Part 4 / 2016
UNDERGROUND Men who once merely headed minor sects have become aged celebrities; publishers and art dealers have become rich; new movements are constantly being started; everybody attends both the academic and the avant-garde shows, and even the avant-garde of the avant-garde; the family magazines have bobbed their hair; politicians like to sound off on the cultural arts, and newspapers make literary history. So what has been lost? —Robert Musil, The Man Without Qualities
WAIZINE WORDS UNDERGROUND Robert Musil, The Man Without Qualities,
Ancient archaeological artifacts, architecture and art aim at arranging, articulating assumptions about actuality, adapting alternatives, altering atmospheres. Authors attempt at accumulating answers. Avant-gardes assemble authors’, artists’, architects’ abnormal ambitions. Buildings broke. Boundaries bent. Breakthroughs busted beliefs. Big Brother built bronze busts. Bombings blasted bellicose battlefields. Brotherhoods became boundless. Constructivists confronted class calcification constructing compositions. Constitutions collapsed. Cynicism cultivated conflicting cultural climates creating conceptual crises, cyclically consummating cataclysms, creating contemporary catastrophes: civil clashes, communal catacombs, concentration camps, classism clashing communism, Cold conflicts culminating cosmic conquests, Capitalism’s collapsology creating catastrophic consequences. Diptychs diligently displayed dualities, dichotomies, dialectics, demonstrating daunting dreams, dreadful doomsdays, demagogic dictatorships, dubious democracies. Daring designs destroyed devil’s dominance. Devil’s dominance designed dreadful dreamlands. Dictators doomed degenerate displays. Dreamers disappeared. Epistemological erasures enabled ecumenical entities’ exceptional empowerment, enhancing economic embezzlement, endangering
ecologies. Elitism excluded endlessly, enabling extremism, erecting effigies. Fear fostered falseness fabricating faux failures, fake faiths. Fevralism feisty foundations, firmly facing farces, forcefully formed formalist federations. Gathered, grounded groups grasped gas giants. Guns generated global grief. Help halted, highlighting hopelessness. Heroes hesitated holding hope hostage. Ingeniously, intelligentsias instructed intuitive individuals. Intellectual immigrants imagined inclusive islands. Iofan imitated idolized icons. Impatience increased, impacting independent imaginaries. Jealous juggernauts jointly jammed jagged journeys. Khidekel’s knowledge killed Koba’s kitsch. Kazimir knew, kynically. Kings kidnapped Kafkaesque kingdoms, keeping kernels, kneeling Kalashnikovs. Language led logic. Leaders longing lasting legacies labored linguistic laboratories, luring legions, lambasting lands, leaving lives lost. Lissitsky led left’s leading looks, leading Lenin’s legacy. Mystically, Malevich motivated metaphysical
Movements, making manifestoes morph mental mutinies. Marcel made modernity’s makeup multiply, mass manufactured. Meanwhile, monsters moved Machiavellically, mass murdering multitudes.
turing regimes, rupturing reigns. Representation replaced reality. Reality relapsed. Rhizomatic reasoning retook realms.
Previously, philosophical plans prophesized promising prospects. Proletarian programmatic perfection. Peaceful political preservation. Positivistic popular performance.Paradoxically, perverse policies plus populist posturing permeated pedagogical programs painting powerless possible plans, privatizing profit, paralyzing progress, perishing public programs. Persisting pessimistic prognoses provoked poetic positions, perpetually pondering powerful potentialities. Post-modernist paraphrasing presented philological projectiles:
Underground unions urged Utopian universalism. Uncritical, usurped universities ushered utopianism unnavigable.
Suprematism superseded Sun’s setback: surmounting symbolic supernovas, shifting soNothingness naturally neglected nature, nested cial structures, sketching suspended shapes, necrocosmos, nurtured nihilism. Nothingness soaring seamlessly. Stalin suppressed social navigated nirvana, non-objectively, nonbeing, strata. Socialism separated soul, society, scinonexistent. Nuclear nothingness nested new ence. narratives, new Newspeak. Tatlin’s tower twisted towards the top, tentaObject oriented ontologies operated oppotively translating theoretical tension towards sitional objectives. OOO occupied. OOO total technological takeover. Tragically, toobliterated order. OOO orchestrated objects, talitarianism turned tanks to track traitors, objectives, objectiles. OOO offered other thinkers, Trotskyists, Tarkovskian traders. ominous omnipresence. Total terror took toll.
“Quixotesque questions quantify queer quantum query quotidian quos.”
Value varied vastly. Vultures vexed visionary’s vehicles, violently vaporizing victory. Writing, waiting, we wish wonders. Worlds widen. Waves weave. Whimsically we walk, wander. We will wait, warfare warnings within. We work, worship, we’re WAI, we’re: X-chromosomes Y-chromosomes.
Rhetorical rules regulated railing roles, restruc- Zeros, Zeppelins, Zarathustras. [3]
CONTENTS
6 Six Buildings on an Island Narrative Architecture 88 Gallery in CaoChangDi Exhibition Space, Beijing
Chief Editors Nathalie Frankowski Cruz Garcia
22 The Beautiful Ceremony Narrative Architecture
Graphic and Content Design Nathalie Frankowski Cruz Garcia What About It? is intellectual property of Nathalie Frankowski and Cruz Garcia WAI Architecture Think Tank First Published 2016 by WAI Architecture Think Tank Publishers ISBN 978-2-9544145-0-8 www.waithinktank.com contact@wai-architecture.com Printed in China Limited Edition Copy
56 Li Creative Offices Office Building, Beijing
80 Utopia of Two Cities Narrative Architecture
94 Condenser Exhibition Space, Research Centre, Beijing
36 Landscapes at the End of the World Visual Essay / Essay
68 Suzhuo Museum Invited Art Museum Competition, Suzhou
48 Aarhus School of Architecture Architecture School Competition, Aarhus
SCI-FI Who more sci-fi than us? —Junot Diaz
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SIX BUILDINGS ON AN ISLAND
SCI-FI Junot Diaz, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, (Reiverhead Books, 2007).
No longer painfully utopian, post-colonialism was reached as the last one left. Unceasing decades of imposed satellite regulations mixed with internal corruption imploded the last hope of subsistence. The last years were the most intense ones. With warming temperatures extending the tropics beyond the limits of Capricorn and Cancer, a special unit of planners outlined the imminent destiny of the island once the complete population had been expunged. Trapped between hope and anxiety, a series of structures were erected, casted, assembled. Some were product of their immediate historical context. Others the result of a century of specialized intelligence. The island was stripped of surplus modernization. Complete suburban structures disappeared, their concrete and steel crushed
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and collected by machines. Streets were unpaved, bridges dismounted. Automated drones surveilled aerially looking for human made objects. Land rovers roamed the ground cleaning any bit of artificial debris. It took nearly a decade. The island was finally razed clean. After all, there was no life left after colonialism, just architecture. Nature and architecture, to be exact. Like with neoliberalism, the ‘pill’, and Agent Orange some decades before, the island became test ground for new experiments. If the 20th century raced to Space, the last frontier of the 21st century was in the tropics. The Warm War, how it was colloquially called, put hegemonic powers in technological confrontation once again. Direct attacks were out of the picture due to monitoring bodies
and recent treatises. In exchange, proxy board games were deployed through key points around the globe. The tropics were pawns on a global chess match. Tropicality was explored this time in direct relationship with the lush green and clean air. No need to project romantic fantasies on the bodies that inhabited these places since all that was left was the sea and the air after exponential debts and aggressive bailouts forced their people to leave. A former nonincorporated territory became an annexed test lab. From tragedy to farce, the island went from once hosting a military base to be an island as military base. Long held without any form of visionary innovation, the island finally followed the
streams of the avant-garde. From research hubs, to smart structures, to other fantastic and previously inconceivable constructions, new buildings casted the futurist form of architecture in the tropics. The island became the petri dish for a new manifestation of futuristic avantgarde. Tropical Island as experimental Utopia. The Institute of Tropical Intelligence, or Tropicalia for short, an agency focusing on the development of advanced forms of strategic militarized structures, designed six prototypes to be replicated in an increasingly warm world. Part of the project ‘Six Buildings on an Island’, each two of these experiments responded to the main priorities of the agency: Security, Communication, Intelligence.
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Floating Fortress The Floating Fortresses were brutal, and beautiful, and they stood, hovering in the sky like floating buildings. They were the product of a carefully executed intelligence campaign that intercepted a plan making its way from Moscow to Cuba. Conceived in the 1920’s by a cosmic architect, the Plan Krutikov consisted of floating architecture: a city hovering at consistent heights above the ground. After finding the secret plans, a group of architects specialized in speculative cosmonautics and quantum aeronautics concentrated on developing the project. Unable to move forward with the plans of building it due to impractical economic climate and slugging technological advancements, the Floating Fortress finally saw the light of day [ 10 ]
once Tropicalia was awarded governing autonomy. Scaled down and casted in ultralight Minus G Concrete (a nanoconcrete developed as one of the agency’s special engineering projects), the structure hosted a fortress to monitor the coasts of the island. A floating ring contained most of the supporting programs while several watch towers gathered information to be sent to the communication posts on the shore. If necessary, the Floating Fortress was equipped with an in-house prison system, detention and interrogation center. The Floating Fortresses also stored highly advanced weapons.
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Amphibian Fortress Like a metallic star in a cosmic jungle, the Amphibian Fortress stood with its extended shiny, robotic limbs. Consisting of six rectangular members meeting on a common vortex, the Amphibian Fortress was able to move freely through any type of solid and semi-solid surface. The automated structure collected information on the island’s soil, flora and fauna while sending waves to the communication structures on the island. Built with lightweight metal alloy, the Amphibian Fortress was a new form [ 12 ]
of walking architecture. While the Floating Fortress took care of keeping the shores safe from intruders, the Amphibian Fortress patrolled inland, paying close attention to the rainforests and adjacent terrains. The Amphibian Fortress gathered and distributed information about potential threats to the natural purity of the island. The Amphibian Fortress was a kinetic enforcer that, together with the Floating Fortress ensured the island’s security while protecting its Tropicality.
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The Globe and the Javelin Another prize of meticulous espionage, the plan for the Globe and the Javelin was captured during the years of the Cold War. Resting on top of mangroves, the Globe and the Javelin monitored weather conditions while receiving signals from the Floating and Amphibian Fortresses. Built with lightweight [ 14 ]
self-regulating nano-fabrics, the Globe and the Javelin worked in combination. At night the globe floated free, lit with the rays deflected by the moon. On the mangrove, silently, the Javelin received and forwarded radio waves about the island and its surrounding sea.
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Telescopic Towers The Telescopic Towers were the largest structures erected since the island was reclaimed by Tropicalia. Consisting of three towers anchored in the higher peaks of the mountain range at the center of the island, the Telescopic Towers were connected by a series of hyper sensible fibers that created an informatics black hole (the world’s most sensitive radio wave receiver). [ 16 ]
Like Suprematist icons on the virgin landscape, the Telescopic Towers were designed to process all the information collected by the Fortresses. In constant communication with the Globe and the Javelin, the Telescopic Towers were the ears and brain of the agency in the mainland.
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Aviary Encased by mesh and titanium rods, the Aviary stood with its clear geometric shapes within the virgin landscape. It focused on the study and research of alternative forms of aviary interrogation. The Aviary was in reality a Detention Center for Tropical Birds, a Guantanamo for colorful parrots. A lightweight structure assembled following simple geometric and constructive principles, the Aviary was first erected during the great Purge. Unsuspecting, the public thought of it as another zoologist project, increasing on those days of political austerity and land acquisitions by the Federal Government. Birds thought to possess valuable information were detained, interrogated and studied in [ 18 ]
the aviary. Birds were taken from cages and trees. Snatched midflight by Floating Fortresses, captured in the forests by the Amphibian structures. The Javelin’s highly sensitive sensors could detect birds flying thousands of kilometers away. The Amphibian Fortress could feel the noise of a beak chewing on insects. In less than a year no birds remained free. More Aviaries were spotted on the newly claimed landscape. Once tried with dolphins and rats, military training was now directed towards birds. Tropical Birds were the new POW. Those willing converted into allied spies. All birds sang. Some birds sang louder than the others.
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Camp The Camps were the only evidence of the island’s previous inhabitation. Like nuclear no-go zones, they were fenced areas encircling monuments, obelisks, effigies and icons of the life that used to occupy the island. On the years of the great purge, all forms of ‘historically significant architecture’ (a concept used by members of Tropicalia to identify any form of artifact, from statues of political figures, to pieces of buildings, and [ 20 ]
infrastructures) were concentrated on these Camps. As the Camps were quickly filled, more Camps were built. Always respecting sensible zones, the Camps were constructed on areas of transition. Between the palm trees and the beach. Between the mountains and the palm trees. The Camps were Tropical Museums: Prisons for Ideology, concentration camps for architecture.
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CEREMONY Suddenly, the rainbow appeared. I therefore supposed that the whole cycle of the spectacle was over and left my place, making for the exit. Some people in front of me were speaking in a language I could understand at certain times. Some sentences were: “What a Beautiful Ceremony”, and “From tomorrow, there will be architecture for all”. —Superstudio, The Fundamental Acts
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THE BEAUTIFUL CEREMONY
CEREMONY Superstudio, Life Education Ceremony Love Death: Five Stories by Superstudio, The Fundamental Acts, from Exit Utopia: Architectural Provocations 195676, ed. Martin van Schaik and Otakar Macel, (Munich: Prestel, 2005) p. 206.
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Ceremony Champagne glasses were clicking as the celebration of the opening of the Island was finally under way. After a five-year plan involving political coups, intensive software development and endless hours of hard work, the vernissage unravelled. An island built from scratch is no easy task. However, this was no simple island. The island of Biennale was built as a geopolitical territory displaying the ultimate achievements of the Superior Culture in a program consisting of two year periods of events and presentations. Led by a self-declared prophet and reinforced by all his tuition-paying minions, the island was planned as an oversized exhibition of the politics of architecture and urbanism; it hosted absolute forms of architecture in perfect symbiosis with freedom of frictionless market economy.
A secular religious organization in the form of a tax-relaxing libertarian haven, Biennale Island was a stateless corporation, as the nation-state with its orthodox bureaucratic system was dissolved into a privately funded self-sustaining algorithm consolidating a self-perpetuating political system based on the principles of the sacred book (or compendium of books) of Autopoietic Architectural Standards (AAS), or the secular god of market driven automated design. Technofascism was the pinnacle of societal achievement. It implied the rule of design in all facets of life. A political mixture of flawless social stratification and complete aesthetic control, Technofascism was achieved ‘after the submission of inferior cultures (unable to pay their external debts, student loans, mortgages and credit card fees)’ was finally agreed, as Lord BS—the charismatic
leader of the technofascists—declared. Under the rule of Technofascism, Multiculturalism was a thing of the past, as a new, perfectly synchronized society was conceived by mixing genetic manipulation, and downright social forms of corporate Darwinism.  The AAS that motivated the design of Biennale was the quintessential formula for a flawless self-generating development concretized in ethnographic structures of organization as well as in the spatial, phenomenological and spiritual manifestations of architecture and the city. In the opening ceremony of Biennale Island Parametric Capitalism became the new commons. Biennale was conceived as a place for the ultimate collapse of dialectical materialism,
as both populations (workers and elite) could coexist without the feeling of inhabiting a twofold manifestation of utopia. Like the best of religions, Technofascism was malleable and subjective, always capable of adapting and responding to its contextual immediacies. The utopia of the migrant workers (perpetually denied of their citizenship) consisted of a genetic modification that prevented instability and dissipated the chance of revolt. The utopia of the elite reinforced their feeling of philanthropy and entrepreneurship while eliminating altogether with the concept of human exploitation the sense of guilt or remorse. The architecture of Biennale Island was designed as the perfect complement to its psychogeographical apparatus, as buildings, structures, elements and concepts impeded [ 25 ]
the free flow of knowledge, egalitarian distribution of wealth and the creative implementation, and practice of ritualistic freedom. As the elites flew from all over the world to witness a new form of utopian implementation of civil society one could hear BS affirm ‘What a beautiful ceremony’.
eventually would prevent them from leaving the island while rendering virtually impossible the unwanted arrival of new migrants.
As indicated in the book of architectural genesis, the wall of Biennale Island had a very small carbon footprint. Hungry bodies produce low emissions. The wall was built Island with recycled concrete, mostly gathered from We arrived in a zeppelin. Airplanes with conflict zones. The aggregates had organic their limited luxury were a thing of the past. certification from the bureau of sustainability From high above we could see the remains issues. It took five continuous years to of the first pavilions built on the island. Now build. During this period, workers were turned into ruins, the pavilions were floating simultaneously erecting parts of what would monoliths in which migrant workers arrived to be their homes once the ‘wall’ was completed build a wall that would encircle the periphery and their tasks switched to farming, services of the island. Suffocated by brutal wars, ethnic and infrastructure maintenance. They fell cleansing and religious persecution, workers in love, got married, and their families grew. were glad to join their new laborious lifestyle. They worked, slept, ate, played. They forged in pristine concrete a wall that [ 26 ]
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Residential buildings were forged faithfully following models of housing for workers as outlined on the housing chapter of the AAS. Families interrelated, perpetually remaining on the periphery. Architecture was the backdrop for the lives of thousands of family units secluded from the island’s center. Workers housing was the result of one of the self-programing plans of ethnographic design. BS, inspired by modernists ideals, developed its own version of the social housing unit. Libertarian housing was free for its inhabitants, since they paid with their labor by assembling walls in constructions sites and farming the open fields. Architecture in the form of pavilions was inserted occasionally in their bucolic surroundings, providing the necessary [ 28 ]
programs to keep the lower cast of society isolated from the rest of the city. The elite, according to BS, should never succumb its cultural superiority to inferior forms of human interaction. ‘For the island to be perfect it must protect its dominant culture’— he often uttered. Once the wall and the housing units were built, workers planted the trees that now divide them from the city center. Among the flora of the island, wind turbines that didn’t let a single breath of wind escape were installed next to water collection plants and irrigation systems in which not a single drop of water is wasted. Technology had advanced enough as to be as efficient as the economic system that kept the Island from stopping. The green belt, a name that was awarded to
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this dense vegetative wall, was the enclosure of the activities, events, happenings of a whole group of people living within a zone that remained remote from the center, while its inhabitants constructed architectural archetypes commemorating the cusp of the Anthropocene, or the event as transformation of the Earth by human hands and visionary intentions. Fueled by a philosophical engine, the ethos that drove all the efforts of the island was ‘sustainable city, better world’. For this, the design and construction of segments and elements of some of the most important visions of the twentieth and twenty first centuries were commissioned. The concept that led to the organization of the center of the island was based on the [ 30 ]
idea of ‘a harmoniously sustainable business city’ in which cruciform and infinitely tall towers covered with photovoltaic cells and high efficiency glass dominated the skyline. Skyscrapers quietly celebrated the materialist dialectic relationship of the role of big business and its multimillion-dollar investment in the development of Biennale Island. Housing, offices, technocrats and businessmen responsible for developing, planning and managing the island, the center of Biennale was the epicenter of VIP activities. Traveling from other developed cities with certifications and diplomas of the most respected institutes, the elite class would have been entrusted to develop strategies and tools for the continuous development and growth of the economy of the island while residing inside pristine lofts and home offices.
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Architecture once again provided an infallible security blanket that reflected the conditions, simulacra, and lifestyles of those who inhabit it. Just like the workers housing was provided for procreation and seclusion, the radiant structures of the center were equipped to host the highest forms of entertainment and consumerism. Through technological inventions, strategic interventions and legislative findings, the island became not only a paradigm for sustainable development in the world but also for ideal living conditions. Ivory and concrete, glass and marble, technology, politics and economics form a triad of undeniable progress. Finance and development guaranteed a perpetual cycle of continuous growth. The island in the hands of the elite would lead the way of an achievable [ 32 ]
utopia manifested in periods of two years of exhibitions. In the area between the skyscrapers and housing for workers, a third group of pavilions expose the economic and technological developments, according to the leaders, representing unprecedented progress in sustainable development of the contemporary city. Between the workers housing, and the towers of the elite, a third group of pavilions were constructed by a select group of trained workers. Assembled following the most rigorous construction methods to be found in the AAS book, each pavilion in this area represented an achievement in modern sustainability strategies. From organic farming, to the sustainable extraction of rare
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minerals for research and development of technological tools, each pavilion emphasized in an area to explore technically and economically. Â In this area some workers labored tirelessly picking up fruits and vegetables harvested without pesticides or preservatives. Others processed coltan and tantalum to develop communication, agriculture and transportation tools. Some workers were in charge of manufacturing garments with biodegradable fabrics while others developed ecological materials for the construction of buildings. To defend the island from possible threats to the sustainable state of its economy, a select group of workers was trained to form an army capable of maintaining order within the island and monitor the peripheral wall. [ 34 ]
From one of the towers one could see the distant horizon, as the chimera of modernization was enclosed within a horizontal white wall. Within the limits of Biennale Island efficiency was treated like a religion. In Biennale Island efficiency is the ceremony of life. On the island everyone assumes his role. The island grows economically. Its development is sustainable.
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LANDSCAPES AT THE END OF THE WORLD
The end of history, like the death of god, was a prematurely announced coup d’état. Capitalism’s hyper-efficient flexibility tirelessly turns the abstract and ardent subversions of its detractors into commodities. No concept, matter, territory, or state can escape its alchemistic grip. After all, the environment— even in a dilapidated state, approaching demise—can still be manufactured, marketed, and consumed. The Anthropocene, that ultimate conquest of humankind over its environment, makes the technological utopia of the Cubo-Futurist “Victory over the Sun” more than just a fantastic dream. The clashing tensions of the ideological dialectics of the early twentieth century resulted in the imaging of a parallel, almost unheard of universe. In the landscapes of Suprematist architect
Lazar Khidekel—a series of sketches for futuristic cities made in 1928–32—totems without qualities levitated like weightless clouds. White, as in José Saramago’s Blindness, the slender segments of Khidekel’s cities fly over mountains and rivers, only slightly touching the ground before defiantly taking off to soar at impossible heights. Desperate times, as many have observed, make it easier to imagine the end of the world than to visualize the end of capitalism. Is the End of the World by Science a crumbling gospel or a latent threat? In our Fevralist fervor, we contemplate these unbearably light mastodons, dreaming of the possibility of absurdist acts of architecture with landscapes radically untouched. [ 47 ]
Utopianism
Thus the schools, which have often been accused of ‘utopianism,’ become the real pace setters in the art of building. —El Lissitzky
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AARHUS SCHOOL OF ARCHITECTURE Aarhus School of Architecture Aarhus, Denmark Workshop. Multi-Use Hall, Office, Cafe, Classrooms, Library International Competition 2016
Utopianism El Lissitzky, Schools of Architecture, From Russia: An Architecture for World Revolution, (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1970), p.73.
School as Manifesto Like Vhkutemas and Bauhaus, The New Aarhus School of Architecture aims to become a model for the architecture school of the 21st Century. Through its flexible spaces based on universality, transparency and intellectual exchange the New Aarhus architecture school aims to blur the divisions between art and architecture, between the city and the building, between landscape and edifice, between creation and life. By creating a building that invites for exchange, dialogue, experimentation, and engagement through its flexible spaces, and proposing the surrounding landscape to be made into an ‘Architecture Park’ for temporary installations, events, and supporting programs, the New Aarhus Architecture School is more than a pedagogical institution, it is a School as manifesto.
selection of the building (emphasizing on industrial and sustainable materials with robust finishing) creates an environment where the Free Plan, Free Section and Free space enhance the possibility of its design to be driven by the activities and events happening, while maintaining a high level of architectural quality for academic social and professional meeting spaces. The conceptual triad of Free Plan, Section and Space blurs the traditional boundaries between programs and activities, creating a wholly functional and optimized space based on transparency and flexibility for universal exchange where the study spaces, workshops, administration, exhibition, and meeting spaces coexist and feed from each other.
Urban Strategy: Campus Effect and Architecture Park The School will be strategically located on Form and Space: Free Plan, Free Section, the southwest area of the site in order to create a ‘campus effect’. In order consolidate Free Space the creative area of Godsbanearealerne the Robust, scalable, and flexible like Cedric adjacent landscape will be transformed into an Price’s concept for The Fun Palace, the New Aarhus School of Architecture bases its form ‘Architecture Park’ (a space for installations, events, and site-specific temporary projects) and spatial layout on three main principles: free plan (as in the free organization of spaces that relates directly to the school and to the green wedge from the Ådalen. The strategic on horizontal planes), free section (as in the location, as well as the organization of the visual and physical connection of spaces program will allow for a seamless integration on their vertical and diagonal dimensions), with the city, the immediate landscape and and free Space (as in the universally free the neighboring current and future buildings. organization of programs, activities, and New spaces on the ground level (café, store, events). Organized in three volumes of exhibition and meeting spaces), open terraces different heights on the ground level and in the upper levels, and the multi-hall, provide a multi-use hall collocated above them, with alternative programs that can run parallel the building creates an endless amount of to the academic function of the school. spatial configurations with open areas of Flexible space also provides with alternative varying scales, qualities and heights that can tenants that can rent spaces in the building, be subdivided and interconnected, creating creating another flow of users and income a continuous surface of cross learning and exchange not only inside the building but with and enhancing the capacity of the building to its adjacent context as well by means of open act as a social condenser relating not only to terraces and outdoor gathering, workshop and the immediate ‘campus’ but to the whole city installation spaces. The structure and material as well. [ 50 ]
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NEUTRAL In other words, you cannot create an absolutely neutral space, and you cannot invent a completely new space; you always generate differential spaces that are outfitted in distinction from a different, former space. —Peter Sloterdijk
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LI CREATIVE OFFICES Li Creative Offices Beijing, China Office Space, Workshop Commission 2014-
NEUTRAL Peter Sloterdijk, Spheres Theory: Talking to Myself About the Poetics of Space, Harvard Design Magazine No. 30, Spring/ Summer 2009. From a lecture with Sloterdijk asking himself questions February 17, 2009.
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The office building is a modern invention. However, the misinterpretation of the fundamental combination of abstraction and repetition has turned the contemporary office building into nothing more than a redundant and uninspiring array of working spaces. But, how can a space embrace flexible, and alternative working spaces? Can the office building echo the ideal changes of working conditions? Can the stiff, unmovable office typology change? Rather than exerting all its effort on the redundant futility of contemporary architectural form, the building maintains a brutal level of neutrality in its exterior, while its interior acts as a catalyst of spatial dynamism and intellectual exchange. LI Creative Offices proposes a new form of creative workspace. Instead of recurring at the monotonous typical plan, the building is based on five principles that aim at providing a new form of spatial flexibility where spaces are meant to interrelate and adapt, as the creative works demands unique conditions for each and every project. The program of the building includes transforming meeting rooms, workshop space, leisure areas, a cafeteria and library. LI Creative offices is designed following a set of five principles for the optimization of contemporary architecture: 1. Continuous Plan The plan establishes the limits of the circulation in a building. With the aim of enhancing interrelation between spaces, and creating a continuous exchange between
programs, the floor slabs of the building are connected to each other by means of sloping floors that act like lecture and performance halls, workshops and circulation space. 2. Free Section By distorting the building not in plan, but in section, a new richness of spatial experiences is achieved. What used to be the regime of the generic space because of the repetition of equidistant slabs now becomes a pluralistic assembly of zones of varying spatial potentials. 3. Free Structure Advancements in engineering allow for the distribution of the structure not only to create optimum spaces, but also to divide and delimit, and to support both the free section and the continuous plan. 4. Free Space Modern Architecture inherited the free horizontal plan from an industrial era focused on mass production. In an era more concerned with creativity and dynamism, Contemporary Architecture integrates the diagonal slab to the free plan; creating spaces that not only avoid the generic monotony now part of every office building but that enhances new visual and physical connections between spaces that otherwise wouldn’t have any relationship. 5. Wall as fenestration The façade of the contemporary building will stop aiming at recreating the aesthetics of the generic office slab, and instead will consist on facades that actively explore the dialectic between the building and its surroundings, as a translucent materials, metallic membranes and efficient glass windows can provide for a dynamic building envelope.
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GARDENS The flat roof demands in the first place systematic utilization for domestic purposes: roof terrace, roof garden. On the other hand, the reinforced concrete demands protection against changing temperatures. Overactivity on the part of the reinforced concrete is prevented by the maintenance of a constant humidity on the roof concrete. The roof terrace satisfies both demands (a rain-dampened layer of sand covered with concrete slabs with lawns in the interstices; the earth of the flowerbeds in direct contact with the layer of sand). In this way the rain water will flow off extremely slowly. Waste pipes in the interior of the building. Thus a latent humidity will remain continually on the roof skin. The roof gardens will display highly luxuriant vegetation. Shrubs and even small trees up to 3 or 4 metres tall can be planted. In this way the roof garden will become the most favoured place in the building. In general, roof gardens mean to a city the recovery of all the built-up area. –Le Corbusier
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MUSEUM OF GARDENS
Suzhou Museum Suzhou, China Exhibition Hall, Multi-Use Hall, Lecture Hall, Library, Café Invited Competition 2015 GARDENS Le Corbusier / Pierre Jeanneret “Five Points Toward a New Architecture”, Programs and Manifestos in Twentieth Century Architecture, Ed. Ulrich Conrad, (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1970), p.99-100.
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Ethos How to create a cultural institution that highlights and enhances the qualities that make Suzhou unique? How to create a contemporary museum taking into account the city’s rich history without making a futile imitation of the past or an artifact completely indifferent to its context and program?
Program The program of the building is divided in three main zones: Museum containing all the exhibition spaces and supporting program; Cinema with lobby, concessionaries, a café and a cinemateque; and Administration containing office space, logistics, meeting rooms and archive. These three zones are contained in three volumes on the ground level that give The Museum of Gardens creates a new form support to three cantilevering boxes that conof cultural building by reinterpreting Suzhou’s tain the exhibition halls and Dome-cinemas. spatial archetypes, the courtyard and the garOf varying height and sizes, the connecting den and connecting them with a public prom- volumes include exhibition halls that interplay enade and exhibition spaces. A series of path- with open air gardens to create a dialectical ways connect the diverse levels of the building relationship between nature, architecture and by means of a pedestrian bridge that hovers art. The neutrality of the spaces allows for over the river to the south of the building, the maximum flexibility of layouts, creating an dock area to the east side, pedestrian conendless array of possible use and configuranectors to the south and ramps that lead the tions. The Cinemas are contained into a volpublic to a series of open air, semi-enclosed ume with independent access from the outside and enclosed courtyards and gardens. and with access to two of the semi-enclosed courtyards of the building. The spatial distribution of the building allows for the spaces to be used at different schedules.
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CITY And whoever becomes ruler of a city accustomed to living freely and does not destroy it, let him expect to be destroyed by her, because as refuge for her rebellions she always has the name of liberty and her old customs, which neither through the length of time nor for any good deed will ever be forgotten. And whatever one does there and whatever one provides, if it is not to persecute or disperse the inhabitants, this name and these customs will never be forgotten. —Machiavelli, The Prince
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UTOPIA OF TWO CITIES CITY Niccolò Machiavelli, The Prince, Q. Skinner and R. Price (eds.), (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,1988).
Against the remarkable characteristics of build- I will show you what you came looking for—he ings that often make architecture an exhausting said with emanating calmness. attempt at creating uniqueness, it’s the ruin that possesses the ubiquitously transforming quality Left without an option, I accepted. of turning everything into the same. After taking some slow thoughtful steps, he I was walking through ruins. pointed at two rags of fabric attached to the wall with delicate, thin nails. Worn down and Wall fragments carried my sight through layers stained by time, each cloth displayed a simple of history. Somehow, I kept repeating in my geometric shape. The irregularity of their edges head these lines by Borges: disclosed a sense of urgency in their conception. Small cracks exposed the eminent dissiFrom the past we keep some names that language tends pating elasticity of old pigment. Both pieces, to forget. one displaying a black square, the other a white vertical rectangle were unassumingly neutral, Mysteriously taking material form around me. unadorned. The ground crumbled under my feet. Dust par- You must have come looking for answers—he ticles defied gravity’s acceleration in their relent- claimed. less and chaotic ascent. From within exposed masonry and curved metal bars I saw a building. As I didn’t offer any response he continued: The uneven masonry barely revealed its cubic A long time ago I created two images. Depicform. Apertures of different sizes cut through tions of conceptual deserts, each one had a the façade as in a desperate attempt to breathe. simple form. Some people thought they were special. A bearded man welcomed me inside. They were seized during the raids. MisinterpretHe had a deep serious look. His clothes were ed, each one of these paintings led to a vision stained with paint, although around us every- of the world holding each a particular philosothing seemed neat and organized. It looked like phy. Full legions of followers swore they have he lived alone, but was somehow not surprised deciphered the meaning of these works. They to see me. believed in their metaphysical presence, reading some hope in their latent promises. Complete Still without a word, he led me down a corridor. worldviews were outlined following the supposed ideals of each one of these paintings. The windows on the wall were of different sizes. Outside you could see two larger shades ris- But—he added, a work of art is nothing but iting above the monochrome hubris that evenly self. There could be no exactitude in the meancovered the field. After taking a left turn we ing of a work of art. There is no other certainty entered what seemed to be a studio. The room than the truth of what the work of art is. A was lit with sunlight filtering through sparse ap- work of art will withstand history, and at the ertures on the ceiling, washing its naked con- end, be left to face its own autonomy. crete walls here and there.
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The light of the works, they claimed, led them The people in the city built a tall, slender tower to plan entire societies. To build villages, towns, of glimmering whiteness. The scaffoldings discities. appeared in the sky. Around the tower, the city was white. Each new building was a blinding Feeling obliged, I intervened: projectile aiming for the sky. Are there ruins around us the remnants of Like in the neighbouring city, people gathered these societies? in the form of an army to defend their sacred values, to fight what the Black Cube representHe nodded without uttering a word, starring ed. blankly to the wall or to the paintings now looking more intriguing than before. The White Tower —he added, was an image that defined the aesthetic concepts of societal What happened to the buildings? To the people life. It was the base of the language people used that built them?-I asked. to communicate with each other. Life existed because of the White Tower—or the Black Driven by blinding excitement, each group of Cube, to learn from them, respect them and people dedicated their lives first to construct a fight for them. monument, then to live in reverence to it. With the black square as reference, they created a Because the images reigned supreme, in the city monolith by carving out the blackest of stones. of the Cube and the city of the Tower facts Hundredths of builders joined in, first in the didn’t matter. Language—always a malleable extraction of the raw matter from the mines, clay—was an allegorical vehicle for the consolithen in the conception of the Euclidean effigy. dation of the doctrines of the Tower and the People spent great part of their lives building Cube. The leaders of the Black Cube and the the Black Cube. White Tower understood the power of images, but underestimated their effects on the mental Lives perished and children were born to wit- state of people. ness the slow process of assembling the world’s biggest monolithic building. Of unprecedented Life in the city of the Cube and the city of the size, the structure was as tall, as was wide at its Tower became nothing but a decipherable set base. The massive shadow it casted was consid- of images moulded by those in power. To conered a blessing for those living in the city. All life trol the image of life is to define life. Aesthetics in the city was created on the periphery of the served as device in which concepts were porcube. Everything in the city orbited around it. trayed as the sublime manifestation of truth. Through these concepts and their meaning in The Cube defined how people lived and what relation to other concepts you can control the people did with their lives. To justify its impor- image and meaning of life and therefore the tance, schools based on its fundamental teach- lives of people. ings were created. Education was devised as a medium to explain through diverse forms of As fanaticism rose, people worked to let the science and philosophy the ideas behind the reign of their own dogmas run uninterrupted. Black Cube. The idea of sharing the world with any other doctrine that their own would have meant comArtists paid tributes in all the forms to the plete failure. Disagreement ensued as each soBlack Cube. People lived for the Black Cube. ciety channelled every scientific development, Music was written to carry on the doctrines every ideological cornerstone into discreditof the Black Cube. Once the Black Cube was ing the opposite worldview. It was a matter of built people would do anything to defend it. To time—he added to my silent stare. protect it they created an army of like-minded people. He walked out of the room. And what about the White rectangle? —I in- Speechless, I followed him pass the paintings, terjected. out of the building. Those left out by the doctrines of the Black Cube, decided to create their own parallel society. The White Tower was the icon of a life devised in sharp contrast to that of the Black Cube. If the Cube was dark, the Tower was light. If the Cube represented transcendental opacity, the tower stood for ultimate transparency.
As he stopped at the door, I kept walking into the ruins without a uttering a word. Without daring to look back I found myself deeply lost into the nothingness the paintings had fundamentally strived to portray.
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INSTALLATION That does not mean, however, that the installation is somehow “immaterial.” On the contrary, the installation is material par excellence, since it is spatial—and being in the space is the most general definition of being material. The installation transforms the empty, neutral, public space into an individual artwork—and it invites the visitor to experience this space as the holistic, totalizing space of an artwork. —Boris Groys
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GALLERY IN CAOCHANGDI
Gallery in Caochangdi Beijing, China Exhibition Space, Office, Storage Commission 2016-
INSTALLATION Boris Grous, Politics of Installation, e-flux. A Version of this text was given as a lecture at Whitechapel Gallery, London, on October 2, 2008
Ruin
State A derelict façade devoid of any intention. A Beijing is a fast city. The life cycle of buildings front yard lacking any identity. A pastiche of meant to be replaced hastily often produces ad hoc HVAC details. defacto ruins. Architecture is slow. Even in a fast city, buildings take time to be ‘needed’, requested, designed, built.
Site Caochangdi Village is Beijing’s second art centre. After the rise and gentrification process of 798 (Beijing’s main art centre), Caochangdi moved to occupy a center role in the country’s art development. Attracting galleries of serious gravitas, the suburban town positions it’s premature ruins as spaces full of potential.
Request How to create quality exhibition space on the dusty outskirts of Caochangdi Village, a gallery and art space conglomerate on Beijing’s 5th Ring Road? [ 90 ]
Challenge To create ‘neutrality’ while providing an identity for a new art institution. To minimize heavy structural interventions. To reclaim the lost qualities of the current building. Program Exhibition space for contemporary art exhibitions, office space to meet with artists and collectors, storage for art, storage for miscellaneous Strategies Consolidate the new landscape intervention with a façade using the compositional elements of the current building in an innovative way. To create a ‘white box’ for exhibitions. To create modular furniture for the display of the collection of small objects of the owner.
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IDEAL Present institutions are both too small and too exclusive. The present context is in danger of lacking, on the one hand, recognisable social relevance, and, on the other, the capacity to initiate progress rather than attempt to catch up with it. —Cedric Price
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CONDENSER
Condenser for Architecture, Art and Spatial Investigations Beijing, China Archive, Exhibition Space, Artist-in-Residence Space Commission 2015IDEAL Cedric Price “1.1 Introduction’, Potteries Thinkbelt (unpublished manuscript), February 1966, Cedric Price Archives.
Ruin Beijing is a fast city. The life cycle of buildings meant to be replaced hastily often produces defacto ruins.
front yard lacking any identity. A pastiche of ad hoc HVAC details. Fast Cities produce fast architecture. Fast Architecture is the State of architecture in Beijing.
Architecture is slow. Even in a fast city, buildings take time to be ‘needed’, requested, designed, built.
Challenge To create ‘neutrality’ while providing an identity for a new art institution. To minimize heavy structural interventions. To reclaim the lost qualities (or qualities that nobody ‘knew’ were there) of the current building.
Site Caochangdi Village is Beijing’s second art centre. After the rise and gentrification process of 798 (Beijing’s main art centre), Caochangdi moved to occupy a center role in the country’s art development. Attracting galleries of serious gravitas, the suburban town positions its premature ruins as spaces full of potential. Request How to create quality exhibition space on the dusty outskirts of Caochangdi Village, a gallery and art space conglomerate on Beijing’s 5th Ring Road? State A derelict façade devoid of any intention. A
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Program Exhibition space for contemporary art exhibitions, office space to meet with artists and collectors, storage for art, storage for miscellaneous Strategies Consolidate the new landscape intervention with a façade using the compositional elements of the current building in an innovative way. Create a ‘white cube’ for exhibitions. Design modular furniture for the display of the collection of small objects of the owner.
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The WAIZine 4 is possible thanks to collaborators, curators, organizations, critics, and friends. WAI would like to thank Ronald Frankowski, Michelle Garnaut, Bruno van der Burg, Paula Alvarez, Pedro Gadanho, Daan Roggenveen, Beatrice Leanza, Sarah Herda, Joseph Grima, Christopher Rey Perez, Aaron Betsky, Petra Eckhard, Guido Tesio, Anh-Linh Ngo, Zhang Ke, Elias Redstone, Josh Feola, Li Shan, Hao Chen, Ava Liu, Milia BiXin, Li Jie, Simon Zhou, Francisco Javier Rodriguez, Geisel Cabrera, Joao Dias Pereira, Claudia Taborda, Ma Yongfeng, Merve Bedir, Capital M, M on the Bund, Glam, Beijing Culture and Art Center, Parasite 2.0, Unicorn Center for Art, Institute Francais in Beijing, TU Graz, TU Munich, ETSA Madrid, ETSA Malaga, ETSA Barcelona, Horizonte Journal for Architectural Discourse, Arch +, Architectural Review, Columbia Books on Architecture and the City, Time-Out Beijing, the Chicago Architecture Biennial, Shenzhen Hong Kong Urbanism and Architecture Bi-City Biennale, Beijing Design Week, Shanghai International Literary Festival.
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