The Unilever Series: Dominique Gonzales Foerster - TH.2058

 

IN*VISIBLE. A HOUSE DISSOLVING IN THE FOREST

By Linfasonora

In*visible is a fascination, a chance to think and then dream. It is a soft, emotional architecture.

In*visible is an imaginative experiment, which consists in switching from visible to invisible through a conceptual breathe. It is an architecture that seems to appear from the void, made of tiny items of material. Only quantity and proximity render visibility.

A small mound of sand fulfils the hands. With a little rush, the material thins out, it spreads in the ambience, it disappears in the air. 

A grain of sand is the barely perceptible soul of a dune as big as the eye can see. 

In*visible is an idea that originates from an image. The scene is a forest, where common home furniture are located like in a surrealistic act: a wardrobe, a bed, a dining table, … These objects seem to be suspended in the natural environment, seem to be out of context. But they actually represent a home.

Millions of particles “live” in the forest. They are technological elements, artificial bugs that sometimes sparkle in the night, like mechanical fireflies.

Each element (flying/floating/hovering in the thin solution of the atmosphere) is linked with its fellows. They exist/live in the network, they make a system, they communicate with each other.

The slightest signal is interpreted as a movement, a mutual approach or a departure. The particles go closer or away. They create a more or a less thick, visible nebula. They form the shell of the house: a permeable/impermeable case, a place of shades between inside and outside, natural and artificial, house and wood. The architecture is evanescent and never becomes tangible. It rises out of nothing just visual. Still, it is material. 

The house’s material is itself the process that produces it. The material is not a motionless and passive element. It is a responsive and sensitive device, constantly re-shaping (or self-shaped). 

In*visible: 

It is a diffused architecture, that lives spread in the air (my house is in the air). It is made of swarms instead of walls, like thrilling nebulas of material. It is made of dust of barely perceivable relations.

It is a breathing architecture, that physically contracts and expands, responding to environmental and weather conditions and to the inhabitant’s wishes.

It is an eco-systemic architecture, made of communities of particles/organisms that live in symbiosis with each other and answer to environmental stimulus.

In*visible is a shine. It is a plan which aims to be a fashion icon. Brilliantine, pailettes, glittering jewels, in*visible has a female outlook for gleaming ornament pulsation. Sparkling, in the night time. 

In*visible trusts in miniature technologies. Magnetic adaptable forces hold the particles together, shifting their thickness and rarefaction, therefore their visibility. An invisible nanobot “station” is in communication with them.

The station can enclose home space, even if lasting invisible, and then attracting particles. Or it could be more than one station: awfully extended or awfully tiny nanobot successions, like invisible tech-pearls thread. The filaments wave in the air, becoming more or less visible, they contract and broaden, they stretch and curl up, they tangle a barely perceivable substance.

In*visible could not be realized straight away. It does not apply well-established technologies. It looks for technicians and scientists teamwork, alternating between their imagination and their skills. In*visible is a fantastic appliance which takes technological researches as starting points, contextualizing them in every achievable set/background. This kind of attitude could be compared to  the science-fiction world, even if the last purpose is not fictional.

In*visible wants to be real.

Can architecture be poetic first than realistic?

Can science (and architecture) be investigated through images?

Can architecture and science influence each other, communicate ideas, produce imaginative scenarios?

(..to be continued…)

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