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.