BB BD (Back to Basics)
In October 2008, after a rainy autumn afternoon at the Venice Biennale, as was pronounced the death also suffered unexpected suffered an entire generation of architects-stars, the 2000s. This oral statement, claimed by a number of students visiting Brussels at the biennial extravaganza of architecture left me speechless twice: in admiration of the clarity of such a decision despite their young age and horror at a situation that I had not anticipated, that of being part of a sudden, those who had experienced these so-called star system years of flourishing. This expeditious burial was followed a few feet away, an exhumation equally improbable: that of the exposure
Interrota Roma, originally mounted in 1978 under the tutelage of Colin Rowe. Before his rehabilitation Venetian, the exhibition was shown in New York, Mexico City, London, Toronto, Zurich, Bilbao, São Paulo, Paris and Barcelona, where he and 30.
The history of architecture articulates a series of cultural moments. In this article I will try to fathom the present and to identify the mechanisms at work in this additional variation of the score as much as its architectural interpretation. It is time to question a generational double shock: first, that constituted by the emerging architectural production now, of our generation, and secondly, that derived from the fascination of young graduates for models until recently buried. With regard to these three cultural commentator, teacher and practicing architect I try to draw some lines of thinking.
Returning to Venice. Why, after all, this exhibition Roma Interrotta she had an enormous impact on students, instead of what could be expected to know the constellation of objects labeled wisely aligned in the Cords Arsenal? Is it due to the nagging feeling that, at the end of the trail with the "contemporary architects", referred to commonly shared feeling of a late afternoon at Ikea, when disgusted, we can not see one of these couches, tables, chairs or cabinets? Beyond mere provocation, it is clear that the objects arranged in rows of the famous Swedish store and those exposed to the biennial share something in common: their status as objects and treated under proposed. Through a gradual process of reification, the architects have produced objects decade ended, accompanied by much media coverage in their finished images. Following the idea of the English phrase "What you see is what you get "architecture projects as well as their communication vehicles have been gradually outsourced, thought to be part of the trading network relied on a promotion immediate understanding, unlike Principles based on the development of internal logic and the search for conceptual questions. I am therefore tempted to speculate about the next magic performed by exposure Interrotta Roma, regardless of a deal with some nostalgia Plans drawn in ink on tracing paper and presentation frames evoke the cozy atmosphere galleries another time, projects have each a whole and especially, a character refers to two things: the degree zero of the matter architectural presence and manifestation of the space beyond the sign, speculative fiction , a poetic universe conceptually developed, including abstraction, however, leave up to interpretation and imagination.
A decade after the advent of Paperless Studios in architecture schools worldwide, we see now reappear projects Architecture on Paper, in the tradition of poetic experimentation and learning Jonh Hejduk at Cooper Union. The architecture is present, defined by the interposition of parameters outsourced, is seeking a second wind that would justify such efforts. Aldo Rossi and his idea of critical architectural practice are updated through projects on cities. Signs of a return to discipline is evident. Drawers of history, one that contains the inheritance is opened again and the work of modernity back on the job. In response to a decade of architectural invention at all costs characterized by the production of major objects or summarized in a programmatic approach occur related research spatiality as architectural basis, both from a phenomenological point of view (the contours of the space, its materialization ..) at the level of features that allow to reveal, make it readable and understandable . Anti-anti-object and image, the space issue is again at center stage. And, coincidence or probably not, architects are not the only ones to revise the fundamental perception of modernity and heritage - I think the work of artist Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster and Tom Sachs, for example.
replica currently taking place in the architectural field, which is reconsider the issues of space to reassess the performative capacity of inheritance and propose a pause in the race for the iconography is salutary in part because it is reflexive and partly because it marks the sign of a willingness to operate on the real. The same one that recognizes the complexity of forms - in contrast to complications fabricated - and suggests to intervene in a simple and obvious - in a foot-cons simplistic. Strangely, within the idea of an impossible figure, the present moment exists only because it requires an absolute timelessness even though it may be temporary, otherwise the risk lapsing into nostalgia, the rigor closed and reactionary posture. A transition that purpose. It is probably in the post Back to Basics we can identify the relevance and the actual scope of the present time, through its ability to continue to produce critical thinking in motion.
Text / Cédric Libert
Pics / Paul Mouchet, BigBoxness
excerpts of the latest issue of
Side B - Back To Basics
Department iconic French suburbs, the Seine-Saint-Denis, labeled the media label 9-3, has embodied the early 1960's photograph of a young angry, stigmatized as the seed of "rogue" or recently as "scum." An image that director Jean-Pierre Thorn decided to twist the neck restoring its value to a half-century of musical culture-cons, and vote often repressed a territory with a loss of identity, but never lot of energy ... From the legendary concert of the Nation in 1963 to slam today through punk and of course the great wave hip-hop, the documentary traces the various stages of musical resistance intimately linked to social reality and popular which it is derived. An epic told by some of those who have wealth and creativity: Daniel Boudon, boilermaker and drummer in a rock band in the early 1960s, Marc Perrone, promoter of folk ten years later and precursor slam , Loran Bérurier Black, icon of the punk generation, DJ Dee Nasty, architect of the French culture of hip-hop, rapper Casey, a partner with Rocker radical Free Zone (ex-Black Desire) and the slammer D 'de Kabal. Extensive excerpts from concerts (NTM Bérus ...) and archives and punchy tell the story of a suburbs undermined by uncontrolled urban policy, industrial change from time to time, disillusionment and political indifference, even aggression, government: a fertile ground where culture and thought are constantly reinventing itself. 
