Resumen de Casa relato colección: la construcción del espacio a través de los objetos
Ana Isabel Santolaria Castellanos
The main objective of this research is to offer an insight into the collection from the point of view of architecture, especially focused on domestic space. The goal is to analyse and deepen on the existing relations between the inhabitant, the house and the objects contained, in order to reveal the role that the collection acquires in the construction of domestic space.
The starting point arises from the understanding of a collection as a set of objects related among them by a story, established by the collector, who gives them meaning by binding them to the space in which they are contained. This narrative is like an imaginary line that traverses all the pieces and the things that are to be expressed in such story, establishing an indispensable network of affinity and similarity between them. Imagination is the tool that activates thinking and allows, on one hand, to relate a series of objects and make them discuss; and, on the other hand, it is essential to be able to look and discover those intimate and secret relations between things, to be able to read what is not written.
The collector is the figure that gives meaning to the whole set, through the intimate relation he establishes with his collection. Thus, the collection becomes a projection of the character, in such a way that, in each of the objects he collects himself. The collector lives through his pieces making the own collection his home, to the point of becoming a part of it by turning into one more piece. The indivisible unity between the house, the collection and its inhabitant is thus revealed.
In the collector’s house, the capacity of modifying a space changing its content is especially expounded. It is evinced that the collection of objects constitutes one more element to work with when projecting the space and that, therefore, it allows to state that the collection is defining and creator of space. In this sense, this investigation presents three ways in which the collection constructs domestic space: exhibition, decoration and atmosphere. ‘Exhibition’ includes collections clearly conceived to be looked at and to be displayed, whose disposition occupies the house but does not conquer it completely. The collection as ‘decoration’ responds to the need of embellishing the space that contains it, being the general composition what prevails over the individual pieces. Those are collections with a certain style or aesthetic concern that reconstruct scenes like decorations or indoor catalogues. Finally, ‘atmosphere’ refers to collections that are extended three-dimensionally over the space infecting not only the walls and other support elements, but also constructing a whole universe. In them, collection and architecture are so intimately related to the construction of space that it is impossible to separate them.
To invent a story line about some objects, to relate them and to dispose them in a space, are revealed as propositional acts comparable to a project. From this perspective, the collector becomes a curator, who searches, argues and exhibits a collection; as well as a designer, capable of turning each little object into an element of something much greater. In the end, the collection has to do with the art of unifying and separating things, with making visible the invisible, with being able to look, interpret and construct something new with that.
The developed discourse about the collection, its role in the construction of domestic architecture and its value as a project, are shown in six representative works explained in the second part of the thesis, in which a house and a collection are described through a personal and almost autobiographic story. In the light of these examples, the investigation results in an invitation to consider what does it mean to project, since the collection is a demonstration that it does not only consist in giving form, but also in giving meaning to things.
