Superstudio Robert Ven

SCI-Arc

«I like elements which are hybrid rather than ‘pure,’ compromising rather than ‘clean,’ distorted rather than ‘straightforward,’ ambiguous rather than ‘articulated,’ perverse as well as impersonal, boring as well as ‘interesting,’ conventional rather than ‘designed,’ accommodating rather than excluding, redundant rather than simple, vestigial as well as innovating, inconsistent and equivocal rather than direct and clear. I am for messy vitality over obvious unity. I include the non sequitur and proclaim the duality. I am for richness of meaning rather than clarity of meaning; for the implicit function as well as the explicit function. I prefer ‘both-and’ to ‘either-or,’ black and white, and sometimes gray, to black or white.»

... the interests from the beginning have been interested in complexity and an architecture that comes out of multiple forces. It has been interested in contradiction and the use of the contingent, found information. Its interest in the ambiguity, the idiosyncratic, and the specific, incomplete and looking for new organizational types that then have to do with these conditions which I see as characteristics of the time that we live in… It is ‘both and,’ and not ‘either or,’ in that I have been interested in provocation and conservation, both. Projects all have aspects of provoking or innovating new conditions, and also have parts of connectivity and integration and conservation of found conditions.