The first key to interpreting the work of
Columbian studio Paisajes Emergentes, or
"emerging landscapes", comes in the form of
the group's name. Indeed, this Medellín-based
architecture collective strives to make buildings
that enter into contact with the submerged energy
of nature and commence an exchange that
will evolve over time. The "emerging landscape"
thus represents a suspended horizon, something
unexplored that is waiting to be awakened.
"Architecture reacts to places" is the statement in
which their investigations are rooted. They want
their architecture to be able to listen to and register
the latent energy contained in the landscape,
aiming to construct a physical device that allows
us to capture dormant qualities, activate them
and make them perceptible. Architecture proves
to have the power to interact with these enigmatic presences, as it possesses the means and scale to
mediate with them.
What does the landscape mean to Paisajes
Emergentes? Rather than a literary dimension
from which to extract elements for a representation
that is destined to last a single fleeting lifetime,
they see landscape as a space of freedom
where one goes to discover one's own primary
images. During this process, drawings represent
the medium that collects emerging images and
deposits them on the reality of a paper surface.
Inhabited or uninhabited as it may be, architecture,
to these three young Colombian architects,
implies the condition of listening, the search
for a profound and direct relationship with the
unheeded manifestations of a place. This quest is
inspired by instability, the passing of time and the
interaction with nature's slow pace, measured in geological eras or telluric movements.
For the (landscape) architects of Paisajes
Emergentes, natural phenomena constitute the
"raw material" from which to make a project emerge.
Thus, if architecture is not separable from and
cannot exist without natural phenomena or the
enigmatic presences in the landscape, it is because
architecture is not meant to engender a form of
resistance. Nor does it aim to erect a bulwark in
defence of the enclosure identified by architecture.
Rather it is prepared to be a form of adaptation,
in order to include these things in the project and
turn them into the activators of a new ecosystem
that is at its centre. To do this, architecture steps in
to function as a piece of infrastructure and sustain
the emergence of new ecosystems that would not
have been able to establish themselves independently
otherwise: a place of welcome for "natural" accidents. It is as if architecture had found the
memory of its organic substance in order to stage
its aspiration of becoming fully fused with the elements
of nature, adapting to its prolonged rhythm
and the slow turning of the wheel of time.
Each project stems from the patient observation
of a place's qualities. The "dialogue" with the
presences that inhabit the landscape is modulated
according to a quasi-scientific type of language,
specifically able to indicate the laws with
which to manipulate the "raw material" that is
the foundation of the project. It helps them to
calculate the direction of the winds, the breezes
blowing in from the mountains, the trajectories
of the currents, the rhythmic movement of the
tides, the convectional flowing of air and atmospheric
factors. This language is constructed by
borrowing from the semantic fields of geology, biology and meteorology – subjects which Paisajes
Emergentes attempt to make their own in order
to open up the architecture issue to unexplored
territory.
Despite the consciousness of an inescapable
destiny that suggests we beware of environmental
catastrophe, the magical architecture of Paisajes
Emergentes recognises the intrinsic life of the
landscape (which is inhabited by presences that
preside over the invisible side of the universe) by
trying to describe the parallel dimensions that are
feasible for the human environment. In flooded
landscapes, such as in J.G. Ballard's deserts of
water, human constructions emerge as mysterious
and faraway or suspended. The sky, like the sea or
prairies that stretch out as far as the eye can see,
dissolves into the horizon, alluding to a future
that is unknown yet full of possibilities.
Paisajes Emergentes
The Colombian studio's magical architecture describes the search for a profound relati onship with the unheeded manifestati ons of a place, revealing the spaces that safeguard the invisible side of a landscape.
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- Francesca Picchi
- 04 August 2010
- Medellìn