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Kat Scoufaridou
Diploma 9

This project explores the relationship between architecture and the city as a flat image. The way through which this project is told repositions our understanding of experiencing the space of the city as a 3 Dimensional stage that extends from the interior to the city. The inhabitant of this stage thus becomes the actor and spectator to the event.

The project examines the boundaries between architecture and the flat image city and the potential of architecture to transform around a number of rituals and ceremonies. This occurs across three different actions, that will describe and unfold the city from its flat state and this will be created as it is being experienced.

These three actions are:

·         The unfolding of the city

·         The isolation of interiority

·         The experiential sequence/navigation

The archive is a collection of all the documents exchanged, written and published during the period of the construction of the Bibliotecca Marciana in Piazza San Marco, Venice. All the documents and the architect’s drawings of the Library have been lost. Therefore this collection of documents intends to display a brief introduction into the life and events of Jacopo Sansovino during the construction of what is to be his most genius work ever built.The towers themselves also sometimes become actors in the sequence of events as the movement transformation shapes the interior spaces on the barge as well as reconfigures the relationship one has with the object and the city. The cemetery sits on a floating barge. A detached stage that holds the 12 columbarium towers is attached on the edge of the north side of the barge. This detaches from the barge and travels to the city, constantly creating and engaging with the context of the city. At the same time, it creates its own context by rearranging itself into different configurations that reposition our perception and understanding of the relationship between the city, the object and the individual. Movement, distance and perception are the key aspects that allow these relationships to change.The city must be unfolded. By unfolding the envelopes that define the stages of the city, the flat image becomes obsolete. So the city will no longer be a collection of fragmented objects and images but rather will become a juxtaposition of those objects and images, creating a framework that expands rather than limits the horizon of experience.We now leave the city and enter the ceremonial space of the funeral. Surrounded and enclosed by columbarium towers arranged in a single space, the key focus shifts again on to the isolation of the individual, by the single space and the event that is about to start. Completely detached from any urban context, you experience the individual’s view.These borders of enclosure are cracked open to reveal the city. The space is now separated into multiple individual spaces for the ceremony of the cremation. The relationship of the individual to the city shifts again. As distant spectators we observe the city while at the same time we are performing to the inhabitants of the city, making us at once the actors and spectators to an event.We are now in a street overlooking the city. A sense of openness reveals the boundaries of the space and the city and introduces the context of the surroundings as the event moves along the streets for the ceremony of the burial. An interplay between scale and perspective gives the individual a feeling of unsteadiness. The city begins to form and be defined around the individual.We find ourselves once more in complete isolation. Present either to revisit a beloved or bury one, it is the private moment of the individual where the focus is on the action of experience. The event.The dark interior and the light penetrating through the façade perforations give the individual a sense of calm. Four views are extracted from the site where the corner becomes the point where four spaces are defined, split and joined. The corner is seen as the point which defines the edges of a space, the point which splits two spaces and the point which brings two spaces together. The corner is constructed as a hinge point from where all four views unfold. The four views are merged together where each folds into the other, creating four different spaces which constantly change in perspective, scale and space. The corner is used in this case as a dynamic shifting point where these spaces unfold and are created. The corner orchestrates the space around the individual as he moves towards, away and from the object.