Porto Academy Summer School 2018 :: MUOTO Studio

MUOTO

PORTO ACADEMY FAUP

2018 20–27 JULY

Archaisms (delirious regressions)

Gilles Delalex João Salsa Álvaro Hernández Angela Gianuario Craig Nener Elisa Donini James Russell João Manarte Julian Raffetseder Kristen Wu Lahni Lowe Ludovica Franchetti Martin Nolan Nicolás Garín Odriozola Olta Mamaj Rafaella de Siqueira Bisineli Leean Kim Ties Kweekel Tomás Bueri Valentin Lindenlauf

In his novel « Ubik », Philip K. Dick imagines a world where objects get older as time progresses. They don’t get damaged, but their technology regresses day after day. Phones turn from plastic to bakelite, and petrol cars become horse-drawn carriages. In this scenario, society does not go back time but regresses in terms of technology. The story unfolds, but the material world returns to a former state of development.

Progress and regress coexist, but do not oppose each other. Future and past intermingle with each other and question our linear conception of time.

Can we apply such a scenario to architecture? Can we imagine buildings that reconcile progress and regress? Can we think of a progressive regression, or a regressive progression? Can we envisage an architecture that fuses feelings of optimism and nostalgia as part of the same emotional state?

Our objective here is to assess this scenario by imagining buildings that evolve in their uses, while returning to a previous state of constructive and technological development. In this scenario, building do not turn into old-fashioned designs or romantic ruins. Rather, their materials and construction techniques evolve in a regressive sense. Trusses turn into stone vaults, and curtain façades into stained-glass windows.

This one-week exercise means to interrogate today’s contradictory state of modernity. For, while the process of modernization has accelerated in an unprecedented way, ideals of modernity such as social progress or collective emancipation have been forgotten.

Modernity and modernization have become two opposite perspectives.

We shall propose a third alternative perspective where the invention of new modern ideals prevails over technological modernization.

Our corpus of study consists in a series of built or unbuilt projects designed by the architecture office OMA. Since the early 80s, OMA has incarnated a resisting force against postmodernist visions. It has advocated for a state of “hypermodernity”, claiming that modernity had never stopped. In order to assess to this surely simplistic reading of OMA, we propose to explore some archaic aspects of the office’s legacy. Students choose some of their favourite OMA’s buildings and deconstruct them in technological terms. They submit them to various technological transformations, by constructing models out of unexpectedly traditional materials. Students are asked to be particularly creative in their choice and use of poor and wasted materials, as a way to express a both literal and conceptual mode of constructive regression. Their interpretation of OMA’s work include a reflection on the evolution of the initial programming of the buildings, and a specific form of representation referring to child-like, low-tech, or home-made constructions. The models produced during the week intend to be an original reading of OMA’s modernity, at once naïve and thoughtful, solid and precarious, refined and spontaneous, dark and playful, old and new.

Casa da MĂşsica

Julian Raffetseder Martin Nolan Ties Kweekel Valentin Lindenlauf

Seattle Central Library

Ludovica Franchetti Olta Mamaj Tomas Bueri

Nexus World Housing

Alvaro Hernandez Kristen Wu Rafaella Bisineli Rian Kim

CCTV – Television Cultural Centre

Angela Gianuario Elisa Donini Nicolás Garín Odriozola

Maison à Bordeaux

Craig Nener James Russell João Manarte Lahni Lowe

MUOTO

ÁLVARO HERNÁNDEZ ANGELA GIANUARIO CRAIG NENER ELISA DONINI GILLES DELALEX JAMES RUSSELL JOÃO MANARTE JOÃO SALSA JULIAN RAFFETSEDER KRISTEN WU LAHNI LOWE LEEAN KIM LUDOVICA FRANCHETTI MARTIN NOLAN NICOLÁS GARÍN ODRIOZOLA OLTA MAMAJ RAFAELLA DE SIQUEIRA BISINELI TIES KWEEKEL TOMÁS BUERI VALENTIN LINDENLAUF

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