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

“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