UNAUFGERÄUMT / AS FOUND
UNAUFGERÄUMT / AS FOUND examines architectural designs and strategies for found situations and existing buildings. A collection of recent projects from very different cultural contexts reveal how, with minimal means and resources, the most unlikely buildings and urban territories can be transformed and extended for entirely new uses.
Architects working with found spaces and situations articulate the complex processes, the negotiations with potential users, that precede what appear to be minimal interventions. It is often performative and cultural spaces that require particular attention to existing details and atmospheres, as well as the needs and expectations of the users. Several projects therefore focus upon the iterative design approach - the architect takes on the role of a listener and collaborator, negotiating new design and intervening for a moment in a longer term process in order to reconfigure a spatial context.
The projects featured in UNAUFGERÄUMT / AS FOUND - focus upon the continuity and creation of found situations as a sustainable form of practice. Redesign and refurbishment with found spaces therefore draw upon traces, memory and materials, juxtaposing the old and the new. Perfection and attention to detail gives way to the makeshift; the unfinished. Minimal resources often determine this design approach, yet such financial constraints can lead to unexpected solutions.
Architectural interventions in marginal or non-places within an urban context also become distinctive design statements in themselves: the architecture of intervention employs durable, economical materials often drawn from an industrial context. Entirely new structures are implanted upon and within existing architecture. Such strategies for reactivating a found situation can reshape our notions of useable - and useful - space. Resourceful designs and ventures into problematic or underused spaces of the city and its peripheries need not involve state of the art materials. It is often precariousness - a situation driven by limited budgets and indeterminate settings - which inspires the most innovative and dynamic architectural designs. The exhibition poses the question - in an age of relentless development and gentrification, where urban territories are cleaned up in order to conform with an aesthetic of social acceptability - can new architecture devise more subtle ways to interact with a given (an existing) context? can lo-tech and laissez-faire design present relevant alternatives to the driving force of urban renewal?
Featuring: Andrés Jaque Arquitectos (Madrid); Flores Y Prats Arquitectes (Barcelona); Fnp Architekten (Stuttgart); Haworth Tompkins (London); Hiepler Brunier & Atelier Le Balto (Berlin); Ifau Mit Jesko Fezer (Berlin); Index Architekten (Frankfurt/Main); Isa Stürm Urs Wolf Architekten(Zürich); Klaus Stattmann (Wien); Lederer Ragnarsdóttir Oei (Stuttgart); Mathias Müller, Daniel Niggli / Em2n (Zürich); Modulor.Beat (Münster); Osa – Office For Subversive Architecture mit Studio +44 (London); Przemo Lukasik / Medusa Group (Gliwice); Recetas Urbanas – Santiago Cirugeda Arquitectos (Sevilla); Spillmann Echsle Architekten (Zürich)
