Navigating into a venture of a research on an architecture without verticals

This writing investigates my conversation with personal drawing projects developed as part of my on-going PhD research titled ‘an architecture without any verticals: an allegorical venture into problematizing the vertical’. My research is an allegorical inquiry to explore and encounter the critically informed, half-imaginary spatial knowledge of ‘an architecture without verticals’. I argue for the possibility of ‘an architecture without verticals’ engaging with the theoretical positions of Bloomer, Irigaray and Cixous and speculate on the act of pushing the limits of the language in process of problematizing the vertical 1 2 3. By methodological explorations through the acts of writing, drawing and reading, my research navigates into an alternative drawing practice where the multifold inclusion of the inner-hand ventures into an imaginative knowledge of an architecture without verticals. Through an embodied knowledge of tactile experiences and manual practices, the drawing projects inquire explorations of the simultaneity of interior and exterior, devising a personal drawing narrative on imaginative verticals.

I am intrigued by the idea of ‘an architecture without verticals’, drawn into its impossible narrative in implication of a possible way to liberate architecture. Acknowledged as inevitable parts of architectural design practice due to the upright body and production of spatial enclosement 4, verticals are long criticized to be appropriated instruments to elaborate a spatial order based on separation, dominancy and hierarchy 5 6 7. The consequent separation of inside and outside, private and public associates strongly with the confinement and the assignment of the female body to the private interior 8 9. Within this regard, I learn from Bergren who argues for the ‘re-swallowed’ female creativity, in desire to re-gain ‘swallowed’ creativity without the interference of dominant male language 10. I care about the question of an architecture without any verticals as a possible way to re-swallow architecture.

I speculate that spatial narratives of verticality, when re-swallowed, surpass the pre-conceived knowledge on verticals in architectural practice. An act of re-swallowing verticality is therefore suggested as a critique on, and subversion of the basis the vertical elements and dimension are handled, and not exclusively as to erase the vertical dimension. I am reminded by Torre and Birkby of the ways feminist approach re-offer verticals, proposing the term “open-ended walls” that enable producing multi-functioned spaces that trespass distinctions between private and public, inside and outside 11; or playing with the idea of personal spaces and re-thinking them as gathering spaces in which the presence of vertical elements delineates no boundaries 12. In her conversation with Luisa Muraro, Irigaray questions what verticality may signify as a right for women and seeks for its subverted meanings 13. In this regard, the question of the research, formulated speculatively as an architecture without verticals proposes to problematize verticality and push the limits of spatial narratives of verticality. It entails the absence of pre-conceived knowledge on vertical architectural elements, rather than flattening out the world.

The consecutive drawing research projects, dalina storage house and a half-imaginary land of an imaginary consulate on a days’trip, experiment strategically with the use of allegory and coordinate a play with invented and existing narratives of a site, exploring within their half-imaginary lexicon (fig. 1-6). Acquiring multiple meanings through a simultaneity of verbal and visual languages 14 and playing with the order of the language 15, an allegorical method is used in this research as a way to subvert the traditional understanding of vertical in architecture through a state of playfulness. Within this regard, I propose to relate the use of allegory to a ficto-critical writing (-drawing, -reading) practice. In-between fiction and fact 16, ficto-criticism bears a double writing, which I argue to be in conversation with the use of allegory in my drawing projects.

Navigating in this research project, I learn to pass through associative, evocative, personal ways of producing knowledge. The use of allegory in architectural design is considered as a way to articulate misfit knowledge. Rendell argues that Bloomer’s way of playing with language in her allegorical practice brings forward the ‘inappropriate’ in architectural design practice 17. Nicholson devises allegory for the ‘unthinkable’ in architecture and Darden proposes the use of allegory for the ‘reverse’ architecture 18 19. In this research, through the use of allegory, explorative acts of writing, drawing and reading invent multi-misreadings and pose the question of an imaginative knowledge of an architecture without verticals.

invented multi-misreadings of verticalities 1:
navigating from storage to inner hand

The drawing research project titled dalina storage house is proposed as an allegorical architectural project to search for a re-narration of Aksaray-Karaköy route, a site in historical part of Istanbul, Turkey, as an half-imaginary urban spatial scenario without verticals (fig. 1, 2). I begin from my observation that many of the abandoned spaces on this route are employed as storage spaces as a result of settled trade network in this area. Exposed through the transparency of the windows, storage unsettles the spectacle of the facade, filling the emptied spaces inside the buildings as a container where cargos wait stacked to be put in manual lines of transportation within the field. I contemplate through drawing on storage as a subverted way of using the vertical dimension in space. Exploring through systematic plays on textual order of words and images from the site, the project generates a half-imaginary and invented lexicon composed of verbal and visual, as a device for the site to re-swallow itself (fig. 1).

The half-imaginary lexicon is applied iteratively in re-narrations of the existing site (fig. 2). By transportation within the trade network, I am introduced to the act of carrying and associatively to the inner-hand as its corporeal organ, which I investigate by drawing and model-making as a peculiar space that bears interior and exterior qualities simultaneously (fig. 3). In this way, I am reminded of an unusual case of unconfined interiority within the route’s iterative re-narrations. I propose to pursue the spatial knowledge of the inner-hand as a question of an imaginative knowledge of an architecture without verticals.

invented multi-misreadings of verticalities 2:
navigating from inner hand to excavation, dogs, flies, wax models

The drawing research project, a half-imaginary land of an imaginary consulate on a days’trip, is produced at a day-trip at the archeological site, Aşağıpınar Höyük in Kırklareli, Turkey. Beginning from my experience of the site through the untouchable excavation, friendly dogs, impudent flies and scary wax models, the inner-hand inquires the imaginative knowledge of an architecture without verticals via drawings.

The project acquires a family of ambiguous ficto-critical figures as a personalized site-specific language of an architecture without verticals (fig. 4). The lexicon of figures and the re-narration of the archeological site speculate for a peculiar imagination of the spaces of an architecture without verticals (fig. 5, 6). Re-narrated through the embodied knowledge of the hand, an architecture without verticals is posed as a question where more than one imaginative vertical collapses onto each other in order to blur the boundaries between interior and exterior, private and public, tangible and intangible.

Departing from the first drawing project that leads my way towards a discovery of inner hand as an imaginative knowledge of an architecture without verticals, the second drawing project is a journey specifically navigated by the creative body of an inner hand. In this journey I am reminded of “getting to know seeing-with-the-naked-eye.” 20. “She hadn’t realized the day before that eyes are miraculous hands, had never enjoyed the delicate tact of the cornea, the eyelashes, the most powerful hands, these hands that touch imponderably near and far-off heres. (…) She had just touched the world with her eye, (…). Violent gentleness, brusque apparition, lifting eyelids and: the World is given to her in the hand of her eyes.” 21. I associate the state of “seeing-with-the-naked-eye” 22 with the act of re-swallowing proposed by Bergren, in terms of re-gaining own creative body (eye, hand, …) that departs its way from distanced knowledge 23. In this context, I care about the involvement of my inner hands as my navigators that bestow me a ‘naked-eye’.

Guided by my inner hands, I enjoy attaining a spatio-temporal and personal knowledge on unrecognized narratives of the site, voiced by my own connection to dogs, flies, excavation and wax models. Abandoning canonical knowledge on the site through revealed archeological ruins and traces, the words dog, level, trespass, follow, hand deliver the basis of this project’s half-imaginary lexicon, proposed with regard to site-specific attributes of dogs, flies, excavation and wax models. These attributes are specifically accounted for their capacity to offer subversions of verticality.

Combining together Bloomer’s discussion on the text as a woven entity and a scripted construction, and Haralambidou’s arguments on the tendency of allegorical architectural drawings to interrupt conventional architectural notation system, I devise operations in an allegorical skillset to be applied on both verbal and visual playing with the textual construction of drawings 24 25. Identifying with my experience at the site, inner hand’s haptic abilities to rub and to smear conform as the architectonic operations to be applied on the textual construction of the drawings. Explorations of drawing with pastel together with pencil on paper and of carving out linoleum are attempts to both re-enact the haptic experience on drawing material and to search for alternative spatial narratives by means of their material qualities (fig.7, 8).

The following writing seeks to explore spatial narratives of the half-imaginary site as an architecture without verticals, re-narrated through the acquired half-imaginary lexicon bog (dog), bevel (level), bresspass (trespass), bollow (follow) and band (hand):

In this venture, a consulate becomes a bonsulate. A bog should not be maybe understood as a dog itself. A bog, bears warm-hearted moves of the hair. A bog, is the dog itself in a way, yet within the relations of this venture, we know it as a bog. A bonsulate, on the other hand, is definitely not like the consulate itself, it has more than one, at least two tails. I notice that the bonsulate carries a long string along, this string opens up around the bonsulate, can be dragged on the ground. It is easy to give shape to this string. A bonsulate can carry out the act of brespassing. The act of brespassing, is like the act of trespassing, yet it is not trespassing itself, it bears the celebration of coming together.Within this journey, a hand becomes a band. A band, is like an inner hand, it is both inside and outside. And a bollow is like a follow, yet they are not the same thing, when in state of bollowing, one can never tell who is after who. Me, the bonsulate and the bog bollow each other in a playful state in this half-imaginary land (fig. 6, 8).

The drawing research projects introduce to me a critique of the canonical production of verticals in architectural drawing practice by venturing into an interiority-informed drawing practice. The inquiry of the inner-hand unsettles the boundary and questions the content of architectural drawing. The architectonic operations to rub and to smear, attempted by materials of pastel combined with pencil voice unconfined interior spatial qualities. Drawing through the acquired families of ambiguous ficto-critical figures as site-specific lexicons of an architecture without verticals, poses a question on spatial contents of empirical notation. Opening this personal drawing practice to others as in the intrinsic act of translating from drawing to spatial knowledge is a matter of on-going discussion of the research project.