuvent dessiner sur un mur gigantesque et continu sur deux étages, et finalement on peut remonter aux espaces de repos isolé de tout le reste. L’escalier est un système simple et clair qui distribue les espaces d’une manière joyeuse. Une des règles du jeu était de travailler seulement à l’intérieur du projet, sans toucher les murs de la façade, alors, dans l’intérieur, j’ai fait des interventions pour enrichir le mouvement et l’atmosphère des espaces. Dans la salle à manger on a une grande ouverture en triangle qui s’ouvre vers l’espace extérieur, ensuite, dans l’espace de travail manuel on a une ouverture en cercle qui donne toujours vers cet espace, et finalement dans l’espace extérieur lui-même, on a une ouverture en demi-cercle qui s’ouvre dans la cave pour voir ce qui a en dessus créant un sorte de labyrinthe piranésien. Finalement, en sortant de la maison dans la friche, on rencontre un labyrinthe, étant un espace apportant de l’ordre dans le chaos végétal du jardin, et aussi un chouette endroit pour jouer cache-cache. Ces deux éléments sont contenus par un ovale creusé dans la végétation afin de délimiter l’aire de jeux. Déridée cette limite, y en as quelques éléments qui sorte de la zone délimitée afin d’attirer la curiosité et l’exploration de l’inconnu.
VILLA MA2 (2018 - 2019) Atelier: HISTOIRE, THEORIE et CRITIQUE Enseignants: Wouter van Acker, Iwan Strauven The ultimate pleasure of Architecture lies in the satisfaction of needs not experienced, but imagined. Therefore, the ultimate pleasure of Architecture is not physical, but metaphysical, that is to say, it doesn’t satisfy the needs of the body, but the needs of the soul. The needs of the body are evident: shelter, warmth, protection from the elements, the body speaks for itself, but what about the needs of the soul? The needs of the soul become apparent after an accidental intoxication of pleasure when we transgress the limit from need to pleasure. The ultimate object of architectural pleasure transgresses the needs of the body intentionally to find the limit and the beginning of the soul. It satisfies needs apparently non-existent yet natural. It delights when one needs to be satiated, it comforts when one needs to be protected, it pleases when one needs to be sheltered. The ultimate object of architectural pleasure sings to its users, instead of speaking. The ultimate object of Architectural pleasure is a hedonistic prison from which the soul will try to escape, it cannot be contained, its limits are endless, it searches liberation from the same, it draws into the open, into the endless, into the new. The soul seems to find pleasure in distancing itself from pleasure at times, even from punishing itself, the soul seems to find pleasure in the new. And what is new and always changing yet always punishing if not nature? Punishment leads to growth, and growth leads to change, and the desire to experience the old in a new way. Nature protects and punishes, it satiates and delights, in its indifferent presence, it always controls. Once overwhelmed, the comfort of the past acts as a retreat, the prison becomes a shelter again. The ultimate pleasure is not the actual experience of pleasure but the future promise of pleasure, the imagines pleasure is more powerful than the real one, nature is capable of that promise and of revealing that potential.
BRAVOURE, SCARCITY, BEAUTY MA2 (2019 - 2020) Atelier: HISTOIRE, THEORIE et CRITIQUE Enseignants: Vincent Brunetta, Jean Didier Bergilez Le prétexte heuristique proposé par l’atelier HTC - Bravoure, Scarcity, Beauty - représente une opportunité de retourner à l’essentiel et de réfléchir aux aspects qui définissent la pratique architecturale aujourd’hui : au-delà d’une simple réponse aux besoins d’un programme dans un contexte donné, observer le potentiel d’un lieu et le mettre en valeur à travers des actes précis et délibérés. Le projet proposé répond à un concours pour l’office du tourisme - centre culturel « La Maison du Pays des Collines » d’Ellezelles. Le site existant est défini par des volumétries et matérialités diverses. Le sol, coloré par un vieux pavage, commence sur la place communale et s’immisce entre les constructions en briques dans un style régional. Le tissu médiéval des environs prédomine, avec des dégagements à certains endroits et des contractions plus brutales à d’autres. Les infrastructures actuelles de l’équipement communal sont flanquées d’une extension « contemporaine » qui fait le lien entre deux bâtiments plus anciens. Un acte de bravoure se révèle nécessaire dans un premier temps : démanteler cet appendice et dévoiler le préexistant tel qu’il était, sans le couvrir ; accepter sa matérialité, et s’en servir pour créer des ambiances gratuites. De cette manière-là, utiliser le potentiel des matériaux vieillis par le temps sans rajout, pour trouver de la beauté, de la sensibilité. Afin de préserver ces qualités, l’intervention sépare le nouveau de l’existant, laissant un vide entre les deux qui invite au passage. L’espace extérieur central ainsi formé est dépourvu de superflu ; espace de respiration accueillant le nouveau « jardin des mystères », le vide attire le plaisir du regard à travers tous les espaces. Des choix simples guident l’usage des matériaux. Toujours dénués de superflu, les espaces révèlent leurs propriétés essentielles, visant à répondre d’une manière nuancée à des besoins programmatiques attendus, à travers le mouvement percevant l’abondance du nécessaire.
Poïèsis in architecture Mihai Pop pop.misii@gmail.com Portfolio fin d’études