Kathryn Stevens: Isometria

Folding is simultaneously transformative and generative, formal and intuitive, sequential and improvisational, generative and destructive, and narrative.

Folding as a generative process…. is essentially experimental, agnostic, non-linear and bottom up.’*

The original material (before the intercession of the hand) may be seen as a void, pure; prior. And so, the folding begins, and four transformative processes begin.

The first, of course, is to create a third dimension from what was two dimensional stuff. Material becomes object; sheet spawns structure. Transformation into possibilities of function, space, and, so, into influence. The object inhabits, interrupts and occupies.

On a single line and in a single act: void becomes substance; surface, space.

But there is no such thing as a free lunch! The original singularity has been defiled! The integrity of the material, compromised through this violent act! Molecular structure is permanently altered and there is no going back. Stress is assured and the potential for fracture threatens the thing. Generation: possible only through degeneration.

The sequence of folds continues, and a new, potentially destructive, alteration emerges. The material now transposed from a state of original equilibrium and stability to various states of tension. Each new crease creates weakness and strain, yet simultaneously has the potential to create something stronger.

And the folding needn’t be defined by any preconceived outcome; this is not Origami. The fold is, in essence, exploratory and improvisational. Whilst the event has a formality and a specificity, the sequence needn’t be pre-thought. One fold follows another (in

Isometria the sequences follow a set of theoretical rules toward a necessary principle), as a phrase might follow another in conversation; structurally coherent and inherent, with intent, but with no preconception of what might follow; a Jazz of Architecture.

And through the whole Composition of Damage the entire tale of transformation is documented. An unmarked surface becomes creased, lined and dented. A history - an archeography of creation, generation, destruction and degeneration recorded indelibly in the form of a diagram or map, with the potential for decoding for future repetition - history, in the making.

The canvas is flat. The subject folded, but not unfolded -yet to realise its potential as Object/Space.

David Edmundson 2016

*Vyzoviti, Sophia, Folding Architecture: Spatial, Structural, and Organizational Diagrams. Page One, Publishing2006