Collage as a design tool in architecture Vs collage as a narrative in architecture

Can architecture work without the collage methodology? On the one hand, one can state that collage is an artistic approach to architecture that makes the design process a bit fun. On the other hand, the collage is not such a fordable principle. In particular, this process of visual narrative has more depth than that. It allows the mind to think while creating. Either made by hand or digitally, the principle of collage accepts processes as well as mistakes for the design to evolve and grow. Perhaps, in a collage, every move is thoughtful and thorough, from the textures’ decision, to the final aesthetic and synthesis of the image, as well as the materiality and the composition to the existing given context. Reasonably, it helps reconceive space in new and assists in the creation of a profound image. Perhaps, an image that makes you feel something rather than just being flat, superficial and boring such as a realistic render. Instead, those multi-layered juxtapositions can automatically produce an aesthetic of a space without needing any words for explanation. In this case, the image presents its own justification.
This post-digital mode of drawing embodies narrative cues and aesthetic allusions. The collage act, according to Athens architecture firm Le Point Supreme, is described as something more than an aesthetic. Theoretically, it is not a necessity in architecture, but practically it helps reconceive space in new and works as a narrative. Le Point Supreme architects are interested in forms of contradiction and disruptions of meanings. Perhaps, the usage of collage in such an interest is the most effective approach to architectural representation. The desire to combine technical with atmospheric drawing is working as a generative tool to them at the beginning of their design process. Their ideal architectural collage consists of non-literal and in-direct principles combined with precise spatial information of perspective drawing with the informal, psychological, and invisible social and cultural properties of space. This form of combination between the realistic and the unrealistic, encourages the viewer to reflect critically about what he sees. Their utility is to push the design forward by projecting a human-active atmosphere responding to the urban and social context of today and anticipate the spatial qualities rather than the tectonic details. Pantazis, the cofounder of Le Point Supreme, claims that the overall impression of their collages is flatness and depth, coinciding in a single frame. This reminds of David Hockney’s character (fig1) where he produces those flat layered collages that always carry a mystery with them. Likewise, Le Point Supreme adopt the same mindset. Layered abstract collages with no shadows and light, yet they still have the sense of depth and realism. In particular, as unrealistic as they may seem, the final built result is corresponding perfectly with the representational “abstract” drawing. Figure 2 shows the before and after completion.

Figure 1. Figure 2.

Similarly, FALA Atelier, a Portuguese studio lead by Filipe Magalhães, Ana Luisa Soares and Ahmed Belkhodja, create collages that are carrying a story and a narrative as well. Adopting a similar methodology to Le Supreme Point architects, FALA Atelier are playing with this seductive visual tool in the very first stages of their design process to achieve an understanding experience of space. However, this trio is ruled by “an obsession for clarity”. Their obsession is made evident in their collages as their final built projects are surprisingly similar to their abstract and unpretentious collages. At this point, it should be noted that collage in architecture can be solid and liable when it comes to reality.
Their collages are mostly considered as pieces of art work rather than architectural drawings. It is challenging to sniff out architectural “glitches” in his collages. The strict line work and textured realism dissemble the distortion. To “read” one of the spaces, “you need a cipher, which is why FALA Atelier always pairs the images with plans,” says cofounder Filipe Magalhães. “The two are like a binary system. Without one, you have no idea of what you’re looking at.” Figure 3 illustrates the digital montaging and the finished built project that shows that FALA’s nonchalance regarding realism can be anything but “naïve”.

Figure 3.

It is all about architectural communication. Those hyper-realistic images produced from third party plug-ins through which we render the ideal view of a project might be representational but in a shallow way. However, a digital collage drawing focuses on the atmosphere and concept that the architects want to achieve.

This reaction to the vapid verisimilitude of hyper-realistic computer renderings is not always liable because of its unrealistic and distorting approach. For that reason, most architects do not take collage seriously.
But why do we need collage? Or do we really need it? Expressing architecture through collage assists storytelling; it mirrors the architects’ ambition to transform reality in the minimum means necessary and in an efficient way. In a field full of technical drawings and realistic thinking, collage assists a break from reality. Ideally, Rem Koolhaas, during the Cold war era in 1972, developed this factual and fictional scenario for a contemporary Metropolis during his entry for the competition “The City as Meaningful Environment”, named Exodus, or the Voluntary Prisoners of Architecture. Koolhaas argues that architectural planning seems to limit the freedom of suggesting new interventions. While standing against this monotonous and dull vision of creation that he describes as “terrifying architecture”, he suggests a new idea of architecture as a means of exclusion and division as a motive to initiate change and most importantly provide freedom in a new unforeseeable event. His architectural interventions suggest a case against the objectionable aspects by presenting an ideological model of a strip cutting through the city of London with a series of extraordinary and unprecedented events as well as new forms of social life.

Koolhaas, in his project, uses architecture as an instrument to suggest a dystopia, an architectural proposal that consists of an unrealistic approach, expressed through dark collages that illustrate the vivid scenes of that chaotic period. Koolhaas is trying to form a place that is different in character, encircled by a forbidding wall. A prison on the scale of a metropolis, where people sought refuge voluntarily. The intervention is designed to create a new urban culture energized by the political supervision of the time. In a city where separation and segregation were taking place, in between the good half and the bad half, Koolhaas creates a common ground where all the negative aspects of the wall, aggression, inequality, destruction could be the ingredients to a new phenomenon. This linkage, the territory of the “strip” which is separated in squares of different functions is developed to represent an urban “chaos”. The usage of collage in this project is vigorously aiming to recreate the vivid scenes of the cold war era within these visionary urban confines (fig4). Thus, a set of orthographic scaled drawings, in this case, would be meaningless to this architectural proposal that seeks to present the confined space as a series of new extraordinary experiences. Koolhaas proposes his architectural phenomenon through perspective photomontages, mostly in dark colours, to express the isolation and the feeling of prisoning. In order to demonstrate on flat drawings, the exact same chaotic circumstances undergoing at that time. Mediums used on his montages are mostly magazines produced at the time, as well as aerial photographs to show the context in this massive architectural innovation. His main interest in mixing disparate functions and synthesizing unrelated fragments is indeed witnessed in his collages as he mainly focuses on the dystopian mindset of unrealistic yet relatable and liable spatial representations.

Figure 4.

From the 20th century onwards, modernist architecture is introduced by great architects and as long as technology was evolving, the technique of architectural collaging became an integral part of the design process of many architects, alongside with architectural drawing. Photography, magazines and newspapers provided a new medium of presenting on flat paper the illusion of a space that yet does not exist. The starting point of collage was introduced to the public by Mie Van Der Rohe, at the heart of modernism movement. This creative and artistic technique of montaging accompanied the architect throughout all of his journeys and experiences until his death.
This connection of art and architecture was the center of interest of Mies Van Der Rohe as it reflected his aesthetic principles and the modernism attitude, as well as illustrating his design process as an architect. The modern spatial juxtapositions of Mies Van Der Rohe were avant-garde long before his building became famous in the field of architecture.
Mies Van Der Rohe produced his first well-known photomontages as part of his design process but they were also autonomous pieces of art. Under the catastrophic impact of WWI, revolution and industrialization happening in the beginning of the 20th century, new art movements arose as an expression to the circumstances undergoing at the time. Dada, was one of the post-war art movements that influenced great architects to use photomontage in their design processes. Originated as a negative reaction to the horror of World War I, the Dada movement consisted of artists who rejected the logic, reason, and aestheticism of modern capitalist society, and instead expressing through art the nonsense. Figure 3 illustrates a famous collage of political approach which reflects the artist’s views of the political and social issues that arose during this transitional time in the post-war German society. Similarly, in one of Mies Van Der Rohe’s famous collages, in particular, the convention hall project in Chicago, Illnois, Mies illustrates the interior perspective and spatial arrangement of the convention hall using the photomontage technique. In particular, while Combining illustrations, sketches and juxtapositions, the collages are architecturally led, setting the principles of modernism with strong dimension-building lines and striking spatial concepts for interiors for built projects such as his

the photomontages were created through the layering of different materials like wood veneer, photographs and acrylic sheets to demonstrate different vanishing points. He emphasizes in the chaos of the post-war to clarify the period of transition by inserting a picture of attendees at the Republican National Convention 1952 U.S. specifically, taken from Life magazine. In this case, the activity of the floor is contrasted with the ceiling above which illustrates a two-way grid of steel trusses that take up more than half of the picture. The walls are a deep green marble decorated by state seals and the ceiling is a deep steel grid with an American flag draping down and features crowds of people cut from newspapers. The geometrical basic shape of the Convention hall expresses the typical American conditions of construction during industrialization. It could be easily understandable that Mies’s collages could be monochrome, mostly white, simple, and drawn with perspective grid pencil lines but yet they are powerful composition draws the eye

Mies Van Der Rohe was mainly taking inspiration from the imaginative collages of the Dada artists and from avant-garde artists of the time like Hans Richter and El Lissitzky. He was interested in the artistic approach to architecture. Perhaps, his collages were a part of his design process and expressed a speculative driven spatial narrative. The collages were like frozen films, as they were relaying in the society of then, and the dynamic of the city in the 20th century where people were recovering from the war.
Mies Van Der Rohe was clearly paying attention mainly on construction. Particularly, he states “Architecture begins when two bricks are places carefully together”. Therefore, collage for him was providing a great advantage to explore materiality and construction in his design process. His minimal, yet significant spatial perspective juxtapositions were prioritizing lines and valued negative space with a touch of some artistic elements of minimal fragments or famous art pieces like an antique Buddha sitting calmly between other modern sculptures as shown in his collage for the Concert hall proposal in 1942. When observing his collages in detail and in close ups, one can clearly identify on the one hand, the contemporary fragments of the 20th century modernist “new” architecture with exacting technical precision, and on the other hand, the speculative and narrative approach to this new art world era. Perhaps, his spatial compositions combine the artistic narrative and sensitivity of architectural design with the practical and technical approach of architecture.

In his thought, it is by using those unpretentious art fragments like life size sculptures or drawings, that the collage is becoming ideally balanced between the form and the spatial field, which is seducing the beholder. Eventually, through those restless siftings of perception, the beholder is left in the hands of the artist and is drawn to the expanding pictorial space of the new architecture and therefore modern life.

Bibliography

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