DMJ – The Story of the Raft: Architectural Narrations of Disaster, Despair and Delight
Architectural stories, almost by definition, construct narratives combining image and text. It is these combinations of the visual and the verbal that make architectural stories particularly compelling and memorable. ‘The Story of the Pool’ (1976) by Rem Koolhaas is a case in point. The script, written by Koolhaas, tells of a floating pool crossing the Atlantic, propelled by a group of Russian avant-garde architects swimming away from their goal (New York). The paintings, by Madelon Vriesendorp, depict the pool at various stages of the journey, often against the backdrop of architectural projects produced during the formative phase of OMA (Office for Metropolitan Architecture). Of interest to this article is the very end of the story, where the pool collides with the ‘Medusa Raft’ – a reference to the famous painting by Théodore Géricault in the Louvre. A proof print in the Drawing Matter Collections shows the moment the Medusa Raft breaks to pieces. The image here serves as the starting point for an examination of the raft as a narrative device within and across the work of OMA – one whose ‘story’ has not yet been told.
Drawing on a range of references and sources, this essay develops a reading of the raft as a cultural trope and iconographic motif, rich in meaning but also full of contradiction. This reading never settles in favour of one interpretation – be it that of a life-saving craft or a ‘plastic replica’ destroyed by the Floating Pool. What emerges is a more complex thought-image, in which postmodern irony and social critique, the built and the unbuilt, are in tension without leading to resolution. What, then, is the ‘story of the raft’ and how can it be told? The answer, this essay suggests, lies in a play between image and text where associations multiply, as images and stories of the raft proliferate.
Download the full article as a printable PDF
DMJournal–Architecture and Representation
No. 3: Storytelling
Edited by Mark Dorrian and Paul Carter
ISSN 2753-5010 (Online)
ISBN (tbc)
About the author
Willem de Bruijn is an artist and academic working across the fields of art, design and architecture. He is currently a senior lecturer at Arts University Bournemouth, where he teaches architectural design, lectures on architectural history and theory, and supervises research degrees. His writings have been published in journals such as Footprint, Writingplace, the International Journal of Art & Design Education and The International Journal of the Book.
