Aleph
Aleph is a work whose direct reference may be the short story of the same title by Jorge Luis Borges. In it, the Argentinian author describes the Aleph as “the point in space that contains all other points”.
At the same time, Nicolas Grospierre’s Aleph has a second, less evident source of inspiration, and which lies in the tessellated structure which develops upon the viewer’s eyes as he gazes into the work. This structure reminds indeed of the so-called “space-frame”. In architectural engineering, a space frame is a rigid, light-weight, truss-like structure constructed from interlocking struts in a geometric pattern. It is capable of bearing huge weights in comparison to its relatively light structure.
The space-frame technology was developed, among others, by Buckminster Fuller, or, later by the avant-garde architectural groups Archizoom or Archigram. These architectural groups saw the space-frame as a way to emancipate architecture from geography and place. Because it was lightweight and easily assembled, the space-frame was seen as the basis of a nomadic architecture, but also progressive, egalitarian and non-hierarchical.
However, these utopian ideals proved, in the long run, quite illusory. The space frame, as an engineering technology, was used primarily in the design of malls, airports, commercial warehouses – in a word, in the architecture of social control of late capitalism. In effect, instead of being the instrument of architectural emancipation, the space frame produced the contrary – the architecture of invisible oppression and control.
Nicolas Grospierre’s Aleph is, by itself, quite contradictory, as it seems to contain a limitless space in a limited box, but it also reminds of this paradoxical and contradictory phenomenon that the space frame is.