Studio Drawing Architecture: The Event
*LIVE project* in collaboration with Le Fresnoy – Studio national des arts contemporains, a building by Bernard Tschumi. The event as spatial encounter.
MARS3 · Gent · English
teacher(s): Riet Eeckhout · Lidia Gasperoni
field of interest: Alternative Architectural Practice · Art and Architecture · Exhibition · Media · Public Space
attitude: Speculative · Poetic · Experimental
method of inquiry: Research by Design · Observation · Fieldwork
design media: Drawing-based · Narrative · Model-based
learning environment: Co-creative · Individual trajectory · Live Project
study trip: Mandatory
Description
Studio Drawing Architecture invites students to develop architectural proposals for a *LIVE*
project commissioned by Le Fresnoy – Studio national des arts contemporains in
Tourcoing, France. Le Fresnoy occupies the site of a former popular entertainment complex where Bernard Tschumi designed an important piece of architecture in the nineties, tying the built
relics of a socio-cultural entertainment program into an acclaimed centre for artistic education.
Today, Le Fresnoy wishes to reconsider the square situated at the entrance of the building. This public space forms a threshold between the city and the institution, materialising a strong boundary between public life and artistic production, between the ground plane of Tourcoing and the elevated landscape of Tschumi’s roof.
Drawing Architecture Studio takes this threshold as a site through which the relationship between institution and city can be explored, intensified and reconfigured.
The project asks what spatial possibilities might emerge from these constructed encounters, and how architecture might intensify them: drawing out new relations between artistic ambition and
collective experience, between institution and city, between event and everyday life.
The project will be structured by site visits, the construction of ‘section as investigative device’ and ‘artist as informant’. Students will be able to lean on a series of consultants: Lidia Gasperoni (Philosopher and Architectural Theorist), Orin Torati (SciArc and working across moving & still image, new media), Arnaud Hendrickx (curatorial practice)
The project will finalise with a student exhibition of selected architectural artefacts at Le Fresnoy.
Key questions
How can the encounter between artistic imagination and the everyday life of the city be activated and intensified through architecture?
Position statement
Studio Drawing Architecture understands architecture not as a static object but as a relational field in continuous formation, emerging through encounters between people and places, between ideas and material conditions, between movement and space.
Following Bernard Tschumi’s proposition that there is no architecture without event, the studio will investigate architecture as a relational and time-based practice, one that emerges through encounters between space and action, artistic intention and everyday occupation. Rather than resolving these differences, the project will seek architectural possibilities within their collisions, frictions and unexpected affinities.
Learning outcomes
(1) The student demonstrates insight into context analysis, concept formation, problem sensitivity and engagement, ethics, and personal imagination. (2) The student is able to formulate an individual research or design strategy. (3) The student demonstrates advanced knowledge and understanding of fundamental structural principles. (4) The student is able to employ design as a mediating medium.
Expected deliverables
Drawings and drawing related outcomes, analogue as well as digital · Exhibition · Digital media· Architectural drawings · Project-specific output (determined by the project’s inquiry)
Study trip
Description: On 22 September, we will visit Le Fresnoy, Bernard Tschumi’s celebrated 1997 building in Tourcoin, as well as its immediate urban surroundings. (Tourcoin is located just over the border in France-
Additional cost: 25 Euro transport
Alternative trajectory: joining the site visit is recommended.