My methodology is an act of composition to change the formal syntax of Checkpoint Bravo. The morphology of elements alienates and shifts the relationship of the users, challenging imagination and memory. The proposition of simple, basic structures, subordinate to the existing and unostentatious in appearance is nurtured by details of things found. Mimicry, mirroring, disintegration, modelling, layering define methods of confrontation and alienation. Each existing structure receives a counterpart as an abstracted idea of itself. For instance, the bridge house, graphically illustrating a line, is extended in two directions. The formal intervention does not only create a new enclosure of space but also questions the perception of the gate by changing the balance point. The elongated figure, like the corderie in Venice, houses artists studios, ateliers, working and exhibition spaces. The restaurant building with the circular shape receives a huge box sitting on its back. This is the new high-point for Checkpoint Bravo. The house suggests rooms for dwellers, using shared, private and open spaces. The verticality enables the view over the whole site and beyond, pointing towards a twisted logic of observer and observed. The two gas stations are diagonally offset and separated by the highway. One of them is re-used as a platform, a stage like a theatre and receives a complementary structure opposite as a grandstand for the viewers, underlining the direct confrontation of the original checkpoint.
Evelyn Osvath
The transition from a three-dimensional to a two-dimensional layer – as an investigation of the threshold of art and architecture – enables the understanding of Checkpoint Bravo as part of an open concept similar to François Morellet’s Récréation N° 3 , thus making it possible to continue the formal ideas of the found, allowing a sense of incompleteness. Within this open image, Checkpoint Bravo is interpretable in various ways, balancing out existence and alienation, adding up to people’s individual perception of physical experience of the site. By avoiding static results, my proposal aims to continue spatial experiences and create sequences and new scenarios for inhabiting a space again; in terms of connection, solitariness, work, communication.
Continuation of space is not meant as the continuation of inherent violence and power but rather serves to connect and re-interpret the existing, as the beginning of a dialogue. The unique spatial and urban condition – as an enclosed island and as an ensemble of self-contained buildings – gives way to the idea of a dense space filled with multiple functions, served by elements of the past and new forms that cooperate. Coming back to Lefebvre’s socio- anthrophological approach, the intervention is meant to change the precondition of the previously perceived and lived place.
on site review 38: borders, lines, breaks and breaches 23
Made with FlippingBook interactive PDF creator