The other drawings in the exhibition belong to the same period and are grouped in series depending on their setting or compositional system, typically following a layout where architecture is set out as an autonomous object or still life. More generally, the exhibition reminds us of the virtuosity and expertise of Lerup’s drawings, and the way his images are used as a tool to represent not only architectural themes, but also create subtle and elaborate narratives within them.[1]

1234 House, 1985, water colour on paper, 24x18cm

Such is the case with Lukamanier Pass – 8, which shows two sets of hands in the bottom left corner of the image, one resisting the other, which, knife in hand, is about to cut into the structure of a building fragment, as if describing some premonitory event. The classical language of the building, formed by a group of columns and a pediment, is time-related to the robes draping the arms above the hands. These are only half visible, covered by the background, like ghostly images found in unrevealed layers of old documents. The event depicted (the fighting to avoid an attack on an architectural fragment) is a mental passage that takes place in a real location (Lukmanier Pass in the Swiss Alps, which borders the canton of Ticino, famous for its 1980s architecture), and which invites the viewer to figure this whole story out.

Lukamanier Pass, 1986, water colour on paper, 24x18cm

From a representational point of view, most of Lerup’s drawings on display use oblique projection, often combining elements with different perspectives – a smart way to elaborate complex narratives, and something that would be more difficult to achieve with standard one- or two-point perspective. This kind of illusionistic projection also enables the viewer to be located closer to the subject, occupying the same representational centre where the action takes place.[2] As a device, the use of multiple projections recalls German fashion photographer Peter Lindbergh’s favoured medium: ‘Using 35mm is more like talking – conversational photography – while larger formats are like presentation. Thirty-five millimetre is like a part of your body. You talk and you take pictures; how people react to you and to your camera, that’s what you can get on 35mm.’[3] The same conversationalism and commitment to analogue photography can be found in the work of Catalan photographer Xavier Miserachs, particularly the images applied to the walls of his house in Esclanyà. Here Miserachs created a beautiful patchwork of family images, mostly taken on the beaches of his beloved Costa Brava, a region where Harnden Bombelli built the Staempfli house – another architectural subject rendered by Lerup (Cadaqués, 1986).[4] This house, like the others displayed as a part of a series in this exhibition, is depicted as an autonomous object, detached from its urban context and immersed in a wasteland of dramatic scenery, like a poetic manifesto to human dwelling.

Set, Ostia, Italy 1991. Photo by Peter Lindbergh

Cadaques, 1965. Photo by Xavier Miserachs

Cadaques, 1986, water colour on paper, 22x16cm

But beyond architecture, Lerup’s work has also consistently dealt with the equally classical models of urbanity and the academy. From the perspective of his written work, and related to drawing, his latest book about Houston is an example of an author able to work simultaneously with visual and narrative content in order to communicate a wider set of ideas.[5] In this particular case, drawings are used as tools to explain complex urban events and conditions, sometimes of a diagrammatic or schematic nature, and seemingly produced at the same speed as his typing. In this sense, Lerup’s drawings are imbued with a sense of humanity and wilderness that connects with the experience of living within a Texan environment, with its humid, subtropical climate as the everyday experiences of driving fast expensive cars over freeways. Ultimately these contradictory features – yet more fatness and thinness – is what most characterises Houston as a living environment. And although his books suggest larger, more deployed narratives than just drawings, these last ones are ultimate instruments to tell, suggest and put us closer to some of the many stories they contain.

—José Zabala, editor at Quaderns.

_____
[1] For additional Lerup material go to the database of the CCA or see the following link.
[2] See: James S. Ackerman introduction to Massimo Scolari’s Oblique drawing. A history of anti-perspective. MIT press Writing architecture series, 2012.
[3] Peter Lindberg, Artforum May 2016, Volume 54, Issue 9.
[4] Manuel Martín et. al., El Cadaqués de Peter Harnden y Lanfranco Bombelli. (Col·legi d’Arquitectes de Catalunya, 2002).
[5] Lars Lerup, One Million Acres & No Zoning. (Architectural Association, London, 2011).

/// The exhibition ‘A Fat House for a Thin Man,’ is being exhibited at Betts Project. Betts Project is a London-based contemporary art gallery specialising in architecture established in 2013 and founded by Marie Coulon.
/// Marie Coulon is the founder and director of Betts Project. She arrived in London from Bordeaux, France, in 2010, having studied at the Ecole d’Enseignement Supérieur d’Art de Bordeaux (EBABX), and worked with Arcade gallery until 2012. At the same time she has worked with curator and critic, Chantal Pontbriand, on a variety of projects including Mutations (Paris-Photo 2011) and Parachute Anthology (2012).
/// We want to say thanks to Thomas Weaver, for his kind advise, reviews and edits on this text.

To be out of place has several interpretations, and this is the richness of the exhibition, that has succeed in becoming that kind of network mentioned by Rancière which is seeking for a new understanding not only of the state of the art in design and architecture, but a new understanding of the world we live in. Dealing with many uncomfortable topics, the visitor can explore how design responds and interacts with the contemporary notions of economy, politics, food, desire, and some other human obsessions that are often missing in museums or galleries.

The idea of using a door that is at the same time the entrance, the exit, the full, and the empty [created by Belgium artist Koenraad Dedobbeleer], can be understood as the manifesto of the exhibition itself: to be out of place is to lose contact of the usual place to occupy an unknown one.

Liam Saint-Pierre, The Reinvention of Normal, 2015.

Johanna Schmeer, Bioplastic Fantastic, 2014.

The need to discover that unknown field that can be a fertile ground to unlearn from all preconceptions, rules and habits, is in the basis of many of the exhibited projects. The Liberator, Defense Distributed’s 3D Printed Gun, pushes to the limits the current notions of ethics, economy and politics; but at the end is a project that clearly represents the contradiction between legality and legitimacy: The release of the 3D printed files in May 2013 was followed by several US governmental censures and investigations, a fact that makes you think why if in some countries you have the right to buy a gun, you’re not free to make it by yourself? Ethics vis-à-vis with economics.

In a similar position we can recall Home, a collaborative film by San Francisco-based Holly Herndon and graphic designers Metahaven.

“I can feel you in my room
why was I assigned to you?
I feel like I’m home on my own
and it feels like you see me.”

With this provocative words, the tandem has done what Herndon calls her “definitive NSA break up anthem,” in a video where she is singing while dozens of computer icons scroll past her. This is a way to research and perform how the NSA revelations have fundamentally changed the relationship between a person and her computer. It’s again a dilema and dichotomy between two opposites, the public and the private.

We had the opportunity of briefly exchange some thoughts with Rosa Pera about her outlines for the exhibition:

Quaderns: You have a background as curator in the field of art, as independent curator and also as director of el Bòlit, a center of contemporary art. From this experience, which are for you the main differences of working in the field of art and working with designers an architects?

Rosa Pera: From a curatorial approach, I don’t think there is any difference; I’m interested in the different ways to investigate and to transmit questions and ideas about different issues from a contemporary point of view, whatever the field of knowledge they are coming from. As there is not only one way to practice contemporary art, depending on the medium or according to political attitudes or critical charge, there is also a rich panorama of practices in design and architecture, including strongly speculative proposals, like design fiction or object oriented ontology.

Beyond this, the research processes are different and I think it is really interesting to provoke situations in which these practices can engage in stimulating conversations. As Rebecca Solnit points out, the scientists transform the unknown into the known; as she explains, they are like fishermen capturing fish from the sea while, in contrast, artists will submerge you into the dark blue water. I think that designers are often swimming and fishing, sometimes also into the deep.

Marc Ligos, Hang Lamp, 2009.

Quaderns: The main statement of the exhibition, of being ‘out of place’, refers to the need of losing contact from our comfort zone to start discovering or rediscovering other fields for actions can also be understood as losing contact with your context and reality, thus, not responding in an appropriate way to the current needs of society. Can you elaborate a bit more this statement, please?

Rosa Pera: Acting out of your comfort zone leads to other forms of investigating and communicating, maybe to open up a dialogue with contexts and audiences that usually are traditionally connected to other fields. On the other hand, more than not responding to the current needs of society, I’m referring to projects that are rooted in spaces where they are not subjected to conventional protocols, ruled by principles that resist or fight against them. Sometimes these kind of projects are proposing other ways to act, unexpected or unpredictable, following positive and constructive new prospectives and imaginaries to face the future.

Quaderns: In the exhibition, you have several pieces that are not useful in a pragmatic way, rather than that, each piece is like a manifesto on how to use design as a critical tool. Do you think that design has the same power as art (which has a long history as an activist and critical field) to communicate this critical approach?

Rosa Pera Yes, absolutely. And if they are engaged sharing ideas and contrasting different points of view, the results could be extremely stimulating. And curators and museums have a long way to walk with them, to discover new ways to approach the present and think about the future all together, making it accessible to diverse audiences.

—–

To be out of place is the feeling that you have when discovering more than 45 projects that take you on a time travel through human history, from biogenetics, to politics, economy, fear, anger, joy, and desire. And only after taking the time travel that brings you out of place, the possibility to come back and look with renewed eyes to our daily reality, becomes authentic again. That’s the magic of this curatorial approach, that can have a real impact beyond the design field. It has a real impact in the way we understand that terra incognita that’s is our world.

—Ethel Baraona Pohl, editor at Quaderns.

/// We want to thank Rosa Pera for kindly answer our questions and for showing us the exhibition. You can follow her at @rosapera
/// The Out of Place exhibition is the result of the work undertaken by the curator team headed by Rosa Pera and a team of five professionals representing the different disciplines of the FAD: Pau de Solà Morales, Ana Domínguez Siemens, Albert Martínez López-Amor, Jesús-Ángel Prieto and Juan Vidal. With Sol Polo as Assistant Curator.
/// The exhibition will be open until October 31th, 2015 at Disseny Hub Barcelona. You can follow more info at: @fadbarcelona #foradelloc

Everything spins around Guidi’s 20 by 25cm, full-scale contact prints: the camera was the media of Guidi’s research on Scarpa’s architecture, as the prints are the media that engages the viewer. Being full-scale contact prints the images have colors and details unfamiliar to our contemporary eyes: there is a physical translation – or traveling – of the light at San Vito de Altivole, to its reflection in Brion’s Tomb’s materials, to the negative film on the photographer’s camera, to its direct imprint in the photosensitive paper, and to the eyes of the viewer. Nothing is immediate, and we can learn about these slow travels in Guidi’s text at the end of the exhibition. The words tell how he learned to “see” through the camera, to grasp the physical movement of light between materials, presenting a self-evident reality inexistent before his observation through the lens. This observation affected him, the shade moving through the building, creating forms reminiscent of Klee’s formal theories and abstract compositions, transporting Scarpa’s obsessions towards Guidi’s own. Often visiting the cemetery to see the building under specific light, he was frequently betrayed by the weather, and was thus forced to discover new aspects and produce unexpected images. He mused: “I would have liked to stop the sun every now and then—don’t move!—so that I could run around and record the effects of the same light on the other areas of the cemetery.”

Guidi’s photography allowed him to avoid the traps set up by Scarpa’s own obsession with architectural detail and form; the images are not descriptive, but are inquisitive. It is as if architect and photographer were in dialogue. Neither of them had to dismiss their own ideas about architecture or photography, and the images return the fruits of a respectful conversation.

The exhibition brings another, physical, dimension to this dialogue. The viewer has the opportunity to emerge within the conversation. One enters the exhibit trough an axial corridor that forms symmetrical square spaces with white-washed walls at a 45 degree angle to the hypostyle parking lot. The first group of exhibition rooms has a Greek-cross plan. Thus when entering one room, the remaining spaces are left behind. The photographs are hung at an unusual height, one that forces the viewer’s neck into a slight, though not uncomfortable, downward movement. We are pulled into the amazing colors and details of the photographs, the sequences set for us to follow Guidi’s research and discoveries. When the room sequence is complete, we have to lift our heads up again and, suddenly, the whole scenario changes. The relationship towards the axial space through which one engaged the exhibition has disappeared. Seeing the images has shifted our place; the exhibition has moved us from one place to another. It is an architectural trick: the inner corners of the Greek cross are retrieved 1.5 meters from the outer corners – one wall is smaller than its facing wall – thus, when we think back to the entire space, we are not in the position we were when we entered. Feeling the shift, and contemplating it, makes us aware of the intellectual and physical processes taking place while seeing experiencing the exhibition. Back to the central space one can repeat the experience in the following rooms, and in doing so, placeless, find the required suspended time to join Guidi’s research on Scarpa’s time and place.

This thought-provoking exhibition is preceded by a William Blake aphorism: “The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom.” In today’s frenzied world, overpopulated by images and speed, the quietness of this exhibition is decisive. Its tricky laconic title already offers advice: Carlo Scarpa. Brion’s Tomb. Guido Guidi. Once emerged in the exhibition’s rich conversation, where apparently everything is slower, one has, rather, to think faster: time runs faster, images run faster, ideas run faster, the world runs faster, even faster than the sun. No themes or boundaries allowed, just architectural obsessions.

— André Tavares, February 2015

/// All images by Paulo Catrica.

Carlo Scarpa. Brion’s Tomb. Guido Guidi.
Exhibition in the South-Garage of Centro Cultural de Belém, Lisbon.
December 1st 2014 to March 8th 2015
Curated by Joaquim Moreno and Paula Pinto.

In moments of rapid transformation and reflections about the importance of design as a catalyst for social change, BIO 50 invited Jan Boelen —founder and artistic director of Z33 House for Contemporary Art, and Head of the Master department Social Design at the Design Academy in Eindhoven—, to be the curator of the 24th Biennial of Design. Boelen had been researching in the past years about experimental design, and the collaborative territory that emerges around concepts such as social design, scarcity, and new technologies, where design is employed and implemented as a tool to question and transform ideas about industrial production, public and private space, and pre-established systems and networks. Based on these ideas, the BIO 50 chose the concept of collaboration for this year’s edition, where design is a tool to rethink everyday life and possible futures for design.

Matevž Čelik, the director of Museum of Architecture and Design, explains:

“It is necessary to break with the fetishisation of products that has alienated design from production. I believe that BIO should play a role in this field and strive to support creativity in its most delicate and vulnerable stage. This means that in the future, BIO has to increasingly play a research-based, experimental role.”

Among the variety of projects and outcomes, we want to highlight the importance of researching and developing projects related with themes as necessary as Affordable Living, Knowing Food, Walking the City, and Observing Space, among others.

Setting up the container for ‘Affordable Living’. Photo: Tomislav Vidović

The problems about the access to housing have been in the focus of mass media since the real estate bubble came out with the financial crisis in 2008. Many efforts have been developed, such as the work of the Spanish group Plataforma de Afectados por la Hipoteca, that’s why it’s easy to understand the importance of working about this issues in a biennale context, not only from the activism field but working with a collaborative approach with activist groups, designers, architects, and policy makers. In a moment when the need for housing is confronted with the fact that contemporary cities seem to be filled with empty, unused buildings, the group of Affordable Living explored the causes and consequences of this topic, and developed strategies and tactics aimed at making contemporary affordable living a reality.

Friction Atlas. A project by Paolo Patelli and Giuditta Vendrame.

Going from the building to the street, as part of the Walking the City group, the project Friction Atlas developed a new concept of dérive, addressed to understand the issue of legibility of public space, of its programs and of the laws that regulate its uses. In a moment when the privatization of public space is ever present in mostly all of our cities, when surveillance elements [such as CCTV cameras] are part of the urban environment, this project looks how the many regulations created by governments discretize human behaviour, and tend to be algorithmic, quantitative and invisible. To transgress this fact, the project was based on drawing 1:1 diagrams, and enacting laws on the public surfaces of Ljubljana, with the intention to make legal prescriptions and loopholes visible, and therefore debatable.

Raw material. Oloop, Hidden Crafts. Photo: Designer archive.

Elements of the project in process. Hacking Households. Photo: Tilen Sepič

A fascinating and thought provoking approach of the BIO 50 Biennale is that the works presented cover a variety of issues as well as different scales. From the big scale of housing and street projects, we can mention as well projects which deal with craft and industrial design. The group Hidden Crafts worked with the aim to discover is there is new life to found in the methods, outcomes and distribution of craft and how to recover, adapt and learn from the craft tradition in Slovenia. The research goes from the relationship between the craftsman and the consumer to the collaboration between manufacturers and designers, with the idea of envision how to use new materials with traditional techniques to create a new knowledge exchange.

A deep research based on the process rather than on the final object has been the leading theme of Hacking Households. The main idea is to look to traditional household appliances and how they are created as a closed system: when something goes wrong, the most cost-effective solution is to throw out the appliance and replace it with something new. In the same way as projects like Open Structures or the transparent tools by Jesse Howard, this team uses 3D printing and DIY circuitry to build upon users’ newfound abilities and opportunities to repair, customize, modify and repurpose existing products, creating a family of appliances designed for disassembly, repair, and modification.

A whole set of ideas, projects and new ways to understand the future of design and architecture can be find on the exhibition BIO 50: 3, 2, 1 …TEST, that is displayed from 18 September to 7 December 2014. So if you have a chance to visit, don’t miss the opportunity!

/// All the info and venues, at bio.si
/// More info to be found at MAO Slovenia and following @BIO_50

What follows is Tiago’s article:

Since the troika’s arrival, Portugal has undergone a revolution in the State’s spending structure.

Health and Education are no longer the State Budget’s largest spending areas, with debt payment, the cost of saving a bank and the payment of public-private partnerships (PPPs) gaining prominence. In 2013, 47,50% of the State’s budget was reserved for these last three items, with cuts in Health [27,10%], Education [21,50%] and Social Security [19,90%].

The State tends to disappear as an actor in public and social politics, taking on the role of tax collector for debt payment. It is not hard to imagine that, in the current scenario, there is no place for a national housing policy.
But what is going on with the private sector?

State Budget 2013
. Source: CGTP – Intersindical Nacional.

By virtue of an old law, which froze rents for decades, the real estate renting market dwindled until 2012. Houses to rent were scarce and the prices were prohibitive. The biggest beneficiaries of this imbalance were the banks. Both the financial collapse and the sudden lifting of frozen rents, as demanded by the troika, raised considerable fears, which led to old rents being abruptly bumped up. Thousands of citizens, especially among the aged population, are now having to abandon their lifelong homes.

Although it does not show in the official data, the housing market is in turmoil, with the informal sector echoing this turbulence. A common practice in non-legalized neighborhoods, key-selling, is often the only solution. These operations are carried out outside any and all real estate transaction taxes and do not require the certifications requested by EU directives. All you need to do is hand over the money. Originally an illegal settlement built on the seaside, in an idyllic location 10 km away from Lisbon, the Cova do Vapor neighborhood is an example of this real estate effervescence. With half the neighbourhood duly licensed, it is exactly the houses without legal documents that are available. Key-selling for a 50m2 house might cost between 10.000€ and 20.000€, while legal ones would cost upwards of 50.000€.

The actual size of this market is yet to be studied but it seems clear that the austerity policies being enforced on the country are stimulating a return to the informal. Buying a non-legalized home carries its risks but does not entail a loan, a mortgage, a bank and substantially reduces the value of the investment.

/// *originally created for “Homeland – News from Portugal” newspaper – Portuguese representation at the 14th International Architecture Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia 2014
/// All the info about on their web-site homeland.pt

Featuring the work of Yasmine Abboud, Olympia Anesti, Nick Axel, Jacob Burns, Jesse Connuck, Rodrigo Delso Gutierrez, Yi-Hui Lin, Frank Mandell, Basima Sisemore, and Alan Yates.

The event of recognition in many ways is an acknowledgement of the legitimacy of a particular legal entity. As a precondition, recognition is also detection, identification. Lastly, the “re-” of recognition points to an act of translation by which things are thought differently.

This exhibition starts from these premises of recognition to unearth some of the conflicting sets of circumstances, decisions, controls and landscapes of the world we live in. The work presented seeks not to examine a common sense of spatial and political destabilization, but rather to initiate an engagement and re-evaluation, a recognition and re-cognition, with contemporary spatial politics.

“Home is a 3-year shelf stable pizza” by Jesse Connuck.

“Grounding Deregulation” by Nick Axel

By recognizing, we:
- Present Beirut’s contested history through the city’s structural rolling blackouts. Explore Thessaloniki’s social and architectural interface with the Roma.
- Expose the legal geography of industrial deregulation in the United States.
- Meditate on the effectivity of violence and the digital mediation of “terrorism.”
- Reflect on the relation between the home and war through military food rations.
- Frame in-vitro fertilization as a Palestinian movement of political resistance.
- Challenge the legitimacy of civil engineering metrics as a perceptive device
- Render the distinction between life and the circus unrecognizable.
- Reveal shifting axes of identity in facial recognition technology and Syrian militia defections.
- Use time variables to turn the infrastructure of urban environments over to its inhabitants.

/// Exhibition details:
re-cognitions
Centre for Research Architecture
MA Research Architecture 2013-2014 Exhibition

19-25 June. 10am-6pm daily

Richard Hoggard Building (RHB) 312
New Cross, London
SE14 6NW

/// Header image: Jacob Burns: “‘Everyone Can See the Fate of Spies”
/// You can follow all the projects and more info on re-cognitions FB event

“In architecture we can identify a number of processes that bear a great similarity to this botanical process. Preexisting structures, physical or otherwise, are grafted with the new proposal, generating a building that brings together and harmoniously fuses the characteristics of what already exists and what is new. We can find this grafted architecture across the centuries in a great many examples. However it is in the last quarter of the 20th century and the early 21st century where we find a great number of projects in Catalan architecture in which proposals of different types and scales achieve brilliant results.

Grafting transmits the idea of a new organism that combines the strong points of its original components and is more vigorous than either of them on their own, an idea of renewal and growth.”

In order to visualize this concept, they have selected16 projects, that in different ways, share a contemporary attitude of understanding architecture. Some of the selected projects are:

Caldereria petita, housing renovation. Calderon – Folch – Sarsanedas Architects. ©Rodrigo Díaz Wichmann

Cultural center Casal Balaguer. Flores&Prats Arquitectes. © Adrià Goula

Mostly all of the projects are from the 21st century and are therefore vibrant proof of the vitality of this way of approaching things. It is also interesting to see that this attitude is one of the hallmarks of Catalan architecture, and Catalonia is one of the places where it has been developed with the most vitality and diversity.

The projects selected are presented through the process each architect followed in the phases of drafting and constructing the building. They are unique processes allowing us to see firsthand how analysis and decision-making develop through sketches, diagrams, drawings, photos, models, texts and more. Each project must be self-explanatory, making use of all available resources.

Public space Teatre La Lira. RCR Arquitectes. © Hisao Suzuki

The complete list of selected projects is:

—Reforma de la Casa Bofarull (1913-1933, Josep Maria Jujol, als Pallaresos)
— Apartaments a les golfes de La Pedrera (1953-1955, Francisco Juan Barba Corsini, a Barcelona)
— Restauració de l’església de l’Hospitalet (1981-1984, José Antonio Martínez Lapeña i Elías Torres Tur, a Eivissa)
— IES La Llauna (1984-86, Carme Pinós i Enric Miralles, a Badalona)
— Caldereria petita, rehabilitació d’habitatge entre mitgeres (2001-2002, Calderon – Folch – Sarsanedas Arquitectes, a Gelida)
— Museu de Can Framis (2007-2009, Jordi Badia BAAS Arquitectura, a Barcelona)
— Espai públic Teatre La Lira (2004-2011, RCR Arquitectes (Rafael Aranda, Carme Pigem i Ramon Vilalta) i Joan Puigcorbé, a Ripoll)
— Apartament Juan (2011, vora arquitectura (Pere Buil i Toni Riba), a Barcelona)
— Auditori a l’església de Sant Francesc (2003-2011, David Closes, a Santpedor )
— 3 estacions de la Línia 9 del Metro: Amadeu Torner, Parc Logístic i Mercabarna (2008-2011, Garcés – De Seta – Bonet Arquitectes (Jordi Garcés, Daria e Seta i Anna Bonet) i Ingeniería Tec-4 (Ferran Casanovas, Antonio Santiago i Felipe Limongi), a Barcelona)
— Espai transmissor del túmul/dolmen megalític (2007-2013, Toni Gironès, a Seró (Artesa de Segre)
— Clínica Arenys – can Zariquiey (2006-2013, Josep Miàs Arquitectes (Josep Miàs), a Arenys de Munt)
— Centre cultural Casal Balaguer (1996 – en procés, Flores&Prats Arquitectes (Eva Prats i Ricardo Flores) i Duch-Pizá Arquitectos (Ma José Duch i Francisco Pizá), a Palma
— Restauració paisatgística de l’abocador vall d’En Joan a Begues (2002 – en procés, Enric Batlle , Joan Roig i Teresa Galí, al Parc Natural del Garraf),
— Torre de 94 habitatges de protecció oficial (2012 – en procés, Josep Llinàs, a L’Hospitalet de Llobregat)
— Projecte de revitalització del districte d’Adhamiya (2012 – en procés, AV62 Arquitectos (Victòria Garriga i Toño Foraster) i Pedro García del Barrio – Pedro Azara, a Bagdad).

Auditorium of Sant Francesc church. David Closes. © Jordi Surroca

An important detail to be mentioned is that, for the first time, there will be on exhibition some facsimile reproductions, in real scale, of the plans and drawings that Josep Maria Jujol did for the Bofarull House, which are part of the Jujol archives.

/// Header image: Renovation of the Bofarull House [1913-1933, Josep Maria Jujol, als Pallaresos] © Guillem Carabí
/// All the info about the exhibition can be found on the web-site Venezia 2014

Nature has been testing strategies for 3,8 billion years to solve design problems, sometimes even before they appear. The term biomimicry [Greek bios, life, and mimesis, to imitate] means to copy or emulate shapes or functional solutions of certain species of animals, plants and natural systems. Even appeared in 1982, the term biomimicry was popularized by scientist and author Janine Benyus in her 1997 book Biomimicry: Innovation Inspired by Nature. Nowadays the biomimicry community has grown and exchange knowledge and resources in networks such as Biomimicry 3.8 where you can find references on how spiders manufacture a waterproof fiber around five or six times stronger than steel, or how the process of green chemistry lead to electrons in a leaf cell to convert sunlight into fuel.

Similar examples are shown in the exhibition Biomimicry. Design Inspired by Nature in Roca Gallery London [Until 24th May] which was previously held in Barcelona. The general thesis of the exhibition is that any of the problems and challenges faced by architects, engineers and designers have been previously solved by nature and the answers to all our challenges are around in our environment.

Latro Lamp Mike Thompson. Bio-light Philips

The exhibition curated by Ramon Folch Studio shows some commercial products which mimic nature in shapes, functions and systems. From nature we have copied not only its shape [e.g. the hexagon of honeycombs], but also its function [geolocation of bats] and its cyclic and efficient system [a termite nest]. In each of the exposed solutions we can see an improvement for the final product: in some cases it is less friction, and therefore a higher efficiency, while in others it is a better space use. The efficient use of water can be found in products like Lotusan Paint avoiding drops to adhere to the painted surfaces; they run down carrying dirt particles away. Taking care of scarce water, AquaMat emulates the absorbent and hydrophobic structure of the Namib Dessert beetle. Applied to construction, it allows to collect water with a fog harvesting mesh that facilitate the consumption of drinking water in desert environments.

Lotusan paint. Sto Ibérica

In one of its parts the exhibition also included four prototypes of products that are still in pilot stage: Stickybot by Stanford University: a vertical displacement device imitating small gecko toe which interacts at molecular level with surfaces thanks to a series of tiny strands generating a molecular attraction [the Van der Waals force], that only sticks when you pull in one direction. The second is an algae light generator called Latro Lamp by Mike Thompson, where a series of electrodes are inserted into the photosynthesizing organs – chloroplasts – of algal cells, thus generating a small electrical current from algae during photosynthesis. In the same line the project Bio-light by Phillips uses bioluminescent bacteria. In order to make this bacteria glow, you have to “feed” the microorganisms of the lamp with a mix of methane and compound made of waste generating a non-incandescent light by the interaction of an enzyme [lucyferase] with a molecule [luciferin], which emits light. More examples can be found in the Microbial Home project which is a proposal for an integrated domestic cyclical ecosystem.

Gecko toe showing strands that sticks at molecular level generating attraction by pulling it back.

The lectures held in Barcelona presented works of engineering, design and robotics closely linked to the functioning of the human body and perception. Some of the lecturers included Dennis Dollens, Frederic Fol Leymarie and Martín Azua. Stepping aside the presentations which were focused in biomimetic in its broadest sense it was remarkable the work presented by Materfad. This is a center monitoring research and technology in the field of new materials facilitating knowledge transfer between sectors as design, biotechnology, construction, transport and textiles. The technology tracking task allows to detect commercially available materials from one sector that can be applied in other fields. It is the only center on materials in Spain dedicated to innovation through a growing database, consulting and education activities and a showroom where designers can have a sensorial experience of new developments prior make a technical consultation to use advanced materials in their design project.

Photocatalytic Pavement. Materfad showroom.

According to Javier Peña, director of Materfad, we are facing a great opportunity to incorporate innovations in the production processes going from austerity to the abundance of solutions that can be found in nature, to transform our consuming buildings to buildings producing their own energy and materials [like collagen in our body]. In doing so its quite important to adapt education curricula to a new understanding of materials. In recent years we have worked a lot raising buildings and cities but have learned very little things on links between matter, energy and information in nature.

Fabric and textiles. Materfad showroom.

To overcome this situation, Materfad is actively promoting connections with centers like Happy Materials [Prague] and Danish Design Centre [Copenhagen] which whom they have set DAMADEI network to connect design and technology worlds through materials. At present, the network is also expanding to Latin America [Aguascalientes, Valparaiso and Medellin].

Recent advances in synthetic biology reveal the potential of using the basic unit of life [the cell] for product development through nanotechnology. We are starting to develop materials that are responsive to certain inputs [e.g. graphene] but the next step will be to develop multifunctional materials interacting with its surrounding.

Beyond smart materials we will develop strategies to react and evolve like nature. In doing so its fundamental to create synergies through interdisciplinary teams and new mental codes, skills and knowledge to build in a biosynthetic world. The answers are all around us… we should only learn to ask appropriate questions.

—César Reyes Nájera. PhD architect and publisher.
@cerreyes | dpr-barcelona

/// Exhibition [27th February - 24th May] 
Roca London Gallery. 
Station Court, Townmead Road, 
London, SW6 2PY
 | @rocalongallery

From this collaborative approach, they have just released [IN]VISIBLE SITES, part of “an extended and ongoing excavation about empire and urbanism.” in their own words. The text was commissioned by Joseph Redwood-Martinez for The Exhibition of a Necessary Incompleteness, a photo-, text-, and video-based investigation into varied articulations of incompleteness and vertical phasing in the built landscape internationally. This project by Redwood-Martinez is, in turn, part of Timing is Everything, an exhibition curated by Michelle Y. Hyun which explores the ways that built space situates us in time. They add at UCSD:

“The Exhibition of a Necessary Incompleteness is an investigation by Redwood-Martinez into the broader implications of deliberately postponed construction. The project thus provokes alternate understandings and experiences of time, in space that is always being built. If conditions of past, present, and future become less distinct, how does this affect our notions of history – “time” in the collective singular?”

Villa Mella, Santo Domingo. Joseph Redwood-Martinez

The Exhibition of a Necessary Incompleteness is focused on the broader implications of deliberately phased construction which allows for the occupation of buildings or activation of structures that appear to be continually in the process of becoming. In this context, Redwood-Martinez asks: How can we read these objects in a different way? How can we understand these objects freely, allowing ourselves to use a multiplicity of vocabularies and points of reference?

Following you can read DEMILIT’s answers in the form of a fiction:

[IN]VISIBLE SITES by Quaderns

/// More info about DEMILIT at their tumblr-blog or in twitter @demilit
/// About the work of Joseph Redwood-Martinez, here and his forthcoming film One day, everything will be free.