Posted on September 17, 2005 at 23:14:42.
Mehrdad Iravanian: Toward the Fatal Composition (Iranian Architect)
By RN
From my conversation with Mehrdad Iravanian, Iranian architect, winner of international stone architecture, Italy-2002, together with Mario Botta. The conversation is originally in English. I've skipped my long questions and responses (one of which is Pestis Solidus article at Maraka Project) in the following text. The subject is 'landscaping automobile, human system, prosthesis and crash.'
The Moulds dominate the history of architecture. Artificial solids have become more important than the space they create. This hegemony of mould is the natural result of our visual ability and literacy (actual disability and illitracy). The environment lives in the invisible side of NEGATRIUM.
1. AUTOMOBILE
Automobile is a building with an instable volume of negatrium. It always captures (when acting functionally) new locations, occupying new immediacy. It has a sense more than transparency. It is a devouring creature consuming space without trace: a matter of memory of location; an anti historical attitude. An automobile gives a sense of invisible entity that is very difficult to follow. it is a building; similar to caves that reminds me of the silence of a crashed car. A halted phenomenon gaining a new form by concentration or deformation of an original cliché form, which may be called, altered.
Automobiles are the magnetite volumes; last of a group loyal to Cartesian coordination attached to a determined surface for following an objective: a known limited random movement, in other word a limited autonomy presented by environment as an affordable media. They are relevant to surface but ironically the host should not create a stable situation but rather a repulsive one; so an automobile becomes volatile matter for immediacy.
The so-called force dynamic border is the actual property of an automobile. The whole existence of automobile is mobility; other than that it is a mere composition: an alienated building with minimum of border with despotic surface. When dynamic border forced to be a statical one under none of the discussed condition by ... the objectivity of an automobile gains a new dimension more or less statical or rather obstacle one; then what is an automobile, when it is not there; and if it is, it is a forceful bad chemistry of different materials trying to create an image of peaceful coexistence. Add to this, live pulse of human system which always is avoiding the cold metallic surface in quest of animal imitated substitute: leather, a semi-matrix for adaptation to environment. There are always a mediator between two concepts, man and machine: the part.
When act of touching happens the unity of matter will start; the coexistence of physics, one concave, the other convex (considering the complexity of their behavioural pattern). Concavity is the nature of machine; an incompleteness of dimension; always extendable by means of vomiting or devouring a capacity totally differentiated from its physic. Human, the key, gas, liquid, air are parts of convex of context. Human is a part of the contextual composition; the bad chemistry between dead position and liveware. A moment later the separation begins that ends up to objectivity of one: the movement of concave, the release of convex.
2. What is the most similar building to Automobile?
A vast parking lot, the land of minimum connection; fills with mere compositions. Neighbourhoods is not an appropriate term for such arrangement; there is no sense of neighbouring. The volatile dead machine loses its place and disappear; soon it replaces with another object. In a short period of time many factor changes: colour, size, shining capacity, elements of reflection, voice tone, when they gain their objectivity and after that lose their raum. More or less a parking lot reminds me of a time-accelerated city with rapid changing obstacle-moulds (a full scale intolerable prostheses -a palinode to last pieces); a stronghold that relay on volatile condition: automobiles can’t produce images of a building since they edited to be mobile and when they stop and lose their function it seem they are unwanted-object and not appropriate for dwelling. They are fine elements for wasteland; the replica of stability in an accelerated dimension.
3. AUTOMOBILE AND PROSTHESIS
I would say automobile is a primitive prosthesis with regard to its relevancy to a tensile, aged, handcrafted surface, on which it rolls on - limitation of flexural members for rapid dislocation and loss of its property as soon as it stops. I rather Consider boats a mere sophisticated media. They are always at slant (slope) status (when they slide on a surface). The crystal groundless under it has a opulent inter-dimensional identity. Penetrative volumes with a complex velocity. There is no sudden breakage of movement. The boat can penetrate two media in one time (water and air). We experience the same thing when we stop the car at a gas station to fill in the tank.
The car dies, the inter-course starts. In one moment there is a liquid connection between Stage set and dead composition.
We can’t experience new space with our limited sense of infiltration. This is one of those underground movements that hide from daily obvious experience.
But a search for a real plug-In [among automobiles] definition actually happens in driving cinema.
Driving cinema IS more or less like parking lots, but with a linkage of common information between members. So the definition is close to a city, it’s not an accelerated in time but rather information:
The automobile dies. The voice plugs in: information for decoding the picture. Then what kind of prosthesis the automobile is? When it is static and mere composition and lots of movement happening in front of screen and the user is linked with a cable and having the same experience at the same time as the others.
4. AUTOMOBILE, CRASH AND HUMAN: How do you consider the architectural sphere of a human system in a car crash?
I think I have been pushed to the '- without organ' manifestation of a final episode. What actually happening is two parallel volumes move inside the set, all inside each other and surfacing each other; for ground and background, even though different systems moving toward final composition (fatal composition). All balance forces turning to a drastic change: the systolic and diastolic forces at the same time of crash changing the relation between two moulds and final shape negatriums. This situation reminds me an oriental sculptor who carves his sculpture inside sculpture (maybe several of them); the autonomy of form inside form inside form, but some how untouchable. For visual realization, there is a craving for destruction: step by step. Each step a crash: loss of total primary form, achieving the reminder; And again and again. Finally the product is memory and segment. The segment is still the perfect form even if it is assembled or carved out of surrounding, and by itself it is an identical matter. Are we going toward breaking the other shells and touching the inner system?
The matter of disposition of volume. What we call natural relations or positions are subjected to change. A crash is new relationships of mould's surfaces. The negatrium experiences sudden closure, seismic movement; a type of shock of uncertainty that prevents accuracy, silence, and statical calculation. Moments later the disposition can be measured: volume inside volume inside volume.
The primary tasks of colour in crash is negation of system borders, even if the volume reminds as Programmed ............. The representative of containers will loose its shape in a very expressionistic manner, creating flattened volume, a very geometric polygon or island: sum of whole, the oil, the gas, the blood. Black-stain-red.
There is some sign of dwelling after crash: the relation we are trying to establish as outside / inside, and distinction between memory and present.
5. CRASH
Crash is a final stage of producing chain. The realization of exaggerated components and departments. Somehow, it seems the crash product is an error or contradictory to the established aim since it can’t fulfil the primary program but the object is capable of reprogramming according to the new status. It’s not an automobile (as soon as it stops running) but rather a composition of elements. We usually reprogramming the buildings ....A crashed car is under the title of rehabilitation ; it means a program after an actual event. The architectural analysis of the car totally depends on the type of crash and consequently the type of product that comes out of the crash.
When I am pointing to the crash as an entity, I compare the matter with the relativity theory and the subject of an observational entity which is based on coincidence of two or more point-objects at a particular instance of time. Somehow these definitions remind me of the effective and necessary elements for happening the so-called crash; that is time, space, points, line, and surfaces collide in a very particular and exclusive manner which (by present dimension of analytical ability counted obscure and untraceable) contributes a unique behaviour each single time to a crash object’s elements. After a crash many dynamic element appear that won’t follow the known linear movement; so many parts broken and live in a suspense situation that can move naturally by means of turbulence. So the crash is not the end of flexural movement but could be the beginning of different types of none linear operations (operandum).
An automobile can’t impose any location prior to that moment. It loses its linear movement. As soon as it stops, it’s not more than a crash machine: a mere composition that can simulate a building, a hole, a cave, an anchor object.