#Faster than china by FREAKS freearchitects.

Here is a (very) short film made by a young interesting office FREAKS freearchitects (Paris, FR), this movie as been made during august 2007 maybe we can qualified it as a "pre-crisis" work. so far even if the message of the video is pretty tough, the pictures are kind of enthusiastic!!

Enjoy!

# (UN)WALL /// Exodus or the Voluntary Prisoners of Architecture

Exodus or the Voluntary Prisoners of Architecture is the final AA 1972 thesis of Rem Koolhaas, Madelon Vreisendorp, Elia Zenghelis, and Zoe Zenghelis. It elaborates a narrative of a walled city within London similarly to the Berlin situation at the time. This city, like West Berlin, is considered as a shelter that people access and thus become voluntary prisoners of architecture. The condition of the "liberty" here is paradoxically the imprisonment.

Here is the text supplied by the MOMA which owns the original drawings:
These drawings come from a series of eighteen drawings, watercolors, and collages called Exodus, or the Voluntary Prisoners of Architecture. The dense pictographic storyboard reflects Koolhaas's earlier stints as journalist and screenwriter and is intended to be read simultaneously as a factual and a fictional scenario for the contemporary metropolis.

The title of the project alludes to Cold War West Berlin, a restricted enclave encircled by a forbidding wall—in effect, a prison on the scale of a metropolis, and one in which people sought refuge voluntarily. Exodus proposes a walled city in a long strip, with tall barriers that cut through London's urban fabric—an intervention designed to create a new urban culture invigorated by architectural innovation and political subversion. Here Koolhaas and his collaborators use collage to create vivid scenes of life within these visionary urban confines.

The Museum of Modern Art

# (UN)WALL /// Plug-in Berlin by Etienne Boulanger

Our good friend Alexandre Pachiaudi is currently releasing on his blog Archiact, an excellent series of post about French artist Etienne Boulanger's work. Several of his projects could be appropriate for this (UN)WALL theme but the "performance" Plug-in Berlin drew my attention even more than the others. Between 2001 and 2003, he reproduced what Georges Orwell did in 1929 and described in his Down and Out in Paris and London, which is a voluntary choice for a temporary precarious life. During those two years, Etienne Boulanger built several shelters "into" walls providing thus a perfect camouflage of his presence:

"The time of occupation of each space is undetermined and varies depending on unpredictable external events (degradation, police, neighborhood). After having been inhabited, each shelter is abandoned as such on site. In two years, I used 17 interstices as shelters and 21 disused spaces as logistic support. This fragmentation of my environment generates a continuous moving through the city, close from nomadism. This experience of voluntary precarious life goes beyond the conventional field of art and the simple production of objects. The two years "performance" introduces the work in a political, urbanistic and social context which is necessary to a work that is directly inspired by contemporary society."

original text:
"Le temps d’occupation de chaque espace est indéterminé et varie en fonction d’évènements extérieurs imprévisibles (dégradations, police, voisinage). Après avoir été habitée, chaque construction est abandonnée et laissée sur place en l’état. En deux ans, 17 interstices me servirent d’abris et 21 espaces désaffectés, de support logistique. Cette fragmentation de mon environnement quotidien génère un déplacement constant à travers la ville, proche du nomadisme. Cette expérience de précarisation volontaire de mes conditions de vie dépassele champ conventionnel de l’art et la simple production d’objets. La “performance” de deux ans place l’oeuvre dans un contexte politique, urbanistique et social nécessaire à un travail ancré dans notre société contemporaine."

# (UN)WALL /// Dante Ferreri in La Periferia Domestica

La Periferia Domestica who is still following our theme of (UN)WALL just posted this amazing work of Dante Ferreri for Venice's Biennale 2007.

# (UN)WALL /// Dead Memory by Marc-Antoine Mathieu

Marc-Antoine Mathieu is in my opinion the most interesting French graphic novels author. He succeeds in all of his work to re-create an absolute bureaucratic Kafkaian society with humor and intelligence. The graphic novel Dead Memory (yes it has been translated in English !)depicts a city that is subjected to the anonymous creation of huge walls blocking off its streets and composing a totally new labyrinthine space outside and inside the buildings.

One could recall Terry Gilliam's Brazil (or in a less trivial way, Tzahal's siege of Nablus in 2002), when seing the comission of wall breaker who create some new streets within people's appartments.

I think it is appropriate here to re-insert the text I translated from Auguste Blanqui who describe a guerrilla plan for French XIXth century revolutions:

« L’attaque repoussée, il [l’officier] reprend et presse sans relâche la construction de la barricade en dépit des interruptions. Au besoin, des renforts arrivent.
Cette besogne terminée, on se met en communication avec les deux barricades latérales, en perçant les gros murs qui séparent les maisons situées sur le front de défense. La même opération s’exécute simultanément, dans les maisons des deux cotés de la rue barricadée jusqu'à son extrémité, puis en retour, a droite et a gauche, le long de la rue parallèle au front de défense, en arrière.
Les ouvertures sont pratiquées au premier et au dernier étage, afin d’avoir deux routes ; le travail se poursuit à la fois dans quatre directions.
Tous les ilots ou patés de maisons appartenant aux rues barricadées doivent être perces dans leur pourtour, de manière que les combattants puissent entrer et sortir par la rue parallèle de derrière, hors de la vue et de la portée de l’ennemi. »
« L’intérieur des ilots consiste généralement en cours et jardins. On pourrait ouvrir des communications à travers ces espaces, séparés d’ordinaire par de faibles murs. La chose sera même indispensable sur les ponts que leur importance ou leur situation spéciale exposent aux attaques les plus sérieuses.
Il sera donc utile d’organiser des compagnies d’ouvriers non-combattants, maçons, charpentiers, etc., pour exécuter les travaux conjointement avec l’infanterie.
Lorsque, sur le front de défense, une maison est plus particulièrement menacée, on démolit l’escalier du rez-de-chaussée, et l’on pratique des ouvertures dans les planchers des diverses chambres du premier étage afin de tirer sur les soldats qui envahiraient le rez-de-chaussée pour y attacher des pétards. L’eau bouillante jouerait aussi un rôle utile dans cette circonstance.
Si l’attaque embrasse une grande étendue de front, on coupe les escaliers et on perce les planchers dans toutes les maisons exposées. En règle générale, lorsque le temps et les autres travaux de défense plus urgents le permettent, il faut détruire l’escalier du rez-de-chaussée dans toutes les maisons de l’ilot sauf une, à l’endroit de la rue le moins exposé. »
Auguste Blanqui. Esquisse de la marche a suivre dans une prise d’armes a Paris. Maintenant il faut des armes. La fabrique 2006

”When the attack has been pushed back, he [the leader] comes back and pushes relentlessly the barricade construction despite interruptions. If needed reinforcement arrives.
This labor done, one put the two lateral barricades in communication by piercing the thick walls that separate houses situated on the defense’s front. The same operation is being executed simultaneously, in the houses on the two sides of the barricaded street until its extremity, then backwards, on the right and on the left, along the parallel street, on the defense’s front and on the back.
Openings have to be practiced on the first [ndt: first floor in Europe is second floor in US] and last floor in order to obtain two ways; work is being achieved in the same way in the four directions.
All the houses’ blocks belonging to the barricaded streets should be pierced in their perimeter, in a way that fighters are able to enter or exit by the backward parallel street, out of sight and out of reach from the enemy.”
”The interior of the blocks generally consists in courtyards and gardens. One could open communications between those spaces, usually separated by weak walls. It should be even compulsory on the bridges whose importance and specific situations expose them to the most serious attacks.
It would be therefore useful to organize companies of non-fighters workers, masons, carpenters, etc. in order to jointly achieve work with the infantry.
When, on the defense’s front, a house is more particularly being threatened, one demolished the ground floor’s staircase and one achieves opening in the various rooms’ floor of the first [second] floor in order to shoot the potential soldiers who would invade the ground floor to apply some bombs. Boiling water can also play an important role in this circumstance.
If the attack embraces an important extent of the front, one cuts the staircases and pierces the floors in all the exposed houses. As a general rule, when the time and the other defense works more urgent allow it, one should destroy the ground floor’ staircase in all the block’s houses except in the one the less exposed. ”

# (UN)WALL /// Moment by Yukihiro Taguchi

La Periferia Domestica keeps helping boiteaoutils to gather architectural projects or art pieces that apply a process of unwalling and just posted this wonderful video (see below) called Moment. This work has been achieved by Japanese Berliner artist Yukihiro Taguchi; it fragments the elements of the floor in order to create an important quantity of various spaces more or less sculptural, more or less functional.

# (UN)WALL /// A volleyball game over the border

One of the videos Ronald Rael (see previous post) shows during his lecture(s) about the US/Mexican border is the one he found of two Americans and two Mexicans playing volleyball over the border (on the Western extremity of it). This game is a evanescent act of subversion of the wall and its apparent harmless aspect creates an ambiguity that the law did not incorporate. It therefore seems to me that it is an important symbolic act of resistance towards the wall in its absurdity.

# (UN)WALL /// Envisioning the border by Edwin Agudelo

A month ago, I wrote this article about the incredibly stupid project that Eric Owen Moss designed for this ridiculous competition organized by the NYTimes called A Fence With More Beauty, Fewer Barbs. I won't repeat how I feel about this crap (apparently I just did though), but the interesting thing is that Ronald Rael, architect and professor at Berkeley, contacted me and showed me the work he did in order to transform the US/Mexican border into an infrastructure that would at least provide jobs and energy out of this shameful wall.

However I have a fundamental issue with such projects and we had this interesting discussion with Ronald which is extremely important for architects. I do believe that softening the border wall -especially by establishing important infrastructures instead- is the best way to ratify the wall and therefore to make it fully permanent. Ronald on the contrary believe that we have to deal with a factual reality and that we have to do our best to make it the less worst as possible.
This debate is a real interesting problem which can definitely concerns some more domestic programs than this extreme one.

Anyway, Ronald happens to have chosen the US/Mexican border as his studio topic in fall 2008 at Berkeley and you can see his students' work on his blog by clicking here. One project particularly catch my attention and I then discovered that I was not the only one since it has been already published by Bryan Finoki on Subtopia.

This project was designed by Edwin Agudelo who graduated since then and is now working in Washington D.C. Envisioning the border is an attempt to explore the bypass of the border by subterranean ways. Tunnels represents in imaginaries the example by excellence of resisting to the wall since it romanticized the breakout. When you are surrounded by static materiality, you need to try to go through it without completely destroying its global configuration. Edwin thus proves that the wall can both conserve its expressive violence and be bypassed by other "architectural" apparatuses.
This project obviously recalls the incredible network of tunnels that links Gaza strip with Egypt and that Tzahal tries desperately to pierce from the surface. (to read more about tunnels read Bryan Finoki's article about Edwin's project)

Here is what Edwin writes about his project:

On June 28, 2007, agents from the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) and the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) executed a search warrant at 24 North Escalada Drive in Nogales, Arizona, at a home used to conceal the U.S. entrance to a recently constructed tunnel that stretched nearly 100 yards underground to a residence across the border in Mexico.
According to the National Drug Intelligence Center, on January 16, 2008 authorities discovered three short tunnels in Nogales connecting approximately 250 ft. of storm drain to create one continuous passage. Then on December 11, 2008 another clandestine tunnel was found near the Mexico border in Nogales. The tunnel's exit was located about one foot away from the International Boundary fence and was estimated to be about 12 by 19 inches wide.
For the US Border Patrol, it was the sixth tunnel found in the Tucson Sector during fiscal year 2009, which started on Oct. 1. Since the start of fiscal year 2003, 40 tunnels have been found.
The US-Mexico border is not usually thought of in its below grade condition, but the continual illicit digging of tunnels, for the smuggling of drugs and individuals, by increasingly well-organized and sophisticated groups, has been cause for the deployment of combative strategies ranging from “tunnel teams” (Border Patrol Tunnel Unit) to concrete plugs. While monitoring technologies such as motion sensors are effective in the case of sewage infrastructure, clandestine tunnels are most effectively filled with concrete.
Up until now, these plugs have been used to close off the tunnels where they cross the border and at main entrance and exit points, while the areas in between remain largely intact. Part of the reason they have not been filled completely has to do with access to areas where they cross into private property, while on the Mexico side, a lack of resources sometimes keeps any work from being done, thereby keeping portions of tunnels available for reuse through new diggings. Without proper coordination and resources, this will continue to pose a binational security breach whose exact magnitude and range remains unknown.
My interest was in locating, excavating and envisioning three underground border systems: infrastructure (sewage tunnels), natural systems (caves, and illicitly dug tunnels, which through a system of aggregation, might suggest a specific spatial dynamic capable of being programmed for public access. Much of the potential for me exists within what I feel is the futility of the border fence as a definitive and defensible measure. Part of this dynamic is already visible at the border fence in the form of breaches that occur on a daily basis, requiring US Border Patrol to continually reseal and repatch what is often done with simple and highly accessible tools. During our visit to the border in El Paso we were told by US Border Patrol of days where, along just a stretch of a few miles, one to two hundred individuals would penetrate or jump the fence in an attempt to sprint across the barren Texas desert to then slip into the nearby neighborhoods. If this sort of circus can exist above ground, what sort of worlds might we find if we could have a totalizing view of the underground?

Ronald's own words after reading this article are:
My position is that the aestheticization of the border wall is a horrible idea, and i believe you would agree. to a certain degree, the poeticization of the wall presents potentials, as many of the poetic acts of resistance we find on the actual border wall currently or Edwins project, for example.

My argument does not promote the wall's aestheticization or poeticization, but rather attempts to play the legislative hand that has been dealt at the border by attempting to increase security, while putting the 40,000 acres of fallow territory to work, creating solar energy, hot water, saving lives, etc

Envisionning the border by Edwin Agudelo
Ronald Rael's studio: Borderwall as architecture
UC Berkeley 2008

# (UN)WALL /// Complement to the last article The Edge

In the last article, I was evoking this intuition I have about the best transgression of the wall being the fact of standing on it. Pretty stupidly, I did not recall immediately all those East and West Berliner on November 09th 1989 who exactly did that. The gesture there was not so much of crossing the wall but rather standing freely on it, on the very narrow part of Berlin that belong to both East and West.

# (UN)WALL /// The Edge - Lebbeus Woods / Philippe Petit

Lebbeus Woods recently wrote a text called The Edge about the necessity of architects to work as tight rope walkers instead of working "within the boundaries of what they comfortably know and what others know, too". As a metaphor, he used the magnificent transgression we already talked about (here and here) of Philippe Petit joining illegally the two towers of the World Trade Center in 1974.

Philippe Petit’s walk on a wire between the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center, in August of 1974, tells us a lot about architecture and the edge. He and his team, who illegally penetrated the buildings’ security systems and rigged the wire, conceived the two towers as anchor points, stable and sure. Architecture, we believe, endures. Our lives continually moving within and around it are fleeting, ephemeral. It is a very great, but also instructive, irony that, in this case, the architecture did not endure. The towers were brought down by illegal ‘interventions’ different from Petit’s only in their intent to do harm, and to prove the instability of architecture. Both proved the vulnerability of presumably secure systems—especially the social ones symbolized by architecture—and shifted the focus of public perception and debate to what might be called ‘the endurance of ephemerality’ in contemporary worlds driven so often to the edge.

Lebbeus Woods. excerpt from The Edge. 2010

This article does not seem relevant at first glance as far as our (UN)WALL subject is concerned. However, it made me think that if we still consider the wall as a line, a good way to transgress it would probably be to walk on this line. The wall is an infra-world that exist between two larger milieus. Imagine the fantastic gesture that would consist in walking on the edge of the West Bank wall...

# (UN)WALL /// Tunnel house by Dan Havel and Dean Ruck

This incredible tunnel house has been posted everywhere two years ago when it has been achieved by artists Dan Havel and Dean Ruck in Houston. This installation evokes a black hole that absorbs the house's material from inside. People have then the opportunity to experience this vortex.

# (UN)WALL /// Rachel Whiteread

In several of her works, Rachel Whiteread is "unwalling" architecture by casting the negative of the wall i.e. the space framed by the walls.
For House (1993), she casted an entire Victorian house in London printing all the details of the original walls in the concrete. She then destroyed them letting the concrete negative as a final result.
For the Holocaust Monument (2000) in Vienna she metaphorically reproduced this process by casting an imaginary library. The books are thus appearing as the surface of the monument and the detail precision is such that the pages are actually visible.

two last pictures: Joe Perez-Green