Corrado Curti interviews Bryan Cantley, Professor of Design Theory at CSUF and owner of Form:uLA. Editorial coordination, Donatella Cusmà.

Looking at the works and drawings by L.A. based architect, professor and spatial orchestrator Bryan Cantley almost gives you the impression that you’re peeping through the keyhole of the architectural mise-en-scène of Jean Tardieu’s La serrure: right before our eyes gorgeous buildings unveil their hidden and perverted beauty in an extreme striptease, peeling off their skins like Robbie Williams in the Rock DJ music video and revealing their machinic nature.

There is, however, definitely more to his research than just architectural porn, and these naked buildings/machines defy numerous architectural clichés and conventions, both in the way they are conceived and in the representational techniques applied to them. Ladies and Gentlemen, please welcome Bryan Cantley and his Architectural Burlesque:

Betty Boop 2004, artwork ©Michael Paulus, www.michaelpaulus.com

CC: Before we begin, could you tell us about the projects you’re working on, and the concepts you’re currently exploring?
BC: Several:
1] I am working on a book of my work. This has been in development for many years. Unfortunately, partly due to the economic climate, it has been difficult to find a publisher. The overall feedback has been: “wonderfully intriguing work, but we don’t know if we can sell 50,000 copies… if you can fund it yourself we are interested…” Obviously, since my work is experimental [read: non-profit], this has almost killed the project.

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A detail from Jurgen Mayer H’s award winning proposalsBlueprint
Jurgen Mayer Architects were last named the winner of the Audi Urban Futures Award. The award is an innovation was set up by the German car manufacturer to encourage discussions around the relationship between mobility and urban planning. Mayer’s winning proposal posited a future where cars are run entirely on electricity taken from a smart-grid, known as the Electricity Embedded Environment. The visualizations of the project, consisting of rapid-prototyped models and Minority-Report-style renderings, showed a world of 2030 where the digital, virtual and real worlds have melded together – cars come with integrated augmented reality software and the flow of traffic is automated. The practice receives a prize of 100,000 euros.

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Via Blueprint

UPDATE: The deadline for Call for Mobility Pilots: the future of biking in Copenhagen has been extended to September 30 2010. Please send all relative information on previous post here

Ethel Baraona of dpr-barcelona interviews New York based Architect and Urban Designer Petra Kempf, author of the publication ‘You are the city‘; a unique ‘kit’ of drawings and text which readers can mix, organize and overlay as they please, creating their own city scenarios. The publication aims, through play and interaction, to provide the individual with insight into the complexity of cities and the forces that constantly transform them: “Cities are backdrops for dreams and desires, a platform for departure and arrivals.”

In the interview the author gives her views on the digital and mapping technologies and the relevance of the human experience in cities.

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In a review of Urban Interventions - Personal Projects in Public Spaces, Regine Debatty of We Make Money Not Art writes that as well as being “surprising, fun and delightful” the publication also reveals how artists play an important role in placemaking. By bringing places alive the artwork featured in the book compels us to contemplate the social relevance of civic space and how it is governed.

“The book puts urban creative experiments into the wider and rather distressing context of worldwide urbanization…Fortunately, artists, designers and activists are bringing cities back to a more human scale by adopting an anti-authoritarian approach and using the city as their playground and canvas. Their subversive, humorous approach reminds us that the city shouldn’t be left solely into the hands of leaders, urban policymakers and architects”

Urban Interventions, edited by Robert Klanten and Matthias Huebner, features a 200 projects of both established and lesser-known artists, activists and preformers from cities worldwide and “challenges us to question if the cities we have are the cities we need while adding a touch of magic to mundane places and situations.”

Read the review here