La capacidad de de hacer atractivo esta participación desde una perspectiva de aprendizaje e experimentación con el ingrediente de ser autosuficiente económicamente y nutrirse de universidades, museos y fundaciones. “Workshopping” al igual que el Pabellón Nórdico es un lugar donde de una manera transdisciplinar, ingeniosa, activa, creativa se pueda participar y sobre todo aprender de este ingrediente cocinado a partir de las nuevas tendencias que marcara la arquitectura futura.
En 1871 el gran incendio en Chicago destruyó casi toda la ciudad y se levanto otra de nueva planta donde predominaban los materiales ignífugos por la psicosis que había de incendio. Pero antes en 1857 en la ciudad de New York se construye el primer ascensor por Elisa Otis. Eso iba a permitir el desarrollo de la construcción en altura. Las exposiciones entre 1851 en Londres y posteriormente en 1891 en Paris marcarían la introducción de las nuevas tecnologías del acero y la planta libre en europa.
Por ello aprovechando nuevamente este marco nos atrevemos a aventurar que de manera reiterada los estudios de arquitectura proponen un nuevo modelo de gestión basado en la conexión con los usuarios, los modelos de CityLab basados en equipos multidisciplinares de apoyo de proyectos de mejora de los entornos poblados y un nuevo modelo pedagógico y de aprendizaje que se traduce en la cooperación entre diversas disciplinas para llevar a la practica de manera efectiva y transparente los avances que se van produciendo.
Peachtree Center, John Portman & Associates
WORKSHOPPING: AN AMERICAN MODEL OF ARCHITECTURAL PRACTICE
FEATURES SEVEN AMERICAN ARCHITECTS AND COLLECTIVES
The High Museum of Art, along with its co-organizer 306090, Inc., will
present the exhibition Workshopping: An American Model of Architectural Practice at the U.S.
Workshopping presents projects that involve the architect as the initiator of a trans-disciplinary cooperative team focused on research, social engagement, and private initiative for public benefit. Rather than await a framework for solving a problem to present itself, workshoppers initiate that framework for themselves, identifying problems, assembling collaborators, marshaling resources, and ultimately seeing through the eventual solution. In a new economic and political context where activism and pragmatism are rewarded and submission to ideology and trust in hierarchy are not, Workshopping offers a new vision for an American model of architectural practice.
Workshopping occurs across an ideologically, geographically, and generationally diverse range of practices, from small offices engaged in tactical design projects in the city such as Hood Design and MOS; to large corporations organizing urban space networks at a large scale such as John Portman & Associates; from independently organized teams such as that formed by Guy Nordenson, Catherine Seavitt, ARO, LSU Coastal Sustainability Studio and Anthony Fontenot to explore the future of New York Harbor and the Mississippi Delta as public space; to alternative schools and NGOs that take on design and research projects in the public interest such as Archeworks, Terreform, and CityLab. Whether working through material and structural experimentation, community engagement, or development models, what brings these projects together is a common conviction that architectural practices can initiate positive change in the city.
To the theme of the 2010 Venice Biennale, People Meet in Architecture, Workshopping presents two responses: one is that the changing model of architectural practice in America brings a new engagement with public space in a country with a long history of both activism and antagonism towards the city, leading a renaissance in the spaces in which people meet. The second is that this new model is also leading to a revolution in architectural process, creating a new public space of ideas where people meet over architecture. This is the space that Workshopping promises, the charged atmosphere of solution-finding.
— Michael Rooks
— Jonathan D. Solomon
Palisade Bay and Building with Water, Guy Nordenson, Catherine Seavitt, Architecture Research Office, LSU Coastal Sustainability Studio and Anthony Fontenot
The Hill Greenprint, Hood Design Studio
Workshopping explores the role of the trans-disciplinary collaborations in architecture, spotlighting seven projects with a focus on architect-initiated research, social engagement and private initiative for public benefit. The architectural groups include:
• Archeworks design school (Chicago),
• cityLAB at UCLA/AUD (Los Angeles),
• Hood Design Studio (Oakland),
• Michael Meredith and Hilary Sample (MOS) (Cambridge and New Haven),
• Guy Nordenson, Catherine Seavitt and Architecture Research Office, with the LSU Coastal
Sustainability Studio and Anthony Fontenot (Princeton, New York and New Orleans),
• John Portman & Associates (Atlanta), and
• Terreform led by Michael Sorkin (New York).
Workshopping is co-curated by Michael Rooks, Wieland Family Curator of Modern and Contemporary
Art at the High Museum and Jonathan D. Solomon, a founding editor of 306090 Books and Acting Head of the Department of Architecture at the University of Hong Kong. The High Museum has partnered with 306090 to co-organize the exhibition, which will be designed by Atlanta artist Danielle Roney. The U.S. Pavilion is presented by the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs of the U.S. Department of State, which supports and manages the official United States participation at selected international exhibitions.
For the U.S. pavilion, Rooks and Solomon present the architect as a force for change. The exhibition
highlights projects in which a designer identifies an urban problem or condition and initiates research into its foundation and potential solutions without prompting by a client assignment or proposal request. The designers engage their design skills, analysis and insights to catalyze action for the public good.
“We wanted to use this platform to propose that architecture constitutes the shared space of ideas in
research, social engagement, and public-private initiatives—the foundational values of American
architectural practice,” said Rooks.
“Workshopping assembles a group of architects who are actively redefining the role of the discipline,
initiating collaborative projects which stake out exciting new territory. This includes experiments with
new materials and structures to produce spaces for public enjoyment, research into how cities and regions can ensure social and environmental sustainability, and examples of how public-private partnerships can generate vibrant communities,” said Solomon.
The projects featured in the exhibition constitute a uniquely U.S. model of architectural design and
economic development, defined by a reliance on public and private sector collaborations and often aided by government, foundation, and non-profit support. The exhibition highlights the evolving relationship between designer, builder, and client in cities across America, as it focuses on projects and collaborations rather than individual practices, and on process and impact rather than product.
Following is an overview of the architectural groups that will be included in the exhibition Workshopping: An American Model of Architectural Practice at the U.S. pavilion this fall:
Archeworks—an alternative design school in Chicago co-directed by Martin Felsen and Sarah Dunn,
and co-founded by Stanley Tigerman and Eva Maddox in 1993—will present Mobile Food Collective, a
project that imagines and realizes new associations among urban citizens and their food. Archeworks has a history of advocating, designing and building public open spaces and community infrastructure in close collaboration with neighborhood residents, community non-profits, cultural institutions, and
public/private partners. The school’s design projects, including the Mobile Food Collective, inspire
collaborative action to imagine and invent healthier and ecologically sustainable cities.
cityLAB at UCLA—led by director Dana Cuff and co-director Roger Sherman—will present four
projects that represent opportunistic architecture in the post-suburban field conditions that characterize the Southwestern United States, from affordable housing units in Los Angeles to an “urban farm” in a former Arizona strip mall. Since 2006, cityLAB has supported a series of projects concerned with contemporary urban issues, urban design, and the architecture of the city. Specifically, cityLAB is charged “with exploring the challenges facing the 21st century metropolis through research and design, expanding the possibilities for our cities to grow more livable, sustainable, and beautiful.”
Hood Design Studio—led by Walter Hood, a California-based urban landscape designer and artist, and professor at U.C. Berkeley—will examine the interplay of urban environments in two disparate cities, Berkeley, CA and Pittsburgh, PA. The study builds on Hood’s longtime focused research program with projects that consider the impact of greening on urban environments of different scales through public/private collaboration. Hood’s career as an academic has allowed him “to pick and choose projects,” a luxury he has exercised carefully and often polemically, working nearly exclusively in the public realm and often in the inner city. He proactively seeks projects for the chance to create spaces that serve newly evolving public uses and opportunities that help knit together diverse communities through new thinking about open public spaces.
MOS—a dynamic young firm led by architects Michael Meredith and Hilary Sample—will design a
social space formed by a canopy of inflatable reflective solids moored to bent steel benches for the
courtyard of the U.S. Pavilion. The instillation will provide a space for social interaction and dialogue.
MOS has completed a number of installation scale projects for public and private institutions including
the 2009 MoMA PS1 Warm-Up Pavilion, Afterparty, and a temporary puppet theater for conceptual artist Pierre Huyghe at the Carpenter Center at Harvard University. Sample and Meredith are recognized as leaders of a younger generation of architects for whom multidisciplinary research approaches are second nature. Their work combines materials research, innovative structural forms, and social engagement to create spaces for urban enjoyment.
Guy Nordenson, Catherine Seavitt and Architecture Research Office, with the LSU Costal Sustainability Studio and Anthony Fontenot will present two projects that advocate the development of
soft infrastructure alternatives to the conventional hard engineering of storm and flood mitigation. They
will look specifically at approaches in New York and New Orleans, building on their years of research
regarding these sites. The collaborative initiative of Nordenson, Seavitt and Yarinsky (ARO), winners of the 2007 Latrobe Prize, awarded by the Fellows of the American Institute of Architects, resulted in the acclaimed book On the Water: Palisades Bay, which presents their research on the New York Upper Bay in light of sea level rise. The project models storm surge and flooding to evaluate the effectiveness and opportunities of breakwaters, islands, wetlands, and other ‘soft’ storm barriers. Fontenot (Exposing New Orleans) and the LSU Coastal Sustainability Studio have analyzed the geographic and hydrological systems of the complex site of the Mississippi Delta, and propose a series of five new Mississippi River diversions to help direct the flow and deposit of sediment in order to make new land. John Portman & Associates—an Atlanta based firm—will present an early example of large-scale, initiative-based approach to architectural design, the Peachtree Center project. Peachtree Center is a sixteen block development that serves as a significant network of social spaces and an economic engine for the city of Atlanta. Originally built in 1960 and still evolving with new buildings and open spaces, Peachtree Center illustrates how a design-led business can create a positive and powerful effect on the stability and growth of a city. Portman represents a unique model of practice, wherein the architect directly engages contextual socioeconomic drivers and responds by purchasing and assembling land, financing and designing the buildings, infrastructure and public spaces that define the project. Terreform—led by Michael Sorkin—will present New York City (Steady) State, an ongoing research project that asks if New York City can become completely self-sufficient within its political boundaries. The study aims to produce not simply a dramatic new plan for the future of New York but to compile an inventory of best practices and morphologies that are relevant to cities around the world. Terreform undertakes self-initiated investigations into local and global issues and works on independent environmental planning initiatives on behalf of raised expectations and enlarged debate.
The exhibition will be accompanied by a catalogue, edited by Emily Abruzzo of 306090 Books. The 96
page illustrated catalogue, titled Workbook, will include images and texts by each of the seven participants, as well as critical essays by the exhibition’s curators. Princeton Architectural Press will
distribute the catalogue worldwide.
For more information on the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs of the U.S. Department of State, please visit exchanges.state.gov.
Participants
Terreform
New York City (Steady) State, Block prototype (tenement building block). The scale of the block allows attainment of a very high level of autonomy, closing the loop of production, distribution, and consumption for its population. Image courtesy Terreform.
Terreform is a non-profit organization founded in 2005 by Michael Sorkin in New York City dedicated to researching the forms and practices of sustainable architecture and urbanism. Terreform undertakes self-initiated investigations, both local and global, and serves as a resource for communities and organizations to support independent environmental and planning initiatives.
New York City (Steady) State, Terreform
John Portman & Associates
Atrium Interior. Image copyright, 1985, Jaime Ardiles-Arce.
John Portman & Associates’ Peachtree Center illustrates how a design-led business can effect positive and powerful change upon the stability and growth of a major city. John Portman & Associates represents a unique model of practice, wherein the architect directly engages socioeconomic drivers and responds by purchasing and assembling land, and financing and designing the buildings, infrastructure and public spaces that define the project.
Guy Nordenson, Catherine Seavitt, Architecture Research Office, LSU Coastal Sustainability Studio, Anthony Fontenot
Preliminary Palisade Bay master plan design strategies for an adaptive intervention of wetlands, windmills, reefs, oyster beds, island fields, extended piers, detached piers, and extracted slips, top. Inspired by the Venetian vaporetto network, proposed waterborne transportation routes through and across Palisade Bay. Copyright Palisade Bay Team: Guy Nordenson and Associates, Catherine Seavitt Studio, and Architecture Research Office.
The need for new approaches to protect U.S. communities from storm surge damage is becoming more critical as sea levels rise due to climate change. Experience shows that traditional, hard infrastructural solutions are unreliable, especially as storms are increasing in reach and intensity. Two regional examples have been chosen to make the case for a soft infrastructural solution that integrates ecological, urban, and landscape design with engineering to restore and improve nature, while protecting and enhancing culture.
Palisade Bay and Building with Water, Guy Nordenson, Catherine Seavitt, Architecture Research Office, LSU Coastal Sustainability Studio and Anthony Fontenot
MOS
Study for Instant Untitled, Venice, Italy, 2010.. Images courtesy MOS.
MOS began in 2003 around a large table, with its partners, Hilary Sample and Michael Meredith, working through a range of design experiments: a make-believe of architectural fantasies, problems, and thoughts about what we would be building if we could only get the work. Today, as they’ve grown, they continue to operate around one large table as a design office that works closely on each project through playful experimentation, serious research, and old-fashioned problem-solving. MOS engages architecture as an open system of interrelated issues ranging from architectural typology, digital methodologies, building performance, sustainability, structure, fabrication, materiality, tactility, and use, as well as larger networks of the social, cultural, and environmental. Their inclusive process allows MOS to operate at a multiplicity of scales.
Hood Design Studio
Community engages with Centre Ave. model of Hood Design Studio’s Greenprint; the Hill, Pittsburgh PA. Image courtesy Hood Design Studio.
Established in 1992 by Walter Hood, Hood Design Studio is committed to issues that address the re-construction of urban landscapes within towns and cities. Based in Berkeley, California, Hood Design defines the word “urban” as those landscapes where collective densities of inhabitants share physical, social, political and economic resources. The firm has developed a multi-dimensional approach, exploring the role of specific landscape typologies and topologies that together reinforce and re-make landscapes that are specific to place and people.
http://www.wjhooddesign.com/
The Hill Greenprint, Hood Design Studio
cityLAB
The form of cityLAB’s Duck-and-Cover produces the big box logo from a Google-Earth point of view, and a verdant garden at street-level. Image courtesy RSAUD.
cityLAB, a think tank at UCLA founded in 2006 by Dana Cuff and Roger Sherman, develops innovative design demonstrations that intervene in the ad hoc evolution of cities. Its mandate is to bring together design and research to forge experimental proposals, both theoretical and applied, for architecture in the emerging metropolis. cityLAB looks beyond master plans and individual buildings, for radical increments of urban change. The four pilot projects shown at the Venice Biennale illustrate the ways in which cityLAB “operates” to bring together people, sites, issues, and tactics to create design prototypes.
Archeworks
The Mobile Food Collective. Image courtesy Archeworks.
Archeworks is an alternative design school in Chicago directed by Martin Felsen and Sarah Dunn. Since its founding by Stanley Tigerman and Eva Maddox in 1993, Archeworks has advocated, designed, and built public, open spaces and community infrastructures in close collaboration with neighborhood residents, community non-profits, cultural institutions, and public/private partners. Archeworks’ design projects, including the Mobile Food Collective, inspire collaborative action toward healthier and ecologically sustainable cities.
Mobile Urban Farm Tool, Archeworks
306090
306090 is an independent non-profit arts stewardship organization. Since its founding in 2001, 306090 has worked to support architect professionals and students by organizing publications and events geared towards fostering a community of ideas and exchange within the field of design. Exploring contemporary issues in architecture “from every angle,” 306090 is dedicated to opening up architectural discourse by publishing design projects, critical essays, and historic inquiries across a range of places, people and practices. Comprised of new work and untested ideas from around the world, 306090’s books are an arena of open criticism, addressing contemporary conditions in political, technological and artistic disciplines on the basis of how architecture can address them.
306090’s most recent book, Sustain and Develop, includes a geographically and ideologically diverse range of over 50 individual contributors. The series’ fourteenth book, Making A Case, is currently in production and features radically new and varied ideas about the future of the American home.
Editors:
Emily Abruzzo
Jonathan D. Solomon
Advisory Board:
M. Christine Boyer
Mario Gandelsonas
David L. Hays
Mark Jarzombeck
Ralph Lerner
Paul Lewis
Michael Sorkin
Christian Unverzagt
Sarah Whiting
Recent publications:
Making a Case, 306090 14
Emily Abruzzo, Gerald Bodziak, Jonathan D. Solomon, editors—3/2011
Sustain and Develop, 306090 13
Joshua Bolchover, Jonathan D. Solomon, editors—3/2010
Dimension, 306090 12
Emily Abruzzo, Jonathan D. Solomon, editors—9/2008
Models, 306090 11
Emily Abruzzo, Eric Ellingsen, Jonathan D. Solomon, editors—9/2007
Credits
Workshopping: An American Model of Architectural Practice is the official U.S. representation at the 12thVenice Architecture Biennale. The exhibition has been organized by the High Museum of Art and 306090, and is presented by the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs of the U. S. Department of State.
Public Programming in New York City made possible by The Architectural League of New York.
Commissioners/Curators:
Michael Rooks, Wieland Family Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art, High Museum of Art
Jonathan D. Solomon, Acting Head, Department of Architecture, the University of Hong Kong, and co-editor of 306090
Assistant to the Commissioners:
English Cook
Exhibition Designer:
Danielle Roney
Assistant to the Exhibition Designer:
Jeff Conefry
Registrars:
Suzanne Quigley
Amy Simon
Publication:
Emily Abruzzo, Editor
Thumb, Design
Peggy Guggenheim Collection:
Philip Rylands, Director
Chiara Barbieri, Project Manager
Roger Zuccolo, Technology
Marco Rosin, Registration
Siro de Boni (Tratto/Ottart), Installation
Alexia Boro, Press
Matthew Attard, Intern
Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs, U.S. Department of State:
Marjorie Ames, Cultural Programs Division Chief
Alan Cross, Visual Programs Officer
Elizabeth Murphy, Cultural Affairs Outreach Officer
We are grateful for the assistance of the following individuals:
High Museum of Art: Corinne Anderson, Amy Arant, Danielle Avram, David Brenneman, Rachel Bohan, Goldwin Carlin, Susan Clark, Jody Cohen, Jennifer de Castro, Adam Fenton, Frances Francis, Angela Jaeger, Nicole Johnson, Ruth Richardson Kelly, Laurie Kind, James Landon, Jenee Marquis, Linda McNay, Kelly Morris, Toni Pentecouteau, Philip Verre, Woodie Wisebram
Architectural firms: Bill Bradfield, Dana Cuff Megan DuBois Aleksandra Djurasovic, Sarah Dunn, Alex Duval, Martin Felsen, Anthony Fontenot, Walter Hood, Chelsea Johnson, Michael Meredith, Guy Nordensen, Jack Portman, Jarel Portman, John Portman, Mason Pritchett Hilary Sample, Catherine Seavitt, Roger Sherman Michael Sorkin, Rebecca Veit, Jesse Vogler, Jessica Yang, Aaron Yarinsky
Department of State: David Grier, Jennifer Kareliusson, Donald Hunter, Pennie Ojeda, Catherine Stearns, Veronica Thompson
Friends: Nicholas Anderson, Mathieu Cameleon, Elizabeth Chapman, Robert Fitzpatrick, Carl and Sally Gable, Rosalie Genevro, Elisa Glazer, Sarah Goulet, Bill Menking, David Resnicow, Anne Rieselbach
Danielle Roney
Danielle Roney is an artist and consultant working in digital media and locational identity structures through exhibition installation and public intervention. After studying at the University of Georgia in Sculpture and Digital Media, she maintains studios in Los Angeles, Atlanta and Beijing. She has presented her Global Portals project to TEDGlobal 2005; highlighting theories in public realm interconnectivity through global network initiatives.
http://www.danielleroney.com
Jonathan D. Solomon
Jonathan D. Solomon is an American architect based in New York and Hong Kong. He is an editor of 306090 Books, a publication series featuring novel developments in architecture, landscape architecture and urbanism that published its 13th volume, Sustain and Develop in 2010.
Solomon has taught design at the City College of New York and, as a Banham Fellow, at the University at Buffalo. He is currently Acting Head of the Department of Architecture at the University of Hong Kong. Solomon is author of 13 Projects for the Sheridan Expressway, the 26th volume of Pamphlet Architecture. His design work includes Ooi Botos Gallery, a Hong Kong shophouse he renovated as a gallery for contemporary Chinese photography, which received an AIA Citation Award in 2009.
http://www.jonathandsolomon.com
Michael Rooks
Michael Rooks is Wieland Family Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art at the High Museum of Art, Atlanta. Art. Rooks has held curatorial positions at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago (MCA), The Contemporary Museum Honolulu, and at the Honolulu Academy of Arts.
Prior to his arrival at the High, he served as Chief Curator and Director of Exhibitions and Artist Relations at Haunch of Venison, a contemporary art gallery in New York. As curator at The Contemporary Museum, Rooks initiated Hawaii’s first international artist project series with major outdoor works by Taiwanese artist Michael Lin and British artist Paul Morrison. At the MCA, Rooks was responsible for a dozen exhibitions, including the retrospective “H. C. Westermann.” Rooks is the leading authority on Westermann and authored the artist’s catalogue raisonné. Also at the MCA, Rooks organized a posthumous survey focusing on Roy Lichtenstein’s late work; “War: What is it Good For,” the first museum response to the Iraq war; and “AA Bronson: Negative Thoughts,” Bronson’s first solo show in a museum. Rooks received both a Master of Arts degree in modern art history, theory and criticism and Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.
Multimedia
Terreform | Michael Sorkin from Danielle Roney on Vimeo.
cityLAB at UCLA: Playa Rosa from Harrison Higgins on Vimeo.
John Portman and Associates | Peachtree Center from Danielle Roney on Vimeo.
John Portman and Associates | Peachtree Center Data Display from jeffconefry on Vimeo.
Green Print from Walter Hood on Vimeo.
Center Street from Walter Hood on Vimeo.
Archeworks | Mobile Food Collective from Danielle Roney on Vimeo.
Programs
Backstage Pass: Venice Architecture Biennale
Commissioner of the Austrian Pavilion Eric O. Moss, Los Angeles Times architecture critic Christopher Hawthorne, in conversation with architects and Workshopping participants Alexis Rochas, Walter Hood, and Roger Sherman
Saturday, October 30, 2010
2:00 p.m. – 6:00 p.m.
MAK Center
835 North Kings Road, West Hollywood, CA
http://makcenter.org/
Changing Spaces: Workshopping New York
A Symposium with Exhibitors and Curators of Workshopping, the U.S. Pavilion at the 2010 Venice Architecture Biennale.
Jonathan D. Solomon; Michael Sorkin; Hilary Sample and Michael Meredith; and Guy Nordenson, Catherine Seavitt, Adam Yarinsky, Stephen Cassell, and Anthony Fontenot
Moderated by Eva Franch
One in a series of “workshops” organized by 306090 and the High Museum of Art as responses to Workshopping, Changing Spaces addresses the future of public space in a city with changing needs. Workshopping proposes that conversations between different models and scales of practice and different approaches to activism in the city can generate new and productive conversation. Changing Spaces will feature presentations and discussion by exhibitors and curators of the U.S. Pavilion.
Wednesday, October 20, 2010
7:00 p.m.
The Great Hall, The Cooper Union
7 East 7th Street, New York, NY
http://archleague.org/2010/10/workshopping-new-york-changing-spaces/
Project Eco-Delta: Design for Coastal Cities
This roundtable organized by Van Alen Institute and Environmental Defense Fund will focus on design responses to the ecological challenges faced by Coastal Cities. Leading experts in the fields of design, engineering, science and policy will present innovative strategies for the needs of fragile deltas and for the communities of people living in them.
Sunday, August 29th, 2010
11:00am
US Pavilion
Giardini di Biennale, Venice
Workshopping Inauguration
The inauguration of Workshopping took place at 11:30am on Friday, 24 August, 2010 and included short presentations by Philip Rylands, the Director of the Peggy Guggenheim Collection; Michael Shapiro, Director of the High Museum of Art; representatives of the US State Department; and the curators. A short discussion period with exhibitors followed throughout the pavilion.
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