Architectonics and Noise
Inversion of Site Analysis: Uncertain Undulations through Place

"There is noise in the world before we raise our voices there,
before the crowd makes its grumbling cries. … There is meaning
in space before the meaning that signifies. Taking auguries is
believing in a world without men; inaugurating is paying
hommage to the real as such”
—Michel Serres, Rome

“Ventus autem est aeris fluens unda cum incerta motus
redundantia”
[The wind is a flowing wave of air, which overflows with uncertain
movement]
—Vitruvius, De Architectura

Image: Wolfgang Bittner, Gaze, 2007

This studio will explore an inversion of what is commonly understood as ‘site analysis’ in the design process—the attempt to discretize the noisy contingency of a particular location into its essential or relevant dimensions. This form of reductionism leads to the exclusion of everything deemed inessential, to the exclusion of noise.  Indeed, there must be reduction in order to render the abundance of information about the site manageable, but we believe such a reduction can operate through including more.  Although this kind of information overload is often handled intuitively by the designer, we believe that through exercise and practice, we can develop a certain mastership of reducing from abundance.  We propose to do this here by addressing the site climactically, understood in ancient Rome as the meteora. Like the wind that can be measured only probabilistically—much ‘blows in’ and creates a space, as Vitruvius says, which ‘overflows with uncertain movement’.  

We will work with several of these winds and give them architectonic names, calling them oikos, nomos, chronos, topos, inspired by Michel Serres’ philosophical work on the triad of the Vitruvian architectonic disposition: ichnographia (plan), scenographia (perspective), orthographia (elevation). The adoption of these terms will help us to abstract from their common use in the design process. Through exercises that will combine documentation on site in Vienna or on the Web, this abundance will be ‘reduced’ through iterative exercises that always produce more, but which we gradually index in textual, model or image form.  The final output will be the ‘reduction’ of this inverted site analysis into a single image and suggestive title, which, in a single gesture, evokes the climate of a particular location in Vienna.  The images will be presented at an exhibition organized in Winter 2018 for the university community.

Students should have a good command of English, a spirit of adventure, and no allergy to games.

The course will introduce and exercise a general framework for working with the multidimensionality of site. The studio will apply and practice this framework, both in the classroom and out in the city of Vienna. The studio will begin with an intensive week, which will introduce the main concepts for understanding the inversion of site analysis we propose and will already begin collecting information and taming it through a series of exercises.  Students will then continue to exercise and practice on their own and present their progress and findings in one meeting that will occur in November and a second in December.  A final week in February will be devoted to developing the final image and the evocative title and will be accompanied by two external guests with expertise in digital post-production and photography.

Start of the studio: 11. October 2017, 13h,  Zeichensaal 2,  Stiege 3, 3. Stock, Raum AC0324

The course will be held blocked:

• 11-16.10.2017, jeweils von 13:00 - 19:00 Uhr , im Zeichensaal 2,  Stiege 3, 3. Stock, Raum AC0324

• 20 - 22.11.2017 von 09:00 bis 13:00 (19:00) Uhr in der TVFA - Halle, Erzherzog -Johann- Platz 1

• 11.12.2017 von 13:00 - 19:00 Uhr im Zeichensaal 8, Stg. 3, 3. Stock; 12- 13.12. 2017 von 9:00 - 13:00 Uhr im Zeichensaal 8, Stg. 3, 3. Stock

• 19-23.02.2018 von 09:00 - 19:00 Uhr, ATTP, Wiedner Hauptstr. 7, im Hof, Stiege 2, 1. Stock

The final delivery will be an individual project on Inversion of Site Analysis:

One carefully crafted image (a collage, a photo-montage, a render, a photograph) with an evocative title.

The images will be presented at an exhibition organized in Winter 2018 for the university community.