Overview
The IS-CreaLab project JUST ARCHITECTURE? realizes conferences and exhibitions related to the double meaning of the word ‘just’: architecture as more than only architecture, and ‘just’ architecture as a correct/fair architecture. First, it considers an extended notion of architecture as ‘emergent reality’ that can be measured in terms of encounter, including the production of architecture, the object of architecture as a dynamic element, and the events taking place within architecture. The second question regards the foundation of authority, the difficulty of decision-making, and therefore the identity of architecture. These two questions, the dynamic and identity of architecture, are united in the word ‘just’. The project makes these questions methodically happen as ‘just research', hence, exhibits them not as pre-existing things but as a coming into existence. It therefore performs a shift from fixed image to dynamic image for both architecture and research.
At the sic! Raum für Kunst, Lucerne, and the Swiss Architecture Museum S AM, Basel, the project tested the architectural competition. If architecture is understood as a reality emergent from dynamic constellations and constructive processes, what insights can new models of competitions provide for the understanding, making and teaching of architecture.
At the FUGA Centre of Architecture, Budapest, improvisation in architectural education was examined. If architectural production demands high competences in improvisation, how can architectural improvisation be taught and practiced.
By methodically applying the issues (competition, improvisation) to the systems of research (conference and exhibition, including calls, submissions, selections, lectures, and publications) variations are tested and measured as live spatial experimentations. Conferences and exhibitions are not innocent tools but spatial agencies functioning in just the same ways as architecture.
The variations that were tested performed shifts from ‘practice’ to ‘gesture’:
Use of video instead of written text.
Use of web platforms as communication tools.
Use of keywords connecting participants.
The splitting of conferences and exhibitions introduced the notion of model.
Use of exhibition spaces for conferences.
Involvement of jurors confusing the roles of design and judgement.
Launch of re-calls allowing to bypass direct selection.
Participants:
V. Katona, Budapest University of Technology and Economics.
A. Sarabi & A. Egli, Independent Artists, Bern.
I. Latek, Université de Montréal.
J.-P. Chupin, Université de Montréal.
C. Cucuzzella, Concordia University.
P. T. Lang, Texas A&M.
K. Jaschke, University of Brighton.
T. Gough, Kingston University.
M. Beutler, Firma für Soziale Plastik, Bern.
