AIR FORTRESS
2019
Project:
Arch-Fi Installation,Studio Workshop at ZHdK University of the Arts, Zurich
Mentoring:
Julionas Urbonas, Artist Dr. phil. Björn Franke
We shaped objects in the built environment to mediate ideas in a way that’s similar to how storytellers use verbal language. Inspired by the works of Archigram, Superstudio and J.G. Ballard among others, the ’Architectural Fiction’ opens up an entirely new way of thinking, by negotiating our understanding of the world through a fictional model or installation. It is more than simply ‘brainstorming’ options on a flowchart, a feasibility study, a mood-board, a prototype, or financial modelling; it’s a whole different way of operating on reality.
The physical sketches investigate tectonic structures as communication devices and a defensive system for isolated societies. Urban environments have been fortified for a long time throughout history. The mental vector was to build harder, faster, stronger. We are still in this operational mode in our daily grind. These models investigate the qualities of an inverse situation, with a different set of rules. The way this works is, we look at objects as an unfamiliar, alien artefact to lose preconceived notions of their function. In one of my experiments, oxygen becomes a building material.
This approach is about ‘finding’ problems in the nexus of our thinking by externalising the ideas as ‘built fiction’. The model is a thought-experiment: an air-fortress that can’t be conquered, because all it contains is destroyed upon penetration.