On the Idea of Montage as Form of Architecture Production

This is not the time to accomplish something. This is the age of the fragments Marchel Duchamp   Reference and practice are fundamental  to build its own vision of  the world, Ettore Sottsas affirmed that in order to draw architecture other origins, information and  catalogues are necessary to obtain ideas and models. That’s why every day, from my personal storage, I try to compose a catalogue of ideas to assemble from time to time, they are notes, possibilities which I called annotations by images. Annotations are abstract forms, figure without background, used to assimilate the real. They create an imaginary useful for undoing freedom of image. The imagination create semiotic links not matching the existent combinatory of image registered on a daily base. In its Morphologie. City Metaphors (1982) Oswald Mathias Ungers propose a way of thinking and projecting through metaphors and analogy produced through images , showing the idea that throughout figures that later recompose from time to time on a project. This school of thought and reflection go along with every architect work. To store images goes in parallel with creating images, which are slowly transformed on something else, or once compared define working models linked to specific themes. The model is an intellectual structure setting targets for our creative activities, just like the design of model-buildings, model-cities, model-communities, and other model conditions supposedly are setting directions for subsequent actions.[1] Images are the focal point of our culture, it’s very important to read again the words of the German architect. His thesis oppose the functionalism of the period when it was written. To Ungers theory is one of the many ways of seeing and knowing the world. Theory to interpret reality, to confer other meanings, to signs and consequently architecture as an instrument to translate theory. 3 Concretely Ungers try to simplify the project building process, for the same reason I believe is extremely  important not to consider notes as a project formal reference but only as circumstances to reflect on specific themes, instrument of thought. Images so conceived become models not describing but underlining resolute conceptual decisions on a specific themes. Giving indications, creating the conditions to reflect, places to debate. The observer become content’s producer through his reflections. The structure, the form, the space, the necessity to use the architectonic shape as an expressive one,  are secondary compared to the collected themes . Montage is used as an instrument to take note on ideas, produce narrative strategy through simple operations: multiplying signs, scale exchange, reversals, grafts, superimposing, erasing. Necessary operations to pose relative questions on a project that only  at a later stage can be applied on architecture. 4 The annotations are the first instrument through which we can put some order on a personal storage. The storage is generated by an affection on signs, a fragment, a space, an image striking us more than another, we store it, therefore to images we combine texts, quotes taken from books  being its integral part. Annotations put one next to the other make an interpretative Atlas of reality. Taking notes is a project process and a practice I try to develop in a methodological key. It’s true that in this way I have the possibility to re-organize fragments of reality to build my Atlas . To build an Atlas on a definition given by Aby Warburg, who employ photos to build a cognitive process: cut out, reproductions are used to organize a tale, then the chart produced are fixed through a photo representations which determine an accurate place of the fragments, montages create sequence to be interpreted. To build an Atlas on that way is a research experience to construct new meanings. Notes to me can build a narration, retracing themes dealt with projecting, during my architectural activity. Today all this seems obvious, but I’m convinced that precisely because we are surrounded by many images it’s even more important to find a way of thinking through images, putting in place a cataloguing and organized process both physical and mental of this huge cultural asset, slowly replacing reality.  Reestablishing a position inside a cognitive process first of all means to acknowledge on image a different quality.  The serial has conveyed to this annotations a narrative shape much near to the drawing practice than maybe today can be once more used as an instrument to create a new language freeing the thought mechanism from the past trap of what we have already thought. A precise order doesn’t exist, the same image refer to stories and different projects and can be employed in different way. In this process the observer becomes producer of contents. This kind of assembling operation refuse completely any formal value and attribute a different meaning from the original to the new images produced.