Architecture to convert a place into a state of mind.

Apparently a simple task, actually a fairly tricky operation.

To (try to) understand, we split our journey into three parts.

This course is about part 1: from nothingness to place (part 2 is from place to space, part 3 is from space to architecture).

What is a place?

What is space?

How do we make space?

How do we prepare our mind to make space?

Without a concept, we can’t have a place.

Without a place, we can’t have space.

Without a space, we can’t have architecture...

If we want to create space, in the first instance, it has to happen in our mind. When a conceptual vision takes form in our minds, a place (with its own spatial features) is born.

Architecture 101 is an introduction to space and architecture through 101 exercises. A six-month journey divided into 3 courses “online” on iversity (part 1, part 2 and part 3), one final exhibition / graduation party. If you are still alive after all of this daunting process, there will be a one-week workshop “offline”, where we will go one step beyond.

Architecture 101 (part 1: from nothingness to place)

To start our journey, we will deal with the absence of space and place.

Something that could be defined as “nothingness”.

As Ang Lee or Paul Valery would respectively say :

“The source of all the material comes from nothingness.”

“God made everything out of nothing, but the nothingness shows through.”

In a different way, Ludwig Wittgenstein taught us that when things have no name, they don’t exist. Hence in order to understand things, we have to start with worlds in which things have no name. Pieces of music without sound. Televisions without signal.

We will go through the process of shaping meaning. Articulate and complex meanings, defining relationships between mind and bodies, bodies and places. Little by little, we will encounter places and see the world taking shape.

All of this, using a “hands-on” system (you will by doing).