Production of Architecture

NEW SITE! PRODUCTION OF ARCHITECTURE 2009-2010

Production of Architecture: Cities Are Made Of This

At Tensta Konsthall between MARCH 30 until 29 MAY

First we build architecture, then architecture builds us.

During this course we will examine how contemporary building materials and technologies relate to the production of architecture. New modes of production and new materials have continually developed and changed during the last few decades, at the same time it has become difficult to trace how this development have transformed the way we understand architecture. Traditional modernistic ideals as honest accounts of material, function and construction have given way to an increasing occupation with architecture as image, which in turn has lead to an increasing separation between architecture/construction and form/structure. Today we see built examples of this simplified and problematic attitude towards architecture as a complex process. The ambitions in this course are to see if it is possible to reformulate these issues. Is it possible to think architecture that, instead of routinely obsessing with style and external attributes, actually relates to contemporary building materials, construction technologies and modes of production? The topics of economy, material and building procedures will be tested on a small but complex program for a temporary city planning office in Tensta.

For five days International Festival has gone She’s a Rainbow setting up op-centre in Tate Liverpool. Together with a group of architecture students from the Univ. of Liverpool and The Royal Inst. of Technology in Stockholm in addition to choreographers from mychoreography.org International Festival has been diving deep down belly flop into the crack between architecture and performance - which is not exactly equal to dances and houses but rather Bob Fosse meets x-mas decoration or Hundertwasser gone wii-fit - to research alternative modes of production. A mixture of perspectives has been exercised from PCM (Paranoiac Critical Method) to drifting and detournement borrowed from the Situationist, to Duck and Cover and AOL (Additive Opportunistic Leeway). This Saturday a catalogue of proposals and diversions will be unpacked in the context of the exhibition The Fifth Floor – Ideas Taking Space at Tate Liverpool - including social activities, refreshments, performance and celebratory actions.

Technology not only surrounds us but has also become incorprated in our everyday lives, working as extensions of ourselves, shaping our experiences and our methods for creative production. This seminar takes its starting point in some classical texts in the field of new media theory. We will discuss how the formation of space, image, identity and language have been informed by the development of ever more sophisticated technologies.

Friday the 21st October 15:00 to 17:00

A course at the Royal Institute of Technology running from October 27th until December 9th

Architecture Television is about using lo-fi, simple and open source technologies to examine borders, possibilities and limitation to the mediatization of architecture. Architecture Television is televised architecture and architecture televised.

Monday the 13th October 15:00 to 17:00

This seminar consists of two parts, first Håkan Nilsson will give a lecture on how virtuality as concept is operating and understood through different practices of cultural production. The second part is your presentations and a follow-up discussion.

Here are all the presentations for the mid-review in the course UNREAL. The presentations took place at the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, October 3:rd 2008.

UNREAL is a course at the Royal Institute of Technology running between September 8th until October 24th 2008

When faced with the discussion about “real” and “virtual” architecture one encounters many different traces. One is leading towards a way of addressing architecture as a result from various “forces” or “powers”, where the constructed space is understood as something that manifests the predominating one. As a consequence, architects and theorists have been using the idea of the virtual and the network as a tool to resist powers or at least make the powers in question visible; to the beholder, but also to the producing architects. Terms like “open source” and “share-ware”, borrowed from computer science, has been popular in the field of visual arts as well as in architecture.

”We redefine the position of Tensta, putting it in the centre of Stockholm instead of in the periphery. With four different colours, we not only build a structure of around 490 000 000 square meters but we also enable all of us to inhabit new mental territories.”