Dip Unit 17 Yr 4:Tom Elliott, Robert Lunn, Brian Macken, Jack Pannell, Joshua Scott, James Stevens, Michiko Sumi, Dandi Zhang. Yr5: David Dickson, Suzanne Gaballa, Christian Holm, Catherine Irvine, Emily Lewith, Jakob Lund.
The Absence of the Architectural Object Today we take it for granted that we should produce images as part of the process of designing a building and these images usually depict the building as an object. But it is not clear that buildings can be experienced either as images or as objects. Precisely the effort of design often serves to underline the absence of the architectural object, the impossibility of fully imagining it and the inadequacy of any kind of portrayal. The everyday perception of a building, on the other hand, gradually renders it as indifferent and eventually absent. Although the absence of the architectural object means the absence of its total image, architecture insists to function through a saturated culture of images. Buildings are inspired, copied, produced, propagated and consumed via the image. What would happen if we had no access to the plethora of images that surround us? What if photography was unknown to us? History tells us about iconoclastic periods of image destruction. Can such events be seen in anyway as potentially liberating from established conventions? What would architecture be in a culture in which all images are not used? Many thanks to Adam Cole, Alis Fadzil and Lee Halligan.
Niall McLaughlin and Yeoryia Manolopoulou
Show Cat 08.indd 116
Above: Christian Holm. Facing page top to bottom: David Dickson, Suzanne Gaballa, Jakob Lund.
12/6/08 17:31:17