The Dying Dreamer - Architecture of Parallel Realities

Abstract: The objective of this licentiate thesis is to investigatearchitectural experience and creation in virtual space and itsrepresentational problems. The thesis comprises three articlespublished during the years 2001-2003, and a website,www.arch.kth.se/~zimm.The articles investigate architecture as a transgressivestate between the virtual worlds of imagination and thedomestic interior, introducing obsessive dreambuilding as amethod of negotiating material fictions in real space. The mainrepresentative of this kind of architectural activity is thefictional character Baron des Esseintes in Joris-KarlHuysmans´ novel À Rebours (1884). Together with thearchitectural transformations created by the architect Sir JohnSoane and the artists Kurt Schwitters and Gregor Schneider, theprojects share and develop the theme of extreme individualityand explore the architectural imagination at work in the mindof the obsessive dreambuilder. These architects of parallelrealities create operative fields of artificiality andimagination, where architectural space splits into differentontological states, providing fields for observation ofperceptional and representational problems.Keywords:Architecture, Against Nature/À Rebours,Artifice, Artificiality, Domestic interior, Dream, Experience,Fiction, Hypertext, Huysmans, Imagination, Individuality,Interactivity, Interface, Obsession, Obsessive dreambuilding,Perception, Representation, Schwitters, Schneider, Soane,Symbolism, Virtual Reality