E3 – NOT EVEN BARBAR – Spring 2016
Institute of Urban Design – TU Innsbruck

Notevenbarbar comes from a conversation that happened between John Hejduk, John Maruszczak and Raimund Abraham during a trip to the Chicago biennelle in 1979. In this conversation, Barbar, the elephant, could be seen as an architectural object with multiple unique characteristics. Trunk, nose, and ears as spatial concerns can be used to create specific recognizable character in architecture. If you begin to analysis, a majority of John Hejduk’s objects you will see the the Ears are the Wall, the trunk is the circulation and the nose becomes entry. (Wall House 1985) That said, character is something that is specific to a familiarity of ones perception. Architects such as Michael Young, Andrew Zago and Tom Wiscombe (to name a few) use this in order to create architectural objects that question what they are but offer small glimpses into what they may be. In this course, we look to challenge this and create objects that give way to this formal question. Through the means of a variety of software we look to make objects that give way to both visual recognition and material questionability. They will be soft, hard, and flexible. Bag, carved, chiseled, they will begin to display multi-faceted views and uniquely variable spaces. The character as space. Geometry will be simply and through multiple techniques it will find its character, its complexity and its link to the urban environment.