Temple Off

The typology of Temple Off is brought to life through the fragmentary bringing together of divergent thematic strands and methods and making their concealed parallels visible and tangible. The Temple is dedicated to a previously negated basic need that represents the antithesis of the rational and thirsts for excess, ecstasy and the wild.

The following work is a search for characteristics and strategies to draw an initial fine contour of the excessive energy and the spaces demanded for it. By no means, however, is a holistic capture of it sought. The assumption of being able to make a generally valid statement is simply not possible with such a subjective challenge. By wandering through the thematic contexts of the Dionysian, the mystical, the liminoid, ecstasy, tumult, play, abject, anti-structure, masking and heterotopia, similarities and traits of this wildness are worked out and the concept of the off is introduced as a category of spatial theory. In this context, the off can be read as the spatial godfather of excess energy. Both phenomena are understood as rebellion and stepping out of the usual, commercial urban spectacle. In order to correspond to the polymorphous meaning of the off and the excess energy also in the sense of architectural form, the design tactics of bricolage and détournement are applied as decisive formative tools. Besides the theoretical examination of different social and spatial phenomena and a catalogue of typological stimuli used through the chosen design tactics, it is a collection of theses on the nature of the temple that ultimately form the typology. The resulting architectural design is conceived as a spatial configuration of the off, an enabling space for the discharge of the circumscribed wildness. The design oscillates between the defined and the neutral, the experiential and the enabling space. The Temple Off finds its place in this field of tension. The urban context of Paris is chosen as the field of experimentation - a city that, through its density and momentary transformation processes, offers a dynamic breeding ground for the development of the Off as a spatial-theoretical examination and architectural typology. The Temple Off nests near the Boulevard Périphérique on a railway wasteland - surrounded by urban development processes, infrastructure construction sites and an elevated garage. A truly wild place for a wild design.