Imagining Nothingness

Hogeschool voor Wetenschp en Kunst Sint-Lucas Gent:   Thomas Van Campenhout

Imagining nothingness has originated from a confrontation with Marseille as a strongly layered city. Among others these layers refer to the (inter)culturality, economical activities, traffic, leisure activities and movements in general. Also on a morphological level this becomes clear; high building blocks are suddenly planned for in the historic tissue. There is happening a lot in Marseille and life is often literally lived at the streets. It is an amalgameous of diverse events and non-events in which problems are inherent connected to the layered organisation. But they are not experienced as problems as such, but as an extra layer, contributing to a richer experience. It is thus particularly in this diversity and chaotic whole from which the real Marseille becomes clear. The public ground is an important factor in this organisation, the non-places or generic public spaces are where this experience becomes most visible.

Fascinated by this layeredness, this project is a search for a way to sustain this “chaos”, to cultivate it even. The deliberate non-planning becomes a planning-tool. It is the development and space that Rem Koolhaas defines with generic city and junkspace. Simultaneously it is also the development and design strategy that Xaveer De Geyter and Lieven De Cauter make use of in after-sprawl. And at last it also refers to the heterotopias of Foucault and the backsides of Wim Cuyvers.

This search is thus fully situated in the public space. And tries by means of cataloging and re-defining of this space to rediscover its very nature. [ the city is not dead (yet) in Marseille]. Perhaps Hopper understands/expresses this public space very well, he paints the generic landscape, the emptiness becomes simultaneously background and foreground. In an additional layer imagining nothingness situates itself also in a personal search for architecture as “medium/tool” and the feasibility of things. In that sense it can also be seen as a manifest about architecture. “The prison is the only building that can impose its use” - Michel Foucault.

Can we find the quality of public space in Marseille in these residue-places. And see these “junkspaces”, as Koolhaas calls them, or “heterotopias” by Foucault, as a newly discovered richness of urban public space. The void as designparadigm. By defining as little as possible, everything becomes possible [ because it is nothing, it can be anything ].

And furthermore; “Do we need a legitimacy for the vacuum?”. Does not find the in-between-space its legitimacy in its very own nature. Imagining nothingness tries to exploit this free space to the fullest, by maximizing its cutted-off nature and working on its borders to sustain the void by introducing the solid.

The building itself was conceived as two parallel walls with one formal façade facing the city and one informal backside. The backside is facing the large square/void and consists of a number of informal niches and alleys who have non-defined programs. The frontside is faced resolutely to the city center and fulfills every formal public activity, from shopping center to hotel.

The material was chosen as an archetype for the “wall” preeminently. On the frontside it is used as a normal ‘flat’ façade with normal bonds but evolves gradually to the backside into cutted bricks with different cavities and grooves. By using this material a very strong monolythic whole could be achieved in which the different niches are strongly experienced. Still the whole is varied by the three different entities and the unique illumination angle with casted shadows on the façades.

Imagining nothingness is about creating possibilities.
Text : Thomas Van Campenhout

Credit: Micro/Health Laboratory, Gatton Campus University of Queensland, Australia