BorderLINE Architecture is a concept of the young Hungarian architects Marcel Ferencz and Andor Wesselényi-Garay. This concept was chosen by a jury to represent Hungary at the 12th International Architectural Exhibition in Venice.
According to the authors, the interior of the Hungarian Pavilion aims to lead back the visitors to the first intellectual experience of our human existence and to the very origin of architecture. This challenging project is a borderline-project in the widest sense of the meaning. The phenomenon of BorderLINE refers to the split personality of an architect ground between different drawing techniques, as it also refers to the juxtaposition of line and space, drawing and architecture. It refers as much to the antinomy of here and there, as it refers to the dichotomy of inside and outside.
The installation aims to explore the borderline of architecture, a state of proto-architecture that is revealed by LINEs. The authors consider the LINE as an autonomous entity that breaks out of the flatness of 2D to become physical in the space of the pavilion. The lines are made out of ropes hanging from the ceiling and stretched by 30.000 unsharpened pencils.
One can see that the Hungarian Pavilion does not locate an exhibition in its traditional sense but an installation that tries to outline a preliminary state of architecture. This preliminary state is defined and caused by lines. This bunch of lines does not create architecture yet, but still, the installation as a whole outlines a space within the space. So appears this space as the diagram of creation that puts the visitors on the borderline of graphic and architecture, space and void, forms and volumes.
The installation of the Hungarian Pavilion concentrates on the hidden – although very existing – possibilities of the line. Despite of the common belief, despite of the lovable myth, architects, according to Ferencz and Wesselényi-Garay, do not build houses themselves, architects do not create spaces themselves. What they do is drawing lines. It might seem a radical simplification, but still, architects usually can not do more than draw lines. Lines with computer, lines with pencil or pen, lines with the promise of a space, lines that most of the times appear on a flat, 2d surface. It seems, that almost every architect draws. From Siza to Zumthor, from Wolf D. Prix to Steven Holl, from Frank Gehry to Lebbeus Woods. Even the blobitects in the solitude of their studio might draw too.
The authors seriously believe that the line is a universal origin for us to express ourselves, an origin which existence is so often forgotten. For Marcel Ferencz and Andor Wesselényi-Garay the LINE is the basic material of architecture. A rope, that helps them to descend into the realm of thoughts. For them the line is a slightly mystic, almost transcendental entity that leads everyone back to the origin of architecture, the origin of everything. With this concept the two Hungarian architects fit the philosophy that interconnects Adolf Loos’ tomb in the forest and Kubrick’s monolith in 2001: A Space Odyssey.
Posted by: Eva Prelovšek
” …architects do not create spaces themselves. What they do is drawing lines… ”
really?
Good architects create spaces. They think of materials and all the little architectural stuff that makes up a building. They make models. They DO NOT fetishize lines.