Beyond Blue by Yvanna Versyck

BEYOND BLUE master dissertation

drawing architecture, manoeuvring between factual inevitabilities and fictional urgencies Yvanna Versyck

Supervisor: Riet Eeckhout Faculty of Architecture Campus Sint-Lucas Brussels

BEYOND BLUE master dissertation

drawing architecture, manoeuvring between factual inevitabilities and fictional urgencies Yvanna Versyck

Supervisor: Riet Eeckhout Faculty of Architecture Campus Sint-Lucas Brussels

BEYOND BLUE 1

Material practice, a tactile search for 01 technique and spatial articulation

The cubist movement

Modern blueprints

Exposures of the Yard

Roaming the Yard

Speculative field garden

Tension of blue

04 08

Beyond Blue is a thesis project that developed through the process of making. This intense production process explores visual information that is found on the site. It navigates and collaborates between multimedia such as cyanotype, photography, hand drawing, collage, digital drawing and model making. This interaction enabled a close encounter with the found objects that belong to the site. During the contemporary pandemic, my backyard became the site of investigation. This resulted in observing the objects that belonged to my yard and carefully registering it through the cyanotype technique (see drawing series ‘exposures of the yard’ page 34-50). The technique became an architectural guide and enabled me to extract and register certain aspects of the items that belonged to my backyard. It is a photographic process that allows capturing images without a camera on a deep blue color. I exposed the objects on a large photosensitive paper. The objects rests on top of a photosensitive paper in a period of time, exposed to daylight. This led me to investigate time sensitive exposures that articulate a different performance of the everyday objects. An obsession of registering these guided me to roam in my yard (see drawing ‘roaming the yard’ page 52-53). Therefore, an interest has arisen in what could occur in this blue space on paper, whereas I zoom in and later try to exhume the performativity of what is brought by the found objects. While getting closer to the nature of things that are connected to it, this project has led to complex and internal logic of spatial design and architectural thinking in a specific designed condition. On the next pages, this reflection nota will show you my process in chronological order. Furthermore, you can have a brief overview on my website: https://yvanna9.wixsite.com/yvannaversyck/

BEYOND BLUE

1 Material practice, a tactile search for technique and spatial articulation The first set of drawings was formed by the overlapping of rigid geometrical patterns. The shapes are added in different layers on the paper, each layer is indicated with another color. The use of different colored layers was utilized to indicate a different exposure time of the photosensitive paper to light. These drawings were all about learning and exploring the cyanotype technique. There is a physical and intimate relationship with the materials while using and applying the technique: monotonous repetitive acts of smearing, exposing, manipulating, soaking, and drying leaves a mark behind. While the time sensitive drawing develops, three different aspects stand out: first the image consists of different geometric shapes on a light green smeared paper, next when it’s exposed to light you see the color around the shape become dark green and while fixing the image, the shapes are captured next to a deep blue color.

Cyanotype is a negative process, areas where light does not hit the paper will remain white. Due to the fact that the work depends on the light intensity and the time of exposure, it allowed me to manipulate the colors of the remaining image. I added the colored geometrical shapes gradually on the paper and worked with different layers of chemicals. Due to the overlap of the shapes and by fixing and manipulating the cyanotype, small differences were created and noticed. The attention is drawn to the small deviations, exceptional details in the obtained image appear.

https://yvanna9.wixsite.com/yvannaversyck/bottomup

material practice - inzoom - exhume

The cubist movement

This project started with collecting information and searching for references of artists, watching films, and reading books. Soon an interest in the cubist paintings and photographic techniques of the 1920s developed, such as Marcel Duchamp (fig. 1) and Robert Delaunay (Eiffel Tower series, 1909-1912). The cubist’s movement and the concept of depicting the fourth dimension of art intrigued me. Such as Duchamp added an impression of motion by using repetitive imagery. Therefore, the paintings look stretched out, and suddenly another world is created. Gilles Deleuze writes in his book ‘The logic of sensation’1 (Deleuze, 2014, page 35-51), about isolating the figure in a way to break from the representation, disrupt narrative and free the figure. Sad Young Man on a Train from Duchamp embodies this concern: the movement is there and the person fades. By doing so, he escapes from the figurative information and becomes figural. First, there’s the idea of the movement of the train, and secondly the idea of the sad young man who is in a corridor and who is moving. More precisely, there are two parallel movements corresponding to each other. Lastly, the invisible mental activity of the figure is added: the distortion of the young man.

Deleuze, G. (2014). Francis Bacon: Logica van de gewaarwording (Octavo publicaties 11). Amsterdam: Octavo.

Although I am not a painter, I like creating new images with photography and that’s how I ended up looking at MoholyNagy’s photograms2 (Stein, 2014, page 404) that inspired me to continue with photosensitive paper. He made this image (fig.2) by placing ordinary objects, including his hand and a paintbrush, on a sheet of photosensitive paper and exposed it to light. He revived the photogram technique as a means for exploring the optical and expressive properties of light. With this shadow-image of a hand and paintbrush, Moholy-Nagy ambitiously suggests that photography may incorporate, and even transcend, painting as the most vital medium of artistic expression in the modern age.

Stein, Emma. (2014). László Moholy-Nagy and Chicago’s War Industry: Photographic Pedagogy at the New Bauhaus. History of Photography, 38(4), 398-417. 2

Figure 2. Retrieved from “Untitled”, Moholy Nagy, 1926, (https:// www.metmuseum. org/art/collection/ search/265197 [© 1987, Ford Motor Company Collection, Gift of Ford Motor Company and John C. Waddel]

Modern blueprints

Artist Paula Riff (fig.3) and her work ‘Blue is not the sky’3, is an exploration of color, form, and design through experimental and cameraless photography. She uses the historical processes of cyanotype and gum bichromate to imagine the universe through the world of abstraction, as a place where all possible shapes, forms and colors coexist. She combines the historical processes of cyanotype and gum bichromate allowing her a physical and intimate relationship with the materials that she uses to push the boundaries of the medium while considering themes of abstraction and the natural world. The urge of ‘making’ led me to look behind the abstract images with the intention to move beyond the medium’s ability to reproduce reality. I asked myself the question what could architecturally occur behind these geometrical shapes.

Riff, P. R. (z.d.). blue is not the sky. Paula Riff. Consulted on June 7, 2021, from https://www.paulariff.com/blue-isnot-the-sky. 3

material practice - inzoom - exhume

Working with geometric shapes came from a re-imagination of Katja Mater’s work. Her work is obtained by an interest in revealing an alternative experience of the drawing by documenting different moments of her work and combining these layers in one image. She documents something that often is positioned beyond our human ability to see. Mater mediates between time, space, perception, and our understanding of them. She records events that simultaneously can and cannot be – holding midway between information and interpretation. Her practice focuses on the parameters of photography and film, using them as nontransparent media. For instance, Mater’s photographs in her work “parallel planes (fig.4) the different “phases of life” of an abstract drawing, which consists of a number of geometric planes. Every time she colors such an area, she takes a photograph, always on the same negative. They all have slightly different outcomes, by overlaying different fragments of the same event on multiple negatives. Each of these negatives offer a different view on the same event in time and thereby visualizes different ways of looking at one moment in time. The split moments are then brought together to form one bigger image, in consequence the final work is both fragmented and whole.

This intrigued me to extract a different reality of her work through modeling. Interpreting the graphic shallow depth of the image into a physical model serves as a starting point for this spatial investigation. The model starts as a monolith block, where the painting will systematically be carved out. Furthermore, the tactile process of subtraction redirects and uncovers a complex spaciousness. While extruding one line, the line obtains a thickness, there is a possibility to abuse the thickness to define which relationship there is between the different layers. Concluding one layer cannot be read without the other.

material practice - inzoom - exhume

What is pleasant in the obtained geometric collage, is that it consists of several layers, but only the top layer can be seen. The collage was used for the first set of time sensitive exposures, where the colors were used to indicate the different exposures time. The almost endless repetition of the geometric shapes leads to a flatness. The process of repetition where I gradually deposit the colored layers on is visible thanks to the small differences. Due to the superimposition, the geometric patterns are no longer in line with each other, and generate overlap. Therefore, I became curious in where the differentiation takes place.

material practice - inzoom - exhume

By zooming in on the collage, an investigative drawing was made (see page 26-27) to look for a third dimension between the lines. The drawing is redrawn and at the same time converted into a physical model. Space differentiation is found between the lines of the drawing. Subsequently I explored the materiality relationship between figure and ground. In other words, the physical model of the geometrical figure is carved out of the same material as its ground. In this phase of the process, I started to look at ‘the in between’ and the ‘inverted space’.

material practice - inzoom - exhume

BEYOND BLUE

2 Exposures of the Yard

These drawings seek the relationship between absence and presence, the space between everyday objects. The voids are sustained with the information that surrounds them. A cyanotype drawing was used as a tool for exploring the limits of a vision and understanding of forces that conflict with the visible. My backyard and the everyday objects it contains, were my site of investigation over the current pandemic. This resulted in collecting: a wheelbarrow, wooden pallets, second-hand cabinets, etc., and carefully placing them on a large photosensitive paper. The spatial set-up is carefully considered, the object proportion to the field generates tension. The photosensitive paper captures the one-to-one scale of everyday life. These fragments of objects that are used to mediate something have been removed from their function. In certain areas the quality and information of the remaining edge and surface differentiates in sharpness, and in the gradient of the surface. Furthermore, the technique captures space on paper, the flatness of it allows for other speculative ideas to unfold. Consequently, there is a physical sense of the spatial quality.

The gradient of blue, which is part of the natural cyanotype process, makes the volume, the specific curve, the shallow depth, etc. of the used object tangible. Naming the work ‘exposures of the yard’ a situational site has been chosen, the ‘yard’ as my garden. It includes informal nature and consistencies as: the random everyday objects found in the yard, the ground of the yard, the relationship between the objects and between the objects and the ground, small scale interactions between the objects and nature (the insects, humidity, grass that grows differently depending on place and circumstances, morning sun, soil activity, animal life, time and shadow, the elevations of the garden, etc.) ‘Exposure of the yard’ shows a selective reading of this environment, a bringing together of elements of the yard.

https://yvanna9.wixsite.com/yvannaversyck/exposures-of-the-yard

material practice - inzoom - exhume

Tension of blue

The blue exposes the space that has been captured, in this fragment the exposed space underneath a wheelbarrow. The quality and information of the remaining edge and surface differentiates in sharpness, and in the gradient of the surface. By the gradient of the color, the shallow depth is being articulated and revealed. The spatial set-up is carefully considered, the object proportion to the field generates tension. The light is allowed close to the border of the paper next to the hollow object. The edges gradient resulted in dark blue, almost black, and is speeding up to light blue and lastly to white. The natural tendency of the paper creates darker marks in the lighter areas due the technique, owing to the treatment of the paper that brings spatial notion. Secondly, the blue could be linked to a modern imagination of blueprints that were introduced in 1842. The cyanotype technique was utilized for reproducing accurate architectural drawings. In this case, the blue becomes part of the site, a nocturnal hidden realm that guided me in my narratives (see page 58-70).

The light cannot penetrate in the metal and is reflected by the surface on the paper. Lifting the wheelbarrow of the field, the reflections are allowed to enter the hollow object and it creates cloud like forms.

material practice - inzoom - exhume

For more ‘Exposures of the yard’: https://yvanna9.wixsite.com/yvannaversyck/exposures-of-the-yard

BEYOND BLUE

3 Roaming the Yard

The optical drawing of the wheelbarrow in the series ‘exposures of the yard’ becomes a space of investigation for the understanding and acknowledgment of the wider environment, in this case, ‘the yard’ as my garden. The drawing is developed as a speculative narrative field by roaming in the yard and collecting more objects of the garden while I was guided by the stories that belong to it. The wheelbarrow cyanotype is used as a base layer to construct and develop other layers in a digital collage. Flowers, creatures of the yard, animal x-rays, ground plans, etc. are found and appropriated during the spatial investigation by taking photographs and scans and seek spatial qualities by scalar shifts. These iterative drawing acts are simultaneously activated in the space brought by the wheelbarrow. The white lines accentuate certain elements I found during the spatial investigation. They are present because of the contrast with the blue, they function as a loom that weaves the landscape, the sky, and the different layers of information, simultaneously together. The drawing progressed by programmatic and narrative thinking, I was being guided by the found objects and everyday life.

Examples of the ‘programmatic thinking’: themes that have their scriptive nature: the fencing of the garden, the location of my garden ‘number 30’, the shadow drops, a technical plan drawing of the shed, etc. For the narrative thinking, the drawing simultaneously evolves with a self-written text in mind (see page 58-70).

https://yvanna9.wixsite.com/yvannaversyck/roaming-the-yard

material practice - inzoom - exhume

This found space was obtained by an optical drawing (the wheelbarrow cyanotype, 1/1 scale) and an orthographic drawing (digital collage, with scalar shifts). The one-to-one scale and the digital drawing gave me new insights. Both are merged as a context drawing that situates the project: the garden where I start to collect things on the surface of the wheelbarrow, almost literally collecting all of this with a shovel into. The drawing grabs and holds the nature of things, that brings together a poetic microworld in a designed condition. The awakening of things starts in this nocturnal realm where dawn is coming up.

Up at down, surveying the land, waking up and taking in something I only see a few times a year. The cool morning air whips my face, caressing the rubbed raw cheeks. It seems very strange and silent, to be sitting all alone on the grass, but there is no feeling of loneliness at all. In every corner of the garden there is something interesting to look at.

The sunrise is taking over the cold morning, there is thin mist hanging across the pink-and-gold sky. Sitting on the cold wet grass, the first rays of sunlight are coming behind the shed hitting the green bright color. The many flowers next to it are gleaming under my nose in the morning sun, their color was hidden under the passing starlight night. The flowers reach skyward with a smile, they alone possess the power to make the rain forms glisten in the sun.

The heatwaves are rising from the vegetation and the distinct smell of grass and flowers are getting prominent, telling spring is near. A couple of birds hidden between the close by branches are waking up and start chirping, constituting the background noise. The clouds freckle the sky, wisps are floating by as the deep blue twilight retreat into its comfort. Now the sun is lighting up all the garden, caressing it.

Once in the ground, where no grass is growing, an ant comes out of an underground hole. The ant is fast increasing in a line of ants, on the way to a rotten apple. Conscious about their cooperation, the whole is greater than the sum of it parts. I want to catch a glimpse of their underground world. I imagine the roots that are leading to different chambers for stock-piling food and discarding garbage. Suddenly the ants seemed a lot bigger next to the crumbles that they are carrying to these underground holes.

https://yvanna9. wixsite.com/ yvannaversyck/ workspace

BEYOND BLUE

4 Speculative field garden

The drawings produced in ‘Exposures of the yard’ induced the design of a series of terrains, still guided by the accompanying narratives of this closed and consistent environment. I associate this hidden microcosmos with the underground world, where you can have a glimpse of underneath a big stone. I started zooming in on some fragments of the context drawing and exhumed the layers from the cyanotype upward. Consequently, a physic model progressed in a figure-ground reversal way, in search of spatial composition and scale. I am pulling it out of the ground, like a flower that unfolds dynamically. The speculation starts to perform while trying to exhume it further, through the use of shadows. A shadow drop starts to enlarge, it gives dimension to the terrain that’s slowly lifting. Suddenly, the shadow starts to grow in other shadows, it is starting to become alive. A dynamic environment has arisen of this occult microcosmos.

The models exists of iterative layers where a fragment of ‘roaming of the yard’ drawing was imprinted. It seeks spatial qualities by placing and re-placing these elements. Different types of paper were used: paperboard, bond paper, re-cycled paper, chalk, glossy paper, mat paper, etc. in search of a dynamic atmosphere. On every layer different cut-outs and extrusions are made. The complexity of ‘exposures of the yard’ holds spatial notions that I am combining with the natural designed condition: the fragility of the vegetation, the wetness of the rain, the transparency of the shadow, the hollowness, the space and roots underground, the blossom, the erosion of old objects, the voids, the start of new life, etc. The collaboration of different media come together to create new insights. The design speculations lead me from one artefact to another.

https://yvanna9.wixsite.com/yvannaversyck/speculative-field-garden

material practice - inzoom - exhume

In my recent years as an architecture student, I developed into a creative, ambitious person and I also discovered my passion for photography. For those reasons, I saw the master thesis ‘drawing architecture, maneuvering between factual inevitabilities and fictional urgencies’ as an opportunity to combine and broaden all these qualities. I started on this project very intuitively, my feeling often leads me to create new things and thoughts. Throughout the project, I have been actively creating and intensively exploring visual information found on the site.

This project is an ongoing investigation of the overlaps and interactions of different media, the cyanotype technique is combined with digital drawing to create new insights. That is why I end this master dissertation with an installation combining al these media through a physical model and a projector, as a speculative tool. It investigates this ‘enclosed yard’, by exhuming the performativity that has been captured while collecting and investigating this specific designed condition of the site.

The pebble stones next to the grass started making noise as someone walked by, in the corner of my eye. Underneath these stones must be other creatures swarming together, avoiding those footsteps. I lift a garden rock by curiosity, and there is a whole new world underneath. The cold damp arises underneath the stone, and many creatures are hiding from the sun. The bugs, beetles, worms, ants, roly-polies are speeding to their underground holes. In a couple of seconds, the dynamic environment is back again hidden.

This master thesis was an intensive, but learning process. With the help of my supervisor I came to the result I’m proud to show you. This process shows my identity as an architect after five years of study. Therefore, I would like to thank some people who have followed me intensively during this period. I would like to thank my supervisor Prof. Riet Eeckhout for the guidance during the creation of my master thesis. I am grateful for her trust, the extensive feedback, the continued support, and critical recommendations I received each time. Thanks to this process I have broadened my view on architecture. Finally, I am also grateful for my friends and family for continuing to believe in me and for their support throughout the past year.

DRAWING ARCHITECTURE, MANOEUVRING BETWEEN FACTUAL INEVITABILITIES AND FICTIONAL URGENCIES YVANNA VERSYCK

Supervisor: Riet Eeckhout Faculty of Architecture Campus Sint-Lucas Brussels