Present Absence

Present-Absence is a proposal for a research project located in and developed through a structured collaboration between architectural education and practice.

The role of the ‘non-built’ program in architecture is frequently ignored, disregarded or given over to other disciplines. An increasingly program and performance-based profession tends to negate the intrinsic contribution of the space which can be considered as ‘non-built’.
The exact definition of   what non-built may constitute will form a part of the research; it may be defined through an absence of program, tectonic construction, typological precedent or manifest presence.
Here the research project will address the ‘non-built’ in architecture as a positive contributor rather than a negative omission in the methodological framework of spatial design, architectural pedagogy and as a qualitative construct in the creation of built space.

Image : urban plan for Melun Senart  © OMA 1987