Beschreibung
des Entwurfs-programmes |
"We are no longer truly simple. We no longer live in simple terms or places. Life is a more complex struggle now. It is now valiant to be simple: a courageous thing to even want to be simple. It is a spiritual thing to comprehend what simplicity means."
Frank Lloyd Wright, The Natural House, 1954
Clarity and Confusion are opposite but complementary terms, philosophically charged dual phenomena that are architecturally undefined. This evasiveness will allow us to explore and experiment with their spatial, experiential, and object-oriented potential. While Clarity–with a pronounced material dimension through the agency of transparency–seeks to discern in patient research and with the necessary distance the core quality of things, as a counter position, Confusion challenges any sense of order and relates to a feeling of being lost–mentally, spatially, or just generally in life. Altogether, due to the historical "loss of center" with ever more receding reference points marking collective identity, we must learn to cope spiritually with the advance of an expanding field of uncertainties that, in its vastness, may occasionally be overwhelming.
Consequently, following the traditional Japanese notion of Shibui (渋い), achieving studied restraint and simplicity through Clarity is not merely an aesthetic aim but a way of thinking and doing. Based on rigorous discipline and concentration, it seeks liberation from states of disorientation and irritation; figuratively, for instance, when wandering through a thicket, where the only relief may be found in the clearing, the moment of pause that breaks the unease of the perplexing surroundings by bringing light into the dark. Just as this last example shows, Clarity and Confusion are mutually related terms, sometimes in a highly ambiguous way, since acts of clarification may lead to increased disorder, and vice versa, catabolic erosion in its most extreme form of entropic dissolution to a state of absolute emptiness and homogeneity, a white noise more akin to repose than to disturbance. This evasive middle-ground, where opposites intertwine by defying all dualistic modes of thinking, will be critical to our research, as we aim to lose the safe grounds of logic in the obscurity of the paradoxical disposition. Moreover, what looks like a disorder today may be tomorrow's order.
In more pragmatic terms, and akin to Ludwig Wittgenstein's suggestion that "the limits of my language mean the limits of my world," we will initially study the terms' philosophical and emotional underpinnings in a seminar-like forum before giving these theoretical reflections creative expression through abstract, painterly means. Freeing ourselves from preconceived architectural notions and avoiding a linear design sequence, the resulting drawings shall establish the unorthodox foundation for developing the actual design projects. Critically translating the conceptual pre-considerations, the final task will be the detailed formulation of a Place for Meditation on a self-chosen site in Zurich. Building upon a rich tradition of examples in the East, one may think of a temple's Zendo (mediation hall) or the classic tea room, genuinely structures characterized by noble simplicity and quiet grandeur; in the West this typology is only marginally developed, and remains undefined mainly, thus, raising the question of how these places to achieve a state of profound attentiveness through Samadhi (contemplation) when entering the abyss of the "Nameless," should be conceived. |
Thematische und methodische Schwerpunkte |
Entwurf, Konstruktion, Staedtebau, Landschaftsarchitektur, Handwerk, Visualisierungen |
Lernziele |
Architectural thinking is never straightforward but challenges one's ability to integrate diverging factors that constitute the discipline's complex reality. Together with our students, we aim to manifest an attitude of open-mindedness. Each project must be non-dogmatically thought according to its own set of rules deriving from specific internal and external conditions. A unique kind of playfulness that finds equal merit in the urban, rural, and primeval realms is evoked. At the basis of this realistic-utopian approach, cultivated eclecticism is to intensify the students' observations, memories, and intuitions. Since the goal is not to emulate the past nor to be lost in futuristic technofixes, we seek to foster authentic forms and spaces of inherent necessity that make one pause as they radiate presence and unveil our being in the world. At last, each project's impact will be measured by its degree of achieving a radical framework for beauty. Stretching one's mind, what are the limits of architecture anyway? |
