Materialisering. Materializing. Matilda Persson Handledare/ Supervisor Examinator/ Examiner Ulrika Knagenheilm-Karlsson & Veronica Bröderman Skeppe Per Fransson Examensarbete inom arkitektur, avancerad nivå 30 hp Degree Project in Architecture, Second Level 30 credits 25 maj 2018
This is a bathhouse. This is a place to wash of the dirt of the outside world. If we are washing off the outside world, what are we taking in instead? This place is striving to evoke an atmosphere. The irregular volumes, the perforated walls and the masked materials all contribute to the same other worldly expression. This is a place of our world, but it is a scrambled version; new scales are discovered, new textures and new sensations encountered. Like I said, this is a place to wash of the outside world; the dirt, the troubles and the expectations. It is a place for young to meet old, a place for the digital to meet the analogue and a place for a tale to meet reality. Fairy tales have always been able to hold people captive. We are intrigued by their unique mystery and charm. They are often familiar, keeping the same elements and form. This mingled homely familiarity and dark mystery is a special thing, and as I began my thesis I decided to post the question: Can architecture hold the same atmospheric qualities as a tale? To specify my search and what kind of tale and atmosphere I was searching for I decided to start looking at simple children s tales, they seemed to me the closest to that elusive magical substance, with their simple but accurate language and beautiful illustrations. Bland tomtar och troll or Among gnomes and trolls are a collection of folk tales and where first published in 1907. The stories where famously illustrated by John Bauer and are classics by Swedish standards. I started my investigation into the stories by reading and analysing. I decided to strip away the characters and actions of the tales leaving only the environment. I made three films, based on three stories; The boy that was never afraid, The tale of the princess Cottongrass and the elk Leap and lastly The walk of innocence. The films where scrambled versions of John Bauer s images intertwined with the basic storyline of each tale. It changed the stationary images of Bauer into a journey of places, the sequence of light and the materiality of Bauer. These where the things I wanted to carry through into my project. These images of Bauer hold a special atmosphere, the colours and the stuff are so important. I searched for a way to keep these things and started playing around with what could be done. I started by examining the diorama. A frozen moment of environment. What intrigued me was the mix of flat surfaces and volumetric objects. Also, the realness off the floor with the artificial sky and forest around. I started to investigate this. The investigation leads me into the computer to produce an artificial object related to John Bauer. This also lead me to the text For Real by Ellie Abrons. These concepts of different varia- tions of realness was not only intriguing to me but also to Abrons. The text states that we live in a post digital world where the presence of technology can be assumed. This means we should start thinking of digitally produced things as their own entities, not as products to replicate something real. That scanning a rock and producing the same qualities through technology isn t a fake rock but a new rock. We just need to broaden the term. This approach to materiality does not value the authentic material like the modernists did but rather hones in on the expressiveness of the material. It neutralizes moral indignation and instead sponsors playfulness. It is in this vein I have let the original material, the Bauer material and the new material intermix and create palettes to show of this unique quality. To create my new material and object I wanted to let the Bauer image inform the shape of the object, I used a process of displacement. It starts by taking a volume and draping it in the image of your choosing. Then the image is displaces boiled down to light and dark and the volumes surface is offset one way for light and another for dark. Finally, the object is again draped in the image. This is a method that worked well to create a texture and an expression, nut not necessarily volumes, because you need to start with an object to drape for any result to manifest itself. So to create volumes I used spheres and cubes and intersected them. I then extracted only the parts that was over lapping and let these new volumes be my base line for architectural form. These new volumes held qualities of the cube and the sphere, creating a meeting between a sharp form and a soft one, a rational straight and a warm curve. Eventually I started making the massing, eventually complementing my three tales with three textures, three volumes and three different meeting with ground.
For Real. In this text Aborns starts by presenting her own largest reference, Susan Sontag and her Notes of Camp (1964). Here Sontag presents her concept of camp which represent a sensibility or taste that is wholly aesthetic, embracing the artifice and elevates style over content. Camp is humours, enjoyable and full if exaggeration. Some examples of works with qualities of camp is; Tiffany lamps, The brown derby restaurant on sunset boulevard in LA and most things art nouveau. The next important concept in this text is the concept of postdigital materiality. Postdigital not meaning the time after the digital but rather the time in witch the digital in no longer a novelty and should be assumed in most parts of life. So, the postdigital materiality is the kind of materiality that arises in the postdigital. This materiality is based on the though that the digital is now considered as real as real materials. The digital martials should not be considered fake or somehow lesser than physical materials. The qualities associated with postdigital materiality is born from the strange and sometimes even uncanny air that emerge from will full and playful manipulation of material on the physical and digital plane. The project Another rock is made by the office T+E+A+M and Adam Fure and concerns a rock. The original rock was then 3D-scanned into a computer and digitally manipulated before being 3D-printed. This results in another rock, the project wants to discuss the realness of this new rock and Aborns argue that this is not a representation of the same rock any longer it is now a new rock, another rock. Aborns then sets up for pints for the new concept she is proposing, Camp Materiality: 1. Camp materiality is intrinsically artificial, it doesn t value the natu ral state of things, something synthetic or fake is just as valuable. Camp materiality rejects attempts at replication and embraces the artifice and theatricality of post digital aesthetic practise where multiple material ontologies freely mix. 2. It is mannerist, it is exaggerated in order to assert itself as a style. Textures are over articulated, colours oversaturated. It doesn t simply affirm, instead tries to push beyond to something that destabilizers and projects. 3. It is ardently humours, assuming a position of sincerity, but its penchant for the uncanny and the absurd allows it to operate with humour while remaining earnest. 4. It is pluralist. Instead of either/or it favours both/ and, Making room from multiplicity and pluralism. It rejects binary thinking. The definition of collectively is not utopian or uniform. The massiveness of the pluralist movement is unavoidable, rife with contradictions as we struggle with opportumism/narcissism/definance/appropriation/conformism/ exploitation. There is agency in being pleasurable and enjoyable. Postdigital Materiality combats the cynical and ironic of millennial culture with playfulness and humour. It seeks engagement and impact, not through exclusivity or elitism, but through exaggeration, aesthetic expression and images. It uses these aesthetic images and forms to make us rethink. It muddles and frustrates the constructed binary of digital abstraction and physical realness and, in this new concoction, a world of critical reflection and aesthetic imagination is revealed.