MARIE SALDAÑA
I explore the borderlands of history, data, and design.
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MATERIALITY AND SIMULACRUM
2011 - 2019
This project investigated the idea of the cave in architecture. The cave has been the site of the confrontation of nature, technology, and simulation in various contexts throughout history. The anachronistic “otherness” of cave architecture invites its interpretation as a skeuomorph-in-reverse: architectural forms stripped of their structural function and transposed to a more “primitive” medium as ornament.
Nowhere is this more evident than in the rock-cut chapels and dwellings found throughout the Mediterranean provinces that were once part of the Byzantine empire.
The repurposing and/or evocation of the cave as architecture in the Byzantine world is insufficiently understood in terms of pragmatism or symbolism. The proliferation of rock-cut architecture was a deliberate cultural choice that invoked material locality as a form of provincial resistance and self-determination, operating though formal modes may be defined in terms of ideas derived from postmodern cultural theory: namely the simulacrum and the “formless”.
Fieldwork for this project was conducted in Pantalica (Sicily), Cappadocia (Turkey), and Lakonia (Greece) to address thematic issues of representation: how does a representational type (sketch, orthographic drawing, 3D model, point cloud, photography, video) reveal a different ontology/epistemology of the cave? Which types of representation does the cave resist and/or thwart, and which have been historically favored? Various forms of digital media, including photogrammetry and generative code-based video, were explored for their documentary and expressive potential.
Related Activities
Underground SpatialitiesHumanities studio and exhibition, 2019
Rice University
Lakonia, GreeceFieldwork, Summer 2014.
"The Idea of the Cave in Architecture"Conference presentation, 2014
Society of Architectural Historians Annual International Conference, Austin, April 11.
Dixon Fellowship2013
Department of Art History, University of California, Los Angeles.
"Materiality and Simulacrum in Byzantine Cave Architecture: The Case of Pantalica" Conference presentation, 2013
The Substance of Sacred Place: An Interdisciplinary Workshop on Locative Materiality
Max Planck Kunsthistoriches Institut Florence, Italy, June 20-21.
Moore Traveling SeminarTravel/Fellowship, 2012
Department of Architecture and Urban Design, University of California, Los Angeles.
Seminar and travel to sites in Italy, led by Sylvia Lavin.
Cappadocia in Context WorkshopFull scholarship, 2011
Koç University, Istanbul and Cappadocia, Turkey.