unit h - lume materiale

"where stones change themselves in light through architecture, and architecture exists because of light"

Unit H seeks to explore an architecture of the senses; an architecture of human experience that examines the inner language of buildings, of perception, dreams and imagination.

We are interested in exploring the intangible within the tangible, the atmospheric and ephemeral within the tactile and tectonic.

The focus of our investigation is the city of Venice and its dwindling inhabitants. We explore the notion of Venice as a built landscape, a tapestry of interwoven layers, containing monumental past architectures, but also everyday lives and domestic rituals.

The unit encourages the study of processes of use within an architectural experience that may begin to suggest an immaterial/intangible architecture within built form. This year the unit focused on the notion of the embodiment of light within built form and in particular the palpable presence of Venetian light referred to as Lume Materiale.

Aperture: domestic space / public space

Housing is not only the most intimate architecture, but as the major part of a city’s buildings, also forms its public spaces. It is where the occupants of all the city’s various spaces go home.

We started the year by exploring the relationship between domestic and public spaces, between the architecture that is occupied ‘at home’ and the architecture we think of as the city.

The first project investigated ideas of drawing and representation in describing a known domestic space and an associated public space. Our starting inspiration was St Jerome in his Study, by Antonello da Messina, and the essay on the painting by Georges Perec, in Species of Spaces and Other Pieces.

axonometric of room, approach to room and park views, by Nenad Djordjevic

Exposure: Virtual Venice

The second project used narratives found in literature, film, and painting, to construct an imagined architecture: a Virtual Venice. Selected chapters from Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino inspired the proposals of virtual or imagined room and street. The Marco Frascari essay Lume Materiale gave an introduction to qualities of light and materiality specific to Venice. Between these evocative dual guides - literary and analytical - lies the space of exploration, the city of the imagination. Focusing on a single room and street provoked an interest in everyday processes and the possibilities of inhabitation.

Polo: ‘Sire, now I have told you about all the cities I know.’ ‘There is still one of which you never speak.’ Marco Polo bowed his head. ‘Venice,’ the Khan said. Marco smiled. ‘What else do you believe I have been talking to you about?’ The emperor did not turn a hair. ‘And yet I have never heard you mention that name.’ And Polo said ‘Every time I describe a city I am saying something about Venice.’
Italo Calvino, Invisible Cities.

suspended rooms for an artist - composite photograms by Andriani Plessa

Buildings are used as a popular stage. They are divided into innumerable, simultaneously animated theatres. Balcony, courtyard, window, gateway, staircase, roof are at the same time stage and boxes. Here, too, there is interpenetration of day and night, noise and peace, outer light and inner darkness, street and home.
Walter Benjamin, Naples, from One-way Street, and other writings.

collages (top to bottom) fisherman's shelter by Nenad Djordjevic, astronomer and fishermen’s huts by Ramsey Yassa, theatrical street by Piotr Skrzycki

hanging streets - model by Charanpal Matharu

Survey: The Campi of Venice

We studied the campi of Venice with an interest in the duality between the city’s buildings and the spaces between them, and between the drawn physical survey and the study of temporal occupation. Spending time sitting, pacing, eating, watching, measuring the campi, as shadows recede and lengthen.

Each study contains both orthogonal drawings based on physical survey - plan, elevation and section, including material and detail observations, and time-based study of occupation and use - film-based, photographic, drawn, mapped or otherwise surveyed.

top to bottom: Campo San Giacomo da l’Orio - composite film by Wilson Lam, Paul Foo and Faz Patel,
Rialto by Marios Aphram, Campo Santa Margherita by Piotr Skrzycki

top to bottom: Campo de la Madonna de l’Orto by Angelaine Doherty,
Campo San Polo by Charanpal Matharu

Site survey

The main project was the design of housing, public space, and a third chosen element, forming a new piece of the city.

The sites are situated on either side of the Piazzale Roma; gateway to Venice when approaching by road and linked by a prominent new footbridge over the Grand Canal to the railway station. The sites’ locations on the overlapping zone between mainland and island, with the instantly recognisable Venice of the Grand Canal to one side and bus station and multi-storey carparks to the other, means that they tolerate a range of approaches to the problem of how to provide for a Venetian population that is slowly being displaced from the city.

Surveys of the proposal sites established personal interests and lines of investigation with fields of study extending outwards into the city.

top to bottom: site plan by Marios J Aphram, study of Venetian stairs by Miha Mihovec,
site analysis by Nenad Djordjevic, land and water maps by Ioannis Dedes, site material study by Marios Lampouras

Projection: Housing and Public Space

Lives of Spaces

In working through the proposals each student carried out a series of responses to the question of how to create a new piece of the city. Successive pieces of drawing and models combine, as in a film-based montage.

The simultaneous processes of designing a single room for the chosen site and setting out strategic intentions, allowed an instinctive response to the site - attempting to articulate ideas about views, materiality, quality of space and light, while considering how to respond to contemporary needs and provide an armature for future occupation.

Film-based pieces were made to explore in detail the lives of spaces, temporal scales, and to suggest narratives of use contained within the proposals.

"Architecture exists, like cinema, in the dimension of time and movement. One conceives and reads a building in terms of sequences. To erect a building is to predict and seek effects of contrast and linkage through which one passes... In the continuous shot/sequence that a building is, the architect works with cuts and edits, framings and openings... I like to work with a depth of field, reading space in terms of its thickness. Hence the superimposition of different screens, planes legible from obligatory points of passage which are to be found in all my buildings"
Jean Nouvel.