AXONOMETRIES OF VOID

A means of representation is never indifferent or objective. Basically, it is never a means. It marks an intention, it generates a project, it is already part of it. In architecture, representation always anticipates the building to come. As Merleau-Ponty says, the artist has only one way to represent the work he is working on: he has to do it. The representation is a dialogue with the material of the architecture, that is so say the void.

Through the exercise of drawing, the use of the instrument that serves to represent the thing remains the architect’s only bodily relationship with the physical aspect of the material to which it is to give shape. For Vittorio Gregotti, this is his last “manual” and he must defend it fiercely. The body of the architect is first of all in the space of the representation.

Axonometry is a specific representation of architecture. Unlike the linear perspective it has no point of view and no target point. Orthogonal projection is a representation of pure depth, without vanishing lines. It shows space as a continuum. By freezing its limits, it represents the void as the place where transformations take place.

While architecture constructs voids, its drawn representations add matter upon matter. The smooth surface of the rectangular format forms the background, both free and limited, for an idea to come. It is the opacity of the figure which, by contrast, will define the immateriality of the support as that which is empty. We have sought here to represent the void differently, literally, and therefore to make the support disappear. By digging into the paper, by working it as concrete material, analogous to the layered material of a city in which we have come to dig.