Architectural Design V-IX: Voluptas - S1E4 - Variables (F.Charbonnet/P.Heiz)

Abstract

A theoretical or experimental quantity, condition, or factor that does not vary in specified circumstances.Variable [vair-ee-uh-buhl]A quantity or function that may assume any given value or set of values.

Objective

Through the generation of a positive utopian frame steadily based on history and by expanding the defining limits of the discipline to a multiplicity of fields, Voluptas aim is to encourage students to raise proposals which critically address contemporary problematics in a creative manner, propelled by the students’ profound desires.

Content

Devoid of any axiomatic premises, architectural constants are chimerical essences. All historical attempts have fundamentally failed at providing with an unequivocal and permanent contingency. Forever erratic under the evasive tenure of difference and repetition, we are left with variables and doomed to articulate adequacies and performances as transient conditions: architecture is a swamp of solid conjectures. Subordinated to everchanging and conflictual determinations – economic, political, environmental, juridical, infrastructural – the city is the compliant recording chamber of heterogeneous interests and expectations. Accordingly, no urban environment can ever be described as virginal and unadulterated, nor established under the authority of a specific and singular hypothesis. The semester VARIABLES attempts to identify, map and codify urban perimeters and to submit them to speculative regimes of constraints. Through the lens of a chosen agent, students build up a referential arsenal of manifold sources (plans, texts, iconographies, sequences, recordings) to survey existing situations and their historical backgrounds. Accordingly, each group designates a set of typical and exclusive metropolitan features and extracts it from its actual context: this features will be promoted as a variables – which interfere with the primordial and domineering dynamics of a metropolitan configuration. VARIABLES aims at defining pristine hyper-contexts generated by hypothetical ruling incentives: as a marker of singularities, it is to become the varied catalogue of elemental urban idiosyncrasies. Form: In addition to the encyclopedic consultation and compiling of historical sources, we will make use of Google Earth as a performative tool of investigation and survey. Singular metropolitan ortho-frescos (2m x 2m) will become the recording canvas of proliferating layered information and storylines. In addition, an explanatory statement will contextualize the adopted approach and a short compelling and evocative movie sequence will portray life in the hyper-context.

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