Negative Memory

Or Cast Urban Interior As Library Of Refugee Diary

abstract:

In recent years the incoming of the refugees to Europe is phenomenal. To physically write down this special history, a cast  of urban interior is made. The exterior of the interior is then revealed while demolishing the original, linking the memory of a past to the memory of the future generation in the program of a library of diary. The diaries that document the tragedy feeling of the refugees will be archived and view in a location in Berlin where in the past were built by Nazi who separate the races. The detail of the past is preserved and displayed on public, holding the books as shelves. The shape of ‘X‘ becomes an abstract urban annotation that defined boundary within while blurry disappear from the city. 

Studio: Stefano Passeri. Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
Fall 2015, 5th year thesis
Individual work.

A Cast as Memory
Demolition as Creation
 

When a negative cast is made, it is a newly born object. But the inevitable trace of the original piece make it looks like it is aged already. The conflict between the two leads early case study of cast. From large to small, from monumental to ordinary, the input and outcome of the procedure is surprisingly unfamiliar but recognizable. Because the new is created by killing the old. New face is born, so is the new threshold, the new border. Both of which leads to the rethinking of national borders. What is that thick line physically mean?

Scale-less VS Biggness-less
Architecture as Physical Annotation

Scale is a measurement for the logic, but bigness is a measurement for the eye. Even when placed as same size, the scale of objects can be very distinct. Consequently the program types that it enables are very different. In this sense, the scale-less graphical annotation can be resized to any program as it is translated from a flat annotation to physical annotation. Clue-less refugee contractor takes advantage of this by physically build a urban annotation from a small X-shaped mark on the map based on its scale.

Rachael Whiteread, House & Urban Annotation

Phased Axo
Berlin Transforming into the Negative Memory

City Sick by the History. 

The mayor of Berlin decides to finally give a piece of land to the refugee in the city, a land that historically is associated with Nazi immigration alienation. A reversed building becomes the seed of a urban illness and the affect expends to the larger context.

The invasion of the new library memory in the form of old negative.

Transforming Window Norm to Shelves.

The windows of the city is no longer used for looking out, but to be sprayed in concrete vessels that could hold books for the library. The annotation brutally cuts from city and makes a scar that blocks all traffic and breaks all understanding of the old Berlin, creating a sinking plaza that bridge the oblivion with nothing but reading space and social space, which is beneath the heavy memory above.

guide to the shell making

Paralized

The oblivion of the Nazi building in Berlin would  happen again to the new public library carve as time moves forward. At certain moment in the future, the creation of this long run demolition will blend in to the city fabric as if nothing had happened and the only disjunction between the old and new is the gaps between them, marking the evidence that a thick wall used to be there separating each space. Now the space would be free by its own by paralyzing itself into concrete form work.

The reading space below the heavy cast of library is much less heavy but equally intense. The multiple stairs in the plaza can be loosely programmed as reading space, but also auditorium and exhibition. The plaza reaches out to other part of the cross that further connects to the city via passageway, shops and subway station.

“Invisible Manipulation in X-shape.”

Urban Axo

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