Non-place and the acceptance of the scantiness of reality

The schizophrenia of peripheral urban conditions might be seen as related to the formation of a new ontological notion of space that we still perceive and express in a partial and incoherent way, or that we might not be totally aware of. The growth of chaos and disorder , considered as an entropical phenomenon, no longer is to be seen as a destruction of order. It is a potential source of a new kind of contemporary attitude and construction, of an activity that transforms the multitude of the components of a scanty system in a novel scanty totality containing its own richness, coherency , and identity. The price for the existence of a collective evolution is a production of permanent entropy: the creation of a new "order", which is distant from "equilibrium", is to be found through a generative exploration of disorder. The present work aims to transform this latent energy into an urban form. -- [ strategy]: There are several ways of constructing a work. One is by making a system to make decisions, another is by making decisions at each step. This experiment unifies them in a thinking/ design process evolving from a system of abstractions derived from existent conditions to a further exploration of their spatial potentials. The ideas informing the system become the content of the work. The area of Paris-Nanterre west of La Defense is the place for those ideas to be tested and spatially formalized . -- [construction]: A simple vocabulary of lines and shapes devises a system free from associations with previous methodologies and design processes. It generates a series of object- sys t ems that belie traditional representations and understandings of physical space, informing an alternative strategy at urban scale through a broad exploitation of its geometrical possibilities in the way they can be seen, interpreted, combined, shaped, and re- shaped. The strategy is then open to three- dimensional interpretation. -- [ideas]: The ideas informing the strategy are a mean of getting away from an inclusive formalization of the architectural result, from the idea of form as an end, and rather to use form as a means: they are to simultaneously explain the ontological and the processual interpretation of non-place space; they aim to create an interdependence of language and image, and create a narrative mirroring the scantiness of reality i n interdependence with the different stages of the visual progression in the making of two and three-dimensional space. -- [result]: The physical outcome becomes a three-dimensional expression of an idea and of its generative process.

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dept. of Architecture

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

1996

Author dc:creator

• Evangelisti, Gabriele

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• William L. Porter.

• Architecture

Statement dc:rights

• M.I.T. theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/10571

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/10571