ex multiplicitate nihil

Andreas Nonneman

EX MULTIPLICITATE NIHIL – MULTIPLIED TO NOTHING

The story of this project starts at the poles of our planet. Both the North and South Pole, the Arctic and Antarctic are places shrouded in a haze of magnitude and mystery. And while everyone knows that they are vital to our ecosystem, they determine sea and wind currents, function as cartographic landmarks and have guided our movements since the invention of the compass, no one knows exactly how all this works.

The underlying natural laws of these landscapes, the endless number of geometries it seems to be generating, and the mechanisms underlying this inexhaustible variability are still largely a mystery. Hundreds of studies are conducted every year to find answers to specific questions within the strictly outlined fields of science.

The multiplicity, accumulation or multiplication of all the elements present in these spaces: the idea that there are not two rigid poles but six moving ones, the worldwide influence of those two parallel yet very different icescapes, the mechanisms underlying the seemingly inexhaustible geometry of those environments, the human infrastructure on and around the poles searching for answers in an ever‐expanding amount of data, the geopolitical situations, the possibility of reversing the magnetic fields and the constantly transforming landscape give the polar regions an intriguing spatial and situational multiplicity, an inexplicable and enigmatic character, seen as a quality and not a limitation.

The project does not have the goal of fully understanding this situation, I base myself on what is available online, in books, stories and images. Combined and interpreted into a place or situation that resembles a coherent context but is essentially no more than a collage of parameters. I am concerned with the appropriation of a situation, whether invented or not, that carries with it a complexity and specificity so far‐reaching that it is beyond the possibilities of human understanding.

In the work each element in the has a code based on the type of information. The theoretical texts function as a conceptual framework. The storyline is the journal of the project, it structures the work in chapters. Reference material supports both the theory and the story, depicted by models and drawings. The experiments constructed as a generative system or process have a formula that describes the method and procedure. Linked to this process are the names of all files used for it, these can be downloaded. An attempt to turn certain experiments into tools and make them available, a manual to appropriate, use or misuse the work.

With this project I would like to misuse architecture, take the usual processes out of their familiar environment, and reduce the field with all its artificial weightiness to a series of methods for conducting spatial research. Not architecture as a goal but as a medium. In our discipline we look at places and situations with eyes trained to arrive at a solution within the framework of the field, an answer situated not too far outside the clearly defined expected outcomes. This project is an attempt to find ways to escape those imposed thoughts and behaviour patterns. Shouldn’t we, as architects, also be concerned with drawing up environments and situations that can generate unexpected events and insights? Isn’t it a little negligent to be concerned only with confirming the habits and serving routine use?

 

 

 

 

Link to Project book:

Link to narrative: