The Unbearable Heaviness by Kim Võ

The The Unbearable Unbearable Heaviness Heaviness

The University of Melbourne Meblourne School of Design Master of Architecture, 2020

The Unbearable Heaviness

Yichen Cao Studio D

900359

Studio Leaders: Scott Woods, Kim Vo

Prologue

The Unbearable Heaviness explores new means of exhibition architecture through constant mediation between order and orderless, monolithic and contingent, rational and sentimental aspects of Aldo Rossiâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s works, with the implementation of folding and patternation as part of the formal discourse.

Contents

Prologue

Q+A

5-7

Material Works Critics Review

8-15 16-39 40-41

Index

42-49

Notes

50-60

Knowledge Bank

Q+A.

On Rossi, Exhibition and the Project of Architecture An interview conducted by Yi Wang and Yichen Cao.

On Rossi

Yi WANG:

Do you think that you have moved out of Rossi’s shadow? How have you embraced him but also managed to move away from him?

Yichen CAO:

I don’t think I have moved out of Rossi’s shadow. Because we are using it as the major source to generate the formal quality of the curated space. So in my project, specifically, I used Rossi’s language of patternation in order to generate phenomenological experience inside of MAXXI, and apart from that, I think I tried to embrace Rossi in Hadid’s way. It’s kind of a combination and it’s always hard to say if you have completely moved away or not. So it’s always in the middle.

Yi WANG:

Do you think Rossi is still relevant for contemporary discourse? If yes, why? If no, why?

Yichen CAO:

I definitely think Rossi is relevant for contemporary discourse. But I think Rossi more as we should look for his methodology, like his search for typology in Italian architecture. And in Melbourne architecture, what we usually see in the buildings that surround us is like what you said, the parametricism and especially with those RMIT buildings, I sometimes can’t figure out what are they doing and I just thought it’s really bizarre that Melbourne doesn’t has its own identity in those buildings. In those new projects, it just becomes similar like any other city in the world and maybe how Rossi is relevant for contemporary Melbourne. Architecture is how we search for the civil memory from Rossi’s perspective, however is something that currently doesn’t exist in nowadays architecture in Melbourne. And adds on to that just when I was looking at the newly built, still in construction, building next to Melbourne university, I think something is missing.

On Exhibition

Yi WANG:

What is the challenge of exhibiting architecture? What is exhibited and what does the exhibiting in your project? Is it that simple?

Yichen CAO:

The challenge is the missing (of context) or relocation of architecture from its original context. When you exhibit a piece of architecture and you will probably scale it down (into a model) sometimes. So it’s relocated to a context that’s completely different from from its original context. For example, like Zumthor’s architecture, the experiential quality will be missing if you just exhibit it in, for example, NGV kind of context. You will see a model replicate or something, but you will never get the 1:1 atmosphere. I still think, the site we had was with the formal quality of exhibitions, exhibition space. I think what is exhibited will still be like some step one projects (drawings, monuments and domestic objects based on Rossi residential project ). I will try to incorporate some step one pieces into this exhibition. In terms of the exhibiting, I think it can link back to the curatorial strategy I used for my step two project, the second room. Basically it is exhibiting Rossi as a “force”, no matter it’s stabilising, or destabilising. I’m trying to use it as a counterpart to the Hadid building, so that it creates two systems that exist within one context.

Yi WANG:

How would you describe an architecture that exists solely inside the museum? How is that architecture different to architecture that exists outside the museum?

Yichen CAO:

I think if an architecture exists solely inside the museum. In that way it doesn’t have an origin outside of them. So it was kind of born to be exhibited or to be admitted inside a museum. It’s a interdisciplinary project, that’s an architecture but also an installation, and an art work as well. And then we can argue that the function part, the program of an architecture, doesn’t really matter anymore. And that kind of architecture is different to architecture that already exists outside of museum. If that architecture originally has a site, and context but is being moved or replicated into the museum, then for me, is like removing its original condition and therefore it becomes more like an academic project. Some part of it becomes more experimental instead of practical. Like we all say the basic definition about an architecture is essentially a shelter, but if it’s inside another shelter, What does that mean? So this provides more discussion for us, does it mean to purely appreciate its geometrical complexity or even theoretical discussion?

On the Project of Architecture

Yi WANG:

Can you identify a moment of crisis in the development of your project or your thinking about your project – for example a particular problem that couldn’t be resolved, or the idea that took-over your project...? Is it an architectural problem that will continue to haunt your project even after its completion?

Yichen CAO:

I think when you are at the resolving and refinement stage of a project, then some crisis becomes, like, why you do this? How you represent it, and how to make it understood by the critics. I’m also struggling with the detailing of things like how this part meets with other parts of the building. ...

Yi WANG: Yichen CAO:

Yi WANG:

Yichen CAO:

You mean like I switched from one theory to another? I think that’s my problem. That definitely has been haunting me, for years, maybe it goes on and on. I find myself doing better in a short term project than a long term one, because I have trouble sticking to a single solid idea and carry it out till the end. My ways of thinking is always to find the find a better solution, or to find idea that that fits the project most. So if I find that something doesn’t work out, I would just get rid of and switch to another one. But that’s also holding me back for a project. Especially you’re definitely spending a lot of time going back and forth during this process. The project has been evolving every week, and sometimes it just diverted from the original idea. Has your project for an architecture exhibition changed your position or attitude to architecture more generally? If yes, how?

I think it doesn’t change my general thought about an architecture exhibition. Because for me, I still read an architecture exhibition, very different from architecture as a broad concept. So this is like a tree and architecture exhibition is just one branch of it. And architecture exhibition can go as, like what you described, very heavily generated by spatial experience. But it also can be very centric to artefacts, to the objects that’s being displayed. And it all depends on if you want to make the architecture hero or the art objects hero. I think a lot of exhibitions are sometimes leaning towards the former one, but also on other times the latter one. And sometimes it’s just a combination of both. Generally, I still read them very different from architecture as a broader discipline. And if anything, about it changed my thinking or attitude is maybe it helped me to see the possibilities of what we can do in exhibition.

Materials MAXXI Archive:

Materials Residential Project: Freidrichstadt in Berlin, IBA, 1981

Residential Project: Freidrichstadt in Berlin, IBA, 1981

City Project:

Works

Crtic Reviews

The Unbearable Heaviness “Unstoppable Force/Immovable Object” Lachlan Welsh, 2020

Curated by Yichen Cao, The Unbearable Heaviness involves the difficult negotiation of two heavily-laden entities – the canonical architecture of Aldo Rossi and the hyperspecific form of the MAXXI Museum in Rome. With Rossi comes the enduring presence of history, the familiarity of his forms near impossible to escape. In its contemporaneity, however, the Zaha Hadid designed museum is equally powerful. Standing acontextually on the site, it is governed by an internal system of flowing formal logics. Through Cao’s proposal, we see what happens when the unstoppable force of the MAXXI meets the immovable object of Aldo Rossi. As this epic collision plays out across the exhibition, we come to understand the moments where one form may momentarily prevail. When viewed externally, the museum takes precedence. The instantly recognizable Rossian façade is made plastic, folded across the underlying curvilinear form. By creasing along non-orthogonal edges, the grid of apertures is rotated, subjecting the exhibited architecture to the will of its host. However, the heaviness of this draping gesture is counteracted by the apparent thinness of the drape. In this sense, the architectural precedent is stripped of all substance, treated simply as a decorative wrapping paper for the MAXXI. Given Rossi’s penchant for façade articulation through the elevational drawing, such an approach seems fitting. In contrast to the external appearance of superficiality, the plan exhibits the underlying power of Rossi’s rationalist approach to architecture. As a result of the draping operation, what was once elevational now performs in plan. The gridded articulation of the façade comes to rationalize the sinuous gallery walls bringing rigidity to an otherwise fluid spatial arrangement. Acting like a palimpsest, the fragments appear to indicate a pre-existing axis of alignment from which the fifty-degree skew of the museum has resulted. It is in these moments that Rossi wrestles back control from the institution. If there is a clear victor when viewed externally and in plan, the internal views are more hotly contested. In these images, the exhibited content both rationalizes and is warped by its gallery container. Penetrating horizontally through the interior, the Rossian façade creates a looming presence. The two foes battle to define the bounds of the space, the patterns of windows grating with the slick curvature of the museum walls. This ornamental fenestration introduces a bizarre quaintness to MAXXI, its softness reminiscent of a doll’s house. In response, the curved gallery walls come to distort the patterns of light and shadow breaking their strict orthogonality. This alternating tension provides some of the exhibition’s most intriguing juxtapositions of the domestic with the museum. Cao’s curatorial approach pits two colossal works of architecture against one another. In this duel, protagonist and antagonist are difficult to distinguish. The exhibition explores Rossi’s approach to façade and its potential implications in plan and perspective. If the plan is usually considered the seed of architecture, Cao demonstrates that, beyond its ordinary remit of façade articulation, the elevation in all its flatness and superficiality may be just as fertile a ground to uncover new forms of architecture.

Index Step 1. Residence

1.1 City Viewed as a place for collective memories, A city is a record of events and a record of time. Drawn from the Proposal for Florence Precinct, a gird of courtyards repeatedly occur as a ”surgical intervention” to the city. A field of walls with openings allows shadow to be projected on the ground, a measure of time and space, The city mediates between change and permanence. The past, the present and the future exist simultaneously.

1.2 Monument Situating on a platform of stairs, two symmetrical volumes enclosed one dominant block, The Corner column was present through its absence. A thin, linear metal handrail intrigue visitors to enter the interior. On each of the volume, Fenestration patterns taken from the residential projects wraps around the monument like a ‘second skin’. A distinct differentiation in the front and the back registering the differences of the residential’s two-sides facades. Staircase is used as the key element from Monument at Cuneo to express the exhausted heroic journey. The gaps formed in-between preserve the corner condition of the residential and shift the horizontal linear external view to a vertical view

Index

1.3 Domestic Objects

The Volume of the roof and the heaviness of the residential were abstracted into the lampshade, on which cornice and were translated into the pattern. The red mass, hovering over the cylindrical supports, on which red and green stripes weaves interval, represent an abstraction the colonnades as a set of individual, yet unifying domestic objects. A singular green plinth, unifiying the set of lamps to be read as linear objects, yet with the freedom to move individually. Horizontal condition in colonnade is present, even not felt.

Index Step 2. Curatorial Strategy

2.1 One Room Bahia at Ibirapuera, Lina Bo Bardi and Martim Goncalves, 1959 The curatorial strategy I developed for my exhibition is Progression. As a series of plinths are elevated, pointing towards a wall, allowing the viewers to perceive the space and the displayed objects in a sequential way. Compared to the original photo, the monuments are read as a set of iterations, and to be understood in a directional way. the offset model of monument at Cuneo once again, emphasized the sequence of being read as the origin. The oblique angle alludes to space beyond the photograph. Standing in-between the walls and curtains, viewerâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s sight lingers from the two dimensional drawings on the walls onto the three dimensional objects being displayed, which resonate with the original photo, the different choice made displayed object and the display device. A nail inserted on the wall, without displaying anything, emphasized the juxtaposition of the flatness and three dimensional quality.

2.2 Three Rooms Sensing the future: the architect as seismograph, Venice Biennale, Hans Hollein, 1996 In The center of the image is Arata Isozaki tilted fracture, evoking the Kobe Earthquake experience.

Re-stabilizing Putting ROSSI work to stabilizing the deconstructed curatorial space. The curatorial strategy of Re-stabilizing is achieved through approaching the exhibition as fragments of artifacts, rather than having an understanding of a holistic view or indicated routes at first glance. The oblique wall, being the predominant spatial/curating device in the room, it interrupts the continuity of the arch and the platform. Placing the red artifacts besides the white walls, attracting attention to the wall in a way of distraction. Moving away from the first room, and climb through the platform, whatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s being displayed was framed again at the back of the wall. The viewers get an understanding of whatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s exhibited in the other room, without seeing the holistic view at once, but have to complete the puzzle through movements across the different rooms.

Index Step 2. Curatorial Strategy

2.3 Five Rooms Trigon ‘69, Architecture and Freedom, Wilfried Skreiner, 1969 Voyeurism The curatorial strategy of Voyeurism identifies the viewers, as both the subject and the object of the gaze. In the referential photograph, the two figures looking down from the window, were exposed in a condition as if they were viewed as part of the displayed, which brings up the questions: Who’s viewing them? Who are they looking at? What are the motives? Moving to this exhibition inspired by the idea of Voyeurism, particularly the Rear Window, Each rooms is centered around a Rossi window, a device, a lens that the viewers are either looking at, from or being looked at. When a window alludes to another room, there’s a detective story takes place in the interior. Voyeurism is used, to invite the audience to engage with the exhibited objects, and the exhibition itself from an intimate lens that they have never had.

Notes MOODBOARD: ON VOYEURISM

Notes

Knowledge Bank Chirico, G., 1914. Mystery And Melancholy Of A Street. [Oil on canvas]. Ciorra, P., 2020. ‘Aldo Rossi : Exhibitions’ In The Lead-Up To MAXXI’s December Retrospective.. Duchamp, M., 1912. Nude Descending A Staircase, No. 2. [Oil on canvas]. Ferlenga, A. and Rossi, A., 2002. Aldo Rossi. Cologne: Könemann. Ghirardo, D., n.d. Aldo Rossi And The Spirit Of Architecture. Inventari.fondazionemaxxi.it. 2020. Fondazione MAXXI. [online] Available at: <http://inventari. fondazionemaxxi.it/AriannaWeb/main.htm#250704_archivio> [Accessed 8 November 2020].

Lissitzky, E., 1919. Beat The Whites With The Red Wedge. [lithographic poster].

Lynn, G., 2004. Folding In Architecture. Chichester, UK: Wiley-Academy. Obrist, H. and Boutoux, T., 2003. Hans-Ulrich Obrist. Milan: Edizioni Charta. Pelkonen, E., 2018. Exhibit A. London: Phaidon. Rossi, A., 1981. Aldo Rossi. Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press. Rossi, A., Consolascio, E., Reichlin, B., Reinhart, F. and Rodighiero, D., n.d. The Analogous City.

Rossi, A., 2007. The Architecture Of The City. Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press. Schumacher, P., 2020. Recent Cultural Projects At Zaha Hadid Architect.