# Playing the building by David Byrne

Playing the building is a 2005-09 project by Musician David Byrne who connected a piano to a series of devices that make the building around releasing a sound. The sounds can thus be combinated which ultimately creates a symphony that John Cage would have probably not deny.

Each visitor of the exhibition are encouraged to try this building instrument that develops a peculiar way of interacting with a building

Thanks Martin !

# Rue Abu Jamil by Alexis Monchovet & Stéphane Marchetti

Rue Abu Jamil is a documentary filmed by two French journalists Alexis Monchovet & Stéphane Marchetti who thus depict the daily life in the Gaza strip. Two excerpts of this documentary are visible online and the first one is particularly interesting since it explores one of the numerous tunnel that cross the border between Rafah (Gaza) and Egypt. Those holey complexes are the main target of the Israeli army which regularly destroy the zone via their F16 or their armored bulldozer D9 (see previous post about the documentary Death in Gaza).

The videos are unfortunately subtitled in French...

Rue Abu Jamil - Extrait 3 HD from Playprod on Vimeo.

Rue Abu Jamil - Extrait 2 HD from Playprod on Vimeo.

To go further about the tunnel complexes, read the previous article about Edwin Agudelo for the US/Mexico border and Bryan Finoki's article about tunnels on subtopia.

Thanks Elodie

# Walls of Change by Lebbeus Woods

Lebbeus Woods' last article on his blog entitled Walls of Change investigates the wall as an urban element that separates two milieus from each other or punctually paradoxically gather people as the Berlin wall demonstrated in November 1989. The article then focuses on an amazing project, Mr. Woods drawn for La Havana several years ago, introducing the wall as an infrastructure that houses could embrace.
More drawings and texts on his blog.

# Band of outsiders by Jean-Luc Godard

Here is a little animation excerpted from Jean-Luc Godard's 1964 movie Bande a Part (Band of Outsiders). The three main characters cross Le Louvre Museum by running. In 2003, Bertolucci's Dreamers (Louis Garrel, Eva Green and Michael Pitt) defeated their record !

# Manual of Decolonization by Salottobuono

The Manual of Decolonization is a book created by Salottobuono in the frame of the research Decolonizing Architecture (already evoked here) lead by Eyal Weizman, Alessandro Petti and Sandi Hilal. This research starts with the scenario of successful negotiations between Palestinians and Israeli that would lead to the suppression of colonies established in the West Bank and the application of the Right to Return for Palestinian refugees. However, the project does not necessarily implies a total withdrawal of Israeli but rather investigates propositions that annihilate the asymmetrical military that characterize colonies. In this regard Salottobuono propose ten steps of "decolonization" that would actually change the status of the settlements into the architecture of a pacific cohabitation.
In fact in 2005, when the Gaza strip had been decolonized by the Sharon administration, the strategical aspect of this decision implied a strategical decolonization by the Israeli State. In fact, the totality of buildings were destroyed in order for Palestinian not to be able to appropriate them. The only buildings that remained were Synagogues that were obviously destroyed by the Palestinian in front of the cameras that daily feed the hate and fear between the two People.
The process of decolonization proposed by those collectives is therefore crucial in the attempt of a durable co-existence if the negotiations lead to agreements at some point.

Manual of Decolonization: printed edition available on the AA bookstore's website.
Salottobuono
with Decolonizing Architecture, Haudenschild Garage, Barbara Modolo, Manuel Singer, Alessandro Zorzetto.
more on Salottobuono's website.

The introduction text to the workshop and exhibition Decolonizing Architecture can be read here.

# Domus Paranoia by Salottobuono

Salottobuono is an Italian architectural collective that has created (among others) two extremely interesting projects that I absolutely wanted to publish here. The first (second will be for tomorrow) is a pseudo Ikea catalog entitled Paranoia that propose a vision of what might be a urban military world where security will be one more product of consumption (in a nutshell, our world in a slightly exaggerated way). In a way that recalls David Fincher's Fight Club, Salottobuono created an inventory of product that could be quickly being sold on the market (or which are already). The climax of this catalog for architects is a section/perspective of what the house of this near future may look like.

Domus Paranoia
Domus n.902 - April 2007

#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!

# They use our books, let's use theirs !

I am often desperate to see that some excellent authors of "resistance" are being used by the forces they were fighting against in the first place (not to talk about the tremenduous amount of 60's rock songs which are now systematically used in commercials !). What I (We?) forgot sometimes is that we can do the same thing: DETOURNER as the Situationists would put it.

So here is the book all offered to the Detournement since an architect who would like some simple solutions to create an environment less based on paranoia would just have to design the contrary of what it advocates. Its author, Barry Poyner wanted Design against Crime to be a kind of sequel of Defensible Space written in 1972 by Oscar Newman. Without ever making a distinction between homicide, robbery, burglary and vandalism, Poyner's thesis is that "the layout of neighbourhoods, the form of streets, the design of housing and the planning of schools can be said to contribute to the likelihood of crime”

At the beginning of the book he recalls the four Newman's principles to invent controlled and secured public housings:
1. Territoriality: The sub-division and zoning of communal space in and around residential building to promote proprietary attitudes among residents.
2. Natural Surveillance: The positioning of apartment windows to allow residents to naturally survey the exterior and interior public areas of their living environment.
3. Image: The use of building forms and idioms to avoid the stigma of public housing.
4. Milieu: Locating residential projects to face onto areas of the city considered safe (such as heavily-trafficked streets, institutional areas and government offices).

He also advocate for the suppression of semi-public environment (like decks, platforms, galleries etc.) and even more radically for a regulation of children density in residences (!!!):
“Wilson pointed out that efforts were already being made to allocate new tenants to housing with this in mind. Also, where local authorities are rehabilitating older blocks, modifications can be made to change the size of units to achieve mixes of one-, two-, and three bedroom dwellings. No clear guideline can be given for recommending maximum child densities. The study by Wilson defined blocks with low child densities as containing an average of three or less children per ten dwellings, but this would be too stringent as a guideline for housing allocation policies. However, what might be a more realistic approach would be to limit allocation of new tenancies in blocks with large amounts of unsupervisable communal space to all-adult households.”

Each scale is being studied and optimized for the sake of security. From the urban organization of a residential district to the door's material via anti-burglary houses, anti-pickpockets markets and anti-vandalism schools. A nauseous vision of a seamless world where rich are not being stolen and poors remain calm in their public housing...

The foreword says it all; it is written by the main commissioner of London's police who thanks Poyner for his work...see below.

# Field Trips by Bernd & Hilla Becher and Robert Smithson

Field Trips is the name of a 2002 exhibition organized for the Museu de Arte Contemporanea de Serralves in Porto. It gathered the work of Bernd & Hilla Becher and Robert Smithson inspired by their visit to Oberhausen in the Ruhr (Germany) in 1968. The fantastic book of the same name offers beautiful photographs by the Bechers and documents (inventory, drawings, pictures etc.) by Smithson, including his famous Asphalt Rundown (1969) that dramatized a stream of burning hot asphalt on the earth.

# Chronotopes & Dioramas by Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster

Since September and until June 27th, Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster is having a tiny exhibition dedicated to her work in DIA Hispanic Foundation in Harlem (NYC). The exhibition is entitled Chronotopes & Dioramas since she created three dioramas inspired by the origin of forty novels that influence her.
The books are the only actors of those dioramas and the visitor move and blink in order to be able to read the titles...
Authors are Paul Auster, A. Casares, Edgardo Cozarinsky, Lorca Garcia, Franz Kafka, W. Sebald, Gertrude Stein, Enrique Vila-Matas, Roberto Bolano, Jorge Luis Borges, Ray Bradbury, Carlos Castaneda, John Fante, Frank Herbert, Dorothy Johnson, Dorothy Scarborough, Mario de Andrade, James Graham Ballard, Elizabeth Bishop, Paul Bowles, Richard Brautigan, William Burroughs, Joseph Conrad, Samuel Delany, Philip K. Dick, William Gaddis, Edouard Glissant, Ursula Le Guin, Clarice Lispector, Vladimir Nabokov, Anais Nin, Thomas Pynchon, Patti Smith, Kurt Vonnegut and Rudolph Wurlitzer.

# Living Walls The City Speaks Conference in Atlanta

Living Walls is the conference that will occur on August 13rd at Eyedrum in Atlanta and they are currently calling for (street) artists who would participate to the lecture series or to the posters exhibition. The current participating artists can be seen here.

Here is the text they sent us:
"We believe that Boiteaoutils is currently one of the most influential websites dedicated to theoretical spatial discussions. Thus, we are writing to you about our conference on street art and urbanism: Living Walls, The City Speaks. The goal of the conference is to present works from a very small subset of the population -people who make spatial interventions (street artists, graffiti writers, etc), under the same roof with those who generate and speculate about public space (researchers, writers, designers). Our intention is to broadcast a wide spectrum of ideas about public space and its use to our attendees. We hope that everyone leaves the event with a broader perception about the city, its walls, and its myriad potentials.

The conference will be split into a few components: a gallery show, a poster show, and a series of lectures. For the gallery and poster shows, we will showcase the works of a selection of international artists who use city streets as an outlet and canvas for their work. Currently, we are seeking artists that re-appropriate the public realm in order to take ownership and mediate space. For the gallery show, artists are be asked to submit artwork along with documentation and process (sketches, photos, video, text, etc.). This documentation should illustrate the scale and context of the artist's work within the urban landscape. Thus far, we will be featuring artists such as Miso, know-hope, and Gaia. We are also seeking a range of speakers who are interested in alternative, unconventional methods of spatial use. Presently, we have confirmed Jordan Seiler (public ad campaign), Jeff Ferrell, as well as local critics of public space. The last component of the conference is rigorous documentation as we intend to eventually publish ideas and projects created as a result of/for the conference.

Living Walls will take place the weekend of August 13 at Eyedrum in Atlanta. Ironically, our conference occurs in the same city shortly after CNU18 (Congress for New Urbanism -who advocates through use of existing and traditional political policies). Unlike CNU, whose audience is primarily composed of developers and academics who can afford the $200/day entry, Living Walls is addressed to the public, is completely free of charge, is open to participation, and challenges spatial theories via non-traditional use of spatial interventions.

Likewise, since we are a grassroots colloquium without the financial means and fee structure as the CNU, we also are looking to you and others for support. We are currently seeking sponsorship through any form that you can offer: posting information about our conference on your website, connecting us with artists and lecturers, and/or making a small financial donation. Attached are two documents (a press release and call for artists) that we are seeking to distribute. We would greatly appreciate your assistance in helping us disseminate this information with your readers and colleagues. If you would like to contribute financially, you can do so via our website, livingwallsconference.com. We welcome any and all that you can offer. "