RED HERRING 紅鯡魚手記

A reflective journal with photographs of a wrong way journey

Febuary — June, 2013

Nylas Chou, Wu-Han

On what principle does the architect, when he finds the house standing before him correspondent with his inner ideal of a house, pronounce it beautiful?

Is it not that the house before him, the stone apart, is the inner idea stamped upon the mass of exterior matter, the indivisible exhibited in diversity?

- Plotinus, Ennead

03

Never did I realize how far away my dreamy drawings could take me when I am exploring and following them. And I am also set free from concluding anything beforehand, just to see how my drawings will connect to the next sequence of ideas. By adopting this new method, I came to realize that it is the ‘process’ that drives me forward, not concepts.

I am getting interested in producing beautiful images from my process of spatial design. As I could remember, I also more or less engaged in this way of making before, but didn’t take the results as some possibility I could push to reach a more meaningful work. Recently, nevertheless, I take it as a flow I could easily follow as well as automatically let my mind do things.

04

The impulse to continue with my conceptual approach often came out unconsciously and I even urged myself to reach an understanding before I drew anything. As a result, things often ended up with me trapping myself and preventing myself from going further.

In this mausoleum-like space I got inspiration from John Soane’s Picture Gallery, to begin with, I tried to place something inside to have narrative, so I drew a head of Pharaoh I saw in the Soane’s museum. And the response was, ‘this is neither a movie of Hollywood, nor an action movie.’

What kind of movie would entertain people the most? For me, it might be those will be kept in mind in following days and I would come up with different thoughts towards it at any moment. In terms of space, what kind of space will it be, then? I tried to look at those dramatic images with enigma, longing to learn more about entertaining people with enigmatic scenes.

00

Then here came an interesting question: ‘now, I have done the mausoleum-like space, to whom will this space be given?’

I haven’t asked myself this question, though indeed it comes naturally. It lies in the real world, in the nature of a mausoleum. Now that my project started from this type of architecture, I shall explore my work in this way.

For a visionary architect, which one will be his excuse to fulfill his career? Is it the vision drives his architectural drawings, or is it the architecture drives him to have some vision? As far as I can imagine, the architect as an artist has already got some vision in mind but he needs a project to work as an excuse for himself to carry out his visionary architecture.

I wanted to capture the dramatic pictures my space offers. So I need a story to bring me travel further.

01

While I was looking for some objects to have as gifts for the person I made this mausoleum for, these objects turned out to be like concepts going to dominate my drawing pen. They were like traps stopping me from reaching a vision and having a wish to fabricate it as a nice gift.

All my later drawings did not change until I thought of one dressmaker who made me really miss her. This time, I just drew those objects arousing my sentiments one after another owning to that I found out that there were some emotions I can throw myself into and draw nonstop.

Characters I drew may carry out different narrative, however, while depicting this very person, who made me reach a moment no one else could give. Then suddenly I can convince myself to draw for her, work for her.

There exist, first, the unchanging form, uncreated and indestructible, admitting no modification and entering no combination, imperceptibleto sight or the other senses, the object of thought;

second, that which bears the same name as the form and resembles it, but is sensible, has come into existenc… is apprehended by opinion with the aid of sensation.

-Plato, Timaeus

02

While my project was going, I always discovered something gives me a lot of energy and imagination to carry out my work. Something like poetry walked into my space at that moment and I was confident to progress my work further. But later on, because of my intentional drawings, the poetry I had turned rigid.

There was one day, Red and I talked of her project about architectural fragments, trying to figure out what the word ‘fragments’ means to her and to where else it can bring her. We reached a sense, which was in this long process, those fragments seem like having been changed their form into other components she drew in her later drawings; ‘fragments’ as a way to describe her work had done its job, the next thing to do is supposed to be going back to the project, then work on next process the project provides.

09 Red Herring

I wrote this below my drawing just done, ‘pretending to draw objects but in fact to show the space.’ All those people, objects and actions in the mausoleum I drew gave me different images to review my space again and again.

06

I wrote following words in my last reflective journal:

<Looking Back>

Sometimes I went through my developing pages to see the progress and was shocked by those early drawings that have got the quality I need at that moment. Maybe there were something I didn’t fully understand jumping out again, or maybe it was truly what I dreamt about though I hadn’t known well then.

At a moment, I was not sure how to continue my proj- ect, so I went back to edit my study plan and surprised at the paragraph I wrote for my mausoleum. It was not necessarily to rewrite it due to the text done before I explored deeper by two months ago has already depicted every aspect I am go- ing to play. In a way, I had learned how to progress forward in early stage, however, the tendency of over-developing in one certain aspect made me forget to go into another side of my game.

Form in everything and anything, everywhere and at every instant. …Some appeal to the eye, some to the ear, some to the touch, some to the sense of smell…But all, without fail, stand for relationships between the immaterial and the material, between the subjectiveand the objective — between the Infinite Spirit and the finite mind.

- Louis Sullivan

10 Accidents and wondering

To go back to the processes spatial design holds, I started experimenting on the game of light and shadow. I enjoyed those accidents during my experiment going and my heart just couldn’t resist following this unpredictable matters. If I put it in terms of process, it is a sort of process I can never come up with.

In a sense, I knew that the images I got from the accident might related to my work, but the connection was hard to get hold of it. That was why sometimes I was in a situation, saying ‘I feel it is interesting, but haven’t figured out how to make it go with my story.’

I turned to view them as new language components I might set into my narrative. By editing them again, a story seemed like coming with some different plots.

11 Language components

It was an interesting experience that working with Bing to create a big picture showing our group’s works. At first, we had no idea to arrange all the drawings but began with a particular image and made others’ grow from it. However, little by little, we lose our energy to create in this way. Then a game came to us — every 5 minutes we must change to deal with the big image, that is, after her turn, I kept some composition like painting and reconstructed the rest.

Several turns later, Bing said, ‘now I see, what we have to do is using all these individual images as paint to compose a big, big image!’ Gradually, we both saw something beautiful coming from our canvas.

12

In what situation will all those rather intentional and rigid previous drawings come back to me with new energy and new story?

I saw this possibility after my first edition of book. After reading my book, my tutor’s expression seemed like telling me that there are still some story haven’t been told yet lying in my sketchbook. My sketches would give my narrative the very power to make it vigorous.

What holds us upright and prevents a formless collapse?
It is the opposing force that we may call will, life, or whatever. I call it force of form. The opposition between matter and force of form, which sets the entire organic world in motion, is the principal theme of architecture….
We assume that in everything there is a will that struggles to be- come form and has to overcome the resistance of a formless matter.

- Wolfflin

05 Talking to People

I started to do it consciously and to see what I could talk about. Before, I didn’t take it as something necessary to do; but from a certain point, someone asking me for advice, I found that actually I hold some words to say from my point of view. We discussed about our works and thoughts, about imagination, processes and perplexity. There were some times in the school I doing nothing but talking to peers.

While talking, every time I could come up with some new points to express. And I learned that I have got some tempo, which is at every stage, I must make some decisions to express my position, then having conversation, to see how I get along with my choices and with points from others, how my mind will change. There are so many thoughts hidden in the shutting mouth.

07

‘Never build any theory for it,’ my tutor reminded me,‘this could be dangerous,’ and this led me to rethink my way of working.

Certainly, those revelations from my processes were not fixed, therefore I became beware of the distance from any theory and just let my images guide me rather than having any induction of my little experience. With the spatial design skills I have picked up, all I need to do is to bring new knowledge as my project to throw myself into a sequence of making process, accepting all the faults and accidents it occurs to me.

By definition architectural concepts were absent from the experience ofspace. Again it was impossible to question the nature of space and at the same time make or experience a real space.
The complex opposition between ideal and real space was certainly not ideologically neutral, and the paradox it implied was fundamental.

- Tschumi