Category Archives: Manifesto

We work out of a need to explore, probe and question the world around us – through architectural constructions. For us, architecture is not only the buildings we inhabit, but also a way of thinking that can be explored through the spaces of mythical stories, utopian models, economic systems and power relations.

We create highly-crafted spatial constructions as a way of questioning our own assumptions about how we inhabit the world around us, inviting others in to question theirs too. Working through a process of serious play, we tackle our interests head-on and are not afraid to explore the dysfunctional and unfashionable. Our recent work has taken inspiration from mediaeval rituals, romantic ruins, office politics and a Manhattan urban legend.

We develop our work through a process of continual ‘story-telling’. Each project is built on stories whose endings have not yet been written. Our works are not ‘one-liners’, but inspire curiosity exactly because they beg for multiple readings.

photograph above: ‘Made in Ruins’ by benandsebastian (photograph by Niclas Jessen)
see the City of the (Re)Orientated published earlier on boiteaoutils

In the last year or so I’ve become once again very interested in non-monetary economies (1) and, more specifically, in twisting prisoner’s dilemma (2) for useful and practical outcomes. This means I’ve been looking at cooperative systems and altruism (in an economic sense (3)) and how offering the option to be non-altruistic has, anecdotally, often seemed to be more successful in encouraging altruistic behaviour than systems in which the only other option is to *opt out*. Our consumption (and creation) of energy is of course particularly poignant in these kinds of system.

More specifically, with respect to conversations and ‘debate’ around climate change and the environmental crisis, I’ve become particularly interested in how members of the public can themselves contribute to the evidence gathering process; how people can convince themselves of what’s going on, so that they don’t have to rely on merely selecting which authority figure (scientist, religious leader, politician) to believe — they all disagree on major and minor points anyway. I want to find ways to encourage people to learn to question the standards of evidence that are thrust upon them. When authoritative sources cannot be trusted, then citizen-led data acquisition/collection/creation/crafting is the only means of making sense of a situation.(4)

This kind of engagement is vital for us (i.e. humanity) to make sense of our situation, and is essential if any solutions are to be found — Science (note the capital letter) is not the only arbiter of truth, nor is it the only framework for empirical analysis. We are all — scientists, non-scientists, artists, non-artists (much as I hate those false-dichotomies – but I think that covers everybody, right?) — in it together. (5)

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WUNDERKAMMER

« Imaginez les relevés spatiaux futurs, ceux qu’établiront les générations à venir pour tenter de comprendre où se concentrait l’habitat de leurs ancêtres, comment ils dessinaient les plans de leurs cités, pourquoi ils choisissaient ce delta, ce plateau ou cette baie pour se regrouper, bâtir des villes et les nommer… »

Les visiteurs défilent. Certains ne font qu’approcher des hauts rideaux qui séparent le pavillon du parc, d’autres pénétrent dans l’obscurité, y trouvent une place et s’y installent.

« … et lorsque les climats auront changé, à partir de quoi redessineront-elles les paysages dans lesquels nous vivions, la végétation qui peuplait nos villes et les environnait ?

Quand nos intérieurs auront disparu, qu’il restera très peu d’informations sur notre quotidien et moins encore sur nos vies intimes, certains tenteront d’écrire l’histoire des mutations de nos grandes métropoles et celle des existences qui s’y logeaient. Alors, à partir de restes d’édifices et de fragments d’étoffes, les mêmes réactiveront peut-être aussi imaginaires et visions de mondes disparus… »

Le promoteur achève sa présentation et se tourne vers l’écran. Un commentaire off enchaîne, sur la projection de plans et de vues en trois dimensions.

« Entre le conservatoire, la bibliothèque et le cabinet de curiosité, le projet vise à réunir non pas l’histoire de notre époque, mais les rêveries qu’elle provoque : journaux d’exil, utopies réalisées, rosebuds et possibilités paysagères… »

I will try to explain why I am doing what I am doing through an example.

A personal manifesto must start with a personal statement. Mine is this: I’ve become addicted to hypertext. And this is the magnifying lens through which I look at architecture’s augmented reality. With architecture being a cultural toolkit for permanently re-dressing the builtscape that surround us, today’s architecture can only go beyond itself.

Architecture is like the man whose head expanded. Architecture is not only dependent, nor otherwise oriented. As it asks for its own expanded field, architecture rejects the idea of its own autonomy. I claimed for the interdisciplinary before it became mainstream; I advocated diversity when it wasn’t yet such a daily fix; I’ve investigated architecture as urban practice, as open-source, and as performance… With ideology gone I reflected upon resistance and the ultimate incarnation of Marxism. But after all that jazz how can one devise a non-retroactive manifesto?

Architecture will no longer be about form making. Fuck parametrics. Architecture is and will be about conceptual groundbreaking. And architecture intelligence will no longer be provided by a declining star-system, but rather by emergent networks of alternative practices, community projects and architecture NGOs. For many, only now the language of architecture starts to be a benign virus from outer space.

THE ARCHITECTURE OF DECEIT

Setting the scene
The Law of (-1)

There is sometimes a minuscule flame burning inside people who do Architecture. The feeling in the back of their brain that something is terribly wrong with the world. A “splinter in their minds”. For many this feeling of wrong-ness, dissatisfaction and helplessness can never be explained, for its nature is concealed by The Law of (-1).

We need to understand that life is WAR, that we all are driven by the will to power, and that the lofty ideals of the “magnanimous human spirit”: equality, justice, freedom, etc are in practical terms absent from us, for we are not human spirits, we are flesh and bone. Quoting from Nietzsche’s Beyond good and Evil: “Even the body within which individuals treat each other as equals … will have to be an incarnate will to power, it will strive to grow, spread, seize, become predominant—not from any morality or immorality but because it is living and because life simply is will to power.”

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Hard and soft matters as well as nothingness may hook, plant and position a place but the challenge of contemporary architecture is to get up close and personal to people not conceptually or physically but in a way to sustain opportunity across generations.

Why care about form that will suit no-body? Slow down, be selective. Forget the single function if everything else is multi-platform. Reconsider a sensitive adventure beyond efficient manufacture and towards an agile assembly evolution.

What if we cared more about time? Working the instant, the long term, the short term and the structure that makes any event magical (or any other basic terms that enhance everyday life).

Let us construct moments to remember and everything in-between.

Work featured by Marcos Cruz and Unit 20 students Samuel White, Jens Ritter, Hannes Mayer, Yousef Al-Mehdari and Steve Pike.

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Nic Clear (picture extracted from Unit 15′s work by Ben Marzy)

1. The Architecture Of The Near Future will not be what you think it is going to be; it certainly wont be the big bright shiny world depicted in the pages of the architectural press and fostered by the architectural profession. The architecture of ‘bigness’ offers nothing but a vacuous future of shopping malls, cappuccino’s and antidepressants.

2. The Architecture Of The Near Future is not the architecture of the architectural establishment, which has proved itself to be intellectually and philosophically bankrupt, the corporate architectural complex does not produce a vision of the future only images of the future.

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Guy Rottier

MANIFESTO

Architecture is being invented just like one invents a car or a plane. It has no boundaries and can be exported like any other creation. Sites never compelled a predetermined architecture.