![\"1433261077404\"](\"https:\/\/www.sleek-mag.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/06\/1433261077404.jpg\")
TOKI-Massenwohnanlage, Istanbul, 2014, copyright Atelier d\u2019Architecture Autog\u00e9r\u00e9e<\/p>\n TOKI-Massenwohnanlage, Istanbul, 2014, copyright Atelier d\u2019Architecture Autog\u00e9r\u00e9e<\/p>\n
On the 11\u00a0June, the first Vienna Biennale, subtitled “Ideas for Change”, opened its doors in the Austrian capital. A co-production between the Museum of Applied Arts (MAK), with the architecture centre, New York’s MoMA the Kunsthalle and the University of Applied Arts, the Biennale unites art, architecture and design to investigate the “New Modernism” \u00a0– the changes that digitalisation has brought on every day life. How can these disciplines be united to visualize the new digital, and how can a Biennale contribute to this? In exhibitions addressing human labour and the \u2018transparent citizen\u2019, emphasis lay on showing future scenarios for urban development. The exhibition “2051: Smart Life in the City” offered a vision for Vienna in that year, while “Uneven Growth”, curated by MoMA architecture curator Pedro Gadanho united visions for six of the world’s mega-cities, uniting local designers, architects and artists with their international counterparts. Sleek caught up with the curator to talk Seventies utopianism versus Noughties realism, and why Hong Kong is more advanced than New York.<\/p>\n
![\"1433261077400\"](\"https:\/\/www.sleek-mag.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/06\/1433261077400.jpg\")
MAP Office und Network Architecture Lab, Hong Kong Is Land, 2014, Double page spread from the New City Reader Hong Kong, copyright Network Architecture Lab<\/p>\n
Sleek: How did you choose the six participating cities (Mumbai, Hong Kong, Istanbul, New York, Lagos and Rio de Janeiro?<\/strong> \nPedro Gadanho<\/strong> I wanted to represent different parts of the world, stages of development, and states of inequality. In Hong Kong, the question of density was very pertinent. Rio was interesting because it was changing a lot due to the football world cup and the 2016 Olympics, for instance. I started with the cities, then I identified groups within the cities which had already developed research into the urban conditions. We wanted to represent visions that would apply to a longer-term polemical debate. Which project best embodies the approach taken by the Biennale – how technology can make it possible for people to change their own environment?<\/strong> \nThe Istanbul case. It is rooted in a long research process by AAA (Atelier des Architects Autog\u00e9r\u00e9e), and by connecting with a younger group, Superpool, from Istanbul, they had this vision of how social media could help people construct a hyper-local economy. I think this vision could become very interesting very soon. It’s about thinking beyond the tower blocks of surburbia – turning wasteland into areas for gardening, repurposing buildings for neighbourhood functions – taking a community that is nothing but housing at the moment and giving them the power to change this. Of course there is an element of design, but mostly it\u2019s about empowerment. TOKI-Massenwohnanlage, Istanbul, 2014, copyright Atelier d\u2019Architecture Autog\u00e9r\u00e9e On the 11\u00a0June, the first Vienna Biennale, subtitled “Ideas for Change”, opened its doors in the Austrian capital. A co-production between the Museum of Applied Arts (MAK), with the architecture centre, New York’s MoMA the Kunsthalle and the University of Applied Arts, the Biennale unites art, architecture and…<\/p>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":22216,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_kad_post_transparent":"","_kad_post_title":"","_kad_post_layout":"","_kad_post_sidebar_id":"","_kad_post_content_style":"","_kad_post_vertical_padding":"","_kad_post_feature":"","_kad_post_feature_position":"","_kad_post_header":false,"_kad_post_footer":false,"_kad_post_classname":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[81],"tags":[1071,2837,514,2838,2839,2840],"class_list":["post-22215","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-fashion","tag-architecture","tag-futuristic-cities","tag-jeni-fulton","tag-new-modernism","tag-pedro-gadanho","tag-vienna-biennale"],"acf":{"main_category":null,"legacy":"1","exclude_from_ads":null,"hero_title":null,"subtitle":null,"hero":null,"teasers":null,"facebook_image":null,"related_articles":null,"next_article":null,"sleek_card_focus":null,"content":null},"yoast_head":"\n
\nAnd did this debate happen?<\/strong> \nThe exhibition received very reactionary responses from the US (it was originally shown in the MoMA), as they wanted pragmatic answers, and my project was about fictions and imagined scenarios. It builds on the work from Archigram in the sixties, imagining scenarios in unbuilt cities. I don’t think there are solutions to the problems of these cities \u2013 no one has answers, not architects, not architects or designers. When people say they have solutions, mostly, they’re just political attempts to conquer the electorate.
\nHow did the exhibition come about?<\/strong> \nThe initial idea for the exhibition was “How do you use the digital revolution, and new technologies to empower people?”. Part of the project involves crowd-sourcing different ideas about future cities. The online submissions<\/a> are about bottom-up approaches, practical solutions to problems, an approach to tactical urbanism that comes from Michel de Certeau\u00a0and his idea of appropriation of public space by those who don’t have power.
\nThe exhibition itself is more about top-down planning, and how you can combine this with crowd-sourcing to achieve a softer combination of the two strands. Over the 20th century we’ve become used to top-down planning. Now you see movements that counteract it, sometimes subversively, sometimes by because they respond to very immediate needs. Maybe the role of the architect and designer has to change, so they don’t just wait for a commission from the one percent, and they have to activate projects that address the needs of the 99%, because those needs will be pressing. So either the profession adapts to these changed circumstances, or it will die – which has been a discussion in the architecture world for a few years now. I think there is a split in the profession where members align themselves increasingly with artists, like Map Office, to reflect critically on society, and the much larger mainstream sector which is simply doing something which is no longer critical.<\/p>\n![\"1433261077409\"](\"https:\/\/www.sleek-mag.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/06\/1433261077409.jpg\")
NL\u00c9 und Zoohaus\/Inteligencias Colectivas, Lagos Tomorrow, 2014, Rendering von Wasserwegen, copyright NL\u00c9 und Zoohaus\/Inteligencias Colectivas<\/p>\n
\nWas there a discernible\u00a0<\/strong>direction in which cities are headed?<\/strong> \nHong Kong is more futuristic than any other city: by the end of the investigation I thought that New York looked like a village compared to Hong Kong. You can see that in Hong Kong movies, which are much more violent and urban. Although New York has this mythological urban landscape, when you look at the culture produced in Hong Kong, it’s much faster, and much more intense.. You could almost see a sequence from the most futuristic city, Hong Kong, which also produces the most dystopian response to the city that is further behind, Lagos. This elicited a completely different response from the designers and artists because the reality is so radically different. Map Office’s Hong Kong project is comprised of seven artificial islands, it builds on the current Chinese practice of creating artificial islands. There is an island for each type of citizen. There is an island for garbage collectors, for old people, poor fisherman, and so on. These projects raise awareness for the social segregation of the city. It’s taking things to a dystopian extreme.
\nAnd the inverse: utopianism?<\/strong> \nLagos is utopian – it believes that it could be a city in which problems have been solved. I see the work of Map Office in the tradition of Superstudio’s, “The 12 Ideal Cities”, in which they created cities that were exaggerations of trends in a contemporary city, and these were completely dystopian. In all of the projects, Seventies utopian thinking reappears. I think this is interesting, because it means that those utopias were never fully realised, so their potential is still intact. You can go back, and read those proposals as having other, future possibilities. Maybe we now have the technology to realise some of Archigram’s sixties proposals.
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\nText von Jeni Fulton<\/a><\/strong> \nMore: Derek Jarman\u2019s Super 8s<\/a><\/strong> \nMore: Berlin\u2019s Radical 1960s Architecture<\/a> Re-examined<\/strong><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"