WAI Architecture Think Tank

What About Lecture in the UPR Video?

2012-02-10T19:35:00.000-08:00

Video: Lecture WAI in the UPR

San Juan, Puerto Rico

January 25, 2012

WAI Architecture Think Tank founders Nathalie Frankowski and Cruz Garcia were in the University of Puerto Rico for the opening of the solo exhibition “What About It?: WAI Architecture Think Tank en la UPR”.

As part of the event, Cruz presented to a full auditorium a lecture about the origins of WAI, its theoretical concerns, and its on-going projects and publications.

The Lecture that was the first that WAI presents outside of China was presented to a Spanish speaking audience.

Lecture:

Cruz Garcia

Presentation:

Nathalie Frankowski

Cruz Garcia

Introduction: Francisco Javier Rodriguez

Dean School of Architecture

What About Archizines in Milan Video?

2012-02-10T19:09:00.000-08:00

Video: ArchiZines Exhibition in Milan

Curated by Elias Redstone, the Archizines Exhibition that features What About It? Part 1 amongst a selection of 60 worldwide architectural publications is going to be on display in Spazio FMG per l’Architettura in Milan, Italy.

The exhibition will be open to the public from January 27, until February 23.

Here a video of the exhibition.

What About the IFP Workshop?

2012-02-05T03:37:00.000-08:00

WAI to Lecture at the IFP in Beijing

As part of the Iterate Workshop the Insitute for Provocation in Beijing will host a series of lectures that will close with WAI’s presentation Wednesday, February 8 at 7:00pm. The Lecture series will include Michael Caster, Feb 2; Benjamin Beller (BaO), Feb 6; Hutopolis, Feb 7; and WAI Think Tank, Feb. 8.

The Workshop is located at:

Heizhima Hutong 13

Dongcheng District

100009

Beijing

For more info go to:

http://iprovoke.org/

What About Archizines in Milan?

2012-01-29T11:03:00.000-08:00

Photo by Mauro Consilvio

WAI in Milan

The Archizines exhibition that features What About It? Part 1, has opened in Spazio FMG per l'Architettura in Milano, Italy. The WAIzine that is one of 60 contemporary architectural publications that are showcased, will be displayed for the public from January 27 until February 23.

For more info go to:

Archizines

Spazio FMG

PUBLICATION TITLE is proud to be included in ARCHIZINES – a project curated by Elias Redstone to showcase the best new architecture magazines, fanzines and journals from around the world. The touring exhibition was initiated in collaboration with the Architectural Association, London, with art direction by Folch Studio, Barcelona. A catalogue to accompany the exhibition has been published by Bedford Press.

ARCHIZINES is showing at SpazioFMG in Milan until 23 February 2012.

(www.archizines.com)

Photo by Mauro Consilvio

What About the Lecture and Exhibition at the UPR?

2012-01-26T13:19:00.000-08:00

WAI at the UPR

WAI’s lecture “What about It? WAI Architecture Think Tank was presented at the School of Architecture of the Universidad de Puerto Rico to a packed auditorium. The discussion was followed by an intense series of questions and discussions, and by the opening of WAI’s solo exhibition.

WAI’s presentation and exhibition marked the opening of the 2012 school of architecture’s lecture series.

What about WAI’s third anniversary?

2012-01-15T06:58:00.000-08:00

Le Poème de WAI

To celebrate its third anniversary, WAI Architecture Think Tank has released “Le Poème de WAI”, a peepshow of the visual combustible that fuels WAI’s intellectual project.

A trait d'union between brainwash and brainstorm, Le Poème de WAI shows an abstract of the forces that shape the texts, narratives and experiments of WAI Architecture Think Tank.

Music by Miles Davis, “Ascenseur Pour L'Echafaud” (c.1958) and Jan Garbarek, Eberhard Weber, “Chorus” (1984)

What About Universidad de Puerto Rico?

2011-12-24T06:10:00.000-08:00

WAI Lecture and Exhibition at Universidad de Puerto Rico

The School of Architecture of the Universidad de Puerto Rico will host a lecture and the exhibition of WAI Architecture Think Tank the 25^th of January of 2012. WAI’s presentation will open the Lecture series of the School of Architecture that this academic semester will include Thom Mayne, Cameron Sinclair, Kieran-Timberlake, Juddy Kinnard, Alan Balfour, Jorge Silvetti-Rodolfo Machado, Takaharu Tezuka, and Javier Sanchez.

The lecture will be open to the public and will be followed by the discussion and the opening of What About It? / UPR Exhibition.

What About Archizines in the AA?

2011-12-24T04:26:00.000-08:00

Video/Image by Johan Tristan Kinnucan

WAI interview at the Architectural Association

The ARCHIZINES exhibition held in the Architectural Association in London that featured 60 contemporary architectural publications from around the world presented the creators and editors of the magazines through a series of video interviews displayed in IPads. The series of questions presented a unique opportunity to display the different perspectives and conditions that fuel contemporary architectural intelligence today, and to discuss the influence of printed matter in a digitalized world.

What is the relationship between architecture and publishing?

Cruz: We think that there are two kind of (architectural) publishing. One that is more oriented to publicity and marketing, and that’s the one that we have plenty of, publishing a lot of images, a lot of not very critical texts, and it responds more to the market. It is not necessarily very critical with itself. And then on the other hand, we have another kind of publishing that is the one that is concerned with the framing of ideas. How to make these ideas permanent? And it’s the one that was used by Adolf Loos, by Le Corbusier, and the CIAM during modernism, and Archigram, the Metabolists, in the sixties. And Koolhaas. We’ve been losing it since the economic boom in the 90’s, when everything was getting built and there was not a very strong culture of rethinking what people were doing. And I think that relationship between the publishing of ideas is very important for architecture to create a database and a background for the future work of the people that write the texts and for the people that reads them. And for students, and for the professionals. It is what carries the discipline forward.

How do you edit architecture?

Cruz: In order to edit architecture, you got to provide architecture with tools with which you can edit it. The more tools you have, the more options you will have to find ways to edit architecture. It could be publishing, texts, it could be narrative architecture, it could be filmmaking, it could be music.

We always like to put emphasis on these two speeds of editing. One is really slow, building architecture or the construction of architecture. How can you edit architecture through a really wide period of time through what you are building? And the other one is all these simultaneous tools, like magazines, books and movies, and other kinds of media.

If we put an example, we always like to quote from the Modernists, because they were perhaps the strongest ideological period of recent architecture. And if we see Le Corbusier, how he went from his early houses to hardcore modernist aesthetics, and how he detached himself from that period and then started experimenting with the plastics of the building, and how he developed simultaneously these set of tools that set the parameters for the future of the practice like his first texts, more doctrinal texts, L'esprit nouveau, and the texts in which the CIAM bases its doctrines, and then poetry, painting, sculpture, and other kinds of mediums. And we can see how important is to provide these tools because then you can set the parameters on which you are going to set your practice after. How does people that are following you and looking at what you are doing, like the students and professionals, and academics, they can see the development, and then architecture gets edited all the time.

Nathalie: A way to edit architecture is by the process in which you produce architecture and express yourself and express your ideas, so if you use these kinds of medium, like for example filmmaking, collage, theoretical texts, research, all different kinds of tools that are not just design oriented, then you come by editing your ideas and your approach, and then you can express a much more broader expression, or idea of the meaning of architecture.

What is the role of printed matter in the digital age?

Nathalie: Printed matter in the digital age really help us to mark a point in time, and physically produce a material that will encapsulate the statements or concepts you want to develop, in this book or publication. Compare to more digital era where maybe for the user is more difficult to gather or to get what you’re looking for because you don’t know where to look for. You have so many information, that if you have printed matter, it’s all gathered in one material you can always keep, and refer to it in time. (Printed matter) it’s also a time issue, it’s something more permanent, that will not change, that you can always use as reference. Also, as a user, printed matter, will allow you to really experience it with your own speed compared maybe to the internet or even a documentary, and all these digital products that have their own speed. The printing issue will always give you, as a user, the freedom to interact with it at your own speed, in your own order.

How are architectural publications changing?

Cruz: Architecture publication in itself hasn’t change too much. If you consider the history of architecture publications maybe in the last hundred years, we have, as we said before, two kinds of publications, ones that are more market-oriented, and the other ones that are statements in printed matter. But has changed a lot are the mediums of diffusion of architectural information. For example, we can quote our case. We come straight out of our blog, which is a really inexpensive way to get information gathered. And then you gain notoriety through the publication of the blog, people know your work, and eventually you end up printing that stuff, because in the end you still believe in the permanent power of the printed matter.

But, otherwise that wouldn’t happen because if we look at the architectural discipline which is very elitist, and is a small society, and is very secluded. If you don’t know anybody from a publisher, or if your not connected with any school would be very difficult to find an outlet where you can get your ideas diffused. And then, we’re not associated with any of this, but then we find these new technologies would help us to present our ideas to a bigger and wider public. And then, some people quote you on another website, for example, eventually you end up in a magazine, and then other people meet you, and know you, and know your work, and basically without having any physical presence, you get your work known, and then it becomes part, embedded, a new branch of the architectural publications, with all these digital material.

Nathalie: This new dinamic helps to break a bit the pattern that exists, that was very like, publishing, Architecture publications was quite elitist, as you said already, it was reserved to more academic people, or people who already have a lot of experience in the architectural practice, so in a way the digital era helped a lot of people, young people, to access to this architectural world, of contemporary architecture, and opened a lot of new opportunities for a lot of different people.

Image by Sue Barr

Video/Image by Johan Tristan Kinnucan

What About The ArchHive?

2011-12-23T23:50:00.000-08:00

WAI interview at The ArchHive

International online Critical Archive of Architecture The ArchHive has released an online interview realized to WAI Architecture Think Tank. The interview looks at WAI’s conceptual origins, the publication of the WAIzine, and questions the current position of WAI in the architectural scene.

More information on The ArchHive:
The ArchHive is an online magazine about criticism of architecture. It shows every day projects and creative products from the fresh stuff, to the cameos from the forgotten past, along with experts and scholars’ analysis and comments.

The full interview can be read here.

What About Tsinghua Lecture?

2011-12-19T14:28:00.000-08:00

WAI Lecture and Exhibition at Tsinghua University

What About It? WAI Architecture Think Tank Solo exhibition was showcased at exhibition hall of the School of Architecture of Tsinghua University in Beijing. As part of the SA Forum, WAI also offered lecture that was followed by an intense discussion on Thursday, December 15 .

The exhibition presented 14 projects, story boards, and publications designed by WAI since its foundation in 2008. The work of WAI ranges from Theoretical Texts, to Graphic Narratives in Magazines format, to Narrative Architectures, to urban and architectural projects.

The SA Forum is an initiative to enable independent exchange and interaction at Tsinghua University. It was first initiated in 2010 by Martijn de Geus and is now jointly hosted by the Graduate Student Union at the School of Architecture, and it’s EPMA Program (English Program for Master in Architecture)

What About Ideological Urbanism?

2011-11-21T10:40:00.000-08:00

Post(card) Ideological Icon #1, Suprematism, Lazar Khidekel 1927_ OMA, 2006

Post(card) Ideological Icons
What About revisiting the hardcore shapes of the avant-garde?

It has been almost a century since the air was heavily saturated with the combustible gas of ideology. Almost a hundred years have passed since everything from film, through art and architecture, to urbanism was susceptible to the slightest friction in the atmosphere sparking endless manifestoes and multiple visions of the perennial “new beginning”. But what happens when the ideological fire that fuels urbanism is extinguished, and in its place just smoke remains? What is left after the idealistic energy of the avant-garde has vanished and we are left with necrophilic icons of dead ideologies? Why aren’t we able to see the striking similarities and contrasting disparities between the avatars of yesterday’s ideological urbanism and today’s pop-architectural icons?

In the twenties imaginary taut wires, steel trusses, and structural concrete gave form to the muscular monuments of a Potemkinesque avant-garde. Utopia had a shape. First, it looked like a steel tower spiraling hastily towards the sky, then like a leaning tribune for Lenin, then it took the shape of a sky hook fearlessly cantilevering above the debris of the old city, and of a flying city, soaring in circles weightlessly through the firmament. Not only had the avant-garde announced a victory over the sun, but it promised to use urbanism to melt into air all the solid problems of society.

But, at the point when all possible sorts of fantastic operations on the city were about to be orchestrated, the urban intelligentsia crashed headlong into an ideological wall.

If the dreams of the avant-garde were an improbable mission when their idealistic nostalgia was at its peak, it became almost impossible for them to succeed with a looming economic meltdown, asphyxiating ideological persecutions, and the authorities’ sudden aesthetic preference for neo-classical kitsch—who can forget Boris Iofan’s cake-shaped tower?

In the midst of the suffocating pessimism of the sociopolitical atmosphere of the post-war, the avant-garde managed to find an ideological plateau, and develop in it one last (desperate?) plan. With the catastrophic arrival of the Second World War, Utopia had to change shape. If before the war, urbanism was about tabula rasa, and the ideal new cities were to substitute the old urban fabric with ideological monuments, the new urbanism promised to leave the old cities untouched. The new avant-garde proposed to disguise its ideal cities as colossal buildings that could be developed ad infinitum; urbanism as endless architecture.

The second—and last— coming of ideological urbanism in the 20^th century happened fifty years ago. Aroused by the promising future of the new communication, transportation and construction technologies, the new forms of urbanism were grafted around metabolic systems of urbanization, prefabricated instant cities, and Megastructures.

A new ontology of urban forms was created after a whole new cosmos of ideal cities took over the collective intelligence of urbanism. The image of urbanism suffered a dramatic transformation as ideological cities hovered like weightless blankets above the Champs-Élysées, mirror-coated monuments roamed endlessly through the streets of Graz, pixilated buildings, helix-shaped towers, and mushroom-cloud megaliths metabolically proliferated all over Tokyo, geodesic domes sequestered complete areas of Manhattan island, and entire cities were pictured strolling over the surface of the world’s oceans.

Yet again, so suspicious were the proposals of an avant-garde so detached from reality, so economically unfeasible, so ideologically naïve, that they never found (outside of Japan) any possible application or a client devout enough to believe in their projects.

Today’s generation of media-wise, economically proficient, politically correct architects have decided to resurrect the shapes of the most subversive and energetic forms of urbanism of the last century. In the form of an opportunistic architectural cadavre-exquis (started by one, finished by the other) contemporary urbanism has, under the slogan “the stronger the ideal, the sharper the icons” unearthed some of the most the striking proposals of the avant-garde and repurposed them as harmless and ready to consume coffee-table images.

Like when an archeological discovery loses its history-rich past to the frivolity of the museum walls, the icons of the ideological avant-garde have been sterilized, reupholstered and served up to an image-starving audience that devours them as visual gourmet while overlooking their original potential. Prosthetic appendixes of ideologies that expired decades ago, these architectures now captivate the flash of the cameras and win the praise of the critics due to their bold shapes, iconic presence, and their historical ideological references. Exhaustively photographed, printed, blogged, discussed, awarded, these urban forms have metamorphosed from being the icons of a revolution to being the pretty faces of architectural mass media; hardcore urban ideology as architectural soft porn.

Post(card) Ideological Icon #2, Constructivism, El Lissitzky 1924_ Steven Holl, 2002-09

Post(cards)
Agitational provocations in the form of architectural post(cards), the following images have been structured to stimulate the critical understanding of ideological urbanism, to recognize the use of iconographic architecture as its deus ex machina and to identify the recycling of its most intense proposals by contemporary architecture.

By meticulously selecting two formally related buildings and grafting them together like pictures of an alternative reality, the images have the potential to expose two opposed instances in the evolution of urbanism; first as ideological enterprises, then as harmless architectural icons.

On the left side of the post(cards) stand the icons of the urban intelligentsia. Product of their zeitgeist, these buildings share an intense and turbulent history that saw them rise from the collective nostalgia of the ideological optimistic years of the avant-garde, only then to be crumbled away by the inexorable forces of modernity like sand castles in front of a tsunami. The images display symptomatic manifestations of hardcore ideological urbanism in the form of constructivist sky-hooks, non-objective architectons, and metabolist helicoids.

Standing at the opposite side of the image, a series of contemporary architectures strikingly resemble their ideological predecessors. Like organs without a body, these icons’ lack of any clear ideological manifesto, put into evidence how contemporary architecture not only borrows its shapes, but that through image overexposure, and over use, neutralizes the inherent potential of previous forms of ideological urbanism. The new icons offer no hidden subversive messages, state no unprecedented manifestoes, and represent no underground ideologies. The more they become infatuated with their own image, the more they become like Architectural postcards.

By Nathalie Frankowski and Cruz Garcia

Post(card) Ideological Icon #3, Metabolism, Kisho Kurokawa 1961_ JDS, 2006

What About Ideological Monu?

2011-11-21T06:44:00.000-08:00

WAI has been featured in Monu

WAI’s Post(Card) Ideological Icons has been featured in the 15^th issue of the Rotterdam-based international Magazine on Urbanism, MONU. Under the exciting and polemic topic “Ideological Urbanism”, Monu includes interviews, essays, and projects by Wouter Vanstiphout, Beatriz Ramo (St+ar) Bernd Upmeyer, Patty Heyda, Thomas Ruff, Samir El Kordy and Ying Zhou, Brendan M. Lee, Adria Carbonell, Fredrik Torisson, Brendan Cormier, Christopher Pandolfi, and Simon Rabyniuk (DoUC), Michael Vermeulen, Gale Fulton and Stewart Hicks, Mika Savela, Wes Wilson, Geoffrey Thun, Kathy Velikov and Colin Ripley (RVTR), and Melissa Dittmer, Jamie Witherspoon, and Noah Resnick.

To order a copy online of this and past issues of Monu, including past issues including essays of WAI, go here.

To read WAI’s essay Post(card) Ideological Icons, stay tuned to WAI.

What About Tsinghua?

2011-11-21T06:13:00.000-08:00

WAI Exhibition and Lecture at Tsinghua University

As part of the SA Forum, WAI will be presenting its solo exhibition What About It? from the 10 to the 17 of December, and offering a lecture and discussion the 15 of the same month in the prestigious School of Architecture of Tsinghua University in Beijing.

The SA Forum is an initiative to enable independent exchange and interaction at Tsinghua University. It was first initiated in 2010 by Martijn de Geus and is now jointly hosted by the Graduate Student Union at the School of Architecture, and it’s EPMA-Program (English Program for Master in Architecture). The Topic of the 2011/12 academic year is ‘Towards a Future Habitat.’

For more information please stay tuned to WAI.

What About El Nuevo Dia?

2011-11-21T05:56:00.000-08:00

WAI makes the news in Puerto Rico

An article about the origins of WAI has been featured in the “Por Dentro” section of Puerto Rico’s main newspaper El Nuevo Dia. Written by Eileen Rivera Esquilin, the article and interview published Saturday 19 of November highlights the journey of WAI through Europe, China, and its relationship with Puerto Rico.

For more information please go to the online version of the article in endi.com.

What About Stout Books?

2011-11-13T07:09:00.000-08:00

WAI at William Stout Architectural Books

The last copies of the WAIzine, and the Catalog of the first solo exhibition of WAI have been acquired and are on sale on William Stout Architectural Books. The famous bookshop has two stores in San Francisco and one in Berkeley.

“William Stout Architectural Books carries over 20,000 titles on two floors in the fields of architecture, art, urban planning, graphic and industrial design, furniture and interior design, and landscape architecture. For over thirty years, twenty in the current location, it has been a vital resource for architecture and design books, carrying American and international titles, both in and out of print.”[1]

The issues can be ordered online in Stout Books:

To order What About it? Part 1 go here.

To order the Catalog of What About It? Solo Exhibition go here.

William Stout Architectural Books

804 Montgomery Street

San Francisco, CA 94133

email for existing orders: orders@stoutbooks.com

for all other inquiries: libri@stoutbooks.coom

for out of print inquiries: scarpa@stoutbooks.com

Mon-Fri: 10:00am-6:30pm

Sat: 10:00am-5:30pm

William Stout Annex

678 Mission Street

San Francisco, CA 94105

email: annex@stoutbooks.com

Mon-Fri: 11:00am-6:00pm

William Stout Berkeley

1605 Solano Ave

Berkeley, CA 94707

email: scarpa@stoutbooks.com

Tuesday-Friday:11:00am-7:00pm

Saturday 12:00pm-7:00pm

Image by Leslie Williamson

What About Archizines at the AA?

2011-11-08T09:38:00.000-08:00

image:valerie bennett

WAI in Archizines Exhibition at the Architectural Association

The Archizines exhibition opened successfully to the public with a series of discussions in the Architectural Association in London. The show that displays 60 contemporary architectural publications will be on display until the 14^th of December. Curated by Elias Redstone, Archizines finds an outlet for the electrifying energy behind the small magazines that still have faith in the power of printed architecture in an age anesthetized by redundant pixels.

Coinciding again with a global crisis —as in the sixties— Archizines marks the renaissance of a critical architectural youth that through printed, stapled, and bind pages claims for a space to express its ideas. After the few remaining “radical” magazines from the sixties ended up as commercial publications, a new faith is put on the experimental nature of the fanzine.

image:valerie bennett

image:sue barr

What About Archizines Catalog?

2011-11-03T19:59:00.000-07:00

WAI at the Archizines exhibition / catalog

To go with the Archizines exhibition at the Architectural Association in London, Bedford Press releases ARCHIZINES, the exhibition catalog. With contributions from Pedro Gadanho (Beyong), Iker Gil (MAS Context), Adam Murray (Preston is my Paris), Rob Wilson (Block), Mimi Zeiger (Maximum Maxim MMXIloudpaper), and more, the catalog highlights the wide variety, and importance of independent publishing to Architecture. Curated by Elias Redstone the exhibition includes a global array of architectural publications, from the WAIzine (Beijing), San Rocco (Venice), Monu (Rotterdam), Conditions (Oslo), Mark (Amsterdam), Candide (Aachen), Critical (Paris), Log (New York), mono.kultur (Berlin), Plot (Buenos Aires), Soiled (Chicago), Friendly Fire (Porto), Generalist (Frankfurt), engawa (Barcelona), PIDGIN (Princeton, New Jersey), Pablo Internacional (Mexico City), MAP (Copenhagen), Junk Jet (Stuttgart), Too Much (Tokyo), P.E.A.R. (London), Preston is my Paris (Preston), to Horizonte (Weimar), and much more.

To get a copy of the catalog go Bedford Press.

The Schedule of the exhibition is: Friday: Press preview 10.00am – 12.00pm Private View 6:30pm-8.30pm

Saturday: Archizines Live at the New Soft Room at the AA

Printing Architecture - 3.00PM

A discussion on publishing practice in the digital Age

Chaired by Mimi Zeiger (loudpaper / Maximum Maxim MMX)

Tom Keeley (America Deserta Revisited)

Sebastien M. Barat (face b: architecture from the other side)

David Bauer (Horizonte—Journal for Architectural Discourse)

Matthew Butcher (P.E.A.R.)

Constructing Criticism – 4.00pm

A discussion on alternative forms of criticism and architectural discourse

Chaired by Veronique Patteeuw and Tom Vandeputte (OASE)

Benedikt Boucsein (Camenzind)

Tina Di Carlo (Log)

Ian Pollard (matzine)

Matteo Ghidoni (San Rocco)

Tiago Casanova (scopio)

Sebastian Craig (Touching on Architecture)

What About Arhitectura?

2011-10-31T09:03:00.000-07:00

WAI has been featured in Arhitectura Magazine

An interview by Kamilla Csegzi featuring WAI has been featured in the 4^th issue of 2011 of the Romanian magazine Architectura.

What About On Site?

2011-10-21T08:21:00.000-07:00

WAI has been featured in On Site Magazine

WAI’s “What About the Aesthetics of Dirt?” has been featured in the 26^th issue of On Site Magazine. The piece works as a form of manifesto calling for a re-interpretation of dirt as a concept in the design process. The magazine includes articles by Infranet Lab, the initiators of [Bracket] Magazine, Joshua Craze, Kate Forde curator of Dirt, the filthy reality of everyday life , John Szot, Chloe Roubert, Kenneth Hayes, Ksenia Kagner, and more…

To buy a copy of OnSite go here , to subscribe go here

To read WAI’s piece “What About the Aesthetics of Dirt?” stay logged to WAI.

What About the Victoria & Albert Museum?

2011-10-20T00:50:00.001-07:00

WAI at the National Art Library / Victoria & Albert Museum

What About It? Part 1 will be available as a public resource in The National Art Library, a public reference library for the study of design, fine and decorative arts at the Victoria & Albert Museum in London. The WAIzine that forms part of the ARCHIZINES exhibition, and research project on contemporary architecture and urbanism magazines will be along books and manuscripts concerning international fine arts.

The National Art Library opening times are:

Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Saturday: 10.30-17.30, Friday: 10.00-18.30

Before you can use the Library you must register as a Reader. This can be done online in advance.

National Art Library

The Victoria & Albert Museum is located at Cromwell Road, London SW7 2RL

What About “Cities of the Avant-Garde” Limited Edition?

2011-09-25T11:45:00.000-07:00

Cities of the Avant-Garde available in limited edition of 50

A limited edition numbered and signed series (of 50 copies) of Cities of the Avant-Garde (100cm x 70cm) is available on request. The image includes some of the most important urban proposals of the 20^th and 21^st century, and proposes a perspective on the future of urbanism.

For more information write to contact@wai-architecture.com

What About Architecture?

2011-09-22T08:51:00.001-07:00

Architecture is…

Architecture is a path, a process, a journey... it is never achieved. You can get to architecture but you can’t have architecture. You can aim at Architecture, but it will always remain elusive… Architecture transforms, changes, transmutes. Architecture is in texts, in collages, in images, in renders, in photography, in models, in drawings, in buildings…but Architecture is not text, collages, images, renders, photography, models drawings or buildings. Architecture exists in different mediums, but the mediums are not Architecture.

Architecture is an ephemeral state. Architecture is everywhere and nowhere at the same time. Architecture can delimit space, but space is not architecture. Architecture excludes, discriminates… At the same time, Architecture embraces and welcomes… Architecture doesn’t have form, or texture, or materials, or building methods… A building can be architecture, but Architecture can’t be a building.

You can get a license to build, but you cannot get a license to do architecture. You can build all your life, write infinite texts, draft from the dawn until the morning, and still never reach architecture. Architecture could be poetry, but poetry can’t be Architecture. Architecture can be art, but art can’t be Architecture. Architecture can be in a discussion, but a discussion is not Architecture. Architecture is a mixture of elements, but those elements are not Architecture.

Architecture doesn’t win prizes… buildings do, practices do, architects do, publications do… Architecture doesn’t need curriculum vitae or a recommendation letter or a positive review from a critic… Architecture is indifferent to the public praise and the expert’s views.

Architecture is hard to understand. Architecture is mostly misunderstood. People talk about architecture, teach architecture, preach architecture, but they don’t know what Architecture really is… Architecture can’t be taught it school. Architecture can’t be taught at a design institute. Architecture can’t be taught at an office. Architecture can’t be taught. Architecture can just be learned.

Architecture is a process that comes from within… Architecture might seem like an end, but Architecture is always a beginning.

What About the AA?

2011-09-14T10:33:00.000-07:00

WAI to be featured at the Architectural Association

What About It? Part 1 has been chosen as one of the 60 fanzines, magazines and journals to be featured in the Archizines exhibition in the Architectural Association in London from November 5 until December 14, 2011. The WAIzine will be showcased alongside publications of 20 countries around the globe.

The Archizines exhibition will feature printed issues of the magazines, and video interviews of the creators of the publications.

“Launched by Elias Redstone as an online research project in January 2011, with art direction by Folch Studio, Archizines celebrates and promotes a recent resurgence of alternative and independent architectural publishing. From the photocopied newsletter to beautifully bound magazines, each fanzine is a creative platform for the subject and the author. Together they provide a rich and unique window into how people relate to the spaces we inhabit.

Across the world, publications are cultivating architectural commentary, criticism and research. Bucking the current trend for digital media, architects, artists and academics are producing printed matter that adds a dynamic, and often radical, voice to architectural discourse.

Each magazine will be on show, while their authors will be represented in video interviews talking about their work.

An accompanying catalogue, published by Bedford Press, explores the relationship between architecture and publishing with contributions from Pedro Gadanho, Rob Wilson, Mimi Zeiger and other editors.”

For more information stay tunned to WAI.

What About the Catalog?

2011-09-07T11:13:00.000-07:00

Exhibition Catalog Available in Limited Quantities

What About It? Exhibition Catalog is available by online order in limited quantities.

The booklet contains all the texts (Chinese and English), manifestoes and images displayed in the first solo exhibition of WAI Architecture Think Tank.

For orders please email us at: contact@wai-architecture.com with “Catalog” in the subject.

Chief Editors:

Nathalie Frankowski, Cruz Garcia

Guest Editors:

Ronald Frankowski, Stephanie Wang, Daya Zhang, Shiwa Tseng

Catalog Specifications:

42 Pages

Full Color

Printed in Beijing

210 x 148.5 cm

Price

50 RMB + Shipping

70 HKD + Shipping

10 EUR + Shipping

12 USD + Shipping

What About the Exhibition Opening?

2011-09-04T19:21:00.000-07:00

What About It? Solo Exhibition

Opening Saturday 3 of September What About It? WAI Architecture Think Tank solo Exhibition presented for the first time the research work, architectural and urban experiments on 798 Art District, the art epicenter of China.

The catalog will soon be made available to the general public.

For more info please email us at contact@wai-architecture.com with “Exhibition info” in the header.

What About It?

CU Space
706 Beisanjie, 798 ART Zone, Jiuxianqiao Rd.Nr.2 100015 Beijing, China
Opening Reception: Saturday, September 3, 2011. 6:00 pm
Exhibition: September 3 - September 17, 2011
Opening Hours: Tuesday-Sunday 10:00am-6:30pm

它关于什么?
超城空间
中国北京100015,酒仙桥路2号,798艺术区,北三街706号
开幕式: 2011年9月3号，周六，晚上 6:00
展览: 2011年 9月3号-9月17号
展出时间: 周二-周日10:00am-6:30pm

What About the Press Release?

2011-08-28T18:30:00.000-07:00

What About It? Solo Exhibition

What About It?

CU Space 706 Beisanjie, 798 ART Zone, Jiuxianqiao Rd.Nr.2 100015 Beijing, China

Opening Reception: Saturday, September 3, 2011. 6:00 pm

Exhibition: September 3 - September 17, 2011 Opening Hours: Tuesday-Sunday 10:00am-6:30pm What About the Exhibition?

CU Space will hold from the 3rd to the 17th of September “What About It?” the first solo exhibition of WAI Architecture Think Tank.

The exhibition and accompanying publication displays a collection of the visual provocations, graphic narratives, architectural research and projects produced by WAI since 2008. “What About It?” features 14 of WAI’s published, on-going and unreleased projects, represented through animations, collages, drawings, story boards, magazines, and twelve scale models. What About It? will be on view on CU Space from September 3 to September 17, 2011.

Located in 798 Art Zone, the main art district in Beijing, CU Space has become one of the most active frontlines of contemporary art, architecture and design in the Chinese Capital.

What About WAI?

WAI Architecture Think Tank is an international studio practicing architecture, urbanism, and architectural research. Founded in Brussels in 2008 by French architect Nathalie Frankowski and Puerto Rican architect Cruz Garcia WAI is currently based in Beijing. WAI focuses on the understanding and execution of Architecture from a panoramic approach, from theoretical texts to architectural artifacts, narrative architectures, buildings and urban and cultural conditions. WAI strives to make significant contributions to the collective intelligence of architecture, from the conception of intelligent buildings and masterplans to the production of fresh research projects, provocative pieces of visual art, and innovative publications. WAI is a workshop for architecture intelligentsia. WAI asks: What About It?

What About the Authors?

Nathalie Frankowski is a French Architect, graphic artist, and writer who graduated in 2008 from the department of Architecture, Art and Philosophy at the École Nationale Supérieure d’Architecture de Paris La Villette with a Diplome d’État d’Architecture option research. Her final project “It Feels Like Home: Chez-soi entre nature et densité” received the special mention from the jury. In 2008 she co-founded WAI Architecture Think Tank, as a workshop for urban and architectural intelligentsia. Professional and academic experience includes international publications, research, film making, design workshops and working in Belgium, The Netherlands, France, and China. The architectural, graphic, and written works of Nathalie have been featured in exhibitions, and publications around the world. Cruz García is a Puerto Rican Architect, graphic artist, and writer who graduated in 2008 from the Universidad de Puerto Rico with a Master Degree in Architecture after earning the Alpha Rho Chi Medal for outstanding leadership and the Henry Adams Medal for the Highest Degree. His research thesis about Narrative Architectures in the 20th century earned him the PBDT thesis scholarship from the highest scholar institution in Puerto Rico. In 2008 he co-founded WAI Architecture Think Tank, as a workshop for urban and architectural intelligentsia. Previous professional and academic experience includes international publications, research, teaching, lectures, and working in Belgium, The Netherlands, Puerto Rico, USA, France, and China. The architectural, graphic, and written works of Cruz have been featured in exhibitions, and publications around the world.

What About Sponsorship?

What About It? Solo Exhibition is made possible thanks to the generous support of Zhang Ke and standardarchitecture (www.standardarchitecture.cn). Additional support is also provided by the Institute of Optimistic Architectures, and CU Space (www.cu-space.com). More information about WAI Architecture Think Tank can be found at www.wai-architecture.com andwww.waithinktank.com

新闻公告

超城空间将展示年轻的国际建筑事务所WAI Architecture Think Tank的第一次个人作品展。

展览将关注于WAI Architecture Think Tank的研究，视觉艺术和建筑作品。

它关于什么?

超城空间

中国北京100015,酒仙桥路2号,798艺术区,北三街706号

开幕式: 2011年9月3号，周六，晚上 6:00

展览: 2011年 9月3号-9月17号

展出时间: 周二-周日10:00am-6:30pm

关于展览

超城空间将从9月3号到9月17号主办WAI Architecture Think Tank的名为“What About It?”的第一次个人作品展. 展览及附属的出版物将融合WAI自2008年以来的成果，呈现出一场关于视觉冲击，图片叙述，建筑研究以及作品。“What About It?”包括WAI已经完成，正在进行中和尚未发布的总共14件作品，以动画，图画拼贴，绘画，故事脚本，杂志和模型等多样形式呈现，展出将从2011年9月3号到9月17号在超城空间举办。坐落于北京重要的艺术区79的超城空间，已经成为京城中推动当代艺术，建筑和设计的活跃的先导之一。

关于 WAI

WAI Architecture Think Tank 是一个国际化的工作室，同时致力于建筑，城市规划和景观。工作室于2008年在布鲁塞尔，由法国的建筑师Nathalie Frankowski 和波多黎各的建筑师Cruz Garcia共同建立，目前在北京发展。从理念到建筑成品，建筑叙述，楼群和城市文化环境，WAI 一直专注对建筑全方位的理解和创作。从卓越的建筑概念到研究项目的总规划设计，创新的出版物，WAI不断探索建筑的理论精华。WAI是建筑哲学的孵化室， WAI 所寻求的是 what about it ？

关于艺术家

Nathalie Frankowski是一位法国建筑师, 平面设计师和作家，于2008年获得法国巴黎的École Nationale Supérieure d’Architecture大学的建筑硕士学位。她的毕业作品“感觉像家一样： Chez-soi entre nature et densité” 获得了评审委员会的特别提名。08年，她作为合伙人创立了WAI Architecture Think Tank——一个集合了建筑界有识之士的工作室。她的专业和学术经历包括国际出版物，研究，电影制作和设计工作室，曾经在比利时，荷兰，法国和中国工作过。Nathalie 的建筑，图像和写作的作品曾收录在世界范围内的展览和出版物中。

Cruz García 是一位来自波多黎各的建筑师，平面设计师和作家。他于08年从the Universidad de Puerto Rico大学取得建筑硕士学位，不仅以最优成绩毕业，还获得了专业领袖荣誉。他的关于20世纪建筑叙事的论文帮助他获得了被誉为波多黎各最高学术荣誉之称的PBDT论文奖学金。08年，他作为合伙人创立了WAI Architecture Think Tank——一个集合了建筑界有识之士的工作室。其早先的专业和学术经历包括国际出版物，研究，教学和演讲，并先后在比利时，荷兰，波多黎各，美国，法国和中国工作过。Cruz 的建筑，图像和写作的作品曾收录在世界范围内的展览和出版物中。

关于赞助商

What About It? 个人展览的实现要感谢张轲先生和标准营造事务所(www.standardarchitecture.cn)的慷慨支持，其它的支持由Optimistic Architectures和超城空间(www.cu-space.com)提供，特此鸣谢。更多关于 WAI Architecture Think Tank的信息请参阅 www.wai-architecture.com和 www.waithinktank.com

What About WAI Exhibition?

2011-07-11T05:02:00.000-07:00

What About It? Solo exhibition in 798 Art Zone, Beijing

CU Space will hold from the 3^rd to the 17^th of September “What About It?” a solo exhibition of WAI Architecture Think Tank.

The exhibition will show for the first time a forensic conglomeration of the visual provocations, graphic narratives, research and architectural projects, produced by WAI since 2008.

Located in 798 Art Zone, the main art district in Beijing, CU Space has become one of the most active frontlines of contemporary art, architecture and design in the Chinese Capital.

CU Space

798 Art Zone . 798艺术区

BEIJING . 北京市

Opening Reception. 开幕酒会: Sept 3 . 6:00 pm

Exhibition . 展会: Sept . 3-17 . 2011

Opening Hours: Tuesday-Sunday 10:00am-6:30pm

706 Beisanjie, 798 ART Zone, Jiuxianqiao Rd.Nr.2 100015 Beijing, China

北京市朝阳区酒仙桥路2号798艺术区，706北三街

邮编：100015

What About Conditioning the Urban Genealogy?

2011-07-08T22:14:00.000-07:00

WAI has been featured in Conditions

WAI’s graphic genealogy Cities of the Avant-Garde has been featured in the 8^th issue of Conditions Magazine. The graphic timeline is the first part of an ongoing research project on the evolution of the ideal cities of the avant-garde. The chronology includes projects and visions of the urban intelligentsia since the 1900’s and speculates on the future of the shapes of urbanism in the next hundred years.

With a whole new layout, the graphic concept of Conditions has been tweaked by Norwegian design studio Skin Design. The latest issue of the Scandinavian magazine includes interviews of Danish journalist, tv producer, art administrator and director of Den Danske Filmskole Paul Nesgaard, Strelka Institute for Media, Architecture and Design’s president Ilya Oskolkov Tsentsiper, Mateo Arquitectura’s principal Josep Lluís Mateo, Harvard GSD dean and professor Mohsen Mostafavi, and Norwegian provocateurs Fantastic Norway.

To order a copy of this or previous issues, or to subscribe to Conditions go here.

Cities of the avant-garde and other pieces of WAI will be soon exhibited in WAI’s first solo exhibition “What About It?” in Beijing’s Art Capital 798 Art Zone in September. For more information stay tuned to WAI.

What About 3000 WAIzines?

2011-06-02T19:22:00.000-07:00

What About It? part 1 reaches 3000 readers

The Digital version of the first issue of the WAIzine has reached the three thousand readers.

In its third month, readers from Canada, USA, México, Puerto Rico, Brasil, Chile, Argentina, Colombia, Ecuador, Costa Rica, Finland, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, The Netherlands, España, Portugal, France, United Kingdom, Ireland, Italia, Germany, Greece, Hungary,Romania, Poland, Austria, Belgium, Switzerland, Latvia, Russia, China, Japan, South Korea, Hong Kong, Vietnam, Malaysia, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Morocco, Tunisia, Egypt, Israel, Syria, Turkey have joined WAI Think Tank’s journey to enrich the architecture intelligentsia while asking What About It?.

What About Post Post Post?

2011-05-26T09:15:00.000-07:00

WAI featured in the Universidad de la República en Montevideo, Uruguay

Post post post: Nuevas Arquitecturas Iberoamericanas travelling exhibition will be presented in the Architecture Faculty of the Universidad de la República en Montevideo, Uruguay.

The exhibition that includes WAI’s piece “Foam Thinking” will be held from May 26 to June 17, and includes selected practices from Argentina, Brasil, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, El Salvador, España, Guatemala, Honduras, México, Paraguay, Perú, Portugal, Puerto Rico, Uruguay and Venezuela. Between them: A77, Estudio POP Arq (Argentina), Grupo Bijari (Brasil), Supersudaka (Chile), Mesa Editores, Plan b, and JPRCR (Colombia), Estudio A0, and Somadic Collaborative (Ecuador), Fabrica de Paisaje, Monica Galain (Uruguay), Mateo Pinto D’Lacoste & Carolina Cisneros (Venezuela), Tatiana Bilbao (México), Edgar González, elii Agencia de Arquitectura and C+ Arquitectos (España) and Pedro Bandeira (Portugal).

What About Lecturing in the CAFA?

2011-05-12T07:59:00.000-07:00

WAI to Lecture at the China Central Academy of Fine Arts (CAFA)

WAI will be offering the lecture “Thinking Architecture in Time of Crisis” in the Lecture Hall #7 of the prestigious China Central Academy of Fine Arts (CAFA) in Beijing. The lecture will be offered in English with translation in Chinese. How to get there: http://www.cafa.edu.cn/aboutcafa/lan/?c=1111&N=3048)

Central Academy of Fine Arts

Address: No.8 Hua Jia Di Nan St., Chao Yang District, Beijing, P. R. China

Lecture Hall # 7

For an abstract of the content stay tuned to WAI.

中央美术学院建筑学院学生系列座谈No.27：WAI (What About It?) Think Tank: Thinking Architecture in time of crisis

讲座人：WAI Think Tank
Speaker：WAI Think Tank

主办方：中央美术学院建筑学院TEXTENT学社
Sponsor：TEXTENT, School of Architecture, CAFA

时间：2011年5月18日下午6点半
Time：18 May，2011 6:30 pm

地点：中央美术学院7号楼红椅子报告厅
Location: Lecture Hall, #7, CAFA

主持人、翻译：厉之昀
Translator：Irene Li

http://www.cafa.edu.cn/

What About Megastructures and Shopping Malls?

2011-05-09T07:22:00.000-07:00

WAI has been featured in DPR Barcelona

WAI’s Megastructures are Shopping Malls of the Avant-Garde has been featured in DPR Barcelona’s piece L’ordre des Simulacres | What if Capitalism has finally conquered our Utopias?

The article responds to our call to rethink the Megastructures as the parallel (avant-garde’s) universe of the Shopping Mall while establishing links to the ideas of several architects, thinkers and philosophers like Fumiko Maki, Reyner Banham, and Jean Baudrillard.

What About Archizines?

2011-05-02T08:40:00.001-07:00

WAI has been featured in Archizines

What About It? Part 1 has been featured in Paris based architectural magazine showcase ARCHIZINES.

The showcase features some of the finest independent publications from all the corners of the world, between them Monu, Conditions, Log, San Rocco, Candide, Beyond and Criticat.

“ARCHIZINES is a showcase of new fanzines, journals and magazines from around the world that provide an alternative discourse to the established architectural press. Launched by Elias Redstone, with art direction by Folch Studio, the project celebrates and promotes publishing as an arena for architectural commentary, criticism and research, and as a creative platform for new photography, illustration and design.”

Don’t forget to read here the WAIzine

What About New WAIsite?

2011-04-26T08:11:00.000-07:00

WAI presents www.waithinktank.com

In order to make our content available in China, and set another concept for the display of the content of the think tank, WAI welcomes you to visit www.waithinktank.com.

The new website presents the projects and articles of WAI to a broader public. and it will work as the sister site of wai’s blogspot.

What About the Avant-garde, Megastructures and Shopping Malls?

2011-04-15T22:40:00.000-07:00

Clash of the Megastructures?

Megastructures are Shopping Malls of the Avant-Garde

Avant-garde
The avant -garde is a paradoxical state. In order to exist, it relies on its incongruous condition of being both fundamentally contemporary and ahead of its time. The avant-garde is all about contextualizing perfect timing; a vulnerable balance of past references, present problems, and possible future solutions. But what happens when the avant-garde loses its synchronization; when its solutions are overlooked for being too early or ridiculed for being too late?

In the past century the avant-garde was victim of two untimely appearances. In the first one its proposals were too premature; the world was taken aback by the boldness of its ambition. In the second one, the avant-garde was delayed. Here its stratagems were on a futile mission of reinventing what already existed.

Do these two consecutive setbacks prevent us from recognizing the potential of the avant-garde as a tool to design for today while dreaming about tomorrow? Or could we be able to learn from those two episodes in order to rescue whatever the avant-garde has to offer us? Can we rescue their potential? Can making a genealogy of Foucaultian dimensions help us to find the answers?

Le Corbusier 1922
In 1922 Le Corbusier presented the first of his “ideal” cities. La ville contemporaine pour trois millions d’habitants was an urban layout of cruciform skyscrapers, housing slabs and parks intersected by two juxtaposed grids of car infrastructure. In his urban plan Le Corbusier was not only manifesting his ambition for a greener, denser, centralized, bureaucratic, car oriented city, but he was also making clear that Modern Architecture was better suited for these planning conditions.

The Ville Contemporaine was siteless; a power source without an outlet. When the modernist plans started to take shape on real cities, first in Paris with the Plan Voisin, then in the rest of the world with la Ville Radieuse, the image of Le Corbusier oscillated between a visionary and a madman. His preoccupations were clearly fundamental problems of his time, but the formalization of his ideas were not always welcomed. Even if the cities of his time could have needed more hygienic and organized schemes, buildings that were more suitable to live in, collective housing that distanced itself from the Haussmanian family flat and an overall vision that complied better with the new technological advancements, the people were not ready for Le Corbusier.

His cities were not the only ones to find an intense opposition as his ideological postures found fierce resistance as well. The core urban values of travailler, habiter, circuler et cultiver le corps et l'esprit, adopted by the CIAM and integrated in the Athens Charter (1933), turned out to be the focus of attacks after the Second World War broke out in Europe and left the urban and social situation in a much worst and urgent condition than the one that Le Corbusier had rebelled against in the 1920’s.

After evidencing the destructive side of modernization (of warfare), the social and economic conditions at the end of the war put under harsh scrutiny the urban plans which wished to bulldoze the old city centers away. The love for the old city was politically reinforced by the collective memory. With this situation in the background, a young generation of architects willing to continue to explore the possibilities of the modern plan (Team X being one of them) wished therefore to distance themselves from the highly criticized urban visions of Le Corbusier. The war with its obliterating outcome not only represented the destruction of the old-European world, but marked the meltdown of the urban visions of Le Corbusier. After the war a halt was put to the avant-garde and its city, at least on European soil.

Bifurcation 1956
The year 1956 saw three distant but simultaneous events that marked the fate of the avant-garde for the remaining of the 20th century. Unfairly overlooked, these events characterize a key moment in the development of the avant-garde that could be used as a tool to analyze the present, create a critique on the past, and dream about the future.

More than thirty years on from the creation of the Ville Contemporaine, the now officially defunct (who can forget Team 10's practical joke on the CIAM?) “old” avant garde was being given its first full-scale urban experiment in Brazil. At that very same moment, in Europe a “new” avant-garde movement was preparing its (ultimate?) attack on the modernist city unaware of a phenomenon that was taking place in America and that was to signify not only the antithesis of their architectural agenda , but a devastating blow to their aspirations for a new city with a new society.

Brasilia 1956
In 1956 Brasilia started construction. The then Brazilian president Juscelino Kubitschek orchestrated the creation of the new capital with the construction of the first government building by Oscar Niemeyer, and with the “Plano Piloto de Brasília” competition which was won by Lucio Costa a year later.

Anchored on a virgin site, Brasilia was the apotheosis of the modernist city; the ultimate opportunity to develop strategies of urbanization without needing to bulldoze old cities away; the new start that planners always dreamt about. Was Kubitschek the client Le Corbusier always wanted?

At first sight Brasilia was to make its aesthetics recognizable under the modernist inspection lens. When talking about the Brazilian capital the spotlight tended to shift to the features of Niemeyer’s concrete monoliths and radically thin slabs. But a closer inspection of Brasilia reveals an even deeper connection with the Le Corbusian city: the layout with its centralized government, its concrete housing slabs, its grid of streets and avenues, and with the years, the park within city –all the vegetation and trees— not only appear so strikingly similar but reinforce the belief in the city of the four values. Finally, Modern Architecture in a Modern City.

Was Lucio Costa Le Corbusier’s Brazilian translator? Or was Le Corbusier’s avant-garde dream unintentionally designed for Brazil? Was his image of the city of today meant to find consecration someplace other than Europe? Was he imagining his cities somewhere where the collective memory wasn’t as infatuated with the past? Was his architecture giving him away all this time—the pilotis, the garden roof, the horizontal window, all so suspiciously
tropical?

New Babylon 1956
In 1956 Constant Nieuwenhuys was working on the antithesis of Brasilia: the New Babylon. While the first urban avant-garde was dispatched from the Post-War Europe, and re-launched as poured concrete, and asphalt in Brazil it was in Europe again where a “new” avant-garde was to set its second attack on the contemporary city; on this occasion with a different outcome.

This new model for urbanization was comprised of an ever-extending, ever-mutating series of sectors that were to hover above the old European cities. New Babylon was an urbanistic black hole; an ever expanding mass able to suck everything into designed disorder.

Using automation as the tour de force of the new city, New Babylon was to abolish the four points into which the Le Corbusian city was supported. If Brasilia was centralized, bureaucratic and pre-programmed, New Babylon didn’t have a center, possessed no cars, and its people needed no recreation since there was no need to work. New Babylon was the apotheosis of the laissez-faire lifestyle, an Eden for drifters.

In the New Babylon even environmental conditions like daylight were to be abolished, giving the new inhabitants of the new city total freedom to drift à la dérive. The first proposal of a naively energetic avant-garde, the New Babylon was putting all its energy on creating a structure (and a society) into which somebody could wander about without having anything to do. New Babylon was perhaps the first of the Megastructures; colossal complexes that could mix programs and be developed ad infinitum, architectural plankton accumulating in the urban ocean.

Megastructure 1956
Like the New Babylon, several other Megastructures were about to dominate the architectural scenario with their conceptual strength reinforced by their representation strategies. The use of Xeroxing, photomontages, comic strips and short films were part of the visual repertoire of a group that looked to break away from the modernist dogma not just in conceptual terms but graphically as well. Hybrids of science fiction and cyber punk aesthetics, these new structures defied building physics, and sociological preconceptions. No wonder that these mastodons could float, walk and be suspended above the old cities of Europe.

The “new” avant-garde gambled on the narrative power of their new tools, as they went to create stories about their hovering superstructures and their ability to expand and mutate forever, their capacity to challenge the lifestyle of the modernist dogma and control the environment. But while the representation strategies of the “new” avant-garde raised eyebrows because of their innovative nature and because of their ability to integrate pop culture into it, their prophecies of a new architectural program and urbanistic ideal were to suffer a devastating blow coming partly from that same pop culture that they took their graphics from.

Or, Coexistence of Shopping Malls?

Southdale Center 1956
In 1956 Victor Gruen’s Southdale Center, the first air conditioned enclosed shopping mall, opened to the public in a Minneapolis suburb. The building was the first of a series of structures that—like the Megastructures—were to create an artificial environment that would free the users from the complications of the city. Free from bad weather, crime, dirt, problems, the shopping mall represented the ultimate achievement of commercial architecture; the apotheosis of consumer culture; a new type of facsimile reality enclosed in a cluster of walls and juxtaposed corridors. Soon these programs would mutate –like the Megastructures promised to do—and include all kind of uses, from theme parks, to museums, to housing, working, and recreation in a kind of forced marriage between Le Corbusian functionalism and New Babylonian dreaminess.

Was Victor Gruen the architect New Babylon needed? Or was New Babylon the Shopping Mall of the avant-garde? How can the ultimate capitalist enterprise coincide with the ultimate Marxist project? Was the “new” avant-garde dreaming about what the most commercial of enterprises was already achieving? Or, was the “new” avant-garde trying to use their flashy pop-graphics and cartoonesque diagrams as stealth —under the graphics, the mall?

If the proposals of the “new” avant-garde were not as radical as they suggested, would we still be able to learn something from them? Are their graphic representation tools the key to this enigma? If the architectural program isn’t what made them avant-garde, is it their graphics that set them apart from the pack? Were they really answering problems of their time and opening a new future? Or were they just leaving us the key for us to figure it out?

Après-Garde

In this double clash of avant-gardes (the “old” versus the European city, and the “new” against its American antithesis) we come to identify at least two possible outcomes that could throw light over how to develop strategies for the unknown future. These episodes with their unique characteristics show both sides of very precise moments in the development of the strategies of the avant-garde and their potential outcome (some recognized, others ignored).

In the first conflict, a battle with the contemporary city that was won long after the fight was apparently over, gave validity to the avant-garde strategies of Le Corbusier even if its cities were never built. Le Corbusier’s designs for today provided the answers for the city of tomorrow.

However, in the second, the situation turned out to be more critical for the strategies of the new avant-garde after their architectural program turned out to be hoax. Because of the outcome of their ambitious architectural enterprise, the value of their strategies has been overlooked, even undermined.
Howeve, could we make an exception with the proposals of the “new” avant-garde and, in contrast to Le Corbusier, judge them not by the content but by the medium? Are we prepared to acknowledge that the potential behind the hangars, and sectors of the Megastructures was hidden in the graphics that displayed them?

Could we then, instead of condemning the “new” avant-garde to the sterility of museum walls and architecture publications, discard their programmatic naivety, and recognize their potential as powerful tools of representation?

Are we prepared to take the risk and assume the role of the avant-garde, and create proposals even if they are not going to be accepted from the beginning, and develop tools that may end up portraying recycled models of urbanization? Because at the end of the day, as these stories prove, the avant-garde was not always right, but it was, and it will remain just a beginning.

What About Revisiting the Zone?

2011-04-13T21:18:00.000-07:00

Wall Stalker featured in DPR Barcelona

While WAI works in the upcoming second and third part of the animated narrative architecture series, a post about Wall Stalker can be read in DPR Barcelona (César Reyes Nájera and Ethel Baraona Pohl).

Revisiting the Zone presents Wall Stalker within a series of works from other artists inspired either by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky’s Roadside Picnic, or by Andrei Tarkovsky’s Stalker. The animation of Wall Stalker can be seen in Vimeo and YouTube.

Wall Stalker can be read in the WAIzine, in Designboom and in WAI.

What About Mark(ing) the School?

2011-04-03T08:35:00.000-07:00

WAI’s Football School has been featured in Mark Magazine

La Escuela de Balompié de San Juan (San Juan Football School and Training Center) has been featured in the Notice Board of Mark Magazine No.31. The April/May issue includes projects, articles and interviews from AAT+Makoto Yokomizo, KÖBBERLING/KALTWASSER, UN Studio, Suppose, Carlos Casanueva, Aires Mateus, Sun Jiwei, Julie D. Taylir, Stefan Forster, Meixner SCHLÜTER, WENDT, EM2N and JOHN ENGLISH, between others.

To order printed or digital copies go to Mark Magazine No.31

To view other articles on the Football School you can visit Designboom and WAI

What About a Pop-Up City Interview?

2011-03-26T02:22:00.000-07:00

WAI interview has been featured on The Pop-Up City.

An interview realized by Brendan Cormier [Department of Unusual Certainties] has been featured on Amsterdam based online magazine The Pop-up City. The interview highlights “the merits of DIY publishing in the 21^st century”, and focuses on the intentions behind the publication of the WAIzine, its production process and its distribution strategies.

The digital version of the WAIzine can be accessed here. More than 1500 readers in its first month. Thank You for reading the WAIzine.

What About the Football School?

2011-02-24T07:39:00.000-08:00

Escuela de Balompié de San Juan

San Juan Football School and Training Center

Challenge

How to incorporate the most popular sport in the world to a curriculum of high academic demand? How to create the ideal conditions for the development of student-athletes? How to forge an institution that fosters athletic discipline while developing the necessary tools for the formation of professionals for Puerto Rico’s future? How to create a building based on the archetypical principle of Anima Sana in Corpore Sano (Sound Mind in a Sound Body)?

Link

The San Juan Football School and Training Center is an experimental hybrid between educational institution and sports facility. The School tackles simultaneously a problematic public education system and a languid sports development organism. The building uses sports as a motivational tool for the education and development of talented students and as a link between athletic facility and pedagogical center. The courses of the school are designed to integrate technical education, with a regular academic curriculum and a training methodology for the development of student-athletes.

Program

The Architecture of the building is designed to stimulate the relationship between education and sports; between pedagogy and training; between discipline and execution. The building is an amalgamation of spatial operations that enhance the execution of specific requirements for educational and training purposes.

The school consists of a continuous plane that starts from a ramp that goes from the football pitch and gives direct access to a lobby on the third level. This reception space distributes the students to the classrooms in a U-shape wing that encircles a private garden and that provides shelter for a seating area of the football pitch by floating over it. This wing is connected to a volume that contains the faculty offices and the rooms that serve as dormitories for students during the academic semester and athletes during the school holidays. The wing of the dormitories is projected as a slender volume that overlooks the football pitch.

The building integrates in an effortless flow of continuous spaces the four main areas of activities: study, practice,rest, and recreation.

The Study area includes classrooms, technical room, laboratories, workshops, lecture rooms and a library, alongside the faculty offices.

The Practice area is composed of a football pitch, gym, medical room, changing rooms and showers, and video room. The training facilities can be used at the same time as the study area without interfering with each other.

The Rest area contains an array of 28 rooms, laundry and cleaning rooms, and a cafeteria, that can use by students and athletes with different schedules.

The Recreation Area is composed of a wide arrange of spaces that create points of exchange through the building.

Paradigm

The new San Juan Football School and Training Center aims at being a paradigm of civic enterprise, educational building and high-level training facility. The school intends to create a space where sport and education become indivisible.

What About reading the digital WAIzine?

2011-02-14T08:14:00.000-08:00

WHAT

ABOUT

IT?

PART 1:

WAI

ZINE

DIGI-

TAL

What About the WAIzine Release?

2011-02-02T08:29:00.000-08:00

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

What About a peek to WAIzine? Part 1

2011-01-08T06:32:00.000-08:00

WAIzine: the peepshow

In order to commemorate its second anniversary WAI Architecture Think Tank will be releasing What About It? Part 1 the 1^st of February of 2011.

The WAIzine is a graphic narrative in magazine format that includes the first two years of texts, projects and experiments of WAI.

What About It? will be made available by reservation in limited quantities during the celebrations of the Chinese New Year. To get a printed copy of the WAIzine please email your order and post address to contact@wai-architecture.com and you will receive a reply with the shipping details and an invoice through Paypal. If you prefer to use other way for payment, please let us know and we will make it work.

WAIzine information

What About It? : Part 1

Soft cover; 100 pages Black/ White, Colour

Dimensions: 210mm by 297mm

Publisher: WAI Architecture Think Tank

Language: English

Price:

RMB ¥200 HKD $ 235 USD $30 EUR €25 GBP £20

contact@wai-architecture.com

What About the WAIzine?

2010-12-11T06:52:00.000-08:00

What About It? Part 1 to be released after the Chinese New Year

What About it? Part 1 is a printed narrative in magazine format that includes the production of the first two years of WAI Architecture Think Tank as well as several ongoing projects. The WAIzine would be released after Chinese New Year to commemorate the second anniversary of WAI Architecture Think Tank.

The prints will be on a limited edition.

For more information on availability: contact@wai-architecture.com

What About Dreaming in (in)forma?

2010-10-22T09:53:00.000-07:00

What About Dreaming in Beijing?

By Nathalie Frankowski and Cruz Garcia

The Chinese capital wakened up under the veil of a thick cloud of sand. The sepia tinted light gave a gloomy atmosphere to the city which made the time of day uncertain. The cars and the streets were covered by a uniform layer of orange-colored dust. As the small sand particles were violently smashing on the glass windows, you could spot outside several courageous people fighting against the saturated wind; their faces partially covered by masks so as not to breathe in the sand, moving as if in slow motion, painfully trying to reach their destinations.

It would be the day that we discover “it”.

A tower was standing in the center of Beijing; no one could remember how it got “there”. The tower looked simple from the outside. It was one of those buildings that despite its sheer size had nothing to alarm your senses. It could have been one of those developments that pop up from one day to the next like mushrooms after a rainy day.

When we first noticed the tower, the sand storm was not as severe as some hours before. The effect of the small particles flying in the air mixed with the dimmed light of the afternoon gave the building a mystical halo. As we were approaching from Dongzhimen Street, our curiosity started to grow stronger. When we got closer to the tower, we noticed to our surprise, that it was free-standing above the Hutongs. None of the traditional courtyard residences had been removed. Instead, the massive monolith seemed to levitate over them. We were left speechless at the sight of this visual spectacle. We had never seen anything similar before. The contrast with the colossal proportions of the tower intensified the fragile appearance of the Hutongs. We had thought it impossible to see the old and the new coexist in such propinquity in a city where tabula rasa is a daily exercise.

Once inside the tower, we were astonished by what we saw, the sober and neutral façade had nothing in common with its interior. The building was bustling with activity, smells, sounds, colors, textures. Every level that we reached had a different function or use. Some levels were housing entire Hutongs, others were parks or theaters, or neon lit markets, with a color palette like that rendered by Hayao Miyazaki. In fact the building seemed to be like an endless city contained between four walls.

As the sun outside faded away, the tower turned gradually into a glowing lantern. The noise of the crowd grew loud enough so as to muffle our words. The laugher and conversation created a kind of uniform humming sound that was only interrupted by the sudden clap of hands of people cheering the dancing couples. In a matter of minutes the space appeared to us completely different from when we first came in. It was now almost impossible to walk between the staggering amount of people, the dining tables, and ambulant vendors.

Once outside the tower, after leaving its intense excitement behind us, we noticed that even the size of the building had changed. It seemed to have gained some extra storeys during the night. Restless and under constant transformation the sight of such a monumental structure made us wonder if it was the city whose accumulation of layers was literally piling up as a tower, or if it was our growing understanding of Beijing which made the building appear like a city of endless possibilities.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Dreaming in Beijing Has Been Featured in the IV issue of (in)forma the official journal of the School of Architecture of the Universidad de Puerto Rico. The issue titled Living in the City includes a wide selection of articles, projects and interviews that feature Michael Sorkin, Ciudad Urban Think Tank, Rodrigo Vidal, Lilliana Ramos Collado, Jorge Lizardi Pollock, Andres Mignucci, Jorge Rigau, and Francisco Javier Rodriguez, between others.

What About Wall Stalker (Chapters)?

2010-09-18T21:10:00.000-07:00

WALL STALKER
Synopsis

By Nathalie Frankowski and Cruz Garcia (WAI)

A Stalker is what people in Arkady and Boris Strugatsky’s Roadside Picnic (1971) call a whole new profession of misfits that risk their lives in the Zone (a mystical place of transcendental powers) to seize valuable things. A Wall Stalker then, is somebody who is taking the same risk to grasp whatever he can find in an equally mysterious Wall.

Wall Stalker is an animated architectural narrative, in which the characters of Andrei Tarkovski’s 1979 film Cталкер (Stalker) (based on Roadside Picnic) become the protagonists of a three man exodus from a city of icons, in search for the essence of architecture.

After opening with the title illustration, the first image of Wall Stalker shows an overview of Egoville, the capital of Ego in which the skyline is highlighted by a wasteland of desolated icons. This post-apocalyptic environment offers no hope for the three characters as they decide to break away from this city product of the cynicism of man, and reach for the legendary wall, where they believe the essence of architecture can be found. Once the characters leave the city behind them, they find themselves melancholically traveling through a purgatorial landscape of post-iconic desolation. Submersed in a forsaken desert with their last hopes about to evaporate, they finally spot the legendary wall they’ve been looking for. The mysterious presence of this mystical element becomes accentuated by its striking visual silence. Free of any kind of symbolism and stripped of any ideological aesthetic, the wall only offering for the three exhausted men is its inherent inertness. After completing their intended journey, the new predicament of the three wanderers will be how to grasp the mythical “essence” of the wall. From that moment on, their lives and the city will never be the same.

Wall Stalker is a graphic journey through the fictional subconscious of architecture. Using pieces of Jan Garbarek as acoustic background the architectural narrative is built around twelve chapters/photomontages that depict the three men odyssey through the dialectics of architecture and the city they created. The compositions of the twelve chapters not only absorb into its plot Tarkovski’s film but also pieces of El Lissitzky, Vladimir Tatlin, Paolo Soleri, Caspar David Friedrich, and Giambattista Piranesi in the form of collage, in order to create a scheme full of symbolism while simultaneously being disconnected from any other plot.

Wall Stalker is divided into three parts with four chapters/photomontages in each. The first Part is titled Egoville and includes The capital of Ego, The Meeting I, Exodus, and The Last Glimpse. The Second Part is named Un Voyage Purgatoire and includes Les Portes du désert, Sea of Sand, The wanderer, and Conquest. And the Third Part is The Wall, which includes The Meeting II, Inquisition, No turning Back, and Blindness.

Wall Stalker is the first of a trilogy of architectural narratives of WAI Architecture Think Tank that explore the essence of architecture.

Egoville

The capital of Ego

The Meeting I

Exodus

The Last Glimpse

Un Voyage Purgatoire

Les Portes du désert

Sea of Sand

The wanderer

Conquest

The Wall

The Meeting II

Inquisition

No turning Back

Blindness

http://www.vimeo.com/13919911

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YnCt3McXtDc

What About the Burning Icon?

2010-09-12T05:36:00.000-07:00

What About the Burning Icon?

By Nathalie Frankowski and Cruz Garcia

Rem Koolhaas is not Howard Roark. Nevertheless last year on February the 9th it appeared that for once reality could have been inspired by a book, when Koolhaas gave the illusion of becoming the protagonist of Ayn Rand’s novel The Fountainhead (1943). During the Lantern Festival that marks the end of the Chinese New Year’s celebrations, the TVCC tower was set ablaze. While for hours a thick smoke curtain floated above the uncontainable flames, those eager to fantasize about architecture started wondering about this peculiar image. Imagine: the destruction of the hotel and convention center on behalf of his author would be perversely audacious; a perfect climax for an already known plot.

Rand’s novel highlighted the erosive friction that exists between the architect and the politics of architectural quality. The story exposes the struggle of the modern architect—willing to exhaust all his energy in his quest for quality—in front of the mediocre world of the profession—willing to do everything to make his mission impossible. This dialectical relationship of the architect and the profession reached its apotheosis when Howard Roark—the irreverently modern architect—upset with the impasse of the profession, decided to blow up his own project.

Roark took the fate of his design in his own hands. He determined that his building should be destroyed when he recognized that the politics that surrounded the quality management of the project appeared to becoming a vortex that swallowed into sheer awfulness everything which was within reach—and that his building was not going to be an exception. When he grew upset with his Cortlandt Homes scheme because of the alterations to his original design, he didn’t hesitate before he decided to destroy it or felt unabashed after. The implosion of the welfare project he designed came as a critique to an architectural culture driven by incompetence and mediocrity. For Roark there were no doubts about deleting a mistake, and they—the profession—according to his vision, had failed to execute the project according to his quality standards. If Howard Roark had anything, it was conviction and with the explosion of Cortlandt he made his point clear: he wouldn’t allow anybody—clients, developers, contractors, builders, critics or the public—to stand between him and his chef d’oeuvre.

Would it be absurd then, to raise a hopeful and maybe naïve “what if” and wonder what would have happened if Koolhaas assumed the role of The Fountainhead’s main character? What if like Roark, Koolhaas decided to eliminate his own building just for the sake of delivering a powerful message? What if the architect in charge stopped suffering from that hazardous impotence that he claims is the condition of architecture, and confronted the wave instead of just surfing on it? What if the moral incompatibility of the client’s demands was the factor that triggered the building’s fate? What if Koolhaas decided to risk it all while starting a battle against the agents of architecture’s misfortune? What if for once architecture quality only depended on the architect?

By doing so, Koolhaas could be more than just denouncing an architecture that has become incapable of adapting to a period of economic, environmental, and ideological struggle. By destroying his own work he could have become an impersonation of the Nietzschean madman, an architectural Zarathustra, a rebellious prophet. His herculean effort would have faded the image of the martyrdom of the impotent architect under the unbearable power of mean institutions, despotic politics, unscrupulous clients and envious public. Being Howard Roark could have challenged the cynical attitude that architects frequently use to justify projects of questionable ethics like Mies’ proposals for a Nazi National Pavillion in 1933 (for the 1935 Brussels World Fair), or the museum of tolerance in Jerusalem that Frank Gehry projected over an ancient Muslim cemetery, or the Faustian flirt that makes architects feel aroused by the impertinence of scraping the most uncomfortable corners of memory like on the Haus Der Kunst renovation in Berlin.

Koolhaas igniting the TVCC tower could have been the apotheosis of a year of extreme highs and lows. Blowing up the building on the New Year’s celebrations would have marked a breaking point between a time of genialities and monumental inaugurations and a new period that would see few openings and that would face a climate of anguish and disconcerting fate. Koolhaas destroying the work for his biggest and wealthiest sponsor would have made people point fingers in all directions, plotting theoretical schemes for such a catastrophic meltdown. All the questions regarding the authorship of this apocalyptic incident would have evaporated after Koolhaas had taken responsibility for his actions. “I burned the building”, he would have announced.

By condemning himself, not only would he commit all the other stars of the architectural constellation to assume responsibility for what they have created, but architects would start handling more than just the artistic credit of their project, as they would take the ethical one too. Junkspace , The Generic City and the rest of Koolhaas’ intellectual repertoire would stop being read as academic essays and instead would be immediately raised to cult status, being praised and hated for their political agenda. Architecture would stop being used as a vehicle of political propaganda and instead would assume its own aesthetic, ethic, and political agenda.

People would create and endless list of theories that would surface regarding Koolhaas intentions for terminating his own work. Some would think that he grew upset with the project not being carried out on time for the Olympics that were held months before the fire broke out. Others might speculate about his critical position towards his client, about their clashing views on politics, quality and management. All of this would add up to create a great expectation for the jury against the architect. And when the time of the judgment came the world (or those interested) would watch in astonishment as Koolhaas’ allegations were spelled out denouncing all the reasons that led him to finish his project. Standing in front of the judge he would read his testimony: being sponsors of the massive overspending; being the builders of the modern pyramids for the contemporary pharaohs; leading an army of uncritical designers looking for fame; feeding a media that only responds to glitter and glamour; ignoring the demands of a crisis that had eroded all layers of coherent development, destroying architecture in order to save it from mediocrity.

But the fact is that Koolhaas did not burn the tower of the TVCC. The fire that illuminated the night of Beijing for hours seems to have been the result of an accident with fireworks. The zinc that sent uncontrollable flames was not a premeditated spectacle; there was no supposed hidden message behind the fire. At the end of this story, there won’t be a Cortlandt Homes trial against Koolhaas. The Dutch architect will not have denounced the ineptitude on a monumental scale of the profession in a court case against a battalion of politicians and infuriated developers. Architecture will continue to be an exercise for the powerful, and the economically privileged, while the architects will still be seduced by the flash of the cameras and the brightness of the papiercouché.

In The Fountainhead, the architect became a hero by leading the way towards an architecture of high quality by any means necessary. At the moment we have all the elements necessary to make our own novel; but, will we finally have our hero or will Howard Roark only remain a fictitious personage? ■

special thanks to Federico Pedrini

What About the Politics of Quality Management?

2010-09-11T11:58:00.000-07:00

WAI has been featured in Conditions Magazine

WAI’s What About the Burning Icon? has been featured in the double issue of CONDITIONS dedicated to “The Politics of Quality Management”. The magazine includes works, interviews, projects and articles from NAI director Ole Bouman, Pritzker Prize Executive Director Martha Thorne, Norwegian practice Jensen & Skodvin, Polymath Dr. Rachel Armstrong, French practice Phillipe Rahm Architectes, and graphic wonder Jimenez Lai, between others.

To order a copy: www.conditionsmagazine.com

What About Portfolio Interview?

2010-08-20T09:07:00.000-07:00

WAI’s Interview has been featured in Damdi’s latest publication Portfolio

The Interview in English as follows:

Q. Is your portfolio for your own or for an office? What is the difference between the two?

Our portfolio is for our office, WAI Architecture Think Tank. The office portfolio focuses on the particular design philosophy of WAI; in this way our first concern is to integrate theoretical texts, which we consider as a major part in our approach, as well as underlining the development of our different projects ranging from pure research, urbanism, architecture and several experimental mediums, like magazines, film and exhibition art. An individual portfolio, for somebody as young as us, would usually focus more on the diversity of approaches and experiences that you can acquire through your studies and professional practice.

Q. What is the most important element in a portfolio?

For us it can be seen as the good balance between content and layout. Too much of either of those elements can alter the harmony, and result in a portfolio too heavy in the first case, or a portfolio too banal in the second.

Q. How do you select the works to be included in the portfolio? Where does the most successful project placed within the portfolio? What is the best way to order the projects?

It all depends on the projects that you have, and what you want to communicate through the portfolio. It is common to think that the logic corresponds to a chronology, with the most recent projects or the projects that portray the best of your development in the beginning to make a good first impression.

Q. What makes a successful portfolio?

A really successful portfolio is the one that highlights your capacities. A portfolio is something very personal that should reflect the best characteristics of the author. The size, layout and colors should variate according to the preference of the author, as long as it takes into account that which is most suitable way to display his or her work.

Q. What is the most effective layout?

What can be reckon as being a clear layout would be a design that doesn't obliterates the content. The layout should help to showcase the work displayed without competing with it.

Q. Where do you get your ideas?

We are constantly reading and looking around us. We get inspiration everywhere, from graphic design websites, contemporary magazines on design and culture, to the historical research we do for theoretical projects as on the 20^th century avant-garde movement in art and architecture that particularly interest us .

Q. If there is one, what is the weakness or needs of development of your portfolio? If none, how can you make the perfect portfolio?

In the name of WAI architecture, we are concerned in developing our design philosophy, and that is reflected in our portfolio. For us the most important thing is how to manage to have substance and content in what we do, and how to create a visual language that displays it. In that sense our portfolio will develop as our projects get more complex and our practice more mature.

Q. What are the most common mistakes made by people making portfolio?

A very common mistake in portfolio making is the overload of material. Editing plays a major rôle at the time of making a portfolio. Very often portfolios get too saturated with material, and sometimes even too crowded with a unrefined layout. Another issue is to avoid emphasizing too much on yourself, taking the focus away from the projects.

Q. Is there a rule in making a portfolio?

For us a portfolio is like a personal magazine; the project images, content, information, and text in our case, should be integrated harmoniously. It usually follows the same logical order as in a magazine, with a front cover, followed by a small curriculum vitae, an index or page of contents and then the projects. The colors, texts, titles and images are to the discretion of the author; we don't think there is one rule for it.

Q. When and why did you make your first portfolio?

What can be considered as our first portfolio is a magazine called « What About It? Part 1 ». The publication represented a compendium of one year of WAI's work. The challenge was how to address graphically the underlying consistency of ideas behind all the different projects, even when they varied from publication texts, to architecture and urbanism competitions, to film and exhibitions.

Q. Anything to say to those making their first portfolio? If you were in the shoes of one who is judging the portfolio, what would you look for and why?

A good portfolio should achieve two main goals: be a good visual tool, and at the same time be clear about the capacities of the author. When we are judging a portfolio, we look for a line of thoughts behind the designs and the craftsmanship of the author (i.e. model making, image making, renderings, CAD).

To see complete interview and portfolio see Damdi’s Portfolio Volume 5.

Interview Available in English and Korean

To Buy a Copy: www.damdi.co.kr/

What About Post?

2010-08-17T10:36:00.000-07:00

WAI has been featured in POST POST POST Nuevas Arquitecturas Iberoamericanas Exhibition

WAI Think Tank has been selected to be part of an exhibition in the CCEBA (Centro Cultural de España) in Buenos Aires.

The exhibition that spans from August 11 to September 11 includes selected practices from Argentina, Brasil, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, El Salvador, España, Guatemala, Honduras, México, Paraguay, Perú, Portugal, Puerto Rico, Uruguay and Venezuela. Between them: A77, Estudio POP Arq (Argentina), Grupo Bijari (Brasil), Supersudaka (Chile), Mesa Editores, Plan b, and JPRCR (Colombia), Estudio A0, and Somadic Collaborative (Ecuador), Fabrica de Paisaje, Monica Galain (Uruguay), Mateo Pinto D’Lacoste & Carolina Cisneros (Venezuela), Tatiana Bilbao (México), Edgar González, elii Agencia de Arquitectura and C+ Arquitectos (España) and Pedro Bandeira (Portugal).

For More information visit the CCEBA : www.cceba.org.ar

Revista Plot: www.revistaplot.com/