–—body building. |||||
AA Summer School: Après City 2012
The Olympics produce a global contagion of the benefits of sport and the need to put our bodies in shape. However, the role of architecture in these events is limited to be a spectacular but, at the same time, fat stage. More to be seen by a global audience than to be used by citizens who receive them. And not only that, but underneath its steriod image lies a future paralysis. The relationship between architecture and physical shape will drive the workshop reflection. How can we transform buildings into something extremely useful for their users? We will use the Olympic message - exercise as a social event -, to produce an intense encounter between architecture and the entire human body. Retrieving the physical part and the most intense function in architecture above the visual. The relationship between body cult and architecture took a leading role in Modernism. As Beatriz Colomina states “Modern Architecture was understood as a kind of medical equipment, a mechanism for protecting and enhancing the body”. One of his main characters, Hannes Meyer stated in 1926: “The stadium vanquishes the art museum, and bodily reality replaces beautiful illusion. Sport unifies the individual with the masses. Sport is becoming the advanced school of collective feeling”. Contemporary fitness also embodies new forms of interaction between the user and the space he inhabits. Farshid Moussavi finds in the new fitness machines the best reference of the buildings operability, “as machines (that) depend on the connections they make with other machines, including the human body… The body and the machine work together in a holistic manner... It is your own interaction with the machine that unfolds the different exercises, and triggers the different functions according to your own needs, whether they be getting fit or lean, healing, or relaxing”. Our exercise will aim to transform architecture, buildings, into machines that allow a heavy use by its users: SPORT ARTIFACTS that bring closer architecture to the citizen and his body. Machines that express the necessary role of architecture to build a healthy social body. Après City: The Body.
your shape
don´t lose
with architecture
Project: Teaching Proposal by Mi5 architects
after the olympics