Lengyel Toulouse Architects
Univ.-Prof. Dipl.-Ing. Dominik Lengyel
Dipl.-Ing. Catherine Toulouse
Sundgauer Str. 29
14169 Berlin
Germany

phone +49 (30) 30 10 63 10
info(at)lengyeltoulouse.com

The office Lengyel Toulouse Architects, based in Berlin, was founded in 1999 by Dominik Lengyel and Catherine Toulouse in Cologne. Dominik Lengyel holds the Chair of Architecture and Visualisation at the Brandenburg University of Technology Cottbus-Senftenberg.

“Authenticity and credibility are essential to mediation strategies. Just like the physical original, the curatorially managed mediation is authentic and credible. It is the independence of the virtual replica that is the decisive factor that distinguishes virtual mediation from the material sphere. Data from mediation strategies are thus subject to their own identity and interpretability without colliding with the identity of a supposed replica. The new credibility thus also arises through digital technologies, but due to the autonomy of the artefacts of the mediation strategies, it is not subject to the asymptotic dilemma of replicating the original, namely that the replica approaches the original so closely that the differences would at least no longer be obviously recognisable. By renouncing the attempt to replicate the original and instead creating a completely independent digital object for mediation that is clearly and obviously different from the original in the long term, the original is supplemented in a complementary way instead of being made seemingly obsolete. In this way, the uniqueness of the tangible original remains with the original itself, next to which the virtual mediation presents itself as an independent and likewise authentic object, one that is both new and consequently needs to be designed from scratch. The fact that this new object has to be created from scratch may at first seem surprising in the context of replication, but it is a central necessity, since it is not a matter of imitating the original, but of complementing it by means of spatial and visual design.“

Excerpt from: Dominik Lengyel, Catherine Toulouse: Gestaltete Abstraktion als Vermittlung glaubwürdiger Authentizität (Designed abstraction to communicate credible authenticity). In: Staatliche Museen zu Berlin (Ed.): EVA Berlin 2019. Elektronische Medien & Kunst, Kultur und Historie: 25. Berlin event of the international EVA series: Electronic Media and Visual Arts: Conference Volume, 6 - 8 November 2019, Kunstgewerbemuseum am Kulturforum Potsdamer Platz, Berlin. Berlin: Staatliche Museen zu Berlin - Preussischer Kulturbesitz, 2019, pp. 146-148