What is the Future of Architecture?
Crap is Good, 2012
Initiated and organized by Pieterjan Grandry
257 pages, 170 x 240 mm
ISBN 978-3-00-040029-2
www.the-future-of.org
www.crapisgood.com
Sometimes the most straightforward questions can beget the most remarkable answers. (Why else would interviews with Hans Ulrich Obrist be interesting?) A recent book published by Crap Is Good, called What is the Future of Architecture?, contains responses to its straightforward title question from 53 contemporary practitioners. Presented in alphabetical order, the contributions form an eclectic encyclopedia, from essays to recorded conversations to stories to drawings.
Despite the surface-level similarity of many pieces in the book – likely due to maximal usage of buzzwords like “sustainability” and “participatory design” – there are some truly strange/great bits to be found, like Bading Kagalakan’s Voilà! Architecture Manifesto: “Georges Pompidou Centre in Paris looks like a Botticelli portrait with acne. ...Voilà! Masculine bodies will be our roof water drainers!”
Yet some opinions in the book are downright oppositional, particularly regarding uncube’s current hot topic, culture. While Kyle Matthew Greene writes that “architecture is the generator of culture,” Marjetica Potrč writes that culture clearly comes first. We can only hope that, in the future, architecture will continue to be so provocative. (ew)
Urban Catalyst: The Power of Temporary Use
Philipp Oswalt, Klaus Overmeyer, Philipp Misselwitz
DOM Publishers, 2013
Hardcover 165 x 235 mm, 384 pages
ISBN 978-3-86922-261-5
www.dom-publishers.com
The team behind the Urban Catalyst research initiative began as iconoclastic proponents of the urban ad-hoc. With the publication of their eponymous book ten years after the start of the project, Philipp Misselwitz, Philipp Oswalt and Klaus Overmeyer cement their role as pioneering documentarians and actors in the urban informal. The book details the projects’ examination of the economies and strategies of temporary use’s power to operate in the city – and the significant change it can engender, outside of typical political/financial structures. (jb)
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