ARCH_323b Architectural Representation Seminar II: ‘Image Fictions: Realism and the Aesthetics of Doubt’

Architects too often “equate realism with reality,” rather than recognizing realism’s capacity to conflict with and throw reality into question (Michael Young, The Estranged Object, 2015, p. 26). Instead of aspiring to photorealistic techniques in an attempt to represent reality as such, this course examined the political potential of realism’s aesthetic realm.

Each project is an image-based narrative that confronts the political, technological, or environmental issues of a contested territory. Students researched and documented an existing architectural infrastructure that intersects with a complex set of contemporary issues. These included: the US–Mexico border crossing, Kaesong Checkpoint between North and South Korea, Charles de Gaulle Airport, Terminal 5 of John F. Kennedy International Airport, INMOS microprocessor factory, the US military’s Stanley R. Mickelsen Safeguard Complex, the CargoLifter Airship Hangar, the Holland Tunnel, Grande Dixence Dam, Hoover Dam, Viamala-Brücke, and the Aquapolis.

Undertaking a fictional archaeology of possible histories and futures, students produced hyper-articulated totems that retain a majority of the DNA needed to build the original architectural infrastructure. Operating within the visual vocabulary and material constraints of one electronic image type and one image type tied to mechanical reproduction, students rendered and transformed their selected territory. As such, qualities crossed from the material realm of the image to that of the implied picture.