Extracts from “Manifestos – Out There Architecture Beyond Building”,
2008 Fondazione La Biennale di Venezia
1. “ARCHITECTURE BEYOND BUILDINGS” by AARON BETSKY (Director 11th International Architecture Exhibition)
“We must find architecture beyond buildings. We may find it in pure experiments in form, structure and space. We may find it in the deformation of our physical reality or its revelation. We might find it in utopian, dystopian or heterotopian visions. We might find it by re-staging our world so that we can play the roles that we want to enact. We might find it in temporary or enigmatic structures, through actions that make space our own or in simple cocoons. But we must find it.
Buildings or Architecture. Buildings can be avoided.”
2. “TECHNO PARADISE TECHNO CITY” by WINY MAAS (MVRDV)
“Seeing the effect of technical discoveries on human settlements is fascinating. Elevators brought skyscrapers, cars led to suburbs, planes to proximity, etceteras. These devices were a response to needs and it can be said that they increased general welfare.
Sometimes it looks as though the debate on urbanism underestimates this fact. It is as if the discussions on identity, with its protectionism and focus on the continuation of the existing, is paralyzing possibilities, killing curiosity, and therefore stifling renewal and “progress. ”
3. “SWITCHING ON AND OFF” by BEN VAN BERKEL & CAROLINE BOS (UNSTUDIO)
“Today, architecture is determined too much by the values surrounding it. Can architecture be denuded of these values, and, if so, what does this stripped architecture embody?
Values – cultural, commercial, and intellectual – are subject to debate, exchange, and negotiation. That which is purely architectural is not. This inner reality of architecture communicates, but on its own terms. It is the external values surrounding architecture that go with the culture of money and competition. The external values have a place in architecture, but architecture should not always be only about them; it should not always be only about maximizing economic and iconographic effectiveness.”
4. “THE ARCHITECTURE OF CLOUDS” by COOP HIMMELB(L)AU
“Clouds can be considered symbolic of rapidly changing states. They form and transform themselves through the complex interaction of changing conditions. Viewed in slow motion, the architecture of urban development could be compared with patches of clouds.
The words urban planning and urban development belong in a shop for architectural antiques., and should be replaced by phantasms still to be defined, that fluctuate and flicker like the television screen after the broadcast day has finished. …”
5. “PROTOTYPING THE FUTURE” by ASYMPTOTE ARCHITECTURE
“Architecture is the definitively provocative art of our time, a prime target for upheaval and unravelling, which has yet to be fully challenged. Architecture is by no means the pursuit of building design; rather, it is simply built thought.
Architecture is not design.”
———————————————————
