Library: Astronomical Tanatorium [or embracing the

architectural absurdity]

Liberated from the obligation to construct, [architecture] can become

a way of thinking about anything a discipline that represents the
diagram of everything.

Rem Koolhaas, 2004.

*Disclaimer: This is not a project, this is a work of design, made for a

design workshop. This is, in reality, a work for nothing[quote Becket
and his Texts for Nothing].

The project consists on an astronomical observatory located on Ciudad

de Guatemala. From the start, the absurd appears present in the
conception of the project itself: given the atmospheric conditions of
Ciudad de Guatemala the optical capacity of an observatory is virtually
cero. One way to approach the problem will be by proposing a more
coherent, practical and adequate to the site. This is what prevails in
the practice of architecture as the correct approach, the corrective
approach, even an orthopedic approach if you want. One could go
against these absurd conditions of the project by arming oneself with a
paraphernalia of these corrective solutions, but in these terms,
something is lost, something that I believe we as architects should give
ourselves a chance to encounter. This project aims to be one of those
opportunities not to go against the absurd, but on the contrary, to
embrace it, in order to see what other veins of thought open up for the
architect to operate within when the absurd is used in our favor and to
see how far it can be taken. Here the absurd acts as a series of
constraints that will force the designer to think in things that will
probably not emerge by freeing oneself from it, it opens a potential site
to think in a non-reasonable way.

Absurd No.1: The Geographical Absurd

Giving Ciudad de Guatemala just what it wants, while working with the
impossibility of an observatory that is supposed to work as an avant-
garde astronomical device in a site that nullifies its purpose. In order to
do this, the project will be situated in and outside of Ciudad de
Guatemala. The foundations of the project will be located in Ciudad de
Guatemala. In order to obtain the sharpest images possible the other
part will be located in outer space. In between of this components
there are 99, 779. 328 km of nano carbon fiber and glass fiber wire
that will be kept in tension thanks to Earths centripetal force.
Absurd No.2: The Specificity Absurd

The absurd No.1 gives space for another absurd, one about the
components of the project. Each component of the project has to
perform such an specific task, that it allows almost cero room for the
architect to operate as a designer. Each of the components is designed
by a third party, the only role the design has here is to propose the use
of such components. Then, the question arises: which is(are) the
role(s) or mode(s) to operate of the architect(s) in design problems that
have conditions like the ones mentioned above.

Absurd No.3: The Representational Absurd

If the role on the architect in this case is no so much about designing

an object that will ultimately end outside of the means of
representation, then another site for the architect to operate will be
that of the image itself, of the production of images and its
conventions. By trying to represent the whole project in a single image,
due to its size(99, 779. 328 km long) approximately, the detail, the
plan, section, and to a certain extend perspective are consumed by a
diagrammatic kind of representation.

Here, the diagram becomes the absolute possibility of representation

for the project: we can never see the project as a mimetic
representation of what it will look in reality, but an abstraction of the
abstraction; a representation of the representation.

Absurd No.4: The Astronomical Absurd

Finally, regarding to what the observatory itself will actually do and by

extension what I will not do. It will certainly not work with existing
stars, planets or other bodies which remain in the outer space, but
instead what he project pretends is to become the first astronomical
observatory with the use of infrared technology to record images of
death celestial bodies, a register of astronomical cadavers. In this
sense the observatory becomes a mnemonic artifact of pasts
universes.

Absurd No.5: The Imaginary Absurd

This absurd makes allusion to the images produced in this work, which
are in essence the body of the work itself.