PECHA-KUCHA Nr.1

inspiration - MIHALY CSIKSZENTMIHALYI - "Flow theory"

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi is chiefly renowned as the architect of the notion of flow in creativity; people enter a flow state when they are fully absorbed in activity during which they lose their sense of time and have feelings of great satisfaction. Mr. Csikszentmihalyi describes flow as "being completely involved in an activity for its own sake. The ego falls away. Time flies. Every action, movement, and thought follows inevitably from the previous one, like playing jazz. Your whole being is involved, and you're using your skills to the utmost."

inspiration - ARCHIGRAM

Instant City (by Archigram architectural group) is a mobile technological event that drifts into underdeveloped, drab towns via air (balloons) with provisional structures (performance spaces) in tow. The effect is a deliberate overstimulation to produce mass culture, with an embrace of advertising aesthetics. The whole endeavor is intended to eventually move on leaving behind advanced technology hook-ups.

Another project - The Walking City 

 (Ron Herron, 1964) is constituted by intelligent buildings or robots that are in the form of giant, self contained living pods that could roam the cities. The form derived from a combination of insect and machine and was a literal interpretation of Corbusier's aphorism of a house as a machine for living in. The pods were independent, yet parasitic as they could 'plug in' to way stations to exchange occupants or replenish resources. The citizen is therefore a serviced nomad not totally dissimilar from today's executive cars. The context was perceived as a future ruined world in the aftermath of a nuclear war.

inspiration - YONA FRIEDMAN "L’architecture mobile"

In 1958, Yona Friedman  published his first manifesto : "Mobile architecture" which was coined in the sense of "mobility of living." The mobility in question is not the mobility of the building, but the mobility of the user, who is given a new freedom. "The building is mobile in so much as any sort of use whatsoever by the user or a group must be possible and realisable", Friedman explained. Mobile architecture is thus the "dwelling decided on by the occupant". 

Buildings in mobile city should be:

1. touch the ground over a minimum area

2. be capable of being dismantled and moved

3. and be alterable as required by the individual occupant.

            

Yona Friedman, Spatial City, 1960

The Spatial city

Spatial structure should be raised up on piles (vertical means of transport - lifts, staircases) and fitted inside some of the 'voids", areas where building is not possible or permitted (expanses of water, marshland), or areas that have already been built upon (an existing city). It may also be used above farmland, and introduce a kind of merger between countryside and city.

CULTURAL 'GAP'

The issue of tis project is the perception of the space between recent architecture and old building. 

Analysed object – Chelsea building. Chelsea College was a polemical college founded in London in 1609. This establishment was intended to centralize controversial writing against Catholicism. In the 1650s the College became a prison; and in the Second Anglo-Dutch War of the mid-1660s it housed prisoners of war. After proposals including an observatory, the site was devoted to Chelsea Hospital. In 1895 building was established as South-Western Polytechnic, in 1908 as Chelsea College of Art and in 1989 as College of Art and Design.

The idea is to emphasize the recent ‘gaps‘ which are main connections between cultures, generations and history. The  aim of the gap separation is to feel differences between 17th century space and recent. The mirror allow us to see dimensional view and brings us closer to old culture. 

model.
brick - mirror - wall

BETWEEN CULTURES

WEDNESDAY NIGHT INSPIRATION, DALSTON.

Great raft for local communication, for escape from everyday life. Free flow.. 

RESEARCHING SIDES.

IDEA - CULTURAL BRIDGE

I made a sketch movie to express my idea about the future project, which might be a "cultural bridge" between two london sides, south and north. I took random place (Vauxhall riversides) and random architectural shapes for that. As I know, some people who live here assert that one part is better than another and i found lots of discussions about that. I would like to find out about that more, as I am the part of London life for at least one year. 

REFERENCES. COLLAGE

BOOK - The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami (1995)

MOVIE - Man with a Movie Camera by Dziga Vertov (1929)

BUILDING - KultFlux - an art platform on the river Neris , Vilnius (2008)

PAINTING - Noah's Ark by Edward Hicks (1780 - 1849)

INSTALLATION - JR - WOMEN ARE HEROES




The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle QUOTATION 

No matter how far I went, though, there was no bottom. My descent seemed to take forever. I reminded myself of the sound of the pebble hitting bottom. The well did have a bottom! Working my way down this damned ladder was what took so much time. When I had counted twenty rungs, a wave of terror overtook me. It came suddenly, like an electric shock, and froze me in place. My muscles turned to stone. Every pore of my body gushed sweat, and my legs began to tremble. There was no way this well could be so deep. This was the middle of Tokyo. It was right behind the house I lived in. I held my breath and listened, but I couldn’t hear a thing. The pounding of my own heart reverberated in my ears with such force I couldn’t even hear the cicadas screaming up above. I took a deep breath. Here I was on the twentieth rung, unable either to proceed farther down or to climb back up. The air in the well was chilling and smelled of the earth. It was a separate world down here, one cut off from the surface, where the sun shone so un-stingingly. I looked up to the mouth of the well above me, tiny now. The well’s circular opening was cut exactly in half by the half of the wooden cover I had left in place.

“Just a little farther down, I told myself. Just a little more. Don’t worry, there is a bottom. And at the twenty-third rung, I reached it. My foot came in contact with the earth in the bottom of the well. From below, it looked like a half-moon floating in the night sky. “A half-moon will last for several days,” Malta Kano had said. She had predicted it on the telephone. Terrific. And when the thought crossed my mind, I felt some strength leave my body. My muscles relaxed, and the solid block of breath inside me released and came out. Squeezing out one last spurt of strength, I started down the ladder again.

“I wanted to shout for someone. I wanted to scream that I was shut up inside here. That I was hungry. That the air was going bad. I felt as if I had reverted to being a helpless little child. I had run away on a whim and would never be able to find my home again. I had forgotten the way. It was a dream I had had any number of times. It was the nightmare of my youth-going astray, losing the way home. I had forgotten all about those nightmares years ago. But now, in the bottom of this deep well, they came to life again with terrible vividness. Time moved backward in the dark, to be swallowed by a different kind of time.”

JR - 'WOMAN ARE HEROES' part of 28 Millimètres project

"JR embarked on a long international trip in 2008 for his exhibition “Women Are Heroes,” a project underlining the dignity of women who are the target of conflict. In 2010, the film Women Are Heroes was presented at the Cannes Film Festival and received a long standing ovation."

TRAILER " WOMEN ARE HEROES" from SOCIAL ANIMALS on Vimeo.

cultural 'ship'

The idea of the project is a cultural ‘ship’ or ‘bridge’ between cities, countries and maybe even continents.  The main issue is a physical and psychological connection between a place and an object: how a place is important for an object and how an object is important for a place. What is going on with a place then a piece of architecture just disappears and how does it impact people? This project should involve different places (might be all around the world, so the object might ‘move’ from one place to another). One possible way is ‘travelling’ by water, which is one of the first source of communication between different cultures. 

This project could include educational function, free art presentation, art in unexpected places and etc. (it might be a moving show, exhibition place, lecture area, workshop space). Designed object or piece of architecture should be connection between different places and people.