วันพุธที่ 28 สิงหาคม พ.ศ. 2556

On Turning a Preconceived Space into a Gelatinous Volume: A Response to the Lethal Theory




Eyal Weizman’s writing on the Lethal Theory have shed light upon the how we could redesign our interpretation of built-space through construction of negative space. In a nutshell, the component that makes up the city, namely intersections and buildings, and in it windows, door, or sewage lines, have with them a certain ‘rules’ that we all obey - we walkthrough doors, hide in wall corners and walk around tables and chairs. Such rules is obliged by the Nablus defense force. In order for the Israeli Defense Force to tackle their enemy’s preparation, they seek instead, to surprise them by giving up all the syntax attached to all these architectural features and instead treat the city as a “medium of war” by traveling in straight lines to their destinations, through walls, ceilings and floors. Such is this tactic is derived from the many architectural theory developed by  notable figures such as Deleuze and Guattari.

The application of the theory to this construction of negative space in the urban fabric can be inversed and used in a constructive architectural manner. In the same way that the IDF treat the city space as having a jelly-like quality, where the void is not simply a void but is actually a body of substance (a cross over to physics would make this conception of ‘space’ easier to understand, check out http://what-is-space.info ), the fictional city of Columbia, so to speak on a fantastic level, builds and arranges itself in the substantial void that is the ‘air’ and to break all preconceptions of the relationship between the two. Set on the American sky, the levitating city of Columbia treats space as being a medium for construction. Unlike in traditional city where gravity allows building to be only on one plane, the buildings of Columbia, with the help of quantum physics which allows it to supersede the rule of physics, is place wherever the designer chooses. 







However, to down-scale and getting back down to Earth, the UN studio is an example of how this type of thinking can be applied to the real world to create new definitions of space. Their exhibition, “Retreat”, is an intervention to an art exhibition in a fort whereby the concentric organization of the KunstFort Asparen fort in Netherlands was interrupted with the installation of ribbon-like sculpture which winds through the interior in an unexpected manner. The result is a element which binds, in three-dimensional space instead of two, various artworks throughout the three levels of the fort. Such work turns the volume of the fort from a void into substance, a ‘substantial volume’.

Artistically, it is also worth to point out that Christo-Jeanne Claude’s interventions on architecture has created the same effect, of turning a building that contains in it a million  interpretations and norms (ie. corridors as a place to walkthrough) into a voluminous object much in the same way that the IDF has interpreted the urban fabric. Such object would then be ambiguous in its configuration and use and might therefore, presents itself in new ways depending on who is interpreting it.







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