Material and presence are the elemental conditions of Architecture. The illusion of weight as drawn by
light. The line as force, buttress, and threshold. In context, through use, this “Floating World” of
inside out, desire and denial, fortune and ruin, is in harmony. Something left in the rain or
someone exiled from the garden seems only natural.
Symbolic figures from cinema, advertising, and classical art underpin this work. Figures,
household objects, nature, and architecture push and shove, jockeying for space. Images of
daily life pile up and become entangled.
Three components order my work: the development of site as a ontological construct; the
quotidian overlay of path through inhabitation and barrier; and drawing opposing figures as
diagrams of architectonic constructs.
I see plans as romantic diagrams, the points of view here are the birds’ eyes, and herein are
ruins, relics, and an idealized memory of [maternal] shelter. Coming up against that “inarticulate
narrative” that poet Octavio Paz defines as the condition of the architect, my work employs
description towards a widening of the drawing process as design.
I use the conventional illustrative idea of the site diagram and the cutaway model. The site
diagram imparts order and thus meaning. The cutaway model is able to highlight simultaneous
conditions within closed systems. Here, both adjacencies and displaced parts, those elements
previously hidden from view, are brought into a present focus. Projects which are the focus of
model, drawing, and text are developed, figured, and potentially figured out
Richard Taransky RA FAAR