Project Book Drawing Architecture II - Maxime

PROJECTBOOK Drawing Architecture II 2020-2021 Maxime Berets

WEEK 1-4

Reference: Dogville(film), set consists of few objects that define a household. Through semiotics we define different houses and spaces with only limited pointers to existance of these spaces.

‘So simple, the appearance of night in a room full of strangers, the maze of hallways wandered as in films, the fracturing of bodies from darkness into light, sounds of plane engines easing into the distance’. (diary David Wojnarowicz, The Lonely City)

David Wojnarowicz, Arthur Rimbaud in New York (1978-1979)

Antony Gormley, Blind Light (2007)

WEEK 5

Constant Nieuwenhuys, New Babylon (1961)

mapping revolving swirling kinetic pillars become walls walls become pillars

inside enclosed walls hint of light

Rodchenko's Construction No 108.

WEEK 6

Testing models: shadowplay and monochrome colours

WEEK 7

Metropolis, 1927

Metropolis, 1927

Lรกszlรณ Moholy-Nagy, Light Display: Black-White-Grey, 1930

test on rotating model

WEEK 8

Water Towers 1972–2009, Estate of Bernd Becher & Hilla Becher

WEEK 9 Performative Architecture The scale of the watertower doesn’t fit the original meaning of the 1-minute video. The scale is too big and loses the quality that the ‘umbrella’ structure had. This week, I worked on a bigger drawing, inspired by the stills of the 1-minute video. As the drawing progressed, it started to look more like a scenographic space. Stagedesign is something that caught my interest from the beginning on, and wanted to involve in my design. So far, my process has contained a search towards a translation of the performativity that the 1-min video contained. The difficulty was presenting that into a space, rather than object(search for scale?). Within the drawing however, I felt closer and more conscious than before about what this space actually contains. Can architecture present itself as a performance?

Aelita (Aelita: Queen of Mars), Dir. Yakov Protazanov, 1924

Eileen Mayo, 1927

Marcel L’Herbier, 1924 (stage design by Robert Mallet-Stevens

WEEK 10 This week I further investigated the performativity of the space in the previous drawing. Theater of Objects became an important reference in understanding how objects can form a protagonist and replace a human actor. Lots of avant-garde experiments were done concerning this subject, especially the film Ballet Mécanique (1924) is very relevant in my research. Where the previous drawing contains a lot of layering in backgrounds, I now tried to view the space in a different perspective. I believe there’s a visible backside to the stage, maybe it’s rotating? The moving elements(the turning wheels) are related to each other in movement.

In this sense, the space in itself forms a kinetic sculpture that one can enter and interact with, or let it interact by itself.

Fernand Léger, Ballet Mécanique (1924)

Fernand Léger, Ballet Mécanique (1924)

“This becomes apparent in Notes on the Theatre, written circa 1916.14 Here, Depero imagined the transformations of the dancer as events taking place within a simultaneously changing environment. He wanted to abolish fixed scenic architecture and replace it with a multi-level, multi-perspective, changeable stage set. Wings and backdrops were to turn on pivots; ceilings would move up and down; pieces of furniture would chase each other or the dancers.”

FORTUNATO DEPERO AND THE THEATRE, Günter Berghaus (2019)

Fortunato Depero, “Diavoli a caucciù” [Little Rubber Devils], 1919.

WEEK 11 Working title: Mechanical Marionettes This drawing shows a different perspective of the stage; the backside. I wanted to draw inspiration from how in original theater set up you have the wings on the side of the stage. Seeing the umbrella as a performative aspect of the space, I started thinking that the umbrellas could be waiting in the wings. Waiting to be activated and to move like a marionette towards the front. In order for the umbrella to move up front, the original stage-backdrop also has to make way for the umbrella to pass. These movements in itself form already the action of the theater. Like the previous drawings, there’s an absence of man, as if the components of the theater activate themselves into play.

WEEK 12 Do androids dream of electric sheep Are gears light on their feet when they dance Each individual drawing will be titled as movements in a dance

Relevé

Tourné

Sauté

Grande JetĂŠ

Are gears light on their feet when they dance Grande JetĂŠ is the final in the series of drawings, where the different frames are all assembled. With the umbrellas in mid-motion, we find ourselves between the interchanging stage-set. To conclude my work, I would like to refer to Notes on the Theatre, written by Fortunato Depero; where he imagined the transformations of the dancer as events taking place within a simultaneously changing environment. These observations have been the focal point within all my drawings.

In this space, the architecture that would normally serve as backstage, and in that way would normally serve the object we ought to be the protagonist, now becomes the subject of focus. I tried to give expression to mobility and the magic sense of transformation as well as our mechanical, artificial sensibility.

I eliminated any human presence, in order for the mechanical constructions to present themselves in an allusive way as engaged bodies.

Finally, this is the exploration of performative architecture through the use of mechanization, in which inanimate objects take on a sort of life.

JURY

After the final crit I decided to redraw ‘Sauté’ to sharpen the series of drawings as different performances om the stage.

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