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Not in the faรงade,
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Panels stripped from the facade of Ai Wei Wei’s studio installed in The Street
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not on the table,
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Domestic Dreams displayed on the table behind the faรงade
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and the slide-show shows the evidence.
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Slide show shown in the screen portraying what took place between La Straada Novissima in Venice 1980 and The Street exhibition in Shenzhen 2012. as published in Cristina Goberna, Urtzi Grau “From la Strada Novissima to the Street,” in le Journal Spéciale’Z, numéro 3, 2011
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According to our antics dealer the four panels were stripped out from the façade of Ai Wei Wei’s studio the night before it was demolished. Panel 01
Panel 02
1.40
1.40
0.26 2.65
Pour-in-place gray concrete beam 250x250mm
0.25
2.52
2.77
Truss type of prefabricated bed joint reinforcement
0.70
English bond recycled red brick 250x120x65mm
Side finishing Circular concrete saw cutting
1.09
Pour-in-place gray concrete beam 250x250mm
Truss type of prefabricated bed joint reinforcement
0.25
English bond recycled red brick 250x120x65mm
0.26
0.39
0.25
Pour-in-place gray concrete beam 250x250mm
English bond recycled red brick 250x120x65mm
English bond recycled red brick 250x120x65mm
English bond recycled red brick 250x120x65mm
Cutting the panels from the building
In route
0.25
1.40
0.25
1.40
1.05
Side finishing Circular concrete saw cutting
1.05
Truss type of prefabricated bed joint reinforcement
11 1.40 0.26
1.40
Panel 04
1.14
0.59
0.25
0.26
0.32
0.44
Pour-in-place gray concrete beam 250x250mm
0.29
0.15
Panel 03
1.51
English bond recycled red brick 250x120x65mm Truss type of prefabricated bed joint reinforcement Pour-in-place gray concrete column 250x250mm
Truss type of prefabricated bed joint reinforcement
English bond recycled red brick 250x120x65mm
3.71
3.86
English bond recycled red brick 250x120x65mm
3.86
Pour-in-place gray concrete column 250x250mm
0.25
Pour-in-place gray concrete beam 250x250mm
3.10
Truss type of prefabricated bed joint reinforcement
Side finishing Circular concrete saw cutting
2.10
Side finishing Circular concrete saw cutting
Arrival to Shenzhen
English bond recycled red brick 250x120x65mm
Installation
0.25
1.40
0.25
1.40
English bond recycled red brick 250x120x65mm
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But what is the architectural value of this faรงade?
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Passerby wanders in front of the faรงade
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Is it the fact that they display traditional vernacular Chinese construction in the context of an international biennial?
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Stanley Tigerman responds to Aaron Benksy questions on Skype by the faรงade
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Is it the fact that they have their place in the art market profitable business surrounding Wei Wei’s public persona?
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View of the Slide show from The Street
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Panel 01
Panel 03
Or, Is it the fact that they refuse traditional notions of authorship and assume that to copy entails a radical reformulation of architectural imagination?
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Panel 02
Panel 04
Location of the panels on Ai Wei Wei´s studio façade
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Our Hypothesis: Copies allow a radical renunciation to form-making – since form is defined a priory – in order to focus on architectural knowledge yet to be explored
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Flaneurs in the The Street, photo Š Ruoyu Chen
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Hence, inside...
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Table Mock-up Roundabout phase one paper model - interior - 270x210mm
0.27
0.21
0.27
0.21
Roundabout phase two paper model - exterior - 270x210mm Roundabout phase two paper model - interior - 270x210mm
0.27
0.27
20 R0.
0.21
0.21
Roundabout phase one paper model - exterior- 270x210mm Roundabout phases one and two site model - 270x210mm Le Charme Discret de la Bourgeoisie site model - Ă˜400mm
0.96
Le Charme Discret de la Bourgeoisie paper model - interior - 270x960mm
R0
.07
R0.
07
R0.
07
R0
.07
R0.
07
3.50
Golf Course Blocks site model x 3 - Dimensions TBD
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R0
.07
0.27
0.27
R0
.07
R0
Golf Course Strategies paper model x 10 - Ă˜100mm
0.28
R0
.07
0.27
0.17
0.27
0.30
R0.
07
Master Plan for Aldea Moret site model - 270x270mm
0.28
0.28
0.28
Master Plan for Aldea Moret preservation strategies x 6- 280x270mm
0.40
Master Plan for Aldea Moret Aldea LAB model - Dimensions TBD
0.28
0.27
0.27
0.15
1.20
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...the models on the table appropriate despised typologies of the real estate bubble and re-visit their potential.
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The excess of architectural production generate knowledge that the speed of consumption condemns to oblivion
Domestic Dream # 080623 - Superphosphates! For more information refer to page 40
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In this context, architectural knowledge can be public, yet undiscovered, if independently created fragments are logically related but never retrieved, brought together, and interpreted.
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Domestic Dream # 100409 - Le Charme Discret de la Bourgeoisie For more information refer to page 40
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We call them Domestic Dreams
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Domestic Dream # 110610 - Roundabout Prophylactics For more information refer to page 41
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They exist in an architectural unconscious, somewhere between the desire for foreverlost modes of inhabitation and the repressed pleasures of utopian typologies.
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Domestic Dream # 070115 - Golf For more information refer to page 41
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The revision of despised typologies enables the identification of issues that can be publicly contested, fostering advancements in the field
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Last Pictures
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FKAA # 080623 - Superphosphates! Master Plan - Completed - June 2008 - Cáceres
FKAA # 100409 - Le Charme Discret de la Bourgeoisie Competition - April 2010 - Reus
In later years, highly speculative real estate operations have surrounded the abandon mining complex of Aldea Moret, a nineteen century industrial development in Cáceres, Spain, endangering its mayor urban and architectural values. In 2007 the burst of the real estate bubble stopped the private plans to redevelop the site. Cáceres City Hall took over the site and asked for an alternative model of development that had to integrate advanced preservation ideas, energetic and ecological sustainability, participative planning polices and the declaration of the abandon mining complex as National Industrial Heritage Site. Superphosphates! Is the result of that call and its first phase ‚ planning‚ is currently under development.
The burst of the real estate bubble left a pool of empty apartments, non-affordable three-bedroom units with no ideal users. Spanish domestic organizations seem to have evolved faster that the developers’ habits, and single parents, young professionals, illegal aliens, elderly couples are stuck with homes designed for a traditional families. Could it be that the House with Multiple Rooms, the finde-siècle bourgeois domestic space, is really what got stuck in the imaginary of the generation that grow with during the Transición? Nevertheless the radical subdivision of the space of the house emerges in consumer habits as much as in developers’ interests or national domestic regulations. To sublimate the dreamed nineteen century model we propose to increase the number of rooms per unit—55m.2, six rooms, 90m.2 ten rooms. First defining a generic stance of 2.5x4m.—usable area 9m.2—, and to eliminate anything that is not room from the plan. We propose a typology of rooms that open only to new rooms, recovering the Alcove as organisational device.
Superphosphates!, is a strategic plan that defines the steps to transform the mining village in a center for innovation. In the context of Cáceres candidacy to the European Cultural capital 2016, Superphosphates! recycles the obsolete mining infrastructure to secure the site against future redevelopments. The galleries, the lighting systems, the deposits of mineral, and the ruined concrete buildings recover its structural functions. Adapted to the new needs of the neighbourhood, the mining infrastructure maintains its iconic presence while contributes to the energetic and ecological sustainability housing the urban systems: i.e. sewer systems, electricity, gas, water, wireless networks, water treatment facilities, centralized garbage treatment facility, etc. Ultimately, Superphosphates! re-imagines the mining village in a prototype of self-managed sustainable neighbourhood of 850.000sqf, that reduces its dependence of the centralized urban systems of the city. Initially implemented in the form of a book compiling strategies to contain the speculation, Superphosphates! is currently developed as a set of urban regulations commissioned by Cáceres City Hall.
Five consecutive rooms define de deepness of the block: 5 x 2.5m rooms + 2 x 0.25m. façades = 13m. Each dwelling unit has its own terrace, positioned as an extra room by the façade. The sequence of spaces connects both facades is ideal for cross ventilation. Half of the rooms of each dwelling unit are one room distance from the exterior. The doors, 2m. wide, when opened, unify spaces. The spatial organization is as old as the Alcove, the interior room use to sleep connected to a second windowed space. In this case, both rooms are narrow enough—2.5m.—to secure light and fresh air, while the system of doors, allows for privacy and programmatic differentiation. The old typology recognize that certain everyday activities do not require the hygienic meridian light, but rather a subtle shadow play tuned through multiple screens. Nowadays the deconstruction of traditional family configurations requires to rethink the domestic space intensifying the filters that mediate between private and public, dark and sunny, secret and exposed.
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FKAA # 110610 - Roundabout Prophylactics Competition - Second Price- May 2011 - Alcorcon The plan for the extension of Alcorcón in the North side of the A-5 is in fact a complete new city. Structured around a system of linear green public spaces – Alamedas Dotacionales – and massive parks – Central Park and the future Sport City of Atletico de Madrid – its urban structure is independent from the existing Alcorcón. The Industrial-Commercial corridor surrounding the A-5 intensifies the autonomy of the operation. Our goal is therefore to articulate the connections between the two cities, as a superposition of the existing industrial areas and the new system of green public spaces of the Distrito Norte. Yet, it would be naive not to mention the Spanish economic meltdown in the context of the proposed brief. As we all know, the inability of families to pay their mortgages has resulted in a landscape of foreclosures. Closely connected, the banks refusal to grant new credits translates in unaffordability of new property, which generates a panorama of empty housing blocks. And we cannot forget that the housing bubble that started it all was pumped up by operations identical to Alcorcón Distrito Norte. The difference, however, is painfully obvious. Previous operations developed during the economic bonanza succeed even is some remain incomplete. But how a plan that doubles the size of the municipality exhausting its land is going to be developed in the current economy? Not only there has been a decrease on the overall building rate, but also, the governmental tendency seems to shift towards policies that emphasize rehabilitation and preservation over new construction. In this context, it is more than justifiable to consider the Alcorcón Distrito Norte Alcorcon might – or should – not take place. At least it would be proper to admit the possibility for it not to being developed immediately. In sight of this evidence, this proposal admits both scenarios and it is structured in two complementary stages that preserve the existing conditions, form connections with the city and propose news forms of domesticity. Hence, the ultimate agenda for this proposal could be summarized in (1) the protection of the descampado, (2) the implementation of two new types of affordable domesticity and (3) reinventing the site as an urban roundabout.
FKAA # 070115 - Golf Competition Europan 9 - Honourable Mention - May 2007 - La Laguna In the zenith of the anti-urban real-estate bubble the golf course is the omnipresent tyrant. Is there any urbanity left in the suburban dreams of this social-democratic consensus? While the kids of the Spanish democratic transition invest in turf and the architectural profession disregards golf banal success, we have to say WE LIKE GOLF COURSES! Not because the ecological collapse, the domesticated landscape, or the lack of sociability they promote. Rather because of the virus of utopianism, the hybridization of natural and artificial and the generic impunity implicit in their emptiness. La Laguna, an island of urbanity in the suburban ocean is the ideal laboratory to redefine the golf as a model European urbanity. This is a ten point manifesto for Golf urbanity: 1 It is neither natural nor artificial, but rather a grass/asphalt gradient. 2 It is shaped funnel-like, granting the sustainable autonomy of energy-suckers cone-shaped environments. 3 It turns suburban hierarchies inside-out forcing back lawns out of the closet. 4 It drags golf constituencies in social activators of ecological management. 5 It is a menagerie public activities and private sports that requires collective management. 6 It is full of hyper-minimun quadruplex units, beautiful nightmares of 40 to 60m2. 7 It has cars instead of pets. 8 Its upside-down gardens welcome the street all the way to the living spaces. 9 It always grows vertically. 10 It takes advantage of the vast range 3m width typologies.
Domestic Dreams expanded
42 Fake Industries Architectural Agonism Fake Industries Architectural Agonism (FKAA) is an architectural office that explores the potential of copies to expand the limits of discipline rejecting originality as essential architectural value, and investigating positive disagreement as engine for the advancement in the discipline. FKAA is an entity of variable boundaries – with headquarters in New York and Barcelona – orchestrated by Cristina Goberna and Urtzi Grau, professors of studio design at the Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation, Columbia University and Cooper Union School of Architecture. Fake Industries The world is full of architecture, more or less interesting; we do not wish to add any more. The last four hundred years of architectural excess produced enough undiscovered public architectural knowledge to nurture, at least, our practice; the last twenty, a hangover of creative-shapes-on-steroids we are trying to recover from. F**k originality. Rather, copies allow us to explore all the potential left unexplored by other’s rush. Knowledge can be public, yet undiscovered, if independently created fragments are logically related but never retrieved, brought together, or re-conceptualized. And that is what we do. Don’t ask us for new stuff, we copy. Architectural Agonism Friction in architectural discourse is not only desirable but necessary for the development of the field. The lack of consensus should be taken as an engine for the creation of knowledge and Agonism, in its opposition to Antagonism, as a positive approach to discussions and the creation of polemics in the field. We are interested in the production of strong positions that activate and extend public architectural polemics.
Selected Projects # 110706 - There is not original work on this installation for the Hong Kong Shenzhen Biennial # 110820 - Nueva Pompeya Instrucciones de Uso for the Universidad de Buenos Aires # 110705 - FKAA Conservation Archive for the Bienal de Buenos Aires # 110610 - Roundabout Prophylactics for Europan 11 # 110512 - Van Alen Books for the Van Alen Institute # 110307 - Lisa and Leo’s Domestic Museum for DROOG # 101210 - Clip Stamp Fold Catalogue for Actar # 101021 - Blok39 # 100820 - OE house # 100616 - Boîte-en-Valise for Postpostpost # 100428 - AMLAB for the Ayuntamiento de Caceres # 100409 - Le Charme Discret de la Bourgeoisie for Europan 10 # 090514 - Media Forest for the Architectural League of New York # 090320 - Ay Caramelles! for Eme3 # 080623 - Superphosphates! for the Junta de Extremadura # 080228 - Utopia’s Ghost for the Centre for Canadian Architecture # 071101 - Khlebnikov’s Musical House # 070115 - Golf for Europan 9 # 061114 - Clip Stamp Fold for the PhD Program at Princeton University # 060724 - BAR for Eme3 # 060530 - House for Cesar # 060220 - Chunks for Europan 8 # 020315 - Circuit # 020221 - I love Japan for Divinas Palabras
43 Lectures
Summarized Bibliography
2011 # 111210 - Hua Galery Shenzhen # 111117 - SOA, Princeton University # 111114 - Barnard College, New York # 111110 - “Arquitectura en Conserva” CCAU Guadalajara, Mexico # 111109 - Encuentro Nacional de Arquitectos de Guadalajara, Mexico # 111013 - Bienal de Arquitectura de Buenos Aires # 110927 - “Utopie” Storefront, New York # 110427 - Collective Spaces of Movement at the Festival of Ideas, New York # 110406 - Open House Lecture, GSAPP, Columbia University # 110411 - European Design Circle, GSD, Harvard University
- “Tres replicas del pabellon aleman” Quaderns 263, Winter - “New York: from the Playhouse to ‘Spiderman’” Barcelona Metropolis 83, Summer 2011, pp. 61-63 - “The Architectural Agonism of the Unplanned, a Play in Ten Acts”, Catalogue of Unplanned exhibition, Superfront, L.A - Ibid. in Domus Web. - Ibid. in Le Journal Speciale Z - “The Antagonism of the Weather Underground” Domus Web - “Reading Group: Flying Close to the Sun, My Life and Times as a Weatherman”, The Studio X NY Guide to Liberating New Forms of Conversation, GSAPP Books, New York, 2010. - “Drawing Transitional Domestic Dreams” Panel Layout for Competition (Seoul, Damdi Publishing co., 2010) - “21st Century Housing” Evolo no.1, Fall 2009. - “Lista de Correcciones” UHF E.R.R.A, no.5, 2009. - “Free Nyc Apartments”, UHF. E.R.R.A, no.5, 2009. - “Fake Industries Architectural Agonism”, Foresight: Architectural League of New York Young Architects Forum. Princeton Architectural Press 2009. - “Ay Caremelles”, Eme 3 Internaltional Architectural Market. Catalogue - “Un Cadavre” Pidgin no.3, 2007, pp. 78-79. -“The Invisible Monument”, The Form and The City, Rótterdam International Architetural Bienale, Rotterdam, Berlage Institute 2007. - “Trozos”, Europan 8 European Results, Paris, Europan Europe, 2006. - Ibid., Catalogo Europan 8 España, Madrid, Ministerio de Vivienda, 2006. - Ibid., Pasajes de Arquitectura y Crítica no.76. - Ibid., AV Proyectos no.13 . - “Sinferencia”, Pasajes de Arquitectura y Crítica no.76. - Controlce, New York, GSAPP, 2006. - “Architecture Goes public”, Volume 3. 2006 - “Luarca”, Europan 7 European Results, Paris, Europan Europe, 2005. - Ibid., Catalogo Europan 7 España, Madrid, Ministerio de Vivienda, 2004. - Ibid., Pasajes de Arquitectura y Crítica no.54. - Ibid., Revista Oficial del Colegio de Arquitectos de Catalunya, 2004. - “Curtains”, Abstract 2003-2004. - “Reorma Urbana”,Visions no.2. - “Reforma Urbana”,Via Arquitectura PFC02. - “Architecture Reviews”, Vanidad Magazine, 2003. - “Reorma Urbana” in: XXI Concurs de Projectes Fìnal de Carrera de les Escoles Tècniques Superiors D’Arquitectura de Barcelona i el Valles, Madrid, Dragados, 2002. - “La Casita”, EMRGTS, Sevilla, Caja san Fernando, 2001. - Eme3density, Barcelona, CCCB, 2001. - “Eme3”, Barcelona Plus: Barcelona’s new creative Catalogue, Barcelona, Ayuntament de Barcelona+Actar, 2000. - Ibid. Met.2, Metapolis 2, Barcelona, Actar, 2000. - “Subway depot”, Mies van der Rohe Chair with Dominique Perrault, Barcelona, Fundación Mies van der Rohe + ETSAB, 2000.
2010 # 101027 - Emergent New Latin American Architectural Practices - Fresh Latino Seminar at Storefront, New York # 101025 - Emergent New Latin American Architectural Territories Fresh Latino Seminar at Instituto Cervantes, New York # 100611 - Panel INTA, Caceres # 100310 - Parsons School of Design # 100223 - Cooper Union School of Architecture 2009 # 091130 - John H.Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape and Design, University of Toronto # 090928 - Cooper Union School of Architecture # 090604 - New York Architectural League # 090512 - Intersecciones, Encuentros de Filosofia y Arquitectura, Universidad Europea, Madrid # 090421 - SOA, Princeton University 2008 # 080704 - Daedalus Gallery, Barcelona # 080331 - Cornell University AAP, New York 2007 # 070611 - “Invisible Monument” Rotterdam International Architecture Biennial, Kunstaal, Rotterdam # 070504 - Europan 8 International Forum, Dordrech, Netherlands.
In summer 2011 Fake Industries Architectural Agonism was invited to participate in the exhibition The Street as part of the upcoming Hong Kong & Shenzhen Bi-City Biennale of Urbanism and Architecture. This show, curated to become a second telling of the famous 1980 Venice Biennale’s La Strada Novissima, would not only include interviews with the participants of this latest exhibition, it would also make a similar commission to the current participants, that is, the design and construction of a 10x4m façade and an installation of their works in the space adjacent to it. Surrounded as we were by façades with aspirations of originality, we could definitely had designed yet another sensitive and beautiful frontage. We deeply believe, however, that the world is full of architecture—more or less interesting—and we do not wish to add more. Instead, we advocated for a reconstruction of architectural imaginaries that have been forgotten, destroyed, overlooked or dismissed. The rapid and unquestioned naturalization of certain sets of issues within the field, and the destruction of others, urges reexamination as a necessary provocation for disagreement that could lead to disciplinary advances. In a time when the bursting of the real state bubble has lowered the construction rate, when a credit crisis hinders funding for building, when rampant foreclosures render useless more design, when architecture’s intelligentsia delve into preservation as an attempt to grow without expansion, when global civilian revolts reclaim the right for dissensus, in this time, we argued that the only way to proceed is through Agonistic Replicas. We proposed therefore, a modus operandi based on the salvation of architecture in danger of extinction: the rebuilding hazardous architecture destroyed for political reasons; the re-imagining this generation’s domestic dreams, annihilated, as they were, by the credit crisis; and the rewriting those passages of architectural history that have been tendentiously discarded. Consequently, for The Street, Fake Industries Architectural Agonism proposed a project for each of these three categories: the rebuilding of the artist Ai Weiwei’s studio’s façade—infamously built and immediately demolished by the Chinese government—, a collection of Domestic Dreams in the form of four architectural designs —30 models—displayed on a table, and a film that portrays the orgy of construction and destruction that took place in the time between La Strada Novissima in Venice 1980 and The Street exhibition in Shenzhen 2011.
Fake Industries Architectural Agonism wwwfakeindustries.org