Advanced Studio Landscape (en)

This semester we seek to navigate through the landscapes of our imagination and our daydreams,
to be able to choose and conceive what must be the place. A site that will condition our
work mirrored by the knowledge of our perception. We will start by asking ourselves questions
regarding perception and what research and investigation and knowledge of perception might
mean for an architect—for us.
Robert Irwin is a highly respected American artist who has worked on numerous important
landscape projects and architectural interventions which he considers site conditioned work. We
will ponder upon Irwin’s Notes Toward a Model¹ — an interesting theory of perception,
conception, of form and formalism.

Gaston Bachelard’s Poetics of Space² is another source that we will use for understanding the
poetic terminology of space from a philosophical side. Simultaneously and most importantly, we
will work with various excerpts of texts or manifestos that are authored by visionary
architects—our dramatis personae—diving into their visionary world and body of work,
translating ideas and reflections as inspirational material that could be transferred and inscribed
into our own projects.
Our main focus however, lies in finding the place, writing an architectural program conditioned
by this very site. Transcending our program from paper to building according to our brief and
assignment.

(scenario — platonic dialogue)

PHAIDROS
Aber im Ernst, Sokrates, was hättest du getan als
Architekt?
SOKRATES
Was weiss ich?… Ich sehe nur, wie ich ungefähr
meine Gedanken gelenkt haben würde.
PHAIDROS
Lenke sie nun wenigstens bis an die Schwelle des
Gebäudes, das du nicht gebaut hast.³

Assignment /Aim:
Measure between your manifesto/brief and impersonation/dramatis personae and establish a
program questioning the census of the domestic. Observe and transcribe your quotes at hand
into architectural programs. Apply Paper Architecture and the seemingly unbuildable and bring
it to built form.

Es geht um die Form, darum, aus einem »unförmigen Haufen von Steinen« eine »Welt genauer
Kräfte« zu schaffen. »Die grösste Freiheit geht aus der grössten Strenge hervor.«⁴

THIS MUST BE THE PLACE (Naive Melody)
[…]
Home, is where I want to be
But I guess I'm already there
I come home, she lifted up her wings
I guess that this must be the place
I can't tell one from the other
I find you, or you find me?⁵

^{2 Gaston Bachelard, The Poetics of Space; Beacon Press, Boston 1969}

^{3 Paul Valéry, Eupalinos oder der Architekt, übertragen von Rainer Maria Rilke, pp.136–137; Edition Suhrkamp, 1973}

^{4 ibid, Umschlagtext}

^{5 Talking Heads, This Must Be the Place (Naive Melody), Song performed in the movie,}

^{This Must Be the Place, by Paolo Sorrentino, France 2011}