DIA series © 2017 - Housing XXI - Studio Terragni
DIA series © 2017 Anhalt University Department 3
AFTER GEOMETRY V HOUSING XXI
Dessau International Architecture School Anhalt University of Applied Sciences Department of Architecture Bauhaus strasse 5 06846 DESSAU Phone +49(0) 34051971531 dia-architecture.de afg-hs.anhalt.de Editing and layout Attilio Terragni info@studioterragni.com www. studioterragni.com Copyright DIA Graduate school of arcrchitecture Anhalt University of Applied Sciences The author Prof. Arch. Attilio Terragni DAAD Guestprofessor DIA Master studio Second semester 2016-2017 ISBN-..........
AFTER GEOMETRY V STUDIO TERRAGNI SELECTED STUDENT WORKS
“AFTER A WHILE, AN EXPRESSION CAME TO MY MIND: SENSORY ALLEGORIES ...”
Dear Colleagues! Due to my health-condition, regrettably I have to miss one of my biannual intellectual refinements, bonbons, the presentation of the Studio of Professor Attilio Terragni! With Attilio, we both tried to come up with some substitutes, Skype, PDF-s, etc., but in vain. Thanks to Facebook, a few hours ago, A.T. published these images, loyal to his Italian passion: he couldn’t wait, to see them together. And of course, it resolved our dilemma, because it gave me the opportunity, to look at them, absorb them, meditate on their intents and of what they, these images, communicate to me! After a while, an expression came to my mind: SENSORY ALLEGORIES ... Like with all big words, immediately, I looked up their conventionally accepted meaning. SENSORY: of relating to the senses or sensation. Transmitting impulses from sense organs to nerve centers. ALLEGORY: a story, a poem or picture, that can be interpreted to reveal a hidden meaning, typically a moral or political one. ...generalizations about human existence... (Synonyms: parable, analogy, metaphor, symbol, emblem) As a privileged person, who - thanks to YouTube - was able to see and listen to Attilio’s exceptional lecture at the University of Melbourne, I know, that one of the most important notion for him, and consequently for his students, is the word ‘ANALOGY’! Here we are, going backward, we already grasped one of the main descriptors of these pregnant and beautiful images! That notion, or as a field, it refers to something, but they never really define that something! Therefore we are able to interpret them, freely, as what they are: ART !
Going upward, the next expression, which insists to grab our attention is: GENERALIZATIONS ABOUT HUMAN EXISTENCE. How beautiful! The potential is there, in any one of them: they are inhabitable, more than one ways, but it is our choice, to select our preference, maybe, like life really is, live a multiple existence, simultaneously! In the same time, but on multiple locations. Or, at the same location, but in different times! How liberating it is! Then we arrive to the moral duties of each of the students: they are not avoiding the “solution”, it is there, its aura is quite tangible, but none of them destroy the illusion of the potential of existence, with an incarcerating singularity! As a last observation, I offer to note the use of ‘sense’ in plural, SENSES. To counteract the destructive aspects of photorealistic computer graphics, it is very important, that we use our haptic sensibilities, sensing with more than one sensors, what we do. It is far from my intent, to generalize these works of art, they are all different, and each has its own dominant melody! But - like melodies - they are intangible, and in my value system, that quality is the highest achievement, what a student - all of us - can strive for! With congratulations to All, I hope, that with these thoughts, I was able to be among you a little bit. Sincerely, Dr. Peter Magyar, AHA, F-RIBA
“THOSE WERE MUCH MORE THAN SEVEN MASTER STUDENT PROJECTS, THOSE WERE SEVEN UNIQUE JOURNEYS OF SEVEN UNIQUE PEOPLE ON THE WAY TO REDISCOVER WHAT THEIR ARCHITECTURAL POTENTIAL COULD BE”
It was like a burst of emotions, like blaze of experiments, like a blast of feelings. Almost manifesting the name of the studio “ After Geometry”, we all experienced transformation of our prejudgments of what the Architecture is.
Undoubtedly, honesty in Architecture is underrated, hence having the chance to witness such a unique approach, we all learned from it enormously.
If we turn to numbers, and often that’s what architecture and geometry is about, It has to By stepping into the studio, students a priori be noted that during the Studio time - more agreed to investigate the unknown - startthan three hundred and sixty hours of investiing from exercises of exploration the forms gation over the course of three months were detached from logics, by investigation of passed, more than seven thousand and two geometry of unknown, to eventually aphundred minutes of important conversations proaching architecture as translation of those happened, more than thousands words were bold experiments into fantastic architectural written and said, more than hundred MB of forms, and by presenting those findings in an memory were used, more than eleven thouambitious format - in the form of exhibition sand Kilometers were travelled, and finally that embodied those experiences in drawing more than sixty fantastic drawings with limitformat. less lines and imagination as part of “AFTER GEOMETRY” Vol 6 were displayed in June As an observer of such transformation, it was 2017 as part of Final Presentation of Studio clear that students were truly digging out by Attilio Terragni. their projects from subconscious almost like finding hidden treasure, that for long awaited Those were much more than seven Master rediscovery. They even named the projects student projects, those were seven unique likewise: “ The Crystal”, “Overlapping Realijourneys of seven unique people on the way to ties”, “Subspace”,“Tornado”, “Planar Conrediscover what their architectural potential struct”, “The Wave”. could be. Having the chance to assist Prof. Attilio Terragni on the course of the Studio “AFTER Lena Pozdnyakova GEOMETRY” Vol 5, I must confess that it was Artist and architect a professional and personal discovery in many ways, but most importantly that of the honest relationship that Attilio Terragni continuously builds with Architecture.
“ONLY THROUGH THIS PROCESS WE CAN ESTABLISH A STATE OF ARTISTIC “DISPLACEMENT” OR A “SURPRISE”, THAT, AT END, IS THE REAL VALUE OF A PROJECT.”
II have to thank my friend and colleague Attilio Terragni for the invitation as guest critic to the students finals of DIA, this year. I have to thank him for two reasons: I really saw a very creative study environment and I had the chance to see and appreciate outstanding works developed by the students. I perceived the impressive level reached by the students at the first glance when I entered the studio for the first time and I had a look at the drawings on the walls. The first very important thing I noticed during my critic was the enthusiasm of the students while presenting their works. I understood that they really liked their results and enjoyed the creative process they went through in developing them. I had the impression that they really felt protagonists in a methodology of work and that they were going to absorb it. And this is not to be taken for granted because the teaching method suggested by Terragni is in my opinion really experimental and for sure fitting many visions of the contemporary world that is definitely complex and sometimes difficult to understand and interpret. The method he suggested them, without giving them a precise way to go and a final solution in their hands, is in my opinion first of all “open minded”. I think he just leaded them in following that particular method and a logic through their creative process letting them somehow free to express themselves. And this method presents different aspects: could be very “wide” and different according to every single project, could be “complex” because involving several inputs ranging from borrowing iconic words from the arts, the nature or the artifice to the exploration of the potentiality of the virtual environment and the computer processing, could be “surprising” because partly conscious and partly unconscious, could be “individual” because it leaves space for personal creativity. And what he taught them has been to let the inputs to inspire and create but also to accept and control the “accidents” that the method itself can bring in.
As I tried to say earlier, the general complexity coming out by this way of doing is variegated but can better interpret our contemporaneity and simultanousness. This complexity probably is no more just functional, is no just geometric, is no more just simple logic somehow. The approach, that could be considered formal (but everything is form at the end), on the other hand doesn’t lead not to consider history and even techiques. This approach is just part of a “here and now” history, because, at the end, we have to make our history and tecnolgies should develope. And doesn’t lead either to be abstract, remote or out of the context because even the context enters necessarly the process at certain point. Many times the quality of a project lays in the control of thousand of random variables, the more they are the better it is. I think Terragni teaches to his students to accept, choose and manipulate these variables, including the accidents, the stimulation(s) apparently coming form far and even the chaos. Only through this process we can establish a state of artistic “displacement” or a “surprise”, that, at end, is the real value of a project. I think the results reached by the students are the fruits of all this and the fascinating images of architecture they produced are really expressions of “culture”. The more we can perceive this “culture” the more we can be sure to be in front of quality architecture. At the end I can say that the eucational level reached by Terragni studio and by his students has nothing to envy to the work developed by the most reputed architecture schools in the world that I had the fortune to know, both for the method and the results. And at the very end I have to say that I am glad that are definitely still existing and very alive exploration and experimentation in architecture, so we will never be bored.
architetto Gianluca Milesi
“HOUSES THAT STRUCTURALLY, ARE YOUNG, FULL OF ENERGY, DYNAMICS FOR OUR DIGITAL AGE, MADE NOT OF SHAPES BUT ANIMATED FIGURES,.”
SHALL WE CHANGE CLOTHES? After the Emperor, every generation has owned their houses: the one who dressed, from morning to night, a wig, the one that wore a pinstriped suit with hat.
Here, today, we need housing in BLUE JEANS, houses that structurally, and not just for cosmetics, are young, full of energy, dynamics for our digital age,
made not of shapes but animated figures, whose dance you can’t stop and nobody can reduce to the requirement of Silence by the King, the Queen and the Bishop or to the whisper in the ears of the stupid side of capitalism. We want houses that smile and whose dimensional energy is only the beginning of their abilities. Welcome to After 5 Geometry.
Attilio Terragni DAAD Guestprofessor DIA
HOUSING IN MILAN
“WE NEVER DO ARCHITECTURE TO BECOME ROCK-STARS”
“ WE HAVE CONFUSED THE IDEA OF LIVING WITH THE FLOOR AREA, THE IDEA OF LIFE AS EVOLUTION + REVOLUTION WITH THE IDEA OF CITIZENS CONSIDERED AS PATIENTS.......”
Motionless: forced to double meaning, or brought to perceive the sensible reality not through the physical form of experience, the built, but by simulating reality itself in a virtual world that anticipate the sensory emotions that SO remain too far away to be expected. We can no longer wait, we have to respond to the conditions of modern history, the urban forms that contain sublime imaginations and preserve the Constitutive Act, the initial thought, the imaginative action; the city therefore must reserve spaces for being abstract, must allow its contemporaneity, must deliver the fields of experience. Deprive the inexorably and rapid decline of residential urban form, in which, on one hand we can still understand the boundaries of History, but on the other we have confused the idea of living with the floor area, the idea of life as evolution + revolution with the idea of citizens considered as patients, a subject to be help and save by a planning department. We must observe and listen to this dissonances, perceive and read the differences,design through the “conflicts” of the contemporary world. All of this will be invistigated this semester in the studio trought a series of proposal for new type of residential buildings where the language of architecture will be
ARCHITECTURE: WHAT GOES ON (WHEN YOU ARE THINKING) / WHAT GOES ON (WHEN YOU ARE THINKING) ... ..BETWEEN SCIENCE AND DREAMS, BETWEEN THE BOOK OF CERTAINTY AND OF THE IMAGINATION. IN MUSIC, AS IN ARCHITECTURE, IT IS TO RECOGNIZE, IN EACH AUTHORS INFINITE VARIETIES OF EXPRESSIONS,THE INDIVIDUAL PECULIARITIES,THE UNMISTAKABLE PHYSIOGNOMY AND SPIRITUAL VALUES OF MOZART, BEETHOVEN, CHOPIN AND SO ON. BEFORE THE FIFTH SYMPHONY WAS MADE,THAT WORLD DID NOT EXIST. ARCHITECTURE IS ALL THAT YOU SEE, WHEN YOU INTEND TO SEE ARCHITECTURE. THE WORLD, LIKE A ROOM, IS A SPACE THAT REPRESENTS ANOTHER AT DIFFERENT SCALES AND IN A PARTIAL MANNER. THOSE WHO ENTER MAY EVEN ADAPT IT A LITTLE TO SUIT THEMSELVES, AND USE A LITTLE ACCORDING TO THEIR NEEDS IN ORDER TO INHABIT CREATIVELY. WHILST LISTENING TO LUCIANO BERIO; WE KNOW IT IS TRUE THAT ARCHITECTURE HAS CHANGED BECAUSE OF GLASS AND STEEL, AND THAT, SIMILARLY, MUSIC SHOULD CHANGE AS A RESULT OF NEW TECHNIQUES TOO, THE COMPUTER BEING ONE OF THESE. BUT I STILL BELIEVE THAT IT WAS THE ARCHITECTURAL THOUGHT, WITH ITS VAST DETERMINATIONS AND FUNCTIONS, THAT REALIZED GLASS AND STEEL. LIKE THE MUSICAL THOUGHT OF THE 50’S THAT RAISED AWARENESS OF THE OSCILLATORS AND TONE GENERATORS IN A COMPOSITION, WHICH WERE ALREADY THERE JUST AS GLASS AND STEEL WAS FOR ARCHITECTS. THOUGH WE HAD FORGOTTEN THIS, IT WAS ALREADY KNOWN BY VITRUVIUS: ARCHITECTURE IS THE EMOTION WE FEEL WHEN WE VISIT A PLACE, IT IS THE SENSATIONS ON OUR SKIN GENERATED FROM THE SPACES SURROUNDING US. IT IS A PARTICULAR EMOTION, AS ARCHITECTURE IS THE ONLY EXPRESSION OF MAN WHERE THE EXCITEMENT IS ALL AROUND US PHYSICALLY, AND IT IS THE ONLY SITUATION IN WHICH COUNTLESS FEELINGS CAN COME FROM ANY DIRECTION, OVERLAPPING EACH OTHER. I CAN WRITE A WORD, AND THEN REWRITE ANOTHER WORD IN ITS PLACE; BUT WRITING THESE OVERLAPPING MESSAGES CAUSE THEM TO MINGLE, WHILE SPACE ITSELF CAN OVERWRITE ANY KIND OF EMOTION WITHOUT WRITINGS CHRONOLOGICAL ORDER.
PLAYING A MOZART SCORE IS TO SPROUT THE HIDDEN SOUNDS BETWEEN THE LITTLE NOTES WRITTEN BY THE AUTHOR, SOMETHING THAT WITHOUT US REMAINS SILENT. MUSIC RESOUNDS MAGICALLY AND THEN DISAPPEARS INTO A NEW SILENCE AS IT NEVER EXISTED. THE ORCHESTRA RELEASES SOUNDS LIKE SEEDS THAT MIGHT SPROUT INTO THE LIFE OF THE LISTENER LIKE FLOWERS, POISONOUS PLANTS, STEMS, THORNS AND CROWNS, WHICH WILL GROW SOMEWHERE THAT MOZART KNOWS NOTHING ABOUT. THE SAME FOR ARCHITECTURE. OUR SCORE THAT COMES FROM THE PAST WE HAVE TO MAKE IT RING AND SPROUT SO THAT WE CAN HEAR IT AND SHE LIVES ONLY IN OUR VISIT AND FOR OUR TALENT FOR THE STONES, BECAUSE IT IS ABSOLUTELY CERTAIN THAT NEITHER TERRAGNI NOR BORROMINI WILL EVER DO IT ANYMORE. ARCHITECTURE, LIKE MUSIC, IF THERE IS NO ONE WHO PLAYS IT, DOES NOT EXIST, AND DOES NOT SPROUT: ARCHITECTURE ONLY HAPPENS WITH US, AND ITS HAPPENING IS TO SPROUT NEW STORIES AND LIVES THAT TAKE IT AWAY FROM THE RISK OF BECOMING AN IMMOVABLE PETRIFIED MASK, AN OBJECT THAT IS NO LONGER COMPREHENSIBLE OR CONFINED TO A SUPPOSED OBJECTIVITY, INSTEAD OF BECOMING A SEED WITH WHICH TO GO A BIT TOGETHER. AND A SURPRISING THING ABOUT SPROUTS IS THAT THE THINGS THAT GROW CAN BE VERY DIFFERENT FROM WHAT THEY SHOULD HAVE BEEN.
“WE ALWAYS TRY NOT DO BORING ARCHITECTURE”
DESIGN STUDIO RITUAL FOR DEMO-CRAZY GATE-VISON MEMORY MEETING CULTURE PREY MEDITATION POLITICS ART BUYING SELLING SKY COLORS SOUND FOOD SCULPTURE COMUNICATION RELAX TRAGEDY HAPPINES BODY MARRIAGE OLD NEW EX NEXT LANDSCAPE PRODUCING
ARCHITECTURE FOR DEMO-CRAZY GATE-LANGUAGE DIMENSIONS VOID LIGHT SHADOW STRUCTURE ENTRY EXIT GEOMETRY TIME NETWORK OUTSIDE INSIDE LAYERS FAÇADE STAIRS PASSAGES GROUND FOUNDATION MATTER SECTION NATURE ROOF CORNERS FLOORS OUTSIDE SPACES ROOMS HALL HORIZONTAL VERTICAL PRECISION
SITE 1 MILANO MELCHIORRE GIOIA
TORNADO, TSU TSEN TEH, 2017
THE CRYSTAL , PERICA GALESKI , 2017
THE WAVE , KANIKA TALWAR , 2017
PLANAR CONSTRUCTION , NIEL PATEL, 2017
FLUID SPACE , ROSTYSLAV SKYBA , 2017
SITE 2 MILANO COLONNE DI SAN LORENZO
OVERLAPPING REALITIES , MARINA PANCERI, 2017
THE IRIS, REETY LACHHMAN, 2017
STUDIO LIFE