Image from sci-fi thriller DISTRICT 9 via Yukon Science fiction Writer

What: A Workshop of Experimental Architecture on the urban border-conditions
Where: Johannesburg (SA)
When: Aug 23 – Sept 10 , 2010
Who: RIEA.ch Research Institute for Experimental Architecture

In a rapidly growing urban world, slums and informal settlements provide shelter for a sixth of the planet’s population and unless effective action is taken they are likely to become the most common form of dwelling on earth by 2030.

Parallel to this critical situation lies another inconvenient truth that architecture as a profession is affecting no more than 5% of what is built every year around the world.

This sounds like the loudest call for Architecture to re-assume its political content and broaden its field of action, or to eventually accept, as a discipline, its irrelevancy in facing new and inevitable urban challenges.

The Silent Borders Workshop, organized and lead by RIEA.ch, will take the megacity of Johannesburg as a case study to investigate the spatial and mental borderlines generated by diverse social, economic, technological and cultural conditions that meet, mix and clash within the city.
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Cluster is pleased to announce a new regular column on its blog edited by RIEA-ch – the Research Institute of Experimental Architecture.

The term “Experimental Architecture’ was first used by Peter Cook of the avant-garde architectural group Archigram in 1970 – long before the advent of interactive technologies. Archigram, pioneers in experimentalism, were intent on pushing through the traditional boundaries of architecture to radically redefine how people related to, perceived and experienced architecture and the space that we inhabit. The core was to think architecture before building it, to grant it consciousness.

Lebbeus Woods, considered one of the most visionary architects of our time, has since been carrying out extensive research work on the topic, broadening its scope internationally and establishing it as a field of study in further education institutes, continuing to pursue the power of the imagination as fundamental to the discipline.

Woods founded RIEA (Research Institute for Experimental Architecture) in 1988, an international institution dedicated to advancing experimentation and research in the field of Experimental Architecture. Under his direction, and co-directed by Guy Lafranchi, the work of RIEA covers promotion and training for experimental design, support and implementation of experimental projects in architecture, urban design and other related areas of science and culture through the organization and hosting of lectures, workshops, conferences, symposia; the launch of competitions; editing and promotion of formal and informal publications. (More on RIEA.ch here)

If architecture is to tackle the challenges posed by contemporary society then we need to search for a new vision, an architecture that is able to fulfil needs, to connect and communicate, to provide, to respond, to share, to transform and so on, and this requires fertile ground for experimentation. We need ideas.

This is why Cluster and RIEA.ch have come together. Over the past six years Cluster has focused its research on innovative forms of urban planning that respond to the needs of the ‘mutating’ city and the impact that new technologies have had on transforming (even extending) city life. We are interested in mobilising new ideas and encouraging intercultural and interdisciplinary dialogue on issues related to the built environment.

Both Cluster and RIEA.ch agree that architecture needs to address the complex and interconnected systems that have become an integral part of urban life, and to rethink the ‘role’ of architecture in a networked and global society, but most of all it needs to share and produce ideas, as the paradigms we inhabit have proven insufficient in anticipating and solving issues of conflict, instead often engendering them.

The RIEA.ch blog on Cluster will be organized as a multi-platform space for the discussion and dissemination of historical and current tendencies within the discourse of Experimental Architecture. It is an invitation to discuss, analyse and criticize ideas with the aim of developing the good ones and creating others from scratch.

The content of RIEA.ch will follow this scheme:

WHAT DOES IT MEAN?
The “What Does it Mean?” section will feature posts, writings, and essays that explore the status of the discipline and its position within the discourse of Experimental Architecture, covering theory, practice and education. The Area will host dialogues and interviews with scholars and researchers in architecture and related fields, aiming to foster the creation of new fields of work and original lines of thought in Experimental Architecture.
This section will also be dedicated to the dissemination of RIEA events, activities and projects such as conferences, workshops, competitions, and books.

NO PLACE TO HIDE
The “No place to Hide” section, will be structured as an ongoing, ever-growing archive of places where architectural and urban instruments has been deployed for confronting, re-thinking, and/or transforming crises (social, economical, ecological), border-conditions, and regimes of power (political, military, cultural). The archive will present practices explicitly addressing these three areas of interest, utilizing architectural and urban strategies as an agent of change and resistance.

The RIEA - Cluster blog is an open call for participation addressed to all individuals interested and engaged in to experimentation, in architecture and other fields.

Let the discussion begin!

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¹The title of this Area of the blog is directly taken from the title of the introductory essay by Lebbeus Woods that opened the First RIEA Conference in Experimental Architecture in 1989 and later published by P. Cook. (1990). RIEA: The First Conference, New York/Berlin: Princeton Architectural Press/Aedes.

²No Place to Hide is the title of the 1995 Innsbruck Workshop.

The second issue of SEE Bulletin, the only publication entirely dedicated to exploring matters related to design policies and programmes for design support across Europe and beyond, has just been released and it’s really good! A ‘must’ for anyone interested in issues concerning design and innovation policies.

Contents include a research paper by Prof. John Heskett ‘Aspects of Design Policy in History’; ‘Good Design Selection’ from Korea as an integral part of the government’s innovation and procurement strategy; ‘Better by Design’ from New Zealand, a government initiative to expand the country’s economy through the successful design to export businesses and a snapshot of world design policy news from Argentina, Australia, Canada, Costa Rica, Iceland and Qatar, and to top it off the ‘Design Policy and Promotion Programme Map’ that offers a global perspective on the growing number of increasing maturity of design policies and promotion programmes.

The Bulletin is available for download at the SEE project website here

SEE is a network of eleven European Partners sharing knowledge and experience on how design can be interated into regional, national and European policies to boost innovation, competitiveness, sustainability and social and economic development. The SEE Bulletin is produced by Design Wales.

…and disrupts its grid¹

Solomon Benjamin

‘Developmentalism’ is now a morbid zeal, mobilized to survey, to GIS, to digitize, to research, and colonize ‘Third World Cities.’ And in this zeal, lies the panoptic desire to turn the steel frame of the Nation State into The Grid and the Rule of Law, the Master Plan that poses the activist academic as an emancipator, speaking on behalf of the voiceless poor. And with this, a formalization of the Grid into a distinct street away from the city.

“Where does the street as ‘thoroughfare’ end and the city begin?”

This question is asked by many – in these times of ‘illegal’ migrants, of street vendors seen to disrupt traffic flows and “legitimate” pedestrians, and the zeal for “policy advice, participatory planning and public consultations” and attempts to soften the hard edge of Master Plans – but not addressing the issue of property. These are also times the endorsement of the high art as a property circuit now seeks the ‘street as ritual’ disciplined into safe ‘heritage zones’². Are these pointers of an implicit ‘fear of the street’ depoliticizing our conception of urban space? Does asking this question, and drawing from Bromley³, reinforce the discipline and violence of the Grid and the Rule of Law? Or, is there a need to reject the bifurcation between the Street and City, and with it, a view that the city is necessarily ’striated’4 whose singular forms property in land and commodity long been naturalized? Perhaps we should locate such questions and their associated interventions as a result of the fear of the undisciplined city, the complexity and fluidity of which subverts easy political and economic control.

This image shows an elevated expressway that cuts through Bangalore’s central wholesale trading markets. The earlier trades, here showing vegetables, persist to deform the planner’s dream

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Images Courtesy Vestergaard Frandsen

(article also available in Italian, to view click on Italian in the menu bar above / articolo anche disponibile in italiano, cliccate in alto sul menu Italian. Thanks/grazie Iris Cartia!

Cluster is supporting a project to help give earthquake victims in Haiti access to safe drinking water - which we think is a very good idea! The humanitarian crisis in Haiti will long outlive the earthquake that struck on January 12 2010; thirst, hunger and disease are rife, food and water supplies are scarce and survivors are highly exposed to the risk of contracting waterborne diseases through the intake of contaminated water.

Haiti is more in need of help than ever before.

Drinking Water for Haiti aims to help by donating at least 500 units of LifeStraw to the Haitian people to provide safe drinking water and contain the spread of life-threatening disease among survivors.

The award winning LifeStraw is a 10 inch practical, portable plastic straw (cylinder) that uses advanced technology to convert dirty water into drinking water by filtering out and killing bacteria as they are sucked up the tube.

Simple to use and light in weight Lifestraw is easy to distribute and can be carried around for use outside the home, it doesn’t require any electrical power and has a longevity of approximately one year (based on a consumption of 2 litres of water/day).
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