Architecture101 _ From Nothingness To Place _ A Trip Towards Light

Architecture 101 From Nothingness To Place

A TripTowards Light Curated by Marina Metaxa

Instagram | Twitter | @mani_elab

Introduction

What is Architecture 101?

Architecture 101 is an introduction to space and architecture through 101 exercises.

A six-month journey divided into 3 courses “online” on Iversity: part 1 _ from nothingness to place part 2 _ from place to space part 3 _ from space to architecture A Trip Towards Light, illustrates some of my most significant moments throughout this journey’s first course entitled From Nothingness To Place.

Six weeks of wander in the complete absence of space and place. Something that could be defined as “nothingness”.

A total number of thirty daily assignments designed to be conducted on smartphones or tablets and oriented on shaping meanings, defining relationships between mind and bodies, bodies and places.

Architecture 101 is also a community of people.

People who like to learn and make things together, so dedicated part of this booklet presents a selection of my peers’ creations, who have been of great inspiration and support for my personal learning experience.

Special thanks to the #architecture1o1 community and our tutors: Stefano Mirti @stefi_idlab, Anne-Sophie Gauvin @asgauvin and Petronela Nita @petronela_nita.

Contents

What I’ve learned _ p. 01 _ Part 1 What I’ve learned from others _ p. 23 _ Part 2 My Place _ p. 37 _ Part 3 Illustrated essay _ p. 38 _ Part 4

2/101 _ #RelativeSizeOfThings

Part 1 _ What I’ve learned Week 1 _ Taking Pictures

Assignment: you will spend 9 minutes watching the Powers of Ten, explore The scale of the Universe and take a picture of your eye.

The distance from the eye and the context around it, gives a relative perception of its color.

01

Part 1 _ What I’ve learned Week 1 _ Taking Pictures

3/101 _ #50000YearsAgo

Assignment: today you will take a picture of something with no name. In fact, you will take a picture of crumpled paper.

Nothingness felt soft to me.

02

5/101 _ #TVWithoutSignal

Part 1 _ What I’ve learned Week 1 _ Taking Pictures

Assignment: take a picture of a TV without signal

During my 3' (time assigned) of staring the tv screen (and I really dislike tv's so this assignment originally sounded like a punishment to me), at a certain point I decided to turn the volume up and eventually close my eyes. Just like that, I found myself walking alongshore my beloved village's port, placed on this beautiful greek island where I've spend all of my summers. I swear I could hear the fishing lamps (boats for fishing by lamplight in Mediterranean) riding away towards a beautiful sunset, cutting the gulf's waters.

In this frame I saw the boat's prow .

03

Part 1 _ What I’ve learned Week 2 _ Learning To Sketch

7/101 _ #QuestionWithoutAnswer

Assignment: find a picture of a face and reproduce it by sketching it. Then repeat the exercise but flip your original image upside down.

Drawing something awkward to the eye, gave me a feeling of brain freedom.

04

10/101 _ DayTimeNightTime

Part 1 _ What I’ve learned Week 2 _ Learning To Sketch

Assignment: sketch Kazuo Shinohara’s house in Uehara without looking at it; sketch it by ‘memory’.

Look at it, keep it in your mind and do not look at it again.

My memory focused on what considered essential.

Made with random pen on paper.

05

Part 1 _ What I’ve learned Week 2 _ Learning To Sketch

11/101 _ #PlayItByTrust

Assignment: sketch your hand but do so wearing a blindfold. Cover your eyes and look at your hand.

See only by feeling.

‘L’ for Loyalty. made with right thumb on iPhone 4s w/ Adobe Ideas app.

06

12/101 _ #RomanceInManyDimensions

Part 1 _ What I’ve learned Week 3 _ Making Collages

Assignment: make an abstract digital collage representing yourself.

Myself in pieces and parenthesis. made with iPhone 4S app Bazaart 07

Part 1 _ What I’ve learned Week 3 _ Making Collages

13/101 _ #InsideNoOutside

Assignment: make an abstract digital collage representing the way you ‘feel’.

I feel the blossom is coming. made with iPhone 4S app Bazaart and Fragment 08

14/101 _ #WhatMakesTheDesert

Part 1 _ What I’ve learned Week 3 _ Making Collages

Assignment: make an abstract digital collage representing the place you are at.

What makes “my place”, is water. made with iPhone 4S app Fragment 09

Part 1 _ What I’ve learned Week 3 _ Making Collages

16/101 _ #BrianEnoSays

Assignment: make a digital collage representing yourself in the place you at. This time, you may go beyond abstraction.

Champagne e Morandi in the recovery area. made with iPhone 4S app Union 10

17/101 _ #ExcuseMeWhile

Part 1 _ What I’ve learned Week 4 _ Observing The Weather

Assignment: look at the sky through a kaleidoscope and show us what you see.

On a rainy day, I see daisy fields. [early evening, rainy sky from Thessaloniki] made with iPhone 4S app Kaleido Lens 11

Part 1 _ What I’ve learned Week 4 _ Observing The Weather

18/101 _ #MySunMachine

Assignment: today you will render the Sun in outer space

AIA 131 Ă… 10 million Kelvin; Solar flaring regions. made with iPhone 4S app Fragment 12

Part 1 _ What I’ve learned Week 4 _ Observing The Weather

19/101 _ #SomePeopleWalk

Assignment: today you will render the Rain.

‘Here lies a Matta-Clark’ or ‘building floods’ made with iPhone 4S app Color Lake Free 13

Part 1 _ What I’ve learned Week 4 _ Observing The Weather

21/101 _ #VoyageDansLaLune

Assignment: today you will render the Moon. Do not take a picture of it! Start from scratch.

‘Two drifters, off to see the world.’ made with iPhone 4S app Tangent 14

22/101 _ #YourMindWill

Part 1 _ What I’ve learned Week 5 _ Shaping Diagrams

Assignment: get your head together and make a diagram of your mind.

I often change my mind; eventually everything connects. made with iPhone 4S app Grafio Lite 15

Part 1 _ What I’ve learned Week 5 _ Shaping Diagrams

23/101 _ #YouGottaHave

Assignment: make a diagram of your body.

My body is a function of time.

Time even though immaterial, ‘not material’, is more familiar to humans since more perceptible from the human body and mainly because it represents the cohesion of life.

Thus said, architectural composition is based on the time factor, both in terms of physical functioning and psychological experience.

[The Tao of Architecture; Amos Ih Tiao Chang]

made with iPhone 4S app Grafio Lite and Tangent 16

26/101 _ #BeSureYou

Part 1 _ What I’ve learned Week 5 _ Shaping Diagrams

Assignment: make a diagram of your mind, body and place.

In my place there is light; light is where my mind feels lucid and my body alive. made with iPhone 4S app Grafio Lite 17

Part 1 _ What I’ve learned Week 6 _ Drawing Maps

27/101 _ #ALineIsADot

Assignment: map your place as a line.

Look again at that dot. That’s here. That’s home. That’s us.

[Pale Blue Dot; Carl Sagan] made with Staedtler pigment liner 0.2 on paper 18

28/101 _ #YouCantCriticize

Part 1 _ What I’ve learned Week 6 _ Drawing Maps

Assignment: map your place as a geometrical system.

I do tend to take lines from other lines i like, and then write around them.

[Syd Barrett] made with Staedtler pigment liner 0.2 and iPhone 4S app Grafio Lite 19

Part 1 _ What I’ve learned Week 6 _ Drawing Maps

29/101 _ #HumanBehaviourFlows

Assignment: map your place as if it were a sea.

ACHTUNG! Inspired by emotions and desires, only knowledge conducts the trip towards light.

made with Staedtler pigment liner 0.2 on paper; iPhone 4S app Grafio Lite and Tangent 20

30/101 _ #NoManIs

Part 1 _ What I’ve learned Week 6 _ Drawing Maps

Assignment: map your place as an island.

I may submit to the unknown, but never to the unknowable.

[Robert Zelazny; Lord Of Light] made with Staedtler pigment liner 0.2; iPhone 4S app Grafio Lite and Bazaart 21

Part 1 _ What I’ve learned Week 6 _ Drawing Maps

Assignment: map your place as if it were a starry sky.

Where thoughts serenely sweet express How pure, how dear their dwelling-place.

[Lord Byron; She Walks in Beauty] made with iPhone 4S app Bazaart; Union; Grafio Lite; Tangent 22

31/101 _ #ThisWorldIs

3/101 _ #50000YearsAgo

Part 2 _ What I’ve learned from others Week 1 _ Taking Pictures

Assignment: take a picture of crumpled paper.

During the first days of the course, I found it a bit difficult to be spontaneous while approaching the assignments’ request. Despite the ostensible simplicity of this exercise, I really admired the immediate responsiveness and creativity of my colleagues; the use of light and colorfoul paper, created interesting versions of ‘things with no name’. Observing other people’s artwork in this spaceless, ‘placeless’ and wordless - thus silent - context, encouraged me to let myself go and connect further with our wander into abstraction.

23

Part 2 _ What I’ve learned from others Week 1 _ Taking Pictures

Assignment: take a picture of crumpled paper.

24

3/101 _ #50000YearsAgo

6/101 _ #MusicWithoutSound

Part 2 _ What I’ve learned from others Week 1 _ Taking Pictures

Assignment: take a picture of silence.

Reflecting on music in terms of abstraction, listening to Buddhist monks singing in Pali (Pali is a dead language that most people cannot understand) and watching John Cage’s 4’33” performance, gave me confirm of the vastness of the existing sound forms.

25

Part 2 _ What I’ve learned from others Week 2 _ Learning To Sketch

8/101 _ #DoorsOfPerception

Assignment: look at a vase and sketch the space around it. Do not sketch the vase.

This assignment - for me - has been the most challenging and disapointing in terms of execution.

On that specific day (Tuesday 13th January 2015), my Doors Of Perception have been comletely shut.

Despite all the precious input provided by the tutors, I couldn’t help but do the one thing I was not supposed to do...sketch the vase. I could not see beyond that.

In this occasion, the fact that I’m not used to sketch on my smartphone with dedicated applications, has been quite a disturbing factor. Fortunately, my peers and their creations have stimulated my curiosity to explore furtherly the technological possibilities.

26

Part 2 _ What I’ve learned from others 9/101 _ #SomePeopleTheyKnowThings Week 2 _ Learning To Sketch

Assignment: today, you will sketch leaves. Find some leaves and sketch them without looking at what you are sketching. You are only allowed to look at the leaves. You are not allowed to look to your drawing (while you draw it).

Exciting homework and really fun to execute on the limited screen of a smartphone. Despite my numerous attempts, esthetically speaking I did not reach my peers’ outstanding results. However, practising over and over helped me furtherly improve with my mind relaxation and attitude.

27

Part 2 _ What I’ve learned from others Week 2 _ Learning To Sketch 9/101 _ #SomePeopleTheyKnowThings

Assignment: today, you will sketch leaves. Find some leaves and sketch them without looking at what you are sketching. You are only allowed to look at the leaves. You are not allowed to look to your drawing (while you draw it).

28

11/101 _ #PlayItByTrust

Part 2 _ What I’ve learned from others Week 2 _ Learning To Sketch

Assignment: today you will sketch your hand. But you will do so wearing a blindfold.

Cover your eyes. Now, look at your hand. See without using your eyes. See only by feeling.

This is one of the assignments that helped me face some of my personal limitations. I can be rigid sometimes and too much skeptical. This exercise actually proved me how much information and possibilities I miss, by basing large part of my perception on what I see with my eyes and less on trusting what I feel with my intuition.

While forced in darkness, I realized how limited the human eye can be, while recognizing what already knows.

My conclusion is that voidness and nothingness as states of the mind, can give infinite space to invention and creativity.

29

Part 2 _ What I’ve learned from others Week 3 _ Making Collages 12/101 _ #RomanceInManyDimensions

Assignment: make an abstract digital collage representing yourself.

After two weeks worth of effort reflecting on ‘nothingness’, we proceeded with our first attempts to define our ‘special place’. I was delighted to discover the fascinating eterogeneity of all the participants and the diversification of our individual conceptualization on ‘nothingness’.

30

The true delight is in the finding out rather than in the knowing. [Isaac Asimov]

Part 2 _ What I’ve learned from others 12/101 _ #RomanceInManyDimensions Week 3 _ Making Collages

Assignment: make an abstract digital collage representing yourself.

Despite a certain familiarity with the technique of collage, the use of my smartphone (since the course was shaped basically for this kind of interaction) initially gave me a certain sense of discomfort. My previous analogue experience of ‘making collages’ was limiting my ability to connect with the device. In fact, I don’t believe that my final collage for ‘Romance In Many Dimensions’ , instantly gives the impression of what this technique is all about.

Eventually I felt that it was the device itself and the applications I’ve used that ‘suggested’ my final artwork. A pleasant manipulated by technology.

Once again, I admired my peers’ creative effectiveness!

31

Part 2 _ What I’ve learned from others Week 3 _ Making Collages

14/101 _ #WhatMakesTheDesert

Assignment: make a digital collage representing the place you are at. Do not include yourself in this place. Represent only the place. Work on abstract figures and surfaces and forms.

More or less colorful, more or less abstract my peers’ places gave me a sense of honesty. Couldn‘t this be what makes a place to feel a person’s own place. Where one can feel free and unconditional to experiment and discover what lies out of it?

32

22/101 _ #YourMindWill

Part 2 _ What I’ve learned from others Week 5 _ Shaping Diagrams

Assignment: today, you will get your head together and make a diagram of your mind.

33

Part 2 _ What I’ve learned from others Week 5 _ Shaping Diagrams

26/101 _ #BeSureYou

Assignment: today you will make a diagram of your mind, body and place.

Shaping diagrams has been a very challenging week. Although the inputs provided by the tutors and some further research were enough to clarify how a diagram is supposed to be, apply this process in order to represent my own mind, body and place - nonetheless a final image of the three concepts in one image - turned to be quite complicated.

34

27/101 _ #ALineIsADot

Part 2 _ What I’ve learned from others Week 6 _ Drawing Maps

Assignment: today you will map your place as if it was a line. Apparently, a very easy task, actually, slightly challenging...

35

Part 2 _ What I’ve learned from others Week 6 _ Drawing Maps 29/101 _ #HumanBehaviourFlows

Assignment: map your place as if it were a sea (or an ocean if you prefer).

36

Part 3 _ My Place

Week 3 _ Making Collages

It was during the third week of the course - week dedicated to the collage technique - when we were first invited to represent the meaning of ‘place’. More specifically the place we were at. By that moment, I was happily absorbed by the spaceless and undefined context through which the journey was evolving.

Those that initially had appeared to me as playful daily exercises, eventually had broughten me into an amazing state of grace and inner peace. I found myself relieved and released. After two weeks of wander into ‘nothingness’ and freed from my preconceptions, my void mind had become a source of running water.

A source springing pure love and affection; the visceral need for action and the confidence to explore the unknown. My meditative silence was leading the way to my creativity and enforcing my intuition. I was becoming more lucid and inspired, seeking only for balance between my mind and body. This is were my place became a bright peaceful vision.

Week 5 _ Shaping Diagrams

Week 6 _ Drawing Maps

37

Part 4 _ Illustrated essay

Architecture1o1 is my first online learning experience ever. What brought me here has been my innate curiosity and conviction of my ignorance. Exactly, ignorance! This is how I've always considered myself compared to the infinity of wisdom and beauty hidden or far from my sight and understanding. The perspective to live such an intriguing process as part of a multiethnic virtual community and the possibility to interact with people from different cultures yet belonging to that infinity that I lust for, have been the ultimate motivations.

I was born in Greece and I have lived in Italy for fifteen years; I have been in Paris and Madrid once, sailed around the Croatian islands a lot more than once, but this is the farthest I have ever been and seen with my own eyes. Not enough to satisfy my thirst for knowledge, still much far from answering some of my crucial existential questions.

Quite a contradiction compared to how I even came to exist.

A family story says, that I was conceived on a tanker ship while crossing the Atlantic Ocean. My father is a captain and during that trip my mother was in visit to keep him company and spend some time together. What can I say, they felt inspired. I was named after my maternal grandmother and it was in that exact moment when my connection to the sea has been sealed for life. Marina, in Latin means “of the sea”.

I can hear Sirens inviting me to undertake new journeys and explore unknown destinations, all the time. A constant challenge for the mind to keep its openness and flexibility to embrace the unknown. A process that demands the ability to detach yourself from what you know and learn how to make space for the acquired information. Make space for what is essential, for the things that really matter. For more effective methodologies.

This is the spirit that accompanied me into my Trip Towards Light.

Since the first week of the course, I often found myself physically in different contexts. After a long time I found myself in Thessaloniki, the city where I was born and in the house I was raised. Further, in houses that weren’t mine, a room with a view that wasn’t my room, lost without my precious books or special memorabilia that I’m attached to; parameters that in a certain way challenged my ability to reach the desiring ‘void’ state of mine.

The assignments have been amazingly effective and guided me perfectly in the devoiding my mind. It has been the most beautiful daily meditative experience I have had so far. It tought me discipline and faith to my creativity. Not to take myself so seriously and embrace my limits. It encouraged me not be afraid to connect with others and not to be afraid to expose myself. Mostly I enjoyed the sense of responibility for my own creations and the sense of freedom to state my case and vision a place of my own.

Sat Nam

38

Architecture1o1 _ Part1: From Nothing To Place.

A MOOC directed by ABADIR, Stefano Mirti, Anne-Sophie Gauvin, Pettronela Nita and hosted by