# The architecture of Jean Renaudie

Architecture is the physical form which envelops human lives in all the complexity of their relations with their environment.

Jean Renaudie, 1968

In my opinion, Jean Renaudie is one of the very best French architects of the last fifty years. His two housing complexes in Ivry sur Seine near Paris (see previous post) and in Givors near Lyon are two very successful examples of architecture becoming urban in an era (50's-60's) that created what is now famous as the French suburbs catastrophe. In fact, those two housing complexes are extremely interesting in the fact that they embody a real urban density, mix several social levels, organize urban life on a multitude of storeys, blur the limits between private and public areas and supply a little piece of garden to every apartment. This architecture is full of episodes, surprizing moments of beauty in an urban artefact/landscape full of hideaways.

In order to know more, I recommend Irenee Scalbert's book: A Right to Difference at AA Publications

The following photographs and plans are excerpted from this book.

# Francois Roche's lecture in the AA

This Thursday, Francois Roche (R&Sie(n)) will be giving a lecture at the Architectural Association entitled Ecosophical Apparatus and Skizoid Machines (using Guattari's terminology). This lecture accentuates the launch of R&Sie(n)'s new book called BIO[re]BO[o}T that gathers the Paris based office's work on machines and schizophrenia in architecture.

# (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

# RIBA Presidents Medals Student Awards 2009

RIBA Students winners 2009 have been announced and are visible on the President's Medals website. Like every years projects reach a very high degree of representation which still seems to be an important point in Great Britain schools' pedagogy for which architectonicity serves narration.

projects on picture: Nicholas Szczepaniak (University of Westminster)/Silver medal, Selvei Al-Assadi (London South Bank University), Stephen Townsend (University of Nottingham), Pascal Bronner (Bartlett), Paul Durcan (University College Dublin), Wen Ying Teh (AA)/ Silver medal, Biten Patel (University of Brighton), Robert Taylor (University of Sheffield)

# Intensive Fields conference at USC School of Architecture

Dear people of Los Angeles (for God's sake stop saying L.A. when you have one of the coolest name of city on earth !), this event is for you ! On December 12nd, USC school of architecture is organizing a conference called Intensive fields about the very popular topic of parametric urbanism with a bunch of very high quality speakers. I think that this quality is necessary when you deal with such crucial issues as urban design. To reach this scale of design is problematic and any proposal should certainly includes a part of self-contradiction in order to avoid the dictatorial hand of the architect on the city...
I just regret that Chris Lee was not invited to this event since he is tackling this kind of issues for a certain time now with his unit 6 in the AA...

Don't forget to register !

# Trabeculae/Protosynthesis by Supermanoeuvre

Trabeculae is a project imagined by Supermanoeuvre, a young "practice" created by Dave Pigram (New York) and Iain Maxwell (London). What they define as projects, research and teaching (AA, Pratt and Michigan mostly) are more or less intermingling for a global creative attitude trying to generate architectures related to variable "social, cultural and ecological" parametrics.

In fact, Trabeculae is a project for last Beijing's Biennal extending a previous research called Protosynthesis which was first released for Marc Fornes' Philadelphia exhibition: Scriptedbypurpose.

Trabeculae is the result of reimagining the central atrium office tower. Replacing the traditionnal operation of repetitive extrusion, a heliotropic branching system actively seeks out those areas within the zoning envelope with greatest access to daylight. Forking and swelling in response to varing light conditions, the atrium is thus conceived as a site-specific network that traverses intellintelligently and freely from one facade to another. The atrium becomes the defining element of differentiation within otherwise normative floorplates while maintaining efficient floorscape ratios.
Within the atrium, a second order proliferation of the same system at a finer scale develops a structural meshwork - the trabeculae. The swellings and coagulationsof this topologically free structural network-within-a-network accomodate meeting & function rommes, bridges, and communication strairs as welll as supportng the attriums glazing.
An instantiation of the proto-synthesis algorithm this project embraces the specific heterogeneity of a given scenario and points towards the possibility of architecture speciation.

Project team: Dave Pigra, Iain Maxwell, Brad Rothenberg, Ezio Blasetti

# SCHOOLS /// AA (Architectural Association)

Architectural Association
location:36 Bedford Square, London (United Kingdom)
website

illustrating projects:
- Fredrick Hellberg / Manhattan oneirocritica
- Hani Fallaha / Rapid development refugee camp
- Amandine Kastler / The cabinet of curiosities
- Colin Ashton / Residential hotel
- Toby Burgess / Performative fog harvesting surface in Namibia

# Weaving with nature

Honda Syoryu

This is not an AA student models !

When I saw last Kawamata's pieces in Versaille I thought first to the eel trap (korobashi) that I bought In Japan, but when you look closer to contemporary sculpture in Japan you can find something pretty close to Kawamata's work that might have inspired him...
Its called Bamboo art or Textile art and it's seems to come from Ikebana (japanase flower composition art) and Ikebana basket .
This arty basketery create amazing shapes, skins and spaces. Following some of the best artists of that movement.

japanese eel trap or "korobashi"


Morigami Jin


Kawashima Shigeo


MIMURA Chikuho

Yamagushi Ryuun

More information here, or here

cf: in Western countries : Andy Goldworthy and friends...

# Eyal Weizman / A civilian occupation: The politics of israeli architecture

Remember this post ? I was telling that I was about to write another about this book, A civilian occupation: The politics of Isreali architecture (Une occupation civile: La politique de l'architecture israelienne), and I actually never did.

This book has been designed and edited by Eyal Weizman, an isreali architect (who graduated in the AA) who center his work on the denunciation of israeli politics about settlements. In fact, Palestine West Bank is more and more colonized by jewish fundamentalists who therefore use architecture and urbanism as a strategical weapon. I am not really skilled to write about this issue althought I've seen by myself these outrageous secured settlements, but the best thing is definetely to read this book which gather analysis from architects, film director, photographers and journalists (all from Israël).

Here is also a website about an architecture research called Decolonizing Architecture supervised by Weizman (a palestinian friend of mine is actually preparing her architecture thesis through this research, I hope to get some pictures and texts sometimes)

And, as the former post was written in French, I found this translation of Weizman's article about Aviv Kochavi (Isreali General) who created military strategy of Walking through walls. Read it ! It's really really interesting

# AA Design Research Lab Pavilion [C]space

[C]space is the winning entry in the ‘AADRLTen’ Pavilion competition. It is an advanced technology concrete structure that is erected in Bedford Square,London. The Pavilion opened on 13 March 2008 coinciding with the release of the DRL10 Book. The structure was designed and developed by Alan Dempsey and Alvin Huang with Adams Kara Taylor and members of the AADRL
--> DRL's website
--> [C]space's blog