Volume 41
Archis 2014 #3 Per issue € 19.50 (NL, B, D, E, P) Volume is a project by Archis + AMO + C-Lab…
is su e
N
To beyond or not to be
Th e
Ve ni ce
IO D in UT se C rt H in PA si V de IL
How to Build a Nation /The Venice issue
V41_COVER_How to Build a Nation-FIN.indd 1
How to Build a Nation
Ole Bouman Rem Koolhaas Stephan Petermann Wouter Vanstiphout Léa-Catherine Szacka Luca Guido Daniele Belleri Ruth Lang Nick Axel Ryan King Dan Handel Justin Fowler OfficeUS Thomas Daniell Andrés Jaque Mariana Pestana Bart Lootsma Azadeh Mashayekhi Brendan Cormier Rob Dettingmeijer dpr-barcelona
22/09/14 11:40
SUBSCRIBE NOW www.volumeproject.org/subscribe
UB RO BR AD NE R
Archis 2014 #1 Per issue € 19.50 (NL, B, D, E, P) Volume is a project by Archis + AMO + C-Lab…
Volume 39 Urban Border – UABB\Shenzhen 2013
Huang Weiwen Zhang Yuxing Li Xiangning and Jeffrey Johnson Ole Bouman Zheng Yulong Mary Ann O’Donnell Yang Xiaodi and Yin Yujun Adrian Blackwell Linda Vlassenrood Archis Doreen Heng Liu Liu Guangyun Chen Zetao Chris Lai Dai Yun Corinna Gardner Joseph Grima and Tamar Shafrir Rafi Segal and Yonatan Cohen Rufina Wu and Stefan Canham Harry den Hartog Daan Roggeveen and Michiel Hulshof Stefan Al Zhang Xiaojing and Chen Zhou Ni Weihua Jeremy Till Museum of Modern Art São Paulo Architecture Biennale MIT Center for Advanced Urbanism MAXXI Architettura Studio-X The New Institute Berlage and Volume Office for Metropolitan Architecture Droog with TD Architects The Value Farm Museum of Finnish Architecture Victoria & Albert Museum
To beyond or not to be
U A B2 B0 \ 1 S3 H E N Z H E N
D OR IZE AU TH CATION PUBLI
Volume #40 Architecture of Peace Reloaded Complexities and considerations
Volume #39 Urban Border Architecture as urban catalyst
Volume #38 The Shape of Law Subvert, avoid or change
Volume #37 Is This Not a Pipe? Building mechanics
Volume #36 Ways To Be Critical When everyone’s a critic
Volume #35 Everything Under Control Building with biology
Volume #34 City in a Box Corporate takeover of public domain
Volume #33 Interiors Think inside the box
Volume #32 Centers Adrift Centers are on the move: are you in or are you out?
Volume #31 Guilty Landscapes The creative use of guilt
Volume #30 Privatize! We are all individuals
Volume #29 The Urban Conspiracy The grey take-over of city and society
Volume #28 Internet of Things When things start talking back …
Volume #27 Aging Life beyond the nursing home
Volume #26 Architecture of Peace How can we materialize peace?
Volume #25 Getting There Being There Living on the Moon
Volume #21 The Block Housing for the billions: mass-produced, custom-made
Volume #20 Storytelling Another way of understanding our era
Volume #19 Architecture of Hope Design for a multicultural society
Volume #18 After Zero A new contract with ecology
Volume #17 Content Management Collecting, organizing and sharing information through architecture
SOLD OUT!
Volume #24 Counterculture How protest informs architecture
Volume #22 The Guide Architect as guide, guide as architecture
Volume #23 Gulf Cont’d The Gulf inside-out: forces, experiments, influences
SOLD OUT!
Volume #16 Engineering Society New options for social engineering
Volume #15 Destination Library Method and canon for the architecture of library 2.0
SOLD OUT!
Volume #14 Unsolicited Architecture Unsolicited Architecture: the pro-active practice
Volume #13 Ambition Architect’s ambitions in a landscape of misguided purpose
Volume #12 Al Manakh History, culture and architecture of the Gulf region and beyond
Volume #11 Cities Unbuilt Architectural dimension of destruction – special focus on the Caucasus, Kosovo and Lebanon
Volume #10 Agitation Agitation as vitalizing condition for architecture
Volume #9 Suburbia On opportunities for suburbia after the crash
Volume #6 Power 2 Power at the scale of the building
Volume #5 Power 1 A photographic essay focusing on the relationship between power and architecture
Volume #4 Shareware A portable exhibition of ideas to break through architecture
Volume #3 Broadcast On methods and potentials of broadcating architecture
Volume #2 Do less! An analysis of the architectural will and how to decide on the right dose
Volume #1 Beyond On going beyond the office, the school, and the magazine
SOLD OUT!
Volume #8 China New ideas about the future of the Chinese city
Volume #7 Power 3 On architectural thinking as foundation of power structures
V41_COVER_How to Build a Nation-FIN.indd 2
22/09/14 11:40
#Volume 41
How to Build a Nation Something funny happened in Venice this year. For the first time, a general theme was given to the national pavilions at the Architecture Biennale. They were to be historical shows, focused on the impact of modernity on a country’s architec ture. What it produced was not just a global survey of twentieth century construction, but also heroic stories of nation-building. Yes, architecture can build nations. Today, we seem far from that notion. The nation-state is either giving up on itself, or ex ploited through tyrannical regimes. Meanwhile architects are hardly taking up the cause. Volume presents a hybrid issue: one that reviews the pavilions of the Biennale, and makes the case for building a nation.
52
A Very Small Empire Dan Handel
51
Elastic Compensation Justin Fowler
62 8 Statements on the US Pavilion: A Crypto-Materialist Treatise OfficeUS 68
Modernization and Its Discontents Thomas Daniell
73
Open Society Dutch pavilion insert
Editorial Arjen Oosterman
4
Nation Versus State Ole Bouman
106 Sales Oddity: Or How Mediaset Challenged Europe Andrés Jaque
6
Critical Globalism Rem Koolhaas interview
112 A Reporting Pavilion Mariana Pestana
10
With a Little Help from AMO Stephan Petermann interview
118 The Tyrolean House: Invented Tradition or Simulacrum Bart Lootsma
14
National Pavilions Map
16
Representing the Nation Curators on their pavilions
18
A State of Exception Wouter Vanstiphout interview
28 Volume 41
The Giardini: A Relational Choreography Ryan King
2
22 The Biennale as Agent Provocateur for Democracy Léa-Catherine Szacka and Luca Guido
1
46
Continuity’s Construction Daniele Belleri
32 Architects Take Command: The LCC Architects’ Department Ruth Lang 40
V41_FINAL.indd 1
126 Something from Nothing Azadeh Mashayekhi and Brendan Cormier 130 SAR/SEZ/PRD/PRDC: Positioning Hong Kong and Macau Thomas Daniell 134 Africa’s Burden Rob Dettingmeijer 140 When Pixels Become Nations Ethel Baraona Pohl and César Reyes | dpr-barcelona 144 Colophon
Framing Agency Nick Axel
22/09/14 10:42
Land of Hope and Glory Arjen Oosterman
This Biennale has very little of that. By setting a theme that is based on curiosity more than conviction, posing questions rather than making a point, it opens perspectives on a variety of themes. For the Elements of Architecture, one could argue about quality of individual presentations, about consistency in the way material is presented (and whether that matters), and comprehensiveness of the selected elements, but that is evaluating results, not idea and approach. On that level there were harsh criticisms: people said that this Biennale is not about architecture, that it is about one man’s deficiencies, that we’re looking at a giant ego show. That may not be the most interesting and productive way to look at what’s being presented. No matter the autobiographic origins of the two subthemes Elements of Architecture and Absorbing Modernity 1914 – 2014, both set relevant topics and produce a wealth of material. There is no denying for instance that architecture is highly influenced by a building industry that transformed from making to producing in over a century. The recent development of reuse only adds complexity to this; it doesn’t change the fundamental that architecture has become the art of combining and connecting. So to use the Biennale to pose a question and start researching as an open-ended project is innovative and powerful. Where the Elements asked architecture to look at its own fundamentals, the ‘absorbing modernity’ theme formed the other end of the spectrum (with Monditalia
V41_FINAL.indd 2
Volume 41
This year’s Venice Architecture Biennale breaks with two mech anisms that defined its presence over the last fifteen to twenty years. First is the setting of a grand, though conveniently abstract theme that suggests a connection between current development and the state of architecture. The ethics of archi tecture (or of the architect?), the architect as seismograph, architecture is for people, that kind of stuff. These past themes suggested a critical position of the curator on duty, but hardly succeeded in influencing the debate, let alone affairs. At best they added flavor to the core element of the Biennale: a presentation of who matters in architecture. And that brings us to the second mechanism: no matter the main curatorial theme, every pavilion was totally at liberty to present their best architecture and archi tects. Some pavilions succeeded in selling an idea more than products and some (rarely) attempted to raise an issue, but the ‘who’s doing what’ element was dominant. An exception in this series was Ricky Burdett’s research-based attempt to shift attention to the global city, stop architecture from navel-gazing, and call for an engage ment with greater urgencies, in 2006. Not really early warning, but a useful intervention at the time, making some issues intelligible for a broader audience. It didn’t prevent most national pavilions to do what they generally do: show some young developments inside its national borders or present an established voice.
2
22/09/14 10:42
Volume 41
in the Arsenale as an extensive case study). That theme was proposed to the national pavilions and absorbed by them with remarkable enthusiasm. To move away from the hottest or most topical, dig into one’s own history and reflect on defining moments and developments seemed an attractive option. It produced some very interesting presen tations and overall helped to create a more complex and layered story of what twentieth century revolutions brought about. For instance, that ‘modernity’ as a spreading disease, touching ever-larger parts of the globe, was received quite differently, and that the mix of generic and specific produced different cocktails. Modernism (as most pavilions took the theme) had serious trouble from the start to incorporate cultural and local specificity as it seemed to water down its main assumptions and goals. So to be presented with what countries and nations contributed to modernism or how they transformed formulas and forces to their needs and capacities is refreshing to see.
3
But what do we see when we reverse the perspective, not look at how modernity or modern architecture landed in different contexts, but look at how architecture contributed to defining state and nation? There have been moments in the recent past when nationbuilding was not really an issue. It was a program alright, but not a contested one. It simply was a consequence of what was being done, a program and way to go about things based on wide consensus. And that includes the destruction of (state) identities that had fallen from grace. The struggles expressed by strikes and demonstrations in the 70s through to the 90s were targeting inequality (pay) and foreign policy (war) mainly, not the nation as project. The current tribalization of societies around the world does pose questions to architecture, however. The assumption that in the longer run we’re moving to ever more homogeneity, that cultural, religious, and political differences will be absorbed by this global melting pot of connectivity and economic interrelations is being challenged by recent developments. At present it looks more like the global economic system itself needs these tensions and contradictions to function; that ‘smooth’ space is not a real option. On a more pedestrian level this relates to architecture directly. If the state as representation of the nation is eroding – its powers seeping away to local and regional levels and to larger conglomerates like the EU – and the nation is no longer an unambiguous project in its territorial claims – splintering into rivaling groups each claiming to represent ‘the nation’ or refusing to be part of the larger entity – architecture’s role is at stake. Should it fall back on the partisan option and become good or bad depending on the political inspiration underpinning the project? Can it provide credibility to (or for) minorities, can it (again) help build a nation? Answers to that last question presented in this issue vary from quite pessimistic (architecture can, but only in a synthetic and questionable way), to pragmatic (architecture does anyway, no matter what architects say or think), to reluctant optimism: its role won’t be major, but something should be possible at least. Before we move that last direction, it would be good to answer the question: is doing nothing the better option?
V41_FINAL.indd 3
22/09/14 10:42
#themakingofabiennale
Critical Globalism Rem Koolhaas interviewed by Brendan Cormier and Arjen Oosterman
Arjen Oosterman Your curatorial exhibition Elements of Architec ture started with a hunch that looking at architecture this way may produce some idea or insight. What did you find? Rem Koolhaas It is
difficult to mention one aspect. For me there are several outcomes. Before we started there was no particular focus in one direction. We often start with a hunch and see how it develops. With this project we were confident from the start that direc tions would emerge or conclusions would announce themselves or urgencies would develop. That took a year to become clear. There are three serious components: The incredible intelligence that architecture has been generating and which is seemingly receding to the back ground. That is a flattening of the profession. We had to be more thorough than we had been before. In other words, I was horrified to realize that I never really had thought about a staircase. The more we looked at ele ments in isolation, the scarier they became – particularly when you looked at them in movies. In addition to such aspects that could be more or less expected, we discovered the urgency that all these elements are tending to merge with digital technology. Not only in terms of an alert, but also to see that each element has a certain amount of potential in relation to digital technology that we will have to develop. In the book version of Elements, we have been working with Werner Sobek and Chris Carrol amongst others, to try to define the future of architectural elements and therefore the future of architecture. Looking at the elements, we realized that, much more than we had previously thought, architecture is not defined as a comprehensive thing, but through the ingenuity of a collectively acquired overall intelligence. That we launched this at the moment when each element is undergoing a transformation by digital technology, made it particularly compelling. AO What you just described, the relation with digitalization, the emphasis is on how elements start to interact invisibly, not how they look. In the small test exhibition in Rotterdam, some 18 months
V41_FINAL.indd 6
before the opening, presenting research by your Harvard students, it was very much about the physical entities and how they interrelate spatially. RK I don’t see that we’re looking at just one aspect
and not at the other. And implicitly, this is presented as a work in progress. That’s also why we didn’t want the catalogue to have a book-like condition. We’re still working on the book with Taschen that we’ll present in the spring. You can construct very diverse articulations and arguments for each element. And as an exhibition, we wanted it to be diverse and not too coherent or coming from one point of view. Not to say rigidly: this is what we’re doing and imposing on the material. AO One critic wrote that this show should have produced theory and that it failed to do so. RK I never understand what people mean by theory
in architecture. They said the same about Delirious New York and forty years later it is considered part of theory. So eventually, I think, this will also have some intellectual effect. AO You can interpret this Biennale as coming from a negative understanding of the state of archi tecture, stemming from worry. If so, this would be an attempt to restart. RK Did you really feel so? AO You can also read it as an optimistic attempt to show the insane richness and intelligence of architecture. RK I definitely started with a pessimistic feeling. But
also with an intuition that we hadn’t looked sufficiently enough at an intellectually rich image of architecture. And it is a long-standing argument that we [as architects] are provoked by the economy and the economic system in focusing on only one aspect of architecture at the expense of many others. So when we started to look at the others, it revealed an astonishingly rich world that we – and I don’t know if we should talk about we here – that I had almost forgotten. AO There are two parts to this exhibition, Elements of Architecture and Absorbing Modernity RK Three. AO ? RK Monditalia. AO Yes, sorry, of course. RK The three are really interlocking. AO With Monditalia in the center? RK No, I would say the broader field is Absorbing
Modernity with the two other entities within it: Elements and Monditalia. In the end it is an exhibition about the whole process of modernization.
Volume 41
With Rem Koolhaas ‘couch surfing’ has acquired a new meaning. Anyone lucky enough to actually get an interview with Koolhaas will most likely end up on his couch. The back seat of his BMW that is. Some private conversation time, wherever the journey takes you, accompanied by the deep hum of the V12 sports engine. Volume became member of this back seat club to discuss some intentions behind Fundamentals and perspec tives on architecture it produced.
6
22/09/14 10:42
Volume 41 9
V41_FINAL.indd 9
22/09/14 10:42
#themakingofabiennale
National Pavilions Map
Ireland
Nordic Countries
Denmark
Finland
Belgium
Portugal
Spain
France
Italy
Switzerland
Ivory Coast
Kenya
Mozambique
South Africa
Canada
United States
Mexico
Dominican Republic
National Participation, Venice Architecture Biennale 2014
Costa Rica
Giardini Arsenale Elsewhere
Paraguay
Peru
Chile
Brazil
Uruguay
V41_FINAL.indd 14
Argentina
Egypt
22/09/14 10:42
Luxembourg
Netherlands
Germany
Croatia
Hungary
Czech Republic
Poland
Austria
Slovenia
Serbia
Kosovo
Montenegro
Albania
Estonia
Latvia
Russia
Armenia
Greece
Turkey
Cyprus
Iran
Kuwait
Australia
Malaysia
Korea
Japan
Bahrain
UAE
New Zealand
Thailand
Indonesia
China
V41_FINAL.indd 15
Ukraine
22/09/14 10:42
V41_FINAL.indd 16
Volume 41
What’s the purpose of a national pavilion today? What is it supposed to do? This year’s theme, Absorbing Modernity, put the entire concept of the nation in question, by suggesting that modernization had eroded all national distinction. The pavilions fired back with a rich array of nuance, showing that while the force of modernization was everywhere, each nation absorbed it in a different way. Still, what is the ambition of a curator today – one who is increasingly nomadic and globally networked – to represent their nation? Volume surveys the opinions of 24 curators and commissioners.
16
22/09/14 10:42
In our case, the idea to present all national parliaments in one place counteracts the idea of a ‘national’ pavilion. Interestingly enough, the architectural style referring to classical Greek traditions seems to be the language of choice when the political elites of a nation decide to design a parliament. This is even more astonishing as almost two thirds of the 196 national parliament buildings, which are presented together as a ‘plenum’ have been
Christian Kühn, Commissioner + Concept and Design, and Harald Trapp, Concept and Design, Austrian pavilion:
three different time zones, in four different cities. Comprised of Dominican expatriates, lifetime residents, and international friends and collaborators, the team worked together to develop a curatorial narrative that was both deeply rooted in the country, but also greater than any physical location. The Dominican exhibition presents the country’s history and culture through a presentation that is at once cohesive and heterogeneous.
V41_FINAL.indd 17
Volume 41
Sachi Hoshikawa, Commissioner, Dominican Republic pavilion:
For some countries a national pavilion is no longer as relevant as it once was, but for many nations it is an opportunity to insert them selves into a conversation from which they have been long excluded. By presenting our country’s modern architecture, which is barely known outside of the Dominican Republic, within the global discourse, we are not only contributing to the conversation, but also stimulating it. Although today’s nations could be con sidered nothing more than a form of labeling, the concept of a political identity continues to be strong in small Caribbean island-nations who have historically struggled to perpetuate individual and cohesive cultures in a region that is often too diverse, comprised of different languages, and multiple inherited systems. The concept of a nation to these island-nations, including the Dominican Republic, remains useful, but it is how the boundaries of a nation are defined that must be rethought. The team behind the Dominican Republic exhibition in Venice worked together across
17
19/09/14 12:07
When I was working on the Chinese Pavilion, I didn’t take it as a national pavilion, but one of presenting the fundamentals of a civilization. The nation just happens to be the represen tative, or a tag, of it.
Jiang Jun, curator, Chinese pavilion:
built within the last fifty years. Obviously, architectural styles and movements have rarely originated from a ‘nation’, and the successful ones have always transcended national limits. In terms of building, architecture is produced locally under the specific conditions of cities or regions, so again the national classification is of little use. Still, the national pavilions in Venice could be regarded as more or less arbi trary generators of diversity. With all their idiosyncrasies (selection process, funding, sponsoring, cultural elites) they provide a feasible background for the lively mix of positions the biennale exhibits, until better, supra-national strategies of representation will be developed.
#themakingofabiennale
The Giardini: A Relational Choreography At first-glance, the Giardini seems to be a frozen diagram of anachronistic geo-political order. The European super-powers enjoy a shady space of privilege, while the new national pavilions sweat it out at the Arsenale. But as Ryan King notes, the turbu lent history of the twentieth century has also frozen in place unique relational instances, ones that high lights just how unstable national identity is. Some snapshots from the Giardini.
Considering the role of national identity at the Venice Biennale in relation to the built form of each national pavilion yields insight into the complex and undeclared spatial history that has played out within the Giardini. The Giardini can be seen as a transnational arena where identities are put forth, tested, and constructed through relations to sur rounding pavilions, as well as the international audience that visits the Biennale each year. Since the late nine teenth century, the Giardini has been transformed from a modern Napoleonic public garden to an international art exhibition to a protected heritage site that has become essential to the identify of Venice itself. As each pavilion is owned and operated by its host country, the architec ture, as well as the works exhibited within the pavilions are bound to the projection of national identities. National identities are always overdetermined, fluid, and incom plete. Thus, a dissonance can be found in-between the form of each pavilion and its current meaning. Each national pavilion may tell its own story as an architectural object, but the relational choreography and spatial dialogue between each pavilion frames the Giardini as a microcosm of geopolitics and international relations, producing a parallel undeclared script. The theme ‘Absorbing Modernity’ put forth by curator Rem Koolhaas is a blunt statement about the erasure of local identity in the face of global homogeneity and the rising market economy. Speaking about the theme, Koolhaas states, “By provoking countries by discussing the issue of identity I have liberated every nation to really think about identity and so many are presenting the richness of the last hundred years and the many moments where identity changed”.1 Despite the pretense of architecture’s permanence, the Giardini’s spatial history provides an image of a dynamic and unstable situation that changes over time. To analyze the architectural envelope of the pavilions allows the relationship between the form of the pavilion and current image of the nation that occupies it to be discerned. The effect of a shifting world stage on the national identity of a pavilion can be most clearly seen through
V41_FINAL.indd 46
the Hungarian pavilion. Constructed in 1909, along with the pavilions of Great Britain and Germany (at the time called the Padiglione Bavarese), it is decorated with orna mental references to Hungarian history and mythology. The pavilion, rotated on an angle next to the Italian pavil ion, occupied a central position and enjoyed commen surate importance – a position in accordance with the relevance of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. However, an orthogonal system was imposed on the Giardini later in 1934, a number of years after the break up of the Empire, that the Hungarian pavilion does not adhere to. Thus, because of the pavilions proximity to the Italian pavilion it is easily encountered but its entrance is not obvious. Perhaps it is no surprise that in 1958, only three years after the failed Hungarian revolution against the Soviet Union, the pavilion was radically updated to a flat roof half the height of the original and a white paint job to cover most of the folklore ornament on the facades, in order to align the pavilion with a “a concept of inter national modernism”.2 The collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Empire had further ramifications for the relations within the Giardini. The First Czechoslovak Republic was declared in 1918 and was offered the possibility of having its own pavilion shortly after. Completed in 1926 the pavilion aligns itself with the architecture of Venice and pays tribute to the antiquity of Europe. The pavilion’s spatial location is most telling of the geopolitical situation in Europe at the time. To an extent, Czechoslovakia was under the protection of the allied powers of World War One, being France and Great Britain. The pavilion is located next to the French and diagonal to Great Britain. This spatial position reflected “the Czech cultural elites’ view of their own place within Europe … moreover the close proximity of the French pavilion further underscored France not only as a political ally but as the great cultural model for Czechoslovakia”.3 However, this spatial relevance has not kept pace with Czechoslovakia’s position on the world stage. It has since rearranged itself into the shared space for the Czech Republic and the nation of Slovakia. Perhaps, one of the most interesting parts of the Giardini can be found across the Rio dei Giardini on a piece of land annexed from the Isola di Sant’ Elena in 1932, a time of extreme imperialist activity in Europe. The island is home to the Pavilion of Venice, built by Brenno del Giudice, which also contained the Romanian, Polish, Yugolovian and, at the time, Swiss pavilions – all countries that the Axis powers of World War Two had a territorial interest in. The pavilion offers a linear uniform architec tonic order to the four host nations, with the host of
Volume 41
Ryan King
46
19/09/14 12:07
Photo: Fritz Lamana Rupmanm
After the First Czechoslovak Republic was declared in 1918, the newly formed nation-state established a pavilion in the Giardini next to its allies at the time, France and Great Britain. Now that the country is divided in two, it alternates hosting duties.
The Hungarian pavilion occupies a paradoxically central yet obscure area of the Giardini, as its orientation is out of synch with the generally orthogonal plan. Such a position is curiously a propos for its current standing in Europe.
Volume 41
France cared little about making a statement at the Giardini, and thus its pavilion has been described as a ‘strategy of disdain’. The pavilion is relatively plain when compared to its neighbors Great Britain and Germany.
47
V41_FINAL.indd 47
19/09/14 12:07
#buildinganationstate #unitedstates
Elastic Compensation It’s easy to forget that the United States of America was once a fledgling state struggling to define itself. Indeed, throughout the nineteenth century there was a long and heated debate over what kind of country America should be. The Civil War was not for nothing. The discussion had an architectural com ponent too. Justin Fowler, through the lens of Lewis Mumford, explores this architecture debate, which questions the merits of regional difference versus universalist ideals.
Delivered before Alabama College in April of 1941, Lewis Mumford’s The South in Architecture was to have been a meditation on the culture of the Southern United States in relation to the coun try’s national develop ment. As the question of direct American involvement in the Second World War was at that time far from resolved, Mumford used the occasion to raise the stakes of the endowed lecture series. Playing to the regional pride of those assembled, he argued that while he was hesitant to give such a talk as Europe burned he was nonetheless justified in fulfilling his academic obligations in the presence of a “people who had demonstrated, by their obstinate and enduring example, that neither bodily safety nor creature com forts are important to them, when honor and principle are at stake.”1 Where several decades prior, a rebellious Southern Confederacy had fought to remove itself from a unified nation-state, and in the aftermath had sought to exempt itself from racial integration ever since, now Mumford wanted to conjure the region’s supposed vitality in order to compel a reticent American nation to wage war in the name of a universal humanity against the mech anized tribalism of the Third Reich. Aware of the irony of his position, Mumford chose his lecture subjects care fully with the implicit aim of distinguishing regional dif ference from tribal exclusion, and a healthy universalism from the totalitarianism of the tribal writ large. Thomas Jefferson and Henry Hobson Richardson were hardly representative figures of the American South, but they allowed Mumford to complicate the tidy oppo sition between universals and particulars which had long gripped narratives of architectural form and develop ment. In Mumford’s sketch, the Virginian Jefferson was the rational universalist who moved toward the regional as he adapted his abstractions to social aims and the geographic realities of site. The Louisiana-born Richardson, on the other hand, was the romantic regionalist who delivered a unified architectural language through force of will. Any discussion attempting to locate a national architecture would have to seek it in the imagined place where the trajectories of the two architects converged.
V41_FINAL.indd 54
Their actual site of convergence, however, was in a shared sense of cosmopolitanism reinforced through first-hand encounters with the architecture and culture of France. In Nîmes, Jefferson found ancient Rome and Greece through the Maison Carrée. In Paris, fresh out of Harvard, Richardson found hints of modernity through Jules-Louis André and Théodore Labrouste.2 As Mumford would argue, the regional was not to be confused with the ‘aboriginal’ or seen as a ‘purely local’ process uncontaminated by the outside world.3 A mature regionalism was the product of gradual adap tation over a long, and not always continuous, period of time. For a local development to become properly regional rather than an expression of narrow tribal inter ests required its protagonists to achieve a view from beyond their local environments. Jefferson achieved such a view and returned to install a version of the Maison Carrée in Richmond as Virginia’s capitol before having his formal presumptions tested in the hills of Charlottesville. A young Richardson, abroad, but impoverished as the Civil War was sinking his family’s fortune, found himself protesting the appointment of Viollet-le-Duc with fellow students of the École des Beaux-Arts. Held for a few hours by police, Richardson was separated from the rest on account of his bespoke suiting from London’s Savile Row. As with Jefferson’s cosmopolitanism, Richardson’s “good clothes from Poole’s”4 were underwritten by a brutal plantation economy back home, untempered by the kind of humanizing perspective which the student of architecture was gaining in his own field. When Richardson settled again in the US, he chose not to return to the South, but instead made his home in the Northeast, where, as Mumford suggests, he “interpreted… New England to itself and gave it a better sense of its own identity.”5 In Mumford’s hands, Richardson’s regionalism becomes an attitude or a method of adaptation rather than an attachment to a particular locality. The South here oscil lates between its function as a vital source of meaning and as an alibi for discussing the virtues of the regional scale in the abstract. While the term ‘nation-state’ does not appear in the course of Mumford’s four lectures, the compound idea does speak to the kind of balancing act he was hoping to effect with his regionalist polemic even though he might balk at the analogy. If the ‘nation’ embodies a shared cultural substance, then the ‘state’ is its form of presentation and management. A nation which consid ered its state as being nothing more than a vehicle for expression of cultural bias would assume a tribal character, irrespective of its physical scale, whereas a managerial
Volume 41
Justin Fowler
54
19/09/14 12:07
Photo: Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, HABS MASS, 11-WEL, 3–1
Volume 41
Photo: Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, HABS CONN, 6-NEWLO, 14–9
Henry Hobson Richardson, Boston & Albany Railroad Station, Framingham, Massachusetts. Photo by Cervin Robinson (1959).
55
Henry Hobson Richardson, New London Railroad Station, New London, Connecticut.
V41_FINAL.indd 55
19/09/14 12:07
#themakingofabiennale #unitedstates
OfficeUS Partners* The US Pavilion has changed hands many times over the course of its history. First owned by the Grand Central Art Galleries, it was then occupied by the Italian Navy during World War Two. After the war, it switched hands again, from the Museum of Modern Art to its present condition under the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation. This sum mer, the pavilion is occupied by OfficeUS, eight partners engaged in research projects about American architectural exports. Here they dissect the material history of the pavilion, and speculate on its future export.
* OfficeUS Partners are: Arielle Assouline-Lichten, Cooking Sections (Daniel Fernández Pascual, Alon Schwabe), Curtis Roth, M-A-U-S-E-R (Mona Mahall, Asli Serbest), Manuel Shvartzberg Carrió, and Matteo Ghidoni.
V41_FINAL.indd 62
- 4. The United States is all that is the United States of America. - 4.1 The United States is the Grand Central Art Gallery. - 4.1.1 The Grand Central Art Gallery is 9 people. - 4.1.2 The Grand Central Art Gallery is 1590 m3. - 4.1.2.1 The Grand Central Art Gallery is 290 m2 indoors and 141 m2 outdoors. - 4.1.2.2 The Grand Central Art Gallery is symmetrical. - 4.1.2.3 The United States of America is constituted by a left wing, a right wing, and a center. - 4.1.2.3.1 The left wing displays the left wing. - 4.1.2.3.2 The right wing displays the right wing. - 4.1.2.3.3 The center displays the moderates. - 4.1.3 1930_pavilion floor plan_delano & aldrich.jpg
- 4.1.4 grand central art gallery_pavilion tympanum_1930.psd
- 4.1.5 grand central art gallery_ display strategy_1938 venice exposition.psd
Volume 41
8 Statements on the US Pavilion: A CryptoMaterialist Treatise
62
19/09/14 12:08
- 3. R. Marina pauses all that is the United States of America. - 3.1 R. Marina is the Italian Navy Regia Marina. - 3.2 R. Marina is 5 flags and 6 soldiers. - 3.2.1 padiglioni stati uniti_1942_padiglione r-marina veduta esterna.jpg
- 3.2.2 r-marina_pavilion tympanum_1942.psd
- 3.2.3 r-marina_display strategy_1942 venice exposition.psd
Volume 41
- 2. The United States of America is all that is the United States of America. - 2.1 The United States of America is the Museum of Modern Art. - 2.1.1 The Museum of Modern Art is a toilet and a sewage installation. - 2.1.2 The Museum of Modern Art is a window. - 2.1.3 The Museum of Modern Art is 2 doors.
63
V41_FINAL.indd 63
19/09/14 12:08
Photo: Takeshi Yamagishi, Courtesy of the Japan Foundation Photo: Takeshi Yamagishi, Courtesy of the Japan Foundation
Volume 41
artistic response to that condition), the national pavilions collectively demonstrate that the initial West-to-East flow of modernization, and its countercurrent of appro priated exotica, has become a constellation comprising nodes of greater or lesser reciprocal influence, the re ceived concepts and techniques of modernism renewed by the idiosyncrasies of each host culture then trans mitted elsewhere or reflected back to the source. But few nations have been punched so momentously by modernity as has Japan, from its mid-nineteenth-century forced opening to the world by a delegation of American war ships, to the mid-twentieth-century atomic and incendiary bombing campaigns – both events followed by long periods of accelerated modernization and Westernization. Yet no nation has so flexibly absorbed such punches, rolled with them, indeed absorbed and redirected their impact with jujutsu-like skill. The Metabolists adopted the megastructural concepts that were so prominent in the Western architectural discourse and practice of the 1950s, then synthesized them into radically unique proposals throughout the 1960s. The eccentric and iconoclastic Japanese architects of the 1970s searched for alternative sources of inspiration in a wide range of places and times, cumulatively forming an incubator for the protean, pluralistic creativity of today – an alter native evolutionary path for modernism that is unmis takably specific to Japan yet continues to influence architectural culture worldwide.
70
V41_FINAL.indd 70
19/09/14 12:08
71
V41_FINAL.indd 71
19/09/14 12:08
AMO says: Giardini Gardens: The Global Biennale Flat, or How to Accommodate all the World’s Countries.
Volume 41
#themakingofabiennale #portugal
A Reporting Pavilion What matters more, an exhibition or its communication? After all, far more people read about the Biennale than actually go see it. Equal parts economic tactic and bold gesture, this year Portugal sought to eliminate the middleman by making its pavilion a newspaper – pure communication. The content would be generated back home in site-specific projects that engage the public realm. Mariana Pestana, who took part in one of these projects, reports from the front lines, an abandoned storefront in Porto.
This year, the Portuguese pavilion at the Venice Biennale was a newspaper. Pedro Campos Costa, the curator of the Official Portuguese Represen tation, responded to Rem Koolhaas’ brief with a communication medium that is intim ately connected to modernity. According to him, the newspaper provides a mediation of architecture that is closer to reality, closer to the everyday, the mundane: “If architecture doesn’t touch the reality it doesn’t exist, it can’t transform.” The newspaper was distributed in Venice and worked both as a disseminating platform and as an infrastructure to support projects that were realized back home in Portugal. Pedro Campos Costa appointed six teams of architects and initiated partnerships between each team and a City Council. The aim was for each team, together with their respective City Council, to develop contents for the newspaper which should focus on a general theme: housing. Split into three editions, the newspaper worked as a foundation for research: the teams would develop projects in Portugal as a way to gather information and gain knowledge, and then report to Venice via the news paper. Instead of representing their country, this format allowed teams to investigate it. Instead of presenting a cohesive vision of Portugal as a nation, this format privileged multiple, plural, and unfinished narratives. The dominant discourse about exhibiting cultures interrogates the outsider perspective of the researcher, who examines the other and builds a narrative from their own perspective. Here the perspective was from the inside, looking inwards. The participation in the Venice Biennale allowed us participants, to delve into our own culture and act as researchers of our own nation. I worked with LIKEarchitects in partnership with the City Council of Porto. Our project focused on tran sitory housing. Having realized that the ways of dwelling are transforming radically, with an ever growing number of people living in transit between different cities and countries, we began by interrogating the reasons why housing policies and typologies remain relatively inert and seem to perpetuate a system that might no longer fit
V41_FINAL.indd 112
contemporary society. In order to delve into this subject we decided to become ourselves temporary inhabitants of the city and set up our home in a former bank in Porto for one month. From there, we received both invited and spontaneous guests, through a public program of meetings, talks, and screenings to explore the question: can the contemporary city, where such transits flow, offer new lexicons of hospitality that encompass the transitory? The aim of the project was to constitute a nonscripted platform of discussion, a place for interlocution with and between the citizens of Porto. The history of transience is very present in the history of Portugal, in the bidonvilles that housed Portuguese emigrants during the 60s in France, in the 2,000 families that occupied a social block in Lisbon ten days after the revolution and all the others who followed, the 6,000 Portuguese who returned daily to the country after the colonial war, or the 7,700 who found home in Lisbon hotels for an indefinite amount of time. Despite such a history of transience, the issue is not acknowledged as a subject of discussion. I often refer to the critique that the architect and academic Reinhold Martin wrote about the 2014 Venice Architecture Biennale, in which he mentioned the original twelve1 architectural elements identified by Rem Koolhaas – floor, door, wall, ceiling, toilet, facade, balcony, window, corridor, hearth, roof, and stair – and the unacceptable absence of the number thirteen: the land. The land as real estate, property, territory. The land as the element without which any of the others could exist, a territory contested between property developers, state, owners, and occupants. Perhaps our proposal did provide an answer to such absence, in that it was in the condition of the in-transit inhabitant – without soil, property or territory – that it fundaments possible new lexicons of hospitality. Our project incised into exactly that aspect, which is an issue that is intimately related to the idea of nation: to whom does the nation, as a ter ritory, as a sum of land parcels, belong? Through our residency in Porto we initiated a period of intensive research and after a few weeks we finally began to unveil the real situations in which those who do not own land, those without property, the transitory citizens, live currently in Porto – precarious guesthouses, illegal huts behind facades, shelters – and that there isn’t currently a local policy for emergency housing. What this problem needs is political will or an organized group of resistance. The people who are affected by the lack of offer are made fragile by their transient condition. We therefore realized how important the role of archi tects is in facing such realities, as those who can think
Volume 41
Mariana Pestana
112
19/09/14 12:08
1
2
Volume 41 113
inventively about the management of spatial property and act as mediators between the different stakeholders. Moreover, architects can give voice to those who do not sit at the decision tables. In the aftermath of the project what remains is the opportunity to denounce and raise awareness, for which the newspaper is an excellent medium. Then gather those who are interested in finding solutions and begin shaping tangible processes. The role of the architect is here that of a reporter, doing research on the ground and placing uncomfortable issues at the forefront. It seems urgent to talk about the ways in which architecture responds and defies such realities. If the aim of a ‘national pavilion’ can be to generate knowledge and awareness about urgent issues in need of being addressed, if the role of a ‘national’ curator is to develop critical perspectives on how architecture can help build a better nation, then this pavilion has proved successful.
V41_FINAL.indd 113
As mentioned above, there were five other teams besides ours, working on the theme of housing according to different scopes. Paulo Moreira and Ateliermob foc used on informal housing and presented an architectural project consisting of a new gabion wall to regenerate an area that was affected by landslides in 2005, where debris from the demolished houses is used to create new public structures. ADOC and Miguel Eufrásia focused on the many real estate developments left unfinished during the financial crisis in Portugal and propose to transform an office building into a housing block. Miguel Marcelino and Pedro Clarke worked on the changing Portuguese rural landscape and the remains of their industrial and agricultural heritage, speculating about the return to the countryside as a potential way forward. SAMI and Susana Ventura looked at detached housing and reflected about the desire to build a house for life, so present in the Portuguese reality. They focused on the notion of intimacy, both in the relationship between architect and client and in the relationship between house and landscape. Artéria and André Tavares focused on the theme of rehabilitation, and proposed a productive solution for the uninhabited rooftops of Lisbon. Their ‘Lisbon Skyline Operation’ is a (literal) top-down strategy of spotting places for in vestors and building an alternative model to rehabilitate the deteriorated urban fabric of the city. The income generated by the rooftop is to be collectively managed by the residents association of each building. Many of these projects have managed to raise funds after their presentation in Venice and are currently being further developed. In Portugal the newspaper was received with resistance. Inadvertently or not, by proposing that the Portuguese pavilion would circulate amongst the hands of the visitors in Venice, the newspaper opened up
19/09/14 12:08
Volume 41 114
V41_FINAL.indd 114
19/09/14 12:08
1
4
a larger discussion about the inexistence of a physical ‘national pavilion’ and thus was a critical gesture that addressed that very condition. Even if the newspaper did not intend to be a representational tool, one might read in the precariousness of its structure, the fragility of its material, the disposable character of its typology, a cer tain parallel with the condition of architectural practice in Portugal today in face of the current financial and social crisis. And yet the fact that it shifts one’s gaze away from the form and towards the rich contents, stories and re search outcomes might represent, perhaps, that it is time to reconsider what the discipline is, and the role it plays, now and in the future of the specific context of Portugal.
Volume 41
1 Rem Koolhaas later added three elements to the fundamentals list: escalator, elevator and ramp.
115
V41_FINAL.indd 115
19/09/14 12:08
#pavilionreview #morocco #southafrica
Africa’s Burden Rob Dettingmeijer
In the collective mem ory of the West, Africa is associated with ‘hearts of darkness’. Wildness, violence and plagues threaten the traveler in extreme land scapes from deserts to rainforests. As if this negative image is not enough also the rapid urbanization in Africa in metropolises like Kinshasa, Lagos and Johannesburg is mostly described in terms of uncontrolled growth, decay, and extreme violence. Archi tecture and urban planning in the modern tradition seems to be totally irrelevant. One would almost forget that Africa also was the testing ground for many modern pro jects including architecture and urban planning. This Biennale shows that at least in the north and south of the continent architecture still is a factor in helping to create identities. It is not so much that old forms of modernism are absorbed, but as well that new chapters in the history of modernism and modernization are being written. This may not be what the curator of the Biennale, Rem Koolhaas, had expected. His fascination with Africa started more than a decade ago when he wanted to study the rapid growth of ‘non-Western cities’. He stated: “This forced me to confront something I didn’t know anything about: Africa.”1 At first glance this is a strange statement for somebody with so much interest in the history of modernism. Modern art and architecture is unthinkable without the direct and indirect influences of Africa’s products and images upon European and American artists and architects. These were almost always used as the so-called ‘primitive’ or ‘unspoiled’ instruments to destroy the ages of classicism and historicism that made real modern life impossible. This use lasted until at least the middle of the last century and traces of this idea are visible at art and architecture exhibitions well into this century.2 Secondly, the colonies were a testing ground for all forms of new architecture and urban planning.3 But it was not the way European architecture was con nected with Africa that interested Koolhaas but the way cities like Lagos, Johannesburg, Freetown, and Kinshasa weren’t so much examples of modernity following a Western model but possible glimpses into the future of the metropolis. If one is worried by the way these cities
V41_FINAL.indd 134
fail to provide almost all the services and commodities of traditional urban systems, it is important to realize that these shortcomings have produced intelligent critical alternative systems, which ask for a redefinition of con cepts like stability and even order.4 So in a way this is again looking at ‘architecture without architects’ to make better architecture. At last year’s Art Biennale in Venice, we saw a triumph of newly-invited African nations.5 So it did not come as a surprise many African nations were invited to this 14th International Architecture Biennale, aside from Koolhaas’ fascination for the new urban developments there. Five new African countries participated, Ivory Coast, Kenya, Morocco, Mozambique, and South Africa. The most interesting pavilions came from opposing ends of the continent, Morocco and South Africa. In their history they share almost nothing but they are two examples of the very complicated ways architecture and urban planning are connected with the absorbance of waves and ways of modernization by the architectonic culture of these countries. In these cases the histories themselves are far more complicated, not yet crystallized, and don’t fit easily within schemata of colonization, decolonization, neo-colonization or ‘post-colonial’. Morocco: modernization and orientalism
The exchange between the cultures of Morocco and the West are quite different from ‘Black Africa’. Although not situated in the East one can best characterize the Western fascination with Moorish culture as ‘orientalism’.6 Answering the questions ‘Why Morocco and why now’, the commissioner H.E. Hassan Abouyoub’ states “… Morocco is located at the crossroads of Africa and Europe, strate gically sited on both the Atlantic and the Mediterranean. This unique geography, whose effects are combined with an exceptionally rich and deep history has generated a plural identity. Over the course of millennia, this identity has been nurtured by multiple civilizations promoting a harmonious sedimentation, though not one without mutations and ruptures.”7 One has to at least know some of these mutations and ruptures to understand and provide some back ground to the two parts of the Moroccan contribution. In the nineteenth century, with the weakening of the Ottoman Empire, Janissaries, Corsairs, and European powers struggled for dominance over the former Berber states of North Africa. France had the winning hand starting with the occupation of Algiers in 1830 and Tunis in 1881. In 1880 the Conference of Madrid more or less divided the influences of Spain and France in the
Volume 41
In the context of a post-colonial country, the theme ‘absorbing mod ernity’ could easily be re-phrased as ‘absorbing colonial influence’. But to do so, Rob Dettingmeijer argues, would be to underestimate the com plex history and struggle for indepen dence these countries experienced. Add to this the various ways they have negotiated the heritage of their colonial past. Dettingmeijer weighs in with a review of the Moroccan and South African pavilions.
134
19/09/14 12:08
1
4
Photo: Luc Boegly
Volume 41
Fundamental(ism)s, Morocco Pavilion, Venice Architecture Biennale 2014.
135
Sultanate of Morocco. The French tried to keep control of their ‘protectorate’ by exiling Sultan Ben Jussuf to Madagascar, which only resulted in his triumphant repa triation as King Mohammed V in 1955, declaring inde pendence in 1956.8 Implicitly the power of the kings is nicely illustrated in the answer to the question of ‘absorbing modernism’. First it is stated “Morocco has above all been a land of exploration, a real laboratory for the Modern Project”. And starting in 1914 every decennium is illustrated with one example of modern architectecture.9 But the sequence stops at 1984, the year the late King Hassan II delivered a speech at the School of Architecture, with an effect far greater than the speech of the Prince of Wales, for in Morocco almost all architecture was veiled in tra ditional forms and ornamentation from that date on. Urbanism and architecture became almost imme diately tools in the way the French protectorate showed
V41_FINAL.indd 135
their power. From the beginning, the aim was to control the inner cities and segregate and control the masses by trying to stop uncontrolled urban growth. As a first example, the situation of the Medina of Fez (dating from the seventh century) in 1914 is illustrated: “Between orientalism and modernist cannibalization, the medina provided an excellent pretext for exploration and the execution of radical and experimental projects.”10 The next project is Le Quartier des Habous in Casablanca, a radical social experiment by A. Laprada, A. Cadet, E. Brion (1917 – 1924) for an international ‘freetown’. The city also featured the Assayag Highrise by M. Boyer (1930 – 1934), but the most famous development is still the Nid d’Abeille (honeycomb) & Sémiramis social housing (1951 – 54) by Team X-members G. Candilis, S. Woods, V. Bodianski and ÁTBAT-Afrique. After the earthquake of 1960 Agadir was almost entirely restruc tured with the ‘Grande Place’ (1962 – 1964) at its heart
19/09/14 12:08
VOLUME Independent quarterly for architecture to go beyond itself Editor-in-chief Arjen Oosterman Contributing editors Ole Bouman, Rem Koolhaas, Mark Wigley Feature editor Jeffrey Inaba VOLUME is a project by ARCHIS + AMO + C-Lab + ... ARCHIS Lilet Breddels, Brendan Cormier, Jeroen Beekmans, Joop de Boer, René Boer, Alice Haddad, Martynas Mankus, Anais Massot, Kai Vöckler – Archis advisers Ethel Baraona Pohl, Thomas Daniell, Joos van den Dool, Christian Ernsten, Edwin Gardner, Bart Goldhoorn, Rory Hyde, César Reyes Nájera, Vincent Schipper AMO Reinier de Graaf, James Westcott C-Lab Jeffrey Inaba, Benedict Clouette, Phillip Denny, Susan Surface – C-Lab advisers Barry Bergdoll, Gary Hattem, Jiang Jun, John S. Johnson, Lewis Lapham Materialized by Irma Boom and Sonja Haller Open: A Bakema Celebration insert by Het Nieuwe Instituut VOLUME’s protagonists are ARCHIS, magazine for Architecture, City and Visual Culture and its predecessors since 1929. Archis – Publishers, Tools, Interventions – is an experimental think tank devoted to the process of real-time spatial and cultural reflexivity. www.archis.org AMO, a research and design studio that applies architectural thinking to disciplines beyond the borders of architecture and urbanism. AMO operates in tandem with its companion company the Office for Metropolitan Architecture, Rotterdam, the Netherlands. www.oma.eu C-Lab, The Columbia Laboratory for Architectural Broadcasting is an experimental research unit devoted to the development of new forms of communication in architecture, set up as a semi-autonomous think and action tank at the Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation of Columbia University. c-lab.columbia.edu VOLUME is published by Stichting Archis, the Netherlands and printed by Die Keure, Belgium. Editorial office PO Box 14702, 1001 LE Amsterdam, The Netherlands T +31 (0)20 320 3926, F +31 (0)20 320 3927, E info@archis.org, W www.archis.org Subscriptions Bruil & Van de Staaij, Postbus 75, 7940 AB Meppel, The Netherlands, T +31 (0)522 261 303, F +31 (0)522 257 827, E volume@bruil.info, W www.bruil.info/volume Subscription rates 4 issues: €75 Netherlands, €91 World, $99 USA, Student subscription rates: €60 Netherlands, €73 World, Prices excl. VAT Cancellations policy Cancellation of subscription to be confirmed in writing one month before the end of the subscription period. Subscriptions not cancelled on time will be automatically extended for one year. Back issues Back issues of VOLUME and forerunner Archis (NL and E) are available through Bruil & van de Staaij Advertising pr@archis.org, For rates and details see: www.volumeproject.org/advertise/ C-Lab administrative coordination Margel Nusbaumer General distribution Idea Books, Nieuwe Herengracht 11, 1011 RK Amsterdam, The Netherlands, T +31 (0)20 622 6154, F +31 (0)20 620 9299, idea@ideabook.nl For North American Distribution Disticor Magazine Distribution Services, 695 Westney Road South, Suite 14 Ajax, Ontario, L1S 6M9, Canada, T +1 905-619-6565, F +1 905-619-2903, W www.disticor.com
ISSN 1574-9401, ISBN 9789077966419
Contributors Nick Axel is an architect and writer currently based in London. His research explores contemporary forces and patterns of territorial development, most recently focused on the deregulation of hydraulic fracturing in the US. DPR Barcelona is an independent publishing house based in Barcelona co-founded by Ethel Baraona Pohl and César Reyes Nájera. Daniele Belleri is a Moscow-based Italian journalist. His investigations on geopolitics, design, urban crime, and economy have been published in media including Afisha, Corriere della Sera, Reuters, Slon, and
V41_FINAL.indd 144
Wired Italia. A graduate of the Strelka Institute for Media, Architecture and Design, he is adjunct lecturer at Milan’s Nuova Accademia di Belle Arti. Ole Bouman is former editor in chief of Volume, last director of the Netherlands Architecture Institute and ex-creative director of the Shenzhen Biennale. He is founder of the Value Factory. Thomas Daniell is a Japan-based architect, and Head of the Department of Architecture and Design at the University of Saint Joseph, Macau SAR (China). Rob Dettingmeijer is an Utrecht-based independent researcher, author, and curator specializing in the theory and history of architecture, urban planning, landscape design, and visual culture. Justin Fowler is a PhD Candidate at the Princeton School of Architecture and an editor of Manifest: A Journal of American Architecture and Urbanism. Luca Guido is a PhD architect and research fellow in the history of contemporary architecture at Università Iuav di Venezia. He is interested in the developments of post-WWII European architecture and in the history of landscape architecture. His books include Surfing Complexity. Dan Handel is an architect and was the inaugural Young Curator at the Canadian Centre for Architecture. He curated the exhibitions First the Forests (CCA, 2012), Aircraft Carrier (Venice Biennale, 2012), and Wood (Het Nieuwe Instituut, 2014). He is founding editor of Manifest: A Journal of American Architecture and Urbanism. Andrés Jaque is professor at GSAPP, Columbia University, and SoA Princeton University. With the Office for Political Innovation, they explore the potential of post-foundational politics to rethink architec tural practices. They are authors of projects like ESCARAVOX, House in Never Never Land, TUPPER HOME, IKEA Disobedients and SALES ODDITY (Silver Lion at the 14th Venice Architecture Biennale). Ryan King is an independent spatial practitioner based in New York working between architecture, writing, archiving, activism and entre preneurship. He received a Bachelors of Arts from the University of Massachusetts Amherst in 2013 and has published on the spatial dynamics of the Arab Uprisings. Rem Koolhaas is the founder of Office for Metropolitan Architecture. Ruth Lang is a London-based architect and lecturer on architectural practice, currently studying for a PhD in Architectural History at the University of Nottingham whilst vying with the British Library for the most comprehensive collection of obscure out-of-print books and ephemera. Bart Lootsma is a historian, critic and curator in the fields of archi tecture, design and the visual arts. He is a Professor for Architectural Theory and Head of the Department for Architectural Theory, History and Heritage Preservation at the University of Innsbruck. Azadeh Mashayekhi is the curator of ‘Instant Past’, the official pre sentation of the Iranian pavilion at the 14th Venice Architecture Biennale. She is currently doing a PhD at TU Delft concerning modernity and the development of Tehran in the twentieth century. OfficeUS is a global collaborative architectural practice. OfficeUS Partners are Arielle Assouline-Lichten, Cooking Sections (Daniel Fernández Pascual, Alon Schwabe), Curtis Roth, M-A-U-S-E-R (Mona Mahall, Asli Serbest), Manuel Shvartzberg Carrió, and Matteo Ghidoni. This project was produced as part of OfficeUS, a project of the US Pavilion, commissioned by Storefront for Art and Architecture, at the 2014 International Architecture Exhibition – la Biennale di Venezia. Mariana Pestana is an architect and curator based in London. She is a co-founder of The Decorators, a collective that designs and programs public space. Mariana teaches at Chelsea College of Arts and Central Saint Martins and is currently doing a PhD at the Bartlett School of Architecture. Stephan Petermann has a Master’s degree in History of Architecture and the Theory of Building Preservation at the University of Utrecht. He joined OMA AMO in 2006 working with Rem Koolhaas on lectures, texts and research. He was one of the associates-in-charge for the Venice Biennale 2014. Léa-Catherine Szacka is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Oslo Centre for Critical Architectural Studies. In 2011 she earned a PhD from the Bartlett School of Architecture with a thesis on the history of the 1980s Venice Architecture Biennale. Szacka’s research and teaching focuses primarily on postmodernism and the history of architecture exhibitions. Wouter Vanstiphout is co-founder of Crimson Architectural Historians and the Chair of Design as Politics at TU Delft. He co-curated ‘A Clockwork Jerusalem’ for the British Pavilion at the 2014 Venice Architecture Biennale. Disclaimer The editors of Volume have been careful to contact all copyright holders of the images used. If you claim ownership of any of the images presented here and have not been properly identified, please contact Volume and we will be happy to make a formal acknowledgement in a future issue.
Volume 41
Colophon Volume 41
144
19/09/14 12:08