WHAT? WHY? HOW?

M Arch Report Abstract: SPATIAL LETTERS TO A PRISONER

The project explores the dynamic transformation and translation of a very established architectural product, the office, into a new space that fluctuates between different realities, by means of a narrative. It is an attempt to collide the dynamic construction of an identity in a multicultural society against the rigidly institutionalised architectural typologies by means of cultural productions such as novels, paintings, photographs, architectures and films, that are interpreted through the narrative as an opportunity to develop a hybrid architectural response.

The narrative is the device which addresses the parameters of interpretation, transformation and generation of an standard office located in the Tower 42, in the City of London. This narrative is a non-lineal structure consisting of a set of letters that Nora, a 25 years old basque woman, sends anonymously to her imprisoned father while she is living in secret in an empty office that was occupied by an advertisement company that went bankrupt during the economic turn down. Based on the secrecy that involves the narration, the letters are encode drawings, collages and images, in which Nora describes her mood and activities through the space she occupies, transforms and recreates in each letter.

This project deals with the contradiction between the increasing empty office space in the city center and the consequences of the lack of dwellings, the spread of the city boundaries. The fixed and impersonal architecture of offices is a clear reflection of the market logic. In a multinational capitalist society the architectural institutions (typologies) not always correspond with the cultural paradigm shift, the multicultural and fragmented framework of the so-called postmodernist culture. Aware of the role of architecture as a follower of social demands, this project aspires to define an hybrid spatial configuration based on a disinstitutionalised and recycled architecture.

The personal interests are addressed toward new spatial possibilities based on the concept of Architectures, in plural. Architectures of personal conditions in a multicultural society. A collage made of cultural references, a personal assemblage of a space made of fragments that create a unity based on the difference.
The potential of the narrative as architectural device for addressing personal stories toward spatial configurations, a mixture of art and language, are implemented here to blur the universal unity of modern architectural production and to suggest a new myriad of architectures that escape from binary oppositions and dichotomies. In these terms,it is a critical analysis against the conventional method of modern architecture thinking, linear and time-based.

To achieve this goals the project is addressed by means of a narrative made of different writings and cultural references. The plot is weaved by means of others writings. The project is developed through two narrative processes: the interpretative, of the structure, plot, characters and voice of the space and, the generative, through the opportunities that offer the text to materialise the space. The structure is based on Perec's "Life: a user's manual", where the subject of the narrative is the space which articulates all the parts, and on John Berger "From A to X" ,a plot based on letters without beginning nor end.The project does not follow a linear development, its order is partially left on the particular understanding of the reader who, as the fictitious prisoner, has to decode the space through the letters. In this metaphor the reader is a prisoner of cultural conventions, who is challenged to free the chains of linear thinking and grasp the ambiguous whole. The letters are a text in images that corresponds to a text of words. It manifests a reaction against the dominance of visual image and written language in western architecture, questioning the neutrality of both as the proper correspondence of the act of see and speak. The letters are made of different fragments as an effect caused by the collision between the narration and the space .The assemblage of fragments forces an abandonment of the idea of the reader as a passive receptor.
The space, in its original configuration, is de-constructed, fragmented and violated, converted in shreds that form a pile of pieces, a row material that the structure of the narrative gathers by means of allegorical interpretation, transformation and translation. A space to be recreated with each new reading, with each new assemblage.
The secrecy of the letters, the essence of the narrative, entails the choice of a method that can encode the text into images allowing after a decode of the images into the text. The methodology focuses on such conductors that can express simultaneously these uncertainties from the text to the image and vice-versa. According to this condition the project looks for symbolic and allegoric conductors. The symbolism of drawings and images, the emblems that mix letters and images, the mnemonic of places, objects and lyrics, and the allegory.