SPATIAL FICTIONS: FROZEN DAYDREAMS | Clement Luk Laurencio

Clement Luk Laurencio is a storyteller and master artisan of pencil drawings. His surreal, poetic drawings capture the dreams, inventions, memories and flashbacks of places he has lived, visited and cherished. He calls them ‘spatial fictions’. He says they are an invitation for pause, and wandering, in its timeless labyrinth. He probes the question ‘how is the dwelling a place of reverie and protection for the dreamer?’ His work, which has won numerous awards, depicts themes of the pandemic; loss of connection, forced enclosure, and fantasies of the future and past. When I came across his work, I was struck by the depth of his imagination and skill.  And, he is only just beginning.

Transcript

SPATIAL FICTIONS | FROZEN DAYDREAMS

Clement Luk Laurencio

S1 EPISODE 9 TRANSCRIPT:        April 18, 2021

Nina

“Nestled deep within the vast floodplains, three stone pavilions still stand strong, decades after the inevitable sea rise. These ruins once held vast crowds of people from around the world, engaging in conversation, all around a cup of tea. It was not all that long ago when people would arrive by foot, coming together to debate, conversate, orate, or whisper. As the water rose over the bank, the approach was done by boat. But after the pandemic, the docked boats, which kept this forum alive, have all vanished. It has been a long time, since the voices of people echoed through these pavilions.   The water was still, and a little murky, but one could discern thousands of broken pieces of forgotten porcelain cups, under the shallow layer of silt that had settled over time.  My oars had pushed away the silt, and revealed the fragments of white chinaware. It was as if I had left a trail for someone to follow me here. Up above, the sandstone roofs have been filtering the rain water, all this time, in the hopes that one day, its clean water will be served as tea.   I keep visiting here.  I light a fire to heat the water.   Just as I lit the flame, a soft breeze carried the gray smoke, and along with that, my hopes that it will be seen by another wandering soul.” 

I'm Nina Friedman. And this is WHEREING. WHEREING explores where we are. It is dedicated to those who believe in the inherent pride of belonging and all the ways we feel we belong, and connect to ourselves, to each other, and the spaces that hold the stories where all of this comes alive. Where each experience of belonging is a work of art, created by chance or by design. Dare I ask, is belonging where you are not what matters most? WHEREING is the spatial story. Welcome.

A storyteller and master artisan of pencil drawings, Clement Luk Laurencio, is a recent graduate of the Bartlett School of Architecture University College London. His surreal, poetic drawings capture the dreams, inventions, memories, and flashbacks of places he has lived, visited and cherished. He calls them 'spatial fictions'. He says, they are an invitation for the viewer to wander and pause in his timeless labyrinth. He probes the question, "How is the dwelling, a place of reverie and protection for the dreamer?" His work, which has won numerous awards, depicts themes of the pandemic. Loss of connection, forced enclosure, and fantasies of the future and past. When I came across his work, I was struck by the depth of his imagination and skill. He is only at the beginning.

The drawings that we will be speaking about will be posted on my website, thewhereing.com. These drawings, plus a range of other works, can also be seen on a website of Clement, and that website is clementluklaurencio.com. 

Nina
Clement, welcome. 

Clement
Thank you for having me. 

Nina
It's really my pleasure. Tell us about your origins and your pathways. 

Clement
Yeah, absolutely. Thank you, Nina. So, I'm Filipino. Both my parents are from the Philippines. And, about 30 years ago, they moved to France, and I was born in the South of France.  I grew up here ever since really, from Nice to Paris, and then, and from Paris to a small town next to Geneva, Switzerland, a peaceful town nestled within the mountains. From there, I did my Bachelor of Architecture in the UK, at the University of Nottingham, because it was more directed towards the creative, artistic side.   After doing that, I went on to work for Bernard Tschumi Architects in New York, to have a different perspective of architecture, and the scene there.  I then returned and worked  for a smaller firm in Geneva. So, right next door. The usual course after that is to do the masters, and I did my masters of architecture at the Bartlett School of Architecture in UCL, in London.  Around that time, summer 2020, the pandemic  cast its net wide. So, for me, it was more of a chance to come back home, to have a moment of pause, at least, because I'm sure, you know, the life of architecture is quite a busy one, and I felt it was a good chance to to think things through,  and see  what it was that really attracted me to architecture in the first place. So, that's been my journey so far.

Nina
Yeah. Yes. That's interesting that you say that. One imagines that the choices are always absolute, but I have found that over the years, that question keeps reappearing,  because we change. Are you sitting now near that small town, near Geneva?

Clement
I am at the moment. 

Nina
Clement, what is home? And where do you belong?

Clement
That's a very profound question.  Home is, I think, first and foremost, a shelter for me, and that only in the sense of the physical aspects of it, a ceiling, a wall, warmth. It's a place where the people who you love are, and I've always felt it difficult to define, where is home, whether it was in New York, or whether it was in France, or whether it's in the Philippines. For me, it's definitely where my family is. That's where I feel, I can always say, I'm going home. So, it's not only shelter, but also emotional shelter. And, this place where you can really just be yourself, I suppose. 

Nina
Yes. Completely. 

Clement
Very difficult question to answer. Yeah. 

Nina
Yeah. Especially, when one is a person that has lived in many places and may continue to do so.

Clem,  your drawings transported me  to a time when we worked by hand. And, when I was  at the Architectural Association,  the craft, the art, the poetry of the drawing, was simply, what was expected.  There were masterpieces, all over the walls. I have nostalgia about that time, and I miss the smell of graphite, and my fingers getting black. And even afterwards, you know, drawing with pencil and ink, everyone in my generation has a raised area on the side of the finger, from that time, you can tell, and you probably have that as well. But even when I think about that time, I can't even remember drawings, at the AA, that were as beautiful as the ones that you're doing.  Can you tell us why you work this way? Because, you must certainly be alone in your generation, doing it. 

Clement
Well, thank you very much, Nina. It's very funny that you say nostalgic,  because even though my career in architecture is fairly recent, I too have this nostalgia for these older drawings, that I inevitably look back to drawings by Peter Wilson, Bernard Tschumi, even Zaha Hadid's drawings back at the AA, of course. I was more focused on the artistic side. So, in that sense, gravitating towards the pencil, the crayons, the pastels, and all these fabulous materials that you have, to work with your hands. I think partly because my skill set isn't as good, maybe,  for my digital skills, but I just learned to keep the pencil as part of my arsenal.  Part of that is because it's very difficult for me to communicate, like you said, the atmosphere and the craft of the design through the digital means. And I was lucky  to keep the pencil as part of the whole design process until the final images. 

Nina
Well, kudos to your tutors, as well. 

Clement
Thank you. 

Nina
Who allowed you to keep that determination for that process, without forcing you to change it into  digital deliverables.

Clement
Absolutely. And,  just very quickly.  I think that's a really important point, because  the pace of design is extremely fast, that it's almost difficult to keep up, just using the pencil.  I had to find a way to hybridize digital means with a pencil sketch.  It's definitely a balance. 

Nina
Yes. Yeah. The amount you're expected to produce is enormous. I know that. 

Clem, recently I interviewed a humanist geographer. His name is Yi Fu Tuan. He's 90 years old now, and he has written lots of books, and one of the books that he wrote was called Space and Place. He defines space as movement, and place as pause. He said that we are attached to one, but, we long for the other. When I see your work, I feel that it embodies space and place together, because there's  restlessness, and  continuous movement of exploring these various places and memories. Also, there's a pause, where you are inviting the viewers to inhabit it, but it's also your process,  the rhythmic repetition of the pencil strokes, it's meditative and calming. Right.

Clement
Absolutely Nina, and you took the words right out of my mouth. We just talked about the pacing  of these architectural projects, and I think that's a thing that we  almost forget.  For a lot of us, we just want a moment of pause. I was lucky enough to find in the drawing process itself, that moment of pause for me,  that reverie, that escapism. I would totally agree with this idea of space and place, in that it is a bit of a choreography between movement and pause. I think the drawing, in particular, the 'Pavilions for Conversations' drawings, many of those spaces  are spaces in ruin. But there are also positive spaces of pause and contemplation, a place where people themselves, as they're looking at the drawings, can feel a sense of pause themselves. And, conversely, the 'Memory Palace' drawing, is a bit more of a cacophonic experience of these spatial memories, that I imagined. But, at the same time, as I was drawing it, there were moments of pause.  In a lot of my drawings, I don't  put lots of people in. It's this idea of letting the viewer  project themselves, within that place of the drawing. So, then they can move around without being rushed by the people who, if I drew them in, would  give that sense  of rush. So, it's a bit of both, where I do try to give the viewer the space to move and wander around, and to also pause, within those places. 

Nina
You're actually raising an interesting point for me to consider. You're right, when one puts people in a drawing, it then changes the drawing to something that's seen from the outside. We're looking at it, and without people, would I enter it differently? 

Clement
And, on that point, this issue of scale. I think that's also something that Juhani Pallasmaa talks about a lot of in his lectures, and in his books, is  the scale of the drawing as well, and by drawing, I mean the, the piece of paper and the pencil, the  analog hand drawing. We talked about this rush of students going into the digital means. Sometimes scale gets quite abstract, in that one could easily zoom in to these drawings, through digital means. So, even through the Ipad, one could easily pinch and enter and inhabit that space differently.  But, that connection with the hand drawing, is that the scale remains constant, vis-a-vis my own body.  What I'm drawing has a direct correspondence to the tactility of the body, or to the hand that's drawing it. I think that's a big aspect of hand-drawing, that gets overlooked, this idea of the body, of the one who draws it, and understanding the scale of what they're drawing, in relation to their own body. 

Nina
Right.  In terms of the process of the artist, or the architect. For me, looking at your drawings, because they were uploaded onto the computer, I actually did zoom in quite a lot, to see the details. So, that process still exists, even though you've done a pencil drawing. 

Clement
Absolutely. 

Nina
I am speaking with Clement Luk Laurencio, a young architectural artist whose pencil drawings unfold, surreal, poetic memories of places near and far.  

Clement
You call your work spatial fictions and your drawings, collage moments and experiences, and places, and fragments of time. You're also a storyteller. So with each drawing, what's fascinating to me, is that combination of the story and the drawing, which is magical and dreamy.  And, I would say even romantic. In the time that we have, I'd like to talk about three of your artworks. Let's begin with one that you just referenced, which is the 'Pavilions for Conversations'. Can you tell us about that drawing and its story?

Clement
The Pavilions for Conversations drawings came about from a project that I was doing for my Masters in my fourth year, at the Bartlett School of Architecture.  What's quite interesting with  storytelling, is that  its meaning can change or evolve as time passes. So, the 'Pavilions for Conversations' are essentially set in this flood plain in the future, and shelters away  from the rain, and potential future sea level rise. And, it became  this place, where people of very different walks of life, would come together and have a conversation, that centered around a a cup of tea. And, tea as a bridge to communication, arose  because the project initially was set in Barking,England, and Barking was the link of the new Silk Road, linking  with China, all the way to Barking, England. That's where  the tea ceremony as a way of communication, and then act of diplomacy  started. Anyways, these stone pavilions became the center of a place where people would  have a conversation, come together, and really pause. I think the reason why they were made out of stone, is because it reminded me very much of this really primal aspect of gathering around a campfire, or staying within the shelter of the cave, and being around a fire and a warmth and the elements. Then, I was thinking about  permanence and this  place, which would facilitate conversation or shelter  for anyone who would stumble upon this place. So it's really centered around gathering, shelter and  the elements.  

Nina
Just reducing it down to the cup of tea is so interesting to me, because from my memory, also living in England, it's so symbolic, the cup of tea. It's not just something to drink. When someone says to you, ' would you like to have a cup of tea'? What it means, what they're saying is, 'I want to talk to you’.

Clement
Indeed. Yeah. 

Nina
You know, you talked about  the fire pit. People, the way they hold that cup of tea, particularly in the winter. It's the warming device.

Clement
Absolutely. I think it goes back to our more primal instincts, but also to what makes us feel like a shelter. It's not just a roof over our heads, but it's also  the hearth, and then this fire. The cup of tea  became the hearth, not only for shelter, but also for conversation, which I think was the biggest glue to the project, coming together for a cup of tea. 

Nina
And I think, I even noticed that the form of the teapot was retranslated in various ways into the drawing. 

Clement
Yes.  Each pavilion  dealt with its own manner of conversation, one was for debate. One was for oration. One was for whispers. So, different typologies of building types and building sizes for different types of conversations.  The teapot in the debate chamber was large enough that it had to be poured with the two people as a way of cooperation.  

Nina
Beautiful. 

" Up above, the sandstone roofs have been filtering the rain water, all this time, in the hopes that one day, its clean water will be served as tea.   I keep visiting here. I light a fire to heat the water.   Just as I lit the flame, a soft breeze carried the gray smoke, and along with that, my hopes that it will be seen by another wandering soul." 

I think a number of the pieces are very much pandemic pieces. This one is,  referencing quite a few things, the lost conversation, the lost contact, but it's also a very hopeful piece. You're waiting at the end. There's this sense that people will arrive by boat soon.

Clement
Absolutely. And, it's quite funny, because the project was conceived the year before, so COVID hadn't really happened yet, but I think with stories, and especially with drawings, is that they can live a different life, through the storytelling. That's something that we should also consider, is that for the life of the drawings can also shift and change, depending on the times. And, in this case,  not in terms of adding to it in terms of the pencil, but in adding to the story of the drawings, through enriching words. 

Nina
So, the pavilion, you did that before the pandemic?

Clement
Yes. 

Nina
Wow. A premonition.

In your two works, 'Memory Palace', and also 'Apartment #5', you write about the frozen daydream. They were, I think, both pandemic works, and they seem to ask the question, "if the experiences are gone, how might we recreate the places we've been, that already lives in us?" Saying, "this is what I remember. This is what I want to remember." Right?  Can you speak about these works and what you were thinking about when you were creating them?

Clement
Absolutely. And, absolutely right Nina, in saying that these drawings came from the situation of the pandemic, and Apartment  #5 came first around March of 2020. That was around the first lockdown in the UK. This was also my project for my fifth year at the Bartlett school of architecture.

Nina
During the pandemic. 

Clement
During the pandemic. Yes,  in this  situation of not being able to travel or, being stuck within our own dwellings. 

Nina

What is 'Apartment  #5'? Is that the number of your apartment? 

Clement
That's exactly right. I'm not there anymore, but yeah, it was a very personal project for me. The thinking around this, ' Apartment  #5', is that I was also interested in the Soane Museum. When he curated his own dwelling, with all these beautiful  artifacts  from the ancient past, when you visit it, it's almost as if you go on a journey through time, and all these artifacts have their own imbued memories, whether it's the people who visit there. But, I was more interested in this idea for the lay person, for everyone within the lockdown, of how does the apartment, or the place where they're staying, react to this notion of being stuck at home, and part of that was this inability to go outside, or to go back to those places  of your childhood, or being locked in a place  forcefully. The way I was thinking of  the dwelling, was in this poetic sense, and like you said, romantic sense, especially  when reading Gaston Bachelard, how the dwelling or the home becomes a place of reverie and protection for the dreamer or, for ourselves. And, I was lucky enough to go to India, the couple months before the lockdown. We had this opportunity to see Louis Khan, we saw Le Corbusier, we saw Doshi's Sanghath. It was a first time visiting those places, but also a different country in general. So, that's where these moments of flashbacks were quite vivid for me, when drawing for the Apartment #5 drawings. And, I was thinking of ways, in which I could spatialize these flashbacks, to visualize  these memories within my own apartment, I suppose. Yeah. So, that's the story of how the Apartment #5 drawings came about.

Nina
In a way, your drawing is a way of traveling. 

Clement
Indeed. It is.  Not only for myself, but also for the viewer to meander through the drawings.  With architectural drawing, we are drawing spaces. They beckon to be inhabited by the viewer.  It's  an invitation. 

Nina
"Hidden away from the prying eyes of the outside, an entire world exists, a secret, known only to me. One day, as I made my way to the washroom, I found myself transported. For a moment, I thought I was walking through this sunken and dim spaces of the stepwells in Ahmedabad. Another time, I found my hands slowly running across the smooth, warm kissed tiles of Doshi’s Sangath roofs. Memories of my recent voyage to India. Hallways stretched endlessly.  Stepwells delved deeper. Even the mild wind, has turned into a breeze. So gentle. It felt like velvet." 

The drawing of time. That's what you're doing. 

Clement
Yes.  So, it's not so much representing time through the drawing, but creating the experience of the viewer, to be aware of time somehow. 

Nina
It's almost like you're taking these miniaturized little spaces and worlds, and they're another form of photograph, that you are collaging together, but because you're collaging it together, they have different adjacencies to each other, reshaping  the narrative. You're distorting them. Some are seen from the side, some are seen from the top. Some are flipped, some are mirrored.  Also the objects in the spaces are scaled differently. Like the cup can be as big as the door. There are clocks and pianos. Surreal.

Clement
Absolutely. Just as we were talking about putting people within the drawings before, I have wine glasses and, mugs, desks and crumpled paper on the floor, door handles and doors. The objects  became the reference for the people to scale themselves within the drawing.  I think part of this shift in scale, was also trying to emulate these memories, because in addition to them not being sequential or  anachronistic, meaning that different moments appear at different times. They're not necessarily in order. But, also the scale or the intensity of these memories, shift in some way or another. The white porcelain tiles on the Sangath by Doshi, had a strong atmospheric weight, in my memory. So, I scaled those up in the drawing. It had to do with intensity of the memory, and what I want people to experience or to look at. At the same time, they become universal symbols.  The mug of coffee fits in the palm of the hand. The shift in scale, isn't necessarily making the objects bigger. It's putting the viewer back into the architectural drawing, in terms of scale. 

Nina
Do your drawings have a relationship to film?

Clement
Ah, that's a really great question. They were definitely inspired by films. Maybe not explicitly, but subliminally.  When I  think about  films that  marked me, I always look towards Andrei Tarkovsky, David Lynch. Their films have a gritty texture. I think that's why when people watch those films, they feel that some of the scenes stand out more than others, because in filming a lot of the textures of these scenes, people inhabit that atmosphere, through their own experiences. It's really how Juhani Pallasmaa talks about it in one of his books, ‘the empathetic image’. And, that's how we can relate, as people and as human beings, through atmospheres, through the breeze that's passing through, through the warmth of a fire, or through the coldness of rain. These elemental aspects, and these textures, which appear in Tarkovsky films, David Lynch, and all these other great cinematographers, I'm trying to emulate, or I'm trying to give a sense of texture and atmosphere within the drawings themselves. So, then that way, this connection between the viewer  and the drawing, is much more profound. Because architecture and architectural drawings tends to become simply representative, I feel the emotive part of a building or a space or an experience should also come through. So, that's where the inspiration from the film would come.  

Nina
Very beautifully said. And in the 'Memory Palace', you also have a lot of objects.

Clement
The 'Memory Palace' was really a chance for me  to really take time and to let the drawing and the ideas breathe. When you talked about the 'Apartment #5' drawings, you said some moments appear next to others, or some spaces are juxtaposed.  I think that idea led on in the 'Memory Palace' drawings, beyond my memories from India and that apartment. They reach further back into my past. It was really about drawing these flashbacks, these spatial memories within the 'Memory Palace' drawing. Sometimes a space was left blank. I realized that one of the spaces reminded me of another place I inhabited. It became a daydream in itself, within the process. For many of us, drawing has become meditative, where we can truly pause and let our minds wander. This piece is really, this long daydream, that I would come back to every night. It also touches on this idea of  unfinished work, because I'm not sure that the drawing is meant to be finished. I think they evolve over time. These memories  lays the groundwork for future memories. 

Nina
The story of 'Memory Palace'. 

"I pulled my desk lamp closer, and closed my eyes. I found myself standing at the edge of the hillside town of Modina. After some time, I moved away from the cliff, and ventured through Modina's hidden alleyways, wandering through the quiet labyrinth streets. It was now sweltering hot. Looking for  shade, I passed through a series of passages and covered staircases. Moving through the cascading maze, I found myself in Geneva's old town, which resembled the Italian labyrinth. I felt myself being transported from one place to another, to times dating back to months and years ago, though, not in order. The delicate and familiar mouldings of the Eglise Saint Augustin, from my childhood in Paris, appeared next to the ornate corner of the Manila Metropolitan Theater, Grand Central Station clock stood next to the Parisian lampposts I used to climb as a child. Vivid flashbacks. Some places I have dwelled in for years, where I can remember every scar and texture. Others, I have only seen at a glance. All, have left a deep imprint. I have traveled through times and spaces past, like watching a reel of places that were so familiar to me. I went on a promenade along my memories,  a daydream."

In closing, I want to repeat to our listeners that three drawings we talked about,  will be posted on my website, thewhereing.com. But, if you want more information, these drawings, plus a range of other works, can be seen on the website of Clement, and that website is clementluklaurencio.com, and that link will also be posted with Clement's bio on my website.

Clem, you have incredible talent, and I hope that you go far. I hope you realize your dreams. And, I want to thank you for your time.

Clement
Thank you so much, Nina. It was a great pleasure. Thank you so much for having me.   

Nina
Dear listeners. Thank you for being here. I invite you to reflect on what you've heard today and send your thoughts or stories we would love to hear from you. Stay in touch on Facebook, Instagram, or on our website. thewhereing.com. Subscribe free to WHEREING, wherever you get your podcasts, so that you are alerted when the next episode airs. WHEREING is a pro bono initiative of Dreamland Creative Projects, which provides architectural and interior design services, for the places where we live, heal, age and inspire. If you wish to have a design consultation, visit dreamlandcreativeprojects.com, or email me nina@dreamlandcreativeprojects.com. Until we meet again, goodbye from WHEREING.