Office for Unsolicited Architecture

OWNING THE WEATHER TRAILER This is our alternative. We need to...

Fri, 04 Dec 2009 06:19:49 -0500

This is our alternative. We need to be smarter on the ground. This is architecture’s responsibility.

"In contrast, architects are flailing about. This doesn’t mean that job losses in the profession..."

Tue, 01 Dec 2009 11:37:35 -0500

“In contrast, architects are flailing about. This doesn’t mean that job losses in the profession haven’t been massive, but the profession has done little to rethink how it operates. There’s little question that we won’t see another building boom the size of the one we just witnessed again in our lifetime (nor do I wish it: there’s only so much economic destabilization we can take!). The downsizing is going to be permanent.”

- On Mad Men | varnelis.net

Arquitectura sin Encargo | Unsolicited Architecture « arkinet

Wed, 04 Nov 2009 06:53:57 -0500

via arkinetblog.wordpress.com

‘Unsolicited Architecture’ being picked up in the Spanish speaking word.

Posted via web from ARCHIS | Comment »

"‘there is no possibility of society without antagonism’"

Mon, 02 Nov 2009 10:37:00 -0500

“‘there is no possibility of society without antagonism’”

- Chantal Mouffe

Architecture of Consequence: Dutch Designs on the Future

Mon, 02 Nov 2009 10:20:57 -0500

“Sustainable food production, alternative sources of energy, the need for social cohesion in a healthy environment – these are a few of the essential issues of our time that rub shoulders in environmental planning and architectural design. That forms a tremendous potential for social renewal.
In this book twenty-five Dutch design practices with outspoken opinions present their views on an agenda for the future of the world we live in. The result is a sample of the creative capacity of designers and a call to design a better world.”

Recetas Urbanas (Urban Prescriptions)

Sat, 24 Oct 2009 10:16:30 -0400

PUBLIC DOMAIN OCCUPATION WITH SKIPS

” Santiago Cirugeda’s Recetas Urbanas (Urban Prescriptions). Cirugeda hacks the legal code. Because his home town would not authorize him to build a playground, Santiago Cirugeda obtained a dumpster permit and installed a playground that looked like a dumpster. He also built and occupied a rooftop crane that passersby believed was there only to move building materials. There used to be a video on you tube where the architect used Playmobil toys to demonstrate how to build a temporary flat in your rooftop. The solutions Cirugeda proposes are cheap, fast, accessible to everyone and the key ingredient is to find out the gaps in administrative structure and official procedures, to intervene where the law falls short.” - WMMNA

BUILDING YOURSELF AN URBAN RESERVE

“The work of urban activist Santiago Cirugeda invariably deals with the conflict between individuals’ spatial interests and the rules defined by society to control them. Each of his urban installations give form to a human desire that in order to fulfil itself needs to negotiate a set of legal constraints. Instead of opposing these constraints explicitly, Cirugeda carefully studies them in order to harness their potential. Between the lines of the legal code he sniffs out unforeseen residual possibilities of action and grants them (il)legal asylum in his architectural interventions in public space. In order to add a balcony to his apartment (which was not permitted), he vandalized the facade of his building with graffiti. To clean a façade, one is entitled to erect scaffolding for a period of three months – during which time he appropriated the scaffolding as his balcony. In another project he applied for a permit to install a construction waste container in order to make a play area for children in the street. Once he had the permit, he closed the container with a platform and then mounted a seesaw on the platform. In yet another project he realized a (forbidden) apartment roof-top addition by making the shape and material of the illegal habitat such that it would be invisible to the administration officers who regularly surveyed the roof-scapes from helicopters. In Cirugeda’s urban interventions the very instruments of control intended to streamline every-day life in the name of the law uncanningly mutate into tools which help to overcome these restrictions and open up spaces for potential action.” - from the article Reprogramming Architecture by Ilka & Andreas Ruby - Volume #2 -Doing (Almost) Nothing - 2005

EMPTY LOTS OCCUPATION WITH CLOSET STRATEGY

HOUSING IN ROOFS

Resources:

Recetas Urbanas website (English and Spanish)
A lecture (video) by Santiago Cirugeda (in Spanish) at The Influencers (2008) festival

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mijN470 – Artgineering, 2006 The weekend before opening the new...

Wed, 21 Oct 2009 09:09:10 -0400

mijN470 – Artgineering, 2006

The weekend before opening the new N470 highway to traffic, Artgineering organised the biggest street party in Holland. Everyone who lived in the area served by the N470 had the opportunity to occupy it for the weekend. People were free to do what they wanted on ‘their’ road: beach volleyball, BBQ, or a candlelit dinner.

mijN470 interprets roads as natural public space and as an integral part of our environment.

Ecluse Saint-Lazare revitalisation study, Brussels....

Wed, 21 Oct 2009 09:03:15 -0400

Ecluse Saint-Lazare revitalisation study, Brussels. Artgineering

“Three specific participative interventions and a ‘signal-object’ were added to the process of analysis and diagnosis of the physical data: an export report of the survey of needs and expectations: based on a walk and the first impressions of the sociologist and on 10 portraits of inhabitants; a call for ideas among citizens and associations; and a stall to show the proposal and allow the planners to discuss directly with the inhabitants.

The presence of the caravan (‘signal-object’) can concretely sensitise people to the District contract and the participation process. It moves through the district area outlining the perimeter and marking the meeting locations.”

FREEarchitecture by Artgineering, 1999. “At the dawn of...

Wed, 21 Oct 2009 08:50:04 -0400

FREEarchitecture by Artgineering, 1999.

“At the dawn of the 21^st century capitalism seems to remain the dominant social order. As a consequence cities suffer decreasing collective investments, municipalities are financially exhausted: a playground, a subway station or public toilets are no longer affordable. Architects and urban planners are paralysed by the shift of financial power from the municipalities to corporate enterprises and remain unable to get on well with this development.

What if we would change the rules of this game? If the city would learn to benefit from these economic processes? If untamed capitalism enables light socialism? If advertising could establish a symbiotic relation with the city? Could the cities become self-financed? Can the third millennium bring the economic autonomy of public space?

FREEarchitecture offers the possibility of a more symbiotic relation of architecture and advertising. A projection layer is added to the existing façade of a building. This layer is programmable in sections related to the apartments behind it. The tenants do not receive money, but shares in collective services and investments: swimming pools, kindergartens, root terrace or a public gym.”

"If you design the object without the financing, you’re an academic; if you design the marketing..."

Wed, 21 Oct 2009 04:40:00 -0400

“If you design the object without the financing, you’re an academic; if you design the marketing without the object you’re a politician; if you design the financing without the object, you’re a capitalist.”

- ‘How to Make Unsolicited Architecture’, Volume magazine, 2007. via rory hyde dot com blog

DREAM AMSTERDAM 2007 - Spencer Tunick

Wed, 21 Oct 2009 04:34:36 -0400

DREAM AMSTERDAM 2007 - Spencer Tunick

Paisajes Emergentes Architects competition entry to repurpose...

Tue, 20 Oct 2009 12:41:47 -0400

Paisajes Emergentes Architects competition entry to repurpose Quito’s Mariscal Sucre International Airport Ecuador after its planned closing in a couple of years.

"We are part of a growing number of design professionals, design students, and design thinkers who..."

Tue, 20 Oct 2009 12:33:00 -0400

“We are part of a growing number of design professionals, design students, and design thinkers who are committed to promoting design as a tool for social change, and who see in the design discipline a far broader role to play than that of a silent accomplice to market strategies, brand enhancement, consumption and the normalization of social and cultural values.”

- On Social Design

Unsolicited projects as 'reflecting a generosity and commitment to the local environment'

Tue, 20 Oct 2009 12:24:00 -0400

Unsolicited projects as 'reflecting a generosity and commitment to the local environment' :

“Much like Le Corbusier in an earlier era, Osaka architect Tadao Ando has never had qualms about creating unasked-for visionary proposals and then attempting to convince the relevant governments or landowners to implement them. … Megalomaniacal or quixotic this may well be, but it also reflects a generosity and commitment to his local environment that has turned Ando into one of the city’s favorite sons.”- Tom Daniel on Ando’s City of Water

Schoolchanges Amsterdam by One Architecture “Schools are...

Tue, 20 Oct 2009 12:20:57 -0400

Schoolchanges Amsterdam by One Architecture

“Schools are important for neighborhoods. Schools should become community schools.”

Marketplace in Marrakech (via School en Stad)

Tue, 20 Oct 2009 12:05:13 -0400

Marketplace in Marrakech (via School en Stad)

New Map of Tbilisi - One Architecture and FAST The map exposes...

Tue, 20 Oct 2009 11:59:54 -0400

New Map of Tbilisi - One Architecture and FAST

The map exposes for the first time all spatial and infrastructural projects being imagined or built in Tbilisi, showing the city’s recent atomized development and lack of strategic coherence. It also shows how refugees from earlier civil wars and current residents are displaced. And, it tracks how public buildings, spaces, and parks were privatized, left to stand empty due to the crisis, then to be reclaimed by internally displaced persons. The map reveals a city in which its people, institutions, and form are as unstable as its economy.

The “New Map of Tbilisi”, however, is more than a research tool. By exposing corrupt land deals and making the effect of failed statehood transparent, it will empower citizens to take positive action. The interactive map provides a platform for grass root initiative, civil society institutions and municipal authorities alike to re-engage in a strategic discussion on the urban future of Tbilisi.

Stick on city is a responsive drawing, made to be permanently...

Tue, 20 Oct 2009 11:35:30 -0400

Stick on city is a responsive drawing, made to be permanently renewed. It is a 12mx2,5m training ground for utopians. Built and unbuilt iconic architectural designs assembled in an imaginary landscape. Visitors can take a tour, then add their own vision by drawing in and simply sticking it into the city! By Raumlabor Berlin, Venice, 2008

Norwegian Collection of Potential Architecture

Tue, 20 Oct 2009 11:32:52 -0400

Norwegian Collection of Potential Architecture:

An online collection of the half-baked, the promising, the raw and the invisible architecture; projects that miscarried, went over the top, were turned down by clients or for other reasons never became realised.

Vision for the transformation of Eichbaum underground station...

Tue, 20 Oct 2009 11:31:00 -0400

Vision for the transformation of Eichbaum underground station between Mülheim and Essen into an opera house. A new type of opera will be created in an on-site opera site office in collaboration with specialists in composition, text and space in direct confrontation with the everyday conditions of the place. By Raumlabor Berlin