Eva Franch: "New perspectives are needed because there are new ways of understanding the world"
Imatge:
© Col·legi d'Arquitectes de Catalunya (COAC)
Transgressive. Even “uncomfortable”, the Dean of COCA, Lluís Comerón, went on to say about Eva Franch’s conference. Architect and curator, Franch is Chief Curator and Executive Director of the Storefront for Art and Architecture in New York. Based in said city, her professional practiced is characterised by relating experimental art forms, design and architecture.
The conference she made on 25th November at COAC’s conference hall - within the Architecture Congress - was the first one she pronounced in her native tongue: Catalan. This is a fact that exposes her global recognition. Franch started her speech explaining Storefront’s values, a small gallery which “generates debates which cannot take place in other venues, an experimental place, committed to issues like housing and precariousness, which poses questions nobody asks”. It also poses queries such as: how are cities to be built, now the world has nothing to do with the one a few years ago. “Before, a city was divided amongst areas to live, areas to work and areas of leisure. Now we must build a different type of city. We can live, work and have fun without having to get out of bed”. To Franch, the architect holds the responsibility and the privilege to articulate such responses, but “we often do not know what the questions are”.
This is why she and her team are creating projects such as 'Competition of competitions', a contest where architects themselves must be able to write up the bases of a competition to build the city people need and, therefore, select “that which is urgent”. The project awarded in said competition was, she said, the only one that, besides presenting what needed to be done, also posed what needed to be knocked down. Architects also work by substraction”.
“New perspectives are needed, because there are new ways of understanding the world”, which is why Franch advocates for building cities based on a new model. “Even neighbourhoods are old bureaucratic structures”, she said. “We now share more than ever: pictures, houses, cars… as a result of technological innovations”. This must influence architecture. In order to do that, Franch defends Storefront’s spirit: provocation. And she quoted her university professor Xavier Rubert de Ventós: “only what surprises us makes us think”.
Career
Versatile, creative and natural born researcher, Franch has curated international projects and received numerous awards and scholarships. Her work has been internationally exhibited at FAD of Barcelona, the Venice Architecture Biennale, the Vitra Design Museum or the Shenzen Architecture Biennale, amongst other. Winner of the Suzanne Kolarik Underwood prize or the FAD prize for emerging architects, her strong academic and professional performance has been acknowledged with numerous awards such as the Howard Crosby Butler Travelling Fellowship (2006) or La Caixa (2005-2007). After graduating in Princeton, Franch lectured at SUNY Buffalo, New York, as a Peter Reyner Banham Fellow (2007-08) and at Rice University of Architecture, Houston (2008-2010) as Master Thesis Director. The work of Eva Franch has been exhibited at the Center of Architecture of New York, the Korea Institute of Registered Architects in Daegu, FAD Barcelona, NAI Rotterdam, the Shenzen Architecture Biennale, or the Venice Architecture Biennale. She has been a member of Schloss Solitude Academy in Houston, Texas (2009-2011), and has taught seminars and courses such as Ecologies of Excess, Atmospheres of utopia, Performing Representations, Utopia as Doubt, On Banality-On Metaphor, CityThemeCity or Syn-City: a political sensorium.
The conference she made on 25th November at COAC’s conference hall - within the Architecture Congress - was the first one she pronounced in her native tongue: Catalan. This is a fact that exposes her global recognition. Franch started her speech explaining Storefront’s values, a small gallery which “generates debates which cannot take place in other venues, an experimental place, committed to issues like housing and precariousness, which poses questions nobody asks”. It also poses queries such as: how are cities to be built, now the world has nothing to do with the one a few years ago. “Before, a city was divided amongst areas to live, areas to work and areas of leisure. Now we must build a different type of city. We can live, work and have fun without having to get out of bed”. To Franch, the architect holds the responsibility and the privilege to articulate such responses, but “we often do not know what the questions are”.
This is why she and her team are creating projects such as 'Competition of competitions', a contest where architects themselves must be able to write up the bases of a competition to build the city people need and, therefore, select “that which is urgent”. The project awarded in said competition was, she said, the only one that, besides presenting what needed to be done, also posed what needed to be knocked down. Architects also work by substraction”.
“New perspectives are needed, because there are new ways of understanding the world”, which is why Franch advocates for building cities based on a new model. “Even neighbourhoods are old bureaucratic structures”, she said. “We now share more than ever: pictures, houses, cars… as a result of technological innovations”. This must influence architecture. In order to do that, Franch defends Storefront’s spirit: provocation. And she quoted her university professor Xavier Rubert de Ventós: “only what surprises us makes us think”.
Career
Versatile, creative and natural born researcher, Franch has curated international projects and received numerous awards and scholarships. Her work has been internationally exhibited at FAD of Barcelona, the Venice Architecture Biennale, the Vitra Design Museum or the Shenzen Architecture Biennale, amongst other. Winner of the Suzanne Kolarik Underwood prize or the FAD prize for emerging architects, her strong academic and professional performance has been acknowledged with numerous awards such as the Howard Crosby Butler Travelling Fellowship (2006) or La Caixa (2005-2007). After graduating in Princeton, Franch lectured at SUNY Buffalo, New York, as a Peter Reyner Banham Fellow (2007-08) and at Rice University of Architecture, Houston (2008-2010) as Master Thesis Director. The work of Eva Franch has been exhibited at the Center of Architecture of New York, the Korea Institute of Registered Architects in Daegu, FAD Barcelona, NAI Rotterdam, the Shenzen Architecture Biennale, or the Venice Architecture Biennale. She has been a member of Schloss Solitude Academy in Houston, Texas (2009-2011), and has taught seminars and courses such as Ecologies of Excess, Atmospheres of utopia, Performing Representations, Utopia as Doubt, On Banality-On Metaphor, CityThemeCity or Syn-City: a political sensorium.
10/01/2017
Josep Lluís Mateo: "Architecture is the tool to build a better world"
Imatge:
© Col·legi d'Arquitectes de Catalunya (COAC)
The Architecture Congress asked Josep-Lluís Mateo for a reflection on the values of architecture. This was a challenge not without difficulties, as COAC’s Dean, Lluís Comerón, acknowledged. But Mateo rose to the occasion with a lot of precision, serenity and, why not, also intimacy. He made it “abstract” and not from his personal of professional point of view, he explained.
The architect from Barcelona spoke about the relationship between architecture and society, and what could or should change to adapt to the new times and be able to strengthen the bond between one and the other: a bond that, in the past few years, kept loosening. According to Mateo, “architecture is the construction of the world and, as such, the expression of the society reflecting the values of the moment: greed, sadness, fears…” Architecture, by definition, builds, expresses, and formalises society, he said. Mateo sees architecture as the necessary middleman “on the quest to better worlds”. He spoke about adaptation to new times, where participatory social movements by citizens are on the rise, “a very suitable way to define current problems and needs”. In these contexts, “the architect is the only one capable of generating projects, of formalising them”, to respond to what people require.
Career
Josep Lluís Mateo is PhD Architect and founder of mateoarquitectura, professor of the ETHZ since 2002 and author of various publications. Mateo graduated at the ETSAB, where he is a professor since 1984. He was editor of the magazine Quaderns d’Arquitectura i Urbanisme from 1981 t0 1990, published by the Architects’ Association of Catalonia. His work is framed within a certain eclectic rationalism - drawing from rationalist architecture -: a style which defends the relationship between construction and architecture with a special emphasis on composition; which highlights a commitment between tradition and modernity, as well as the urban character of architecture.
Mateo gives a conceptual treatment to architecture, questioning the idea of traditional beauty and assuming the ugliness of suburbia architecture, as reflected in the reconversion of the factory Can Felipa into the Community Centre of Poblenou (1984-1991), and the multifunctional complex at Joan Güell Street (1989-1993), both in Barcelona. On occasion of the 2004 Universal Forum of Cultures, he designed the International Convention Centre of Barcelona (2000-2004). It features an undulating, irregular-shaped metallic structure which hides the holding elements. This, in turn, creates large open spaces on the inside which allow for a flexible layout.
The architect from Barcelona spoke about the relationship between architecture and society, and what could or should change to adapt to the new times and be able to strengthen the bond between one and the other: a bond that, in the past few years, kept loosening. According to Mateo, “architecture is the construction of the world and, as such, the expression of the society reflecting the values of the moment: greed, sadness, fears…” Architecture, by definition, builds, expresses, and formalises society, he said. Mateo sees architecture as the necessary middleman “on the quest to better worlds”. He spoke about adaptation to new times, where participatory social movements by citizens are on the rise, “a very suitable way to define current problems and needs”. In these contexts, “the architect is the only one capable of generating projects, of formalising them”, to respond to what people require.
Career
Josep Lluís Mateo is PhD Architect and founder of mateoarquitectura, professor of the ETHZ since 2002 and author of various publications. Mateo graduated at the ETSAB, where he is a professor since 1984. He was editor of the magazine Quaderns d’Arquitectura i Urbanisme from 1981 t0 1990, published by the Architects’ Association of Catalonia. His work is framed within a certain eclectic rationalism - drawing from rationalist architecture -: a style which defends the relationship between construction and architecture with a special emphasis on composition; which highlights a commitment between tradition and modernity, as well as the urban character of architecture.
Mateo gives a conceptual treatment to architecture, questioning the idea of traditional beauty and assuming the ugliness of suburbia architecture, as reflected in the reconversion of the factory Can Felipa into the Community Centre of Poblenou (1984-1991), and the multifunctional complex at Joan Güell Street (1989-1993), both in Barcelona. On occasion of the 2004 Universal Forum of Cultures, he designed the International Convention Centre of Barcelona (2000-2004). It features an undulating, irregular-shaped metallic structure which hides the holding elements. This, in turn, creates large open spaces on the inside which allow for a flexible layout.
10/01/2017
Beatriz Colomina: "There is a need to build a hybrid city, between what is real and what is virtual"
Imatge:
© Col·legi d'Arquitectes de Catalunya (COAC)
The last lecture of the closing ceremony of the Architecture Congress was that of Beatriz Colomina, a PhD architect; a historian and a theorist specialised in the relationship between architecture, users and the media; and professor of History and Theory of Architecture and Director of the postgraduate program at Princeton University.
Colomina highlighted that, with industrialisation, the workplace - factory or office - got split from housing. This is the type of city we are still living in. However, with the advent of mobile phones, the idea of a 9-5 working day is already outdated. Now we are available 24 hours, we live ’24/7’. Colomina explained that the Wall Street Journal announced that 80% of young professionals in New York regularly worked from home. “The post-industrial era gets work back into the home and, specifically, into bed”, the architect explained. “Capitalism implies the end of our chance to sleep. It colonises every minute of our lives so that we produce and consume”, she said. This transforms architecture, because it definitely changes temporality and space. We will live in a continuum, “which is another form of exploitation”.
What is the shape of the prison where we cease to differentiate night and day, work and leisure? The bed has become the working space. Somehow, Hugh Hefner, owner of ‘Playboy’, already anticipated this, Colomina explained. The tycoon has barely left his round bed since 1960, when he moved to the Playboy Mansion in Chicago and “made it the epicentre of a global empire he has been managing wearing pyjamas and a silken dressing gown”.
A perverse logic. To understand it, Colomina explained the functioning of the mobile app ‘snapchat’: a social network in which the file disappears from the recipients’ phone between 1 and 10 seconds later. Or the fact that a 5-year-old is able to design his own avatar and Facebook page. We are all building ourselves in this space. We will exist as physical people, but also as our avatars, what we would like to be. “Everyone is the curator of your images on the net”, she said.
“There is no turning back”, Colomina asserted. We are facing a situation which may imply the end of work as we know it for many people. But it is also the end of architecture as we knew it up until now. The digital space has appeared, and “there is a need to build a hybrid city, between what is real and what is virtual”.
In the new world of social networks, knowing what is being built is also important, and “how “instagrammable” a building is, how many tweets or likes on Facebook will it get?” To Colomina, “the responsibility of architects is understanding said new digital media and their power. Nowadays, no one wants to be on the Times cover anymore”. Social networks are redefining spaces, the line between private and public gets blurred. And everything becomes Big Data.
Colomina highlighted that, with industrialisation, the workplace - factory or office - got split from housing. This is the type of city we are still living in. However, with the advent of mobile phones, the idea of a 9-5 working day is already outdated. Now we are available 24 hours, we live ’24/7’. Colomina explained that the Wall Street Journal announced that 80% of young professionals in New York regularly worked from home. “The post-industrial era gets work back into the home and, specifically, into bed”, the architect explained. “Capitalism implies the end of our chance to sleep. It colonises every minute of our lives so that we produce and consume”, she said. This transforms architecture, because it definitely changes temporality and space. We will live in a continuum, “which is another form of exploitation”.
What is the shape of the prison where we cease to differentiate night and day, work and leisure? The bed has become the working space. Somehow, Hugh Hefner, owner of ‘Playboy’, already anticipated this, Colomina explained. The tycoon has barely left his round bed since 1960, when he moved to the Playboy Mansion in Chicago and “made it the epicentre of a global empire he has been managing wearing pyjamas and a silken dressing gown”.
A perverse logic. To understand it, Colomina explained the functioning of the mobile app ‘snapchat’: a social network in which the file disappears from the recipients’ phone between 1 and 10 seconds later. Or the fact that a 5-year-old is able to design his own avatar and Facebook page. We are all building ourselves in this space. We will exist as physical people, but also as our avatars, what we would like to be. “Everyone is the curator of your images on the net”, she said.
“There is no turning back”, Colomina asserted. We are facing a situation which may imply the end of work as we know it for many people. But it is also the end of architecture as we knew it up until now. The digital space has appeared, and “there is a need to build a hybrid city, between what is real and what is virtual”.
In the new world of social networks, knowing what is being built is also important, and “how “instagrammable” a building is, how many tweets or likes on Facebook will it get?” To Colomina, “the responsibility of architects is understanding said new digital media and their power. Nowadays, no one wants to be on the Times cover anymore”. Social networks are redefining spaces, the line between private and public gets blurred. And everything becomes Big Data.
10/01/2017
Juan Herreros: "The current architect is a DJ. The myth of the orchestra conductor has fallen"
Imatge:
© Col·legi d'Arquitectes de Catalunya (COAC)
Madrid-based architect Juan Herreros opened the closing session of the Architecture Congress, and did so with a lecture on architecture’s general interest and its values to improve cities, the land and people’s lives.
The architect was in awe of the works at the Sant Antoni Market, where the event took place: “when something is under construction, this becomes a worrying moment which consumes many people’s energy to be able to make something new, something which will remain over time and was built with a lot of effort”. According to Herreros, this is architecture’s complexity: moving a project forward. A complexity which, nowadays, in times of change, demands the full attention of architects. To Herreros, the complexity of new technologies lies not on the physical side of them (software, hardware…), but on how these act upon society and transform it in a way which was completely unknown up to now.
“The future of the practice of architecture is without drawings, without physical presence and without full control of the project” he stated. There are real-time production systems which allow instant decision-making, even without physically being in the office or the construction site. “We now have a global way of thinking which allows us to work in different contexts, and remotely manage local teams”. According to Herreros, the position of the architect who wants to control everything is now outdated. There is currently the opportunity to develop projects with experimental contents, which involve sharing grounds with other teams.
Herreros used the International Convention Centre of Bogota or the Torre Banco Panama as examples. They are buildings planned amongst various architecture studios and professionals from other disciplines, each of them focussing on their own section but, at the same time, adapting to the new times and evolving with the necessities of the moment. He explained that, in the projects developed in his practice, they now only draw a couple of floors, elevations and sections. Afterwards, distance allows for shape customization, as was done in Panama. At the CICB they got rid of ramps, stages, seats… to repurpose it to be more versatile than the classical convention centre. This way, the building got to integrate with the city and its people. “The contrast between a globalised vision and local knowledge, allows the environment to be read from different perspectives”, Herreros highlighted.
“The essential purpose of the architect is not convincing others that their project is the best, but listening and offering an analysis of what a city needs”. This is why, to Herreros, teamwork is essential instead of “as it used to be, when the architect was surrounded by helpers who would solve his problems”. “Architects are currently more like a DJ, they do what they can with what they have. They are not at the top anymore, but on the side. The myth of the architect as a one-man-band has fallen”.
To Herreros, global thought is one of the main strategies to explore the future of cities. “We need to understand that, when we do something around the corner, this is part of the world. And when we do something at the other end of the world, this says a lot about that place and about us”. Hence, he asks for reconnecting with the small efforts of any architect. “We have to tell society what our job consists of so they understand what we can do for them. Architecture must be essential in the construction of the future: a future that we know is going to be complicated. This is why we need our profession to be aware of what we can do for everyone else”.
Career
Doctor Juan Herreros is a professor at ETSAM, professor at the GSAPP Columbia University and founding partner of Estudio Herreros. He has been a visiting professor at the University of Princeton, ITT in Chicago and the Architectural Association in London, amongst other. His works have been widely published, awarded and exhibited in both individual and collective exhibitions including the Spanish and Latin American Biennial of Architecture; MACBA; MOMA; and several Venice Biennale. His most outstanding works are the Munch Museum in Oslo; the Agora International Convention Centre in Bogota; the Art Gallery Carreras Múgica in Bilbao; the Torre Banco in Panama; the installation “Dialogue Architecture” at the Venice Biennale; or the public space “Communication Hut” in South Korea, amongst many other.
The architect was in awe of the works at the Sant Antoni Market, where the event took place: “when something is under construction, this becomes a worrying moment which consumes many people’s energy to be able to make something new, something which will remain over time and was built with a lot of effort”. According to Herreros, this is architecture’s complexity: moving a project forward. A complexity which, nowadays, in times of change, demands the full attention of architects. To Herreros, the complexity of new technologies lies not on the physical side of them (software, hardware…), but on how these act upon society and transform it in a way which was completely unknown up to now.
“The future of the practice of architecture is without drawings, without physical presence and without full control of the project” he stated. There are real-time production systems which allow instant decision-making, even without physically being in the office or the construction site. “We now have a global way of thinking which allows us to work in different contexts, and remotely manage local teams”. According to Herreros, the position of the architect who wants to control everything is now outdated. There is currently the opportunity to develop projects with experimental contents, which involve sharing grounds with other teams.
Herreros used the International Convention Centre of Bogota or the Torre Banco Panama as examples. They are buildings planned amongst various architecture studios and professionals from other disciplines, each of them focussing on their own section but, at the same time, adapting to the new times and evolving with the necessities of the moment. He explained that, in the projects developed in his practice, they now only draw a couple of floors, elevations and sections. Afterwards, distance allows for shape customization, as was done in Panama. At the CICB they got rid of ramps, stages, seats… to repurpose it to be more versatile than the classical convention centre. This way, the building got to integrate with the city and its people. “The contrast between a globalised vision and local knowledge, allows the environment to be read from different perspectives”, Herreros highlighted.
“The essential purpose of the architect is not convincing others that their project is the best, but listening and offering an analysis of what a city needs”. This is why, to Herreros, teamwork is essential instead of “as it used to be, when the architect was surrounded by helpers who would solve his problems”. “Architects are currently more like a DJ, they do what they can with what they have. They are not at the top anymore, but on the side. The myth of the architect as a one-man-band has fallen”.
To Herreros, global thought is one of the main strategies to explore the future of cities. “We need to understand that, when we do something around the corner, this is part of the world. And when we do something at the other end of the world, this says a lot about that place and about us”. Hence, he asks for reconnecting with the small efforts of any architect. “We have to tell society what our job consists of so they understand what we can do for them. Architecture must be essential in the construction of the future: a future that we know is going to be complicated. This is why we need our profession to be aware of what we can do for everyone else”.
Career
Doctor Juan Herreros is a professor at ETSAM, professor at the GSAPP Columbia University and founding partner of Estudio Herreros. He has been a visiting professor at the University of Princeton, ITT in Chicago and the Architectural Association in London, amongst other. His works have been widely published, awarded and exhibited in both individual and collective exhibitions including the Spanish and Latin American Biennial of Architecture; MACBA; MOMA; and several Venice Biennale. His most outstanding works are the Munch Museum in Oslo; the Agora International Convention Centre in Bogota; the Art Gallery Carreras Múgica in Bilbao; the Torre Banco in Panama; the installation “Dialogue Architecture” at the Venice Biennale; or the public space “Communication Hut” in South Korea, amongst many other.
10/01/2017