What About the WAIzine Release?

What About It? Part 1 Released

Introduction excerpt:

Architecture is tragedy.

Behind every architectural enterprise a series of equally legitimate forces are confronted against each other. Every decision derives from the cancellation of possibilities and the consummation of limitations. Architecture is a product of the struggle between poli­tics, the environment, history, the city, the client, and the public. The maelstrom of equally justified issues draws architecture to an inevitable irony: How to produce a project without obliterating all its other possibilities?

What About It? is born out of this dichotomy; WAI feeds itself from the conflictive nature of architecture and provides a platform in which its multiple conditions can coexist. What About It? is a WAIzine: a graphic narrative in magazine format that includes the intellectual repertoire of the first two years of WAI Architecture Think Tank. The topics of this first edition of What About It? range from the first manifesto on architecture in almost half a century with “The Shapes of Hardcore Architecture” to exploring the possibilities of filmmaking, literature and narrative architecture as with “Wall Stalker” and “The Story of The Tower” as tools to better understand the built environ­ment and its political implications. The WAIzine finds a common ground between medium and representation, content and form, ideas and realization, substance and fashion. Its focus oscillates within critical texts, pure research, graphic narratives, provocative imagery, conceptual projects and architectural experiments.

What About It? is a medium through which questions are asked, ideas are diffused, and discussions are initiated. WAI is a Workshop for Architecture Intelligentsia. WAI asks What About It?

Contents

Underground

What About WAI?

Autobiographical Text, Photomontage

Fashion

What About a Fashion Museum for the 21st Century?

Vertical Omotesando, Fashion Museum, Tokyo, Japan

What About the Burning Icon?

Text, Photomontage

Hardcore

What About Understanding Contemporary Architecture?

The Shapes of Hardcore Architecture

Taxonomic Catalog of Contemporary Architecture

What About the Pure Shapes?

Graphic Narrative

Future

What About Potentially Valuable Urbanism?

Text, Graphic Narrative

Preparation

What About a School for the Talented Youth?

San Juan Football School and Training Center, San Juan, Puerto Rico

Island

What About the Possibility of Other Islands?

Text, Graphic Narrative

Spectacle

What About Glamour?

Text, Photomontages

Greenville

What About Blue Sky Utopias and Dreams of Green Cities?

Rendering the Clean

Text, Photomontage

Stalker

What About the Wall Stalker?

Narrative Architecture, Text, Photomontages, Animation

Genealogy

What About a WAI Timeline?

Graphic Narrative

Authentic

What About an Urban Fiction?

The Story of the Tower, Beijing, China

Narrative Architecture, Text, Photomontages

Metropolitan

What About a Metropolitan Amsterdam?

Metrodam, Mix Use Development, Amsterdam, The Netherlands

Dreams

What About Apendix?

Project Data

Editorial Board

Nathalie Frankowski

Cruz Garcia

(WAI Architecture Think Tank)

Guest Editor and Proofreading

Ronald Frankowski

Graphic and Content Design

Nathalie Frankowski

Cruz Garcia

(WAI Architecture Think Tank)

Thanks to

Chen Ling

Chillfool / Julien Derreveaux

Concept Magazine

Conditions Magazine

Damdi Publishers

Designboom

Mark Magazine

Monu Magazine in Urbanism

Revista Arq.i.tec

Revista InForma

Superfront Gallery

Zilk / Zarisheili Melendez

Zhang Ke

First Published 2011 by WAI Architecture Think Tank

Dong Yang Guan Hutong

#8 Building Entrance 1 Apt. 302,

Dongcheng District

Beijing 100028

P.R.China

Printed in China