ARCHITECTURAL WORKS BY OFFICE FOR THE 21ST CENTURY: THE INCOMPLETE RATIONALISM OF OFFICE KERSTEN GEERS DAVID VAN SEVEREN.
Die Publikation stellt die Projekte von OFFICE durch eine kritische Analyse auf der Grundlage von Archivdokumenten vor und rekonstruiert den Einfluß der kreativen Prinzipien von OFFICE auf die neuen Architektengeneration. Die OFFICE-Projekte wurde in den frühen 2000er Jahren erstmals wahrgenommenund erlangten als neue Formen der digitalen Collage mit kulturellem Engagement große Bekanntheit. Der Autor zeichnet die Entwicklung ihrer frühen Ideen, die als Papierarchitektur entwickelt wurden, bis hin zu den heutigen Gebäuden von erheblicher Größe und Präsenz nach. Das dem Buch zugrunde liegende Argument zeigt die Fähigkeit von OFFICE, in jedem Projekt den Funken einer theoretischen Konstruktion zu bewahren, die in den meisten Fällen nach einer rigorosen Ökonomie der Mittel ausgeführt wird. Selbst die neuen Denkmäler für öffentliche Einrichtungen werden weiterhin von einer kreativen Spannung radikaler Überlegenheit erhellt. ***** This book presents OFFICE projects through a critical analysis based on archive documents. It also reconstructs the influence of OFFICE’s creative principles among the new generations of architects. The OFFICE projects appeared in the early 2000s and gained prominence as new forms of digital collage with a cultural engagement. The author traces the evolution of their early ideas developed as paper architecture to the current buildings of a significant scale and presence. The underlying argument of the book demonstrates OFFICE’s ability to preserve in every project the spark of a theoretical construction, which in most cases is carried out according to a rigorous economy of means. Even the new monuments for public institutions continue to be illuminated by a creative tension of radical superiority.
« Houston » n’est pas un livre comme les autres. Par le biais particulier de l’autobiographie, il nous invite à parcourir, ou à imaginer, la moins connue des grandes mégalopoles américaines. À côté de Los Angeles, New York, Miami ou Chicago, cette ville du Texas n’a rien de la ville de carte postale. Elle en est peut-être même l’antithèse avec ses quartiers très étendus, ses autoroutes qui la divisent, pour ne pas dire la tranchent et son « downtown » accablé par la chaleur en été. Pourtant c’est là que Thomas Block Humery nous invite à concevoir la ville au-delà des considérations urbanistiques, socio-économiques ou culturelles, en mettant l’accent sur la dimension intime comme dynamique de connaissance. Il voit la ville avant tout comme un lieu de projection de soi validé par l’amour, l’ambition, la réalisation de soi, le confort esthétique et d’autres grandes espérances difficilement quantifiables.
La ville est ici liée au sentiment et à l’émotion. Selon cette proposition, l’auteur dépasse les descriptions de géographie humaine, faites de courbes démographiques, de statistiques économiques ou de taux d’activité, pour ne conserver que la perspective individuelle faite de ressenti, d’adaptation, de partage, de liens possibles, de visions changeantes, traversée par la contingence, la délicatesse voire la fragilité de l’expérience. L’espace urbain se déploie selon les modalités de la rencontre qui joue un rôle catalyseur et accélérateur. Houston devient le théâtre d’une interaction où la connaissance de l’espace va de pair avec l’intensification de la relation.
L’auteur revient dix ans après cet épisode vécu et fait le point sur cette connaissance spécifique où des habitudes s’étaient enracinées et où des liens s’étaient noués. Houston est alors un décor de théâtre où des scènes réelles se sont jouées, un décor qui a lui-même changé, transformé par les forces inhérentes et spécifiques des villes américaines pour lesquelles une décennie est déjà une fraction importante du temps. La ville et son visiteur se retrouvent comme deux amants qui n’arrivent plus vraiment à communiquer. On dit que les criminels reviennent toujours sur les lieux de leur crime. Qu’en est-il de la personne qui revient sur les lieux d’une histoire passée ?
Le projet pose ici la question : peut-on montrer ça en images ? La réponse est ambiguë, avec des oui et des non, car les images, malgré leurs limites, peuvent traduire la présence et l’absence, le rêve et la réalité, le passé et parfois la précarité du présent. Thomas Block Humery s’amuse à rendre la ville de Houston labyrinthique, parcellaire, géométriquement abstraite et peut-être même chimérique, comme lorsque l’on veut recoller un bout de vie à un autre.
Le livre est plein de poésie et de profondeur où il est question d’un photographe qui ne voit plus que des métaphores plutôt que le réel. Le projet devient une autofiction et la réponse qu’il propose prend la forme d’une œuvre d’art. Il est question de relations à distance, de publicités détournées d’un âge d’or, de façades de buildings qui font écran, de temps qui passe, du souvenir de “Paris, Texas”, de la flore locale, d’appareils photo et de négatifs vierges. La ville devient une utopie, avec des souvenirs qui reviennent et des futurs qui se dessinent.
Le projet prend une place particulière aujourd’hui à l’heure où beaucoup d’entre nous sont tentés d’aller vivre « ailleurs », où une nouvelle forme de nomadisme s’implante dans des modes de vie changeants. L’expérience montre ici un phénomène de fragmentation, où la vie n’est plus une simple ligne droite mais une succession de moments où l’enracinement semble se faire à différents coins du globe, dans une sorte d’atomisation des destins pris dans une multitude de potentialités. Thomas Block Humery ne tranche pas sur la morale de l’histoire. Il accepte les espoirs comme les échecs et les prend comme les ferments d’une vie qu’il préfère romanesque que totalement maîtrisée.
La description de « Houston » ne saurait être complète sans la mention texte de l’auteur qui fait partie du projet, un texte en forme de confession qui contextualise le corpus d’images et qui fait entrer, pas à pas, le lecteur dans une sphère secrète où chacun peut un peu se retrouver.
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“Houston” is not like any other book. Through the unique approach of autobiography, it invites us to explore, or imagine, the lesser-known of the major American metropolises. Compared to Los Angeles, New York, Miami, or Chicago, this Texan city has nothing of the postcard-perfect image. It may even be the opposite with its sprawling neighborhoods, highways that divide, or dare I say, cleave it, and its downtown area sweltering in the summer heat. Nevertheless, it is here that Thomas Block Humery invites us to conceive the city beyond urban, socio-economic, or cultural considerations, emphasizing the intimate dimension as a dynamic of knowledge. He perceives the city primarily as a place of self-projection validated by love, ambition, self-fulfillment, aesthetic comfort, and other hard-to-quantify aspirations.
In this perspective, the city is closely tied to feelings and emotions. With this proposition, the author transcends human geography’s descriptions consisting of demographic curves, economic statistics, or labor participation rates, retaining only the individual perspective shaped by emotions, adaptation, sharing, potential connections, and ever-changing visions influenced by contingency, delicacy, and the fragility of experience. The urban space unfolds through the dynamics of encounters, acting as a catalyst and an accelerator. Houston becomes the stage for an interaction where understanding of space goes hand in hand with the deepening of relationships.
The author revisits this specific knowledge a decade after the experience, reflecting on entrenched habits and forged bonds. Houston serves as a backdrop where real scenes played out, a backdrop that has changed, transformed by the inherent and specific forces of American cities for which a decade is a significant fraction of time. The city and its visitor reunite like two lovers who struggle to communicate. They say that criminals often return to the scene of their crime. What about someone who revisits the scenes of a past story?
The project raises the question: can this be conveyed through images? The answer is ambiguous, with both yes and no, because images, despite their limitations, can convey presence and absence, dreams and reality, the past, and sometimes the precariousness of the present. Thomas Block Humery playfully turns the city of Houston into a labyrinth, fragmented, geometrically abstract, and perhaps even chimerical, as if trying to piece together one fragment of life with another.
The book is replete with poetry and depth, featuring a photographer who sees metaphors more than reality. The project evolves into autofiction, and the response it offers takes the form of an artwork, touching on long-distance relationships, advertisements diverted from a golden age, building facades that act as screens, the passage of time, memories of “Paris, Texas,” local flora, cameras, and blank negatives. The city becomes a utopia with returning memories and emerging futures.
The project holds a particular place today, as many of us are tempted to live “elsewhere,” where a new form of nomadism is emerging in changing lifestyles. The experience here reveals a phenomenon of fragmentation, where life is no longer a simple straight line but a succession of moments, where rooting oneself seems to occur in various corners of the globe, in a kind of atomization of destinies caught in a multitude of potentialities. Thomas Block Humery does not pass judgment on the moral of the story. He embraces hopes and failures, regarding them as the ferment of a life that he prefers to be more romantic than entirely controlled.
The description of “Houston” would not be complete without mentioning the author’s text, which is part of the project, a confessional text that contextualizes the image corpus and gradually immerses the reader into a secret sphere where everyone can find a piece of themselves.
Display ist kein objekt, keine skulptur. Architektur oder performance display ist objekt, skulptur. Architektur und performance. Display bewegt sich zwischen kunst. handwerk und design. Display ist modularer rahmen und container. Display ist immer eine zusammenarbeit. Display ist plattform und gegenüber für interaktionen. Display macht unsichtbare strukturen und prozesse greifbar und dokumentiert gleichzeitig diesen vorgang. display ermöglicht wechselseitiges betrachten. ohne zu beschreiben. display nutzt kurzfristige verhältnisse. Display ist ein archiv der gegenwart. display ist werkzeug und macht raum zur werkstatt. Display baut alternativen raum. Display ist mein verständnis von kunst. display bedeutet für mich freundschaft und netzwerk. supportstruktur und suche nach handlungspotenzial. Display ist reaktion auf ökonomische zwänge des kunstbetriebs und der kunstproduktion. display ist ein anti-monument.
DISPLAY 2022 – 2016 gibt Einblicke in Paula Gehrmanns bewusst offene und auf Kooperation angelegte künstlerische Praxis. Die darin vorgestellten Arbeiten und Texte thematisieren das Verhältnis zwischen Kunst und Design, Inklusion und Assistenz und dem Handlungsspielraum künstlerischer und kuratorischer Rahmung.
please join us on August 2, 2023 at 7:00pm at Motto Books, Berlin for a conversation with Sandra Peters and Adam Feldmeth to present Peters’ new book Cut Cube.
The book Cut Cube, (2022) results from Sandra Peters’ interest in the graphic interplay between two- and three-dimensional structures. The 11 possible ways to unfold a cube are laid out on white paper, whereas the seven cuts that make it possible to unfold a cube are printed on transparent paper and related to each of the six sides of each flattened cube. Turning pages generates a flow of information to make the viewer aware of the complex interplay between both types of structures.
The book is published with Motto Books, Berlin/Lausanne. A book signing will follow the discussion.
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Sandra Peters is an artist, writer, and educator based in Abu Dhabi, UAE. In her work she focuses on architecture and urban space. She is working towards a reciprocal integration of sensual, structural, and conceptual factors.
Peters has widely presented her work in Europe, the US, and the United Arab Emirates, including Performing the City at the NYUAD Project Space in Abu Dhabi (2023); Un–folded Cube (landscape mode) at Foyer-LA, Los Angeles (2023); Bilateral, Diagonal, Cubical at the Gallery Aanant & Zoo, Berlin (2012) and participated in the group exhibition Erschaute Bauten. Architektur im Spiegel zeitgenössischer Kunstfotografie at the MAK—Österreichisches Museum für angewandte Kunst/Gegenwartskunst (2011). She is teaching at New York University Abu Dhabi since 2014 in the Art and Art History Program, where she is Co-program head since 2021.
Adam Feldmeth lives in Los Angeles and Berlin. His work engages the social elasticity of art through situational discourse with those involved in its materialization. Critical contributions have been included at the Luminary Projects, St. Louis, Missouri; Contemporary Art Daily; the MAK Center, Los Angeles; Kunstbibliothek Sitterwerk, St. Gallen, Switzerland; Overgaden Institute for Contemporary Art, Copenhagen; the Guggenheim Gallery at Chapman University; and the 53rd Venice Biennale of Art. In 2008, he co-authored, “Nomad Post School,” with Guan Rong and in 2020 “Some Pedagogies of the Southland Institute” with Joe Potts
He is co-director of the Southland Institute in Los Angeles, teaches Film/Media studies at Polytechnic School in Pasadena, California, and is a doctoral student at the European Graduate School where he is considering the cobblestone as a mediator of momentum at the confluence of urban space and cinematic montage.
Reflecting on discoveries and debates that have occurred in the two years since its publication, artist Alex Head will read from current works in progress to highlight specific aspects within his ambitious book Ricochet to discuss the architecture of power.
It is now well documented that cults have been used to disseminate disinformation. For example the extremist cults of MAGA, The Oath Keepers and Proud Boys who’s recruitment pipeline has been funded by Big Oil and crypto libertarians in an attempt to overthrow the United States and crash their and the world’s economy.
But what about the arts more widely, is there a form of culture that is transparent about its ideology, particularly in today’s hyper-accelerate media vortex? Are all cultural institutions not also in some way cultish? The cult of patriarchy being just one obvious example that transcends both religious and cultural institutions.
Focussing on specific evidence of how cults have been used to spread disinformation and other historical data the artist will discuss the central motif to his work Ricochet, – the Sacred Date Palm Tree – as a expression of the anti-rhizome. Are we, the unwitting public being continuously gaslit by Sacred Date Palm tree’s in the form of neoclassical architecture? And if so, what can we do to review and refocus personal and political objectives as users navigate the web architecture of the app?
Join us at Motto Berlin on Thursday, 13th of July for an insightful talk where we will explore the profound themes of Ricochet and run across topics like January 6th, Classical Architecture, White Supremacy, BND Building Berlin, Mental Health, Libertarianism, Bitcoin, Gold Standard, Going Offline, Art, Publishing, Design, Cultural Epigenetics, Memory, Witnessing and Social Media.
A ROOM WITH A VIEW takes place in and around the Pensione Seguso, a historic, family-run hotel in Venice. Guided by architecture professor Verena von Beckerath as part of the homonymous seminar at Bauhaus-Universität Weimar that she led in collaboration with art historian Sassa Trülzsch, the contributions to this edition range from the historical to the anecdotal to the artistic and beyond, resulting in a holistic and comprehensive analysis of not only the pensione, but what hospitality and tourism mean today, both in Venice and the world at large. The contributors to this publication come from varying backgrounds, and the rich variety in tone and format reflects that. A ROOM WITH A VIEW features a reflection and collage by urologist and art fanatic Albrecht Kastein, photos by architect and photographer Andrew Alberts, architect Oda Pälmke’s personal account of her time at the pensione, an insightful interview with the owners Yvonne Matijas Seguso and Lawrence Hoque, and architect, professor and editor Ludovico Centis’s historical account of Venice. Much like the pensione, the book eludes rigid categorisation; it alternates between written pieces and photographs, each adding nuance to the work and changing the narrative perspective. As you wander through the pensione during the course of this edition, meeting the owners and venturing into the history of Venice, one question continuously arises, how can we live together? This book is NOA 10 in the Notes on Architecture series, which is published by the Chair of Design and Housing at Bauhaus-Universität Weimar.
Reprtoire 8 zeigt berührende Fragmente aus Architektur und Kunst, Theorie und Realität, die ohne Hierarchie und Sortierung und vor allem ohne Anspruch auf Vollständigkeit assoziativ zu einer Sammlung gefügt sind. Die unendlich aufeinander verweisenden Bilder, Zeichnungen und Texte zeigen ein Formenrepertoire, das Grundlage ist für einen architektonischen Diskurs, der nicht mit der eigenen Problemlösung beginnt, sondern mit der Erschaffung eines Kenntniskosmos der Ideen.
Heft 7 der Reihe Repertoire enthält Beobachtungen – Bilder, Zeichnungen und Texte von Häusern und Räumen – der in Berlin lebenden Architektin Oda Pälmke, die sich wie bei einem Entwurf gegenseitig ergänzen und zunehmend ineinander verweben. Es ist eine Einladung, die Autorin auf ihren Spaziergängen und Reisen in die Welt zu begleiten oder, vielleicht ebenso gut, die Publikation zum Anlass für eigene Explorationen zu nehmen.
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“Repertoire” shows a collection of drawings and photographs of common situations and elements of the built environment and may inspire the natural expansion of the design repertoire.
Issue 7 of the Repertoire series contains observations – pictures, drawings and texts of houses and spaces – by the Berlin-based architect Oda Pälmke, which complement each other like a design and increasingly interweave. It is an invitation to accompany the author on her walks and trips around the world or, perhaps as well, to use the publication as an opportunity for her own explorations.
“Oda Pälmke’s way of working is characterized by the methodology of appropriation, the appropriation of found material. It is a strategy that allows a fruitful examination of the real. Casual and trivial, found and invented develop new levels of meaning through their specific way of working through. If everything can once again become “starting material for transformations”, everything can again become “raw material for productions”, says Peter Sloterdijk, there is no creative creation ex nihilo and the modern phantasm of tabula rasa is overcome. The creative process then consists in finding an attitude towards what has been found and developing a story from it. ”(Anh-Linh Ngo, publisher ARCH +)
Repertoire zeigt eine Sammlung von Zeichnungen und Fotografien gewöhnlicher Situationen und Elemente der gebauten Umwelt und mag zur selbstverständlichen Erweiterung des entwerferischen Repertoires anregen.
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“Repertoire” shows a collection of drawings and photographs of common situations and elements of the built environment and may inspire the natural expansion of the design repertoire.
“Oda Pälmke’s way of working is characterized by the methodology of appropriation, the appropriation of found material. It is a strategy that allows a fruitful examination of the real. Casual and trivial, found and invented develop new levels of meaning through their specific way of working through. If everything can once again become “starting material for transformations”, everything can again become “raw material for productions”, says Peter Sloterdijk, there is no creative creation ex nihilo and the modern phantasm of tabula rasa is overcome. The creative process then consists in finding an attitude towards what has been found and developing a story from it. ”(Anh-Linh Ngo, publisher ARCH +)
“At first; mountains are mountains and rivers are rivers; while you are studying, mountains are no longer mountains and rivers are no longer rivers; but once you have had enlightenment, mountains are once again mountains and rivers again rivers.” — “Transmission of the Lamp” (Song Dynasty)
Artist Yan Kallen studied and lived overseas for many years, participating in many museum and gallery exhibitions abroad. However, Yan always regarded Hong Kong as home. Upon his return from Kyoto, Yan captured his own understanding and sentiments of Hong Kong using traditional Chinese painting style in combination with epiphany derived from Zen school of thought originating from Song Dynasty.
In this city, old houses are demolished every day and construction in process is found everywhere — around any corner, you can find a new high-rise building that seemingly came from nowhere. Revisiting places that were etched into his memory before he left Hong Kong as a child, this book starts from the home of Yan’s grandfather in Pak Hung House in Choi Wan Estate, Ngau Chi Wan. In this easily forgotten place surrounded by high cement walls, how can one gently set down one’s memories?
Perhaps this is a question that every one of us need to answer for ourselves.
