The school of dialogue rooms

SCHOOL OF DIA LOGUE ROOMS

THE SCHOOL OF TOMORROW

Swiss Pavilion 14th Venice Architecture Biennale HANS URLICH ORBIST / curator LORENZA BARONCELLI / scientific director

SCHOOL OF DIALOGUE ROOMS INSTEAD Postgraduate Program Department of Architecture University of Thessaly

ARISTIDE ANTONAS / editor ROSS EXO ADAMS / intervention CHARA STERGIOU / coordination ELENI BONI VASSILIKI CHATZIKOUTOULI VASSILIKI FARMAKI ARCHONTI IOANNOU IOANNIS KARRAS GEORGIOS KOSTIS ANTONIA PAPANIKOLAOU IOANNA PINIARA STAVROULA PSOMIADI KONSTANTINOS STEFANIDIS GEORGIA VLASSI

The School of Dialogue Rooms investigates Cedric Price’s Fun Palace and Lucius Burckhardt’s “promenadology” and “invisible design” concepts in relation to the characteristics of a typical city block of Athens in decay. Situated in the center of the city the urban block we examine retakes the argumentation of the Fun Palace as a constantly shifting space in the context of Athens today. Athens provides a unique space to investigate the possibilities of an always changing program in its more emblematic center area that is emptied during the last decades. Cedric Price’s refusal to define any specific program, his attempt to avoid predetermined parameters In architecture provide an opportunity of alternative performance of a different “Fun Palace of the crisis”, situated in an existing semi abandoned Athenian block. We combined this investigation with a reading of nowadays post-fordist condition when immaterial labour becomes increasingly important. The element of strolling inside the building is to be elaborated as belonging to a new multiple “institution” called The School of Dialogue Rooms. It is meant to represent a school that operates with private small scale meetings since the common knowledge is distributed via Internet.

The School of Dialogue Rooms operates as a platform that curates and selects the existing data repositories in unexpected ways. This idiosyncratic Fun Palace for a city in decay uses existing spaces in order to perform a different type of University that is curated by its staff where students and professors are exchanging roles. The School of Dialogue Rooms is oriented to the production of alternative objects that are shown in its venues and also to the dialogue per se that has no other meaning than spending time in a delightful way. The origin of the word school derives from the Greek word σχόλη, meaning the period of time when we do nothing.

THE EXACT LOCATION AND ITS EXISTING DECLINING USES The existing shop holders subsist in the city block in an apparently insistent way. Their commercial-service activity started-as the buildings erection did- around the 50’s.

Although the block’s buildings stand still now, time formed a new gaze about it, losing its original sense nowadays.

Most of the shop’s occupants changed occupation, workplace, became ‘’modern’’ changing or leaving totally their job-and consequently their space-as their occupations were considered as meaningless and out of date. Some of the few willing to maintain their activity are the ones occupying most of the existent gallery shops.

This condition creates an interesting situation of emptiness. The once full block now can be seen as an infrastructure, as an empty whole that is pending for something. The paradox of the semi-abandoned space not only leaves us with a peculiar taste of life between urban remains(a fainted but still effervescent field) but also produces a different kind of view for the block ,its mystification. In short terms, the Athenian block is seen as a modern archeological site. In the current condition, its elements seem to be idealized. Stairs, lifts, architectural elements and typologies are captured through documentations in order to form part of a new proposal upon the urban remain. The sense of semi-emptiness and the feeling of a past and current activity form somehow a modern ruin, an effervescent block in decline.

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HOSTING A DIFFERENT WORKING FIGURE It is usually observed that in the current situation an alternative worker appeared. This still unnamed persona represents already an adaption of the figure of the worker to another world where immaterial labour becomes a more frequent and common example than the traditional one.

The Athenian galleries were proposed by a city rationale that promoted arcades in order to proliferate the number of small shops at its street level. We use the same space structure (that is characteristic of the mediterranean urban tissue) to create a series of ad hoc meeting rooms for an alternative school flexible institution. The School of Dialogue Rooms showcases an alternative post-network education strategy. Its spaces migrate from empty shop to empty shop, from empty office to empty office in this semi-abandonned Athenian block. The school does not use any determined specific space and can also be extended to neighbouring blocks that share the same character of urban decline with the one we chose to examine for this work. The rooms operate in a rationale of small-scale meeting places where discussions happen. The discussions are either held in order for the participants to achieve some technical knowledge and construct or print objects or are only staged as readings of existing buildings. The ambition of the school is also to read and interpret the area itself where it is situated and its ambivalent condition. Existing post-graduate programs of architecture or fine arts, drama schools of scenography and relateduniversity departments are also hosted. A temporary character of a diffused art and philosophy Academy is to be organized.

Talk halls Information corridors Outdoor tables Meeting baths Washing meeting rooms Conference kitchens Cooking library Labour bedrooms Bed talk studios Sleeping amphitheater Gym symposia LehrcanapĂŠ interview rooms Recording cells Knowledge gardens Hearing walls Edit console halls Dialogue parloirs Conference stairs Representation windows

Š INSTEAD Postgraduate Program Department of Architecture University of Thessaly