Back to Reality. Architecture and the World of Fantasy (original) (raw)
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ACSA West Central Regional Meeting, Ball State University, October 24-26, 2003 (Muncie, Indiana), 2003
Architecture may be built for practical purposes, such as shelter against inclemency – but in fact, it is a harbinger of the fantastic. Architecture is at once distinguished from and connected to the world beyond – fusing together divisions between wish and reality. Architecture acts as a dual-sided cast between us and the world, capturing the patterns and cooperative forces within the universe and interlacing them with our psyche – becoming a fantastic representation of a humane cosmos. Core to this essay is the belief that in order to grasp at any meaning at all, a person must first weave together a universe of meaning. Furthermore, fantasy sets forth a system of meaningful beliefs likened to a set of transparent films, interwoven and plied into the fabric of reality so as to offer coherence and recognizable consistency to what we intuit as cosmically relevant. Through the power of our imagination, a universe of meaning is made visible by the fantastic (eidolon) – this notion pervades all religion, all myth, and underpins all architecture that seeks more than mimetic functionalism or pure formalism. This essay considers acts of architecture as weaving for us a meaningful image of the cosmic (building a microcosm or fashioning a mandala). Humans are considered cooperative beings that by way of the alchemical and fantastic may, in fact, assist in the effulgence and enrichment of reality – a role fantasy shares with architecture.
Architecture and Psychoanalysis: Fantasy and Construction
2013
Architectural practice does not take place in a void. It is inscribed into a historical continuum, it is integrated into a social, cultural and intellectual milieu, it takes form in a code of construction. And it derives its inspiration, first and foremost, from the psyche of the architect who creatively works out a solution. The core of architectural creation is imagination and the passion of the architecturing subject. Tackling this aspect, Nikos Sideris develops a cohesive view: Architecture is the fantasy of the architect formulated in the language of construction. After an enlightening presentation of the concept of fantasy, the logic of architectural creation and the work of eminent architects are thoroughly examined with the help of these conceptual tools. The result is a broad account of architectural practice centered at, and orbiting around, the encounter with the Other. A work of knowledge and affection, this book constitutes a radically original proposition in the international process of encounter between two major aspects of the human spirit, as well as a singular contribution to the transition from an architecture of need to an architecture of desire.
More Than Just a Fantasy: Literary Fantasy as an Architectural Tool
2021
Fantasy literature world building can suggest and support alternative paths for architectural practice using the super stimuli of fantasy “otherworlds” to promote and create more “placed” spaces and improve the wellbeing of communities. According to Edward Relph, the United States has had an issue with “placelessness” since the 1950’s, where building typologies are nationally distributed and rarely localized. Literary Fantasy has created worlds so desirable that they have permeated into a multi-billion dollar industry that reaches past literature, making the consumption of fictional worlds a central behavior in modern societies. The cultural importance and success of the genre is due largely to the importance of world building in that genre’s success, as imaginary worlds act as super stimuli, tapping into the human’s interest for unfamiliar environments according to cognitive scientists Dubourg et al. The speculative fiction genre requires a separation from our world, resulting in d...
Architecture and the Virtual is a study of architecture as it is reflected in the work of seven contemporary artists, working with the tools of our post-digital age. The book maps the convergence of virtual space and contemporary conceptual art and is an anthropological exploration of artists who deal with transformable space and work through analog means of image production. Marta Jecu builds her inquiry around interviews with artists and curators in order to explore how these works create the experience of the virtual in architecture. Performativity and neo-conceptualism play important roles in this process and in the efficiency with which these works act in the social space.
Utopian Architectures and the dictatorship of the imaginary
The paper describes a multi-author research path emerged in-between the general discussion taking place on the AHA mailing-list, and later formally detailed. The focal node of the dialogue is an "architectural" vision of the strategies of conflict and critique. Analisys is multidirectional and multidisciplinary. Starting from the idea of the clash among languages and codes that is embodied in education practices and in the strategies for production and dissemination of imaginaries, it continues by describing the cultural and education strategies that contribute in defining the "design" (and the role of the "designer") as a tool for authority, operating between linited visions, utopias and desire. The discussion, sythesized and formalized in the text, ends by suggesting possible scenarios for the education practices that better seem to embody the more effective reaction and critique models, also describing nomadic and recombinant scenarios narrated under the form of an evolution of the "conference". The work is "open/emergent", and it will be implemented as a multiple-voice digital platform right after the conference, using an innovative visualization system creating a parallel between the visions of architectural design and information architectural design. The platform will be used during the presentation, and it will be released with a GPL2 license.
2019
Architecture and the Virtual is a study of architecture as it is reflected in the work of seven contemporary artists, working with the tools of our post-digital age. The book maps the convergence of virtual space and contemporary conceptual art and is an anthropological exploration of artists who deal with transformable space and work through analog means of image production. Marta Jecu builds her inquiry around interviews with artists and curators in order to explore how these works create the experience of the virtual in architecture. Performativity and neo-conceptualism play important roles in this process and in the efficiency with which these works act in the social space.
Approaching the virtual - A human centred architecture
2017
Humans, on a fundamental level, live not to survive but to explore, to gather knowledge and ask questions about ourselves and the world. Their development is as part of a habitat; they grow from it and have direct influence over it, in an emerging vortex of becoming. When the territory is known, when everything is interconnected, and there is no outside left to explore, to imagine, the vortex stagnates into a circle of imitation, into simulacra. Fortunately, this absolute condition is not part of the nature of reality. There is always a realm of the undiscovered, the unthought, the source of all emergence and becoming, called the virtual. Architects, as humans who shape and manipulate habitats, must first of all be aware of the limitations and aspirations of the human nature, of themselves and the others who inhabit architecture. Considering the intertwined bond between human and habitat, architects have the role of exposing us to the edge of the virtual, to incide external forces and invite them into our perception, and to uncover the outside within the apparently known territory, arousing the multiplicity of the human condition. Architecture is to be under constant interrogation to adjust to and mediate our becoming. While it shelters the body, it also needs to provoke it, to confront it with exterior forces, with whimsical and imaginative worlds. To keep itself emergent, architecture has to situate itself at the boundary, exposed to other disciplines and to the transformations taking place in the layers of the actual. A branch of architecture which inherently lives on the edge is virtual architecture. It embodies different mediums, drawing, text, film, digital, to create a habitat performed through the imagination of its visitors. Virtual architecture has the potential of unbounded critical experimentation, turning the perspective back on the reflection of what reality and the human truly are. This thesis explores human-centred architecture at a fundamental level, searching for the ways our habitat can enable the unexpected. I examine the prospect of an architecture for the virtual in the current fabric of the actual, taking advantage of the fluidity and nomadism of the digitised culture. I analyse the intimate relation humans have with the environment, the factors which influence our perception of space and our ability to affect the world around us. The thesis culminates into an examination of architecture at the limit between physical and digital, employing virtual reality and motion sensing input devices to reflect on the fluid boundary between human and habitat. I see architecture as a celebration, as a mediator between us and the world to live fully, passionately, to rediscover the vigour of our being, to dream and imagine, to operate at the edge.
In Pursuit of Architecture Fiction
Journal of Architecture and Urbanism, 2011
This essay examines the role of architecture fiction and ecstatic realism as strategies for architects working within a protracted period of economic collapse. It reviews the history of the concept of architecture fiction and explores Werner Herzog's idea of ecstatic realism as a means of understanding what the possibilities are for the interaction of art and architecture. Through a series of examples, I explore the development of innovative ways of interpreting the world.
Architectural Representation between Imagination and Revelation
Journal of Civil Engineering and Architecture, 2017
This paper is born from the intimate belief that solutions for the future are to be found in the past. No transformation is irreversible enough to destroy the experiences of the past, unified as a core in tradition. Those come into light whenev r the proper conditions are created. From the point of view of architecture, representation is the basis for the transmission of knowledge, ideas, feelings, etc. The method of the paper is to put in antithesis two concepts which define the present world of representation: real (associated to transcendent revelation) and virtual (understood as result of human imagination). An itinerary through the philosophy of Plato and Plotin, ancient Greek, Byzantine, Gothic architecture, etc., is proposed, until encountering the moment of the death of revelation and the birth of the arbitrary, which is connected to the supremacy of the image. This journey through aesthetic conceptions brought major changes in art and society during the centuries. Recuperation of the involvement of all human senses into perception of space and understanding of the built environment of life as revelation, and not as a simple interface of images, may lead now to a revolution of urban spirit, based on a relationship with the city inspired from the values promoted by Socrates and later developed into Christianity, that proved their permanence across the millenniums.
Virtual as an Aesthetic Medium for Architectural Ideation
2019
Conventionally, architects have relied on qualities of elements such as materiality, light, solids and voids, etc. to break out of the static nature of space and enhance the way users experience and perceive architecture. Even though some of these elements and methods helped create more dynamic spaces, architecture is still bound by conventional constraints of the discipline. With the introduction of technologies such as Augmented Reality (AR), it is becoming easier to blend digital, and physical realities, and create new types of spatial qualities and experiences, especially when it is combined with Virtual Reality (VR) early in the design process. Even though these emerging technologies cannot replace the primary and conventional qualitative elements in architecture, they can be used to supplement and enhance the experience and qualities architecture provides. To explore how AR can enhance the way architecture is experienced and perceived, and how VR can be used to enhance the eff...