# The Cult of the Infinite by Isaac Barraclough

Until December 1st and the President's medals annual ceremony, I'll be publishing a decent amount of student projects coming from the United Kingdom, or said in other words, a plethora of magnificent architectural narratives illustrating the British education savoir faire .

Today I start with an incredible project, The Cult of the Infinite designed by Isaac Barraclough in Gerard Bareham and Adrian Evans' studio in the University of Huddersfield Huddersfield.
This project dramatizes an "infinite" monastic architecture dedicated to the cult of the amazing Jorge-Luis Borges' Book of Sands within a ravine. (don't hesitate to click on the images in order to appreciate the representative details)

Here is the text related to the project:

The work centres on a personal narrative inspired by Jorge Luis Borges’ short story The Book of Sands and the revelation of an infinite book to the protagonist. The story has been expanded on in the form of an epilogue, whereupon the book has passed hands to a group of individuals who proceed to form a sacred cult around the book and its limitless contents.
The thesis aims to explore the idea of infinity in an architecture and also the idea of the common and understood when revealed to us in an unknown and intimidating fashion. This is primarily revealed in the guise of ‘The Book’ and the house it resides in; all of this in turn, supposedly lies within a ravine in the Pyrenees – but ultimately, everything may not be as it first apparently seems.
The story and the work is introduced as part of a collection of documents supposedly found within a suitcase unearthed in the French Pyrenees.
The book is the focal point of a community of unknown size and provides the basis of daily ritual there. The day-to-day activities of the people who reside within the community provide for its sustenance and operate much as a monastery would. The key difference is that their scripture is a very real book: which to the extent of their knowledge holds literally all of what has been, what will be and what is. It will also hold everything that has never been, never will be and never is.
This is The Cult of The Infinite.
A place where an infinite lives meet an infinite book and their endless attempts to extract and catalogue its contents into an infinite library…

The Book of Sands is a mythical book infinite in length. Those who are exposed to it are enslaved by the potential it holds - the answer to everything. In 2006 a suitcase is found buried in the South of France in the Pyrenees.

The contents of the suitcase seem to portray a community that held this very Book at its centre.

Within the suitcase among the drawings, a diary was discovered. On its pages was scrawled an account of the original discovery of The Book.

Early investigation into the form of the construct revealed the emergence of a ravine like topographical feature in which buildings were built, suspended or seemingly hovered.

The diary mentions the House that the cult leaders resided in prior to their exposure to The Book. The House itself seems to have been replicated and fragmented throughout the drawings - Theory holds that these were fabrications manifested by The Book.

Sections such as this were concluded to be nothing more than conceptual images, produced early in the Author's attempts to contemplate their new surroundings.

An aerial plan of the Ravine at its crucial point: The Gourd. The Gourd is the crux of The Ravine itself, the impossible axis on an impossible infinite line - The housing of The Book as it warps the very fabric of space around itself.

The House fragments and contorts into the residential complex of The Cult - an infinite lives meet the infinite pages of an infinite book...

The Gourd - housing The Book and its infinite pages...

The infinite Library - the systematic cataloguing of The Book into a never ending construction of shipping containers...

Section through the fragmented House - the daily lives of the cult members is shrouded in doubt over their place in a boundless universe and where it was they originally came from...

Section through the Gourd and the container of The Book. Beyond lies the limitless contents of the Library...

Section through the rows upon rows of shipping containers holding the catalogued contents of The Book. People spend years pacing its infinite walkways...

The environmental systems at work in the Ravine consist of the huge waterwheels used to power dynamos and the continual ritual of the burning of heresy...

A Scribe House - the relentless task of reading and cataloguing the contents of The Book ready for inclusion in the Library all happens in small scholarly rooms such as this...

That which is deemed as heresy is mercilessly eradicated in the fires of the furnaces deep in the bowels of the Ravine... The faith must remain pure...

# Notre Dame de Royan by Guillaume Gillet & Marc Hebrard

Notre Dame de Royan is a 1958 church in Royan (West part of France) which was designed by architects Guillaume Gillet & Marc Hebrard in association with engineers Bernard Lafaille, Rene Sarger & Ou Tseng after the destruction of the first church during WWII.

The two first photographs are from Guillaume Amat (see previous post)

# Two Connected Houses by Mark Manders

Two Connected Houses is Mark Manders' proposition for the Guggenheim's exhibition Contemplating the Void (see previous article). In fact, this artist proposes to link a little house in the the void of the Guggenheim, with another house on the other side of the street by a tunnel excavated from New York's ground. "It will take four days to construct the tunnel", he writes.

The whole narrative is to be seen on Roma Publication's website

# Abhominal by Jason Hopkins

Jason Hopkins develops a compelling digital art work entitled Abhominal that illustrates a beautiful hybridization of geometrical normative structures with a tumorous organic flesh. His "bodies" are as much striking to me that it obviously evokes the hyperactive use of uncontrolled topological surfaces in current architecture. Jason Hopkins proposes a much more interesting vision of not only a surface, but also its content, the flesh, which is not without recalling Marcos Cruz's interest (see his manifesto for boiteaoutils).

However, what I just wrote is only my interpretation as an architect and I wanted to have Jason's "version" of his own work which is the very short text that follows:

"I am fascinated by mankind’s pursuit of ‘perfection’. Through the instruments of science we strive to categorize, understand, rearrange and ultimately tame the natural world around us. My sketches are explorations of possible genetic futures where mankind has achieved this perfection, where science has ironed out the inadequacies of being human."

Biostructure 2

Human Reconfiguration VI

Human Reconfiguration IV

Human Reconfiguration X

Human Reconfiguration XIX

Olympian I

Human Reconfiguration XI

Human Reconfiguration XII
Human Figure Study III

# An Opening into Voids: (re)connecting Napoli and its Other by Will Laslett

An Opening into Voids: (re)connecting Napoli and its Other is a beautiful project by Will Laslett for Jeanne Sillett's University of Westminster's studio. As told in the text below the project dramatizes a network of architectural canyons linking Naples' multiple caves.
In this regard, it might be interesting to look at it in a dialogue with a project already published on boiteaoutils: Chen Xinyang's Underground City.

Here is the text written by Will Laslett:

An Opening into Voids: (re)connecting Napoli and its Other

This project is an exploration into the caverns of Naples. This vast network of caverns, which has formed through human inhabitation of the land over at least the last five millennia and which has come to extend beyond the perimeter of the city, is unique in its extent and diversity. The network of voids now underlies vast sections of the city, sometimes out scaling the built forms above and yet is largely abandoned, neglected or even forgotten. These are spaces of disorientation, wonder and curiosity, where time is frozen and the nature of positive and negative space is questioned. Through the anthropological creation of a punctured ground plane, upon which Naples is situated, ambiguities are created in notions of the natural and the artificial, the built and the found, as well as the very authenticity of the ground plane itself.

Here I aim to incorporate this hidden alternative network of spaces into the wider network of the inhabited city. Through the creation of a symbolic opening and point of convergence between these two planes, the project aims to allow these worlds to collide, and where in this collision, the city is drawn in, a point of orientation between these realms is created and an altered perception on the nature of the built fabric is allowed. This point of intersection thus aims, fundamentally, to serve as a means of re-comprehending the city, both for those who visit and those who inhabit.

# Nébuleuse by Guillaume Amat

Nébuleuse is a photographic work by Guillaume Amat investigating the strange territory of the French Atlantic coasts and its military ruins from World War II, bunkers. The atmosphere of the photographs helps to compose a foggy heterotopia where those bunkers appears as monolithic artifacts within an infinite sand landscape.

This work integrates perfectly the series of article written about bunkers on boiteaoutils and that can be read by following this link.

Here is the text related to the series (nb: the complete series has to be seen of Guillaume Amat's own website):

Nébuleuse
In April 2007, in a muffled silence, the sea disappeared, as if vanished, leaving behind only ghosts of stone.
These Blockhaus, remains of World War II, slowly digested by the tides turned out to be threatening places of refuge in the middle of an unexplored desert.
A haunting wind is sweeping along the coast and wrapping distant figures.
In the open sea, one could hear the muffled sound of a foghorn very much like the whispering rumbling of life.
People seem to get lost in a scenery both quiet and threatening where one gets stifled by the immensity of the landscape.

The project called "Nebuleuse" (Nebula) is part of a reflection on the question of World War II heritage, the French coast and its conversation.

In the form of a photographic proposition, I tried to show how the hand of man and the hand of Nature can mix or be in conflict.

# Todor & Petru by CRCR (Wizz Design)

Todor & Petru is a very short film created by CRCR, five students from the GOBELINS, l'école de l'image (applied art & digital media school in Paris) within the frame of an internship at Wizz Design in Paris. The results evoke a lot of things that have already been done, yet demonstrates an excellent articulation of technique and aesthetics.

The five students are Remi BASTIE, Nicolas DEHGHANI, Jonathan DJOB NKONDO, NIcolas PEGON et Jérémy PIRES