UC Innovation Centre, Anacleto Angelini, 2014, San Joaqin Campus, Pontifical Catholic University of Chile. Photo: Felipe Diaz
In a recent conversation with SLEEK’s art editor, the artist Ahmet Ögut remarked that architects are becoming the new activists. “They’re on the ground, arguing with the government, changing spaces,” he said. This view might seem surprising as contemporary architecture has once again become dominated by vulgar displays of wealth such as London’s One Hyde Park, where a five-bedroom apartment costs a cool £75 million. Moreover, in terms of building, the profession has become the domain of ‘starchitects’ – a term coined by the Wall Street Journal in 2014 referring to big designers such as Zaha Hadid, Rem Koolhas and Frank Gehry, whose names are brands in themselves.
Under this economic and aesthetic regime, style has commonly taken precedence over substance, and the needs of communities have been frequently ignored. However, a new breed of architects are shaking up the relationship between money, people and buildings. From Elemental’s revolutionary housing scheme for squatters in Chile to Turner Prize-winning group Assemble’s regeneration schemes in the UK’s towns and cities, the profession is emerging as catalyst for change.
“Architects need to adjust to what society is discussing” – Aravena
As the collectives Elemental and Assemble take home prestigious awards, and the next Venice Architecture Biennale will be all about sustainability, affordability and new architectural modes, we speak to the collectives driving this new architectural vision.
Naturally, some people aren’t convinced by the efficacy of these ideas. Writing in The Architect’s Newspaper after Assemble triumphed at the Turner Prize last December, Fred Scharmen wrote, “Awarding an art prize for nice adaptive reuse of half-demolished public housing is like giving an award for the prettiest band-aid on a sucking chest wound.” This seems disingenuous. Independent groups like Assemble can be held no more responsible for the structural problems that have created this “sucking chest wound” than the inhabitants of the buildings they refurbish. They also arguably draw attention to the need for political solutions in the UK’s housing crisis. And in doing so they raise a more profound question about the nature of ownership and public space itself: Who should have the right to shape the places we live in?
In the run-up to the 2016 Venice Architecture Bienniale curated by Elemental, SLEEK speaks to the South American bureau’s director Alejandro Aravena, as well as Assemble, Collective Disaster and Something Fantastic about their practice, their politics and the demise of the starchitect.
Assemble
The idea behind Assemble’s Turner prize winning project began as a callout for ideas from a community scheme revitalising Granby Four Streets, a residential area of semi-dilapidated social housing made up of turn-of-the-20th-century redbrick vernacular dwellings in Toxteth, Liverpool. Following riots in 1981, the council acquired many of the houses in the area for redevelopment, causing hundreds of people to leave, and numerous properties to fall into disrepair.
“We’re trying to address the disconnection between people, buildings and infrastructure” – Assemble
However, over the last ten years, local residents have fought demolition plans and formed a Community Land Trust (CLT) to fix their neighbourhood. Assemble joined forces with the CLT to refurbish ten homes and establish the Granby Workshop, a social enterprise selling domestic items made from bits of demolished buildings. Subsequently, the London-based design group won the Turner gong at the Tate in December last year – becoming the first ‘non-artists’ to do so – and this February Granby CLT was awarded arts council funding for a winter garden. According to group member Giles Smith, part of the group’s success is due to their nonconformist identity. “Going into a situation calling yourself an architect puts up a barrier between you and the community you’re working with,” says Smith. “We try to get around this by saying we’re not architects, and by establishing real relationships with people.”
It’s a novel approach, and one that seems to be working. Since they formed in 2010 they’ve worked on several socially-oriented programmes. These include East London horticultural scheme Limborough Gardens, a child-led research project into play in Bristol’s Leigh Woods, and a temporary School of Narrative Dance at the MAXXI gallery in Rome. Other high profile jobs include a £1.8 million commission to create a gallery for Goldsmiths university in an old Victorian South London bath house, and The Cineroleum, a petrol station on Clerkenwell Road that they converted into an open cinema.
Paloma Strelitz believes that what unites her group is their passion for renovating decaying, disused or ignored urban spaces. “The city can be very disempowering,” she says. “So what we’re trying to address is the disconnection between people, buildings and infrastructure. The built environment is man-made and malleable, so we explores opportunities for people to shape their surroundings.” Assemble’s projects are often public, participatory, and in some cases temporary. Like the pop-up shop and the use of shipping containers as substitutes for commercial and residential developments, their work is undoubtedly symptomatic of the UK austerity programme. However, in this age of decreased public spending, the beauty of their work lies in their ability to help communities maximise their resources and regenerate neglected districts. The next few years will show if they can also take on planning restrictions protecting approximately 1 million long-term empty houses in England and Wales. But for the time being, their projects will continue to empower the public, and that can only be a good thing.
Elemental
Upending traditional architectural hierarchies and putting people at centre of design are the cornerstones of Chilean agency Elemental’s vision. “We’re a ‘do tank’, not a think tank,” says director Alejandro Aravena, who received a Pritzker prize for architecture in January’s annual awards. “And we use the city as a platform for creating equality by identifying problems in transportation, housing and elsewhere where we think we can improve people’s lives.”
Founded in 2000 with the objective of improving social housing in Chile, Elemental consists of Aravena, Gonzalo Arteaga, Juan Cerda, Victor Oddó and Diego Torres. For one of their initial projects, they constructed social housing for squatter families in the town of Iquique. Realising that after purchasing the land, they only had enough cash to fit the dwelling with the bare essentials, they enlisted the DIY know-how of the building’s residents to finish the rest. They have since replicated this approach, allowing for customisable, flexible units that can be adapted to each family’s budget and needs. Elemental’s work is characterised by a participatory design process, whereby initial plans are discussed with the local community, and modified according to their input. This method was used to great effect in Constitución, a city devastated by an earthquake in 2010, where the bureau publically displayed their plans to find out what the locals thought. “We tackle the issues that are relevant to our proposals, and we believe that identifying the questions, and thus the problems, is more important than going straight to the answers,” says Aravena. “And by engaging with the different demands of our stakeholders, who include politicians, locals, environmental advisors and others, we maintain our connection with society.”
Doing this, the Santiago-based architects are also working against their industry’s perceived wisdom, which very rarely values public consultations, and where sustainability is hardly ever considered a top priority. “One of the biggest mistakes architecture makes is that we’re expecting society to be interested in the specific problems of architecture,” says Aravena. “Instead, architects need to adjust to what society is discussing. We should just provide the forms that can translate social problems into solutions.”
Later this year, Aravena will curate the Venice Architecture Bienniale, where Elemental’s ideas about modern living will doubtlessly influence the event’s direction. But with such a thoroughly radical approach to his profession, how does he view his own role as an architect? “Cities consist of frictions and barriers,” continues Aravena, “but they also harbour the solutions to those obstacles, too, and that’s where architects have a very important job, because they have the potential to turn those conflicting forces into material forms, and solve some of the complex problems that different societies face. All it takes is the creativity to translate strategic opportunities into proposals.”
Taken from SLEEK 49 where you can read the full coverage – buy here