a swap

About 20 minute before registration closed on Friday, I took a slightly untraditional route and dropped the required Theory I for an elective that I don’t actually need, Lars’ Building Workshop. I linked to his webpage earlier. The elective page reads:

Lars Spuybroek has pioneered research into the relationship between architecture and the computer in widely published projects . . . The previous semester operated on a systematics of variation based on textile techniques (like braiding, knitting, macremee, or crochet) that resulted in five different housing skins for each student. The premise of this studio is that such variation can only be produced through state-of-the-art manufacturing techniques, like 3-axis CNC-milling. We will fully concentrate on using digital tools to fabricate those models now at the AWPL.

My job is to be the research assistant with those students.

Some of the projects last year from the AWPL:

 

Instant Urbanism, Basel

Where I would like to be now:

Instant Urbansim, in Basel.

“Tracing the theories of the Situationists in contemporary architecture and urban design”

Includes work from:

Lucy Orta (France),

Santiago Cirugeda (Spain),

EXYZT (France),

Srdjan Jovanovic Weiss (Netherlands),

NL architects (Netherlands),

IAN+ (Italy),

PPAG (Austria),

“Instant urbanism will also exhibit concepts and projects that redefine the city as a site for play and appropriation by way of constructing situations. Both new urban research and built projects will touch upon the idea of high-speed urbanism – with an emphasis on self-planning and urban occupations.”

And ooh! the derive is back!

” Two installations will give a contemporary slant to the dérive: a practice employed by the Situationists for investigating the increasingly fragmented cityscape on the basis of disorientation and intuitive explorations.”

“To the outside world the consistency of architecture is a given, from which you deviate at your own peril – which is ironic since it would be much better, and much more interesting, for the world at large if there were more deviations.” Rem Koolhaas

Also, the Situationist strategy of détournement – alienating and recontextualising aesthetic elements in order to draw attention to the ways in which our use of space is conditioned:

Diller and Scofidio,

Bernard Tschumi,

Observatorium , and

Atelier Bow Wow

comes into play – re-programming architecture and activating spaces for previously inconceivable uses.