Finite Format 04
Finite Format 04 is part of the Chicago Architecture Biennial 2017.
We have never used precedents, concepts or metaphors to produce our work. We have simply preferred to assume every case as a discrete one; as a self-referential system within our own shared, and certainly naïve, domain of intuitions and inventions. Since then, and with a rather short and impulsive memory, we have chosen to refer to the things we do by means of the things we have done. Thus, we look back to the thousands of pages of our early sketchbooks, to try to understand our own motivations, our architectonic fictions, daydreams and denials. “The fate of all paper, from the moment it leaves the factory, is to begin to grow old”, as written in All the Names, ideas start as curiosities, then become fascinations (sooner or later obsessions), to only later erode and become obsolete. Why? We do not know. As far as we can recall, we only portrayed this inverted T-shape tower after inhabiting it. Its silhouette is a double format. A figure that is no more than the outline for a field of action, the room contained within a laconic building, with a latent human scale given by its openings. Its identity is both singular and familiar. Each figure of the painted series is internally the same as the others yet with a highly specific and unique formal character.
Since every object is successively transformed according to three pervasive sizes (small, medium and large), the most basic three-dimensional figure (i.e. a cube) becomes twenty-seven variations of volume and direction. As the figure becomes more complex, the resulting series of transformation increases proportionally. Hereafter, a figure defined by four factors produces eighty-one variations. A figure with five factors, two hundred and forty-three. The one presented here, with an outline described by six factors, results in seven hundred and twenty-nine variations. In order to highlight the individuality of each building, a seemingly random combination of eighty-one different colors separate its continuous surface into planes. If the figure would be a sign, it would be pointing towards itself. Tower and plinth, and everything else in between.
