Raphaël Lambotte
WHAT IS COMING: Ce qui arrive
This doctoral research furthers the trajectory of creative practice-led engagement with Architect and cultural philosopher Paul Virilio’s theories through speculative architectural drawing. Virilio’s writings in the late-twentieth century – Dromology, the integral accident, the negative horizon, militarisation, and the aesthetics of disappearance – diagnosed the political and spatial consequences of technological acceleration, many of which have intensified in the twenty-first century. Despite his architectural background and curatorial work, these ideas remain underexplored within design methodologies and have not been systematically addressed through drawing. The project proposes three creative practice research outcomes, the first of which is ‘A House for Paul Virilio’, a series of five large-scale speculative drawings that translate his concepts into spatial and graphic operations. Rather than the drawings simply ‘illustrating’ Virilio’s theories, they are intended to expand upon them, using techniques of layering, distortion, and symbolic fragmentation to expose systemic forces and reframe architectural drawing as a site of epistemological resistance.
Methodologically, the research is positioned as practice-led inquiry, where drawing functions as both process and product of knowledge production. By engaging with architectural precedents such as Lebbeus Woods, Neil Spiller, and Bryan Cantley, the thesis looks to develop a distinctive visual grammar for representing speed, disappearance, and collapse. In doing so, it reframes speculative architecture as a critical practice that bears witness to, and resists, the accelerated, militarised, and destabilised conditions of the contemporary world.
Supervisors
Associate Professor Simon Twose & Professor Daniel Brown
Qualifications
- Master degree in Architecture - Ecole Speciale d'Architecture, Paris, 2023
- Bachelor degree in Architecture - Ecole Speciale d'Architecture, Paris, 2021
Awards
- Wellington Doctoral Scholarship 2024
- Special Price for best Master Thesis at ESA Paris 2022