R&Sie(n) project records
2005-2015
Fonds
The R&Sie(n) project records, 2002-2015, document the conceptualization and design of four projects: Water Flux (2002-2010), I’ve heard about (2004-2006), Olzweg (2006) and Architecture des humeurs (2008-2011). The records consist of approximately 1400 digital files and two models. These primarily document the design and the exhibition, in various galleries, of the projects with still images, movies, 3D models and photographs.
The records are split into four series documenting the phases of R&Sie(n) each different projects, François Roche aligns those projects into two theoretical stances.
The first theoretical stance, research as speculation, is represented through projects “I’ve heard about” and Une architecture des humeurs. In both cases, architecture expresses the action of production in speculative time, which works out devices between robotics, mathematics, neurobiology and biochemistry, in order to take a critical and political position through esthetic. The investigation of new technological tools is meant to open new lines of thoughts.
The second theoretical stance, fiction as practice, includes projects Water Flux (and related project Scrambled Flat) and Olzweg. It envisions an architecture taking place in different and altered times. Simultaneously operative and fictional, it tries to recontextualize-the relation of a situation, an environment, an industrial innovation as a capable fiction becoming a vector of reality while transforming this same reality. In this case, architecture becomes almost a performance, an action rather than a representation, a moving continuity.
This fonds contains a number of born-digital files in CAD and 3D modeling formats. Due to the complex and often proprietary nature of CAD formats, proper rendering and use of these files may require highly specific software. CCA’s dedicated Study Room CAD workstation is loaded with a wide but incomplete range of such software. For further information about services and software available for interacting with obsolete or niche file formats, please contact Collection Reference (reference@cca.qc.ca) and ask to speak with the Digital Archivist. Files were accessible using a range of software, browsers, and operating systems. The stereolithography files (STL) opened most consistently using Autodesk Inventor. The Graphical Interchange Format files (GIF) are accessible using any type of browser.
These records are arranged into four series based on each of the projects present:
Series 1. Water Flux and Scrambled Flat
Series 2. I’ve heard about and Hypnosis chamber
Series 3. Olzweg
Series 4. Architecture des humeurs
Architect François Roche, who was first trained as a scientist and later graduated from the School of Architecture of Versailles in 1987, founded R&Sie(n) in Paris in 1993 along with artist Stephanie Lavaux (1993-2011) and architect Gilles Desevedavy (1993-1998).It was also joined by architects Olivier Legrand, Alexandre Boulin (1998-2000), Jean Navarro (2000-2007), Kiuchi Toshikatsu (2007-2011), Camille Lacadée and Vong Wongkillalerd (2011-2015).
The studio has changed its name regularly since its creation and is also known as Roche, DSV & Sie, R, DSV & Sie .P, R&Sie.D/B:L, eIf/bʌt/c or M4. François Roche, who's personnal practice is also known as New-Territories (1993), has led the firm throughout its existence, conceives his practice as transformative and polymorphous which explains this recursive change of name that also stands as a refusal to brand his work. As of 2019, only François Roche personnal practice, New-Territories, is still active. It is based in both Paris and Bangkok.
R&Sie(n) uses a speculative approach to architecture and focuses on developing technological experiments to explore the bond between building, context and human relations. Each building is a process, a dynamic device that uses architecture to perform an ecologically useful function. The firm works regularly with oppositional relationships: machinery versus nature, purity versus corruption, paranoia versus reality in order to create architecture that transcends its physicality producing a discourse that aims for ecological and social improvement of the place in which it exists.
During its existence, R&Sie(n) has been invited to the French pavilion and International selections of the Venice Biennale multiple times since 1993. Their work can be found in the permanent collections of several institutions, including SF-MOMA, the Centre Pompidou, and Fonds Regional d'Art Contemporain (FRAC).
François Roche has held visiting appointments at the Bartlett School in London, the Vienna University of Technology, the ESARQ School of Architecture at the International University of Catalonia in Barcelona, ESA in Paris, the University of Applied Arts in Vienna, and the University of Southern California in Los Angeles among other teaching positions. He has also lectured extensively at international academic and cultural institutions, and taught at University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia (2006), Columbia University (2006-2013), and at RMIT University in Melbourne from (2012-2018).
Finally, through New-Territories, François Roche has published a number of monographs. These volumes are a collection of research projects and exhibition catalogues including Corrupted Biotopes (2004), a contribution to the Design Document series of books, "i've heard about" (2005), Spoiled Climate(2006), Fiction Scripts (2007), and BioReboot (2010), MythomaniaS (2016), DigitalDisobediance (2018). As well as having contributed to various journals of architecture and design, François Roche was guest editor of the architectural journal LOG #25, published in the summer of 2012 under the title Reclaim Resi[lience]stance. In 2014, a book dedicated to François Roche's work and his collaborations with New-Territories was published, entitled Francois Roche: Heretical Machinism and Living Architecture of New Territories.com.
Material arrived through four accessions AR2015.0112, AR2015.0114, AR2016.0015 and AR2016.0019.
The entirety of the digital files in the archive were kept in the personal possession of François Roche, most recently in Bangkok, Thailand, and transferred to CCA via external hard drive, USB thumb drive, and network transfer. The physical models were shipped to CCA from storage in France.
These records were acquired by CCA as part of the Archaeology of the Digital project. Selected items were displayed in the show Archaeology of the Digital: Complexity and Convention, May-October 2016.
When citing the collection as a whole, use the citation:
R&Sie(n) project records,
Collection Centre Canadien d’Architecture/
Canadian Centre for Architecture, Montréal.
When citing specific collection material, please refer to the object’s specific credit line
English, French
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