t e r r a i n v a g u e
recondite and esoteric suppositions can help us reach into a site’s nature
The Metapolis Dictionary of Advanced Architecture.
Gausa, Et Al. ACATAR publishers
.
Exercises in the form of collages and models were instrumental to thoughts and notes on Carol Burns’ ON SITE: ARCHITECTURAL PREOCCUPATIONS
Site as result of human action is always already conceptually and physically constructed prior to architecture. Surveying and plotting are excercises in the democratization and profiting from terrain, their typically 2d representations reder the site “terrainless”. What matters to the site as profit is its relationship with its surroundings in the form of view and adjacencies.
If the site has natural constructs, legal and political infrastructures prior to architecture and planning is not apolitical, designers are actors in the political arena; this implies that our role is never neutral.
The site is never empty, the architect cannot clear it of its content (context?) Are then the CONSTRUCTED and CLEARED sites constituted by the surrounding context?
In a practical response designers attempt to reduce the sites complexity to its particular aspects
Cleared site: abstract
Constructed site: visible
Site: made by architecture
Site: needed to make architecture
ANY SITE IS ALREADY *CONSTRUCTED* BY ITS SPECIFIC CIRCUMSTANCES
Site as result of human action is always already conceptually and physically constructed prior to architecture. Surveying and plotting are excercises in the democratization and profiting from terrain, their typically 2d representations reder the site “terrainless”. What matters to the site as profit is its relationship with its surroundings in the form of view and adjacencies.
If the site has natural constructs, legal and political infrastructures prior to architecture and planning is not apolitical, designers are actors in the political arena; this implies that our role is never neutral.
The site is never empty, the architect cannot clear it of its content (context?) Are then the CONSTRUCTED and CLEARED sites constituted by the surrounding context?
In a practical response designers attempt to reduce the sites complexity to its particular aspects
Cleared site: abstract
Constructed site: visible
Site: made by architecture
Site: needed to make architecture
ANY SITE IS ALREADY *CONSTRUCTED* BY ITS SPECIFIC CIRCUMSTANCES