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Maurits Verstraete ‘Sheducktion: On Symbolism, Superficiality and Storytelling in Architecture

SHEDUCKTION: ON SYMBOLISM, SUPERFICIALITY AND STORYTELLING IN ARCHITECTURE


The situational sites and procedural worlds in the one minute film were created by juxtaposing and merging film fragments from different worlds. The contradiction and confrontation between the footage generated an exciting surreal world with different atmospheres. Symbols, signs, allusions and characters were used to create a new space, a fictive world of action and reaction.

The book Learning from Las Vegas became an important guideline and inspiration to create my drawings. Las Vegas is also a surreal world, with a rich mixture of styles, tastes and symbols. Venturi and Scott Brown stated that this juxtaposition provided an inclusive and associative architecture, that makes the visitor think more deeply about the objects he is looking at. These ideas were translated into the creation of my own ‘Strip’. An axonometric landscape drawing, where the street invite you into the many actions that are happening.

This axonometric drawing consists of three parts:
The left part symbolizes a naïve and superficial look to the seducing architecture of ‘the duck’. In this part  everything is possible. It seems like a nice wonderful place, due to the  communicative facades of the decorated sheds and the playful character of the ducks. The middle part of the drawing creates a shift in the story. Here we see the exit of suburbia, it exists as a world in itself. It symbolizes the escape from everyday life to the exciting and decadent outside world. Where the left part is a  kind of ‘birthday cake’, the right part is a more dark vision on the superficial architecture. It shows the reality behind the buildings, and the people. It’s a world of over consumerism, misleading info, and seduction.

A sectional drawing was the next step into creating architecture by storytelling. A search for how symbolism could be transformed into materiality. Can the imagination become a reality? The drawing is a mental section through the suburban daily lifestyle. The sectional drawing gave the opportunity to rethink the construction and structure of the narrative and the building. The research shifted to how I could equate the framework of the building, with the framework of the story. Elements like building foundations were used to add a symbolic, as well as a structural layering to the drawing.

A different vision of the built and narrative space arose by constructing plans out of the section. The shift to yet another way of thinking and drawing, brought both the section and the story in a different perspective. The more two-dimensional way of drawing led to a new interpretation of circulation, techniques and scale. It also created the opportunity to reinterpret and adjust the previous drawings.

The references and narrative in the axonometric landscape drawing and the section are very clearly illustrated. As a result, the fantasy is largely due to the illustrative nature of the prints. It is mainly my ideas that are conveyed to the viewer. The plans, on the other hand, provided a certain abstraction. The 2d drawings, with their specific architectural codes, cause alienation. At first sight it is not immediately clear what you see. As a result, it is no longer solely my own fantasy that is projected, but the viewer gets more space to form his own  story and think further about what he sees.

The full process was a research on the common space between storytelling and architecture. It was an opportunity to create spaces and buildings, by one action to another, and how this evolves by investigating different types of drawing (axonometric, sectional, plan). The interaction between the two different structures: ‘story’ and ‘building’ created an interesting spatial exploration.

One minute site

 

Project presentation

Suburban section story

 

Project book

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