the architecture draftsman

LANDED, 1-5

2011-11-23T23:30:00.001+01:00

(from top to bottom, Milan via Maestri Campionesi, Liege, Milan viale Umbria, Milan viale Livigno, Milan via Maestri Campionesi)

LANDED.

An intermediary step between Mars and the reality of the immediate 'here', this series of drawings is a quest on a series of questions:

Is fantastic architecture closer to reality when placed in town?
Does simple contextualisation bring drawings closer to becoming actual buildings?
Is the city of Milan (like many others, jealously guarded in its more or less ancient shape, with a downtown barely allowed to grow) rightly keeping its character, or just turning into an ossified postcard town?

One way or another, it's good to forget for a while about square meters, 60-degree angles, bureaucracy and functionality, to ride free above the roofs of the city.

MAPS, 5

2011-07-19T23:17:00.002+02:00

MAPS, 4

2011-07-19T23:16:00.004+02:00

untitled, Milan 2011

2011-07-19T23:16:00.003+02:00

IMAGINARY JERUSALEM, 18

2011-07-19T23:14:00.003+02:00

MAPS, 3

2011-07-19T23:13:00.003+02:00

IMAGINARY JERUSALEM, 17

2011-07-19T23:12:00.002+02:00

IMAGINARY JERUSALEM, 16

2011-07-19T23:10:00.002+02:00

END OF THE SPACE AGE, JULY 2011

2011-07-07T14:59:00.006+02:00

We are not going to the stars

Huge rockets will not fly us to the endless unknown

What we see around here is all we'll ever see

Science-fiction was just another kind of fairy-tale.

We are not going to the outer space

No emerald-water planets are waiting for us

We'll never meet fremens or little green people

ET's neighbourhood is just too far.

We are staying down here

All they found up there is dust

And dust are now our dreams

Of going up there.

...but maybe, one day...

MAPS, 2

2011-04-21T22:41:00.001+02:00

IMAGINARY JERUSALEM, 15

2011-04-21T22:40:00.001+02:00

MAPS, 1

2011-04-21T22:39:00.002+02:00

MARS ARCHITECTURES, 21

2011-04-21T22:39:00.001+02:00

MARS ARCHITECTURES, 20

2011-04-21T22:37:00.000+02:00

MARS ARCHITECTURES, 19

2010-10-06T23:31:00.003+02:00

MARS ARCHITECTURES, 18

2010-10-06T23:26:00.004+02:00

IMAGINARY JERUSALEM, 14

2010-10-06T23:20:00.003+02:00

MARS ARCHITECTURES, 17

2010-10-06T23:17:00.004+02:00

IMAGINARY JERUSALEM, 13

2010-09-04T23:04:00.002+02:00

MARS ARCHITECTURES, 16

2010-09-04T23:03:00.006+02:00

IMAGINARY JERUSALEM, 11

2010-09-04T23:03:00.004+02:00

MARS ARCHITECTURES, 15

2010-09-04T23:03:00.003+02:00

IMAGINARY JERUSALEM, 12

2010-09-04T23:02:00.002+02:00

MARS ARCHITECTURES, 14

2010-09-04T23:00:00.002+02:00

MARS ARCHITECTURES, 13

2010-09-04T22:56:00.002+02:00

MARS ARCHITECTURES, 12

2010-09-04T22:53:00.002+02:00

IMAGINARY JERUSALEM, 8bis

2010-06-22T00:24:00.001+02:00

untitled, Milan 2010

2010-06-22T00:21:00.001+02:00

MARS ARCHITECTURES, 11

2010-06-22T00:19:00.001+02:00

LOOKING FOR A MEANING IN ARCHITECTURE

2010-06-22T00:17:00.004+02:00

Architecture used to be invested with particular significances that in our turbulent, agitated age have been lost.

Any building – though particularly houses and temples - used to be considered a small model of the World, as it was seen as symbolically unifying in a whole the three levels of life. The foundations stuck deep in the dark, material Earth, the roof, immersed in the full light of the spiritual sky and the walls, doors and windows on the horizon of the human life.

Building was therefore not considered a mundane activity but a deeply spiritualized one, a direct continuation of the Creation itself. Across all cultures, houses or temples – and by extension settlements themselves - were ‘working’ within the local culture and religion to help people understand their own place on Earth (see drawing). The symbolic power of the message they used to convey was universal and we still feel it today.

Nowadays the situation is radically different. Most of us don’t seem to have anymore a clear idea of what we are doing on this planet. The amazing development of science in the last few centuries have made us the depositaries of unprecedented levels of knowledge. We can literally peer further in space and time than ever before. The question ‘how’ – how the Universe works - is been answered with more and more clarity. But the question ‘why’, why we are here and what is the purpose of our existence on Earth, is not. The centuries-old preoccupation of religions and philosophy has little relevance for the everyday life of well-fed people, it seems. And as always Architecture faithfully follows our mindset. Buildings are not anymore a symbol of the World – they have become the World itself. It is hard to discern in the contemporary agglomerations the sense of clarity obvious in any Medieval town.

But wait a minute. The mad urban universe we are creating to ourselves is a hugely complex entity that could be seen as talking, in millions of tones and colors, about the huge complexity of life and Universe itself! The contemporary agglomerations may therefore be seen as better - if definitely less clear - symbols of a complex Universe than the primitive – if charming – earlier ones.

The amassed architectures of ever-growing megalopolis do tend to be schizophrenic and self-referential. They do disorient and hardly seem to reflect any preoccupation beyond the most material ones. But buildings still have their foundations stuck deep in the dark, material Earth, the roof, immersed in the full light of the spiritual sky and the walls, doors and windows on the horizon of the human life.

Maybe all what is needed in order to restore to Architecture – and to the world it creates – its original sense of meaning is some simple, light intervention focused more on revealing to us what is already there than on creating something new?

MARS ARCHITECTURES, 10

2010-06-10T23:13:00.001+02:00

IMAGINARY JERUSALEM, 9

2010-06-10T23:12:00.000+02:00

MARS ARCHITECTURES, 9

2010-06-10T23:11:00.000+02:00

IMAGINARY JERUSALEM, 10

2010-06-10T23:10:00.003+02:00

IMAGINARY JERUSALEM, 8

2010-06-10T23:06:00.002+02:00

IMAGINARY JERUSALEM, 7

2010-05-19T00:31:00.004+02:00

IMAGINARY JERUSALEM, 6

2010-05-19T00:30:00.009+02:00

IMAGINARY JERUSALEM

Like a supersonic aircraft leaving behind its own sound, the mental representation of a city can be so powerful that the actual city – though strengthen by its own reflection – is simply left behind.

New York and Paris are perhaps the most ubiquitous examples of such cities in the modern world. They are enchanting, amazing cities with strong personalities – but they are present in the imaginary of the whole world in a way other places, equally enchanting and amazing, are never going to be. They leave the realm of reality to enter the domain of myth.

Jerusalem has been there since long before Paris and New York even came to exist. It’s not for nothing that a city is holy for three monotheistic religions. Suspended above the edge of the endless desert, Jerusalem is literally half on Earth and half in the sky.

So much Jerusalem identifies with its own myth that the image of a Celestial Jerusalem, accompanying its actual material model from the heart of Heaven, exists from the times of Babylon.

Real Jerusalem is still there, I know it well, I used to live there, yes it is the same city sung and missed for millennia, fought for and claimed by Jews and Christians and Muslims alike, but it lives its actual life with its normal rhythms, with its buses and markets and living rooms and streets and trees. Interrupted sometimes by breathtaking views or by glimpses of ages-old history. Living its normal life, though under the shadow of a conflict so deep, so old, so multifaceted that it looks as natural as the strong light bouncing on the stone of the city.

Jerusalem is still there but I am far from it now, and my own nostalgia for it is merely my own reflection of the same age-old nostalgia for Jerusalem. Far from the actual Jerusalem, I am free to explore the other Jerusalem, the imaginary one, and to reflect into imaginary spaces the amazing depths and spatial richness of a city unlike any other.

IMAGINARY JERUSALEM, 5

2010-05-19T00:28:00.003+02:00

IMAGINARY JERUSALEM, 4

2010-05-19T00:27:00.002+02:00

IMAGINARY JERUSALEM, 3

2010-05-19T00:26:00.004+02:00

MARS ARCHITECTURES, 8

2010-04-27T23:44:00.000+02:00

MARS ARCHITECTURES, 7

2010-04-27T23:43:00.003+02:00

WHY MARS ARCHITECTURES

the dictatorship of function in architecture. The power of architectural space. drawing as a way to escape the dictatorship of function.

Function has been driving architecture since people started to build at the dawn of history.

We are so used to build with a purpose that we don’t even ask ourselves why we do it. Even purposeless buildings (or parts of them) have a purpose, be that only to provide a proof of personal standing.

Architectural space is one of the most powerful expressions of art.

Because no other art form (maybe except music) physically contains you.

Because looking for a meaning and a way in a space is a built-in instinct of a wandering species. Therefore when in contact with a coherent space we immediately start to look for meanings and ways and we find great fulfillment in doing it.

Because architectural space quiet naturally offers clues about the nature of the Universe itself - even the most stupid building is still both a model of the Universe and an evident actual continuation of the Genesis/ Big Bang.

Architectural space could reach new heights as an art form if explored in full autonomy of any functional purpose?

To actually build a space whose purpose is to prove the artistic worthiness of a functionless space is contradictory, not to mention expensive.

Drawing, though evidently limited to flat 2Ds, can:

Walk you through spaces without actual need to build them;

Fruitfully excite your imagination. Precisely in the way a book excites you more than a movie – because it forces your mind to create itself a complete 3D model of a particular space out of the partial image the eyes meet. Therefore no two persons will ever see the same drawing in the same way. The viewer is an integral part of the drawing.

Mars, the perfect place.

Because Mars is wonderful. It is empty, clean, free, windy, mysterious, red. Earth is that little dot on the sky.

It is so far as to make us almost sure we will never touch it. And it is so close, as we perceive it with its boulders and dust and sand and pale sky though the eyes of the Mars rovers, as to allow us to recognize it. To understand it as a place where, yes, we can be.

Because the functions of any Mars settlement, be it made by near-future humans or by far-future post-humans or by the famous little green local cousins of humans are so, so, so completely obscure to us – answering to an unknown society in an unknown environment - as to become totally, completely, absolutely irrelevant. Therefore we can read the architectural space of such a place as pure art.

Because a special relationship can be created with the powerful landscape, in a way we can’t do anymore but in rare isolated projects far from our schizophrenic urban conglomerates.

The freedom to explore Mars is the freedom to explore your own inner world.

Because both are unknown, endless, full of surprises, immensely far and very close.

IMAGINARY JERUSALEM, 2

2010-04-27T23:41:00.001+02:00

IMAGINARY JERUSALEM, 1

2010-04-27T23:37:00.001+02:00

REAL MARS

2010-04-11T22:30:00.002+02:00

Real Mars, endless empty spaces.

Photos by NASA/JPL-Caltech

MARS ARCHITECTURES, 9

2010-04-11T22:04:00.000+02:00

MARS ARCHITECTURES, 7

2010-04-11T20:29:00.001+02:00

AIR CITY, 2

2010-04-11T20:28:00.000+02:00

AIR CITY, 1

2010-04-11T20:27:00.000+02:00

MARS ARCHITECTURES, 6

2010-04-11T20:18:00.002+02:00

MARS ARCHITECTURES, 5

2010-04-11T20:09:00.001+02:00

MARS ARCHITECTURES, 4

2010-04-11T20:08:00.000+02:00

MARS ARCHITECTURES, 3

2010-04-11T20:06:00.001+02:00

MARS ARCHITECTURES, 2

2010-04-11T19:48:00.004+02:00

MARS ARCHITECTURES, 1

2010-04-11T19:44:00.006+02:00

1. Architecture is always born from the constraints of function, site, budget and so on. These constraints are both its matrix and set its limits.

2. But often the actual quality of the resulting Architectural space or Geometry has little to do with the original function it is born to shelter. This is how you can literally find hidden underground utilities spaces looking like cathedrals – and the opposite.

3. Even more so as, during time, functions tend to become irrelevant and the same building can come to express a totally different reality.

Hence the drawings of the series MARS ARCHITECTURES. They ignore a couple of hundreds of years and a few million miles and go visit cities on Mars, to see what their Architecture/ Geometry, born from necessities totally beyond our imagination, may look like.

untitled, Milan 2009

2010-04-11T18:22:00.000+02:00

untitled, Milan 2009

2010-04-11T18:21:00.000+02:00

EMPTY SPACES

2010-04-11T17:22:00.000+02:00

...The effect of the Mars landscape is one of deep relief. It balances the immediate world, so saturated with stuff, that most westerners experience in the 21st century. The

humanity has been starting to suspect already that the place it takes on Earth is becoming dangerously prominent. The very sight of a place out of its reach (although abandoned packages and other spaceship scrap is already littering some areas) brings one back to the mythic times when our own planet was clean, infinite and its resources endless.

For architects, more than on anyone else, the relief effect may be even deeper. For anyone involved with the built environment the idea that its absolute opposite, a place free of anything, exists somehow in the range of our perception can only be refreshing.

Oh my God what a place to build something.

read the whole article at:

http://www.isdstudio.com/isd_empty%20spaces%20arhitectura%200407.pdf

untitled, Montreal 1999

2010-04-11T17:21:00.000+02:00

untitled, Montreal 1998

2010-04-11T17:20:00.001+02:00

untitled, Montreal 1999

2010-04-11T17:20:00.000+02:00

untitled, Montreal 1999

2010-03-11T22:18:00.000+01:00