Conceptual reference...

How to transform an unused functional building into something completely new and successfull?

How does this strategy applies to OTE building?

Is it possible?

The High Line by diller scofidio + renfro

Architecture to Construct Realities Beyond Buildings

Presentation by Ethel Baraona Pohl [dpr-barcelona] at the workshop The Bankruptcy of Architecture:



“Who says we cannot know the future? We can, but it always a matter of interpretation, that is, of imagination. If that seems obvious, I should point out something not so obvious: that knowing the present is also always an act of imagination.”

-Lebbeus Woods

Ecoredux02 workshop @ ArchTUC

Recycling projects and ideas of the past in Ecoredux02 workshop @ArchTUC. Today the FINAL REVIEW (all instructors and guest critics, 10AM - 6 PM: ). More info here.

Cutting holes...

Towards Anarchitecture: Gordon Matta-Clark And Le Corbusier
Gordon Matta-Clark: "You Are the Measure"
Gordon Matta-Clark's movies
about Gordon Matta-Clark's fake estates
Gordon Matta-Clark urban alchemy

What to do when there is nothing to do | mammoth

Rob Holmes and Stephen Becker form mammoth recently published an interview with Lola Sheppard and Mason White from Latteral Office, and we found there some interesting thouths to share:

Mason White pointed

We were asked recently if we were a “trans-disciplinary practice,” and although it would be convenient to say yes–and likely with much evidence in the work–I think our preferred answer is that we are anti-disciplinary … or maybe un-disciplinary. The only time I would say being undisciplined is intentional and productive.

[...]

But over time, our position has solidified more as a specialization on phenomenon and opportunities that is between categories and disciplines. For example, I still think the most important magazine to subscribe to as an architect is the Economist, not Wallpaper. Reading the Economist as an architect, you can see things before they become relevant in architecture, with Wallpaper or Dwell you are seeing it after the fact, as a trend.

And Sheppard adds:

In most cases the economic and ecologic proposals we are leveraging are common, even proven models, such as job creation or remediation. Maybe what makes them unique for us is that they can be positioned in tandem rather than as oppositions.

Read the complete interview here.

Anti-design

Archigram L.A.W.U.N. Project (Locally Available World Unseen Networks) Archigram Archive 1969

A collection of projects that criticize the rational systems of organization and establishes a link between building and furnishing objects. The project becomes a series of tables, chairs and other objects, the domestic and the urban coincide.

Much like the process of Freudian therapy, these projects was to serve as diagnosis and cure, radicalizing the furniture tradition and the rational organisation of the workspace to the extreme.

by Yorgos Tzirtzilakis

Y.Tzirtzilakis interception on ArchiZoom

Yorgos Tzirtzilakis presented the work of ArchiZoom in the 'radical' italian architecture context of 1960-70s. His presentation -an interception, as he called it- touched on the issue of dealing with 'neutral', 'typical' and 'indifferent' architecture. These concepts were discussed earlier in the workshop after the visit to the OTE building in Chania. Tzirtzilakis presentation aimed to provoke a positive reaction to the building and indifferent or banal architecture while insisting on the 'liberating' effects of non-figurative architecture. The last remark brought a refreshing discussion among the participants on the critical context of the work of ArchiZoom and the relation between politics and architecture. 

More videos here.

office-architecture culture

From Robert Sumrell's thesis see the analysis for office-architecture culture

Banken und Sparkassen

Handbuch fur den Bau von Banken und Sparkassen. More photos here.

office typologies, furniture organization

The building under study brings forward also issues of office typologies and furniture organization. Historically different theories have given priority to the design of the interior office space leading to “neutral” architectural envelopes (image via www.carusostjohn.com).

Bankruptcy is understood as the moment when an economical system declares its inability of sustaining it self and enters another cycle of operation promoting, often radical, measures of restructuring. Can we think of bankruptcy not in terms of failure or collapse -due to past choices- or in terms of utopian and idealized possibilities but as another set of operations that call for a different kind of economy? Or can the processes of restructuring anticipate a new kind of architecture?

The crisis condition

In this year’s “Bankruptcy of Architecture”, the workshop will investigate the local conditions as a particular moment of a financial crisis. Can the crisis determine some strategies for architecture? The particular Greek moment takes an emblematic form: a positive, constructive look to this bankrupted world we built is needed. At the contrary some very strong concepts need to be redefined, such the concept of “nature” or the “politics of reuse”. Some changes of the value systems have to be taken under consideration for the function of a workshop that always related art to architecture through theoretical investigation.