SCI-Arc Semester: Fall 2015
Assistant: Rachael
McCall (rachael_mccall@sciarc.edu)
Between
Fact, Fiction, and Fetish: The Making of Factish
Architecture
The word “fact” seems to point to external reality, and
the word “fetish” seems to designate the foolish beliefs of a subject. Within
the depth of their Latin roots, both conceal the intense work of construction
that allows for both the truth of facts and the truth of minds. The construal “factish”
authorizes us to not take too seriously the ways in which subjects and objects
are conventionally conjoined: that which is set into action never fails to
transform the action, giving rise neither to the objectified tool nor to the
reified subject.
- Bruno Latour, On the Modern Cult of the
Factish Gods (2010)
Concept
In recent
discourse the long standing principles of fact, fiction, and fetish have been
significantly challenged and new concepts of understanding what determines our
perception of “the real” have been offered. The once clear demarcation line
between these terms has all but dissolved, leaving us with a much stranger
reality of fictionalized facts and factual fictions. Speculative Realist thought questions both our world of ideas as
well as what we perceive to be objectively real, thus opening up in the process
a whole new paradigm for design as well as the discipline of architecture.
In this
studio we will examine the above premise with an emphasis on two particular
issues:
1.
The
empowerment of objects.
In architecture the notion of object usually falls into one of two categories.
Either we describe the totality of a building as an object, in which all
individual building parts and systems are being absorbed into a singular
expression. Or, we see building components as objects, which only gain
significance through their performative collaboration with other parts. In this
studio we will seek alternative ways of understanding objects as partially
factual and partially fictional, semi-autonomous entities, which can never be
fully exhausted (or understood) through either expressive gesture or building
ecology.
2.
The
introduction of gaps.
Gaps are necessary means to estrange objects from us and from each other.
Estrangement in turn is a necessary means to reevaluate our notion of “a real”,
in which facts, fiction, and fetish are no longer understood as neatly fenced
in categories. In the fields of art, photography, and documentary filmmaking
these categories have already been questioned and dissolved while architecture
still mostly adheres to an antiquated view of the scientific, objective, and
real on the one side, and the artistic, subjective, and fictional on the other.
Gaps are conceptual (and material) tools that force a break with these preconceived
categories and open up new ways of thinking and making architecture.
Project
The studio
will design a new ventilation tower for the Holland Tunnel in New York City.
Ventilation towers are already estranged in many ways both from the context of
the city and their own inner workings. While they foremost serve a particular
mechanical function, their scale and visibility also requires them to perform aesthetically
within the given urban context, thus generating a first gap between the content
of the building and its exterior. Departing from here the students will
formulate their own “factish” approach to the design of the tower by accommodating
techniques of estrangement explored in a preliminary assignment at the
beginning of the semester. Also, each student may choose to add additional
program to the tower if she/he feels it necessary in order to articulate more
precisely the studio goals.
