What About a Year of WAI?

What About WAI?

A year asking What About It

By N. Frankowski and C. Garcia

Critical Timing

It couldn’t have been more accurate. Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc., the fourth biggest investment bank of the United States filed for bankruptcy on September 15, 2008—just five days after one of us moved to Europe for the first time. Suddenly after this event, the world was trapped inside an economical maelstrom. Architects were left confused amidst a pessimistic future. That same year, upset with the ironic relationship between architecture and the economy, WAI was born. How to deal with the paradox that the crisis in architecture started long time before this new fall on Wall-Street?

Critical Anxiety

The predictable dependence that ties architecture to the economy has left the profession defenseless in front of the crisis. Given the instability of the economical soil in which architecture usually sinks its footings, firms were shutting down, downsizing personnel and refocusing aims. Even the academia became a shelter for frustrated ambitions; a home for the dispossessed. Whatever happened to a generation of thinkers? Suddenly the “old” avant-garde found itself awkwardly without the usual shelter on which it used to rely its status quo. Who was to buy the already repeated a thousand times shapes of Styrofoam and corporate renderings? Architecture as the profession to offer solutions became disarmed and impotent. The muscle flexing of the previous ten years of architectural production started to look like an egocentric stratagem to hide the lack of ideas; the frivolous race for glamour was on.

While the architectural establishment became anxious about the critique, WAI was proposing a critical anxiety—one that doesn’t settle on economic plateaus; one that avoids the opportunistic ethos of “thinking when there is nothing to build, and building when there is nothing to think of.”

Critical Criticism

After the failed attempts to account for any rational preferences for shape, contemporary architecture has struggle to find a common ground; an ideology to defend, or even a justification for what was being built. A lack of intent mixed with the proliferation of the mass media has simply multiplied the repetition of architectural stratagems. Contemporary architecture was being reduced to a catalog of “hardcore shapes” and to a series of “renderings of the clean”. Sustainability has become the new cache misère for our lack of intent, a trendy makeup hiding our incompetence, clean urbanism being its apotheosis. We have become a bunch of mere cosmeticians; a group of Peter Keatings but this time without a Howard Roark.

Critical Foam

WAI is about foam ideas. A product of a moment in time, WAI surges when thinking is being “overlooked”; when the abrasive emptiness of imagery overflows and empty foam shapes threatens to saturate the architectural domain. WAI dares to challenge the massive proliferation of foam models by producing “foam ideas”. If for the Pop-architectures of today foam is just a material to shape forms, for WAI foam is an intellectual structure that catalyzes endless cognitive connections. WAI proposes the subversion of the foam as to transform it in a Deus ex machina.

Critical Wandering

Where globalization seems to have gone as the given condition, architecture has somehow remained under the influence of the same topical discussions. The more the world opens, the more architecture regionalizes.

In order to challenge debased regionalisms WAI proposes a revision of la dérive; a post-Situationist urban drifting. In order to construct an urban narrative apparatus for the discussion of architectural and urbanistic ideas, WAI explores, analyzes and experiences contrasting urban environments. Chinese, French, Belgian and Dutch cities have formed a continuous network, that along with Dutch, Scandinavian, American and Puerto Rican magazines and exhibitions have motivated WAI’s architectural projects during the past year.

Critical Interrogation

By asking “What About It?” at the beginning of every project WAI chooses to interrogate before judging; to think before affirming; to analyze before concluding. WAI challenges a generation infatuated with wiki-research, and data-escapes with a critical skepticism; a subversive intellectualism. WAI sees asking: "What about it?" as a working process without given conclusions. WAI dares to take risks.

Critical Alchemy

WAI is not multidisciplinary. WAI believes that architecture as a discipline involves much more than the mere conception of a building. WAI believes in the construction of ideas, and recognizes the infinite palette of mediums that can be used to achieve them. WAI is interested in understanding architecture and the city through all the networks connected to them. WAI proposes a theory of understanding; a theory of alchemy. WAI proposes transformation—quantity into thoughts, shapes into ideas, frivolity into substance; and recognition of history and culture. The more that is produced the more WAI thinks. WAI worries about triviality and inquires about sophistication. WAI is…What About It?

What About the Year of the Tiger?

WAI wishes you a Happy Chinese New Year

To celebrate the year of the Tiger WAI announces the upcoming publication What About It? Part 1… a narrative autoportrait of one year of WAI; featuring architectural projects, visual essays, articles, and film stills of the Think Tank.

Release date will soon be announced .

What About Copenhagen?

CONDITIONS MAGAZINE and Danish Architecture Centre invite you to the release of CONDITIONS #3: “GLAMOROUS COMPROMISE”

TIME: Wednesday 10th of February, from 19:00

PLACE: DAC, Strandgade 27BDK 1401 Copenhagen K

PROGRAM:
- Introduction by CONDITIONS
- Debate including

Architect Bjarke Ingels,

City Architect Jan Christiansen,

Artist Lars Ramberg

and architectural editor of Politiken Karsten Ifversen

moderated by CONDITIONS
- Issue #3 will be available for sale

WAI is an intellectual collaborator of Conditions Magazine. The third issue includes the article “What About Glamour” which proposes a way of understanding contemporary architecture through the scope of glamour. The second issue of Conditions contains the article “The Shapes of Hardcore Architecture”, which proposes a critical analysis of contemporary architecture.

DAC (Danish Architecture Centre)

http://english.dac.dk

Conditions Magazine

http://www.conditionsmagazine.com/

What About LA?

WAI’s The Story of the Tower to be featured in the group exhibit:

UNPLANNED: Research and Experiments at the Urban Scale

25 March 2010 – 2 July 2010
Opening Reception Thursday March 25, 2010 5PM – 8PM
Pacific Design Center (PDC) Suite B208 | West Hollywood, CA | 90069

SUPERFRONT is proud to present UNPLANNED: Research and Experiments at the Urban Scale, the first SUPERFRONT LA exhibit of 2010.

Just as the discipline of architecture faces a re-imagination of itself in this era of slow-motion global capitalism, the human population finds itself crossing the threshold to a predominantly urban existence. Many of the basic tenets underpinning urban planning – Cartesian geometry, programmatic taxonomy, contextualism – have been subject to skeptical investigation and rebellion in architecture throughout the past decade. Yet conventional urban planning continues, the discipline of urban planning operating much as it has since the 1960s (if not the 1860s). Leveraging an interdisciplinary focus, UNPLANNED: RESEARCH AND EXPERIMENTS AT THE URBAN SCALE boldly presents a collection of radical methods for envisioning and producing space at the urban scale.

Curated by Mitch McEwen the exhibition also includes work from ae.i.ou (San Juan), Salottobuono (Venice), Tomorrow’s Thoughts Today (London), Francisca Benitez (New York), Benjamin Cadena (Brooklyn), McLain Clutter (University of Michigan TCAUP), Alex Delaunay (New York/Paris), Johanna Ferrer Guldager and Stine Laurberg Hansen (Copenhagen/ Los Angeles), Dennis Maher (Buffalo), Riitta Oittinen (Helsinki), Hyeri Park (Seoul/Delft), Dubravka Sekulić (Belgrade/Maastricht), Alvaro Urbano (Madrid/Berlin), architects AGENCY (New York), ZellnerPlus (Los Angeles), INABA (Los Angeles), an advanced architecture studio at Columbia GSAPP taught by Mabel Wilson, and a student workshop from the Southern California Institute of Architecture directed by Micheal Pinto of Project Food / LA (Los Angeles).

For more information about the exhibit:

http://losangeles.superfront.org/2010/01/unplanned-research-experiments-at-the-urban-scale/

For more information about The Story of the Tower stay tuned to WAI.

What About a Conditional Glamour?

Architect's Delight

What about Glamour?

A cynical guide for a peepshow of urban frivolity

By N. Frankowski and C. García

What happens when we are no longer entertained by the glitter of the stars, the waves of fashion, the high gossip of competitions or prizes? What happens when we lose faith in architecture itself, when we perceive it in the end as no more than a gentlemanly sport for educated minds and well-trained eyes?

-Luis Fernández-Galiano

Every other city we go, every other video, no matter where I go, I see the same…

-2Pac

The cosmetic is the new cosmic…

-Rem Koolhaas

Glamour is the new black. The contemporary city lies as a catwalk for the showcase of sexy fetishistic architectural products (of contemporary Starchitects). Glittering facades, exclusive brand names, flashing lights and slick materials are the Botox and silicone of the glamorous twenty first century architecture and its urbanism. So what about glamour and the city?

The architecture of the spectacle has been running a hasty race for stardom. The survivors from the generation of May ’68 have finally reached the long sought stratospheric élite of high fashion and fame. In fact, this selected group of every-where-I-look-I-see-them architects has managed to fool an entire pop generation of groupies into copying the cynicism without the critique. Sous le pavé la plage has been reimbursed with an un-equivalent sous le pavé les boutiques Prada.

The plan of Modernism to exploit the Mass Media as its deus ex machina is finally accomplished. Now more than ever architecture is dependent on the power of branding and eye candy pleasures. Magazine covers, TV Shows, music videos, and movie sets have pushed architecture into the midst of a self-claimed glory. Not only has the architect seemed to be floating in the “amniotic fluid” of fashion and glamour, he (and a few exceptions of she) has become a superstar.

The Koolhaas’s, Hadid’s, Calatrava’s, Foster’s, Libeskind’s, and Gehry’s have become brand names like Chanel, Versace and Dolce and Gabbana; every global city wants its own. Architecture has become more infatuated by the centerfold images, the glitter of the papier couché, and by the flash of the cameras than by their auspicious role as agents for social change. The crux of the problem is that architects have become rock stars; the city their red carpet.

In order to understand the conditions of the architecture of glamour and its effects on the city we must update our jargon; glorify our lexicon. A new terminology has to be applied, (or at least proposed) to describe the urbanistic narcissism that has taken over the city like plastic surgery over a model’s face. Our previous database is outdated; it has expired. Therefore, the urban dictionary must be reinvented. In constant revision, never serious, these new concepts, or “disposable speculations” portray the zeitgeist of the modern grozsdtadt.

Bling Bling Urbanism- In Bling Bling Urbanism eye candy is applied on a one to one thousand scale. Removing all the layers of human evidence, it shows a surrealist alternative of a non-existent reality. Bling Bling Urbanism turns the world into an image; it is the apotheosis of synthesis and the meltdown of analysis.

Bling Bling Urbanism seduces into doing lèche vitrine on windows filled with empty urban promises. Graphically efficient we lie to ourselves in order to lie to everybody. Too far from eyesight; too distant from a critical standpoint, glamour is being grafted onto the city. Bling Bling urbanism is ornament the size of a city. From the palm tree shapes of man made islands, to the perfectly gridded urban blocks ―and superblocks, to the parametric spontaneities of software simulacra, entire shapes are being rendered over Google Earth images of toy sized cities. Glamour adds glitter to the city; Bling Bling Urbanism dazzles the spectator.

Sexy Shapes-Previously used exclusively to describe attributes that provoked sexual excitement; “sexy” is not longer attached to the human figure. After recognizing the power of iconography, sexy-man made machines are being raised with lust and desire. The more the tower twists, bends, or spread wide open, the more exposure it receives. In this world driven by paraphernalia, sexy describes it the best, and the expression is becoming ever more popular in magazines, public presentations, and even the most sacred events at the academia.

Like an adrenaline rush, lust anesthetizes our logic as we become unable to distinguish the obvious lack of content behind the sexy shapes. Incapable of identifying the repeated plot we fall in the scheme like a lover blinded by “the moment.” The scene has been set: a flock of birds flying through a sun irradiated, clean, happy sky; the joyous effect of a summer lapped by a gentle wafting fog, and in the background, sexy shapes are erected.

Bimbo Towers- Like a supermodel, high rise is getting prime broadcast time. In fact, clients are pouring obscene amounts of time, architects and money to erect towers that, like bimbo girls, look attractive but don’t confer anything else than their looks. The skyscraper is indeed the definitive typology predilection of the architecture of glamour. It has become a fetishistic silhouette of whatever is à la mode.

Erected as the objectification of a desire for virility, the bimbo towers dominate the urban skyline. Their sexy shapes have swallowed everything else that was urban ―monoliths of conceptual emptiness have substituted substance with “Junkspace”. A new race aiming to conquer the sky with Bimbo Towers seems to on; and like Yona Friedman’s architecture mobile (1958) this frivolous incarnation of whatever that is wrong with architecture grow equally over a desert, a rice field or a slum. Sooner than expected, glamour will take over and every city will proudly raise its bimbo tower.

Sassy Facades- Distinctively stylish, these pretty faces create boulevards reminiscent of boutiques with exclusive brand names. Entire urban contexts are transformed into shopping malls; making every city look the same. The sassy facades are achieved through a surgical approach that operates over the urban epidermis ―no wonder that more than often they are referred to as “skins.” An overwhelming amalgamation of nicely done facades decorate our expérience psychogéographique as the city finally becomes a Debordean spectacle.

Libraries, churches, shopping malls, restaurants, supermarkets, and banks are induced into a collective camouflage of urban frivolity; a sassy make-up of sassy facades. Clinging to catch the eye of the spectator, a new urban swagger is arrogantly thrown in everybody’s face. Sassy facades offer to the pedestrian a peepshow of glamour, a private lap dance of urban chic.

Chic Interiors-This is the most intimate and perhaps exclusive part of the glamour scheme. The interiors seduce, but don’t satisfy. Identity is dropped intentionally in order to gain credibility. You are not longer able to identify the function of the place (or the purpose of it). All neon lit, chic interiors suggest you are in a hotel lobby. At the same time you could be waiting for food, for a shoe, for a book or an airplane. Typology is transfigured into ambience and environment. Not only the interiors are not exposed to the outside, but are totally “disconnected”; the air conditioner helped to emancipate the building from the city.

The Chic Interiors don’t clarify their intentions with the city, instead they blur them. They offer each visitor a retreat into a paradisiacal taste of irresistible attractions. And while they create an eternal flow of first-level visitors, the Chic Interiors could be nothing but a fifth category in the urban lexicon; lacking substance and just trying to be glamorous.

Blinded by the glittering features and exclusivity of architecture and the perfect neatness of man-made shapes, the city is about to be dead (again). Not only have we unwittingly surrendered to the luxurious life of high fashion, but we have become the ultimate manipulators of the urban avatar, the definitive cosmeticians of the city. We have turned the city into a gigantic decoration. If for Adolf Loos ornament in an architectural scale was a crime, then ornamental urbanism would have been a felony.

After so much gossip and camera flash our urbanism has turned self-conscious; we have turned the city into an anorexic model that cannot see itself in the mirror anymore. After modernism we have failed to see ourselves again as urban alchemists, not because our inability to remember previous Zarathustran efforts, but because we don’t care anymore. Our city has become a polished caricature of our worst urban cynicism.

Glamour is addictive. More and more we want more glamour, and in fact we get more glamour. The urban portrait of the 21^st century reveals cities ignored for the sake of the prolific production of architectural artifacts. The mountains of Styrofoam models grow at the same speed that the stack of pages of architectural publications. The servers are full of speculative figurations; we show videos of our projects in development, of our buildings in construction. We are the architectural voyeur, the glamorous exhibitionists. The architectural “process” has enhanced the spectacle by letting it all be exposed.

We have become unable to do anything if it doesn’t become a spectacle. We want every image of every attempt, however futile or sterile, to become a tool for propaganda. We get satisfied not by how much substance we have built, but by how many publications we have been featured in; by how much prizes we have won. The potential of Glamour has been a miscarriage; a tool undermined. Used by the modernists to gain credibility for their ambitious vision of a brave new world, Glamour never really reached its climax. Instead, we have eroded all its potential; stopped its initial momentum. Glamour has been banalized. It has passed from a spontaneous opportunity to address an issue to an opportunistic overload of paraphernalia. Never before have we been so infatuated by the strass et paillettes of the glamorous world of Architecture with a capital A.

Luis Fernandez-Galiano asked in a soul tearing note what happens when we lose faith in architecture? What happens when the glamour issue is over and we are left standing “empty-handed” and “empty-minded” in front of a vanishing audience? Are we then to assume responsibility for what has been intentionally irresponsible? Or are we to surrender to a Mephistophelean seduction and find more ways to polish the mirrors of our narcissistic profession?

The reality check is imminent; the dream is over. We have all been shouting insipid slogans hoping they will turn into a manifesto; a contemporary urban gospel. The recent economic crisis just showed that the bubble of the architectural crisis bursted long time ago; long before Wall Street. We have been constructing ideological edifications on artificial foundations. The only coherent statements have come when we claim that we don’t make statements anymore.

A young generation of architects is left a midst the crisis of the crisis. If between architecture and the city the relationship is often problematic, then between glamour and architecture the problem has been cancelled, subtracted, since there is not intellectual dialectic anymore. We keep on trying the same formula with stubborn perseverance enforcing an opportunistic amnesia that erases the memories of a post-Bilbao glamour breakdown. We don’t recognize that while the covers of fashion magazine help promote the image of individual architects, it does very little to help the entire profession, and much less to contribute to the development of the city. Glamour has enlarged the architect to become bigger than his architecture, and his architectures to outsize the city.

An arrogant and egocentric approach towards the city has reduced the possibilities of discovering alternatives to the problems we have created. The frivolous search for glamour has turned the city into a distorted apotheosis of Rem Koolhaas’s The City of the Captive Globe (1972). In it the sensationalistic pleasure of the hedonistic mind has run out of proportion, obstructing the construction of artificial conceptions and births of theories and making it impossible for the self-centered architectures to breed on a globe which, no longer being within their attention has vanished from their captivity.

In the post-glamour city where looks don’t deceive anymore, and where nobody looks at the covers of the magazines, only those who were brave enough to reinvent themselves and maintain critical distance from the intoxicating aroma of the glamour will be the ones who can attempt to rescue the city, and perhaps the globe. Meanwhile, in the contemporary city the fashionable offerings keep on being dumped on top of the urban substance. Architecture is still a self-conscious profession that hides behind cosmetics, and the “big” and the “powerful” are still using the Glamour as a tool of self-promoting propaganda. It is time for us to wonder what will happen when the fireworks are finished and the smoke clears; will the city (or the Globe) still be there? ■

Debord Unlimited: The frivolous peepshow