Vapourable Sublime: Aquatecture Experiment and Project Review

Abstract

There is hardly anything that entices pure awe and a feeling of the sublime as ruins of a historic manor. Notions evoked by such ruins confine strong sensations of longing for a non-discernible object of loss. Taking that into consideration, this paper takes everything a step further – it dematerialises the formal language of manorial architecture and challenges the intuitive melancholic sensations of the visitor. It eliminates the habitually known architectural elements of a manor and calls for a rewriting of space and atmosphere. In the described research, water is the key element, as all of its states are familiar to humans and thus serve as an effective stimulation of the senses. The most sublime state of water is vapour. It is manifested here as a visible exhalation of the ruin, a mist that disintegrates architecture, dematerialises space and annihilates gravity. Vapour makes the architecture insubstantial and human emotions transitory. It provides strange, senseless and fantastic notions which rewrite architectural design, offering new methods for applying water in landscape architecture, heritage and tourism. The aim of this paper is to present the aquatic phenomenon in architecture: the structure of space by water as a primordial element. The case study for this research was a competition project for Château de la Mothe Chandeniers in France. Designed according to doctoral research on relations between water and architecture, and offering a responsible design approach and a unique methodology, the project deliberates upon those two commonly known notions, while adding the third – Aquatectural common ruin as innovative method of revitalization of built heritage.