Episode 32

The Paper Architects |

The Princeton Architectural Press published In 2003 the book Brodsky & Utkin: The Complete Works and catch up our attention over the group known as the Paper Architects.

In 1957 Kruschev declared that the socialist realist architecture was an “over-decorated” style and abolished the academy of architecture. In that years, from the 60s to the 80s, modern technology and especially prefabrication, was developed worldwide to satisfy the urgence of mass housing, but especially in Russia it was exploited to produce an aesthetic communist discourse to promote the idea that of any kind of decoration and creative ideas were considered unnecessary and immoral. The group Paper Architects was created in Moscow to protest against all this ideas in a moment where the architectural practice was corrupted by the tedious standardized production, and a barren ideological legacy in the late 1980s.

We can read in the essay Alternative Identities: Conceptual Transformations in Soviet and Post-Soviet Architecture by Anna Sokolina:

While the generation of the 1960s used architecture to improve reality, the paper architects of the first decade after perestroika withdrew into the beautiful, magic world of paper architecture, opposing official Soviet architecture through their neo-constructivist designs, deconstructive or historicist replicas, and postmodern contextualization.

The most representative works of this period was the designs made by Alexander Brodsky and Ilya Utkin among others, so here are some of their art-works-designs-architecture-schemes.

It reminds us of Leebeus Woods, another great architect that has lots of art-works and always related with his politically vision and provocative ideas of a possible reality. 

Beautiful Collage paintings of Landscapes By Leslie Shows.

These atmospheric constructed landscapes show us the way into the painter’s imagination. Architecture can not exist without Landscape and looking at these paintings one can start to see landscapes in a different perspective that can lead to new innovative ideas in architecture. 

A collection of inspiring books for Architecture.

Also El croquis magazines are highly recommended as they offer a reliable source of information and often a thorough documentation of projects by the featured architect.

FLOATING LIBRARY ISTANBUL | Alicia Bourla | Unit 21 |  2011

Yet Another Bartlett Project from Unit 21.

Istanbul, an ‘archipelago of neighbourhoods’ is a city within which the East and West straddle amongst each other, ‘like memories plucked from dreams’. I propose a building in the water, where the density of the city disappears, within the marriage of the civilizations inhabiting the two banks of the strait. Concentrating on the Islamic tradi- tion and culture, I designed a floating library for women and children, enabling all neighborhoods to participate in the cultural event. In modern Istanbul the Library celebrates the need of women for social encounter outside of the household. This proposal investigates daylight screening as an intelligent dialogue between historic and contemporary architectures, and technologies. The journey though the Library, exploring the different shadows unifying or isolating spaces, hinges on the national cultural setting of Istanbul.

Opium | Yaojen Chuang

A project which explores the ephemeral, poly-sensorial experiences of the body, based on Cocteau’s 1952 book “Opium”. It posits a series of environments that correspond and capture a sense of sacredness and weightlessness, of the senses and of well-being. But also of sexuality and corporeality: a phenomenological inspection into personal, subjective, intellectual and cognitive processes.

Check out Yaojen’s website:
http://www.yaojenchuang.com/projects_opium.html

There is no place like these homes. Danish designers Ben & Sebastian show through vivid 3D renderings, real-life building sculptures and life-sized architectural models that there is a way to take our imagination – the architecture we dream of – and make it come alive.

City of the (Re)Oriented is one of their most incredible works, like something straight out of a William Gibson vision of a futuristic three-dimensional cityscape, an MC Escher piece for postmodern times or perhaps the urban pathways of our very minds. So what does it mean”The ‘map’ has long been useless in a city whose streets are continually reshaped by their walkers, vendors, sponsors, hobby street artists and salvation-sellers. In this anthill of possibilities only the most elastic orientation software can direct the city’s inhabitant through its myriad of shifting, tangled streets.”

Royal Re-Formation

CHROMAtex.me
site specific installation by SOFTlab

CHROMAtex.me was installed at the bridgegallery in the Lower East Side of New York City from September 2010 through October 2010. It was constructed of 4,416 panels of high gloss photo paper. Each panel is a specific color and geometry to fit its unique placement within the larger form. The entire structure was held together with 17,000 standard office supply binder clips.