As in Beatriz Preciado's contra-sexual manifesto, we can understand the program of architecture as a technology. We need to accept that architecture as such is political, that it organizes practices and that it judges whatever practices there are: be it public or private, be it institutional or homely, be it social or intimate. And we need to understand that the program of a specific architecture is being established through the detour of spatial and temporal limits of architecture. But it is not the open quality of the neutral container or the endless qualtity-less plane per-se that forms a potentially emancipatory aspect of architecture and of space. It is exactly the contra-productivity performed within these spaces that not only breaks up the prevailing power-structures, but also produces an empty free space for an alternative production within the system. [more]

For better or for worse, in all its fragmentation, Houston is also a city that may give us some indications of how in the future megalopolises could become more than the sum of their parts. It may come as a surprise to many, but even if Houston is this endless, quasi-comatose city that for the most part consists of an endless sea of individual houses, shaded by what Lars Lerup has called a “zoohemic canopy” of broccoli-like trees, it is also the birthplace of some spectacular forms of collective life. The success of these new forms of collective life depends on a symbiosis between live and televised audiences. The buildings accommodating this new collective life are basically enormous halls that can accommodate events from baseball to football, from Wrestlemania to rock concerts and from demolition derby’s to religious masses and victims of a hurricane [more]

Gert Jan Willemse was a Dutch architect whose major work consists of a series of books. Consisting of small pencil drawings that could take several weeks to make and inspired by literary sources, these books seem to show a ‘Design for a world without people’, to quote the Austrian writer Peter Rosei, who was one of the inspirational sources of this beautiful work. Born in Apeldoorn, The Netherlands, in 1957, Gert Jan Willemse took his own life in Switzerland in 1987. In a conversation with Bart Lootsma that was published in HUNCH, Pier Vittorio Aureli considers this work as the particular Dutch contribution to what he has recently called “The Project of Autonomy” in a very interesting book that was published by Princeton Architectural Press in 2008, which is subtitled: “Politics and Architecture within and against Capitalism”. [more]

Sebastien Marot is a philosopher and guest-professor for landscape architecture at the ETH Zürich. This lecture is based on his PhD ‘Palimpsestuous Ithaca: A Relative Manifesto for Sub-Urbanism’, in which he traces the roots of contemporary discourse in architecture, urbanism and landscape architecture in the landscape setting of Cornell University in Ithaca. [more]

Marc Pimlott interviews Bas Princen on his most recent photographic works. This article will be published in the forthcoming OASE 76 and is published here with kind permission of the editors of OASE.

In ”Linz Status Quo”, cultural capital has a double meaning. The first being of course that, together with Vilnius, Linz will be Cultural Capital of Europe in 2009. The second meaning has to do with the cultural capital of Linz itself. For the sociologist Pierre Bourdieu, who introduced the concept of cultural capital, it incorporates all material goods just as well as forms of knowledge, education and skills that enable people to more easily find a position of status and power. There are three types of cultural capital. In its institutionalized state, institutions that give diplomas and titles recognize the cultural capital. The objectified state involves things that a person owns and can be sold, like instruments, books or works of art. In its embodied state, cultural capital is embodied in the individual, as inherited and acquired properties of oneself.

Veröffentlicht/Published in: Angelika Fitz, Martin Heller (Hg. / eds.), LINZ TEXAS. Eine Stadt mit Beziehungen / A City Relates, Springer-Verlag/Vienna.

So what is it then that commends Linz for its part as a Capital of Culture? Perhaps its famous cultural institutions (Linzertorte cake, Bruckner festival, Ars Electronica)? Or is it the idea that it has morphed from an ugly industrial town into a beautiful city of culture? The latter explanation is favored by its Mayor, Franz Dobusch. Or is it because Linz boasts a rare asset, i.e. nature, industry and culture mingling together to form a harmonious whole? Martin Heller, artistic director of Linz09, thinks that this “trinity” is Linz’s unique selling proposition. A big claim that needs to be corroborated by facts.

Veröffentlicht/Published in: Angelika Fitz, Martin Heller (Hg. / eds.), LINZ TEXAS. Eine Stadt mit Beziehungen / A City Relates, Springer-Verlag/Vienna.

 

Traditionally, in dwelling, ideas about the collective have been expressed in types, both on the level of the individual dwelling as well as on the level of urbanism. Today however, this relationship is not as obvious any more as it used to be. [more]

Cities have always tried to provide their residents with the best possible urban environment. Due to the growing importance of leisure industry and tourism, cities such as Melbourne are more and more forced to compete for becoming hot spots on the world map. Through a comprehensive analysis of the city it is shown how sport and design have become synonymous for Melbourne's local culture and could simultaneously attract worldwide attention. Independently, Thomas Fussenegger developed underutilised sites throughout the inner city. Thereby, sport, identity, branding, experiential design, and public space turned out as the key issues. New cognitions gave rise to a comprehensive concept for Melbourne's urban thinking and planning. The proposed concept shows how architecture can be utilized to combine local and global aspects of city making in order to service social integration and economic growth. A series of individually developed architectural interventions provides an idea on how the overall concept could become part of each project in a different way. The inner city of Melbourne becomes the urban playing field. [more]

A reconstruction of the years before Rem Koolhaas decided to become an architect, in which he was deeply involved in the Dutch avant-garde culture of the nineteen sixties as a journalist and filmmaker. [more]