Contemporary
Building Strategies
New Orleans: Shotgun House with Rainwater-Harvesting Tank
Building materials, energy, communications and water-supply infrastructure, 2008
Future Talk: The Great Republic of New Orleans.
Max Protetch Gallery,
New York
Shotgun House with Rainwater-Harvesting Tank points to
two recent trends in New Orleans: the revival of the
local architectural style known as the Shotgun House, and
the move toward self-sustainability. Both are
post-Katrina developments and correspond with the
deconstruction of modernist architecture and the search
for a new, 21st-century social contract for
democracy. Local harvesting of energy resources points to
the emergence of new environmental and, consequently,
political boundaries. The two caryatids serve as
reminders that New Orleans is being rebuilt by its
citizens.
Forest Rising
Tree trunks, building materials, energy and communication infrastructure, 2007
Forest Rising,
The Curve, Barbican Art Gallery, London
A rural school, equipped with satellite dish and solar
panels, stands on an island elevated by tree
trunks. Visitors walk beneath a satellite, the elevated
island and a helicopter platform. The project is based on
practices developed by Amazonian communities in Brazil in
response to the most pressing social, economic and
environmental concerns of the 21st century. Their ideas
for the future include the development of small-scale
economies, a new citizenship, the University of the
Forest, the protection of knowledge, the protection of
territories, and global connectivity.
Rural Studio: The Lucy House Tornado Shelter
Building materials and communications infrastructure, 2007
Rural Studio: The Lucy House Tornado Shelter,
Nordenhake Gallery, Berlin
The Lucy House, designed by architect Samuel Mockbee and
his students in the Rural Studio Outreach Program and
constructed in 2002, combines residential architecture
with emergency architecture. Home to Anderson and Lucy
Harris and their three children, the house includes a
built-in tornado shelter, on top of which a bedroom sits
inside the "crumpled" tensegrity dome. This tornado
shelter is also used by the Harrises as a meditation room
and family/TV room.
Burning Man: Tensegrity Structure with Solar Canopy, Wind Turbine and
Water Devices
Building materials and energy infrastructure, 2006
Fantastic Politics, Museum of Contemporary Art, Oslo, Norway
This tensegrity structure, created from long wooden poles
and cord, is stabilized solely through tensegrity, by
balancing the forces of push and pull. The shelter is
upgraded with self-sustainable technologies, such as a
solar canopy and a wind turbine, which power a water pump,
among other things. By combining strategies for both
leisure and subsistence, participants in the Burning Man
Festival practice survival strategies through play.
Xapuri: Rural School
Building materials, energy and communication infrastructure, 2006
How to Live Together, 27th São Paulo Biennial, São Paulo, Brazil
This is a case study of a primary school that has been built in a
remote area of the Amazonian forest in the Brazilian state of
Acre. The construction of such schools represents a collaboration
between local communities and the government. Typically, a school is
equipped with extensive solar paneling and a satellite dish, in other
words, a source of energy and the means for communication with the
world.
Prishtina House
Building materials, energy and communication infrastructure, 2006
Marjetica Potrc and Tomas Saraceno: Personal States / Infinite Actives
Portikus, Frankfurt/Main, Germany
This Place is My Place - begehrte Orte, Kustverien in Hamburg, Hamburg, 2007
Prishtina House is a case study of a house in the Peyton Place
neighborhood of Prishtina. It is an example of personal
orientalism. After the collapse of modernism, the citizens of
Prishtina began building their houses in a wide range of styles, each
expressing the taste of the owner. Here personal style is accentuated
to the level of kitsch. In Prishtina, the citizens have become the
smallest state. Personal styles are the expression of a fragmented
society. Self-sustainability is also an issue, since citizens have to
rely on their own resources: a generator powers the streetlight.
Permanently Unfinished House with Cell Phone Tree
Building materials and communications infrastructure, 2006
Revisiting Home, NGBK Neue Gesellschaft fuer bildende Kunst, Berlin
The structure points to how 'nature' is represented in
contemporary urban culture. The focus is on the
communications infrastructure. The tree on the right is
actually a form of infrastructure concealment -- a hi-tech
cell tree made of steel and plastic. The three columns on
the house are painted to look like tree trunks, alluding
to the origins of architecture in an archetype that
equates tree trunks with columns. Another reference to
'nature' are the steel rods protruding from the top of the
walls, a typical feature of 'growing houses' in informal
cities, which account for half of the world's
fastest-growing metropolises.
Islands: The Urban Villa and the Urban Village
Building materials, energy infrastructure, and 3-channel video, 2005
In collaboration with Kyong Park
M City, European Cityscapes, Kunsthaus Graz, Graz, Austria
The Urban Villa is a hybrid between a Ljubljana case study, the
Salamander urban villa by Sadar Vuga Architects, and the new urban
development in Haverleij, the Netherlands . Urban
villas and urban villages are new architectural typologies that have
emerged over the past ten years. Here, the ideal residential complex
represents a dramatic reduction in the number of people living
together in comparison with the previous modernist model.
Ljubljana under a Common Roof
This is a case study based on a proposal made by
architect Josef Plecnik for the city of Ljubljana in 1944. The city
builds a roof and provides the infrastructure for a
neighborhood. Residents build houses beneath the common roof. A
similar concept may be seen in present-day Johannesburg (although on
a different scale). Here, a roof and essential infrastructure are
provided to individual families, but not to the whole community.
Hybrid House: Caracas, West Bank, West Palm Beach
Building materials, energy and communication infrastructure, 2003 - 2004
'Urgent Architecture', PBICA, Lake Worth, FL, 2003
'Urgent Architecture', MIT List Visual Arts Center, Cambridge, MA, 2004
Hybrid House juxtaposes structures from the temporary architecture of
Caracas, the West Bank, and West Palm Beach, Florida, and shows how they
negotiate space among themselves. Each of the community-based structures
formulates its own language, which, in all three cases, has much in common
with archetypal (and not modernist) architecture. Emphasis is placed on
private space, security, and energy and communication infrastructures.
Summer House
Building materials and energy infrastructure, 2004
'Summer House', Balkan Trilogy: Part3, Kunsthalle Fridericianum, Kassel, Germany
A summer house has been installed inside an industrial construction, namely,
a water tower. This is a case study of Paul Rudolph's Walker Guest House, an
early modernist building that uses counterweights to raise and lower the
walls.
Next Stop, Kiosk
Building materials, energy and communication infrastructure, 2003
'Next Stop, Kiosk', Museum of Modern Art, Ljubljana, Slovenia
A palafita -- a South American house on stilts (sometimes called "a walking
house") - is balanced on top of a group of intersecting city kiosks. The
K-67 kiosk was originally designed in the late 1960s as a mobile dwelling
unit by the Ljubljana-based architect Sasa Maechtig.
Caracas: House with Extended Territory
Building materials, energy and communication infrastructure, 2003-2004
'Caracas: House with Extended Territory', Nordenhake Gallery, Berlin, 2003
'Caracas: House with Extended Territory', De Appel Foundation for Contemporary Art, Amsterdam, 2004
The social state never really materialized in Caracas. Half the population
lives in the informal city in houses constructed without legal title or
building permits. Space is creatively negotiated and appropriated. To claim
greater space, an additional facade may be built in front of the existing
building. Greek columns underline the appropriation of space, too. They
represent a human presence on the site.
Caracas: Dry Toilet
Building materials and sanitation infrastructure, 2003-2005
'Borne of Necessity', The Weatherspoon Art Museum, UNC, Greensboro, NC, 2004
'Caracas: Dry Toilet', Nordenhake Gallery, Stockholm, 2004
'Urgent Architecture', PBICA, Lake Worth, FL, 2003
'Urgent Architecture', MIT List Visual Arts Center, Cambridge, MA, 2004
'Farsites: Urban Crisis and Domestic Symptoms in Recent Contemporary Art',
San Diego Museum of Art, San Diego, CA, 2005
This is a case study of a dry toilet built in the La Vega barrio of Caracas
in 2003. Because the dry toilet does not need water to operate, it radically
reduces the amount of water used by residents while providing a long-term
sustainable solution for the problem of wastewater.
Caracas: Growing House
Building materials and energy infrastructure, 2003
'GNS', Palais de Tokyo, Paris
In Caracas, half of the city's population resides in the informal city in
structures that are perceived as rural, not urban architecture. Called
'growing houses,' nearly every barrio dwelling has iron wires sprouting from
its rooftop, as if proclaiming the vitality of the place. Anything may be
recycled as building material for these houses.
El Retiro: A Roundhouse
Building materials, 2003
'Somewhere Better than this Place', CAC, Cincinnati, OH
This is a case study of a roundhouse, a residential unit constructed for
earthquake victims in El Retiro, El Salvador. A roundhouse can be built by
as few as two people in approximately ten hours or less, and no previous
knowledge of house construction is needed. Such houses can even withstand a
small-scale hurricane.
Permanently Unfinished House with Cell Phone Tree
Building materials and communication infrastructure, 2003
'Permanently Unfinished House with Cell Phone Tree'
Salzburger Kunstverein, Salzburg, Austria
A cell tower is disguised as a tree. The house remains unfinished, so the
owners can avoid paying taxes. Visual pollution and deregulation shape both
the built and the natural environments.
Leidsche Rijn House
Building materials, communication and energy infrastructure, 2003
'The Pursuit of Happiness', Kunsthalle Bern, Bern, Switzerland
Leidsche Rijn, the biggest residential development currently in the
Netherlands, is a showcase of creative solutions at a time when the
social state is in decline. Many of these solutions emphasize private
concerns and self-reliance. Wadis, the green areas between buildings,
harvest rainwater, and a twin water system is used throughout the whole
area. Contemporary urban nomads and Travelers reside next to each other.
Rural Studio: Butterfly House
Building materials, 2002
'Designs for the Real World', "Generali Foundation, Vienna
Rural Studio is an outreach program for architecture students at Auburn
University, who work with the residents of Hale County in rural Alabama
to design highly personalized dwellings. Construction materials are
devised from whatever is at hand in the area and usually include recycled
or often overlooked objects. The Butterfly House makes use of natural
ventilation, and its roof harvests rainwater, thus making a statement
in self-sustainable architecture.
Hybrid: Burning Man and Barefoot College
Building materials, energy infrastructure, 2002
'Housing', Westfaelischer Kunstverein, Muenster, Germany
Considered a utopian structure in the 1960s, Buckminster Fuller's
geodesic dome now occupies a place in everyday life across the globe.
Its quick and easy construction, often using recycled industrial materials,
satisfies the need for shelter and makes it the best choice for relief
housing for both Burning Man and Barefoot builders.
Duncan Village Core Unit
Building materials, energy and communication infrastructure, 2002
- 2003
'Through a Sequence of Space', Nordenhake Gallery, Berlin, 2002
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'PARA > SITES: Who is moving the global city?', Badischer Kunstverein, Karlsruhe, 2003
'Art Unlimited',Art Fair Basel, Basel, Switzerland, 2003
'Urban Strategies', Galerie Museum Ar/ge Kunst, Bolzano, Italy, 2003
'1st Lodz Biennial', Lodz, Poland, 2004
Case study of a service core unit in Duncan Village, East London,
South Africa. Service core units are an example of collaboration between
urban planners and settlers, the formal and informal city. The energy
infrastructure and the question of shelter are dealt with separately.
The city offers utility services, specifically, potable water, energy
and sewage, and the new residents build their own homes. Until very
recently, social housing did not exist in South Africa.
Barefoot College: A House
Building materials, energy infrastructure, 2002
Max Protetch Gallery, New York, NY
The structure is based on houses created by untrained architects for
Barefoot College in Tilonia, India. Equipped with solar panels and able
to harvest water, these houses make it possible for the settlement to generate
its own energy. This combination of local knowledge, high technology,
and the principle of self-sufficiency has won the Barefoot Architects international recognition.
Kagiso: Skeleton House
Building materials, communication and energy infrastructure, 2001
Guggenheim Museum, New York, NY
This is an example of a core unit from Kagiso, a suburb of Johannesburg.
The city provides a simple structure: a roof on stilts and connections
to the sewage and water system. Individual owners build their homes
within this framework. According to a New York Times story, one future
owner moved his shack to the site of this skeleton house so he could
guard his new toilet.
East Wahdat: Upgrading Program
Building materials, energy infrastructure 1999 - 2003
'50 Years of Central European Art',
Museum Moderner Kunst, Vienna, 1999
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'East Wahdat: Upgrading Program', Centre Gallery,
Miami-Dade Community College, Miami, 2000
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'The Sheltering Connection', Allen Memorial Museum,
Oberlin College, Oberlin, OH, 2001
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'The Pursuit of Happiness', Kunsthalle Bern, Bern, 2003
About 25 percent of the Greater Amman population lives in unregulated
settlements. Rather than raze the shantytowns, the Urban Development
Department decided not to evict the occupants. City authorities provided
road access, electricity and core units with water and a sewage system.
With the help of neighbors, residents moved their existing shanty structures
to a corner of the plot as a temporary shelter. Once the first room
of the new house was built in the vacant space, the residents moved
in, pulling down the original shanty.
The Core Unit
Building materials, energy infrastructure, 1997
'Skulptur. Projekte in Münster', Landesmuseum Münster, Münster, Germany
In Honduras, core units are a part of the suburban housing program.
The building provided by municipial authorities is equipped with electricity,
running water and a toilet.
People add rooms as their finances and building skills permit.
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