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Indeterminate architecture - parallel spaces

Part 2 Project 1999
Julius Klaffke
London Metropolitan University | UK
The project presents itself through the method of working on the proposal for two spaces that exist in anticipation of one another. The exploration of a spatial phenomenon in Fleet Street leads to a spatial proposal for the city and then to an architectural proposal in Bilbao.
The development of a pinhole camera and the performance of its picture plane evolves from a recording device in Fleet Street to an instrument for the proposition of space and finally to a tool to critically draw the architecture.
The pinhole camera, the picture plane and the architectural models exist and develop in constant interaction. Every new aspect causes the questioning and redefinition of the relationship and performance of these tools.
The pinhole camera is a device to examine the personal relationship to the city. Its nature generates the architecture as well as the architecture generates certain performances of the picture plane.
The method of working challanges the project at every stage of the project. An end is not determined.
I propose two places that exist in anticipation of one another:
A new concourse for an existing trainstation in the city centre and a seaside restaurant at the coast suggest a new reading of the city through the personal experience of the two places.
The project explores possibilities to propose two places that allow spatial links to develop between them through the personal relationship of the occupant to the architecture.

Julius Klaffke


We asked our students to consider how the city was available to us in different ways. Julius' work originated in an analysis of his relationship to Fleet Street as he entered it from a side allay. Through anticipation and memory he was at times more conscious of the space beyond or behind him than the space where he stood. He studied this through a series of pinhole cameras and photographs where he manipulated the picture plane to represent his experience. In making these he realised how the camera needed to be capable of greater variation to more accurately pursue his personal relationship to the city.This fascination with the picture plane and how it could be modulated to work with the discrepancy between geometry and experience lasted throughout the year.

After he had studied his experience of Fleet St. Julius decided to test this phenomenon much further. We visited Bilbao and used it as the site for our projects. Julius chose a site within the city and another a few miles away by the coast. He set out to test whether he could construct the sort of assembly of space he had experienced in Fleet St. but with a much greater seperation of elements. Each project anticipates the other and requires the other to be fully understood.

Julius developed the buildings through models that he examined with his variable picture plane camera. Of course the project also developed a depth of other concerns with respect to program and context. However, it is the rigour and invention displayed by parallel and dependant development of camera and architecture the I enjoy most.


1999
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