Download - Weaponized Architecture
LOST IN THE LINE[ by Léopold Lambert ]
Visual essay from the forthcoming book
Weaponized Architecture
#SantJordi
SPECIAL EDITION
2012.04.23
Léopold Lambert (born in 1985) is a French architect currently living in New York City. His work com-bines the occupation of designer with the one of writer and editor for the blog The Funambulist which daily attempts to question architecture via other disciplines such as cinema, literature, philosophy or politics. His book, Weaponized Architecture. The Impossibility of Innocence is a materialization of such a process which combines a theoretical interest with a fundamental enthusiasm for design itself.
Visual essay from the forthcoming book
Weaponized Architecture
#SantJordi
SPECIAL EDITION
2012.04.23
Architecture is the discipline
that attributes physicality to the lines
traced on paper. In this regard, the
architect wields the power to sepa-
rate milieus by the mean of those lines,
thereby applying a tremendous vio-
lence upon the bodies that become
prisoners within. One immediately
thinks of the famous geopolitical walls
of our world; around Gaza and the
West Bank, along the Mexican bor-
der, in the middle of Cyprus or Korea,
etc. However, those walls are only the
INTRODUCTION/// The labyrinthine dark matter of the line’s thickness
Excerpt from the graphic novel Lost in the Line by Léopold Lambert
extreme illustrations of a more general
and subtle system of architectural ap-
paratuses that manifests a transcen-
dental control on the bodies.
This characteristic of architecture can
not only be explained by intrinsic quali-
ties, but also for the close relationship
it has maintained through history with
military strategy. The latter, in its need
for diagrammatization, rationalization
and optimization, mutated ‘the archi-
tect’ into ‘the engineer’ who designs
exclusively via those processes. The
more literal the translation from a
diagram to an architecture, the more
powerful the transcendental control
becomes.
The labyrinth, in its classical represen-
tation, is the quintessence of the archi-
tect’s absolute control. The line is traced
from above, its author has a total vi-
sion of the space, and he is amused
to see bodies below subjected to his
architecture. When he writes The Trial1
and The Castle2 in the 1920’s, Franz
Kafka reinvents this notion of labyrinth
by creating a maze that escapes the
control of its developer, the giant ad-
ministrative system. This maze will find a
space in 1941 through Jorge Luis Borg-
es and his Ficciones3 in which space is
composed both by the notion of infinite
and the random. Eventually, during the
1950’s, Constant Nieuwenhuis brought
an architecture to this labyrinth by the
creation of New Babylon, the territory
of the Homo Ludens’ continuous drift.
Those three labyrinths, whether they
are administrative, spatial, or architec-
tural, all own the characteristic of not 1 Kafka, Franz. The Trial. New York: Vintage Books, 1969.2 Kafka, Franz. The Castle. New York, Knopf, 1954.3 Borges, Jorge Luis. Labyrinths. New York: New Directions, 2007.
being controlled by their creators.
The labyrinth proposed in the follow-
ing story attempts to be of this kind,
as well. Just like the wall, this labyrinth
is defined by a single line; however it
considerably increases its thickness in
order to allow a roving in the line. In
fact, one transgression towards the
line consists in walking on it, in the way
of a funambulist (tightrope walker) ex-
periencing spatially this one inch thick
world. This labyrinth is an uncontrolla-
ble growing entity comprised of a for-
est whose use depends exclusively on
its appropriation by people. The cre-
ation of a new environment that needs
to be colonized in order to acquire a
function implies the invention of a new
architecture that adapts to its new
conditions. Its violent architectural vo-
cabulary is not innocent nor is the po-
tential danger its experience implies. In
fact, Italo Calvino’s dream of remaining
for a lifetime in the three dimensionality
of the forest4 entails a refusal of com-
fort, convenience and safety.
4 Calvino Italo, The Baron in the Trees. New York : Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1977
Credits:
Characters: main: Laura Vincentextra: Danielle Pecora and Xinyang Chenhuman-book 1: Martin Byrnehuman-book 2: Ekin Barlashuman-book 3: unknownhuman-book 4: Sarah Le Clerc
The human-books scene is inspired by Ray Bradbury’s Farenheit 451 [New York. New American Library, 1968]
Excerpts from:Fyodor Dostoyevsky. Crime and Punishment [New York. New American Library, 1968]Antoine de Saint-Exupery. The Little Prince [New York. Hardcourt Brace, 1943]Franz Kafla. The Trial [New York. Vintage Books, 1969]Albert Camus. The Stranger [New York, A.A. Knopf, 1946]
“Lost in the Line” is a visual essay included in the forthcoming bookWEAPONIZED ARCHITECTURE. The Impossibility of InnocenceLéopold Lambert
First edition: 2012 dpr-barcelonaAuthor: Léopold LambertGraphic design: Léopold LambertPublishers: dpr-barcelona
dpr-barcelonaViladomat 59, 4º 4ª08015 BarcelonaSpain
Weaponized Architecture is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.