Beschreibung
des Entwurfs-programmes |
BORDERLINE(S) INVESTIGATION
It all starts with a question. We are not looking for an answer, we are looking for a way to formulate it. The question is in itself a quest. To carry out this investigation, we walk on a ridge line, we put ourselves in danger, we take risks; we want to find what we are looking for.
We are moving forward on a path, on the path of defining the great values - those of architecture but also those of the architect, those of everyday life, those that make it exceptional, those of the ordinary and those of imagination, those of yesterday and today, those of tomorrow’s world.
This line on which we walk is the frontier of our discipline, which we test, which we extend, which we do not limit ourselves to. So we go elsewhere, we use all kinds of media, we use all kinds of tools, we call on all kinds of experts, on all kinds of scales...
By flirting with the limits in this way, we find ourselves no longer being only an architect but also a photographer, a filmmaker, a sociologist, an engineer, an artist, a philosopher, a playwright, a writer or a poet... We do not prioritize things other than by the subjective value we give them.
THE VERY GRAVE ART OF BEING LIGHT
There is one choice I often make in life; that of lightness.
«Dancing with our chains» said Friedrich Nietzsche in his book «The traveler and his shadow. «To live this lightness - as opposed to heaviness - and not a futile unconsciousness; a lightness that also lives with gravity, feet anchored in reality - this opposite of frivolity.
For me, lightness is not the dream of an imaginary world, the escape from reality neither the dizziness of obese needs. Life is so short at times that the complicated or the serious, as well as the so-called light solutions that we sometimes choose.
Rather than seriousness of life, I prefer fluidity; rather than grandiloquent, I prefer the simple; rather than complicated relationships, I prefer fulfilling relationships; rather than greatness of soul feigned or put forward, I prefer humility and generosity experienced, rather than any form of physical or psychological violence, I prefer sweetness.
Lightness is this position of letting go of the useless, the heavy, the futile;
How do we perceive lightness? Is there a difference between ultra-light and light, and can we make this notion tangible, or must we on the contrary free ourselves from the representative constraint and accept the subjectivity of the imperceptible? Marcel Duchamps introduced the idea of inframince (infra-thin) without defining it. However, the infra-thin allows us to designate an imperceptible difference or interval, sometimes only imaginable, between two phenomena, or several phenomena intimately interconnected and affecting each other.
To accept the notion of practically imperceptible opens up the possibility of constructing visibility from almost nothing. Revealing distinctions hence character and identity of two almost identical objects? The infra-thin introduces the possibility of difference in the serial process. The possibility of richness without extravagance, beauty in the sweetness, the truth, the simple, the self, the common.
SPECIALISTS INPUTS
Workshops and lectures by Bertrand Stofleth (photographer), Karsten Födinger (artist), Olivier Campagne (3d modelling & visualisation), Giotto Messi (structural engineer), and Arnaud Malras (facade engineer) |
Lernziele |
CHAP 1: MYTHOLOGY
At the beginning there is a myth, a reference project generating a narrative. The production of models, analytic drawings, photographs and drawings will support this narrative which ought to be subjective, personal and intuitive.
The result of this research will be presented as a compilation of images: the “Mythology” of architectural lightness.
CHAP 2: FINDING FREEDOMS
The project’s sites will be located in the linear landscape of the Rhone valley after the documentary project “Rhodanie” by photographer Bertrand Stofleth.
The existing channels, railways, highways, bridges, factories, dams, resorts, leisure parks, visible on the photographs inform us about this highly exploited and urbanised territory stretching from the Alps to Marseilles.
In this chapter we will try to reveal the potential of those urban areas by proposing hybrid programs potentially generating new urban conditions.
CHAP 3: MOCK UP
The mock-up is no longer a model, but neither is it yet the building. It is an abstraction and a hybrid device that suggests the building, but is also formally independent from it. It can be seen as an objet d’art, a temporary installation.
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