Mapping Absurdity

I often pondered about the difference between fine art and architecture. While they posed as two dialects of the same language, they differed in usefulness. Whereas fine art was functional (purposeful) but useless (impractical), architecture had both function and use. Unlike artists who indulged in pure expression, architects must contend with useful design.

But what happened when design plans broke down or failed to meet expectations? In theory, architectural designs that lost their usefulness shared similar traits to art. The works of creative individuals like Gordon Metta-Clark, who straddled both spheres, seemed to concur. When he relocated cross-sections of houses into galleries and stripped them of usefulness, they transformed from architectural spaces into artworks.

This observation inspired me to explore other iterations of this transition. By making blueprints of impossible scenarios, I applied the certainty associated with an architectural process to the ambiguity of pure expression. In my act to stretch the architectural language to extremes, say, by constructing a precise diagram of a fictional animal, I transformed blueprints into art.

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