Architectural Design V-IX: Voluptas S1E6 Apollo (F.Charbonnet/P.Heiz)

Abstract

The semester "Apollo" aims at designing erratic hyper-contexts generated by hypothetical ruling incentives: as a marker of singularities, it is to become the passionate catalogue raisonné of elemental urban idiosyncrasies.

Objective

Objectives: Research & curation of contemporary concepts, articulation of a discursive argument, visual literacy & storytelling, editing & montage, architectural drafting. Incentives: Movies & filmmaking, territorial & urban scale, collectivity, situations & artefacts, socio-political dimension, critical position, contemporary conditions. Steps: (1) Analyse a movie, research contemporary concepts, identify potentials, articulate a critical position. (2) Project an urban scenario on both the artefactual and the territorial scale, focussing on collectiveness and the socio-political aspects of society. (3) Express a critical position towards a contemporary condition by the means of such a fictive context in both image and plan. (4) Train rhetorics and argumentation, master drafting skills as well as image montage.

Content

"Dionysos / Apollo" is to become a rambling exploration on the lookout for an urban environment beyond reasonable or irrational, good and evil. Considering humankind as embedded in (and dependent on) its geological era, we look upon history’s intertwined layers as torpid raw potential to be fully deployed, appropriated and composed with – joyfully disrespecting historical authenticity. The visionary Hístor seeks, finds novelty in the old, rather than an unfounded assertion of the present with the past. Simultaneously, all thoughts and actions are rooted in essence in the terrestrial now. The semester APOLLO aims at designing erratic hyper-contexts generated by hypothetical ruling incentives: as a marker of singularities, it is to become the passionate catalogue raisonné of elemental urban idiosyncrasies. Project: Students interpret, negotiate, and make meaning from information presented in a source movie, before transcribing their subjective reading to a telling but suggestive cinematographic draft (1.80x1.80m). Audacious and unprecedented urban environments are then extrapolated from the narrative as singular metropolitan orthoimages (1.80x1.80m) become the recording canvas of these proliferating storylines. The complementary drawing and image both crystallize the fictional metropolis’ shared desires and aspirations in an effort to re-write an alternate architectural and territorial fiction and reflect critically on contemporary conditions, overthrowing socio-economic status quo. Furthermore, students will construct an argumentative arsenal to support their discursive argument, based on an encyclopedic compilation of evocative historical sources.

Resources