Architektur in Gebrauch - AG1

AG 1 – Golden Lane
AG1 documents a moment of the Golden Lane Estate in London. The story begins in an apartment on the 13th floor of Great Arthur House. The raw and ephemeral beauty of this small apartment, found in a stripped down in-between owners stage of renovation, is amplified by its bare design structure; this is a sharp and thrifty elaboration of resources and while amplifying qualities such as openness, accessibility and the all encompassing penetration of light at building and unit level, becomes an instance of the architecture and 50 years of use that carry the entire estate.

AG (Architektur in Gebrauch) is a magazine for architecture in use. Each number of this series documents one building or one built structure in its current state, considering its transformation while looking back at the moment when it was built. The term “use” (Gebrauch) constitutes from this perspective the driving force behind the development of every built structure.

AG is a magazine for the practice of architecture. Instead of another contribution to a history of architecture, repeating itself as an endless series of new buildings in which the photographs of the time of realization become the only instance of authenticity and influential moment, AG follows the opposite way by observing, from the point of view of the now, history as a simultaneous present. With the focus on the present, which is also the focus on the value of use, AG intends to seize the production conditions in architecture as the main discourse on the built environment.