time-capsule transcripts.
- an experimental taxonomy of forms as a vehicle for a design operation -
what: installation displaced in Delft, at the CA2RE | CA2RE+ Conference | RECOMMENDATION, Delft University of Technology, Faculty of Architecture & the Built Environment
with: arch. ph.d. Gianluca Croce
where: Delft, The Nederlands
when: 2022
key words: time capsules, archive, archetypes taxonomy, emergency, apocalypse, environmental and artificial disasters
The perception of a contemporary era dominated by the looming threat of one or more catastrophes brings awareness of the need to preserve our existence traces, away from their probable disappearance and the possibility of their space-time transmission. Our research aims to investigate the concept of “time-capsule” in its most disparate forms, highlighting how, in its principles of protection, conservation, and communication, as well as its spatial configurations, there are relationships of continuity and contiguity only apparently random. The purpose of establishing a genealogy of the formal relationships between different objects - such as an Etruscan tomb or a World War II bunker - seeks to demonstrate how the diverse functional needs end up coinciding in the frequent use of some primary forms, sometimes even as a result of their assemblage.
The research on the formal characteristics of architectural objects and technological devices of the most disparate but associable for their function to “time capsules” is itself an application of the DDR method: as the straightforward operation of critical reading, evaluation, redesign, and synthesis of the examined objects allows to trace a taxonomy of elements that constitute a formal critical archive through which formulating the project of a new time-capsule, fed by the analytical and critical approach thus conducted. Therefore, the idea of developing a time capsule with an architectural meaning moves from the awareness that modern time capsules do not include the architectural aspects and their expressive potentialities in a relevant way. Exploring this device through the architectural discipline and its syntax means re-establishing the aspiration to transmit such an essential message in significant, symbolic, and monumental terms. The complexity and ambition of this operation require an experimental design approach involving the reconstruction of the genealogy of architectures and objects conceived as time capsule devices, giving body to a formal repertoire. Starting from this archive, the project operates utilizing a compositional process that intends to embody and integrate both the external configuration of the proposed examples and the internal ones and their relationship with the ground. The assembly, manipulation, and hybridization of models intended as archetypes is the operation that unfolds a project which reasons and operates through multiple systems of actions ranging from ready-made to cadavre exquis.
