Archifutures Volume1 – The Museum

Future Architecture Platform

The Museum

A field guide to the future of architecture Edited by &beyond

Future Architecture Platform

Archifutures The Museum

Archifutures Volume 1: The Museum

Future Architecture platform

Archifutures Volume 1: The Museum

A field guide to the future of architecture

dpr-barcelona

edited by &beyond

Preface

Archifutures

Welcome to Archifutures Volume 1: The Museum. This is the first part of a new series of field guides to the future of architecture.

Archifutures maps new developments in the fields of contemporary architecture and urban planning with contributions from institutions, activists, thinkers, curators, architects, urban bloggers, polemicists, critics and editors involved with the Future Architecture platform. Through conversations and essays, interviews and images, across three volumes – The Museum, The Studio, The Site – the series lays out an inspiring range of active strategies for the future of the built environment. Both real and imaginary, these are the projects and people shaping tomorrow’s architecture and cities.

The Archifutures publication series accompanies the Future Architecture platform, a European-wide network and EU‑funded initiative set up by the Museum of Architecture and Design in Ljubljana, Slovenia in 2015.

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Preface

The focus of each of the first three volumes of Archifutures is as follows: Vol. 1: The Museum – a field guide to communicating the future of architecture

Change comes through communicating great ideas. This first volume in the Archifutures series looks at communication strategies and education programmes developed by the collaborating institutions and organisations of the Future Architecture platform.

Vol. 2: The Studio – a field guide to speculating upon the future of architecture

If you want to change the world, you need to start with great ideas. This second volume lays out key theories, concepts and manifestos currently forming the architectural horizon.

Vol. 3: The Site – a field guide to making the future of architecture

Why aim to change the world, if you can’t translate great ideas into reality? This third volume in the Archifutures series looks at the practical projects, strategies and tools for the future that will transform the landscape of architecture.

Welcome to the future of architecture. &beyond September 2016

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Contents 12

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Preface By &beyond 16

Think Future Introducing the Future Architecture platform

By Matevž Čelik

Introduction

By Sophie Lovell, &beyond

Museum of Architecture and Design, Ljubljana 36 Learning by Doing On reaching the public and learning from mistakes Interview with Michał Duda by Nick Axel Museum of Architecture, Wrocław 48 Crossing the Threshold Taking the museum out of the building and into the street Interview with Andreas Ruby

by Fiona Shipwright Swiss Architecture Museum, Basel 62 Towards Collective Utopias The Oris lecture series in Zagreb

By Ana Dana Beroš Oris House of Architecture, Zagreb

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146

An Open Interface Institution evolution in Graz

By Markus Bogensberger

True to Form On shaping the architectural debate Interview with André Tavares

by Mariabruna Fabrizi & Fosco Lucarelli

Haus der Architektur, Graz

Lisbon Architecture Triennale 90 Beyond the Biennial Bubble Three festivals, three approaches Interviews with Saimir Kristo, Josephine Michau and Danica Jovović Prodanović

by Léa-Catherine Szacka Tirana Architecture Week Copenhagen Architecture Festival Belgrade International Architecture Week 108 Those Who Can Pedagogic vision meets interdisciplinary strategy and tactics Interview with Urs Thomann and Vladyslav Tyminskyi by Rob Wilson CANactions, Kiev 122 Hypersupersurface A collage conversation between Cristiano Toraldo di Francia & Guillermo López Text by César Reyes Nájera National Museum of xxi Century Arts, Rome

162 Week by Week The challenges of inclusivity

By Bekim Ramku Prishtina Architecture Week 174 Data Mining and Designing Solutions Design Biotop is rethinking problem solving

By Saša Kerkoš Design Biotop, Ljubljana 184 The Alchemy of the Wor(l)d Some ideas about plausible futures in architecture publishing Interview with Ethel Baraona Pohl and César Reyes Nájera

by Sophie Lovell & Fiona Shipwright Illustrations by Janar Siniloo 204 Acknowledgments

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Introduction

Archifutures

When we, the &beyond collective, were known as the uncube team making a digital magazine about “architecture and beyond” we spent a lot of time together thinking about patterns in complexity, investigating strategies for the future and seeking out those who were quietly doing things differently.

And perhaps even helped change the idea of what an “architecture magazine” is in the process.

As a team we have never really been interested in big business, commerce or starchitecture, except in terms of the ideological shifts they may have generated or where they impinged on the world of the other 99 per cent – for good and for bad. For us, architecture is a deeply interconnected discipline and the nodes at which it interconnects with the unexpected, with people, with “the other”, with the future, has always held great ˇ fascination for us. So when Matevž Celik of the Museum of Architecture and Design (MAO) in Ljubljana approached us with the idea of creating a book for their newly initiated Future Architecture platform, we were very much drawn to the idea of becoming involved with this growing band of platforms, institutions and networks, many of whom are as well-versed in looking “beyond” architecture as ourselves – if not more so. And who better to publish this book with than our kindred spirits dpr-barcelona, who also happen to be equally devoted to pushing the boundaries of architecture publishing and seizing the potential for change in these strange times we are living in.

Founded in 2015, the Future Architecture platform is a young entity whose members are still discovering their potential together and still determining how to communicate what the platform actually is amongst themselves, to their audiences and to the general public. We at &beyond felt that the primary goals of this book, the platform’s first publication, should therefore be to clarify the Platform’s purpose, to act as a field guide to the wealth of knowledge and investigative potential that it contains and as a vector for the sharing of strategies, ideas and mechanisms

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Introduction

with each other, with fellow network members and with their audiences – most especially not just other architects.

So to start with, we came up with not one book but three; three volumes in what we hope will be an ongoing series. For Archifutures Volume 1: The Museum, A field guide to the future of architecture, we looked at the strategies that the 14 founding members of the platform are adopting in order to address the future. Traditionally one thinks of institutions as being slow to change, somewhat phlegmatic, but the organisations here have been working hard on developing adaptive strategies to monitor, question, reflect, communicate and implement changes in architecture research and practice that are leading to exciting new iterations of this historic profession.

Almost without exception, these member organisations have come to realise that architects cannot afford to operate within a closed system bubble of “experts” who only talk to each other. Architecture is inextricably connected to the communities and (increasingly urban) environments in which we live. In order to build a better future, it is vital that we find better ways of communicating, sharing and empowering communities and citizens – as well as other organisations and institutions outside and within the discipline.

The primary objective has to be to improve the environments in which we live without detrimental cost to the natural environment or our fellow citizens. The commitment of architecture to humanity’s needs has to be reaffirmed – on all levels. To do this architects need to combine their skill sets with those of other disciplines to improve and change the systems that govern the present in order to prepare us for, and to build, a better future. As governments and the corporate and commercial world continue to lumber on within the confines of their more static modi operandi, it is often at the grassroots level, within local communities – both digital and physical – that change and innovation is being implemented with informal, bottom-up, self-initiated interventions that are having the most interesting direct impact. For the first time in our history, we have the tools to

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share successes, failures and lessons learned at a local level quickly and universally – and almost for free.

Thus, change is coming, the future is coming, through a myriad of tiny networks and systems. And it is a porous rather than an insular architectural response that is now needed. There is a lot at stake: to ˇ paraphrase Celik in his opening essay which introduces the Future Architecture platform: “the architecture of the future will not only be a practice that leads to the construction of buildings and artefacts, it will also lead the way to new fields in which to operate”. This is the vision that the participating institutions in this book share. The purpose of this and subsequent volumes is to communicate their strategies for going about it.

In an interview with architecture journalist Nick Axel, for example, curator Michał Duda explains how the Wrocław Museum of Architecture in Poland perceives their primary function to be that of paying back of their debt to the community that funds them, through the presentation of their collection but also, more importantly, through education by reaching out “beyond the thick museum walls” to both young and old with an ongoing series of pedagogic initiatives.

Andreas Ruby, the new director of the Swiss Architecture Museum (S AM) in Basel, also talks about drawing in visitors across the threshold but in this case by taking the museum out onto the streets of the city and thereby inverting the idea of a “collection” to encompass the surrounding built environment and thus making the S AM “a museum of the city too”.

Architect and curator Ana Dana Beroš is the organiser of a series of guest lectures by leading new architecture theorists at the Oris House of Architecture in Zagreb in Croatia. Her aim with the series is to encourage, via new interventionist tools, a move from building statements to building communities, brushing alongside the (currently back in vogue) theme of utopias in the process.

Markus Bogensberger, Director of the House of Architecture in Graz, Austria, views his institution as an interface between the arts, building

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The Future Architecture platform 01 Museum of Architecture and Design, Ljubljana Slovenia 02 Museum of Architecture, Wrocław Poland 03 Swiss Architecture Museum, Basel Switzerland 04 Oris House of Architecture, Zagreb Croatia 05 Haus der Architektur, Graz Austria 06 Tirana Architecture Week Albania 07 Copenhagen Architecture Festival Denmark 08 Belgrade International Architecture Week Serbia 09 CANactions, Kiev Ukraine 10 National Museum of XXI Century Arts, Rome Italy 11 Lisbon Architecture Triennale Portugal 12 Prishtina Architecture Week Kosovo 13 Design Biotop, Ljubljana Slovenia 14 dpr-barcelona Spain

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Introduction

culture, the public, politics, social policy and the economy: working with the established system to increase understanding and awareness in the context of a region that has been officially open to architectural experiment since the 1960s.

In Beyond the Biennial Bubble, architectural historian Léa-Catherine Szacka talks to three organisers of three young architecture festivals in Belgrade, Copenhagen and Tirana about their motivations for instigating iterations of a growing breed of festival formats, all of which are focused upon connecting with the urban environment, providing further evidence of this drive to open up and connect architecture with the city, its culture and its citizens.

Not all of the platform members are museums and festival organisers. &beyond’s Rob Wilson talks to two initiators of the CANactions School for Urban Studies in Ukraine about their inclusive approach to postgraduate education that combines students from the fields of architecture, engineering, sociology, graphic design and journalism acknowledging the fact that the issues facing us in our cities are way beyond the scope of one discipline alone. Their pioneering approach is to develop new, dynamic interdisciplinary tools to address urban development and implement change in a country experiencing tough challenges at present.

In 2016 the MAXXI National Museum of 21 st Century Arts in Rome hosted an exhibition of the work of Superstudio, a radical and highly influential Italian group who began questioning the architectural status quo back in the 1970s.

Especially commissioned for this book, Cristiano Toraldo di Francia, co-founder of Superstudio, entered into a visual dialogue with Guillermo López, co-founder of the young Spanish practice MAIO, in the form of a conversation in collages.

The resulting exchange questions the nature of architecture programmes and the hierarchy of spaces, and brings our contemporary idea of the future into vital dialogue with utopian ideas of bygone generations.

A fascinating discussion between André Tavares, co-curator of the 4th Lisbon Architecture Triennale, and architects Mariabruna Fabrizi and Fosco Lucarelli of Microcities about the Form of Form focuses upon Tavares’ call for the

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architecture profession to “reclaim its authority” as an open activity that is useful to society. Change is in progress and architects, he says, need not only to be instrumental in that change, but at the forefront of the new “forms” that are arising and will arise from it.

On a more practical level, Bekim Ramku, the head of the Kosovo Architecture Foundation, talks about the Prishtina Architecture Week in the context of inclusivity and the strategies they employ to get the general public and professional architects to interact with one another with physical results that benefit the local community as well as local architecture students.

The only design-based member of the Future Architecture platform to date, Ljubljana’s Design Biotop provides a distinct approach by focusing on new kinds of design thinking and participatory practice. Saša Kerkoš, the platform’s initiator, talks us through the value of problem-solving through data analysis and system design in the public sector, which has the potential to influence strategy and funding at a national level.

Last, but not least, Fiona Shipwright and myself from the &beyond editorial team take a long hard look at architecture publishing in an interview with Archifutures’ publishers dpr-barcelona (an architect duo who predominantly practice in the realms of publishing, criticism and curating). The key to developing a new way of classifying and working within the situation of dynamic complexity we now find ourselves in, they say, is to “decode our imaginary from the [static] concepts we learned in the past” and thereby embrace new models that are based on distributed networks.

We all know it’s hard, but the future has to start somewhere and we already have one foot in the garden of forking paths that leads there. Here’s hoping that this debut volume in our series of field guides to the future of architecture – featuring a first set of expert travelling companions – can provide some small assistance in choosing which routes to take.

Sophie Lovell &beyond

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Think Future

Introducing the Future Architecture platform

Museum of Architecture and Design, Ljubljana

Ljubljana

“We are increasingly convinced that the distinction between the past, present and future in architecture is an outdated illusion.”

By Matevž Čelik

Introducing the Future Architecture platform

Think Future

Think Future

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MAO ˇ MatevŞ Celik is director of the Museum for Architecture and Design (MAO) in Ljubljana, Slovenia.

The MAO preserves and archives works from prominent architects and designers of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries and shares their resources via exhibitions, publications and a diverse programme aimed at a broad range of visitors.

As a centre for research, the MAO also serves as a dynamic forum for the exchange of ideas, knowledge and dialogue. Since 1972, the museum has also organised and hosted the Biennial of Design (BIO), Europe’s oldest design biennial.

Think Future

Ljubljana

The founder and head of the Future Architecture platform, Matevž Čelik, on the necessity for exchange, raising awareness and building commitment within the discipline.

The Museum of Architecture and Design (MAO) in Ljubljana launched the Future Architecture platform, a pan-European programme involving 14 organisers to date from 13 countries, to open up a wider debate around architecture and the living environment. We believe that architecture requires continuous questioning, criticism, commitment, self-assessment and research, as well as a poetic reflection. The volume of new housing construction is now higher than at any time in human history and the level of human intervention on the face of the planet is reflected in the sheer number of catastrophic changes to our environment. At the same time the proportion of development resulting from thorough reflection and

Previous page: © Tilen Sepicˇ /MAO This page: A Century of the Poster © Domen Pal /MAO

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careful planning by architects has diminished. It seems that the new generation of professionals are all too often cut off from the possibility of using their knowledge to help to shape a more harmonious development of our living environment. The Future Architecture platform is intended specifically for them; the emerging talents of various disciplines who will shape cities and architecture in the future.

For us there is nothing unusual in the fact that a platform that deals with the future has been designed within a museum, a treasure house of history. Through the prism of the architectural heritage in the museum we are faced daily with the knowledge of how past thinking about the future has shaped contemporary reality. Knowing

Saša J. Mächtig: Systems, Structures, Strategies exhibition view © Tilen Sepicˇ / MAO

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Think Future

Ljubljana

that, we are increasingly convinced that the distinction between the past, present and future in architecture is an outdated illusion. We believe that in an institution that deals with architecture history, the present and the future should coexist and there should be no question of priorities related to time. The spaces we live in are shaped by historical and contemporary architecture whilst at the same time being constantly subjected to thinking, planning and the developing of projects for the future.

Slovenian Pavilion presented by the MAO at the Venice Architecture Biennale 2016 Š Dekleva Gregoricˇ architects

The platform is built upon the social mission of European architecture as a pragmatic intellectual discipline that involves innovation and has potential to improve quality of life for all. By applying a creative mind-set and cross‑disciplinary endeavour, architecture has contributed to the sustainable development of cities, economy, social cohesion and environment.

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“The platform encourages us to rethink architecture as a fundamental cultural force with transformative potentials that can solve significant problems beyond building.�

The platform encourages us to rethink architecture as a fundamental cultural force with transformative potential that can solve significant problems beyond building.

By presenting the work of emerging professionals via different activities, it strives to make these complex issues comprehensible to a wider audience. The platform enables us to manage and coordinate actions by different organisations that are committed to architecture, but usually operate separately, each at their own pace, and addressing different audiences. Under the umbrella of the Future Architecture platform our work can become interconnected. Through a joint, Europe-wide programme of activities we can reach a much broader spectrum of participants and audiences than was previously imaginable.

A multidisciplinary perspective garnered from different European cities and architectural approaches is the core of the platform. We want to engage various creative disciplines, build relationships between creators, institutions and audiences, and form strong cross-sector networks that will develop through time and last beyond the projects themselves. In November 2015 the Platform launched an open call for ideas. In order to communicate the social, environmental, economic and design potentials of architecture, we have sought out inspiring individuals from various disciplines; not just architects but also urban planners, curators, landscape architects, designers, artists, filmmakers and other emerging professionals involved with thinking, exploring, engaging and shaping our living environment. The open call attracted 524 applications from professionals based in 39 countries, who have contributed 291 ideas. The 14 member organisations from 13 European countries have created

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Think Future

Ljubljana

a pan-European programme of exhibitions, conferences, lectures and workshops that is intended to reach a minimum of 250,000 people. The ideas of the emerging professionals are also being spread via our web platform futurearchitectureplatform.org and highlights from them will be presented in the publication series Archifutures, of which this is the introductory volume.

By using an open call approach, the platform not only managed to reach and map a range of emerging contemporary critical practices, but also to reflect the values of the upcoming generation of creators. The range of ideas submitted to the open call show that, for this generation, architecture is not necessarily an activity whose sole purpose is to build, but rather a field of intellectual research. The contributors express both criticism and determination to tackle the most pressing problems of our time. Scrolling through their ideas reveals that young professionals feel the need to consider all aspects of architecture as their profession, to change the understanding of architecture as a business model and to rediscover the commitment of architecture to society.

They show architecture to be a way of thinking, observing and analysing the modern world.

Another important message coming from these proposals is that the architecture of the future will not only be a practice that necessarily leads just to the construction of buildings and artefacts, but will also lead the way towards new fields in which to operate. The platform’s open call also allowed professionals to think beyond everyday business relations between themselves, their clients and contractors. Instead of responding to the usual commission and trying to solve problems posed by the client, they have set themselves their own problems and challenges to 32

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initiate personal projects, within which they were able to determine their own priorities and goals in attempting to solve them. The subjects of these projects frequently stand outside architecture or are tangential to it. This shows exactly the significant potential of the Future Architecture platform: to continue to elicit unexpected new ideas in the future.

For the MAO, the Future Architecture platform is an extremely important reflection of the ethics of our museological approaches. We believe that through collecting archives and objects of heritage as well as interpreting information, the programme of the MAO should reflect transparency, different opinions and the pursuit of the truth. Social and political events in the outside world affect the activities and events at the museum and, in our view, contemporary relevance and the capacity to react to change are of particular importance for the field of architecture and design. Therefore, it is vital for us to monitor the practical realities of everyday life and to constantly question the values that are driving architecture and design. Ideas that are being revealed through the Future Architecture platform and cooperation with organisations supporting the platform influence the museum with information that is of key importance in its development as a public institution.

“It is vital for us to monitor the practical realities of everyday life and to constantly question the values that are driving architecture and design.�

The platform aims to start a long-lasting process of integration of activities of different organisations that promote architecture into a common Europe-wide architecture programme. We believe that by establishing common objectives, working methodologies and a brand, we can share and implement knowledge, connect organisations, audiences and professionals.

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Think Future

Ljubljana

I would like to thank to all the member organisations of the Future Architecture platform for their cooperation and support in establishing the platform and also for presenting a very interesting programme of activities in the first year of operation. In particular, I would like to thank all the participants who, with their applications,

have created a rich pool of ideas and helped to initiate a fruitful discussion, which I hope will continue to grow in the future with new collaborations and to help empower architecture to redefine itself as a profession – one that can rise to meet the challenges facing the future of humanity.

Kiosk K 67 Š MAO

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Learning

by Doing On reaching the public and learning from mistakes Museum of Architecture, Wrocław

Wrocław

“The driving force is to provide a medium for boosting architectural consciousness and as a consequence the sense of responsibility for our common spaces, heritage or environment.”

Interview by Nick Axel

On reaching the public and learning from mistakes

Learning by Doing

Learning By Doing

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Museum of Architecture, Wrocław Michał Duda is a curator at the Wrocław Museum of Architecture.

It deals primarily with the history of architecture and urban planning in Poland, as well as international contemporary architecture.

The museum is also actively forming an architectural archive and has a publicly accessible collection of architectural drawings and documents (from the sixteenth century onwards), photographs, stone samples, sculptures, graphics, stained glass, and ceramics. This collection serves as the base for numerous exhibitions and publications. The museum presents over 20 different exhibitions each year, and realises various programmes and events aimed at professional architects, historians and the general public.

Learning By Doing

Wrocław

Nick Axel from Rotterdam-based "Volume" magazine is intrigued by the Wrocław Museum of Architecture’s extensive education programme, which seems particularly aimed at children and teenagers. He talks to Michał Duda, one of the museum’s curators, about what they have learned from working so intensively with their younger public.

Previous page: Museum of Architecture, Wrocław © Maciej Lulko This page: Museum of Architecture, Wrocław © Mirosław Łanowiecki

Why does education have such a strong focus in the Wrocław Museum’s institutional activities?

Education is, in our mission, equally as important as collecting and heritage preservation. Everything we do for the public is somehow and on different levels educative: raising awareness, initiating discussion, distributing knowledge, predicting trends and ideas, etc. We are quite a big institution that consumes a relatively large amount of public money. The only outcome we can produce in exchange for that money is protection – in terms

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Museum of Architecture, Wrocław © Maciej Lulko

of buildings and the collection – and education. That’s how we pay off our debt. We do not treat education as a separate strand of our activities. Every event is – or at least should be – educative.

Well it depends on which part Who do you see yourself educating? Future of our so-called educational architects, clients, or users? activities programme we are in. When we work with children and adolescents we are more focused on boosting their curiosity and sensitivity.

Architecture here is more of a background, or playground, than a key player or a heavy piece of knowledge that we are trying to sell them.

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Learning By Doing

Wrocław

When we organise discussions, workshops and lectures dealing with professional knowledge, we try to support the spread of an open-minded attitude towards architecture.

The driving force of every single exhibition, outdoor installation, or any other initiative is – or at least should be – to provide a medium for boosting architectural consciousness and then – as a consequence – the sense of responsibility for our common spaces, heritage or environment. In this sense the most important group within our audience is the users.

Does the public come by their own volition?

Generally yes – apart from some schoolchildren. But, admittedly, non-professional users are the target group that are the most difficult to engage. That’s why we have been trying to reach outside – beyond the thick museum walls – for the last few years.

The Archi-box summer programme, for example, launched in 2014, basically addresses this kind of audience. When we invite an architect to design a temporary installation in front of the museum building on a wide lawn surrounded by street, car park, and footpaths, we do not ask for a fancy form or sexy shape, but for a piece of architecture that can stimulate unexpected activities. The aim is to show users and passers-by how simple changes can rearrange a space, and how easy it is to shift from passive user to (co)host and change-maker.

Is your approach tied into public education?

Not at all. Polish public education has been rapidly going downhill for almost two decades. I think that its main goals are becoming more and more contrary to the ethos of education that supports

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“Admittedly, non-professional users are the target group that are the most difficult to reach.”

open-minded, curious, sensitive but defiant citizens.

In the Polish public education programme you will find more about practical tests than anything about public space, architecture, or shared responsibility for shared ground.

Patchwork. The Architecture of Jadwiga Grabowska-Hawrylak © Tomasz Olszewski / City Museum of Wrocław

That is always the big question.

What are the main crowd-pullers at the There is no real formula.

Museum?

Sometimes a very out-of-date, niche subject can generate crowds of visitors. But two things do always work: very local issues and blockbusters.

Amongst the most visited exhibitions at the MA with an almost equal number of guests was an exhibition about the Pritzker Prize laureates and one about local railway stations.

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“Two things do always work: very local issues and blockbusters�

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Learning By Doing

Wrocław

Previous and this page: Zespół residential project, Grunwald Square, Wrocław.

Patchwork. The Architecture of Jadwiga Grabowska-Hawrylak © Chris Niedenthal

Do your guests come back and visit again?

It depends. The core of our audience do. We have no data about others. But I think that it is much more difficult to encourage the first timer through the doors than it is to make them a regular visitor or participant.

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Themselves. Subjects that touch them What engages them? directly, i.e. political issues. But we have to be very gentle with touching politics – especially locally.

We are the the municipal museum.

What doesn’t engage them?

Very progressive, experimental, contemporary architecture from emerging architects, for instance, arouses the interest of only a few people. It is much easier just to meet them in the pub than organise big exhibition or event just for them. But we try to wrestle with this aversion. You can imagine how big a challenge the Future Architecture platform is under these circumstances.

What has failed in your view?

Many things. Probably more than have succeeded. But despite being one of the oldest architecture museums worldwide, we see ourselves as youngsters: trying to avoid mistakes, but nevertheless taking them as an unavoidable part of the process. We try to draw conclusions from our slip-ups and avoid things like organising boring lectures about nothing more than the lecturer, or pointless workshops, or exhibitions that made little sense... or we like to think we do at least.

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Towards Collective Utopias The Oris lecture series in Zagreb

Oris House of Architecture, Zagreb

Zagreb

“The idea is to take the architectural thinking of newer generations a step further, to new prospects of critical spatial interventionism.”

By Ana Dana Beroš

The Oris lecture series in Zagreb

Towards Collective Utopias

Towards Collective Utopias

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Oris House of Architecture The Oris House of Architecture in Zagreb, Croatia opened in January 2015 as a platform-venue for the promotion of architecture and culture, as a place where architects, designers, business people and other interested participants can meet and socialise. The aim is to promote architecture and the culture of living through organised lectures, workshops, exhibitions, discussions and other professional conferences and the venue has wide experience in collaborating on an international level.

The Oris House of Architecture Association have published a magazine, Oris, since 1998 as well as numerous architectural books and catalogues.

Towards Collective Utopias

Zagreb

In 2016 Ana Dana Beroš curated and organised a series of lectures at Oris House of Architecture in Zagreb to which she invited several participants of the Future Architecture platform to contribute.

Here she outlines some key visions and projects by protagonists working on the front line of change.

Previous and this page: © Borko Vukasov

The Oris lecture series at the Oris House of Architecture, Zagreb was characterised by the notion of “architecture on hold” and the (im)possibilities of surpassing this all‑too‑familiar “stillness of the discipline”. Critical writing and research architecture seem to have taken over architectural design and building practice as the prime interest of young architects nowadays. In this respect, the idea of the Oris lecture series was to take the architectural 66

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thinking of newer generations a step further, to new prospects of critical spatial interventionism. Simply put: to encourage us all to venture from building statements to building communities. For trained architects, it is crucial not to forget the basic architectural toolbox we were all taught in school, however exhausted and obsolete those tools might appear when struggling with urban realities at hand. Construction of social experiments and the creation of urban alternatives – the affordable utopias of the twenty‑first century – must be embraced in the physical world too, together with the right to fail.

Ana Dana Beroš Ana Dana Beroš is an architect and curator focused on creating uncertain, fragile environments that catalyse social change.

She is the co-founder of ARCHIsquad - Division for Architecture with Conscience and its educational programmes Out of Focus: Architecture of Giving and urgentArchitecture - open advisory centres for citizens.

Her interest in architectural theory and experimental design led Beroš to co-found Think Space and the Future Architecture platform. Her research project Intermundia on trans-European migration received a Special Mention at the Venice Architecture Biennale in 2014.

Rather than focusing on a single major event, this lecture series aimed to develop in six lectures both reflexive and interventionist tools for architecture students as well as interested parties, supporting self-organised investigation and action in ever-changing urban environments. A parallel, para-academic, educational programme was devised and debated at the Oris House of Architecture with the following central themes: the violence of architecture; the failure of architecture as the project of the future; the architectural manifestations of contemporary ruins; transformations of urban territories related to migration and building in marginalised communities.

Weaponized Architecture

The very first lecture Weaponized Architecture by Léopold Lambert (creator of The Funambulist magazine) strongly argued architecture’s relevance as political weapon. According to Lambert, as architects we shouldn’t avoid making “architecture a weapon” but rather use this weapon to inform our political agendas and manifestos and to define our roles in disruption of dominant mechanisms of power.

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Towards Collective Utopias

Zagreb

The lecture poignantly started with an example of the Rousseauist primitive shelter as a carrier of violence.

Lambert stated that when we invent protection, we also invent the protocols for selecting who will benefit from the protection and who will not. Furthermore, when we invent the wall, we also invent the door, the locks, and the key that materialises the exclusivity of bodies protected by the shelter. From this argument on the very first violent act of creating the primitive shelter, the lecture presented several case studies of varying political degrees to demonstrate the idea of “weaponised architecture”: the military and civil occupation of Palestine, the construction of a new militarised capital city in Egypt, the social and racial urban segregation embodied in Parisian suburbs and the socalled humanitarian camp built for refugees and migrants in Calais. Lambert’s lecture concluded with a statement that architecture’s political innocence is an illusion, and that we as architects have to learn to anticipate and deal with the social consequences of the spaces we design.

In Architecture After the Future the lecturer Ana Jeinic´ presented the idea, proclaimed by the social theorists such as Marc Augé and Franco Bifo Berardi, of the complete collapse of the concept of future. This is in opposition to twentieth century Futurist and modernist thinking in which the future is reliable and trustworthy. Our current reasoning is based on the awareness that the future is not so bright. So when our belief in the future as progress is irreparably shattered, how can we as architects adapt to this post-futurist condition and act accordingly? In ´ opinion, since an “architectural project is always Jeinic’s a project of the future”, the described situation must have profound consequences for architecture as a discipline.

Architecture After the Future

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The lecture further explained tendencies and strategies for dealing with the crisis of the architectural project in a futureless world starting with “temporary architectures” and recycling architectures via salvatorian architectures – that feature neoliberal mutation of architectural utopianism – and ending with “ordering architectures” that propose the uncompromised recuperation of the architectural project as a means of introducing formal anchors to the city.

Previous page: The "Jungle" refugee camp, Calais, France © Léopold Lambert This page: Budu nost/Future © Bojan Mredenovic

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The Disposable Human vs. Economies of Solidarity

The Disposable Human vs. Economies of Solidarity lecture was part of Merve Bedir’s ongoing research into the vocabulary of hospitality which started with the assertion that attitudes about refugees begin with the words we ascribe them. According to Jacques Derrida in Of Hospitality, the first act of violence is the imposed translation of asking for hospitality in a language that by definition is not our own. In her search for contemporary absolute hospitality, described by Kant in the Greek city-state as an independent condition until the point that the migrant is asked his or her name, Merve Bedir explained the diverse vocabulary that reveals the ambiguous legal and political context of refugees in Turkey. The lecture presented things, technologies and spaces related to migration and confinement from different contexts: from Istanbul to a small town of Gaziantep on the Turkish-Syrian border, over to Mytilini on Lesbos in the Aegean, the river Maritsa in Bulgaria and Amman in Jordan and to Melbourne in Australia.

Above: Entrance to Syrian refugee camp, Mytilini, Greece © Merve Bedir Below: Leftover life jackets and wrecked boats, Mytilini, Greece © Merve Bedir

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In her work Merve Bedir investigates and supports local initiatives by migrants and refugees that attempt new forms of solidarity and representation, by testing in action the terms under which we can live together in spite of our differences. According to Bedir it is the key question of everyday utopia.

Ruincarnations by Miloš Kosec revealed to us the fascination the post-industrial age has with ruins, from benign objectification of the so-called "ruin-porn" to the complex commodification and gentrification processes of deindustrialised urban areas. According to Kosec commodification of decay is only possible if it remains an artistic, social or political “other”, since the transformation of the ruin to mainstream, contemporary architecture erases its primordial virtues. Kosec searches for the subversive potentials of ruins; for him the conflict between existing structure and new use is a productive architectural subversion per se, so he examines the qualities of decay that are worth saving, and also reflects in urban planning of the sustainable cities of today.

Ruincarnations

In Building (ourselves) Together via a transdisciplinary collective, Aman Iwan agitates for an alternative and locally-committed architecture in opposition to the homogenising global trends of architecture serving capital. The collective has experience in exploring “social truths” in territories of marginalised populations in Chile, Brazil, Algeria, Burundi, Benin and Afghanistan. They create “architecture for the people, by the people”. Their methodology is one of exchange, rather than imposition, in order to learn from each other and to preserve the vernacular knowledge of building and living together.

Building (ourselves) Together

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The collective is eager to share this knowledge and their experiences in a periodical publishing that will connect architectural interventions in a global micro-scale system.

The very first issue of the periodical entitled Building (ourselves) Together will nourish experiences, traditions, and the vernacular knowledge of concerned populations, but also share architectural thoughts from “the era of megastructures” and its charismatic protagonist Yona Friedman. As a form of reciprocal learning, the “mook”, as Aman Iwan call their magazine/book, is published in French and English and will be translated into all the local languages of the territories under their investigation.

No Future – Building the Present

The No Future – Building the Present lecture by urbz, an experimental platform from Mumbai, advocated immediate “architectural action in the streets”. It is about engaging with the present conditions of an existing city, without considering the future. The behaviour of genuine citydwellers in everyday life is, in their view, the point of departure for any critical spatial intervention. According to urbz, architectural practice must leave the future behind and seize the present instead – beyond the aseptic conditions of an academic research or the secured walls of an architectural studio.

Urbz’s way of embracing the present at hand, regardless of how challenging and disturbing this reality is, resonated with my activist work with the Are You Syrious? volunteer group in a refugee camp on the Macedonian-Greek border which was taking place at the same time as their Oris lecture in Zagreb. The confrontation with the “extreme now” in a contested territory, the need to make choices with immediate real life consequences, reminded me of the value of “intimate utopias”.

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These are only humble steps towards “collective utopias�, imaginations of social orders that provide alternatives to the present. (Self)infusion with hope, and the right to envision everyday miracles in order to bring forward their materialisation, is a way of thinking about the future – that was encouraged by the Oris lecture series.

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True to Form On shaping the architectural debate

Lisbon Architecture Triennale

Lisbon

“Our profession needs to reclaim its authority as an open activity that has use for the cultural, social and technical ambitions of society.�

Interview by Mariabruna Fabrizi & Fosco Lucarelli

On shaping the architectural debate

True to Form

True to Form

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In an interview with Mariabruna Fabrizi and Fosco Lucarelli of Microcities, André Tavares, chief curator of the 4th Lisbon Architecture Triennale, explains why now, more than ever, architects need to see themselves as much more than just form‑givers.

The practice of architecture It seems you are particularly interested has always been about in the relationship between architectural forms and the way they are materialbridging culture with ly produced. In your opinion what is the technical translation. In the biggest consequence that recent shifts in last 50 years – and especially modes of production have had on consince the advent of digital struction and the evolution of form? How culture – architecture has do they manifest themselves in the Trienbecome just one field amongst nale? a constellation of highly specialised players in the construction sector, to the point where the architect is even being regarded as surplus. In fact the architect is someone who deals with this wide range of specialists and who makes decisions about many crucial aspects: from the financial to the political to the technical. Out of all this though, the architect is only actually expected to "give form" to the project – whatever that means.

At this year’s Lisbon Triennale we are interested in discussing the predominance of form as a cultural and technical attribute, understanding form as a device for synthesis and not as a specialised discipline. The three main exhibitions of the Triennale, The Form of Form, The Building Site and The World in Our Eyes, will establish a triangular relationship that will relate the authorial side of architecture (that is, where architects are effecting synthesis) with its more technical side and then also with the wider representation of cities.

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Our profession needs to reclaim its authority as an open activity that has use for the cultural, social and technical ambitions of society. This Triennale is an attempt to reconstruct the idea that architecture can have a predominant role in the organisation of our society.

One of the main themes of The Form of Form exhibition is the permanence of form, over many eras and across different cultures; how does this deal with the effects of the evolution of society? How it is possible that form survives through the epochs?

The answer comes from the fact that we are still human.

A sense of scale in relation to the human body – a material’s weight, the force of gravity – is still the same as it has been for millennia. Similarly, from a cultural perspective, many of us have been raised in societies that take a visuallyled approach to architecture and form, whether we are architects or not. These are some of the reasons for the spatial and temporal affinities between cultures that are very distant from one another yet come out with similar forms, such as with Mayan and Egyptian temples, structures created by societies separated by 2,000 years.

In the Building Site exhibition, have you also tried to show projects that explored the use of different formal logics that go beyond these affinities?

I believe that invention and newness are also affinities themselves. For instance, the work of Usina (a group of architects that has been operating in deprived areas of São Paulo for many years) required the development of managerial techniques based on self-build. Usina’s rationale is not the same as the standard building industry’s rationale. Nevertheless, their inventive practice produces houses that look like houses. The idea of the house prevails.

Opposite (above): Lisbon: The Form of Form (under construction) © Nuno Cera Opposite (bellow): Lisbon Triennale 2016: The Form of Form © Tiago Casanova

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Lisbon Architecture Triennale

Lisbon

Whenever you step away from standard practices, you also step away from more established ways of designing and building architecture, consequently generating new forms.

Today “new forms” doesn’t just have to mean the parametric forms of digital practices; they are fascinating and challenge our culture in many ways, but they also generate problems in terms of the organisation of the building site. Changes come slowly – and form prevails.

André Tavares is chief curator of the 4th edition of the Lisbon Architecture Triennale, 2016. His co-curator, Diogo Seixas Lopes sadly passed away in February 2016.

Since its creation in 2007, the Lisbon Architecture Triennale (LAT) has fostered knowledge and exchange about contemporary architecture by creating a dialogue open to professionals and the general public alike. LAT’s fourth edition hopes to lead visiting audiences in an in-depth exploration of Lisbon’s urban landscape, allowing visitors to experience unexpected places, tracing new paths in the city and its surroundings.

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Opposite: Mutirão 5 de Dezembro © Suzano SP This page: Mutirão Copromo © Osasco SP

We want to tackle several What is your position on the tensions between “collective production / social purpoints where the tensions pose of architecture” and “disciplinary between the individual and the autonomy / individual authorship” that collective are very strong. In appear as another theme of the 2016 Trirecent years there has been a ennale? trend to stress the individual side: “starchitecture” and the fantasy that the general public are unable to grasp the uniqueness of certain buildings. This is, of course, an impoverishment of architectural practice and perception.

I am not suggesting that we should undervalue the role of the individual architect, but we also need to recognise the politicians with their policies, the fire services with their regulations and all the other actors that have a huge impact on the form of a building. These forms of authorship, intervening in the creation of architecture, underline the fact that, for better or for worse, architecture is a social and collective construction. Thus architecture requires individual awareness – provided that every individual understands its role within a collective process. This is only possible when individual responsibility is engaged.

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Your writing reflects an interest not only in the theoretical aspects of architecture, but also in its more crude and concrete aspects: its construction, its matter. How do you think the figure of the intellectual who is connected to architecture has changed in recent years?

In architectural history you can find many figures who have been both intellectuals and designers: people like Leon Battista Alberti during the Renaissance, or Le Corbusier in the 1960s, or Aldo Rossi and Vittorio Gregotti in the 1970s.

Rem Koolhaas might be the last specimen. Nowadays, the situation has changed a lot because we are facing a demand for specialisation but the amount of time and effort required to produce a building inevitably prevents the architect from cultivating a more critical perspective on their profession. One simply does not have enough time to write a book. Subsequently, people outside the profession – from the media, academia and elsewhere – are taking part in the discussion. They bring amazing ideas but this outsider condition is enlarging the gap between the practice and culture. Instead of being enriched, architecture is becoming a very anxious activity.

Aside from holding a triennale, anothThe time an audience takes er way of shaping architectural debate is to perceive each exhibition is through publishing. What role do publiextremely varied. It can be as cations play in this triennale and how do fast as 30 seconds or as slow they establish a dialogue with the exhibias three hours, while each tions? Are there different temporalities exhibition itself lasts two or that you want to establish through these three months. Publications media? work in yet another timeframe.

They provide an opportunity to record a number of conversations and discussions – like the one we are having now – that expand further upon the content of an exhibition. You can visit the Triennale, you are thrilled by it but you have a flight to catch – so you buy the book and 156

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Mariabruna Fabrizi and Fosco Lucarelli Mariabruna Fabrizi and Fosco Lucarelli are architects from Italy. They are currently based in Paris where they founded their architectural practice Microcities and conduct independent architectural research through their website socks – “a non‑linear journey through distant territories of human imagination.”

Previous page: The Building Site © Skrei This page (above): ANGIPORTUS I, 2012 © Renato Nicolodi This page (below): Necessary Lines #03, 2014 © Marco Cadioli

you read it on the plane. The book does a lot to balance the visual and the textual, and also has an important role in setting out the topics, the vocabulary and the concerns that occupy us today.

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“For better or for worse, architecture is a social and collective construction�

Arestava Arestava, Movement of elements, 2014, Uppsala, Sweden Š Kristin Arestav

True to Form

Lisbon

Every architectural exhibition forces one to consider how architecture can be displayed. How does form enter an architectural exhibition? What was Diogo Seixas Lopes’ and your position and how has this evolved while working on the exhibitions?

In the specific case of The Form of Form, we were very conscious that it be based on the circulation of images – in the media, for example – and also that something would be built for the exhibition. The idea of construction was crucial from the very beginning, even before the name The Form of Form came about. We are aware that we cannot exhibit architecture, but we can create architecture in an exhibition.

So in answer to the question “How does form enter an exhibition?”, you would argue it is in the production of forms, either through the imagination of the architect or in having actual built forms as protagonists of sorts for the exhibition?

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Absolutely.

The Alchemy of the Wor(l)d

Some ideas about plausible futures in architecture publishing

dpr-barcelona

Barcelona

“The future of expertise will be defined by people and artificial cognitive systems working collaboratively… architecture, academia and the publishing industry should take note of this, and the sooner the better.”

Interview by Sophie Lovell & Fiona Shipwright Illustrations by Janar Siniloo

Some ideas about plausible futures in architecture publishing

The Alchemy of the Wor(l)d

The Alchemy of the Wor(l)d

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Archifutures editors &beyond talk to the book’s publishers dpr-barcelona (César Reyes Nájera and Ethel Baraona Pohl) about digitally-mediated connectivity, complexity, survival and how to realise “the book of the now”.

dpr-barcelona Founded by Ethel Baraona Pohl and César Reyes Nájera, dpr-barcelona is an architectural research practice based in Barcelona, dealing with three main lines: publishing, criticism and curating. Their work explores how architecture as a discipline reacts in the intersection with politics, technology, economy and social issues. Their publications, both digital and printed, transcend the boundaries of conventional publications, exploring the limits between printed matter and new media, transforming traditional publishing practice into a live exchange of knowledge.

Their [net] work serves as a real-life hub, linking several publications and actors on architecture and theory.

We can easily agree that We are in the middle of a huge post-digital we’re living a paradigm shift, paradigm shift at the moment – some call it the beginning of the Fourth Industrial but we wouldn’t describe it as so-called post-digital Revolution – architecture and publishing are disciplines that are both experiencing culture, we would say that and driving effects at the front line of a more accurate description these changes, would you agree? is that of post-humanism, as humans, non‑human beings, and intelligent technology are becoming increasingly intertwined. Interactions between humans, materials, technologies, plants, and animals are at the core of new architecture developments.

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In publishing the increased presence of algorithms and artificial intelligence is creating new kinds of meta-narratives. Some of these create uncertainty and confusion, whereas others simply open up a whole new world in terms of access to information and research possibilities. Our main concern in this context – the thought that we constantly ruminate upon – is how these flows collide to create new formats, and how they coexist, whilst trying to avoid the dichotomy of being either for or against the digital. We need to decode our imaginary from the concepts we learned in the past, which, to a certain extent, have been handed down by those who wanted to preserve the system as something static rather than dynamic – no matter if we’re talking about publishing, architecture or the economy.

We are dealing with massively increasing complexity and the need to communicate advances and changes – despite the complications involved with that complexity – as well as rapidly evolving parameters and strategies on all sides. What can we as architecture publishers and critics effectively do when the battle appears to be on all fronts?

First of all, we should be aware that such complexity is a contemporary condition which not only affects publishing in architecture. In our opinion it is not a battle, but a chorus of voices which at first sound dissonant, but at certain points become harmonic if you can finally distinguish the patterns within. Other disciplines like computer science, medicine, biology, mathematics and music have been more effective in embracing such complexity as part of their language, but we’re afraid that neither architects nor architecture publishers are trained to respond to the dynamics of active parts and differential change which are the inherent conditions of many contemporary practices and networked communication.

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&beyond would like to thank all the Archifutures Volume 1 contributors, interlocutors and provocateurs, most especially: Ana Dana Beroš, André Tavares, Andreas Ruby, Bekim Ramku, ´ Ethel Cristiano Toraldo di Francia, Danica Jovovic´ Prodanovic, Baraona Pohl and César Reyes Nájera, Guillermo López, Josephine Michau, Léa‑Catherine Szacka, Markus Bogensberger, Mariabruna ˇ Fabrizi and Fosco Lucarelli, Matevž Celik, Michał Duda, Nick Axel, Saimir Kristo, Saša Kerkoš, Vladyslav Tyminskyi and Urs Thomann.

Our thanks also to everyone who has assisted in mapping out the ˇ Anja Zorko, Elena architectural beyond: Ana Gajski, Ana Kuntaric, Fuchs, Pippo Ciorra, Sara Battesti, Claudia Di Lecce, Bence Komlósi, Mads Farsø, Małgorzata Devosges Cuber, Livia Corona Benjamin, ˇ ´ Merve Bedir, Barbara Pocek, Gabriela Sadowska, Divna Anticevic, ISSS research and architecture, Superfuture Group, Aron Lorincz, Lawrence W. Speck and Rok Avbar. &beyond October 2016

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Imprint

Archifutures Volume 1: The Museum A field guide to communicating the future of architecture www.archifutures.org A publication series accompanying the Future Architecture platform www.futurearchitectureplatform.org Future Architecture platform is coordinated by the Museum of Architecture and Design (MAO), Ljubljana ˇ Director MatevŞ Celik Concept, editing and design &beyond Editors Rob Wilson, George Kafka, Sophie Lovell, Fiona Shipwright and Florian Heilmeyer Design Diana Portela with Janar Siniloo and Lena Giovanazzi www.andbeyond.xyz This book is set in Ergilo, Freight Display and Paul Grotesk It is printed on Munken 90 g paper / Semimat 115 g Coated paper / Maule Graphics 280 g Print run of 800 copies First published in 2016 Published by dpr-barcelona in 2016 Viladomat 59 4 o 4 a 08015 Barcelona www.dpr-barcelona.com This book is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercialNoDerivatives 4.0 License. It allows sharing but not commercial nor derivative use of the material in any medium or format.

Every effort has been made to trace copyright holders and to obtain their permission for the use of copyright material. In the event of any copyright holder being inadvertently omitted, please contact the publishers directly. Any corrections that should be incorporated in future reprints or editions of this book.

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The European Commission support for the production of this publication does not constitute an endorsement of the contents which reflects the views only of the authors, and the Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained therein.

cc by-nc-nd 4.0 of this edition, the editors and the publisher Š 2016 the contributors for their texts and images Printed in Spain Legal Deposit: B 22804-2016 isbn: 978-84-944873-6-1

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Archifutures Concepted, edited and designed by &beyond, Archifutures is the publication series accompanying the Future Architecture platform, a European-wide network and EU-funded initiative set up by the Museum of Architecture and Design in Ljubljana.

This series brings together projects and initiatives, both real and imaginary, that are shaping tomorrow’s architecture and cities – and thus our societies of the future.

Vol. 1: The Museum A field guide to communicating the future of architecture There’s no point having great ideas about how to change the world if you can’t communicate them. This first volume in the Archifutures series investigates communication strategies developed by the Future Architecture platform members to share their great ideas.

Essays and interviews from the Museum of Architecture and Design, Ljubljana, the National Museum of xxi Century Arts, Rome, the Swiss Architecture Museum, Basel, CANactions, Kiev, Prishtina Architecture Week, Kosovo, the Lisbon Architecture Triennale and others give working examples of the roles that these organisations and institutions play in communication and education for those both within and beyond the field of architecture.

ISBN 978 – 84 – 944873 – 6 –1