Heterogeneous and non-linear illustrations, sketches and annotated drawings link artistic survey and architectural potential. They serve as a visual representation of the wasteland heterotopias (Foucault & Miskowiec, 1986, pp. 22-27) and as thought protocols that can be arranged to fit within the spectrum of potentials and fill the gap between chaos and plan. They encompass atmospheric surveys and a planning strategy as they emerge and become inextricable from another. The use of drawings formed a habitus for design and subsequent design-driven research, following Pierre Bourdieu's argumentation that such practices take time to engage in, as they are "systems of durable, transposable dispositions, predisposed to function as structuring structures, that is, as principles which generate and organise practices and representations that can be objectively adapted to their outcomes without presupposing a conscious aiming at ends or an express mastery of the operations necessary in order to attain them" (Bourdieu, 2018, p. 53). These representations can be interpreted as design proposals but also as systemic frameworks that facilitate further exploration and invention of these particular problems and their subsequent solutions.
METHODS
The exploration of the industrial wastelands was initially conducted by the method of "walking the ruin", as described by Tim Edensor (Ingold & Vergunst, 2008, p.129).
This, in turn, was documented through film to grasp and document the complexities of the space and “the minimal gestures which limit interaction with the environment” (Ingold & Vergunst, 2008, p.129-130). Following this, hand drawings were juxtaposed with time-freeze images captured within these videographic vignettes.
The replayed film facilitated a closer exploration of singular moments that may have been lost while solely photographing singular spaces and engulfed the descriptive documentation and the mapping of a phenomenon that preceded the actual act of design intervention through drawing.
These vignettes also captured an architectural experience rather than physical architecture and ultimately provided raw experiential data (Troiani & Ewing, 2021, p.254) to explore how the phenomenon of intervening in an industrial ruin is experienced and represented.
Sketching the site in this manner was seen as a mode of exploring and ‘knowing’ the subject matter and engaging with it through a subjective analytical filter. This helped calibrate the focus on explicit particularities that would not be made evident through conventional surveying methods.
These drawings within a film can then be experienced, decoded and understood by a viewer unfamiliar with the multiple layers that reside within the post-communist industrial ruin. The emerging design proposals are also in perpetual flux, further enforcing the assumption that these sites can support multiple interventions of various scales while never being in stasis.
The transformation of the reused architectural object can be captured within spatial fragments that, through film, can open up a broader spectrum of experimental potentials.
Through the integration of videography and phenomenography in the design process and viewing hand drawing as a heuristic practice, imaginative interpretations can be woven into empirical observations, promoting an enriched approach to context, cultural heritage and human experience, thereby leading to multi-layered and responsive design solutions.
This complementary methodology enables a fluent transition between analogue and digital modes of representation, leveraging the strengths of each approach in the design process without truncating either in the process.
A similarily minimal invasive procedure was illustrated through video vignettes, which defined potential parcours across the site and paused at pre-defined intervals, where a single frame was used as the background for a hand-drawn suggestion on marker placement. These proposals, which resembled comic drawings, would also complement a necessary gap within participatory practices described by Oana Pavăl and Maria Găvodzea (Pavăl & Găvozdea, 2023, p. 267) and address ‘the layman’ as explanatory guides. “Casual graphic treatment” given to “intangible empirical” and essentially urbanistic and architectural considerations (Engler, 2017, p. 66) had the potential to create a bridge between design-driven strategies and bottom-up action for the reanimation of spaces that are in states of disrepair as well as continuous flux, and in which “disorder and ongoing destruction predominate aesthetic perception” (O’Callaghan & Di Feliciantonio, 2021, p. 21).
This research aimed to distance itself from what Jennifer Bloomer depicts as “bipolar logic”, which “demands an inferior and a superior term (...) demarcating binary categories in which one term is privileged over another. (...)” (Bloomer, 1993). When dealing with transformation or reuse, the "new" is often being glorified, thus denying the intrinsic value of the existing "old" object.
Capturing and transporting suggestive practices and interventions within the network of the manifold epistemic layers mentioned above posed a particular challenge, as their non-object-based, atmospheric and diffuse character evaded the established discursive and representational paradigms of traditional architectural projects. To effectively design and communicate spatial practices that engage with post-communist ruins it was important to view them as moribund bodies deserving of nurture and respect regardless of their charged historical and cultural connotations. This required design strategies to evolve into medial practices that could make the envisioned processes explicit, despite their diaphanous (Paans, 2024, p.3) and dynamic nature. Developing a reanimation strategy for post-industrial bodies that aimed to position itself between curatorial maintenance and aggressive natalist intervention (Cairns & Jacobs, 2017, p.24) therefore necessitated an approach that would also elude compartmentalisation within a binomial system of presence versus absence (Pilia, 2019, p.71), and which would be able to encompass the intrinsic simultaneity of naturally occurring and design-centred processes affecting industrial heritage sites.
This research utilised two main types of visual methods: hand drawing and phenomenographic sketching. These methods, along with the narrative exploration of post-communist imaginaries, formed the foundation for the emergence of a particular habitus regarding post-communist industrial ruins and heritage — variations of these methods developed in close interrelation with the character of the sites.
