Catalogue Archilab Europe Strategic Architecture

Publication of the current exhibition of Archilab 2008 by Editions HYX
ISBN: 978-2-910385-54-5
www. editions-hyx.com

Ares International Competition for Renewable Energy Sources & Bioclimatic Architecture for Shells to shelter People affected by Natural Disasters 2007

“PLUG IN HOSTEL”
By Demet Mutman and Alexandre Mussche
Special Mention Award

The main concept of the project is to create a “PLUG IN HOSTEL”. The aim is to create minimum cost and maximum sustainable shelter units within the livable urban regions within the city by relocating the victims of the disaster. By forming a system of mapping the destruction zones within the urban area, the project team targets framing the relocation spaces and relocating the disaster victims to not destructed or slightly effected urban areas. The idea of relocation of the victims from their previous destructed urban areas to the still livable safe zones within the city is based on the social and economic sustainablity concepts. By relocating the victims for a limited period of time and increasing the density of safe urban zones in the city for sheltering those people at, provides the project to connect and use the primary infrastructure of the city main and not building new, temporary infrastructures for the new developed settlements. On the other hand this kind of approach would take into consideration of the social backgrounds of the victims by not pushing them away from the community and social life but integrating them again with life in the urban centers in the case of social and cultural sustainability.

The main actors of collaboration for the project are the internal affairs ministry, institute for emergency aid for crisis, community centers of the city and the local inhabitants to provide hostels to the victims. Since the concept starts with the idea of hostel and to host, the collaboration and special agreement contracts would be created by the previously mentioned organizational actors. This kind of aggreements targets to organize the relationship between the host and the hostel by developing the plug in shelters and framing the functionality of the unit.

website: http://www.uia-architectes.org/texte/england/ARES2006/results.html

VENICE ART BIENNIAL 2007

“TEMPORARY ART INTERVENTIONS AS AN URBAN PLANNING STRATEGY, CASE OF MOSTAR”
with the Bauhaus Dessau Foundation and German Study Center Venice

On the occasion of the opening of the 52nd International Art Exhibition, La Biennale di Venezia, the Bauhaus Dessau Foundation presented three artistic projects, one of them „Mostar 2007“, as strategies for urban development under the motto “Bauhaus ArtInterventions”. The projects have been discussed with Mrs.Ute Meta Bauer, Director and Associate Professor, MIT Visual Arts Program, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge; Mr.Okwui Enwezor, Dean of Academic Affairs and Senior Vice President, San Francisco Art Institute, Mr.Veselin Gatalo and Mr.Nino Raspudic, Urban Movement Mostar.

The presentation of the project aimed to introduce several temporary artistic interventions created and developed by the project team and activated on ground by the help of a local organization for showing the possible leading effects of the temporary art interventions as a tool for a sustainable urban planning approach which takes local aspects as well as glabal issues into its account for a further step. Mostar 2007 in this manner defines a unique example of an intervention which aims to heal a divided city after an ethnic war by using a neutral transformation catalyst.

Archilab Europe Strategic Architecture

The 2008 edition explores the mutations of Europe brought about by spatial planning, illustrating the scope of the European Union’s contribution to the fields of urbanism and architecture. Archilab Europe showcases the projects and programs implemented by the European Union to foster and support trans-regional and trans-border spatial planning. Omar Akbar, director of the Bauhaus-Dessau Foundation (Germany) is curator of the exhibition, which will take place between 24 October and 23 December 2008. Thus, Orleans finds itself at the center of a unique panoramic view of current European trends in architectural creation and spatial planning.

The subtitle “strategic architecture” is significant. What projects and programs are being implemented today in Europe and who are the architects involved in this dynamic? What weight is given to creation and innovation? Has Europe adopted a forward-looking approach to urbanism and quality of life issues? How are the digital revolution and new virtual communities being integrated? How do architectural programs take into account opportunities of a global society in the development of micro-systems on the local scale? Will new urban spatial organizations emerge from the transformation of the activities and modes of communication of Europe’s citizens? ArchiLab offers visitors a unique opportunity to develop an opinion on this territory in deep reconfiguration of Europe. The concept of strategic architecture proposed by Omar Akbar, neither observation nor protest, seeks to foster critical, open and plural debate, anchored in the social, political, economic, geographic and cultural issues daily affecting our ways of living.

"Archilab Europe - Strategic Architecture" aims to present the decisive and strategic role of architecture and planning interventions as a tool for the development of cities and regions, and show the links with funding structures within the European Community. The exhibition will highlight in particular how architecture and strategic plans of action may be linked up with one another. In doing so, the exhibition poses the question of whether, given this context, Europe may be viewed as a testing ground for new approaches to architecture or planning. Do these “strategic architectures” stimulate and promote innovative development and dynamics in the cities and regions?

website: http://www.archilab.org/index.html