No proper building. Not even an architecture project that would give a hint of what its future headquarters would be like. That didn't prevent El Bòlit, a brand new Contemporary Art Center, from opening its borrowed doors a few weeks ago in Girona.

For many Europeans used to fly on the cheap, Girona equals Barcelona or the Costa Brava. Ever since one of the most famous 'no frills' airlines chose the airport as one of their hubs, hordes of travelers land there, grab their luggage on the rotating belt and hop on an hour bus ride that brings them directly to Barcelona centre. They never get to see Girona. They miss a lovely medieval city. Its cathedral is celebrated as one of the finest specimens of Gothic architecture in Spain, there's a local tradition of climbing steps to kiss the butt of a stone lioness and people will invite you to eat chocolate flies. And now there's that new contemporary art space called El Bolit.

The Bòlit was a game popular among children in Catalonia until the middle of the XXth century. "It's a metaphor for a dynamic center, one that is constantly moving and is pushed forward by people", explained its Director, Rosa Pera, to Spanish newspaper El Pais. The opening exhibition of the center proves that, if the center is still waiting for a proper building, it certainly doesn't lack a strong personality, a dauntless attitude and a very promising exhibition programme.

As the introduction to its current show, In Construction. Recipes from Scarcity, Ubiquity and Excess, states:Beyond the construction of a building, the creation of a contemporary art centre involves first and foremost the construction of a discourse, relationships and dialogue. This is why the first exhibition at the new centre focuses on processes that explore new methodologies to articulate narratives with the context as a starting point.

Retrospective Cirugeda. Image courtesy El Bolit

Heading the party is Santiago Cirugeda whose Recetas Urbanas (Urban recipes) are lined up for a retrospective made of models, videos and a brand new intervention. The work of the Sevillan architect fosters the dialogue between institutions and citizens in order to come up with better ideas susceptible to solve the issue of housing and public space management.

Retrospective Cirugeda. Image courtesy El Bolit

Santiago Cirugeda has sometimes been labeled as a "guerilla architect", "a subversive artist", "a urban hacker". His action/constructions are always adapted to the situation. Because his home town, Sevilla, would not authorize him to build a playground, Cirugeda obtained a dumpster permit and installed a playground on top of a dumpster container. In another intervention, he built and occupied a rooftop crane that passersby believed was there only to move building materials. He even posted on you tube a video to demo how to build a temporary flat in your rooftop. Cirugeda's recipes are cheap, fast, accessible to everyone and one of their key ingredient is that some of them exploit the gaps in administrative structure and official procedures. They intervene where the law falls short.

Santiago Cirugeda, Niu. Images courtesy El Bolit

Cirugeda also developed a site specific architectural intervention on the roof of Girona's Sala de La Rambla (where half of the exhibition is hosted.) The temporary infrastructure has been designed with the aim of hosting artistic activities as well as providing a working space for Spanish and international artists invited to work at El Bolit. El Niu (the Nest in catalan) is made of several containers and covered with branches and leaves.

Probably more famous to the new media art community, Michelle Teran opens the second chapter of the exhibition, the one dedicated to Ubiquity. The artist is showing her recipes for making and re-making narratives out of everyday experience inside Girona's intimate Capella de Sant Nicolau.

Screening of videos by Michelle Teran inside the Capella de Sant Nicolau. Image courtesy El Bolit

In her performance series titled Life: A User's Manual, the artist applies potential literature methodologies and uses video scanners to pick up images recorded on wireless security cameras (inside hotel lobby, private home, bank entrances, etc.) Scenes thus recorded in 17 cities around the world are projected in the exhibition space. I had seen the work of Teran in countless exhibitions but it was the first time i had the opportunity to see displayed next to one another not only the videos of her performances, but also the wide range of devices she uses to host the video scanners. Suddenly i realized the breadth and complexity of her work. I was particularly struck by A20 Recall, a collective exercise in cultural memory carried out by the artist over the course of three weeks with the help of residents of Quebec City. The result of the experiment is an online map of made of texts and images documenting situations that arose in response to the fortification of Quebec City during the FTAA Summit of the Americas in 2001.

Technology is used as a tool to discover the significance of the trivial and to re-endow hidden stories with meaning, while fostering a critical spirit among citizens from their immediate surroundings. This is active, collective voyeurism used to combat indifference and oblivion.

The third part of the exhibition is From excess, recipes for an architecture of accumulative thought by Catalan artist Jordi Mitjà. The Catalan artist defines himself as an 'image collector'. He has carefully compiled and slightly edited images recorded by amateur film-makers in the 1970s in order to create a singular portrait of Empordà County in Catalonia.

Installation of Jordi Mitjà. Image courtesi El Bolit

Mitjà has also composed a large-scale installation for El Bòlit. An accumulation of old photos, fragments, left-overs, video, and findings, the piece builds up the foundations of argumental architectures that welcome and rebuff those who, trapped perhaps between illness and therapy, dare to enter.

The smart-looking little man up here isn't very concerned by the exhibition but i'd nevertheless like to introduce you to him. He is Sant Narcís (St Narcissus), Girona's patron saint, famous for having defeated French invaders by throwing swarms of flies at them.

More images from Girona and El Bòlit.

In Construction. Recipes from Scarcity, Ubiquity and Excess runs until January 11, 2009 at El Bòlit, Girona (SP).

Sarajevo, 2008. ©Wolfgang Thaler

Last week, just a few hours after having landed in Switzerland for the IETM Autumn Plenary Meeting (which focused on the very sexy theme of 'misunderstanding'), i was sitting in a train to Basel. Like an automaton, i had been drawn to the city to visit Balkanology, New Architecture and Urban Phenomena in South Eastern Europe, the ongoing exhibition at the Swiss Architecture Museum.

SA M explores contemporary architecture and urban design from a trans-disciplinary perspective, not just at national level as its title might suggest, it also puts architecture into a global context.

Having been very impressed by their previous show, Re-sampling Ornament, i was more than eager to get very enthusiastic about the current one. Expectations were high. Expectations were met.

It started well right from the start. The exhibition design by Thilo Fuchs & Oliver Mayer of Tatin, with Oliver Theinert was a delight. Floating panels, writings on the floors, elegant typography and graphics.

© Tom Bisig

Now about the content of the show: Balkans generally refers to South Eastern Europe, a region with varying geographical definitions. Going beyond clichés and the pathos, the Balkanology exhibition focuses on the impact of recent socio-political changes on architecture and urban planning, drawing a variegated picture of urban development in the region and the forces that determine it.

Prishtina, 2008. © Kai Voeckler

Curated by Kai Vöckler, the exhibitions focuses on two main themes:

- the way inhabitants solved the lack of housing and initiated construction projects on their own account.
- a comparison between outstanding yet hardly known buildings of socialist modernism in Yugoslavia with contemporary architecture.

Prishtina, 2008. © Kai Vöckler

Since the collapse of the socialist economic system in ex-Yugoslavia and Albania and the war that lead to the split of Yugoslavia, a new form of urbanisation typified by extensive informal building activity has appeared on the territory. Taking advantage of sketchy legal frameworks and governments initially too weak to enforce rules and regulations, inhabitants have taken the issue of housing shortage in their own hands, they started building new dwellings from scratch and adapting existing edifice for their own purposes.

Prishtina, 2008. © Kai Voeckler

In this context, a term often used in all its negative connotations like Balkanization takes a radically different meaning: it stands for the improvisation and adaptation skills of architecture. Some of the many questions the exhibition aims to raise iinclude: how can a combination of governmental and social control offer the best possible basis for a successful retro-active 'post-regulation? To what extent unregulated, informal urbanism develops new typologies and urban forms, and how these forms could also emerge under the banner of neo-liberal de-urbanisation in the rest of Europe.

As part of a broader research on Belgrade informal architecture, Dubravka Sekulic and Ivan Kucina have compiled a fascinating archive of Belgrade roof extensions. The project in longer run wants to examine the cultural habits that provoke this kind of action in the city and their implication on architecture and public space of the city.

More images of the roof extensions in the PDF report

In the other chapter of Balkanology, examples found in Belgrade, Zagreb, Kotor, Prishtina and Tirana illustrate the way architects, artists, urbanists and activists from South Eastern Europe are dealing with these rapid new transformation processes. The outstanding yet hardly known buildings of socialist modernism in Yugoslavia are compared with contemporary architecture.

National and University Library, Prishtina, Kosovo, 1983. Architect: Andrija Mutnjaković. ©Wolfgang Thaler

Using selected cases, Maroje Mrduljaš, editor of Oris, and architectural historian Vladimir Kulić show how Yugoslavian architects and planners have tackled "modernity" and "internationality". As you will see in the following examples, the outcome of their investigation oscillates between the depressing and the exhilarating.

©Wolfgang Thaler

New Belgrade, a residential area built across the river from Belgrade by Tito after 1950, was conceived as a city of 'light, sun and future' and planned following the principles of the CIAM (the International Congress of Modern Architecture). The challenge at the time was to erect as many buildings, as fast as possible, in order to accommodate a displaced and quickly growing post WW II population. The initial vision of functionality and modernity was translated into what has been defined as a 'brutalist architectural approach'.

Image by Jim Skreech, via Belgraded

One of the most striking projects that demonstrates the modernity of Yugoslavia is Rijeka's Flexible Swimming Pool, designed by Vladimir Turina in 1949. The auditoriums of this 'architectural device" would have been place on railway tracks to be moved from inside to outside depending on the weather. The inner pool could be easily turned into an exhibition hall or an airplane hangar. All the elements could have been constructed with the technology of the time. I couldn't find any image of the project online so let's drift to another project i found particularly appealing:

Zlatko Ugljen was a student interested in the reinterpretation and modernization of Bosnian Ottoman heritage when he started the Šerefudin's White Mosque project in Visoko, Bosnia and Herzegovina. What started as a modest project made pro bono for the local community ended up as one of the most internationally celebrated buildings in former Yugoslavia: it was awarded the Aga Khan Award for Architecture in 1983 and in 2007, Hungarian architects declared that the mosque was one of the three best designed sacral places in Europe. More images.

On the left, the minaret and mosque as seen from the graveyard. © Jacques Betant.On the right, inside view. ©Wolfgang Thaler

Balkanology, New Architecture and Urban Phenomena in South Eastern Europe runs until December 28 at SA M, the Swiss Architecture Museum in Basel.

One final recommendation: get your hands on S AM No. 6 - The publication accompanying the exhibition Balkanology - New Architecture and Urban Phenomena in South Eastern Europe, edited by Francesca Ferguson & Kai Vöckler.

Related entries: The K67 kiosk.

The Polish Pavilion was awarded the Golden Lion for Best National Participation at this year's edition of the Venice Biennale of Architecture. And it's easy to understand why.

Curated by Grzegorz Piątek and Jarosław Trybuś, the exhibition is entitled Warsaw's Polonia Hotel. The Afterlife of Buildings and presents six major architectural projects designed in Poland in recent years by renowned architects.

What is the point of having a second air terminal at Warsaw airport when skyrocketing price of oil makes flying affordable to very few people? When importing bananas from Brazil and rice from Vietnam has become a scandalous luxury? The solution envisioned by Polish authorities a few decades from now is to convert an airstrip into cultivated land and to adapt Terminal 2 to the needs of a large animal husbandry plant.

Could this idea be discarded as a crazy forecast when speculations about the future of Berlin's Tempelhof airport, now officially closed, envision the possibility to turn the 900-acre (365-hectare) site into a luxury spa, some condos, a museum, a park, a trade center or even the centerpiece of a new Olympic bid.

Terminal 2 - Fryderyk Chopin International Airport, (Estudio Lamela, Lamela y Asociados)

What's the use of the Metropolitan office building designed by Foster+Partners once the speculative real-estate market faces collapse or in case of a revolution in the patterns of corporate work? Could it be bought one day by the police and turned into a prison? The idea might not be as crazy as it sounds. The building encircles the courtyard (which would become an exercise yard for convicts) in an almost perfect panopticon and the polished surface of the walls multiply reflections, enabling a surveillance from all points of view.

Metropolitan, by Norman Foster and Partners

What is going to happen with a monumental university library such as the Warsaw University Library when all the books become digital? Wouldn't it make more sense to restyle the space into a shopping mall?

Warsaw University Library, by Marek Budzyński, Zbigniew Badowski

Who needs a monumental Marian shrine like the Sanctuary of our Lady of Sorrow, built between 1994 and 2004, in Lichen when even the last Poles have ceased attending masses? Surely they would prefer Poland's largest church to be converted into an aquatic park, right?

Sanctuary of our Lady of Sorrow, by architect Barbara Bielecka

The project didn't stop with a bunch of photos. The building of Polish Pavillion itself - a monumental building raised in the 1930s- is subject to change. The curators re-purposed it into a hotel for the first five days of the Biennale. When i visited, beds were still welcoming visitors willing to have a quick rest and a red sign that reads Hotel was added on the facade of the Polish pavilion.

The Venice Biennale of Architecture continues until Nov. 23, 2008.

Positions, Portrait of a New Generation of Chinese Architects, edited by Frédéric Edelmann (Architecture Critique) and Françoise Ged (Architect and Director of the Observatoire de l'Architecture de la Chine Contemporaine in Paris.)

Amazon USA and UK.

Publisher Actar says: This book presents over 40 finished works by Chinese architects, produced between 2003 and 2008. A compelling selection representing a new generation of architects in a country whose building rhythm over the last decade has been unstoppable, as China's architects are making their mark within the backdrop of an avalanche of world class architecture stars.

Featuring works by China Architecture Design & Research Group, Jiakun Architects, Atelier Deshaus, Mada s.p.a.m, MAD, TM Studio, Urbanus, Studio Pei-Zhu, Amateur Architecture Studio, Atelier Feichang Jianzhu, Atelier Z+, Standardarchitecture and Architectural Design & Research Institute Nanjing University.

Contemporary architecture in China has met with a huge amount of coverage in the press. With so many shopping malls, gated communities and high-rise condos mushrooming within its borders, and with such cheap labour force, China has become a mecca for new architectural ideas. We've all been admiring photos of the Bird's Nest, the CCTV headquarters, the Water Cube, etc but every single one of these buildings has been designed mostly by foreign architects. So where are the Chinese architects? Who are they and more importantly what are they doing and building? Do they find inspiration in the heritage of their country or are they more influenced by what they see in the West? Are the spectacular edifices built in Beijing and Shanghai only?

Positions gives some answers to those questions and they are encouraging answers. No pagoda-helmeted builders in sight. Instead, the book showcases dozens of constructions by mega-talented architects and introduces you to 15 of the most accomplished architecture studios. There's a one page biography and presentation of each practice, along with their contact address, followed by several pages that focus on the most striking works conceived and/or built by the architects.

Here's a selection of buildings you encounter in the book (i wish i could have added many more but i struggled to find good images of some of the most remarkable edifices online):

MADA s.p.a.m's Hotel Village in the Jade Valley

MADA s.p.a.m's Hotel Village in the Jade Valley is the Shanghai-based architect's attempt to establish a vineyard in his childhood village. The house he designed in Lantian is both modern and deeply anchored in Chinese tradition.

MAD, Super Star_A Mobile China Town

MAD studio has now gained world stardom. Their latest project is the conceptual, star-shaped, mobile Chinatown they are currently exhibiting at the Venice Biennale of Architecture. The new model would be self-sustaining and replace the usual restaurant streets and fake traditional buildings that gives a kitsch image of contemporary China.

Digital Beijing, by Zhu Pei and UNRBANUS. Photo: Iwan Baan

One of my favourite building ever is the computer circuitry-inspired Digital Beijing, by Zhu Pei and URBANUS Architecture. The edifice concentrate, during the Olympic Games and afterwards, all the computer systems allowing the control of the smooth running of the Games and subsequently of the Capital.

Inside the book. Slideshow:

See also 0300tv's five part documentary China According to China.

Related book reviews: The Chinese Dream - A society under construction, by DCF, Neville Mars and Adrian Hornsby and The Concrete Dragon: China's Urban Revolution and What It Means for the World, by Thomas J. Campanella.

The Arsenale section of the Venice Biennale of Architecture has many characteristics that makes it stand out from other architecture exhibitions. One of them is that you won't get to see cardboard models and plans. In fact, you can even walk around and inside the 1:1 scale replica of an apartment building with sharing spaces.

All the furniture and appliances necessary have been fabricated from methacrylate and are embedded with microservers. It's the return of the internet of things, baby!

Hyperhabitat. Reprogramming the World is a research project directed by Guallart Architects, initiated at IaaC (the Institute for Advanced Architecture of Catalonia) in 2005, with the BCN Fab Lab in collaboration with information designers Bestiario.

The project aims to propose answers to questions such as: Could our world be in habited on the basis of information technology? How could this be organized?

Just like a digital network is made of nodes and connections, Guallart's model is a large-scale attempt to have all the elements of the physical world communicate with each other. The house functions as a small ecosystem, where each object is a piece of a widely distributed intelligence, able to interact with the others. Architecture becomes the interface that enables us to inhabit the world. The connections do not stop at the room level, objects also communicate with the whole building and can even interact with the neighbourhood or the rest of the world.

The microservers embedded in the objects interact with one another to generate relationships that are displayed as a large-format projection on one of the walls. Line codes can be drawn to suggest relationships or 'line codes' between nodes. In addition a special web platform, to be launched on November 24, will enable people around the world to put forward formulas for reprogramming the world.

Image Daniel Aguilar

Hyperhabitat is the biggest Internet 0 (a new microserver technology developed at MIT to generate ambient intelligence by linking a series of miniature computers) network ever created. The project also builds upon the creation of and the theory of the multiscale habitat, an 'urban genome' project developed at IaaC that seeks to introduce new approaches to the generation of buildings and cities by restructuring the functional relationships between the constituent parts.

A key objective of this 'reprogramming' of buildings and cities is to use artificial intelligence in order to save energy and achieve a more self-sufficient model of living. As the architect explained to El Pais, the project tries to materialize the socio-economic changes that the world is currently undergoing, we are moving from a financial economy towards a production economy based on removing the price of objects in order to give them value. Guallart added: 'The way to visualize this idea is to build dwellings which are self-sufficient, applying artificial intelligence to buildings.' The architect is obviously aware that working at the building level is not sufficient if one wants to change the socio-economic structure of the world, action would have to be taken by working at the town-planning level (cf. Guallart's Sociopolis project,a neighbourhood designed with a mind set on efficiency, functionality, digital networks.)

Slideshow of the images i took of the installation:

There's a really nice video interview of the architect with views of the workshop where the installation has been entirely developed and built on 3cat24. But you might prefer a video presentation in english than in catalan:

More images on Daniel Aguilar's flickr set, and on the project website.

Hyperhabitat is on view at the Arsenale, Venice until November 23rd, 2008.

Why do i keep reading that there's too much art at the ongoing Biennale of Architecture in Venice? Why this rush to call 'art' anything that doesn't match expectations? The projects i've seen in Venice last weekend shouldn't be defined as art (at least not very good art), maybe some specialists wouldn't even qualify them as 'proper architecture' but most of these works have the virtue to bring forward some relevant debates and concepts, either by proposing experimental alternatives to the brick and mortar approach or by attempting to broaden and renew the discourse on architecture. In many cases, the participants speculate on future architecture by taking a look back at the avant-garde of the '60s, deliberately going back and forth, hoping that we'll be smart enough not to stop -once again- at the 'is this art?' level.

The critiques are directed mostly at the projects of the architecture studios that fill the Corderie, a spectacular exhibition space located within the Arsenale, Venice historic naval yards. Built in 1303, restored in 1579 and 1585, this 6400 sqm surface used to host the manufacture of hawsers, cables and thick ropes.

Corderie, Arsenale. Courtesy: Fondazione La Biennale di Venezia

During the architecture biennale what you can see inside the Corderie looks indeed much more like installations than buildings, each of them answers Aaron Betsky's -this year's Curator of the Biennale- request to look beyond buildings in order to discuss and question architecture. In his view, 'architecture is not building. Architecture must go beyond buildings because buildings are not enough. They are big and wasteful accumulations of natural resources that are difficult to adapt to the continually changing conditions of modern life.'

Here's a first couple of ideas i particularly liked at the Corderie:

An Te Liu's Cloud is an eye-catching assembly of dozens of air purifying devices, the kind you kind find almost anywhere in the world. They filter, sterilize and purify the air, getting rid of what we regard as harmful: bacteria, allergen, dust, unpleasant smells. They respond to our modern desire to live in a highly hygienic and technology-controlled environment.

In his essay The Architecture of Well-Tempered Environment (1969), architecture critic Reyner Banham put the development of technologies (electricity, air conditioning) ahead of the classic account of structures, eventually asking the question 'Why have buildings at all?' Sophisticated technologies, in his view, would one day allow us to survive without the traditional forms of shelter which we have come to take for granted. Our world could become entirely controlled by 'bubbles', with our needs met through various systems and devices.

An Te Liu, Cloud

The Cloud's air-conditioning appliances carve out their own invisible space in the exhibition space. Their trooping into an overhead armada evokes their sci-fi roots, reminding us that what we both desire and fear is a squeaky clean future.

Asymptote, Prototyping the Future: Three Houses for the Subconscious. Image from archiportale

Conceived and manufactured digitally, Asymptote's contribution to the biennale is Prototyping the Future: Three Houses for the Subconscious. Three round and elegant fiberglass objects is the output of a computer-based research on what buildings might look like if we were to put them through a wind tunnel testing, in the same manner as we do with cars and planes. The shape of the very static building would recall ideas of high velocity, acceleration and dynamism.

Asymptote's work, like the one of many of this biennale participants, deliberately calls up the architectural experimentations of the period that went from the 1960s to the early 1980s, when the boundaries between architecture, engineering and art were fuzzier than they are today. Prototyping the Future explore buildings under a more emotional and visceral light.

The 11th Venice Architecture Biennale, Out There: Architecture Beyond Building, runs until November 23rd.

I just spent a couple of eventful days in Eindhoven, NL. Endless thankyouverymuch to my lucky star (in this case the MU art space) who brought me there as the Van Abbemuseum had just opened a fascinating and very timely exhibition dedicated to contemporary art and culture of the central and southern states of America. I'll come back with more details on Heartland but here's the appetizer:

Minoru Yamasaki, the architect of the WTC twin towers, authored another set of buildings that would end in gravel and dust in front of TV cameras, this time in St Louis, Missouri.

Designed in 1951, when the city was still segregated, the Pruitt-Igoe was a complex of 2,870 apartments. Originally, the city planned two partitions for the housing project: Pruitt for black residents, and Igoe for whites. But as segregation was ruled unconstitutional in the 1954, the project was opened as racially integrated that same year. Within two years, most white residents had found the means to relocate elsewhere.

A building in the Pruitt-Igoe housing development collapses during its widely-televised demolition

Yamasaki's initial designed incorporated Le Corbusier's '3 essential joys of urbanism; sun, space and greenery'. Severe cuts in the budget forced the architect to compromise its original plan, leading eventually to the deterioration of the gym, playground and landscaping. The complex was vandalized and quickly fell into disrepair and disuse.

After several unsuccessful attempts to rehabilitate the area the St. Louis Housing Authority began demolition of the complex on March 16, 1972. It was regarded as a failure of architecture as a tool to solve complex social problems.

Ironically, the rubble was carted off to serve as landfill for luxury homes being built in the suburbs of Ladue, Missouri, the wealthiest and most expensive neighbourhood in the U.S. at the time.

Michael Rakowitz, Dull Roar, 2005

Reports of the time say that the public attending the demolition let out a dull roar as the buildings fell. Artist Michael Rakowitz, famous for the paraSITE plastic shelters, recreated the Pruitt-Igoe housing project in the form of a big inflatable building. He called it 'Dull Roar'.

The inflatable structure is right at the center of a circular wooden ramp, and the public can walk up, gather around and watch the building deflating and then resurrecting, again and again. The spectacle evokes those images we all saw on TV a few years ago: on the screens the Twin Towers stood erected than fell, you'd switch channel and here they were again, up then down.

Michael Rakowitz, Dull Roar, 2005

Small drawings hanging around the inflatable evoke the local baseball team's loss the night of the implosion, the sad death of architect Louis Kahn in a Penn Station bathroom and, once again, the collapse of Yamasaki's World Trade Center.

The installation, featured in the the Heartland exhibition, is on view at the Van Abbemuseum in Eindhoven until January 25, 2009.

There's quite a few things i miss about Belgium. On top of the list are: eating grey shrimps in Ostende (especially when the sky is grey and the sea even greyer) and the ridiculously small amount of time it takes to be out of the country. Last week i sat 2 hours in a train and i was in Paris. A few days before that i took another train and after 30 minutes and hop! i was in Maastricht, a city which has a very powerful magnet for me: NAI Maastricht , the little sister of Netherlands Architecture Institute in Rotterdam.

The entrance of the exhibition, with the sculpture of Peter Sandbichler. Photo Guus van den Akker. Image courtesy NAI Maastricht

The ground floor of the institute was occupied by State Alpha, on the architecture of sleep, an exhibition that explored (it closed a couple of days ago) the theme of sleep as a psychological inner world, while drawing on such areas as film and product design to visualize the relation between architecture and that inner world.

That was a very satisfying exhibition. My mind kept feeling stimulated (not an easy task, believe me), the works selected were good, the archives fascinating, the information was shooting in all directions, the graphic design was stunning (congrats to Experimental Jetset) and there were beds all over the place to watch the videos and fall asleep on a quiet afternoon.

Different aspects of sleep were examined in six chapters.

An impression of the archive of NAI on the subject 'sleep'. Photo Guus van den Akker
Image courtesy NAI Maastricht

Phenomenology of Sleep is a collection of film fragments that show the rituals of falling asleep and getting up within their architectural context.

The Architecture of Sleep, a medical expression that describes the structure of the sleep process, gave the lowdown on the current state of sleep research. On the other had, the chapter Science of Sleep compared how other (pseudo-scientific) expertises such as Feng Shui deal with sleep and its spatial effect on how we organize our bedrooms.

People listen to the visions on 'the house in the dream' of Lacan-experts Walter Seitter and August Ruhs. Photo Moniek Wegdam. Image courtesy NAI Maastricht

Dream House investigates the dream house within the housing market but also the house as a symbol in the subconscious.

The fifth chapter, Economy of Sleep, focuses on the opposition between sleep as a gift and source of vitality and sleep as a product around which an enormous market has developed - beds, scents, masks, creams, herbs, therapies, medicines...

Parisian homeless (sans-abri), photographed by Bernhard Cella

Providing a shelter for sleep is far from being the exclusive domain of architects. Austrian photographer Bernhard Cella shows us the Parisian sans-abri as amateur architects who arrange their sleeping place and deliberately reckon with the look of passers-by.

In the gallery was a video of Roman Signer's 1992's Action, Garenne Lemot, Clisson. The artist installed a tent in the middle of the park of La Garenne Lemot and he slept every night there for a week. Inside the tent was a microphone connected via an amplifier to powerful loudspeakers hung on trees in the nearby woods. Because Signer snores, the sound of hi snoring was played in full blast (and only at night) in the surrounding landscape.

T.R.A.U.M., bedsculpture of Barbara Caveng, which can be used free of charge after advance reservation. Photo Mathias Schormann

Barbara Caveng left the T.R.A.U.M. ('dream' in german) foldaway bed right in front of the NAI for people to take a nap there any time they wanted. All you had to do was make a reservation if you needed it on a particular day or night. Unfortunately the bed was destroyed during a Summer night.

The piece of furniture was originally a wall bed that the artist found in a Berlin road tunnel in 2004 and modified several times. The most important aspect of this piece is not the beauty of this glass encased bed sculpture. What matters is the gesture that comes with it, it is a social sculpture with a practical and generous use.

In her video Research for Sleeping Positions, Anna Jermolaewa experiments with a variety of possible sleeping positions on a bench of the type of a growing number of public benches constructed so as to prevent people lying down or sleeping. The bench she chose is located at Vienna's Westbahnhof, the place where in 1989 Jermolaewa spent her first week as a refugee in the West. By designing public space furniture that discourage people from lingering there, city administration is also setting social mechanisms of exclusion.

The idea of a 'natural' nocturnal sleep is a naive one. Most cultures have adopted more than just night-time monophasic sleep. Think of the Mediterranean siesta, for example.

Japanologist Brigitte Steger researched a unique Japanese forn of multiphasic sleep that sees people responding to their need of sleep by taking a nap in full view of wakeful people and in public places. This peculiar behaviour is called Inemuri. Even in their sleep, people are supposed to behave according to rules of the social setting. The phenomenon makes it clear that sleep is organized more by social rules than by architectural measures.

The concept State Alpha, on the architecture of sleep has been developed by Liquid Frontiers. The exhibition design is by EventArchitectuur. The graphic design is by Experimental Jetset.

Here's a slideshow of the images from the exhibition:

State Alpha, on the architecture of sleep is the first in a diptych. The second part will open at the end of October under the title Changing Ideals.

Previously at the NAI Maastricht: Edible City Part 1 and part 2.

Related: Conflux - Vertical Bed, Urban furniture to accommodate the homeless.

The Chinese Dream - A society under construction, by DCF, Neville Mars and Adrian Hornsby.

Publisher 010 says: What if you built the whole mass of western europe in 20 years? What if 400 million farmers then moved in? What would it look like? How would it work? Would you be able to go to sleep at night? And if you did, would you dream of somewhere else ...?

Taking as its starting point the goal announced in China in 2001 to build 400 new cities of 1 million inhabitants each by 2020, or 20 new cities a year for 20 years, the book explores the hopes and hazards of dreaming on such a scale. The question being asked is in fact no less than how to build a new utopia. But is China mortgaging its present for a promised future, and doing so at the same time that current speeds of construction eclipse any real forward planning?

Partly because of the Olympics, publishing houses have been releasing books about China by the dozens, with massive and super fast urbanization appearing to be the most popular subject by far. And who could blame the public for being so fascinated by back covers that repeat again and again figures and facts such as:

'China is the fourth largest economy in the world. If current growth rate continue, China will outsize the U.S. in the next 20 to 30 years'

'By 2020 China's national network of expressways will exceed in length even the American interstate highway system.'

Photo-collage by Martijn De Waal. Bigger version online and inside the book

Some of these publications are genuinely well-researched and carefully written, others feel more like a quick and opportunist job. If you have to get your hand on just one book about urban China, make it this one. It is the result of several years of works by experts who were called to reflect on possible scenarios for urbanization in China in 2020. It is also great 'value for money', not just because the price is surprisingly affordable for a book that counts 700 pages but because once you open it you realize that it's almost a work of art. The typo, graphic design, the photos, the layout, the graphics, every page has been meticulously crafted. And i have photos to prove my claim:

The urban (near) future of China is analyzed under every angle: economics, society, ecology, energy, architecture, urban planning and politics.

Some books about similar subject shun from any mention of China's political situation. This one doesn't. It's not exactly heavy on politics but its authors recognize that, while 'it's urbanization not democracy that constitutes the main driver for change in China', it would be naive to try and draw a clear picture of Chinese cities without taking the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) factor into account.

More importantly, the books holds a mirror to our 'Western societies". We've arrived at a crossroad where we are forced to stop and look with horror at the shortcomings of the capitalist model, a model that China is embracing fast, steady and avidly. The more i read about China's frenzy and excesses the more i was remembered of ours. Of course there are many differences: we know of the 'American dream' but how much exactly do we know of the 'Chinese dream'? We might have often read that one of the main goals of China is to create a broad middle class which will, of course, form the least saturated market we can dream of, but are we sure that the Chinese will blindly follow the same models of capitalism as we do? For example will they be willing to embrace our 'credit-addiction' and other eco-suicidal habits?

Beijing Boom Tower

I almost forgot to mention my favourite part of the book: the 'Glossary / From Lipstick to Skyscraper'. Some of the words and expressions relate to urbanization all over the world (archi-scrabble, anyone?). Some are peculiar to China: Chinese immobility, Chinese Moderni$m, Chengdu 1.5, dormitory extrusion, floating village, panda-hugger, Shanghai fever, chiburb, etc.

If 700 pages are not enough, head to BURB.TV, the collaborative research wiki that updates and expands into the larger knowledge of The Chinese Dream. Each article is a topical blog or BURB into which texts, images, and discussion are submitted. The research is produced with visionaries, architects, planners and social scientists invited by the Dynamic City Foundation.

Related: Book Review - The Concrete Dragon: China's Urban Revolution and What It Means for the World.

Global Cities at Tate Modern.

The Chinese Far West, Get It Louder (Part 1, China), China China China China !!! Chinese contemporary art beyond the global market, Neural magazine special China, China Now at the Cobra Museum, Beijing's "hutong" destruction, 798 art district in Beijing + The 798 art district, take two.

The excuse for my visit to Paris was SmartCity, a conference organized in the frame of the festival Emergences. Emergences is an 'international festival of electronic cultures and new art forms'. However, one must accept that in a city like Paris the word 'international' doesn't necessarily that tacit rules will be respected and that the activities and conferences will be held in any other language than french. That's probably why i enjoyed the event so much. While both the issues discussed and the quality of the speakers invited to the panels were definitely of international relevance, the festival had a homely feeling with an audience ready to participate and dialog, un-refrained as they were by any lack of knowledge of the ubiquitous english.

The conference focused on urban activism and artistic interventions in public space, a theme which offered a splendid contrast with the venue of the conference: the very chichi Maison Internationale at the Cité Internationale Universitaire de Paris.

Perfect venue to discuss alternative uses of urban space

There were some good moments but the one that got me glued to my seat, pen in the hand and eyes on the screen was the presentation of mOmentoMoNUMENTO, a joint project by Brazilian collective Coloco & French experimental architects of Exyzt whose pavilion at the Venice architecture biennale of 2006 i had enjoyed so much.

Exyzt's works engage mostly with temporary interventions, ephemeral constructions and the presence of diversity in urban space. They have recently joined forces with Coloco to submit to the institution Cultures France a project that will be part of the official programme of the French Year in Brazil (February-July 2009).

When located in urban centers, skeletons provide opportunities

The final project stems from a research started in 2001 by Coloco.
The Brazilian collective observed, analyzed and documented a phenomenon called 'skeleton dwellings': in big cities, groups of people decide to occupy then inhabit buildings which were left unfinished and abandoned because of economic crisis, ups and downs of the estate market, war, cataclysm, etc.

Result of the dead-end of the estate market

The desire of these people is to live in the center of the city, close to the services. They organize the general functioning of the building: bathroom and garden for the collectivity are installed, trash collection is organized, spaces on ground levels are reserved for the elderly, etc. Sometimes, the dwellers are kicked out of the building but in some cases, they manage to reach an agreement with city officials (conscious that the abandon of the center of a city for the suburbs is a growing problem) and their dwelling become permanent and 'legitimate'.

Prestes Maia (Sao Paulo): This building has been abandoned 20 years ago. Its debt in taxes almost equals its value

The skeleton dwellings derive from a logic of opportunity, being easily inserted in dense urban areas and diversifying the supply of low-cost urban housing.

Building their dwellings, recycling these abandoned structures

Neighbours organize themselves informally

Prestes Maia (Sao Paulo): Each family lives in roughly 20 sqm

Gloria, Rio de Janeiro: Even after renovation, some facades can't hide their history

Meanwhile, Exyzt is also working on the rehabilitation of disused spaces and on alternative and cheap forms of dwellings.

A first project they presented is République Ephémère where 450 architectural students from Europe were given some rudimentary tools and materials to organize for 2 weeks their life as a big community in the enclosed space of the two wharehouses?

Each student was untrusted with a survival kit, including a construction manual and security instructions, and a defined quantity of scaffolding and textiles. Geometrical problems could arise, as this amount of scaffolding, sufficient to build one cubic room could then be combined with others: for example, 2 kits put together could give rise to 3 dwellings.

Video:

The affinities and exchanges between the participants were gradually translated into architectural terms. More complex, personalized structures were developed over time. The implantation looked like a cross between an organic. medieval village and a refugee camp. It kept transforming itself, not only on the level of the individual sphere, but also on the level of the collective organization.

The second project Exyzt spotlighted was an intervention inside and outside of the Palast der Republik, a gigantic relic of the communist era, now demolished and about to be replaced by the (very tacky imho) reconstruction of its predecessor, the Berlin Stadtschloss.

Der Berg (image southwarklido)

Under the menace of a demolition act, Raumlabor, one of the most brilliant group on the German architecture scene, decided to occupy and open the monument to the public. They called Exyzt to give them a helping hand.

Der Berg (in german: the mountain) is an artificial mountain, a surrealist architectural performance built to react to the absurdity of making a tabula rasa of a part of Berlin's history in order to build the replica of a long disappeared building.

This collaboration resulted in a 20 meters high triangulated structure made out of scaffolding and fiber glass textile. The installation invaded the theater, while another team made it spread through the roof and onto the front porch of the building. Der Berg became a monument inside a monument.

Movie:

After this introduction, Exyzt and Coloco focused on mOmentoMoNUMENTO, the project they are working on for the official programme of the French Year in Brazil (February-July 2009). The idea is to follow on the steps of the French tradition to 'offer' monuments to foreign countries (think of the Statue of Liberty). This monument, however, is already on site. Well, sort of. The architects have obtained the help of the city of Sao Paulo to spot one of the many skeletons that have been standing for years in the city center, waiting to be reconquered by Exyzt and Coloco.

Saõ Paulo: an apartment building for the wealthy overlooks a favela, ironically called Paraisópolis (Paradise city). Photo: Luiz Arthur Leirão Vieira (bigger view)

The building they've set their sight on was built in 1965. It is the first building with a facade entirely made of glass. Occupied at some point by the federal police it has now been left to decay. The main problem the architect have to solve is that living inside the building is almost un-conceivable without air conditioning which has been dismantled in the meantime. The whole electrical setting has to be re-installed as well (especially if one wants to have access to the top floor by lift.)

The project responds to Sao Paulo government's desire to find new solutions that will inject life back into the center of the city: inhabitants have moved to the edge of the city, leaving many abandoned buildings and a thick infrastructure of roads behind them.

The building is left at the disposal of the architects for one year. If at the end of the project, the result is deemed good enough by the city, it could become a space left permanently occupied by cultural organizations, art galleries, artists residencies, etc.

Exyzt and Coloco want to make the rooftop (originally planned as a landing spot for helicopters) accessible to the public.

The project is currently self-funded. Any help and feedback would be most welcome.

Related: Global Cities, The Morrinho Project at the Venice Biennale and Juan Freire - From the Analogue Commons to the New Hybrid Public Spaces.