PRECEDENT

In 1841, Karl Marx puts together a series of notes on Spinoza. The notes are later reassembled to produce what in the end amounts to a complete rewriting of the original text; a sort of collage that links the fragments and work even at the grammatical level. Marx’s Quaderno Spinoza, provides a striking example of aggressive reading and appropriation. 

CONCEPT

This exercise proposes to repeat a similar operation based on two classics of contemporary architecture theory: Il territorio dell‘architettura (1966) by Vittorio Gregotti and The City in the City – Berlin: A Green Archipelago (1977) by Oswald Mathias Ungers. The books focus on two topics, a formalised theory of design and a conceptual understanding of territory.

From these interpretations, architecture emerges as an abstract, intellectual exercise whose content is the transformation of landscape. The final product of this operation is a new book, entitled “Mise en abyme”, with at least 50% of each book erased, added illustrations and the creation of a new editorial design.

PROPOSAL

Mise en abyme, as “the endless cycle of comprehending and interpreting”, seeks to denote the idea of a multifaceted thinking and conceiving architecture and urbanism.

The authors discuss that “the city is a collage of layers that change and develop, and create a new image of fragments”. Throughout the book, an attempt is made to refer to these layers by means of different types of paper, chapters and images that respond to these multifarious perspectives