The not ordinary academy

Abstract

The studio topic Glaneur/Glaneuse refers to the old ‘profession’ of the gleaners, those people picking up the leftovers of the agricultural harvest and making out of these food for their families. Architects are called to be some kind of gleaners, too.

In these past graduation months, the site (field) has been read and absorbed. The reading process has been guided by the french architecture theories of Clement, Lefebvre and Latour. Gilles Clement, in his ‘Third Landscape Manifesto’, describes how urbanisation creates residues within the city structure, such as vacant industrial areas. ‘THE (NOT) ORDINARY ACADEMY’ project challenges current urbanisation, questioning its environmental, economical and, mostly, social sustainability, attempting to give a new meaning (function) to these residues. For example, the demolition of the existing factory fabric indeed provides more space for specific urban and architectural developments. However, this specificity requires more time, money and energy than the adaptive reuse of these 'third landscapes’, with the risk that city requirements change during their construction. To then mention Bruno Latour’s theories, “...critical attention is shifted from architecture as a matter of fact to architecture as a matter of concern. As matter of fact, buildings can be subjected to rules and methods, and they can be treated as objects on their terms. As matters of concern, they enter into socially embedded networks, in which the consequences of architecture are of much more significance than the objects of architecture.”

In a general and local context where architecture doesn’t engage enough with ‘local’ political and social contexts, the need to re-consider the potential for architects to be influential and transformative agents of (existing) space grows pressing.3 Challenging ‘mainstream’ architecture means fighting norms that shut down other ways of thinking and operating. In fact, in this conflictual environment, many architects find themselves reduced to simple decorative participants improving the marketability of developers’ projects. This critique aims to re-evaluate the potential and influence of the architects in the definition of the urban and social space.

A similar theoretical approach has already been defined by some offices, projects and publications, which suggest other ways of doing architecture to move away from architecture's traditional focus on the look and making of buildings. They aim for a much more expansive field of opportunities in which architects and non- architects can operate and collaborate. These case studies have been presented along with this master thesis to show a transformative intent to make the status quo better: the means are varied, from activism to pedagogy, publications to networking, making stuff to making policy.4
Spatial production belongs to a much wider group of actors. In this ecosystem of actors and events, the intention of the research is to narrate the conditions in which an on-site architecture office can ACT as a device to challenge and/or inspire the ongoing developments, investigating in which way this alternative could provide more sustainable solutions with a different urban strategy. The purpose is to assemble a gradual re-appropriation and re-configuration of the leftover buildings whose functions won’t be overdetermined, allowing a continuous transition of activities that will increase the value and awareness of these spaces and their potential. More practical, the project is an attempt at how a fast deliverable architecture could be given back to the city with the least and mostly needed intervention possible, all done in the name of presenting a new way of looking at how buildings and space can be produced. How?

The non-overdetermination of the building’s function is based on a simple change of connotation of the existing artefacts (being there spaces, structures or objects) allowing different conditions to happen while this transition is happening, also after the architect leaves the site.
As written in the studio description, “architecture grows out of existing conditions and resources.” In fact, the design assignment – as will be presented in the common urban plan – aims to discover and develop the scenario between a vacant industrial site – in its built and unbuilt matter – and the possible opportunities that its vacant spaces can offer, as evidence of the possible cohabitation of public and private domains. In this way, the project detaches from the ordinary academic architectural ‘utopia’ and looks forward to a more realistic approach with given realistic social, political and architectural conditions, defining the architect’s role not anymore as consequential, but rather influential.
Evoking “mixed feelings” (thanks Paul) is a way to express the complexity of this process. As Enrique Walker writes in the foreword chapter of ‘Without Content’ by Kersten Geers, (referring to architects) “...they stage a conversation, and situate their work within it. They forge alliances. They establish sources. They delineate sensibilities. They define positions. They declare programmes.” And, as shown this afternoon, they curate.