AN OT HER S C A P E : AN AR C HI V E O F U R B A N F I CTI O N – Architectural drawing tells stories.
E P C S
Szu-an Yu
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ARCHIVE
OF URBAN
AN
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E A
FICTION
H R
T
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01 ANOTHERSCAPE: I
AN ARCHIVE OF URBAN FICTION 04 10 14 28
Key Themes Scheme Experience The Collections
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CAN ARCHITECTURAL DRAWING, AS A MEDIUM, L I N K T O A N O T H E R C R E AT I V E D I S C I P L I N E ? 44 46 50 52 56 58
Overview Theoretical Context Practical References Narrative Strategy Production Evaluation and Feedback
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ANO T HE R S C A P E : –
Anotherscape was a project researches into the power of imagination activated by the speculative drawing, as well as the possibility of linking to other creative discipline, where they may benefit from each other.
An interactive design was proposed in order to embody the idea – An Archive of Urban Fiction. The Architects and Writers participated by working on the Key Themes – the twenty-two Qualities. All the Drawings and Writings made by audiences are collected under these categories. Through the similar or distinct Qualities of different kinds of fictions, they share and compare narrative concepts across Drawing and Writing.
The proposition targeted at the relationships between the drawn and the written fiction. While fictional writing tells imaginative stories, architectural drawing similarly presents imaginative space. Across the common ground of World Building, both Architects and Writers are expressing the narratives of our living environments.
A Scheme of this Archive of Urban Fiction was created, performing as a platform for both sharing and inspiration – the Briefs and the Collections. The Briefs indicate the steps for making fictions under the categories of Key Themes; the Collections of the fictions created by the audiences therefore become a mobile exhibition to engage more audiences.
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AN ARCH IV E OF U R B A N FI CT I O N – Key Themes
The twenty-two Qualities represent the key themes that Architects and Writers will be working on in this project. All the created fictional Drawings and Writings are collected under these categories.
IN DRAWING MATERIALITY / ACTUALITY / COLLAGE OF SPACE / DISSECTION / ARTIFICIAL GROUND / PERSPECTIVE / ALIENATION / SPATIAL SCALE / JUXTAPOSITION / PERFECT GEOMETRY / ORIENTATION /
Through research and analysis, the Qualities were identified and extracted from the speculative drawings and writings. Each Quality represents one aspect through which a drawing/writing can effect a viewer/reader’s perception; in other words, one aspect that Architects or Writers can manipulate while creating their fictions.
IN WRITING SENSE AND EMOTION / REFERENTIAL ELEMENTS / CHARACTERS / DISSECTION / SURREAL SETTING / POINT OF VIEWS / MONOLOGUE / DURATION / ASSOCIATION / SEQUENCE / TIME MOVEMENT /
Therefore both Architects and Writers translate places into narratives by using particular Qualities, through their respective media of Drawing and Writing – their unique means of storytelling. Within these twenty-two Qualities, there are nine pairs that share similar concepts across Drawing and Writing; the other four of them are specific to their medium.
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MATERIALITY
SENSE AND EMOTION
Materiality is the surface of every object that you see. It is the skin of both any element in the space and the space itself.
Happy, sad, lonely; exciting, scary, frightening; loud, soft, silent, quiet, noisy; sweet, sour, bit, salty, spicy. Hard, soft, silky, bumpy, smooth, grainy, polished, glossy, rough; hot, cold, freezing, frosty, chilling, burning, steaming, wet, dry
It is the texture that represents the quality of the material. Or sometimes it fakes the look of something else; it doesn't really matter. What we are talking about here is merely the appearance of it.
Bright, dark, bright, shadowy, shining, pale, dull, shimmering, gleaming; pink, red, blue, yellow, tanned, colourful, colourless‌
The appearance of the elements in the space can form overwhelming patterns. You can put emphasise the individual detail in every inch of every element, or make all the looks into one single texture. And of course you can transplant something onto something else, where the visible qualities and the object contradict each other. The point is, it becomes unusual enough to shock people.
ACTUALITY
REFERENTIAL ELEMENTS
A set of lines indicates the dimension of a space, in the aspects of scale, form, layer, and function. Hatching gives the sense of texture, material, and quality. These represent the imagining of a space, anticipating how it will look.
A referential element is a description that is based on some existing knowledge or shared memories. Through these referential elements, new messages are better understood as comparisons, extensions, simulations or implications.
Then, you add a piece of something taken from the real world. Drawings represent, articulate, and perform reality as a reference. Yes, add actual images, which you borrowed from the physical and existing world.
Metaphors and similes are forms of this commonly used in sentences. They borrow meanings from other things in order to represent. The reference can be broader than just the meaning of a word; it can be an event, a history, a well-known person, or any cultural production.
This produces the coexistence of imagined lines and actual images, the concurrence of imagination and reality. It is the relations in between that are conflicting or resonant.
COLLAGE OF SPACE
CHARACTERS
Collage happens when a space is perceived as multiple spaces, and these multiple spaces are borrowed from different sources. The fragments of
In a story, a single character can represent a single storyline, which shows the cultural value, background, lifestyle and environment of this 05
space do not belong together, and have not existed together before you combined them. Collage produces a collection of places, which have their own identities that refer to something else. Each fragment is seen as an entrance – an entrance to another place.
protagonist. A view of how he or she exists. What if there is more than one character in a story? There are multiple storylines. Each storyline has its own performance; it is individual and differs from every other storyline. However, in the end they are brought together; they represent a series of micro worlds, which are interwoven and revealed in a story.
This is the collage of space: when the spaces sit together and retain their own personalities. But remember, each piece of the collage is not just a flat surface; there are depths in each section.
DISSECTION
DISSECTION
There are sequences in spaces, even though they are not visible in a simple depiction of a space.
Dissection is a whole read through part by part, piece by piece, and word by word. A piece of writing can be a dissection of a basic concept.
Dissection is the process that displays those sequences. For instance, a whole space is separated into parts and these are perceived one by one. From the doormat, the threshold, the foyer, to the rest of the rooms, these are perceived sequentially but exhibited together in one piece of drawing.
Dissection breaks down the description of the scene that you are trying to illustrate, into different, separated elements. You depict, examine, and talk about each one carefully and specifically. Like an anatomist, you observe, investigate, and describe any tiny piece separated from the whole; you believe in the value of fragments and in what a tiny thing can perform.
Dissection also shows the relations between human and space. This method of depiction can refer to the human behaviour or, let’s say, the abilities of a space. And then, one by one, each segment is examined carefully.
Then you go as deep as you can, as subtly as you can.
ARTIFICIAL GROUND
SURREAL SETTING
We are in the city, and cities are built within nature. Nature is the stage of any play, the paper of any painting, the origin of our creation. What will happen if this is no longer the case? What if the place where nature exists is actually a manmade space?
This is the imaginative description of the story world, which goes further than the real and becomes surreal. It achieves this when its basic logic is not something you have learned before; it challenges fundamental common sense, which is meant to be the basic structure of understanding and perceiving. The whole system and the background should not be realistic; make something as impossible as it can be.
There is no nature anymore; the whole earth is an artefact. The ground is not the same one into which plants extend their deep roots; it is just the floor with a bit of soil. Oh yes, it is a fake nature; it is a space where everything is artificial (something that you create!).
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PERSPECTIVE
POINTS OF VIEW
Unusual perspectives reorganise the shapes that are presented. This occurs when the linear perspective is not like the one that we usually use.
A point of view represents a set of values. There are multiple points of view and thus there are several sets of values possible. And here these are focused on the same thing.
For instance, the three vanishing points don’t follow the three axes. In other words, they don't need to be perpendicular to each other anymore. The two vanishing points can be not on the same horizontal line; the third vanishing point doesn't follow the point where the other two intersect.
Through its different aspects, the same thing can be understood differently; from different points of view, different facets can be pieced together into one thing. The thing distorts slightly in each aspect. It offers varied interpretations, multiple filters; the thing differs according to different sets of values.
Further, more than three vanishing points are allowed. You can make four, five, or more vanishing points that come from all different directions. Through this you make different sets of lines, which come from different perspectives and merge into one space that you focus on.
ALIENATION
MONOLOGUE
Alienation is the distance that surrounds what we look at. It is the distance produced when something is enormously enlarged; no matter whether it is an object or a building, it becomes alienated.
I am sitting on the bed and facing the window. Do I look sad? I guess you are saying that in your mind, though my face is illuminated by the sunshine. Well, I am not really alone, you know. I am just happened to sit here by myself, and, have been looking outside for a while. Ok, maybe longer.
It is also the emptiness of distant space, when you don't know what is there. There is nothing that surrounds it. It is the only thing there.
Look at the shadow, the funny shape on the street! You said.
In other words, it is solitude. Nothing else will reach it, or, can reach it, unless you crawl through the unknown emptiness on your own.
I am still looking, looking at the shadow same as yesterday. Is that your favourite scene of this street? Yes? Very good. No? It doesn't matter, because it is my favourite now.
SPATIAL SCALE
DURATION
Every object makes an impression in terms of scale, as does the space. These kinds of conventions sometimes confine the pleasure of perception. The intention here is to challenge conventions by playing with the scale of things and also with the scale of the
Duration is the changing scale of time; it is the compression and expansion of time, which happens between representation and reality. You can represent one year in a few lines, or a whole 07
space itself.
life in one sentence. This means you are compressing perceptible time in reality.
Scale is about size: length, width, height, largeness and smallness, tallness and shortness, width and narrowness, and so on.
On the other, you can also represent one minute as a long story that might take a whole day to read. In this case, you are expanding perceptible time in reality.
Through exaggerating the contrast between the components of a space and the elements within that space, we experience the normal as spectacular; by transforming a tiny object into a space that can be walked through, we reimagine the possibilities of it.
JUXTAPOSITION
ASSOCIATION
Juxtaposition is where things that retain their usual appearances are put together in an unusual combination.
Association is like a matching game: in the game you look for the connections between any two or more elements, and then make the associations.
A curtain is a curtain, a cage is a cage, a volcano is a volcano; but what is it when there is a cage covered with a curtain sitting on top of a volcano?
The aim is to present a scene, an atmosphere, or a situation through many pieces of description of various things; little by little, a vision is built up through the associations that appear spontaneously.
What about a lawn inside a small room? What about many items appearing to be deliberately combined, but which, on closer inspection, don’t make sense?
These can be contributing to the same idea and enhancing it; or they can be producing conflicts. The intention is to achieve effects through creating relations between things.
A scene where objects are juxtaposed disrupts conventional relations and creates new meanings.
PERFECT GEOMETRY
The design process starts very often starts geometrically. However, as we know, things are more complicated in reality. In other words, pure geometry has the artistic quality of perfection. It is used frequently in graphic works, but what about presenting it as a three dimensional thing in a space? As the spatial depiction of something always gives a proper sense of space, perfect geometry in space might have an apparent realness that we might doubt. This is the performance of a fantasy, which is persuading perfect geometry to exist in real space.
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ORIENTATION
Here the plan or the elevation is out of place. This is a vision where the axis of the space is incorrect. It confuses what you see and what you think that you should see. You will find that on the ground, there are windows that are supposed to be vertical and that belong to the elevation; pools of water that should be on the floor are no longer horizontal but form the façade. The water doesn't fall; it stretches to the ceiling, and people walk on the walls. Here you can decide in which direction gravity operates; you change conventional orientation. There is no consistent axis system; there is no socalled up and down.
SEQUENCE
In reality, events have a certain order that is constant. It is different when they are put into a piece of writing. There are sequences in which events are encountered through reading; there are orders of sentences, paragraphs, and events, one after another. And the most important thing is, there is no need to obey reality. You are free to arrange the events however you choose – what goes first, what follows it. You can decide what kind of order to follow, and what the effect should be: smooth, surprising, or confusing.
MOVEMENT OF TIME
This is to do with our sense of time in reality, especially the change and the movement of it. It relates to establishing the speed of time in a story; it forces the reader to follow the footsteps of time. Indicating the movement of time makes it easier to measure the duration of events or notice the order of events when imagining the story. Sometimes it also indicates the period in history and reminds you of movements within the larger chronicle of time. 09
AN ARCH IV E OF U R B A N FI CT I O N – Scheme: The Briefs for Fiction Making
The Archive of Urban Fiction was physically realized as a trolley and a box. The trolley provided the mobility of the Archive, reflecting the idea of Urban Fiction in various places in the city of London.
0 THE MANUAL / Short introduction and instructions indicating the steps that audiences are going to take.
As a platform for sharing, the Archive functions as a proposal, inviting Architects and Writers to participate. The briefs indicate the steps for building up the Archive, introducing the Key Themes on making fictions, which they can take as an alternative exercise to stimulate their thinking and the creativity.
1.1 THE CATALOGUE / Explanation of core message and the twenty-two Qualities in Drawing and Writing.
In terms of the brief, there are: THE MANUAL, THE CATALOGUE, the Quality Cards, the Scopes, the Map, the Place Cards, and the Introduction.
0 It is designed as two versions in different colors. There are steps explaining how to use elements in this ARCHIVE box, including introducing the Qualities, using the scopes on the map, finding the place, and the format of the fictions that audiences are going to make. This is designed as the cover of these booklets. 10
1.2 Quality Cards / Cards showing the Qualities.
2 The Scopes / Objects magnifying the names of places on the map.
3.2 Place Cards / Cards indicating the information about Places.
3.1 The Map / Map of London displayed with longitudes and latitudes.
4 INTRODUCTION / Further information on this project.
1.1 This is executed in black and gold graphics, reflecting the colour code of this ARCHIVE box. It outlines the main topics in Drawing and Writing. It is designed to be the biggest book of the set; the pages can be read from the beginning with the diagram, as well as from the inside with the map. 1.2 Same as contents in THE CATALOGUE; but the size is matched to THE MANUAL in order to be placed inside it. Each card will have one Quality in Drawing on one side and one Quality in Writing on the other; except for those which are not paired.
2 Made by a laser cut piece of clear acrylic with a symbol and a glass cabochon, cemented into a cubic shape. The scopes are designed to magnify the texts on the map; each of them represents one of the Qualities. In order to keep the cabochon bright enough, it is translucent on two of the four sides. 3.1 Printed on light canvas that can be folded and unfolded easily. Longitudes and latitudes are in gold lines. There are sets of numbers on the right hand side 11
that audiences can choose from; the numbers indicate the locations of places according to longitude and latitude. 3.2 There are two ways to read the cards: for Architects, the cards give a description of the place; for Writers, they show the real location of the place. They are designed in the same format as the Quality Cards, and also fit into THE MANUAL. 4 More details introducing the background of ANOTHERSCAPE; including the starting point, key topics, and the concept of AN ARCHIVE OF URBAN FICTION.
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Scheme: The Collection of Urban Fictions
As a platform for inspiration, the Archive exhibits the fictions created by the previously participated Architects and Writers. These fictional drawings and writings are expressing alternative stories of places; through the diverse thinking represented here, especially the different storytelling modes of Drawing and Writing, more ideas and possibilities can be provoked in the process of generating narrative. A projection displays the collection of speculative drawings made by Architects; a speaker plays the collection of fictional writing created by Writers. The collections are also displayed on paper.
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5 The Collection / Drawings and Writings categorised under nine pairs of Qualities and four individual ones.
5 The Qualities are introduced on the cover of each category. Poly film is used for its translucency and durability. On the right hand side, there are index labels for finding the categories quickly. 13
AN ARCH IV E OF U R B A N FI CT I O N – The Experience
This is the Archive. A box with a trolly. Then, you meet the archivist, as an architect or a writer.
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You hear a voice reading stories; then, there are fascinating drawings projected. The stories seem to be somewhere you has been to.
“At first it went almost unnoticed amidst the city's other pungent odours of decaying vegetables and human detritus......."
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The archivist gives you a booklet, showing how to participate in this archive.
0 THE MANUAL / Short introduction and instructions indicating the steps that audiences are going to take. 16
STEP â‘
In THE CATALOGUE, the twenty-two Qualities are introduced.
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1.1 THE CATALOGUE / Explanation of core message and the twenty-two Qualities in Drawing and Writing. 18
PLEASE CHOOSE ONE OF THEM: For Architects MATERIALITY / ACTUALITY / COLLAGE OF SPACE / DISSECTION / ARTIFICIAL GROUND / PERSPECTIVE / ALIENATION / SPATIAL SCALE / JUXTAPOSITION / PERFECT GEOMETRY / ORIENTATION / or For Writers SENSE AND EMOTION / REFERENTIAL ELEMENTS / CHARACTERS / DISSECTION / SURREAL SETTING / POINT OF VIEWS / MONOLOGUE / DURATION / ASSOCIATION / SEQUENCE / MOVEMENT OF TIME /
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FIND THE ‘QUALITY CARD’ OF IT. The concept of that Quality is introduced there, along with a symbol of it.
1.2 Quality Cards / Cards showing the Qualities. 20
STEP â‘Ą
On the right hand side of this Archive Box, there are twenty-two SCOPES placed in the tray. Each Scope is a tool for searching for the places. PLEASE FIND THE SCOPE that matches the Quality you have chosen and use it on the Map.
2 The Scopes / Objects magnifying the names of places on the map. 21
3.1 The Map / Map of London displayed with longitudes and latitudes. 22
STEP â‘¢
From the map, PICK UP ONE OF THE NUMBER SETS. The set of numbers are longitude and latitude that help you to find the location of your place ON THE MAP.
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It says, 'An architectural museum'.
Use the scope as a magnifier to enlarge the text at the spot you got and FIND THE ‘PLACE CARD’ OF IT. You can see the description of that place, which is for you to speculate the story in there.
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STEP ④
Now, you got the ‘Quality’ and the ‘Place’ for your brief. PLEASE IMAGINE WHAT THE PLACE WILL BE LIKE according to the description; and CONSIDER THE QUALITY AS A TOOL to fictionalize the space.
FOR ARCHITECTS *Format: one image of digital or scanned hand drawing in TIF. A2.Sketch, painting, computer drawing, rendering, collage, photomontage (Actuality only), etc. *This is intended to be an architectural speculative drawing. Please keep it imaginative and giving a proper sense of a space.
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FOR WRITERS *Format: a text in PDF. Approximate 300 to 1000 words. Story (can be short or long), poem, description, in the type of narrative writing. *This is intended to be a fictional writing. Please keep it imaginative and providing alternative ways of looking at a place.
You leaves with your new ‘task’, feeling excited and thinking going to the ‘Place’ to have a look. You then draw or write as you usually do, adding in the specific topics from 'new task' to your daily work.
4 INTRODUCTION / Further information on this project. 26
Afterwards you may go back to the archive to submit the fictional drawing/writing. Like what you saw last time, all the drawings/writings are collected under those specific topics.
5 The Collection / Drawings and Writings categorised under nine pairs of Qualities and four individual ones. 27
AN ARCH IV E OF U R B A N FI CT I O N – The Collections
What the audiences have created, in response to the briefs, are seven architectural drawings and eight pieces of fictional writing.
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MATERIALITY / SENSE AND EMOTION
FIRE Chris Fenwick At first it went almost unnoticed amidst the city’s other pungent odours of decaying vegetables and human detritus. Yet soon it came to overpower everything. That unmistakable smell and taste of acrid smoke from burning wood and plaster. It clawed at the throat, stung the eyes and clogged the nostrils. First one house then another and another. Soon whole streets were ablaze; ancient streets that had been the city’s arteries for a millennium and more. The noise of the flames, crackling and snapping and exploding everything it touched, could now be heard all over the city. Men, women, children came pouring out from houses and taverns, from shops and churches with barely enough time to gather up a few scant possessions before the inferno consumed all around them, their screams and shouts of anguish competing with the noise of the fire itself. Terror and panic and anger united them, as they fled leaving behind all that they had known, all that they had worked for, all that they had cherished. From the distant hills, the orange and ochre skies looked as though a dozen tropical suns were setting simultaneously upon the city below. Dark smoke spiralled lethargically into the air settling over the scene in a heavy black shroud that seemed to signal its death. For four days and four nights the fire raged carving a huge swathe from east to west across town. No respecter of rank, it scythed its way through the secular and the sacred, across parkland and parapet and through palaces and paupers’ hovels. A new thoroughfare had now been created that would form the template for the city that would rise in its stead. A city of stone and brick to replace that of timber and straw. One day, a fine tall tower would stand on the very spot where the fire had begun to remind generations as yet unborn of those terrible events. But that was for the future. For now, it was time to mourn the dead and console the living; to salvage the little that remained and to remember what had been and what was now gone forever.
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ACTUALITY / REFERENTIAL ELEMENTS Po-min Kung
ACTUALITY / REFERENTIAL ELEMENTS
Unforgotten Lives Chris Fenwick happened and, even if she wanted to, it was too late for her to reverse that decision. It was gone forever, there could be no second chance, no going back.
The brightly lit room was a welcome contrast to the dull, slate grey London skies that she had just left behind. This was a place that she had never been to before, and she was only here now, by chance, because of the rain and because the streets were so empty and bereft of people. And she needed people just now. Not their conversation, nor even their acknowledgement, just their presence.
She looked up. The room was large and freshly painted. In spite of its contents, it felt clean and safe and warm. There were perhaps two dozen other people there with her. That was enough. She was not alone. Some were seated cross legged on the floor with sketch pads and pencils, peering purposefully into the cabinets, intent on capturing the precise details of their subject. Others, seemed to wander from display to display with a bored, ambivalent aimlessness that made her question why they had come here in the first place. Perhaps, like her, to shelter from the rain and perhaps to try to marshall their thoughts in this place of quietness and learning.
The clinic had only been a short walk away and, although her clothes were wet through, she hardly noticed. What had happened allowed her no space for any other emotion or sensation. It had been the right thing to do of course. She knew that. It was the logical, sensible and practical thing to do. She had made a mistake and now she had dealt with it. It was done, finished with, over and she could, should, put it behind her. Now she could start to re-build her life; begin again as though nothing had happened. But it had
She, however, determined that, since she was here she, would not be like that. She would give the exhibits the attention they deserved. Besides, it would help to 30
distract her from what she had just left behind.
of every size and hue circled high above in a cloudless azure sky seeking out their prey. Gone were the jars and cylinders, gone were their sad, shrivelled and colourless contents. Instead, the cabinets were filled with every kind of living creature, snakes and sheep, foxes and fawns, beavers and butterflies each, in their own perfect habitat, each doing exactly what God had intended them to do, had intended them to be.
The first case contained the large mottled brown bones of a man. She read the notice that said it was one of the museum’s early acquisitions and that the donor had insisted it be on permanent display. It was some way of achieving immortality she thought. Artists do it with their paintings, writers with their books, this man with his mortal remains. The thought, for some curious reason, comforted her.
How long she stood and watched that glorious scene she could not tell. She felt a sense of joy and warmth and comfort knowing that, in her mind at least, she had given them the life they had been denied; the opportunity to live out their potential and the chance to take their place in the world, in the natural order of things.
She moved on. The next case contained an array of early medical instruments, some of brass, others of iron, others still of wood. She shuddered. What strange demon of chance, she wondered, had brought her to this place at this time? She hurried on quickly trying to extinguish the thought of these vaguely familiar objects of so recent memory from her mind.
And then, in a moment, that vision was gone and she was once again staring at those creatures, frozen again inside their liquid cage, immortalised for benefit of tired visitors to amuse themselves over a wet lunchtime or for students to sketch. She pondered the irony of it all. That stark but beautiful choice between immortality or a brief, happy but soon forgotten life. Both, in their different ways, had meaning and purpose.
She turned a corner. Line after line of glass cases, each containing row after row of glass shelves, each packed full of sealed glass cylinders of varying sizes and differing contents. All bore their original labels with their fading, brown copperplate handwritten inscriptions. She read each one with care and studied the contents of the jars intently, starting with the first;
But then, with a slow and dreadful, numbing realisation she understood for the first time that day, that the decision she had made had provided neither of those choices to that which she had left behind.
‘Three week old foetus of a frog’ And then the second; ‘Near term foetus of a rabbit’ Then the third; ‘Five week old foetus of a macaw.’ And so on down the line and up and down on every shelf until she had read every label, seen every creature bleached, white and whole and still recognisable in their jars of formaldehyde. She stepped back taking in the scene as a whole. Through a window she noticed that the sun was breaking through the clouds. She could feel its warmth upon her face. The bored, aimless people had left now that the rain had stopped, but the sketchers with their drawings were still there, shading in every bone, every muscle, every sinew. She looked again at the cases and walked back to the start of the display. Turning round she carefully, but more quickly, studied at each jar and their contents once more. But as she did so, each one was brought to life in her mind. Frogs and toads were now sitting by a sweet lake, their true colour and vitality restored, croaking and chirping contently in the morning spring sunshine. Rabbits and hares were running and jumping and clawing the air in vain attempts to catch elusive moths and mayflies in richly coloured meadows. Countless birds 31
COLLAGE OF SPACE / CHARACTERS
Three Characters within the Soanes Museum Jon Wood The Visitor I see a masterly composition of nooks and crannies, shafts and facades layered with curiosities, creaking folds and cloaks of purpose against the erosion of the metaphysical- there’s human worth in the objects now, artefacts of man, each replete with meaning, a story exposed with each swell of light sent down from the unseen orb into these watery depths. We descend like curious fish down to where the pride and prizes of the dead are preserved our informed forensic gaze dusting the laminated obfuscation’s of the past. We see pieces made from other’s hands, from another’s land, purloined or acquired, for good, obsession or wealth, we don’t know but their physical moulds remain, their pattern, the resilient marks of their time accepted by every modern eye on every corner of London. The Guardian Today I’m in the drawing room with the rows of seats never sat on and a table never eat on, walls no longer barriers, ceilings still celestial, doors almost always open for polite company in a steady flow to come and stare. I guide and advise, I’ve been here a year so I’m not an expert. Each time I look I find something new, the delicate curl of a brass handle, a pattern within a pattern, the statue’s melancholic gaze. The house lays its hand on me, I can feel its presence from stone cellar to terracotta roof tiles. The builders are in restoring, I’m anxious but I think the house accepts their presence, we will grow and more shall be revealed for our hungry eyes. The Occupant Piranesi spoke to me last night, he took me by his hand, it seemed a perfectly natural thing to do, we passed through his ruins of antiquity, no, I mean literally walked through white hewn stone walls, mighty slabs of intent piled high and tottering. We walked straight through them. It didn’t seem to matter where he was leading me, it was peaceful, the many tones of light: the half lights; the dappling shades, then we sank deep into his dark subterranean chambers cut sharp with an irregular pulse of blue light from above. We were timeless. He calls me now in the wakened hours to join him, away from the cloying living with their piggy gaze, naive questions and suppositions. We are not curiosities we walk the earth of perpetual sublimity, they swoop and forage like half tamed, flaking locusts in a brief frenzy of existence. 32
DISSECTION / DISSECTION Yu-pu Lu
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ARTIFICIAL GROUND / SURREAL SETTING
The Gardens Jon Wood From where have you come, mighty brushed rods and troughs of Gods, a reawakened dream of man unbent by selfish need? These upturned arches that slight civilisations past, this brute majesty, familiar yet unimagined does not compete but sits in its complex wealth of form unchallenged by the lesser city outside its walls: the modest church in white hewn stone in silent prayer and the tall glass and tin clad blocks that would bow if they had a soul. I am on one of the many decks of this great ship, standing in the presence of the three towers that command fear and reverence, they shift as I turn, tremulous sentinels, masts taut against time, they look out to where their toy town neighbours, fashioned from comic book images and false icons, dilute the eye. I dream of babylon and ageless wonders of the world and look upon the river within its girth and wait for the vessel to arrive that will take me to the origins of this invented place beyond the limits of my mind. Maybe it will take me back through epochs of old: past Greek capitals; Mayan arches; the cosmic geometry of tombs; cities carved from stone; ziggurats and celebrated Temples but I would return to this place here as rich as any seen. London I say treat this gift well and be generous in your usage we will not witness its kind ever again.
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PERSPECTIVE / POINT OF VIEWS Ya-sin Tseng
PERSPECTIVE / POINT OF VIEWS
The Visitors Chris Fenwick
They are back. I hear them now, downstairs. They always come at this hour. I should be used to them, but I am not. Their presence unsettles and alarms me as much as it did the first time they came here. Why do they persecute me so?
to room or as they sit with melancholic despondency in the corner. But I do not pity them. I fear them as much as I do the others for I know they all mean me harm. I know that that harm can come at any moment. I know that it will strike out at me from nowhere, when I am unsuspecting and unprepared, like an angry, spitting, venomous viper. When it will come I do not know. But come it will.
Once this was a place of quietude with just the old man for company. Now they are here, shuffling around, opening and closing doors, whispering on stairwells and in hallways.
Oh, why do they torture me? I would rather it was done and my fate sealed. To prolong my misery waiting like this, waiting for the inevitable, is more than I can bear. And still it goes on day after day, month after month, year after year. Please let it be over. Let it be today.
Of course, I have seen them many times although always from my place of safety, from my Sanctuary. It is the children I should pity, such young wasted lives. I watch their pale, drawn faces as they move from room 35
Wait. I hear footsteps on the stairs. They are coming! Hide. Hide. They must not see me. They must not find me!
Unseen and unnoticed, he detaches himself from the others and slowly, carefully and with as little noise as possible, begins to climb the stairs. He is the unthinking slave to the curiosity of his youth and gender and as such he is powerless to do other than he does now. As his foot touches every one of the ancient, creaking timbers, the boy notes with alacrity, that each tread has its own unique sound. But, young as he is, he knows that it is vital that he proceeds in silence, for he fancied he saw something in that room earlier, only briefly, only fleetingly, but something.
They move slowly up the wooden stairs and enter the first room. Their eyes alert to every subtle detail. The flickering lamps, the dusty cobwebs, the small pile of soiled clothing on the floor. They gather silently by thedream of babylon and ageless wonders of the world and look upon the river within its girth and wait for the vessel to arrive that will take me to the origins of this invented place beyond the limits of my mind. Maybe it will take me back through epochs of old: past Greek capitals; Mayan arches; the cosmic geometry of tombs; cities carved from stone; ziggurats and celebrated Temples but I would return to this place here as rich as any seen. London I say treat this gift well and be generous in your usage we will not witness its kind ever again.
He reaches out to the heavily ornamented brass handle. He grasps it with some difficulty for it is almost as large as his hand. He turns it for what seems like an eternity and then, when he feels tension loosen in the huge tenon of the lock, he places his other hand flat on the grainy wooden surface of the door and gently begins to push it open.
unmade bed. Some stare uncomprehendingly, mystified by it all. Others seem overwhelmed and moved by the experience. But they are all quiet, so very quiet and they talk only in hushed tones. A small boy clings tightly to his mother’s hand. His eyes are fixed upon a large, deeply stained mahogany wardrobe in the corner.
A few moments respite then before it all begins once more. A few minutes of calm before that dread fear and their return. But no, no, it is too late. The door, the door it opens! No time to hide, no time to run, the Sanctuary is too far. Now is the hour, now the moment that I have both feared and longed for.
After a time, they leave the room, gently closing the door behind them. They move to the next room and the next and then the next, walking this way and that, their feet scraping on the floor as they go, moving almost in unison as though they were one creature, one living organism.
It is a child. A small boy. He stares at me. He must see me, yet he displays no emotion or fright. He just stares. How can this be so? Yet he will soon summon the others. I must await my doom. But still he does not move or call out or run. I do not understand. Some minutes have now passed and he has remained motionless, unblinking and unflinching framed in the door. Does he see me or does he see me not?
It was close that time, so very close. Barely did I manage to secrete myself before they entered. They hunt me like a wounded animal. But my wounds are not of the flesh but of the mind and of the heart. I cannot endure this fear much longer. This fear of waiting to be found, to be subjected to.. who can say what? Let it be over. Dear God let it be done.
There is movement now at the bottom of the stairs. A voice is calling. ‘George, George where are you?’
Listen. Listen. They are moving once again. They are going back down the stairs. I can see them in my mind’s eye. Back past the dusty portraits in their gilded frames, back past the fading gas light in the hallway. By the hatstand now. Now stood atop that poorly mended rug. Now they are by the door, huddled, whispering, conspiring.
‘Here mummy,’ the boy replies. ‘Well come down here at once.’ ‘Yes mummy’. But the boy does not leave, instead he continues to stare. Then after a few moments, he steps backwards through the frame of the door and back on to the landing. He reaches for the handle and just before the door closes he smiles and says,
Let them leave. Sweet Jesus in heaven, make them go. But what is that? Is it the sound of the street door opening? No, listen again. It is not the street door but the door to the parlour. They begin their pursuit afresh. But I am safe up here. For now. But how long will it be until they return, how long before they find my secret place, my Sanctuary?
‘Goodbye.’
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ALIENATION / MONOLOGUE Ming-yen Chou
ALIENATION / MONOLOGUE
Running towards fish island Jon Wood My gullet burns my back aches. Under the dark arches of the industrial age I sensed my pace slowing. Got to step it up, no purpose in jogging, jogging’s part of a prescribed life style along with Sunday supplements and achieving schools. Its on the list stuck to the broad fridge door next to your children’s drawings. Something you shoe horn into your wonderfully full and progressive lives. Christ I’ve got to step it up.
What do I feel, what do I see? Tell me! Within my torso I can feel jangling organs held loosely in place by a mesh of stretched and fatigued wire. They are flushed by pulses of oxygen, bruised by motion. Words slip off my lips. Look at the reeds in the brook, the wide landscape, part abstract, part cultured, edged with steel and corrugated structures, traversed above by flat nosed carriages ferrying back and forth. I’m following the river as it winds long, slow, round. Why are you not moved by the contrasts? The endless patterns of nature out here away from the grip of the city. I can’t see its wonder only feel my meanly padded bones against grit. What use are the words.
Listen to the sounds, the displaced gravel, how many different types of bird can you hear, we can still breath if there’s bird song even as the buildings march to the waters edge. Will she still be there by the stern brick factory wall mocked by colour and grimacing cartoons her spray can ready.
Rana’s body is padded for impact, deliciously unathletic, kept pleasingly budhaesque and plump with heaped spoons of sugar that ameliorate her bitter coffee, she thrives on a navvies diet, feels no guilt and nothing, as far as I can remember, jars. 37
SPATIAL SCALE / DURATION Szu-an Yu
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JUXTAPOSITION / ASSOCIATION Jacquetta Wang
JUXTAPOSITION / ASSOCIATION
The Entrance Prasanna Khanal An indifferent sky threw in a steady stream of rain onto the jagged fabric of the city, making its inhabitants rush. In an older part of its labyrinthine disorder, an elderly edifice stood triumphant as water seeped down its symmetrically carved portals. Its tall belfry tower and the curve of the cupola had seen many a thunderstorms. The building is a late nineteenth century structure built on marshy land reclaimed from the river; reads a pamphlet at the entrance. The redness of its façade interspersed by stone carvings of men wearing elaborate headdress holding cane- staff gesturing its visitors to gander inside.
light falling from hanging Chandeliers placed at intervals and lit candles placed on a table besides the door reveals its cavernous insides. People scattered about; sitting on wooden chairs, some walk about, others lighting candles. Towards the nave, a large wooden cross, on which is painted a half-naked man, hung from above as if it were a creature of the sky, its upper end lost in the darkness of the unseen ceiling. Walking away from the door, a large stone pillar makes its presence felt, it too vanishing high above. The air feels stuck & heavy, the space holds an intrigue. It’s like as if the place were high up the mountains, a cave.
A large wooden door leads into its interiors; yellow 39
Its walls depict pictures of faraway lands, where people wore robes, and kept animals. A large bronze foot stepped fleshly on a ‘leather sandal’. A loose cottonlike robe drapes its heavy body; its right arm flexed at the elbow with two fingers pointing up while the left arm hung, as if from a sling, across the chest holding a pair of keys in its palms. Moving up a broad chest, a thick neck led to a square jaw with verdant beard, and expressive large eyes glared out at whoever was in front, with an intense expression. Dark wavy hair had a circular sun like disc floating over it, completing the character. The figure sat on an elaborately carved chair addressing a person or an assembly. The whole architecture demanded attention, making the visitor one of its many parts. A man in his late 60’s with long flowing beard was glancing down an open tome, alongside him stood a young girl as he reads out loudGuide me, O thou great Redeemer Pilgrim through this barren land I’m weak, but thou art mighty Hold me with thy powerful hand Bread of heaven, Bread of heaven Feed me till I want no more Feed me till I want no more.
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ORIENTATION / Ting-jia Chang
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/ TIME MOVEMENT
Time Tunnel Chris Fenwick From the outside you can see at once that she is indeed a strange confection; a perfect melding of function and form. Part fortress, part provider of life for those confined in her belly.
filled with books of every colour and hue and on every subject known to man. Paintings from another age fill any remaining vacant spaces left by the bookcases, hung on the fine grained wooden paneling. You feel like you have stepped into an ancient Piccadilly gentleman’s’ club. Beneath your feet is a crimson coloured handwoven oriental carpet and in the centre of the room an enormous carved and polished table. Four men, and a woman taking notes, are seated around it. You recognise the men instantly from the old newsreels and grainy black and white photographs you have seen. The old rotund man at the end of the table, the most recognisable of all, is puffing anxiously on his cigar, his two colleagues seated either side of him fiddle anxiously with their pens and winged collars. It is hot in here in this strange windowless room and air is a pungent cocktail of cigar smoke and fear. The tall man in the uniform stands up and leans forward and places the palms of his hands firmly on the table. He speaks;
But later you discover that the face that she shows to her public hides her true nature. Beneath her stern, stone facade is a subterranean world of snaking tunnels, their purpose long abandoned, their meaning long forgotten. You note now that they are lined with metal shelfs and dusty boxes filled with yellowing files full of ancient correspondence and obsolete memoranda. The stored detritus of modern commercial life that no one wants to see but no one dares destroy. But for now you shut that from your mind and continue your journey through her long intestinal caverns back to another time, a darker time. You close your eyes and picture it. Above, in the outside world, the real world, bombs fall from the sky. The city has become an inferno as far as the eye can see. In the distance, a siren calls out its wild banshee wail and the jingle-jangle bells of fire engines and police cars rushing by can only be heard intermittently between the noise of those terrible and terrifying explosions.
‘Then we are all agreed? It is to be the 6th of June? There is a long silence. Everyone looks towards the old man at the head of the table. You sense the tension in the air. There is no movement. Even the old man’s smoke seems frozen, suspended in time. Eventually he nods. There are sighs of relieve but the anxiety on the faces seems, if anything more intense.
But down here, here in the safety of her womb, you are spared that hateful cacophony. You drift from bunk to bunk, ghostlike, invisible, observing everything but betraying no sound nor movement. Anxious mothers in floral pinafores, their hair tied up with scarfs tend their fretful babies. Old men, oblivious to their surroundings, lie on their backs snoring nosily, their toothless mouths open wide. You see a gaggle of soldiers playing cards, smoking, laughing. Further on a boy of no more than twelve years of age, in short trousers and a sleeveless pullover, is whistling tunelessly to himself trying to distract his mind from the fact that he is down here alone. There is a overpowering smell of stale cigarette smoke, cheap food being cooked on makeshift cookers and human waste. You step back and survey the whole scene. Eight thousand souls are here. People from all classes, all backgrounds and all faith, all united by a single purpose.
You open your eyes and the smell from that room is gone in an instant to be replaced by the dank odour of slowly decaying paper. You retrace your steps along the tunnels and open the door of her portal. The roar of the traffic is the first assault on your senses. You blink as the bright sunlight meets your eyes. You are back, back on familiar ground, back in a familiar place. But somehow, in some way that you cannot put words to, the world seems different now, different and new.
Time passes, and you walk, on and come to a huge locked metal door. But this is no barrier to you and you pass through it and are immediately startled by what you see. It all seems so out of place, so incongruous. Oak bookshelves line nearly every wall and are neatly 42
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01 ANOTHERSCAPE: I
AN ARCHIVE OF URBAN FICTION 04 10 14 28
Key Themes Scheme Experience The Collections
II
CAN ARCHITECTURAL DRAWING, AS A MEDIUM, L I N K T O A N O T H E R C R E AT I V E D I S C I P L I N E ? 46 50 52 56 58 60
Overview Theoretical Context Practical References Narrative Strategy Production Evaluation and Feedback
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CAN ARC H IT E C T U R A L D R AW I N G , AS A MEDIUM, LINK TO ANOTHER CREATIVE DI SCIPLI NE ? – Overview: Research, Idea, and Outcome
Anotherspace is An Archive of Urban Fiction aimed at building up a platform that connects architects and writers through making various fictions in the format of architectural drawings and fictional writings.
A compelling experience was created as an interface between the audience and the message. This was achieved through the creation of an archive of urban fiction, consisting of the collections and the briefs with key themes.
The undiscovered spatial fictions exist in the form of architectural drawings that speculate about possible worlds. However I realised that, while thousands of spatial fictions are created all the time, many of them are not told? The key drama in Anotherscape therefore centres on the possible expansion of the audiences of speculative drawings, and the research question established was:
The collections and the briefs communicate the inspirational aspects of the archive, in the form of a mobile exhibition and a series of steps for contributing fictions, which represent the achievement of the project’s first layer of objectives. The ultimate aim of the project, its secondary layer of objectives, is achieved when audiences understand for themselves the significance of the relationship between image and text.
can architectural drawing, as a medium, link to another creative discipline?
The key themes – the ‘qualities’ – in the briefs represent the corresponding features of drawing and writing. These qualities are integrated into the briefs, and the outcomes created by audiences – fictions in the format of drawing and writing – are categorised under these twenty-two headings.
While architectural drawing presents imaginative space, fictional writing similarly tells imaginative stories. Across the common ground of world building, both architects and writers are expressing the narratives of our living environments. This suggested a possible answer: to connect the two disciplines though their respective media of drawing and writing – their unique means of storytelling.
Most of the reactions and feedback from audiences suggested that the project was successful in inspiring a sense of intrigue in other participants’ works, in the act of disseminating the briefs, and in stimulating interest in participating further in the future. Moreover, many of the comments expressed interest in the relations between the visual and the textual and mentioned that they expect more interaction with the other audience group (writers or architects respectively). The outcomes in Anotherscape answered the research question. However, like many other projects, many more opportunities arose during the course of the project, as well as afterwards. It opened up a research journey into different modes of storytelling, experimented with specific ideas, and looks forward to more exploration towards other possibilities.
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Theoretical Context
The theoretical context of Anotherscape was based on a series of different conceptual areas around the perception of space, the production of spatial narratives, the functions of fiction and the connections between the visual and the textual. (Diagram 1)
'All reality is brought forth solely by imagination… this act which forms the basis for the possibility of our consciousness, our life' – J. Pallasmaa, 2011 1 The fundamental idea underlying the project is that we read narratives though building up a parallel world in our mind, which is constructed by countless mental images. These images are fused with existing knowledge and memories. While narrative real-world experience analyses and assembles information in its own way, it also inevitably mixes with the imagination; it becomes a subjective narrative reality.
Diagram 1. Theory context of Anotherscape.
ESTABLISHED NARRATIVE – Established narratives form a kind of existing knowledge that informs our perceptions. They shape our ways of understanding everything, from our personalities to our shared languages, and the ‘database’ of experience on which we draw varies from person to person; this is why reality is in an important sense subjective. While it has been suggested that our cultural ‘baggage’ is the source of our subjective understanding (Porter & Sotelo, 2004) 4, this cultural experience can also be potentially manipulated, or even controlled. The reliance on cultural context and narratives of self produces prejudgments and stereotypes; the aim of this project was to challenge these conventions.
SUPERIMPOSITION OF ACTUAL SPACE AND IMAGINATION – Mental representation operates through a duality of the actual and the imaginary; it is a digested and rearranged fact that is not purely true but real enough to make us believe in it. This overlap happens in every moment of our experience of space and can be expressed in terms of the concept of ‘heterarchitecture’ 2 , the superimposition of real space and virtual space, which becomes a kind of conversation between the two; these kinds of narratives are found in ‘Drawing on Site’ (Figure 1) 3 . This concept set the basic premise for the project that we more or less always overlap thoughts with facts when perceiving space.
Figure 1. Kennedy & Violich Architects (with Linda Pollak and Michael VanderBourgh), Drawing on Site, Boston, Massachusetts, USA, 1991.
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THE VALUE ARCHITECTURAL FICTION – There is a range of diverse viewpoints on the relationship between fiction and architecture, usually concerned with the dialogue between actual perception and fictional narratives. Whether it is fiction represented by real architecture or architecture represented by fictional drawing, architectural fictions are primarily intended to challenge conventional thoughts on living environments.
FICTION, A TOOL OF THINKING – Through imagining things in fiction, we reconsider reality. One compelling theory is that the dialogue between possibility and apparent impossibility help creativity. As the interpretation in ‘Critical Design’ suggests, it is important to re-think, to raise awareness, to spark debate (Dunne & Raby, 2007 ) 5 . ‘It is a planned escape versus an alternate reality that better enables us to understand what is real and what is not, or simply what could be just for the sake of difference.’ – D. Gissen, 2009
(Figure 2, 3, 4, 5)
SPECULATIVE DRAWING – As one of the basic methods of representation, architectural drawing is a common medium in which architects can express their speculations. It has the irreplaceable capability of visual representation in terms of immediacy, as well as an ability to escape the limitations of the material world in a way that real architecture cannot; in other words, implausible scenes can be described on a drawing more effectively. Innumerable architects have executed their ideas of possible worlds in this way; in this project, these are considered as spatial fiction that poses questions.
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Fiction describes the imaginary to satisfy our desire for the imaginary and for change, and reveal what we have never thought of. It proposes alternative versions of what the living environments can be; it offers possible worlds, which ‘are constructs for thought and discourse — they are testing grounds for ideas, wishes and fantasies' (Jamieson, 2011) 7 . This idea helped in developing the core message in this project: the imaginative power activated by the interaction between reality and possible worlds.
(Figure 6, 7, 8 and Appendix B – Catalogue of Speculative Drawings)
‘Absurdity is a rhetorical device aimed at questioning conventions.’ – T. Ngo, 2008
Figure 4. Philippe Rahm, Digestible Gulf Stream, 2008. <http://www.philipperahm.com/data/ projects/digestiblegulfstream/dgs9.jpg>
Figure 2. Rob Walker & Ellen Susan, Hypothetical Development Organisation, 2011. 8 <http://www.spontaneousinterventions.org/ wp-content/uploads/2012/08/52crop.jpg>
Figure 5. Antfarm, Inflatables, 1971. <http://31.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_ m8b302QFcR1qcnad6o1_500.jpg>
Figure 3. Protocol Architecture, The Rühmann Notebook, 2010. <http://farm5.static.flickr. com/4059/4632029573_5611d3e8bd_o.jpg>
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THE POSITION SHARE THE UNDISCOVERED – The question arises of who these spatial fictions are talking to. The power of architectural language is summed up in the notion that, ‘expressed in the pragmatic language of blueprints and models, visionary architecture has an immediacy that films and books lack’ (Keats, 2013) 11 . However, it is also increasingly closely tied to architecture as a profession; non-architects have seldom been considered as the audience for spatial fictions. In a context where cross-pollination between different design disciplines is generally considered positive and productive, it would seem important to share these rich ideas on our living spaces. As Phol commented about WAI, who believes in exploring potential of tools used in other intellectual disciplines, the limitlessness of our world can be increased 12 . This valuable opportunity formed the main question in this project: can architectural drawing, as a medium, link to another creative discipline?
SIMILARITY IN WORLD BUILDING – ‘What we tried to do, in order to open up the conversation, is to use techniques and formats that people are familiar with.’ Because the focus in this project is on sharing stimulating thoughts, some particular media stand out in terms of their ability to express powerful imagery. ‘Fiction is an extraordinary shared language unlike the closed language of the architectural drawing’ (Young, 2013) 13 . Literature and film are common formats of storytelling that in fact hold similarities to architectural description in terms of constructing imaginative world. Drawings and texts play distinctive roles in those particular media due to their simplicity in terms of visual representation and textual representation. This notion of relations between visual storytelling and textual storytelling became the answer for the research question.
Figure 6. Tom Ngo, Normal Dwelling 1, 2010. <http://www.tomngo.net/wp-content/ uploads/2010/10/normal-dwelling-1web. jpg>
Figure 7. Ettore Sottsass, New Domestic Landscape, 1972. <http://www.ymag.it/wp-content/ uploads/2009/04/indl_par_sott_ rendering675.jpg>
Figure 8. Saul Steinberg, Graph Paper Building, 1950. <http://relationalthought.files.wordpress. com/2013/04/saul-steinberg-graph-paperbuilding-1950.jpg>
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THE INSIGHT REFERENTIAL TEXT AND IMMEDIATE VISION – A fiction is constructed by text, which is basically referential. That is to say, the reader needs to refer a certain meaning in order to imagine a described scene. In textual storytelling, plots and details are generated by associations of existing knowledge that we are asked to link to what we read. ‘Drawings, collages and models transmitted an urgency to be understood, to find eyes able to receive the message that was being sent.’ – E. B. Pohl, 2012 12
FLOWS IN-BETWEEN – The gap exists in many forms during the process of perception: between reality and unreality, between each word in a text, between visual representation and existing memory, and between referential text and immediate vision. Following that, the action of ‘filling or bridging the gap’ is where imagination is activated, narrative is generated, and fiction is created.
On the other hand, the improbable scenes in drawing are perceived by actual vision. This immediacy offers our dominant visual perception an irresistible vision of possible worlds. Associations are suggested when actuality and imagination are superimposed and interplayed in front of our eyes.
In other words, through piecing up, superimposing, interplaying, and re-arranging different elements, we propose fictions. The analysis above became a significant contribution in this project, resulting in the concept of twenty-two ‘qualities’ between visual and textual storytelling.
GAPS FOR IMAGINATION – In comics, the space left between two frames has a significant function (Scott McCloud, 2005) 15 , where viewer makes associations and imagines scenes in between to complete the narrative. The gap asks to be filled and brings the storytelling medium alive. Similarly, in text as Jamieson suggests, ‘unwritten spaces of the text allow the reader to exercise their own imagination: filling in the gaps’ (Jamieson, 2011) 7 . This is also a key motivation for reading.
‘Both, however, hold the capacity to make a world and to ground one’s actions. Interestingly, much of the language used to describe each, float between the two worlds: One ‘reads’ architectural plans. One discusses the ‘structure’ of a novel. One ‘plots’ drawings in an architectural office.
For further discussion on these gaps, there is an interesting argument about ‘presence and absence’ (benandsebastian, 2012) 16 . What is presented quite often obstructs the space for new imagined imagery; Jamieson comments on Lefebvre’s thought that, ‘the image quite literally ‘kills’ the imagination’ (2011) 7 .
Part of our human condition is the ability to understand our existing situation and to contemplate other worlds.’ – Marc J Neveu, 2007
In this project, the relationships between the visual and the textual can be located in this interpretive ‘filling the gap’. While it offers more possibilities and calls up immediate mental images when interpreting a text, the visual emphasises perceptions and meanings that are difficult to imagine beyond.
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Practical References
LABORATORY OF LITERARY ARCHITECTURE 19 – ‘I eventually created an architectural space that emerged from, and was inspired by, the characters in the book.’ – Kanasu Nagathihalli, SOA Fiction. Partnered with Chelsea Hyduk, M.Arch ’15
Many case studies expanded the range of references for the project and contributed knowledge on its subject; here are three case studies that particularly stand out in terms of their perspective and format.
CONSTRUCTS OF ARCHITECTURE AND FICTION 18 – ‘The architect uses projection as well as representational tools to construct new tangible realities. Fiction writers work in a similar way, constructing worlds, spaces and characters through text. Both architects and writers construct places through their mediums to make manifest their ideas’ – Butcher, M. & Rabourdin, C., 2010
In a creative writing course, students teamed up with architects in order to physically build the architecture of the text from a novel. ‘Any architectural question is answered from a literary point of view; any literary issue is addressed by a spatial idea’. This is a project executed from the perspective of the writer, in which architectural representation becomes a tool to perform the ‘space’ of a novel. The two projects mentioned above established and validated the relations between textual narrative and spatial design or spatial representation, which supported the concept of Anotherscape. However both of them apply a one-way rather than a two-way relationship.
Firstly, this architectural brief contributed significantly to Anotherscape by affirming the shared ‘world building’ concept between architects and writers. Secondly, it emphasises the positive relations in between but stands on one side of the divide. By aiming to ‘explore the tools of the writer as a means to generate new architectural potentials as well as the tools of the architect to generate fictional narratives of the city’, it proposes to design architecture with the help of the writer’s tools.
Figure 10. Ayn Rand. Model by writer Kanasu Nagathihalli and architect Kanasu Nagathihalli, Atlas Shrugged, 2013. <http://graphics8.nytimes.com/ images/2013/07/31/opinion/draft-architecturerand1/draft-architecture-rand1-tmagArticle-v2. jpg> Figure 9. Bernard Tschumi, Screenplays, 1976. <http://atelier10.files.wordpress.com/2010/09/ screenplays1.png>
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SHORT STORIES: LONDON IN TWO-AND-A-HALF DIMENSIONS 20 – ‘[T]ext and photographs of collage, are two aspects of a story existing in a troubled rrelationship, sometimes working in parallel with one another, sometimes reinforcing one another and other times contradicting one another.’ – Lim, C.J. & Liu, E., 2011 This is a collection of architectural projects in which collages of text and photographs are used to enhance the narratives. These two media are commonly considered more qualitative and phenomenological than conventional architectural representations. Although the project remains from the perspective of architects, the relation between visual and textual representations is proposed as a two-way relationship. In a way, the collage represents a dynamic form of co-authorship for the narratives. This concept helped to develop the idea of fictions consisting of drawing and writing on places; but Anotherscape goes further in that the perspective of the writer is also involved, rather than only that of the architect.
Figure 11. CJ Lim/Studio 8 Architects with Maxwell Mutanda and Tomasz Marchewka, Discontinuous Cities, 2007. <http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-t_jhuDO_waI/ TbRAVc1CBaI/AAAAAAAABik/3xOSfnH3Xro/ s1600/cjLim45.jpg>
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Narrative Strategy
STRATEGY – The narrative strategy for Anotherscape was a framing narrative consisting of a metalepsis in the form of a shift from extradiegetic to intradiegetic, a change of voice, narratives framed through metaphor, and a metanarrative (Diagram 2) . While most of it was in the service of building up an experience to achieve the first layer of objectives in the project, the metanarrative was particularly applicable for the second layer of objectives. This second layer – the ultimate aim in the project – was to deliver the idea that there is great value in the relations between the visual and the textual in the process of imagining. This message, claiming the significance of relations between referential text and immediate visual material in creating gaps for imagination and imaginative flows in-between, was relatively abstract. In order to make this abstract message comprehensible, an experiential process was required.
Diagram 2. Narrative Strategy in Anotherscape.
However, the whole narrative was in fact about the audiences themselves: architects and writers. The ultimate aim was to get them actually doing and ‘thinking’ of it. It was ultimately aimed at making them ‘into’ the story.
An experience was created as the narrative, accompanied by the first layer of objectives, which was to prompt the perception of the intriguing thoughts in other participants’ works, the act of obtaining briefs and executing their pieces of work, and the will to participate further in the future. It became the interface between audiences and the ultimate aim.
To transform them into intradiegetic audiences, the mechanism of ‘obtaining the briefs’ is offered. The briefs require their attendance as characters. At the same time, the presence of the narrator is diminished because of the change of voice, which is explained in the following parargraph.
EXTRADIEGETIC TO INTRADIEGETIC – The narrative was embodied as an archive of urban fiction, including the collections and the briefs. The two elements, collections and briefs, represent the role of the audience, which therefore shifts from being extradiegetic to being intradiegetic. When the collections are displayed, the narrator, an archivist, tells the story of the ‘fictions that are collected in this archive’. The narrator here is intradiegetic and the audiences remain extradiegetic. 54
CHANGE OF VOICE – The change of voice in the experience is from thirdperson to second-person, to first-person. The thirdperson narration is at the beginning when the archivist presents the collections telling the stories of others, or of stories created by others. Second-person narration is used for the majority of the project; the briefs request audiences to complete actions by using ‘you’. The aim is to move them into the diegetic world but also to slightly diminish the presence of the narrator. This is intended to centre the audiences in the story. Furthermore, the second-person narration here also functions as a suggestion and transition to the next change, to first-person narration. In the last stage, where audiences create their own fictions and narrate their own stories, they fully become the characters of this narrative.
FRAMED NARRATIVES AND METAHPOR – In the archive, the twenty-two key themes that categorise the fictions are the framing narratives. Following the narrative of the visual and the textual and the narrative of the archive, these themes are considered as the third level. Each key theme – each ‘Quality’ – is presented with a text describing its features. Here the second-person narration is used again, in order to position audiences within the imaginative worlds, in which the rules could be manipulated by architects and writers. Representing the core message of exploring relations between drawing and writing, the ‘Qualities’ of both sides were juxtaposed and connected through metaphor. Investigating these, a large crossover was found, indicating that narratives flow in between.
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Bibliography
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Gissen, D. (2009) Architecture fiction – a short review of a young concept. HTC Experiments. [Internet]. 22 February 2009. Available from: <http://htcexperiments.org/2009/02/22/ architecture-fiction-%E2%80%94-a-short-reviewof-a-young-concept/> [Accessed 15 December 2013].
3 Bonnemaison, S. & Eisenbachc, R. (2009) Installations by Architects: Experiments in Building and Design. Princeton Architectural Press. 18 Butcher, M. & Rabourdin, C. (2010) Constructs of Architecture and Fiction. [Internet]. Available from: < http://atelier10.wordpress. com/20102011-brief/ > [Accessed 14 December 2013]. Caracciolo, M. (2013) Experientiality. The Living Handbook of Narratology. [Internet]. 7 November 2013. Available from: <http://www.lhn.unihamburg.de/article/experientiality> [Accessed 28 April 2014]. Castle, H. & Spiller, N. (2013) Drawing Architecture. Architectural Design No. 225. London: Artmedia. 16 Clement, B. & de la Cour S. (2012) Present Absence. benandsebastian. [Internet]. 2012. Available from: <http://www.benandsebastian. com/?page_id=2841> [Accessed 5 May 2014].
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Cook, P. (2008) Drawing: The Motive Force of architecture. United Kingdom: John Wiley &Sons Ltd.
Klems, B. (2013) How to Make Your Setting a Character. Writer’s Digest. [Internet]. 19 November 2013. Available from: <http://www. writersdigest.com/online-editor/how-to-makeyour-setting-a-character> [Accessed 28 April 2014].
5 Dunne, A. & Raby, F. (2007) Critical Design FAQ. Dunne & Raby Website. [Internet]. 2007. Available from: <http://www.dunneandraby.co.uk/content/ bydandr/13/0> [Accessed 26 April 2014]. Flachbart, G, Beigl, M. & Weibel, P. (2005) 2 Disappearing Architecture _From Real to Virtual to Quantum. Basel: Birkhàuser. Gendler, T. / Edward N. Z. (2013) Imagination. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. [Internet]. Fall 2013 Edition. Available from: <http:// plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2013/entries/ imagination/> [Accessed 15 December 2013]. 6 Gissen, D. (2009) Fiction’s Genealogy. HTC Experiments. [Internet]. 1 May 2009. Available from: <http://htcexperiments.org/2009/05/01/ fictions-genealogy/> [Accessed 15 December 2013].
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Pallasmaa, J. (2009) The Thinking Hand: Existential and Embodied Wisdom in Architecture. United Kingdom: John Wiley &Sons Ltd. 19 Pericoli, M. (2013) Writers as Architects. Opinionator: Exclusive Online Commentary From The Times. [Internet]. Available from: <http:// opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/08/03/ writers-as-architects/> [Accessed 15 December 2013]. Pitt, D. / Edward N. Z. (2013) Mental Representation. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. [Internet]. Fall 2013 Edition. Available from: <http://plato.stanford.edu/ archives/fall2013/entries/mental-representation/> [Accessed 15 December 2013]. 12 Pohl, E. B. & AR interaction (2012) From Line to Hyperreality. domus. [Internet]. 12 March 2012. Available from: <https://www.domusweb.it/en/ architecture/2012/03/12/from-line-to-hyperreality. html> [Accessed 15 December 2013]. Porter Abbott, H. (2002) The Cambridge Introduction to Narrative. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 4 Porter, L. & Sotelo, S. (2004) Design by Narrative. [Internet]. 3 September 2004. Available from: <http://www.ierg.net/confs/2004/Proceedings/ Porter_Sotelo.pdf> [Accessed 26 April 2014]. Ryan, M. L. (2012) Space. The Living Handbook 57
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Production
Initial prototyping on book. In Work-inprogress Show.
Sketch & glass cabochon.
A metal stick for supporting the top, resistsing the forward and backward force at the same time.
Broken down and re-assembled trolley.
Protyping on 'scopes with cement, plaster, Trolley structure in process. and acrylic. Archive box in progress.
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Frosted acrylic top and gold handle.
ANOTHERSCAPE szu an yu
Projection of drawings.
Collabotator meetings.
Graphic style in Anotherscape.
ANOTHERSCAPE in action.
Screen printing for printing 'gold' on black paper.
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Evaluation and Feedback
With the aim of sharing narratives, the project included three main stages: the impetus to perceive intriguing thoughts in other participants’ works, the act of obtaining briefs and executing their pieces of work, and the will to participate further in the future. In other words, this first layer of objectives is intimately connected with audience experience. Thus, it can be assessed from participants’ reactions and feedback. Enjoyment, Benefit, and Anticipation There were mostly positive comments, which can be divided into three aspects that responded to one of the three stages as stated earlier: enjoyment, benefit from the process, and further anticipation. In terms of enjoyment, it was mentioned that the twenty-two topics were mostly interesting to them, and that they derived diverse inspirations from ‘different versions’ of spaces. In terms of benefit, the feedback revealed the practical value of the project for audiences; in a way, the briefs became one of their exercises that helped in developing their creative skills; on the other hand, the experience of making fictions had given them different perspective on living space and broader imaginations. It had also reduced conventional thinking.
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“I have really enjoyed this project. It has brought me into a whole new world!” – Chris Fenwick “The interesting part is that to ‘represent a representation (text in brief)’; from actual space to word description, and then the drawing, it was ‘translated’ twice.” “Different from own ways of thinking, it gives more space for creativity when expressing other’s imagination (text).” – Po-min Kung
“This project may help me in my exploration in the written word and how it related to Architecture.” “It has been interesting and challenging.” “I particularly like the architectural idea of space connected to a written description of space.” – Jon Wood 61
“I was inspired when the image transformed in my mind. And Quality expands the possibility even more!” – Yu-pu Lu
“This is where I can play with my imagination more than most of the real projects I had. Especially it began with the text description, rather than an actual site.” – Ya-sin Tseng
“I would definitely do it again. It was interesting, fun and inspiring. It would even be better if architects could have more contact or communication with writers. It should be interesting!” – Jacquetta Wang
“It was a good chance for pure happiness of speculating and creating imaginative spaces.” – Ming-yen Chou
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“It’s a way to rearrange the reality and personal expression, into another level.” “These kinds of studies can jump out of the traditional design thinking in Architectural Design fields.” – Ting-jia Chang
“It gave me a chance to look at the city space with a different perspective and also write about it.” “It would not only help my writing skills but also broader my imagination.” – Prasanna Khanal
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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Sincere thanks to writer Chris Fenwick, Jon Wood, and Prasanna Khanal. This project couldnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t be accomplished without their contributions. Also, kind help from Helen Biggs and Matthew Bambridge. And of course architect Ming-yen Chou, Po-min Kung, Yu-pu Lu, Jacquetta Wang, Yas-sin Tseng, and Ting-jia Chang, for their encouraging participations. Thanks to Inigo Minns, for his continuous and valuable guidance, as well as supports from tutor group; Tricia and Ryo, for taking care of everything and many advices; friendly technicians in workshops for their humor and kind help. To very important and supportive, Chiao-yi, Manasi, Sonia, and Tracey, for their non-stop encouragements and brainstorming in almost every aspects; as well as suggestions and help in emergency from Deric, Marrie, and people from the course. Lots of thanks to dear friends in London and Taiwan; to Yen-chang, for his support and contribution in many ways; to whoever had spent time giving ideas or arguing with me. And the last, thanks to my brother, for his lovely music in my video; dearest mom and family. To my dad, and his love forever.
Summer 2014
Szu-an Yu is a designer, working in a range of media across the design and architectural fields, from photography and film to graphic design and architectural work. She has a particular interest in practices of visual representation, especially in relation to urban spaces, which she investigates in her work through exploring how the content of urban narratives and stories is expressed in different media. Currently based in London, She works as a graphic designer for a wayfinding and signage design consultancy. Before moving to London, She worked in Taiwan, where she completed various graphic design and architectural projects and developed exhibitions, including for REC Alternative Space and Curating. She also worked as a project assistant and teaching assistant at the Department of Architecture at National Cheng Kung University (NCKU) in Tainan. San holds an Master of Arts in Narrative Environments from Central Saint Martins and a Bachelor of Science in Architecture from NCKU in Tainan, Taiwan.
University of the Arts London Central Saint Martins College of Arts and Design MA Narrative Environments London, UK 2012 â&#x20AC;&#x201C; 2014
National Cheng-Kung University College of Planning and Design BSc Architecture Tainan, Taiwan 2005 â&#x20AC;&#x201C; 2009
WORK
Holmes Wood Consultancy Graphic Designer Boyarsky Murphy Architects Designer REC Alternative Space & Curating Graphic Designer Department of Architecture, NCKU Project Assistant / Teaching Assistant SHENG-YUAN, HUANG + FIELD OFFICE ARCHITECTS Intern
ARCHITECTURAL
ART
Aug 2014 – Present London, UK Jul 2014 London, UK Aug 2011 – Aug 2012 Tainan, Taiwan Sep 2010 – Jul 2011 Tainan, Taiwan Jul – Aug 2008 Yilan, Taiwan
Advanced Cinemetrics : Generating Space Form, Movement & Time Images in Hong-Kong International Workshop
Mar 2011 Hong Kong
Cinemetrics in Hong-Kong International Workshop
Mar 2009 Hong Kong
The Venice Biennial, 13th International Architecture Exhibition, Taiwan Pavilion Final List
Nov 2011 Taiwan
INTA, Idea for Action Kaohsiung, dynamic eco-patch Honorable Mention
Oct 2009 Taiwan
Modern Storyteller : New Media & Interactive Design Show Young Urbanists Small Grant Scheme: Stories & the City Museum of the Future Shenzhen OCT Loft Creative Festival
Jul 2016 New York, US Aug 2015 London, UK Dec 2013 – Mar 2014 Shenzhen, China
WWR x REC Exhibition of REC
May – Jun 2012 Tainan, Taiwan
Concept City Exhibition of REC
Dec 2011 – Jan 2012 Tainan, Taiwan
My Dear Crocodile Exhibition of REC
Oct – Nov 2011 Tainan, Taiwan
REC – RECord, REConstruct, RECode Exhibition of REC
Aug – Oct 2011 Tainan, Taiwan
Liquid Perception Resident Artists Program in Governor’s Residence in Tainan County
Nov – Dec 2010 Tainan, Taiwan