Architectural Design V-IX: Voluptas S2E2 – Pathfinder (Charbonnet/Heiz)

Abstract

PATHFINDER 2 focuses on the city of Istanbul: its rich history, morphology, mythology… all canonic spatial perimeters as suggested by Lefebvre: political, sociological, anthropological, economical. As the framework of our prospective investigation, it evokes an array of fantasies and triggers multiple narrative potentials.

Objective

OBJECTIVES: Research & curation of contemporary concepts, articulation of a discursive argument, visual literacy & storytelling, image montage & composition, architectural drafting and projecting. INCENTIVES: Agency & character, narratives & scenarios, territorial & urban scales, collectivity, situations & artefacts, socio-political dimensions, critical positions, contemporary conditions STEPS: 1. Analyze an urban territory, research contemporary concepts, identify potentials, articulate a critical position, conduct an objective survey, draft a path; Reduction of the path to its subjective experience, drafting of the resulting collection of architectural features; project an urban scenario on both the artefactual and the territorial scale; 2. Epitomise/Idealise the experience-path in order to express a critical position towards contemporary conditions; 3. Train rhetorics and argumentation, master drafting skills as well as image montage.

Content

'As I waver back and forth, sometimes seeing the city from within and sometimes from without, I feel as I do when I am wandering the streets, caught in a stream of slippery, contradictory thoughts, not quite belonging to this place, and not quite a stranger. This is how the people of Istanbul have felt for the last hundred and fifty years.' –Oran Pamuk, Istanbul: Memories and the City (1944) 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. The visionary Hístor finds novelty in the old, rather than an unfounded assertion of the present with the past. This semester aims at both finding and drafting fictional paths within existing environments, and the obsessive recording of their past or present traces of becomings. PROJECT 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: together we will attempt to transcribe the manifold experiences of the city. 1. RESEARCH Driven by the choice of an Agent and a Timeframe, conduct a survey based on the objective observation of Istanbul, in order to map out and draft possible paths within the city. Further focussing on the subjectivity of experience, extrapolate multiple lines of fiction. 2. PROJECT Epitomise the experience in order to formulate a critical comment onto a contemporary condition and reveal future potentials. The city thus becomes the recording canvas of intertwined and proliferating storylines. 3. DISCOURSE Construct an argumentative arsenal to support the project postulate, based on the selective curation of evocative sources. The complementary drawings, images and discourse crystallise the fictional metropolis’ shared desires and aspirations in an effort to re-write alternate architectural and territorial fictions and reflect critically on contemporary conditions, overthrowing the status quo. A series of lectures by experts from various fields will punctuate the semester, in order to broaden our reading of cities, pathways, agencies and their underlying dynamics.

Resources