1.

Since you guys are presently developing your graduation projects, we thought
it could be useful to present my graduation project, developed 4 years ago in
the Border Condition graduation studio.
2. I would like to start by saying that every time I tried to present it or expose it,
this project resisted any attempt to linearization. It is impossible, for me, to
make sense of it defining a clear beginning and an end-point, only one
beginning and only one end-point, so that all the implications, decisions and
ramifications could be reduced to a concept, one main chain of logical
deduction, and to a final, univocal interpretation. The question is then: how to
share, how to communicate this project when its form is so distant from, and
so irreducible to the common channels of representation and the accepted
and official styles of thinking. How then to say something about it at all,
beside confronting you with a set of bare facts, of artefacts?
Instead than trying to linearise it in a narrative, I would rather proceed by
following a few threads, or perspectives, that taken together should give
rise to an image.
3. so, I will give a small introduction, then...O,X,4,...
4. The task of reconciling divergent, dis-aligned, or antithetical pro-position has
become impossible in the contemporary city, as in the work of art.
Nevertheless, it is definitely possible to define some of the themes that
belong to this project, and to organise them, if not in a structure or in a
coherent whole, at least in a SET where elements are in relation to each
other, or we should say, in spatial contiguity with each other. In fact, this
project does have a conceptual configuration, and this conceptual
configuration has the form of a CONSTELLATION, at least in the definition that
Benjamin gives of this notion. Benjamin introduces his constellation with
respect to the problem of how historiography representation relates, or
describe, eventsunderstood as heterogeneous events and historical
phenomena.
5. How to bring the historical phenomena, the obscure minutiae whether of
baroque drama, of industrial aesthetics or of print culture into connection
with something that is less ephemeral and of greater philosophical weight?
In the context of Benjamin attempt to make sense of modernisation, the basic
significance of the constellation lies in its connecting or mediating power, in
its potential to bring together material particularity with overarching notions
or ideas, without reducing one to the other. Since:

6. "The idea belongs to a fundamentally different world from that which it

apprehends. For phenomena are not incorporated in ideas. They are not
contained in them If ideas do not incorporate phenomena then the
question of how they are related to phenomena arises. The answer to this is:
in the representation of phenomena The set of concepts which assist in the
representation of an idea lend it actuality as such a configuration."
7. We should make clear that, for Benjamin, Idea (image) means something
very different from concept. The difference being that Ideas are not subject
to the mechanism of reduction that defines concepts. Ideas do not need to be
thought of as an organised structure, where a process of differentiation, a
creative process, is reduced to ONE singularity, to a beginningAdopting the
notion of Constellation for describing the form and the function of an idea
means that ideas are formed by a juxtaposed rather than integrated
cluster of changing elements that resist reduction to a common denominator,
essential core, or generative first principle. Borrowing Post-tructuralist
terminology, We can say, with a degree of approximation, that concepts have
an arboreal structure, while for Benjamin Ideas, or images are Rhizomatic.
Let's start then, since we have to start somewhere, from the periphery: from an
aspect of the project that is often dismissed as peripheral, or as trivial, maybe
because it is too material and not discursive enough. Let's start with Drawing
Technique, more precisely with how some of the final drawing where made.
8. Drawing Techniques
9. The 1:200 drawings that you see here where all extracted from a digital
model, made in Rhino-5.
10.
Beside a few minor routine and automatic operation there is no script for
this model, no explicit logical tree, neither in Grasshopper nor in rhino-script.
It has been modelled, or I should probably say: waived, manually. With a
mouse and directly on Rhino interface.
11.

The most challenging part was representing the system of cables, which

are bundles of 6 polymeric ropes, used in nautical industry for boat traction,
called Dynema-12. With the exclusion of few other elements that we will
introduce later, the cables constitute the material 'bulk' of library.
12.
They define at the same time the load-bearing structure, the internal
appearance and the spatial quality of the library. They deliver an arrangement
that is pretty distant from the dominant understanding of architecture space

as a system of separations. Perhaps, the word: FIELD is more accurate than

the notion of SPACE to describe this place.
13.

However, I resolved to reduce the cables to single lines, for obvious

problems of scale detail and file weight. The task was then that of making a
3-dimensional drawing rather than a model. This distinction proved to be
rather important and created a number of technical complications.
14.

3d modelling software are in fact implicitly based the system of linear

projections. One of the assumption of this system, that constitutes the

foundation of 3d software Cartesian space, is that lines are meant to define
surfaces, and surfaces are wrapped or folded to define solid shapes. No point,
or line, or two-dimensional surface object is coherent on its own, as
representational element, in this space. Furthermore, This aspect is what
defines the rules of visibility in rhino: the priority of an object on another,
ordered according to the point of view > first the foreground object then the
background one. In other words, when objects are surface-like or solid-like we
see the object that is immediately in front of us, that hides those behind. This
is also the aspect that allow us to control and manipulate a 3d-model. Our
very possibility of working in 3d-softwares relies on it.
15.

Of course, when the elements are simple lines, this system of visibility no

longer works. We could thus say that this style of making, this technique,
forced the limit of the software. In a way, this particular drawing process is a
Mis-use of the rhino. This aspect is pretty important since In misusing an
instrument, that is, deploying it in a way that betray, or go against, its
accepted and institutionalised use, the way it was intended to be used, we
can actually open an instrument or a technique to other, interesting possible
usages.
16.

In a way, This reminds of a practice, common between architects, of

modifying, designing and creating the tools needing for building or designing
architecture. Let's just think to the special machines that Brunelleschi
designed for building the dome of Santa Maria del Fiore in Florence, or to the
contemporary full-fledged digital architect that designs custom plug-in for
grasshopper: Romantic scripts meant to be used only one time, for a single
project.
17.
When I started to draw, or maybe we should say, to Sew the lines, the
'hardware' of the library (that is, the disposition of staircases, galleries and

Lecterns, or reading platforms) was already modelled. For each line, two
points in the upper and lower structural plate respectively, defined the 2 ends
of a given line, while the upper and lower end of the line representing the
handrail post, were the anchors through which the line would unfold.
18.

Each line is a particular type of Spline called Interpolated curve. The

defining characteristic of the interpolated curve is that it intersects the

anchor-points, while in the approximated spline the anchor-points work as
tensors defining the line curvature.
Additionally, my interpolated spines started and ended tangent to the
horizontal Normal direction of each point. This construction is what define
the peculiar curvature of the cables, anchored to the ceiling and
underground pulleys, that assumes the geometry of a variation of the
Ogee arc, however with non-circular, differential curvatures.
19.

Interestingly, even if the library owes so much to digital drawing, the

specific form of this curve emerged from the making of a physical model, a
maquette. Having in mind that the cable should have been in polymers and
not in metal, I made a study model using think plastic fishing line, tensioned
between 2 perforated Perspex plates and waived between intermediate
jagged perspex surfaces.
20.

It is important to note that The model does not represent the library as it

turned out to be designed. It is a 1:100 frame encompassing a small portion

of the field and simulates only a couple of conditions that will return in the
final design. For this study model, we are thus talking about Partial
representations. In isolating singular aspect of a design, partial
representations has the advantage of tackling, studying, solving, or
presenting specific conditions that would be simply too difficult to solve when
in the midst of the others.
21.

The making of this model was an experience that I would associate to

what I imagine to be the practice of watch-making, or of meditation. A line

after the other, in a movement of differential repetition. We will somehow
return on this aspect at a certain point.
22.

The curvature of the interpolated curves, tangent to the anchors, came

from the observation of the material behaviour of the fishing line, waved
through the perforated plates and the jagged surfaces.

23.

We can start seeing that the design technique of this project oscillates

between different means of representation, that we can provisionally divide

between Analogue and Digital. An exchange between analogue model-making
and digital 'modelling' in this case. On the one hand, This exchange creates a
cross-pollination between 2 different modality of doing. On the other it
renders ambiguous this division between analogue and digital techniques of
representation, > the limit between the 2 momentarily collapsed.
24.

I have to say that the making of the digital model was a little bit painful. I

started sewing from one of the corners of the field, and proceed along a
zigzag line.
25.

When a certain density of lines accumulated, It became practically

impossible to recognise the point of the field upon which I was working at a
given moment. Without foreground-background priority, different lines and
other elements of the model, sitting at different positions, and thus far apart
in the Cartesian space overlapped in the axonometric camera viewpoint. Even
with changing manually the visibility of singular elements, selected one by
one and then isolated, the process proved to be way too slow
26.
This, given the fact that each curve had to start, land and anchor to very
specific points disseminated in the field, soon became quite frustrating, and
gave a fair amount and headache. The possibility of seeing through the field
of wireframes, of distinguishing an element from the other, of recognising
which line came in front of the otherin one word, my vision, was quite
literally compromised, and with it, also the power I had on the design
vanished.
27.

However, I eventually solved this issue with a small simple trick. I

modelled a red sphere, the only solid object in the file, and placed it in a
dedicated layer called "marker". I used the sphere as a bookmark: I would
move it along the sewing path, placing its centre in the exact point on which I
was working.
28.

In this way, if I had to change the objects visibility setting, or zoom out, or

rotate the camera, I could simply select the one-object layer directly and
automatically zoom-in on the spot.
29.

The red sphere , so to say, enlightened its immediate surroundings. The

solid object worked as a spatial reference for the lines around it, clarifying

their relative position and separating the foreground elements from the
background.

X
30.

Lets now have a look to the printed drawings.

(unfolded-section) This one comes from different sections of the digital

model, made perspectival by placing a camera pointing at the exact centre of

each frame, and flattened out. The 2d lines have been exported in illustrator
for layout-ing. I opted for a very simple print style: only black lines. However
there are 15 combinations of line thickness and opacity only in this drawing.
This is because certain section were so dense as to render the drawing not
sufficiently readable, while other allowed for a more realistic dimensioning of
the lines representing the cables.
31.
Albeit being a digital drawing, for some mysterious reason, some part of
drawing gives the impression of having been drawn free-hand. So, this
drawing, a digital-borne one, drawn more or less in the standard architecture
drawing technique, that of edge definition through Lineamenta (that is, black
abstracted lines on neutral white paper), holds certain characteristics that are
normally assigned to analogue rendering-drawings or etchings (those of
Piranesi, for example). For example, I think we can talk about atmospheric
quality of the drawing in this case. The ambiguity of this drawing, as an
artefact, is that it collapses the distinction between analogue and digital
drawing. It is digital and analogue at same, even if in different ways. This
feature is also reinforced by the printing technique. In fact it is printed from a
vector file in Wax Ink. In this way lines create bas-reliefs. They can be
perceive even only haptically.
32.
However, I claim that some portions of this drawing transgress also the
analogue dimension. In other words, they belong to that category of digital
drawings that couldn't be made manually, with ink-pen and rulers, not even
using the highest level of care and precision, and that also this aspect has to
do with blindness as the limit of visibility.
33.
This is quite interesting if you think that parametricism has in fact an
analogue-borne origin. It is sufficient to recall Greg Lynn account of Biology
Centre for the Goethe University in Frankfurt, by Eisenman architects, to see
how those first geometrical permutations and recursions were actually drawn
by hand.
34.

Also, a contemporary double-curvature design hardly reach the level of

geometrical complexity of Gaudi's. Almost any geometry can be drawn by

hand, given a sufficient level of skill and patience. What parametricism does
is that it diffuses this high-level of craftsmanship, that do not belong anymore
only to great talents but also to ordinary draftsmen; and that it makes this
sort of operations extremely more time-effective. Thus any digital drawing,
beside certain particular raster techniques, can be produced or reproduced by
analogue means.

This is probably not the case for some of these perspectives since,

even if we think to start drawing from the background toward the

foreground, the density of cables accumulates in such way that the
background elements will erase (will blacken), the space where the
foreground elements will be drawn, making it (almost) impossible to
determine their exact position.
35.

Drawing (/) Space

36.

This ambiguity and, so to say, superimposition of states between the

Analogue and the Digital that we find in drawing as material artefacts, can be
found in the "representational-other-side", the side of the projection; in other
words, it can be found in the architecture of the library that these drawings
represent.
37.

The library is basically a computational machine-environment. The

disposition of the lecterns, the assemblage of the mobile unites that

constitutes the circulation and consequently the trajectory of the cables... in a
word: the form of the space, is computationally-driven. Almost everything is
numerically controlled, and could be represented in numbers.
38.

Similarly to Konstant's New Babylon, the kinesis of the library and the form

of space, in a way or in another, depends on the composition/summa of the

plural/collective will of the members of the library, a rather exclusive
community of blind readers.
39.

One of the way this library could work from the point of view of

management, is that different clusters of similar topics are accessible in

Specific Lecterns. Readers can produce compiling of existing information,
establishing possibly unexpected connections between apparently distant
epistemological domains. When this connection is collectively accepted it is
translated in a new physical connection.

40.

A new gallery is formed that connects two lecterns, and thus two clusters

of topics. I might well be a different setting, a sort of blind research library,

where each reader claims a specific lectern, and the proximity, or degree of
connectivity, between one lecterns is given by the communion of interests
between readers.
41.

Thus, the library is constant formation or reformation. As such It doesn't

have a precisely structured geometrical form. Or rather, we could say that

architectural form, in this case, is in a state of Potentiality. The form of the
library is never fully actualised because it corresponds, within the limits
defined by the matrix of possible kinetic variations, with the rather large set,
or field, of possible actual configuration that space might take.
........EXPAND???
42.

Resorting to the literary metaphor, and to the analogy between the Book-

format and Gothic theological architecture, we could say that the library it is
constantly being written, and re-written. It thus abandon the analogy with the
book-format, and with text, to become Hyphertextual.
43.

Also the navigation in the library: the circulation and the blind's orientation

in space is based on the numerical. In other words It is digital. Every topiccluster is associated to tree digits that individuate the position of a lectern:
the first two are the coordinates of a position at ground floor level, thus they
designate a single rope. The third alphanumerical indicates a specific
intersection between a mobile unit and a cable: This last Braille digit is
engraved on the handrail post.
44.

This system of orientation complies to the way a blind person represents

(meaning in this case: think of and understand) Space. In fact For a blind,
there is always an intermediate phase between the confrontation with
physical reality and the formation of idea of the space surrounding him, in
which the function of the eye is substituted by an additional intellectual effort.
Lacking the sense of vision as a spontaneous interpretation of space, the
blind is constantly forced to codify the external into verbal and numerical
systems in order to delineate the characteristics of his surroundings.
45.

Thus, not only Braille is a numerical language, but also: a common

strategy of orientation blind people is that of literally counting the steps that
separates an obstacle from another.

46.

While the geometric form and structure is in becoming, instable, in

fluctuation let's say, the library delivers a peculiar feeling... and maintain a
particular atmosphere in whatever configuration it assumes. The space has
the quality of an architecture drawing: made of lines, where lines are freed
from the duty of enclosure, of definition, and of description of shape.
47.

This space is smooth and continuous, without interruption, without breaks.

It presents no particular, or substantial difference between one point/sector

and another, no discontinuity or sudden change. It differentiates smoothly
rather than discretely. It is also a-hierarchic: it neither has a centre, nor
particular points of interest, in a way akin to a forest.
48.

SENSORIALITY....???

Drawing (/) Experience

Let's go back to the drawing process for a while, and let's try to tackle it from a
different angle. Before I mentioned that making the wire model was in a way
similar to meditation... Now, let's see if we can reflect a bit upon that, finding out
what we can draw from it with respect to this project.
49.

Both sewing the physical model and making the digital model involved a

degree of detachment from the object being drawn... from what I called: the
representational-other-side, what was projected in those lines.
50.
In a way the material act of sewing between the Perspex plates and of
drawing and modelling in the software acquired a degree of autonomy from
what we conventionally call: Thinking. This understanding of cognition as
conscious thinking, that is philosophically grounded in Rationalism and early
Phenomenology, is in fact the faculty that enable the representational link,
in architectural design, between a certain act of production, of drawing for
example, and what this drawing represents.
51.

To put it simple, I am trying to give an account of an act of making that

underlay to, and at same was supported by, a state of awareness that was
different from what we normally call thinking. Something beyond, or simply
something other, than thinking. An act of making then, in which thinking was
temporary put between bracket, eclipsed as it were. We could describe it, in a
nutshell, as a drawing/making-induced Trance, or as an act of Bare-making.
52.

Let me just try to clarify this concept, which is the hinge that relates

vision to our epistemological system, to knowledge, to prediction, projection

and architectural representation. And also one of the reasons for which this
library for the blind is also an act of Blind drawing.
53.

Famously, In The Memoires of the Blind , Derrida argues that drawing

originates from the confrontation of the author with its own memory, rather
than from the perception of the external world. Derrida introduces three
aspects, Three types of powerlessness of the eye whereby the
apprehension of the invisible prevails over the perception of the visible during
the act of drawing. The first aspect, the A-perspective of the graphic art is a
reflection on the inscription of the trait.
54.

Derrida underlines that what is to be traced, what is just about to be

inscribed, doesnt belong to the domain of the spectacle, of the spectacular

objectivity. The to-be-traced doesn`t conform to any sort of guideline, visible
before the act of tracing. The trait comes instead from a recollection, a
transcription on paper of the memory of the model, that is preserved in the
memory of the draughtsman. In the moment in which a line is being traced,
the draughtsman is blind to the visible. The draughtsman is contemplating
memory, recollecting the invisible, rather than looking at the visible model set
in front of him. This is one of the reason for which drawing is blind according
to Derrida, that the hand is guided by memory and not by perception. Let's
call this the First-Order Blindness.
55.

The visionary draughtsman is always, at least momentarily, blind because

in an effort to produce the novel, he refuses to comply and to reproduce the

reality at hand.
56.
But what about architecture drawing? It is perfectly obvious that
Architecture drawing do not rely on external perception since the object
represented is a projection: it does not yet exist in the form it is being
represented. Furthermore the most conventional modalities of architectural
representation (plan, section and elevation, axonometry) are completely abocular, meaning that they present architecture in ways that are not directly
perceived as such. Still there is another aspect that relates blindness more
specifically to architecture drawing.
57.

This aspect pertains to how our cognitive model, as well as discursive

knowledge, is modelled upon vision, the most theoretical of external senses.

In architecture production, the architect's vision is that which grants the
faculty of foreseeing spatial events and planning accordingly.

58.

Thus, architecture is able to connect the lines it draws with the spatial

implications of those lines, that is, to evaluate what could be the value of
those lines with respect to the human body, context, budget, etc... It is thus a
matter evaluating in advance, of gaining an amount of anticipated knowledge
on an object that can't be observed.
Within the paradigm of architectural vision as anticipated knowledge,
Architectural drawing is often defined according to this Instrumentality
toward the architecture object, toward a spatial construct that is yet to
come. In most cases, Drawing is defined as architectural exactly because
it satisfy this representational duty. It must always be representational.
59.

This other account on vision then, this Second-Order of blindness that

is perhaps more relevant to architectural design in particular, considers sight

in terms foresight, and blindness as the eclipse, or temporary interruption of
projective foresight.
Derrida doesnt specify what kind of mnemonic recollection is at the origin of
drawing. However, since the object of the discussion is mimetic drawing, the
recollection at play could be interpreted univocally as the visual memory of the
model. It is unclear, however, what Derrida means with Anamnesis. In fact, for
Plato, Anamnesis is the recollection of original forms inscribed in the soul, such
as the spontaneous knowledge of basic mathematics. It is possible that Derrida's
anamnesis is completely independent from consciousness. In that case, there
wouldn't be an intermediate passage, a mental representation,
between recollection and inscription: the visual memory of the model would
then be directly translated into gesture and sign.
60.

Let me draw a parallel with another project where the interruption of

projective and representational vision is quite literally linked to physiological

vision, and of lack thereof. In 1983 Coop Himmerblau produced a sketch that
would have eventually been implemented into their project for a so-called
Open-House in Malibu. The sketch, become known as blind drawing, was:
"Created from an explosive sketch drawn with eyes closed in intense
concentration; the hand acts as a seismograph, recording the feelings that the
space will evoke."
In this case, projective-representational blindness (second-order) is
induced by literal blindfolding. Lines are traced with eyes closed with in

mind a vague feeling of : light and shadows, enclosure and openness,

whiteness and vaulting. These categories are completely abstract
(sensorial abstractions). No thought is given to the architectural meaning
of those marks, or traces of a drive to make.
61.

Architectural

implementation, and with this I mean the translation into architectural

elements, is done after the drawing being made. If you think of it, this is not
really a different way of producing architecture...rather a radicalisation of a
phenomenon of detachment between building and drawing, the distance that
lines can maintain, for a while, from what that might their interpretation in a
full scale construct.
62.
"Think that the drawing in architecture, that is, the unconscious act which
calls logic into question, could be the blind spot. The coincidence that is not
a coincidence, leads us to a method of design in which the drawing becomes
important. Free from the physical constraints, without thinking about spatial
consequences, the drawing comes into being in an instant, and
administrates the building. And when you see the drawing, created in an
explosive moment, you see the superimposition of plan, elevation and
section. Everything is in the drawing."
63.

Without me really noticing it, while I was drawing the library something

similar occurred. In the sense that it occurs a similar black-out of projective

thinking. Still it was reached via different means. It dealt with the presence
of rather clear design limits: First limit: The fact that the space of the
library was meant to unfold within the ceiling and the floor grid. Second Limit:
that the elements to be disposed in the field had been defined and accepted:
lecterns disseminated in the field, galleries and stairs connecting them and
ropes to hang the elements. The disposition of these elements and within
these limits enjoyed a great amount of freedom.
64.

What I called before bare making, and Drawing-/or Making-Induced

Trance, its exactly this purely intuitive form of drawing, that is pretty difficult
to reach in architectural design, given all the constrains imposed by the
commitment of connecting drawing, or more in general,
65.

All the possibility for encounters, for social intercourse, the density of

connection in the different areas...all of these factors were generated, blindly,

in the act of making. Rather than being the result of reasoning, of reasonable

decision making, that is, of an attempt at keeping-under-control the elements

of a design and foreseeing their consequences. This freedom, the temporary
liberation from the constrains of built-matter, was also a foregoing of control
over what is being made, renouncing to keep an eye on them, of watching
over them.
66.
Impossibility of foreseeing, or proceeding forward, blindfolded but still
proceeding, animated by something that we could only call faith in the possibility
that something will eventually emerge.
WHAT ABOUT THE PART ON POESIS ??? (maybe when I talk about trancedrawing)
The Library and the City of Rome. Mapping, yes. But what?
As Rome was a latecomer to industrial modernity, the design and the
construction of peripheral districts, began only in the early 50. Previous to that,
the periphery of Rome consisted almost exclusively of large shanty towns named
Borgate, a hell of suburbs1 where the former inhabitants of the city centre had
been exiled during the fascist regime. These citizens were forced to leave their
homes destroyed to sanitize the city and to make space for new monuments. As
for the reasons that lead to the construction of the borgate, even the uniqueness
of roman peripheries can`t be fully comprehended without considering how their
cultural significance is intrinsically related to Rome`s inner city and, more
precisely, to its spectacular appearance.
In many respects, Mussolini`s project for Rome was driven by the same
intentions underlying the archaeological excavation carried out under
Napoleon`s rule, as well as the works of urban renovation undertook by Pope
Sisto V. In the XVI century the pope himself designed a network of visual axes
connecting the major monuments and the centres of power in the city. As John
Rhodes suggests, what assimilates the main stages of Romes urban
development is that they all have concurred in the progressive derealisation of
the city`s physical space, which is, the reduction of the city`s material reality
into a primarily visual spectacle, ultimately transforming central Rome into a

1 Pier Paolo Pasolini_Letter to Silvana Mauri, in Letters_1952_ p.380

spatial construct in service of representation. 2 Gradually, the city centre as a site

traversed by social, economical and emotional forces has thus been deprived of
the most meaningful relation with its inhabitants. However, far from being
intended to generate a purely aesthetical pleasure, the image that Rome offered
to the visitors was concretely subtended by the power that resided in the city.
In 1949, the newly constituted democratic parliament launched a national
program for the construction of public houses. The Grande Ricostruzione had
the double intent of incrementing workers employment in the building industry
and of housing the increasing amount of people, mainly workers themselves,
migrating to the big cities in search of better living conditions. The ideological
connotation that characterised the construction of Italian peripheries implied,
especially in the capital, a reconsideration of the modality through which political
intentions were expressed in urban design, as well as of the places where such
designs were implemented. In fascist period the city centre was operating as a
representational instrument for promoting the regime`s value system by means
of exhibiting Rome`s glorious past. The expression of social democratic principles
was instead accomplished in the periphery of the city, where the working class
was now granted with the commodities deriving from industrial modernisation,
which were embodied in the possibility of owning a house.
Tuscolano II
One of the peripheral districts built in the post-war period was chosen as
research site. Frome many points of view the Tuscolano II is emblematic of
neorealist period. It is a large public housing complex, designed and built from
1951 in proximity of Cinecitt, south-east of Rome. While Tuscolano I was a
modest plan inscribed in the previous masterplan of 1936, Tuscolano II and III are
among the finest realization of neo-realist architecture 3. The district occupies
35.5 hectares of land and comprises 3,150 apartments built to house some
18,000 people.
The Tuscolano is even the set of Pasolini`s second movie on the periphery of
Rome. In Mamma Roma, Pasolini interprets the newly built district as a place
2 John David Rhodes_ Stupendous, Miserable City_ UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA
PRESS_2007_pp.xvi-xvii
3 Ibid. P.143

where, despite the promise for a better life that was to be assured with the
construction of the periphery, the evil inevitably rooted in human beings is still
present in everyday life and ultimately prevails on any constructive intention.
The promise for a new realism appears then as fundamentally rhetoric while the
periphery also participates in the production of illusion that the city centre.
Tree eyes to see
The exploration of the Tuscolano has been carried out by means of three
photographic devices. The approach to the site was, to a great extent, tentative
and proceeded through several tests, errors and progressive adjustment. To be
honest, I cant say that this was a conscious choice since the outset, however,
the this approach has been slowly accepted and adopted as a research strategy
that informed the architecture project.
The devices are conceived to subdivide the image into several planes of
projection, thus producing multiple and simultaneous points of view on the
subject. The focus of interest wasn`t much that of capturing the city in one or
more images, as much as it was that of studying the relation between different
angles of view, or versions of the subject. The recordings oscillate between flat
and tridimensional representation: on the one hand they consist of a number of
pictures laying on two-dimensional planes; on the other, since every shot
imprints several projections, the images preannounce possible physical
representation.
Each recorder generates a perspective with no point of view, similar to an eye
gouged out from the body proper and still seeing. Due to their partial
disobedience to the operator, the recorders produce images that are distant both
from their author and from the city they represent and can thus be studied as
autonomous systems of signs.
I Device
The First device is a four pin-holes camera obscura that imprints one multiple
image on five projection planes arranged orthogonally on the sides of the inner
camera. The pin holes measure 0.55 mm and the focal length is 150 mm on the
central plane. The shot results in a singular set of images, picturing space from
four slightly diverging points of view, each of them recurring on more projection

planes. The first device has been used only once on site to capture a view from
the south entrance of Tuscolano II.
Even if the date of invention of the camera obscura is still uncertain, its optical
alchemy was already known to Aristotle who noted it in his Problemata Physica4,
written in the IV century before Christ. More than thousand years later, Vasari
ascribed to Leon Battista Alberti the invention of a human size camera obscura 5
but, according to other sources6, it would have been Filippo Brunelleschi to use
the device for the first time in order to establish the rules of linear perspective.
II Device
The Second device consists of a small photo camera, a custom made optical
objective and a motive body on wheels. When it is pulled along by the operator,
the gear system reduces the wheel rotation speed and transfers the energy to a
piston that presses the shutter button; every 7.5 meters the photo camera shots
a picture that is divided in four frames by means of two oblique mirrors
embedded in the optic.
The second device was employed during a walk in the research site in order to
picture the spatial condition at the edge of the Tuscolano II. It collected some 200
images that have been subdivided and reassembled in four sequences.
The logics that inform the working of this recorder, those of mechanical
production of images and of their linear juxtaposition, are analogous to those of
a movie camera. More precisely, the second device could be defined as a dolly
camera, a piece of filmmaking equipment patented by Segundo de Chomn in
1907, consisting of a wheeled support on which a camera can be mounted. If we
think that before Giovanni Pastrones Cabiria, dating from 1914, the position of
the movie camera was fixed as in the case of a photo camera, it is clear how the

4 Aristotle_ Problemata Physica, book VI_c. 350 BC_Brill Academic Pub_1999

5 Giorgio Vasari_The Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and
Architects_1550_ Modern Library Classics_2006
6 Antonio Di Tuccio Manetti_ The Life of Brunelleschi_1480_ The Pennsylvania
State University Press _1970

introduction of the dolly was crucial for the development of cinema as a specific
form of art. 7
III Device
The Third device remained in the computer screen. It simulates a number of
cinematic walks through an iconic apartment building in the Tuscolano_II and It is
meant to be composed by four webcams and 16 perspective scenographies
representing space at different scales. All together, the scenographies constitute
a field of information regarding the subject and, since they are disposed in the
field without any particular order of priority, the shots can be assembled in many
possible narrative sequences. The recordings, webcam footages in this case, are
edited according to a combinatorial matrix that links representation techniques
and degrees of privacy in the building. The third device outputs a cross-split
cinematic image in which every window corresponds to a navigation path
through the building, hence showing multiple footage of various spaces at the
same time.
Central for the development of the third device was the notion of nonlinearity,
introduced in 1902 by the astronomer Henri Poincar in order to describe the
movement of celestial bodies. As opposed to linear ones, nonlinear models
incorporate multiple possibilities for the development of a given system or for
the interpretation of a certain event. As early as 1922, Joyces Ulysses 8
suggested a discontinuous understanding of time, but it is only in later works
such as The Garden of Forking Paths9 and Cent Mille Milliards de Pomes10, that
nonlinearity and its narrative possibilities began to be explored in literature.
The space inside the camera
The visible is never in an isolated image or in something outside of images,(...)
yet it becomes visible in that which is transformed, transported, deformed from

7 Richard Abel _Encyclopedia of Early Cinema_2013_p.92

8 James Joyce_ Ulysses _1922_Wordsworth Editions Ltd_2010
9 Luis Borges_ The Garden of Forking Paths. In Labyrinths_New Directions_1962
10 Raymond Queneau_ Cent Mille Milliards de Pomes_Editions Gallimard_1961

one image to the next, one point of view or perspective to the next. There has to
be a trace linking them.11
From this point on, the focus of the research shifted from the representation of
urban space to the space inside the camera obscura, with the intent of mapping
the process of translation that occurs between two-dimensional and
tridimensional representation. To this purpose, the first device has been turned
into a light projector and a tridimensional grid [a non-object, just a reference
system] has been reduced on five flat planes.
The resulting set of images has undergone a series of operations meant to
isolate each of the projection and to trace the areas of intersection or
superimposition between them. {INVERSE PROCESS} From these signs it has
been extracted an intermediate dimension represented in a drawing, understood
as a state in between image and architectural space.
The literal meaning of the term photography is drawing/writing (graphia) with
light (phts). Its etymology confirms that photography is a particular kind of
image that deals with the representation of the visible, i.e. of something that can
be seen because it is irradiate with light. A drawing conversely, can be traced in
the dark. What is drawn doesnt necessarily belong to the domain of the visible,
actually, what distinguish architecture drawing as a particular form of
representation, is that of having the invisible as a subject.
Drawing In between
The drawing inside the camera visualises the translation between image and
architectural space in an intricate field of lines. Invisibility will become the
conceptual framework within which forthcoming decisions inherent to the
architectural project will be taken, and thus it requires a further clarification. To
this regard, Merleau-Ponty gives a far-reaching account of how the invisible can
be conceptualised: not to consider the invisible as an other visible possible, or
a possible visible for another . . . . The invisible is there without being an object,
it is pure transcendence, without an ontic mask. And the visible themselves, in
the last analysis, they too are only cantered on a nucleus of absence.12
When observing Alberti`s drawing for Santa Maria Novella, one realises that the
traits bring into existence the geometrical relations and the syntactical
11 Latour and milie Hermant_ Paris, ville invisible_La Dcouverte_1998_pp.29

connotation underlying the construction of the facade as such. Before that the
drawing was traced, the architectural qualities defining both the structural
coherence and the expressive register of the facade, were not simply latent, but
ultimately absent. However, for how much these qualities are embedded in the
stone, and thus they can be deduced with an attentive analysis of the building,
they still remain invisible.
That the distinctive subject of drawing hasnt much to do with the representation
of the visible, doesn`t undermine its property of opening up to the broadest
horizon for what concern the visualisation of architecture space. In fact, exactly
for not representing the appearance of what it projects, drawing operates as an
index of architectural thought. A single architecture drawing embodies a field of
interpretative possibilities, an entire universe of meanings, each of them
expressing the unique relation between artefact and beholder.
En-framing
The drawing was impenetrable: the density of the weft made it impossible to see
its inside. Nevertheless it was promising for a criterion concealed in its form.
Framing was used as a conceptual operation for exploring the drawing`s internal
logics. Framing is to focus on a part of the whole, to isolate that part and to
overlook the rest. In other words, to frame means giving to something an
ontological integrity that wasnt there before the operation, while what remains
outside the frame it is sacrificed and forgot. It limits as much as it permits. In this
case, framing was an revelatory act.
The drawing has been subdivided in 126 parcels of eight cubic centimetres each.
Re-framing
The parcels have been summed up and recombined in 42 frames. Even if each
frame is characterised by different density and configuration, they all share the
formal quality of an assemblage of oblique surfaces that fork and intersect.
These fragments can be interpreted both as parts of a bigger whole and as
different versions of the same set of formal characters. All of them can be the

12 Maurice Merleau-Ponty_The Visible and the Invisible_Northwestern University

Press_1968_p.257

outset for the development of a possible architecture language. However, only

one of them has been enlarged and represented in a physical model.

I should make clear that many of the things I said today were by no means
foreseen from the beginning. This also adds up to what I would call: the nonlinearity of this design process. But also to the notion of potentiality. > infinity
Impossibility of knowledge, of fully knowing it. This introduce another dimension
of blindness that has to do with the convergence of modern epistemological
model and the physical sense of vision. In a way we could say that one
determined the other, or that there are strong correlations between the two.