An architecture on longing
Tabitha De Smedt. Antwerp, Belgium
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Name of work in English
An architecture on longing
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Name of work in original language
Entering that moment when a desire of a space becomes readable
Prize year
Young Talent 2018
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Work Location
Antwerp, Belgium
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Author/s
Tabitha De Smedt
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School
Faculty of Architecture - KU Leuven.
Brussels, Belgium
Young Talent 2018 YT Nominees
An architecture on longing
Entering that moment when a desire of a space becomes readable
Program
Mixed use - Cultural & Social
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Labels
Research · Compact
Architecture is often represented in a drawing or a model as a projection for an architecture that exists outside of it. For me, architecture can also exist in and through the design itself and become a built reality. What attracts me to architecture are specific moments of becoming, where time is suspended for a while, a moment of entering architecture.
As an architect, I move between writing and designing, and I use them in a similar way: they are 2 ways of getting to know myself and my work better. I want to look at architecture slowly and intensively without limitations. This has a tendency to play out more in my mind than it does in reality, I can truly see it through writing about it, by finding the right words for it. But then designing takes over from writing, and the design starts writing me\nMy working method is not fixed, but relies on familiar habits that keep coming back in the way I approach architecture. By using both cinematic and graphic mediums, I tried to find the right language to grasp this moment of longing. In trying to capture this in an architecturally readable space, I wanted to use a medium that could trigger this desire to see and absorb the intensity of its qualities, to activate, enter and construct them. My aim was not to create a fiction, but to get a hold of that moment that makes you stop, makes you go back. This led to coinciding typical, recognizable elements of architecture that instigate this longing for me, into one autonomous whole, into my own written and designed charter, as a meaningful something. \nUltimately, I wanted to evoke the experience of entering space as something that becomes spatially sensible or readable. Therefore, by giving the final model the shape of an entering object, I tried to visualise that moment of active intrusion. It’s a demonstration for an architecture that manifests from my imagination. This suggestive architecture requires a certain precision, which has a lot to do with how I personally enter and experience space (obliquely), but it also relates to the way materials come together, each with their own thickness, length and width. Even empty spaces or transitioning from one space to another can offer an array of possible experiences. Though limited in size, the object still speaks about proportions, composition and the impression of things and space. It’s something seemingly unstructured, enigmatic and sensitive, like an entry into an architecture that tells a story and unlocks a phenomenological experience.