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06Aug 2014

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Parasite2.0 (Milan, Italy) investigates the status of urban life by developing interaction and intervention devices outside conventional systems of contemporary architecture. They are currently members of the ViafariniInResidence programme. They have previously worked on “The Third Island Ag ’64 ’94 ‘14” for the 2014 Venice Architecture Biennale and “Parasite Trip” for the 2012 edition, as well as “Radical Islands, The New Ibiza” for Bloop Festival and “Urban Hacking Machine” for Lo-Fi @ Wired Next Fest 2013.

Wikyplaza as Radical Island

The city right is more than a right of individual or collective access at the resources that it saves and protects, it’s a right to change and reinvent the city. The cases of loss of the city right occur also during the design mode of the public spaces, today monopolized by the neo-liberal market interests and by the statal bureaucracy. The 2011 movements exactly start from the public space and from its democratic use, choosing as their center big and significant places of the city. Turning business and leisure areas into purposeful and propulsive places, into laboratories of new practices, giving the democratic function back to the urban space, through the prolonged (almost permanent) occupation.

The physical configuration and the drawing of these places lose importance, while the activity that occurs,

foreshadowing of a new democracy, obtains more relevance. In “Causes and Reasons of Desert Islands”, Deleuze talks about continental islands recalling definition of geographers on derived or accidental islands, which arise from a fracture of the mainland, an erosion that has taken them away

living through the sinking, a detachment, labeling itself as different and foreign body. Among control stitches and its boundaries, observable in our capitalist cities, we see growing spaces able to slip it away, real desert islands for new men, for a new vision of urban freedom with different codes and ethics.

In 1516 Thomas More writes “The Utopia”, coining for the first time this word, trying to elude the censure of that epoch and making it coinciding with an imaginary island that the author particularly draws.

The most interesting feature of Utopia Island is its new codes and ethics system, exactly representing the opposite reflex of the Henry the VIII’s England and foreshadowing a different and possible world.

It’s exactly from these systems of rules, that constrain the use of the public space, that we have to restart, formulating new ones. We can read the public spaces of the 2011 re-appropriations as radical islands with sharp borders, within which a new reality can start afresh and where a new elaboration of forms of democracy can be possible. 

Dreaming the islands, no matter whether with anguish or joy, it means dreaming of separating, of being alreadyseparated, far from continents, of being alone and lost, or rather starting again and recreating. There are derivedislands, but island is even that to which it’s drifting, and there are original islands but island is also origin, the radicaland absolute origin.”

G. Deleuze, Desert Island

Radical island blaster_ mobile laboratory for the afterthought of a radical urban space

In 1996 Lacaton & Vassal astonished the entire European architectural scenario thanks to a requalification project of a public space, using their radical proposal of the Palais de Tokyo, which simply asked to leave the space as it was, yet considered full of possibilities. The workshop starts from the construction of a low cost nomadic device with the purpose of reactivate possible radical islands within the Timisoara post-soviet landscape. Using it in order to reformulate the public space drawing process and starting by building a debate place where questioning on what they can be and become in order to activate a process and not to find a definitive solution. The workshop square will be transformed into an active laboratory for and on the Timisoara public space, as the squares of the 2011 movements were be transformed into places for the elaboration of a new form of democracy. During the five days, the participants and the citizens will work inside the radical Island bluster with the aim of writing the “Carta of use of the public space”, starting from the restrictions of the city bureaucracy. They will create a Catalogue of Radical Islands within Timisoara, mapping them, and an Archive of Good Practices to use it as example

for the future The three parts will form a Fanzine that, with the Radical Island Blaster, will remain in Timisoara as heritage for the future of its public spaces.

06Aug 2014

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Waiting spaces is an interdisciplinary discourse melting art, architecture and urban culture into a series of artistic interventions in public spaces. Public spaces represent the connective infrastructure of a city; oftenly these are underperceived or even neglected. In today’s socio-political context, public spaces offer information about the city and its culture. We understand public space in an extended sense: from streets and central plazas to collateral spaces (peripheric districts, underused streets, abandoned industrial sites etc). Public space can also be defined by the way people perceive and experiment the city, which ultimately results in the social interaction of its inhabitants. Public spaces are and should be multi-dimensional destinations, offering a variety of experiences.

Waiting spaces I materialized in 2012. The project consisted in visiting and documenting a series of post-industrial sites in Timişoara, which were also used as a background for video documentaries, as suggestions, as a historical context or as metaphors for reflections on the present.

The interest shifted during Waiting spaces II towards the debate on how to take back an increasingly smaller and suffocating public space, by means of cultural actions (artistic installations, posters, performances etc).

This year’s edition is themed BUILDING-SITE CITY: it questions the changing relationship between individuals and public space, its limits and influence on everyday life. A building-site can also be understood as “the ongoing process of creating a literary, artistic or scientific work”.

Artistic interventions (installation, drawing, poster, video projection, sound, performance etc) included in Waiting spaces III aim to generate a speculative process reflecting on the issue of public space and resulting in a fresh perspective on its context.

Invited artists: Estefan Arnold + Anca Benera, Linda Barkasz, Dyslex, Ciprian Homorodean, Vasile Leac, Monotremu, , Nava Spatiala, Mircea Nicolae, Dan Perjovschi, Sergiu Sas, Miklos Szilard, Lavinia Urcan, TamTam.
More details on:http://waiting-spaces.simultan.org

06Aug 2014

Anuala Timișoreană de Arhitectură – a_ta is the most important professional event organized by the Timiş branch of the Romanian Order of Architects (OAR), with the financial support of OAR.

The project’s main objective is to distinguish and promote excellence in architecture and, in doing so, to highlight exemplary professional practices.

Even though a_ta addresses mainly the architectural profession, a major goal of the project is to attract the general public’s interest in quality architecture and to engage it in the architectural phenomenon, of which it is the ultimate beneficiary. To this purpose, the a_ta events have a public dimension – the exhibition, debates, workshops and conferences are open to everyone – and a formative one – by exposing the community to the values of quality architecture.

This year’s concept - present! - has this major goal as its starting point, thus generating a form of curating that highlights and at the same time questions different types of processes that take place as part of an architect’s path within context: the educational process, the process of buiding a practice, the relations with communities, the project, a discourse, etc.

We used the same type of process for the CONFERENCES - which represent a collection of different practice typologies, interesting  either becauseof their typical concept for building, because of the manner in which an architect might have chosento associate with others or with the community, or for their architectural discourse regarding the physical and theoretical background we are living within in the present.

 

ARCHITECTS ABOUT ARCHITECTURE is, in conclusion, a collection of different ways of understanding what architecture might mean in the present.

 

Before attending the conferences, we inviteyou to go over the profiles of our 8 lecturers:

 

21 november, hrs. 17:00

Unu La Unu – Bucharest

Fala atelier – Porto

Space Caviar – Genoa

DPR – Barcelona

 

22 november, hrs. 17:00

edit! – Prague

XML – Amsterdam

Raphael Zuber – Chur

die Baupiloten – Berlin

06Aug 2014

In follow-up of this year’s theme for a_ta 2014, present!,  POST-ARCHITECTURE ALTERNATIVES [CHRONICLES] is a compilation project, consisting of a collection of stories authored by architects who developed alternative means of existence within the community by orienting their curiosities, thoughts and their life towards remarcable activities.

Architects are invited to share their personal experiences related to alternative activities, also showcasing if and how architecture has influenced them. For this reason, the following line-up of questions has been addressed:

  • How would you introduce yourself to strangers?
  • What made you choose architecture as a profession?
  • How has architecture influenced you personal development?
  • How would you describe your alternative activity to people unfamiliar with it?
  • How has the transition from architecture to your alternative activity occured?
  • How do the two activities influence each other?
  • To what degree are you present in each of the activities?

The resulting chronicles will be published periodically on the internet, until the termination of a_ta 2014.

 

 

06Aug 2014

*** PLEASE NOTE THAT THIS COMPETITION IS RESTRICTED TO ROMANIAN CITIZENS

The Timiş branch of OAR (the Romanian Order of Architects) has the pleasure of inviting you to participate at the first edition of the architectural essay competition a_ta 2014. The competition, launched for the first time this year, is opened to anyone interested in architectural theory and its manifestations in the local architectural landscape.

Through this initiative the 2014 edition of a_ta, themed “present!”, aims to stimulate and acknowledge the theoretic discourse in architecture and, in doing so, to facilitate a different type of presence than a strictly material one, customary to architecture. The competition’s subject – a critical approach of the relationship between architecture and the economic, political, social, cultural etc. present which contains it – is derived from the necessity to investigate and reconsider architecture’s temporal dimension as a result of the contemporary shift of the architectural character from a producer of objects to a manager of processes.

Students, art/architecture critics, professors, philosophers, theorists, sociologists, architects, urbanists, designers etc. are invited to submit a critical essay on the proposed subject. The award, 2000 lei, will be conferred at the a_ta 2014 gala, in December.

The jury is comprised of 3 members: conf. dr. arh. Francoise Pamfil, prof. dr. arh. Ana Maria Zahariade, prof. dr. arh. Ioan Andreescu.

Competition timeline:

- launch: August 1st

- Q&A: August 1st – August 31st

(questions will be sent by email to contact@anualadearhitectura.ro, answers will be posted on the annual’s site)

- registration and submission deadline: November 3rd

- jury deliberations: November 17th – November 30th

- announcement of winner essay: December 3rd

- prize award: December 12th

a_ta is the most important architectural event in Timisoara, organized by the Timis branch of the Romanian Order of Architects (OAR), with the financial support of OAR derived from architectural services tax. This year’s edition, themed present!, establishes as its scope to provoke to dialogue and to experiment with different types of interaction by means of cultural events and interventions unfolded on a 6 months timeline.
For more details about a_ta 2014, you can contact the organizing team by email on contact@anualadearhitectura.ro or onwww.anualadearhitectura.ro.

 

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06Aug 2014

“Entrepreneurship is the process of recognizing opportunities and obtaining resources that leads to the creation of novelty”

 

S_FESTIN is the concluding event of theSTART category of a_ta 2014 and follows right after “Profession minus architecture”. Conceived as a participative process, it consists of a ROUND TABLE anda FEAST in immediate succession.

The aim of the event is to generate debates on important topics detached (or not) from the architectural object. These subjects are fairly important for the profession but discussions on them, while frequent in other professions or other creative industries, are rare and disorganized in architecture.

The ROUNDTABLE will bring together architects from Timişoara and from other cities in Romania, to dialogue openly about architectural offices. The discussion, moderated by arch. Adrian Soare (SYAA), will take into account subjects such as entrepreneurial strategies, communication, inter-professional relationships, collaborations with other professions, administration of an architectural office, architectural startup biographies, office identity, client oriented strategies etc. – these and many more will be publicly debated and can be the pretext for your questions.

The FEAST will end the evening and will generate the opportunity for informal talks between the audience, lecturers and participants on the topics raised at the round table.