Topics

Dysfunctional Plans

The floor plan is a reflection of the societal condition and the hystorical context in which it is created, thus embodying specific notions of privacy, familiar bonds or social relationships among inhabitants. Whenever the plan doesn’t interpret the notion of inhabiting within the parameters of what is considered “normality” in a specific moment in history, we call it “dysfunctional”. A dysfunctional plan implies a questioning and a critical resistance towards any notion of standardization; through configurations of non canonical spaces, it problematizes any comfortable accomodation for the daily living functions and may even become a means of conflict, misbehaviour and abuse. On the other hand it may represent an attempt to embody hypothesis of subversion against a given model.  . … Explore this topic

Walls as Rooms

A wall might be a structure which provides security and sometimes carries the weight of a roof to form a shelter. A wall can divide an interior and an exterior, lead the movements inside a building or may materialize a border, divide two properties or even, – physically and symbolically -, become a barrier between two different regions. In some cases an enlarged enclosure may host a space in itself: the inhabitable wall hides an ambiguous domain within its thickness, an interstitial area on the brink between two conditions: inside and outside.  … Explore this topic

Representation: Axonometric Projection

The axonometric projection is a parallel projection, usually detaching the viewer from the scene and emphasizing the level of abstraction in the representation of the subject. Mostly employed for technical drawings, axonometrics can be as expressive as any other projection while keeping the ability of being highly descriptive.  An axonometric image allows to place on the same level very different layers of informations on a space which is non-hierarchical and isotropic. The complexity of a scene is underlined while its contradictions are resolved by making them peacefully coexist in the same frame. … Explore this topic

When Photography Catches Time

Rather than considering photography as a means to capture an instant, some artists subverted this practice to express duration in time. Sometimes through collages, sequences and superimpositions, in some cases through a single long shot, photographers are exploring different methods to synthesize the fourth dimension within the bidimensional range of a frame. The results provide a wide variety of unexpected solutions, some extremely synthetic while other very fragmented, pushing further the boundaries of the practice. … Explore this topic

Housing the Multitude

Since the beginning of human history the need for a house has implied latent meanings, from the bare “looking for a shelter” to the fulfillment of complex spiritual and social needs. Historically, a number of inhabiting solutions were imagined for the coexistence of individuals and families in collective dwellings, in order to provide an improvement in resource sharing, built terrain and infrastructural optimization and waste limitation.

Completely dissimilar visions of communal life and conditions of social stratification lay behind this group of projects, but all of them share the search for a density which doesn’t restrict the private sphere yet allows, in different degrees, room for shared activities destined to enhance the life of the community. … Explore this topic

Fields

Architectural projects and artistic researches have explored the potential of isotropic spaces, by definition: territories where the conditions are equally distributed. Hierarchy is abandoned, the distinction between figure and ground disappears and the available land is evenly covered, being it a piece of paper or a territorial plot. In some projects the idea of field is a metaphor, the ever-expanding territory of capital materialized by infinite urban development, in other it is merely a condition, a potential to be explored. … Explore this topic