Bachelor Studio IV 2018
Academy of Fine Arts Vienna

Translation from Drawing to Drawing __
Reconstructing Landscape

Ecology, Sustainability and Cultural Heritage
Hannes Stiefel, Luciano Parodi

The urban design Reconstructing Landscape is based on a translation of Peter Eisenmans line-drawing of the Guardiola House, designed in 1988 for Javier Guardiola. The project deals with the drawing and the process of translation as medium and design tool. For the translation of the drawing, there was used the aesthetic of the drawing as well as it´s context and Peter Eisenman´s repertoire. The Guardiola House is a conceptual design and should be a manifestation of the so called Zufluchtsort introduced by Plato as a place which only exists through it´s paradox. This means that a presence of a place always requires it´s absence and can therefore only exist through the moment of creation and instant deconstruction. Peter Eisenman as de-constructivist achieves this through the deconstruction of a pure geometrical form, a cube. Furthermore the topic of (artificial) landscape is important for Eisenmans work, and he often deals with the intersection of various grids, projected to a landscape, to blur concept and environment. Therefore a translation of Eisenmans drawing is based on a translation of the process of deconstruction of the pictured project into a landscape. This was made through a model, visualizing Eisenmans concept of deconstruction. It´s shadows, the sun leaves during a year have been projected onto a new landscape in Argentina, close to the small town Iruya in the Andes. To organize the lines three-dimensional they have been shifted according to the logic of the model. Besides Eisenman is interested in grids because they capture empty volumes showing the presence of the absence. Through the intersection of parts of the new grid, there have been created volumes and ground inside the grid which can be settled. The chosen environment of the Andes should emphasis the aspect of dialogue between the new structure and the landscape. It is an extreme one, so that the new structure exists as an in-between, between it´s inhabitants and the landscape, only touching the landscape on a view points, non violent, but influencing it through it´s quiet presence.