shock control regression adaptation
raurouw / Arnd-Benedikt Willert-Klasing, Filippo Lodi, Jörg Petri, Kyriakos Chatziparaskevas

July 17 – August 20, 2010
opening Saturday July 17, 19:00

PROGRAM e.V – Invalidenstrasse 115

shock control regression adaptation is a laser-installation developed by Raurouw that transforms PROGRAM‘s exhibition space into a place of continuously changing atmospheric conditions. Mirrors are attached to various surfaces to interweave laser beams through the space. Sequenced into four distinct phases that corresponds with Theologian Yorick Spiegel‘s four phases of mourning, the lasers will alternate in configuration and densities to describe geometric interpretations of shock, control, regression and adaptation.

Activated by the movement of visitors in the space, the phase changes suggest and anticipate the shifts in social and spatial relations both between the visitors and the exhibition space and create certain affects.

Rau means wild, from the germanic word roh, or the quality of being wild or untamed. Rouw, with a germano-romanic-greek etymological background, means to mourn, but understood through Spiegel’s phasing, to mourn is to adapt.

As a combination of these two phenomena, Raurouw—a collective recently formed by four architects and graduates of the Städelschule in Frankfurt—encapsulates the relationships between the logic of adaptation, its expression within human behaviours, as well as the untamed wild forces of nature.

about Raurouw

Arnd-Benedikt Willert-Klasing
Born in Germany, AB Willert-Klasing received his Diplom Ingenieur (Architect) at the Brandenburgische Technische Hochschule Cottbus and holds a Postgraduate Master of Arts in AAD from the Städelschule, Academy of Fine Arts Frankfurt am Main. He gained experience working for Klein Dytham Architecture (Tokyo), Kleihues und Kleihues (Berlin), and UNStudio, van Berkel & Bos (Amsterdam). Raurouw offers a platform to develop and realize “Gedankenkonstrukte”. AB Willert-Klasing is currently design architect at Hadi Teherani AG (Hamburg).

Filippo Lodi
Born in Italy, Filippo holds a Master of Science in Architecture and Civil Engineering from the the University of Bologna and the University of Southampton, as well as a Postgraduate Master of Arts in AAD from the Städelschule, Academy of Fine Arts Frankfurt am Main. Filippo has also worked in the office of Juergen Mayer H. and Behnisch Architekten. Currently, alongside experimenting with Raurouw, Filippo is design architect at UNStudio (van Berkel & Bos), in Amsterdam.

Jörg Petri
Born in Germany, Jörg received his Diplom Ingenieur Architekt at the Beuth Hochschule Berlin. After gaining professional experience working for Richard Meier & Partners (New York), HPP Architects and Renzo Piano Building Workshop (Berlin) he completed his Postgraduate Master of Arts in AAD at the Städelschule, Academy of Fine Arts Frankfurt am Main. Raurouw enables him to test ideas and extend his scope of work. Jörg is design architect at UNStudio (van Berkel & Bos), in Amsterdam.

Kyriakos Chatziparaskevas
Born in Greece, he completed his studies at the architectural department of the Aristoteles University (Thessaloniki) and his postgraduate studies in advanced architectural design at the Städelschule, Hochschule für Bildende Künste in Frankfurt. He has worked as an architect at osd—office for structural design—in Frankfurt and with artist Tomas Saraceno in Frankfurt and in Stockholm. He has been academically active by conducting algorithmic design workshops at TU Kaiserslautern and TU Darmstadt.

Historically the architectural competition has been a testing ground for new ideas. It was understood as a space in which research and development, as well as the creation of critical architectural proposals, were possible. Today, competition architecture has increasingly become a service provision for the jury and a fulfillment of the technical requirements of the brief – in other words, simply what is needed to win the competition. Needs are generating ideas whereas ideas should be generating needs. The outcome is often predictable and conventional, stripping competitions of their significance as a critical tool.

Stimulus
- What needs to be changed, and how, in order to make competitions once again a tool for generating new ideas?
- What can be changed to improve the interaction between commissioner, client and end-user in the competition process?
- How do the mechanisms of competitions affect the built environment?
- What is the potential of architecture competitions?

THIS TIME YOU ASK THE QUESTIONS AND YOU GIVE THE ANSWERS

This competition attempts to instigate change by challenging the established in a critical but constructive manner. Join us by contributing the questions not yet asked!There are no fixed requirements regarding submitted material. Entries could be in the form of a text, manifesto, collage, illustration, SMS, image, fax, diagram, installation, paper architecture, runners up, brief, historical material, etc. The essential idea is to explore the potential of the architectural competition – it is up to you how to communicate it. Please address the principle question of how to return to a condition where competitions generate ideas rather than simply deliver solutions. The format and material should be in relation to the concept of your submission.

We challenge experienced architects to take part and share their perspective on the matter.

The entries will be judged anonymously.

Submitted material should reach us by the 1st of November 2010

submission@conditionsmagazine.com
CONDITIONS ANS, Fjordveien 3, 0139 Oslo, Norway
T: +47 97183747

Questions: info@conditionsmagazine.com
(answers to questions will be posted on this website)

1st prize: 2.500 euro
Winner & Runner-ups will:
- be published in a special competition issue of CONDITIONS
- take part in a Scandinavian exhibition
- take part in a dialogue how to implement your ideas

At Luca Francesconi’s studio with Lorenzo Bruni (left), and artist Olga Pavlenko (right), who helped me translate.

Michael Fliri, Come out and play with me, 2004-2008

Michael Fliri‘s new piece at Brown gallery. These are wooden masks that show his face transform into that of a cow. there is also a video of him changing in in and out of a pig and sheep costume.

Giovanni Kronenberg‘s studio

Luca Pozzi presented his work to us at docva’s archive.

We got to see Lupo Borgonovo’s first solo show of his young career at Fluxia. The sculpture we’re looking at is an inverse caste of a fountain by Carlo Scarpa. It’s called Ziggurat, and its made from a mixture of concrete and clay.

Luigi Presicce in his studio (top), and installed (below)

Matteo Rubbi.

The day was ended with, well, more art. It was Galleria Rafaella Cortese‘s 15th anniversary that night. We saw all the shows curator Antonio Grulli made for the occasion – some of them in private apartments. At the end we, found ourselves at Bar Basso, famous for their Negronis (a Milanese specialty), called the Negroni Sbollato – “sbollato” because once, back in the day, it was erroneously made with spumante instead of gin.

Marco standing in front of his piece.

Works also by Mona Hatoum (background), and Alicja Kwade (foreground).

Natascha Sadr Haghighian “can’t work this way.” Cyprien Gaillard, Simon Dybbroe Møller, Manfred Pernice, Oscar Tuazon and the e-flux video rental were also in the show. So Berlin.

Lorenzo and I went to see Elisabetta Benassi put the finishing touches on her show at Magazzino. The exhibition consists mainly of meticulously rendered water colors of the backside of important press photographs she found in archives around the world. In the past, press by-lines were typed or written on the back of photos. We know the photos through their description of the people depicted (Eva Braun, Gertrude Stein etc.), without seeing the image. We got there just before Adam Szymczyk and his group from the Swiss Institute (he opened a show the night before) invaded the little gallery.

You can walk for miles under these loggias in Bologna. Perfect for rainy weather.

We got to Bologna on a monday when museums are closed, but MAMBO director, Gianfranco Maraniello, gave us a peek at the collection exhibition, and the amazing Matej Krén installation he commissioned for the museum. He asked if I suffered from vertigo before I walked in.

Riccardo Crespi contemplates his gallery.

Roberto Ago shows us his “Universe” in his studio. Looks like it includes a line of coke.

At Paolo Parisi‘s studio. It was pouring rain outside.

View from the Palazzo Re Rebaudengo in Guarene d’Alba where the foundation of the same name hosts contemporary art exhibitions.

Andrea Nacciarriti, DRAWINGS # 000000001, 2009.

In front of the Battistero di S. Giovanni (Dante was baptized here), with curator Lorenzo Bruni.

At Michelangelo Consani’s installation at Ex3 in Florence. His work often reflects on social injustices, and this installation was based on Marshall Walter Taylor, an African-American cyclist who was not allowed to compete because he was Black.

I went for a quick visit to Paolo Masi’s studio, whose work is little known outside of Italy, but has been influential to a younger generation of artists like Paolo Parisi. He Paolo is a die-hard formal Modernist who experimented with the social powers of form making in the 60s and 70s. He showed me the various shapes he manipulated from cardboard – peeling back the top layer of paper, he scored the striated core with a fork.

At Maurizio Nannucci‘s house. If you’ve been to Berlin recently, you would have seen his neon work which read “All Art Has Been Contemporary” hung on the facade of the Altes Museum. Sadly, he said it was coming down in a week.

For about a week, I will be traveling throughout Italy to do studio visits with young artists, but 2 days ago, my host, curator Lorenzo Bruni, surprised me with a visit to Gianni Pettena‘s studio in Fiesole. Along with Superstudio and Archizoom, Pettena belongs to the Radical Architecture movement in Italy in the late 1960s, and 1970s. Meeting him answered many questions pretty instantaneously. Why spend hours researching in a library to find the links between the ‘Tendenza’ and the Radicals, or write essays pondering on the role of formal typology in early 70s avant-garde architecture theory when you can just ask?

Gianni Pettena, artist Olga Pavlenko, Carson Chan (yours truly), curator Lorenzo Bruni