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As children after modernism we have learned to deliberately dislocate and abstract historical associations in favour of an industrial vocabulary, celebrating concepts of objectifying abstraction. If we do however engage with historical tradition such as in Ruskin’s oeuvre we find ourselves locked into a taxonomy of styles, isolated from a present and contemporary discourse. Even Ruskin eventually recognises his stylistic legacy of the Pseudo-Gothic to have resulted, as he describes, “in an accursed Frankenstein monster of my own making” [3]. As a conduit into modes of reading the city as part of a cumulative memory, we (Architecture Project) propose a critical attitude towards the representational tools by which we design, analyse and describe urban space, both in practice and education. More in particular how classical representational tools (i.e. plan, section, elevation), in line with architectural professional codes, combined with modes of phenomenological reading through autographic media, aim to install its users ‘remembrance’. In this article, I seek to unpack the need to juxtapose material ideas and concepts against layers of historical and social information when we, as designers, work within an urban fabric. Through the commentary of a selection of our drawings, this is explained as a process of inclusion, aiming to incorporate a multitude of contextual information, seen and unseen, particular to a site and across different timeframes. Important here is that spatial compositions, embracing memorial and monumental values, do hold qualities of ‘strangeness’ and stand explicitly different against their material setting. As such, any iconic linkage is avoided, supporting the driving principle of dislocating form from its conventionally associated meaning or symbolic value, without denying the presence of such values [4]. no isbn ispartof: THE MEDIATED CITY CONFERENCE ispartof: THE MEDIATED CITY CONFERENCE location:London date:1 Apr - 3 Apr 2014 status: published |
