Settled/Nomadic: The Disappearance of the Project and the Invention of the Image. Two Projects by amid.cero9

The summary of amid.cero9’s research presented in 2014 at the A.A. School of Architecture in London (2014/01/18–2014/02/15), “Third Nature. A micropedia”, which gave its name to the homonymous and extremely rare catalogue, attempted to represent some of the research projects carried out by the studio, accompanying the written text by a corpus of images (both archival and authorial). The outcome is not the project in itself, understood as the perceptible result of assessed premises, as much the narrative image that was used or produced in order to transmit it. No longer the canonical design drawings, but rather satellite apparatuses, models and drawings directly exported (apparently) by the design software, axonometries with layers of complexity, collages, (historical) images useful for legitimising certain rifts. The image is the final aim of the research: suggestive and creative rather than plausible. Through two projects (Le Jardins de Prodiges Portables, 2013; The Aegean Paradise, 2014), this essay proposes to inquire into the role of the image, not only regarding the communication of the project, but also as an autonomous fact, whose “context” and “coordinates” become the image’s support, in a non-conformist dictionary that proceeds by photograms: in these scenes, chance opens the doors to fields of knowledge, thought, reflection.