Latent Syntax
MArch 2 | Design Research
Author: Jakub Raspl
University of the West of England, Bristol
Location: Athens, Greece
This drawing tries to tell the story of the Katakouzenos House and the people that lived there and visited the place.
The open plan living room contains a large portion of the history, aura and magic of this house. There is the favourite corner of many people that visited, a terrace overlooking the Hellenic Parliament and is surrounded by the most important pieces of art by influential artists of the 30's generation - Spyros Vassiliou, Yannis Tsarouchis, Giorgos Gounaropoulos, Nikos Hadjikyriakos-Ghikas, or Marc Chagall.
The 'Latent Syntax' drawing takes inspiration in the technique of developed surface drawing. As the focus is given predominantly to the internal walls and their contents in form of artworks, furniture and colour, this approach is deemed to be ideal for the purposes of uncovering the stories of the house. Nevertheless, the adopted drawing technique does take away some elements that are only readable from conventional architectural drawings. To allow the drawing to show the overall layout of the apartment without it being broken by the internal elevations of individual rooms, it was opted to distance the internal elevations from the floor plan to make space for the conventional layout to be read in the middle. This detachment of elevations from their 'base' creates an opportunity to investigate the walls and their contents in the form of artworks and at the same time keep the representation of the internal layout intact to tell the entire story of the house.
