1st BRANCH – DESIGN Radiographies of the activities of design and project. Backstage histories of architectural conception in architecture studios and their mediations with professionals and institutions.
We wish to reveal the complexities of the architectural design: its comings and goings; doubts, relations between its agents; legal and social issues. We suggest the history of the conception and design for the SESC 24 de Maio, by Paulo Mendes da Rocha & MMBB, as the central point of this curatorship branch. We will try to understand the various design approaches that informed the completion of this building over the 15 years that preceded its inauguration (2002-2017). We will emphasize the general changes made during this time and detail their motivations, as in a biography of the building and its design. The exhibition will reveal the several agents involved in the design phases (highlighting professionals beyond the architectural authorship), and then unveil how this network of professionals ended up shaping the building. Furthermore, we will focus on the discussion of the legislation – which was altered throughout the project – and the client’s demands, so that we can then understand the choices that guided architectural decisions 1. This includes interviews; documentaries; original detailed designs; dismissed original designs; law analysis; scale models; prototypes; and a complete timeline that organizes the facts and drawings, helping us understand the gradual evolution, development and transformation of the project. All this material will be presented in an engaging and accessible language, in order to represent the complexity of producing that design and the various relations it created. Additional objects (coming from specific curatorial works or open calls) will focus on debating the design conception processes, opening a window to project spaces in Brazil and abroad (especially in the southern hemisphere and in Latin America). We want to bring new stories that engage and reveal the production processes during the conception of the space. The following questions are the guideline for this branch: how does the process of designing a building accurately work? What are the economic and social influences and how do they take place? Who are the agents involved in the design stage and what are their roles? How do legal issues impact the design? What are the many versions of a design? Which are the exchanges between the place for designing and the construction site?
2nd BRANCH – CONSTRUCTION Radiographies of the construction site and other production and technological chains associated with construction. Dissecting construction work in its countless components and procedures; a kind of “exploded view” of the building that includes revealing its processes.
We want to reveal the elevated number of designs, labor procedures and people involved in the construction of a building2 and not only exposing the materialization process, but also giving voice to agents who are frequently anonymous and made invisible. This branch is divided in two. First, there will be a taxonomic cataloging of objects and procedures that are part of a construction work, discussing their common ground and their origin. The building will be displayed blow up, detailed in its minor components and stages, which will be revealed and analyzed separately. We are also interested in the relation between industrial and artisanal processes in civil construction. This half of the exhibit will document construction sites, and the components or the prototypes will be brought into the exhibition space; there will also be a multimedia analysis of the site’s production, including legal processes (such as patent applications) and economic aspects (costs). The second half will investigate knowledge and work practices and will demonstrate architecture’s collective dimension, giving voice to professionals who are directly linked to the construction site, such as foremen and masons. We will try to critically comprehend the social and working relations in a construction site and the hierarchical relations established with architecture and engineering. This sub-branch will be structured around filmed interviews and audiovisual documentation of the process. Lectures, debates and guided tours will not only analyze the issue theoretically, but will also broaden the discourse based on experience and practice. The other objects in the exhibition will bring forth the poetic aspect of this issue, as well as deepen the debate by bringing new stories of construction sites around the world. The following questions are the guideline for this branch: What are the production processes in a construction site? What are the objects that compose a building? What are the economic relations in these processes? Who are the agents behind construction? What is their perspective on the construction process? The choice of this building is suggested because of the relevance in the metropolitan context, in the emerging urban policies for the historical downtown and in the architectural Brazilian métier. 2 We will choose the project(s) for this branch in the future, according to further curatorial research. We suggest, among other, to look for cooperative/communitarian initiatives in construction. 1