This graduation project started with the intuitive making of a Body & Skin model: an abstract materialist manifesto. It primarily shows an interest in the physical presence and the immediacy of the medium itself. In the next steps of the processing project, however, the sense of a body gets increasingly lost and transforms into the image of a hollow skin. Surface and emptiness occupy an ever larger share of the subsequent design work, initially by exploring the architectural possibilities of the hollow wall. The same shift from massive materialism to visual formalism can be witnessed in the simultaneous theoretical investigations. At first sight they do seem to deal with the possible content of architecture. But on closer inspection content is not really the issue here either. Rather, the essays, reviews and dictionary topics are characterized more by an attempt to sublimate, deconstruct, transgress or empty content than by taking it seriously. Form can only be loaded with content when it is empty, meanings are written on its surface. The concluding design of the project shows how this poetic and imaginary architecture may work.

Folie Fatale offers the possibility of bathing in pure emptiness and superficial appearance. The core-business of architecture is containing, after all; in the centre there is Nothing. In order to offer a truly immediate experience of emptiness, the folly works like a visual centrifuge. The reflecting interior moves the bathing Homo Horizontalis from centre to periphery and beyond. Endless reflections transform each body and each content in superficial appearances that finally make the folly itself silently disappear. There is no room for illusionary metaphysics here, but all the more for continuous metamorphoses of illusion. Distance has both imploded and exploded; perpendicular to the perspective there is a spectacular introspection of the more gazing kind. This bathing in emptiness and appearance offers both purifying catharsis and sensual pleasure. The folly is drawn by sacred glamour; the complicity of sensuality and sense.

The problem addressed by this project as a whole is that there is no problem. This architecture does not want to be a problem-solving activity, but a luxury. After all, it is only this condition of splendour and uselessness that frees the world from its boundaries and just for a moment transcends the everlasting quest for meanings and goals. Luxury confronts us with the sublime freedom of la folie: pleasure, play, possibly also madness. As a means without a goal the folly offers an immediacy that is found only in the medium itself. As a sign without a meaning it inhabits the luxury condition of pure présence. There can be no distance from things. They must be present as an irresistible fate and/or they mean nothing at all. That is what is at stake in this project and its concluding design, Folie Fatale.

Place of education: TU Eindhoven
Specialization: architecture
Tutors: Gerard van Zeijl, Jos Bosman & Henri Achten