The course aims to think about programs as generators of specific
situations that can come and go real or force a reading of spatial and
material existing conditions which at a given time crystallize in these
architectures. The programs are programmatic islands. They can "be"
when conditions favour their visibility.
Occurs like in those ghost islands which are on the maps but that
very few, if any, has been able to visit. We do not know if they really
exist. Remember them. Those pieces of land anchored to the seabed that
were and are no longer. Or that they were not and are now. Islands
appear and disappear. Sometimes consisted then not listed. Some you'll
never be able to see and others have seen. Islands that can move,
change their location. That materialize and dematerialize. The new
ones. The agglomerations of floating trash. The old ones, the ones you
see shining in the distance and you can not land on them because when
you try to get closer, they vanish on the horizon. Large or small.
Kiribati Island. Tuvalu. Lincoln Island. San Borondón. Isla Bermeja.
Sandy. A few days ago the newspaper announced the disappearance of
Sandy Island in the South Pacific. It measured 15 miles long by 3 miles
wide and supposedly belonged to France. The research vessel RV Southern
Surveyor, a vessel from the Australian Hydrographic Service, tried to
get there for the first time without actually detecting it, even when
they placed on the exact coordinates. The seabed remained at the depth
of 1400 meters. No trace of any particularity. Still remains on the
maps. Why do islands disappear or appear? Which conditions, -physical
or intelligent- make an island a vanishing place? They are perfect or
precise, the perimeter of an island is perfect because only saying
"island" we know that is limited, whereas it is not precise because it
is particular, are they invented or discovered?
In the same way we think of programs, architectures, materials,
which at one time, in one place, building, program, or existing
uncontrolled environment, for some specific conditions we are able to
identify, imagine, design and control, they materialize and become
independent architectures. But before that, or for a while after the
programmed conditions disappear, they disappear again. Do not exist
again. We think about real bodies within them crystallize, with no
previous support, small revitalizing architectures. We will give
specific places of work and the student must schedule reactions which
precipitate the controlled appearance of these architectures. He or she
would imagine programs, materials, physical modifications on the
existing that will support what will emerge.
Architecture does not need fixed supports to be generated. No need
tectonics but notification and survival conditions. It can arise at any
point, although today is occupied by something else, by an architecture
or a black hole. The architecture is precipitated into controlled
reactions, the project is the procedure of these controlled and
programmed chemical reactions. We should keep in mind that users, when
to enter and interact with a space, are precisely the main reactive we
will work with. Nothing should be fixed; we must turn stable objects
into events, physical accidents into actions, data into probabilities.
It is fascinating to see that the most stable in the world, the very
physical support on which we operate, may be a fiction. And that the
world of reality that we believe immutable, is quite fickle and unreal
at will.
The course syllabus proposes the development of a complex and
intermittent program to build a new and different spatial situation at
certain times, or with certain environmental conditions within an
actual pre- existing architectural context. We try an architecture in
an environment. The working group will analyze the given environments
on which it is possible to work, then choose the specific location and
determine the programs, its users and the timetable in which the
project will become real. The group should define programmatically and
formally, to then proceed to its structural, material and constructive
definition. The program must meet the condition that its built surface
must be less than or equal to 160 square metres.
The final work will consist of a graphical document, a plant in
DIN-A00 (double DIN-A0) to define material and construction aspects of
the project with great precision, and a DIN-A1 model, which will add
spatial and experiential conditions otherwise limited in paper
format.
Work will be performed by teams of three people, unknown to each
other, one for each school or department involved in this semester:
(The ETSAM-UPM Madrid, Democritus University of Thrace.