Architectural Design V-IX: Borderline(s) Investigation #6 Visibility (A. Theriot)

Abstract

Visibility and its Hidden Dimensions:If something catches the eye, what is next to it will be mechanically less looked at. For a light to appear, it has to emerge from the surrounding darkness. And what attracts the light often leaves its surroundings in shadow. Hence an implacable theorem: the visible is always born from the invisible.

Objective

We aim to seize economic requirements to transform constraints into levers, producers of qualities. These may well be tangible or intangible, prosaic or poetic, constant or unstable, general or occasional... As long as they are initiated by the economy and located far from any rationality. Creating generosity, “excesses” that make the strength and uniqueness of a place. Starting from the book “Appearance of That Which Cannot Be Seen” by Armin Linke, the semester will unfold in three chapters: CHAP 1: MYTHOLOGY CHAP 2: FINDING FREEDOMS CHAP 3: BINDING FRAGMENTS Mandatory workshop on project site (Basel) with photographer Johannes Schwarz: 02-03.10.2021 It is highly recommended to students enrolling to our studio to also enroll and take part in our Seminarweek “Réactions / Actions”, which will take place at the Kunstgiesserei & Sitterwerk St-Gallen, INTEGRATED WORKSHOPS: Three sessions with Raphael Hefti Photography with Johannes Schwarz 3D visualisations with Olivier Campagne Structure with Giotto Messi Facade and enveloppe with Gontran Dufour Building climate with Illias Hischier

Content

Visibility and its Hidden Dimensions: If something catches the eye, what is next to it will be mechanically less looked at. For a light to appear, it has to emerge from the surrounding darkness. And what attracts the light often leaves its surroundings in shadow. Hence an implacable theorem: the visible is always born from the invisible. Visibility and movement: There are also territories where one does not stop, places devoted to transit and exchange (business and industrial zones, areas near railway stations or airports, etc.). From these places, we can only have a partial vision, but also a vision in movement, a dynamic vision. From then on, they call for an architecture that adapts itself to this new speed of vision, and which opens onto another imaginary world. The history of art is full of these regenerations: the impressionists who revealed a new Paris by painting the "hidden banks" of the capital on the outskirts of the stations; street-art which gives back a cyma value to the gable walls, elements a priori the least worthy of attention in architecture. Visibility and intimacy: There is a "hidden dimension" (to use the title of Edward T. Hall's famous essay) that concerns our bubbles of intimacy, which vary according to times and cultures. These spheres remain the founding gauge of the human relationship with architecture. At what distance is a vis-à-vis acceptable? At what point does one start to see too much? Where is the boundary between proximity and voyeurism? Here we touch a balance, both intimate and social, between the visible and the invisible. What's more, we are living at a time when the apprehension of these "bubbles" is being altered by the health crisis. Visibility and illusion: The gaze is, in any case, fallible and to take note of it is also to explore new areas of the visible. The art of trompe l'oeil works on certain productive ironies between painting and architecture (the frescoes in the Hall of Giants in the Té Palace in Mantua, a simulacrum of a building collapse, or closer to us, the "masking" of the Louvre Pyramid by J.R.). This art of camouflage does not always have artistic aims. Just think of the tarpaulins that hide the scaffolding on monuments that are being renovated, and on which the façade of the monument in question is drawn or photographed. Proof of the need to keep the facade of an emblematic building in the field of visibility (and even in the simulacrum mode)! Visibility and new tools: The change in the way we look at things is also accompanied by an addiction to new tools. The advent of the digital image has had an unexpected consequence: in the cinema, in photography, on television, the nights are sharper! Contours are better defined. Humans seem to have the vision of a cat! While the silver image better restores the density of the night, this darkness is both compact and indistinct, endowed with an enveloping dimension, with the impression that one can get lost in it. A digital night simply makes you believe that you have "dimmed the light" of the day, not that day and night are two opposing reigns.

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