Architectural Design V-IX: Voluptas S1E7 Repetition/Dfference (F.Charbonnet/P.Heiz)

Abstract

This semester aims at both designing erratic hyper-contexts generated by hypothetical ruling incentives, and the obsessive recording of their past and present traces of erasures and becomings.

Objective

Objectives: Research & curation of contemporary concepts, articulation of a discursive argument, visual literacy & storytelling, image montage & composition, architectural drafting and projecting. Incentives: Movies & scenario, territorial & urban scale, collectivity, situations & artefacts, socio-political dimension, critical position, contemporary conditions. Steps: (1) Analyze a movie, research contemporary concepts, identify potentials, articulate a critical position. (2) Project an urban scenario on both the artefactual and the territorial scale, focusing 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 rhetoric and argumentation, master drafting skills as well as image montage.

Content

pentimento, n. [pen-tuh-men-toh], plural pen·ti·men·ti [pen-tuh-men-tee]. Painting: The presence or emergence of earlier images, forms, or strokes that have been changed and painted over. ( https://www.dictionary.com/browse/pentimento [2021]) Repentir, s.m. A.1. RELIG. Regret douloureux de ses péchés avec le désir de les réparer et de ne plus y retomber. Synon. contrition, repentance (vieilli ou littér.) − P. ext. Vif regret d'une faute, d'une erreur, d'une faiblesse. 2. P. ext. Regret d'une action quelconque. B.1. Littér. Retour en arrière. 2. Dessin Peint: Correction du trait ou des couleurs apportée en cours d'exécution (p. oppos. à repeint). ( https://www.cnrtl.fr/definition/Repentir [2021]) “Since the trace is not a presence but the simulacrum of a presence that dislocates itself, displaces itself, refers itself, it properly has no site—erasure belongs to its structure. And not only the erasure which must always be able to overtake it (without which it would not be a trace but an indestructible and monumental substance), but also the erasure which constitutes it from the outset as a trace, which situates it as the change of site, and makes it disappear in its appearance, makes it emerge from itself in its production. The erasure of the early trace of difference is therefore the “same” as its tracing in the text of metaphysics. […] The paradox of such a structure, in the language of metaphysics, is an inversion of metaphysical concepts, which produces the following effect: the present becomes the sign of the sign, the trace of the trace. It is no longer what every reference refers to in the last analysis. It becomes a function in a structure of generalized reference. It is a trace, and a trace of the erasure of the trace.” (J. Derrida, Margins of Philosophy, Différance, 1982 [1972]) Content: Pursuing our rambling exploration on the lookout for urban environments beyond reasonable and more than ever considering humankind as embedded in, acting upon and dependent on its geological era, we shall look upon history’s intertwined layers and sediments as raw potential to be appropriated and composed with – joyfully disrespecting scientific authenticity. The visionary Hístor seeks, finds novelty in the old, rather than an unfounded assertion of the present with the past. This semester aims at both designing erratic hyper-contexts generated by hypothetical ruling incentives, and the obsessive recording of their past and present traces of erasures and becomings. Repetition/Differenc: invokes identity and sameness, evolution and change, patterns and habits, originality and copy, time and recurrence, beat and rhythm… all things seemingly constant, all shades of their endless variations. How may such abstract notions contribute to shape immaterial processes and crystallize timeless and paradigmatic urban environments? The careful and critical consideration of architectural paragons, socio-economical dynamics, geopolitical shifts, further endowed with the lure of fiction, shall initiate new beginnings to alternate (hi)stories and cityscapes.

Resources