VISION OF NOTHING

vision of nothing The objective is to design a building which achieves the sensation of upthrust. Kazimir Malevich's painting with the black square on the white canvas, the Suprematism and Proun provide the starting point of the research. The combination and contradiction of whiteness and blackness creates a suspension of gravity. Gravity is still a complicated question for science. Modernism was concerned with the appearance of weightlessness, but interpreted and re-defined this to be floating, or hovering, as in the cantilever and the use of les pilotis (derived from buildings over water). According to Anton Max Vogt: to a fish, a bird, and a terrestrial creature he (Le Corbusier) turns it into architecture on land, above water, and up in the air. This project returns to links with architectural examples such as Wolkenbügel by El Lissitzky and Tatlin's tower - which can be seen as concerned with upthrust. Upthrust produces an equal and opposite grounding force with its antagonism (counterthrust) to the earth in its attempts to escape gravity. A vision of nothing, which offers the blue cosmos as goal and will break off old thinking habits into new angles of vision.

Autorentext

Harry Rödel, M.Arch: Studied Master of Architecture at UNITEC,New Zealand. Project: Upthrust in Architecture. Research inmodern architecture, social art and contemporary art, weightlessinstallations. Lecturer for construction/architecture atUNITEC,NZ. He is currently working on his master of art historyat Auckland University.