>>>>> Lecture: Mappings

>>>>> Tuesday February 5^th at 9.00 Lecture Mappings by Tine Nørgaard

Big Auditorium

>>>>>[P1] The Williamsburg Trilogy/ Constructing a scenario

P1.1 Atlas/ Constructing an archive:

>>>Duration: 1 week

Peter Wilson, Tokyo Rooftop matrix [1]

>>(…) I always tell my co-workers and students that they should, above all, look at things, because it is through observation that one can learn the most. Someone visiting Paris can, for example, go to a museum, or simply go for a walk, and this view of the city can be enough to enrich his individual style of architecture (…)<<[2]

Aldo Rossi

A Scientific Autobiography

The New York City combines wonderful and extraordinary places, people, textures, smells and sounds… It provides a wide range of inspirations and material, understood as potential components for the architectural proposal. The question is how these issues can be used as the matter of the project and processed spatially. Therefore, the first assignment will focus on the site-archeology. Exploring New York City during the study trip, you were asked to observe and register your observations, focusing both on objective data and individual interpretations of the site as well as the wider locale of the area of Williamsburg- using drawings, photography, video, audio or any other media. Based on these recordings and mappings (students who visited the site) an/or collected data from books and network (students who visited the site virtually)- all the things you have found and learnt along the way- you will try to unravel the secrets and the potential of the site.

Gerhard Richter Atlas Sheets 10/1962 and 14/1964 [3]

>>But my motivation was more a matter of wanting to create order – to keep track of things. All those boxes full of photographs and sketches weigh you down, because they have something unfinished, incomplete, about them. So it's better to present the usable material in an orderly fashion and throw the other stuff away. That's how the Atlas came to be, and I exhibited it a few times.<< [4]

Gerhard Richter

Using the collected material- notes, drawings, recordings, notations, maps, photographs…- you will be asked to present your findings and reflections, constructing an Atlas- i.e. an archive containing a valuable information about the site. The material should be processed and comprehensive and coherently organized in your own way, as the character of the Atlas depends on the nature of the collected material. Through its format and presentation you should try to penetrate and highlight the most important aspects of the place- its configuration, its history, its atmosphere, its people… and make it visible. Moreover, you will be asked to process all the data and to elaborate a series of maps of the site (1:100) containing the most important and valuable information. This collection of maps is to be understood as a plug-in tool you can add to the site-model- the point of departure for your design agendas.

This task is to be undertaken in teams of 4 students with two conditions: [1] at least one member should have visited the site; [2] each team should involve one newcomer student.

Note: During the Friday pin-up you will be asked to be very strict with the time assigned to each presentation- 20 minutes. 

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[1] WILSON, Peter: in Bolles+Wilson. A Handful of Productive Paradigms, Bolles + Wilson Publishers, 2009

[2] ROSSI, Aldo, HUET, B: A conversation. in ROSSI, A; GEISERT,H: Aldo Rossi Architect, Academy Edictions, London, New York, 1994, pg.18.

[3]  RICHTER, Gerhard: http://www.gerhard-richter.com/art/atlas/

[4] RICHTER, Gerhard:  Interview with Stefan Koldehoff, 1999 in: Text, wriitings, interwievs and letters 1961-2007.  Thames and Hudson, London 2009, pg. 350

>>>>> Singularities of the evident/ vehicles for events

[Spring 2013]

>>1909 theorem: 
the Skyscraper as utopian device for the production of unlimited numbers of virgin sites on a single metropolitan location.<<[1]

>>(…) I have always conceived of the term "apparatus" (apparecchio) 
in a rather singular way: it is related to my reading and possession in early youth of the volume by Alfonso dei Liguori entitled Apparecchio alla morte. This strange book, which I still recall in many images, seemed to me to be an apparatus itself just by virtue of its rather small and very wide format: I felt that one need not even read the book because it was sufficient merely to own it: it was an instrument. But the connection between apparatus and death also 
reasserted itself in such common phrases as apparecchiare la tavola, meaning
 to set the table, to prepare it, to arrange it. From this point on I came to 
regard architecture as the instrument which permits the unfolding of a thing. I must say that over the years this awareness has increased my interest in
 my craft, especially in my latest projects, where I have tried to propose
 buildings which, so to speak, are vehicles for events. (…)<<[2]

Aldo Rossi

A Scientific Autobiography

During the Fall semester Unit2+3d looked into the complexity of the opening in much smaller scale- a room and the window. The second part of the 2012/13 term, will involve designing the specific building. A special emphasis will be placed at the surroundings and the role of the opening as a mediator between the inside and the outside, different programs or different environments, and its potential quality as a vehicle for generating new atmospheres and scenarios.

The complexity of the contemporary world- social, technical, environmental, infrastructural and economic changes- radically affects and challenges traditional forms, materials and representation of architecture. Undoubtedly, our way of living is changing too. There have been a lot of speculations about the future city and its dwellings. This semester Unit2+3d will navigate between the archeology and the futurology and will continue, among others, to explore the habitat of tomorrow. Thus, our designs will derive from an investigation of radical architectural proposals, ideas of transformations, and the understanding the complexity of everyday life as an operative force.

>>That is how it begins. The place is New York, the time is present, and neither one will ever change. (…)<< [3]

Paul Auster

The New York Trilogy- Ghosts

New York will be an operational field- the play-board- its genesis, its location, its culture, its people, its climate, its stories and peculiar character…The research undertaken during the first semester is to be the other point of reference, and of course the students’ interests, obsessions… are another.

New York is a unique culture- a vibrant place of dense cosmopolitan life. It offers an ideal opportunity to explore the historical, social, economical and political development of urban form, as well as to question the role of architects and planners upon it.

It has been a city of dreams, also a place constantly intertwining fact and fiction. And the architectural proposal always operates in some imagined future. Moreover, nearly always we, as the architects, assume that this future will be somewhat better. But… how to shift from the fantasy to operating in reality? Trying to respond to this question, this semester we will seek an architecture where a reflective reading of the world we inhabit now, an exploration of the past and the experience of the present will be the points of departure for many possible futures.

The project of this semester will be a hybrid building sited at the Keap Street/ South 4^th Street in Williamsburg- a neighborhood with a particular situation (recently, one of the epicenters of gentrification)- an extraordinary place of a multi-faceted reality. Oscillating between the pragmatic and the poetic, fiction and reality, this project- following the Fall semester- should explore the extraordinary of the evident, pushing the boundaries of all possibilities.

The project development will be structured combining tasks of different complexity and duration. However these tasks are not to be understood as a separated assignments- they are rather sequential exercises that nourish each other. Therefore, in this semester we will replace the word assignment with phase.

>>>Structure:

[CUP]  Cross Unit Presentation/ reflection upon the Fall Semester- seminar

[P0]     Play-board/ Cross Unit (CDE) workshop- site model

[P1]     The Williamsburg Trilogy/ Constructing a scenario

[P2]    ‘The art of inhabitation’/ Constructing a place

[P3]     Fictional realities/ Constructing a narrative

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[1] In: KOOLHAAS, Rem: Delirious New York, The Monacelli Press, New York, 1994, pg.83
[2] ROSSI, Aldo: A Scientific Autobiography. Opposition Books, MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, London, 1981, pg.5.

[3] AUSTER, Paul: The New York Trilogy, MIT Press paperback edition, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 2002

>>>>> [AL! Spring 2013]

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>  13 points for 2013:  >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

To observe

To experience

To explore

To collect

To reflect

To extract

To think

To react

To act

To do

To make

To verify

To enjoy

…