Blog Interior Scholarship April 2019 Blogger Naomi Rossignol
These past 2 months, all my work and research have converged around the theme Landscape.
From all the visible features of an area of land and related to the limit of the vision, I was questioning the sense of it. Is it an inside or outside space? Horizontal, vertical, a landscape nearby or far away? Is it a natural or artificial one? Is it related to time and movement, or rather static? How do you perceive it? What is your relationship with it?
The Invisible Landscape, Hillegom, South-Holland
I started my research looking at the flower fields of Hillegom, one of the most typical flat Dutch landscapes. Tulip cultivation areas surrounded by water canals. My first impression was that the place was rather quite. Moreover, I could see a real confrontation between the man-made land and the natural fauna and ?ora to maintain. I wondered how the farmers are sustaining their field, and what is the influence of the surrounding environment? To go deeper, I specifically decided to focus on the human, tulips and snails. Thus, I went on collecting a lot of information on-site and online and started to compare the three by making graphics.
What is their lifespan, adult size in centimeters, rate of growth in cm/day, speed of movement in km/h, for instance? It appeared to me that these were the invisible layers that are shaping the landscape.
Research using books, such as “Landscape and memories” by Simon Schama and literature helped me advance in my project. A thought from Le Petit Prince by St-Exupery has raised my attention as it introduces the notion of character in a landscape: If you were to say to the grown-ups: «I saw a beautiful house made of rosy brick, with geraniums in the windows and doves on the roof,» they would not be able to get any idea of that house at all. You would have to say to them: «I saw a house that cost $20 000.» Then they would exclaim: «Oh, what a pretty house that is! »
These gave me a different perspective to look at the field of Hillegom, from a production point of view I got to the personality and the emotional side of the landscape where I finally ended my research by making a film.
Blog Interior Scholarship April 2019 Blogger Naomi Rossignol
In the beginning of February, I had the opportunity to work with ceramic within an architectural application. We were commissioned at school to design a pavilion for the garden of the world-famous clown Slava Polunin. Fascinated by the magical world of this artist, I imagined large scale meteorites that would land in his garden and in which we could rest.
I was inspired by gems, stones, the vivid colours of dragonflies and by meteorites themselves. As part of the research process, I visited the exhibitions “Meteorites, between sky and earth” in Paris and the Museum für Naturkunde in Berlin which brought me information and inspiration to develop my concept. First theoretically, how the meteorites are formed, what their composition is, where do they come from, how do they reach planet earth? Secondly physically, what are they shapes, colours and textures.
Blog Interior Scholarship April 2019 Blogger Naomi Rossignol
Of all the professional experiences I had this year, the most intense adventure was participating in the Climathon. This worldwide 24-hour competition, located in “The Green Village” of the Technical University of Delft and organized by Climate-KIC, revolved around finding solutions for the climate. Motivated students, professionals and teachers, coming from various backgrounds, gathered to find solutions for the future. This year, the Netherlands, one participants among more than 100 other countries, had the task to work on the theme of Energy. Teams were formed and assigned specific existing spaces. Thus, I ended up working in a team all night long, finding and developing smart energy efficiency solutions for the Aula conference building located on the TU Delft campus, designed by the Dutch team Van Den Broek and Bakema in the style of brutalist architecture. During these 24 hours, all our energy went into analysing, exchanging, drawing, erasing, modelling, writing… – along the way, being coached by professionals and teachers – to finally present our project in front of a high-level expert jury. The 5 projects developed by the 40 participants were very diverse and promising.
