Welcome to Collage and Architecture. This website serves as an archive of our research and explorations into methodologies of collage in the analysis and practice of architecture. This research is undertaken in a seminar at UNC-Charlotte’s School of Architecture in support of a book entitled Collage and Architecture to be published by Routledge in the Spring of 2013. Please see pages “About Collage and Architecture” and “Table of Contents” for an overview of the project.
Mathur & da Cunha Monograph [JD]
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Mathur-da Cunha introduce a new way of viewing landscapes while uncovering what might not be obvious. They stumble upon sites, follow leads and collect material to form an understanding of each location. Their process includes map prints, screen prints, layering and erasing information, photo-transects (photomontages that bring together the maps and horizons of the journey) historical maps, line drawings, and paintings. All of these techniques and resources guide the journey for discovery beyond the surface. The couples screen prints begin to collage the different aspects of a given site calling out importing factors that played a part in the locations history. Each screen print uses multiple layers of drawings, maps, photographs, and textures to create a cohesive print.
Point Supreme Monograph [TM]
Point Supreme architects have an architectural process style that integrates collage, hand drawing, photography, physical model making, and digital models. It is their experimental blending of these that makes their process so intriguing. They work at all scales of architecture; they work at urban, commercial, public, and residential.
The firm consists of 2 main architects, Konstantinos Pantazis, Marianna Rentzou. The firm was founded in Rotterdam, Netherlands in 2007 but is currently based in Athens, Greece.
Their use of collage is primarily to convey the narrative of their ideas in a compelling way. They are interested in spaces of contradiction, disruption of meaning, and unexpected associations. They hope to invent a new style of collage that merges architectural perspective drawing with cultural (less tangible) properties of space.
Some projects to look at for collage technique are The Marble Mural, The Petrolona House Extension, and most of their research work which is done through collage.
FELD studio for digital crafts Monograph [TB]
The Feld studio of digital crafts was established in 2007 and can best be described as “a group of Berlin based designers who share a common language of digital thinking in their work process.”(http://www.feld.is/about/)
Although they are a relatively young studio, their portfolio ranges from handheld interactive devices to small scale furniture and clothing installation as well as large scale urban sculptural pieces. Within much of their work, there is a similar tenor that focuses on human cognition in regards to memory and perception. Experimentation with custom machines and computational processes is used in ways that attempt to reinterpret, enhance and/or encapsulate memory and human perception.
This monograph analyzes select projects from their portfolio in order to gain insight into the broader intellectual underpinnings of their work. After establishing the broader implications of their design work, a more focused analysis will be given to one particular project, Extracts of Local Distance, which will uncover how their digitally inclined working method incorporates collage concepts.
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Next week we will be reviewing your collage iterations from all four methods. As we discussed, the digital methods assignment is the most open ended, as we are using the collage-making process as a means to narrow our definition of digital methods in collage. One iteration will be entirely digital, one will be a hybrid of analogue and digital techniques, and the third is up to you. Your pin-up should include all iterations as well as any diagrams, rubbings, or practice collages you may have made.
case study draft comments:
1. Citations – must cite quotes and ideas in text or as footnotes, with page numbers.
2. Use sources in print wherever possible – online sources have not been vetted. This is important if I plan to include this material in the book.
3. Illustrations [text or image] – be specific! Use specific examples to illustrate ideas.
4. One means of analysis could be to extract ‘collage fragments’ in a taxonomy, to show the diversity of elements combined into a synthesized composition.
- Extracts of Local Distance
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For your reference, here is the presentation on Digital Methods in collage. We are interested in questioning the potential for digital methods to not only facilitate analogic methods, but to inform new methods of collage-making.
John Maeda - F00D
Teddy Cruz Monograph [BG]
Although Teddy Cruz is not vastly published, his work with border cities has become an increasing interest in the architectural world over the last ten years. His development of communal architectural spaces reminds us that even as our technology advances globally, there are still physical boundaries that separate equality of life in everyday experience. Cruz has placed himself and the work of his practice in the heart of the underdeveloped border condition of Tijuana to act upon his argument. He works both practicality and conceptually through design problems to give these neighborhoods solutions that are unique to their needs. He teaches students to follow in his way through the study of everyday life and the merging of their findings in collage and narrative. He gives them the ability to experience and design for a place through both a physical understanding and a subjective intervention of the impressions they take away from the site.Teddy Cruz Monograph bgreen_cruz
Nils-Ole Lund Monograph [SC]
Danish architect, author, and collage-artist, Nils-Ole Lund, has become internationally known for his experimental collage that explores the downsides of modern architecture and technology. Through his collages, he satirizes and criticizes the negative effect the architecture profession can have on landscapes, cities, and individual houses. Lund was influenced by the Scandinavian Modernists of the 1930s. As an architect his specialty was the history of modern architecture with an emphasis on Nordic conditions.
Lund began making collages in the 1960s, but his stay in St. Louis as a visiting professor in 1976 drastically influenced his collage-making, and he became an increasingly professional collage artist, producing more than 900 collages by the year 1990.
Gordon Matta-Clark Monograph [BT]
Gordon Matta-Clark’s work is best viewed as an investigation in the nature of entropy and the de-architecturalization of form and space. The overall theme of juxtaposing elements is present throughout his career and is crystallized with his seemingly static photographic representation. His collage works range from simple documentation to more complex representations that facilitate the understanding of his work.
The following monograph follows a timeline of Matta-Clark’s life and relevant works and additionally provides a further glimpse into his collage making.
Miralles + Tagliabue Monograph [SB]
In 1992, Enric Miralles and Benedetta Tagliabue joined to create their namesake firm, EMBT. Their collage and photomontage work was an integral part of their partnership’s design development. The built and paper projects resonate with the theme of juxtaposing disparate elements of a place through the actions of excavation, addition, and reconfiguration. A study of Enric Miralles’ (and later, EMBT’s) collages reveals a development of his representational methods and means. Although the methods have evolved, a few constants have remained: First, the importance of manipulation of the perimeter of a composition is a persistent theme. “These collages, like a puzzle, represent a space in a way that repeats the process of making a project itself. They are like a surprise, continually offering new definitions of the limits and contours.” Second, there is an insistent curiosity about perspective, point of view, and simultaneity in the collages. The destabilization of perspective through panoramic assemblages and unsuspected adjacencies recur over the years. The multiplicity of their photomontages as an assemblage of views is described as, “aim[ing] to fix, in a single view, all the different images which accompany the eye as it moves along the profiles and sections. They attempt to explain a complete and simultaneous kind of perception, to convey all knowledge contained in all the drawings and perspectives of a project.”
This monograph traces the lineage of the collage work of Enric Miralles, from his beginnings in the late 1970’s through his collaboration with Benedetta Tagliabue (EMBT), and until his death in 2000. Today, Benedetta Tagliabue still practices in Barcelona, and continues to use collage and photomontage as a method of exploring design.
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Text of today’s film, Chris Marker’s Sans Soleil, is available for your reference – write a brief response to the film in your journal.
For next week’s discussion of Digital Methods in collage, please read the ”Coda” essay from Perez-Gomez and Pelletier’s Architectural Representation and the Perspective Hinge.
The first submission for your case study is next week, Tuesday, March 27th at 2pm [via email]. Here is the case study assignment.
Still from Sans Soleil