GSAPP-UPENN courses 2013
Francois Roche, Ezio Blasetti, Stephan Henrich
TA, Luis Felipe Paris, Devin Jernigan
(banner picture above with RMIT/workshop2013/BKK)
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1) Upenn Course
We are in a situation to develop a museum of an Art-Cultural movement, the ‘Surrealism’ which is by nature incompatible with the statement of its Mind values, from psycho disorder to ‘pataphysic approach…
The passage of two juxtaposed realities, to play strategically the incoherencies between real and fiction, dream (nightmare) and logic…seems unreachable, un-manipulable ?
The tooling of the Architects are mainly oriented to a positivism instrumentation, dedicated to a domination of a situation…exclusively condemn to be stuck in the visible spectrum…at the opposite, to avoid to answer, meaning to avoid to symbolize what is not ‘representable’…we should accept to slipper in our ‘psychopathology’, our idiosyncrasy, with or without Mescaline (the psychedelic alkaloid of some Surrealist)…as a protocol of (un)knowledge, engaging a degree of individual and collective masochism, to abandon the preeminence of the territories from where we use to justify the position of knowledge, master-planned. We are condemn in this case to develop unpredictable, uncertain scenario, for a constantly mutating sequence of possibilities (add a morsel of a difference and the result slips out of control, shift the location for action and everything is different), as the ideal occasion to evaluate the fundamental gap between systems that base their development on scenarios and those that base their development on planning.
So, we navigated in a suspended time, balancing between improbable scenario applied to situations and probable technologies, with computation and machinism. The narrations, vector of design process are reevaluating – requestioning the ‘reason of being’ of their existence, without to deny the unreality of their permanencies, as an architecture able to die, programmed to die.
A surrealism museum is genetically a misunderstanding from where we could create the possibility of a manifesto about the illusion of its incarnation…as the choice to NOT BE… drifting in another zone…through a kind of ‘Malentendu’ (French word in the middle of Mishearing and Misunderstanding).
For something which self disqualifies its existence…. But at the condition to be formulated with an extreme manipulation of Science-Geometry-Computation-Substance-Robotic, which underlies the appearent logic of its intentional non reality.
FR/2013
a- Download Surrealism full manifesto (english) PDF / Manifesto 1 (5mo) + Manisfesto 2 (8mo) Click to Download topic / (from Winka)
b-Analyse on http://www.new-territories.com/laboratoriesteaching.htm /
References / Penal Colonies, Kafka / Bachelor Machine – F. Kielsler House / design strategy of unachivement – Hal Foster / Design & Crime / Museum Bunker denounciation – La dame de Changai / Orson Wells / Mirror demultiplication – Tim Burton / The Chocolate Factories – Bio plastic / Starch, Flax, Wheat, Corn… Cocoon Spray / Painting solidifying in the air – Hansel and Gretel / Grimm Brother Fairy Tales – Alice in Wonderland / Beyond the mirror / Mathematic illogic-absurdity – Dadaïsm / Check Wikipedia…http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dada Dali House-Museum / http://www.salvador-dali.org/
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2) Gsapp Course
(n)certainties The battle of impermanency Click to Download topic Click to Download BKK-Paris / LOG#27 (a critical approach between Paris and BKK) Gsapp / Fall 13
Title of the course Scenario-(n)certainties, the battle of impermanency (Opus 6.3) / Schizoid 2.0 / Z.O.O.
Preliminaries
The studio will be in the pursuit of the previous Opus (visible on http://www.new-territories.com/laboratoriesteaching.htm) Including materiality of the construction by ‘’computation and robotic process’’ developed more precisely in this following text and integrating a notion of “life span”, as a protocol of death and life, of “Eros and Thanatos”, this new Opus will be the occasion to develop from two novels (High-Rise by J G Ballard, and ZOO by James Patterson, Michael Ledwidge) scenarii and a design process which will stutter between the pathology of an architecture (High-Rise) including the multiple disorder of its inhabitants and the anarchic behavior of the other species from the nature (ZOO).
This antagonism, the dilemma, the confrontation (sympathy, empathy, antipathy) between human and animal…will be located in Bangkok, at the place of an existing ZOO (on top of a department store / see pictures).
A trip in BKK on one week (using the studio of New-Territories is planned between the 30thand the 4th of October) / Hotel on Chao Phraya River / http://www.riverviewbkk.com/
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Research / analyse on http://www.new-territories.com/laboratoriesteaching.htm /
-3 personnal selections on Machines + Design process + Scenario The 10th forbidden acts, thinking, references in Arch. field in a list Starting scenario /(title, text 20 lines, references, + strategy of research in physical experimentation + strategy of research computer process + robot references with a proto-idea on behavior).
The post need to be a pannel of tittle + text, a pannel of references (including text of explanation/analyse) Starting to check location in Bkk. Google map and earth and street view Pata zoo, bangkok
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On your page / On top your portrait 200x200pixels / 72 dpi+ the 10 forbidden references/notion/ideas + the 3 small pannels (200×300 pixel) you choose on last blog reseach on Scenario / Machines / Design with 3 lines of explanation and as last but not least Your 3 Pannels on Your scenario (1)title/text+(2)References+(3)Machines ideas, concepts, behavior
Conditions
-Reading or flying in the two novels, at the first week agenda.
-Developing a design scenario as a meeting point between species on High Rise syndrome, symptom, and potential of failure.
– Research within the media culture field about similar dialogue or “malentendu”
-Impermanency of the substances at the base of the emergences, as ‘’things which necrose’’…both in the movie and the structure…
-Uncertainty and unachievment (of each invidudual living part and collective structure), both in the movie and the structure…
-Local negotiation / no global control (on view, on air, on access…) for local adaptation, variability, as a “desirable machine”, both in the movie and the structure…
– Measurement and strategy of colonization (no panoptic references but XYZ positioning /GPS), both in the movie and the structure…
– Strategies of bio-mechanical robot (from low tech to high tech) / strategy of construction…even deconstruction / reconstruction -Neighborhood protocol (human animal swarm intelligences!)
Situation
Location in BKK …the site is able to affect the “construction process” or by the specificity of the situation (chemical/morphological/topographical) or by the possibilities to use recycling material of construction from the site (garbage, existing forces and conflicts, transitory substances, anthroposophic exchanges…) or by the (de)-organization of living species, sheltered by the structure. From the machinistic, passing by the chemical to the visceral, some of the processes that the entrant might consider in elaboration of this new Partial-Total Ecology are: screwed, chewed, shat, sweated, swallowed, vomited, pined, secreted, woven, knitted, extruded, staggered, scattered, coagulated, aggregated, welded, pinched, braided, spidernetted, bonsaied, crystallised, calcified, excreted, expanded, branched, pulped, smeared, coagulated, excavated, assembled and disassembled, bended, blended, and their machine picked, spiked, pinched, caressed, embraced, sliced, cut, laminated and loved…
Background
The high rise project was a maniac obsessive topic in the architecture field of this last 10 years. Students, teachers, young architects who pretended to book their posterity were addicted to plan and over design the last Abu Dabi, Dubai, Shanghai, High Rise superstructure, fascinated by the symbolism of the phallic symptom (even twisted, bent, parametrically decorated, with techno windmill on the top, and greenish alibi…). Could we re-evaluate this naïve “blind and deaf and mute period” by questioning the social-aesthetic condition of its own failure, in term of meanings, of “gestalt”, to de-infantilized the temptation to deny the condition of its production (from a kind of childish technoïd architect to a Petit Bourgeois-Upper-Middle Class client). At the opposite, could we negotiate the opening of a Pandora box, from where the design and the disease and the consciousness of the both are contingent, co-substantial? Far away from the gate community delusion, which illusionary seems to protect us against the “savagery” and the alienation of the system, the relationship-aesthetic of antagonisms and conflicts cannot be ignored anymore. We will touch a degree of “beaustrosity”, done by co-dependencies, co-relationship, and co-pathology between “Mal” and Animal. We will use narration, computation, 3D print, scenario…to finalize the work through a presentation which could borrow the format of an exhibition. Program of the “urban structure” A “politic” small community, both collective and individualistic, as a social and fictional experiment, utopian, dystopian, atopian, as a TROPISM
References
-Ballard, J. G., “High-Rise” (Flamingo Modern Classic), HarperCollins Publishers.
-James Patterson, Michael Ledwidge, “Zoo”, 416 pages, Grand Central Publishing
-“Twelves Monkeys”, Terry Guilliam / “La jetee”, Chris Marker
-“Hapnea”, fiction short movie by New-Territories https://vimeo.com/70678465 password/fisherman
-“The Accursed Share”, and “Story of the eye” of Georges Bataille ________________________________________