Category Archives: Architecture

Athena Tacha, Double Star: Antares (1987)

maze

Athena Tacha, “Double Star: Antares,” Ohio Outdoor Sculpture, accessed April 23, 2022, https://www.sculpturecenter.org/oosi/items/show/598.

“A maze of 27 brick walls that radiate out from a center point. The walls are made in three sizes with bricks laid in a stagger pattern with 4 inch gaps between bricks.” [credit]

David Taylor, Working the Line (2007)

“Beginning in 2007, started photographing along the U.S.-Mexico border between El Paso/Juarez and San Diego/Tijuana. My project is organized around an effort to document all of the monuments that mark the international boundary west of the Rio Grande. The rigorous undertaking to reach all of the 276 obelisks, most of which were installed between the years 1891 and 1895, has inevitably led to encounters with migrants, smugglers, the Border Patrol, minutemen and residents of the borderlands.

During the period of my work the United States Border Patrol has doubled in size and the federal government has constructed over 600 miles of pedestrian fencing and vehicle barrier. With apparatus that range from simple tire drags (that erase foot prints allowing fresh evidence of crossing to be more readily identified) to seismic sensors (that detect the passage of people on foot or in a vehicle) the border is under constant surveillance. To date the Border Patrol has attained “operational control” in many areas, however people and drugs continue to cross. Much of that traffic occurs in the most remote, rugged areas of the southwest deserts.

My travels along the border have been done both alone and in the company of agents. In total, the resulting pictures are intended to offer a view into locations and situations that we generally do not access and portray a highly complex physical, social and political topography during a period of dramatic change.” [credit]

MJ Hunter Brueggemann, Vanessa Thomas, Ding Wang, Lickable Cities (2014-2017)

person licking statue

“Lickable Cities is a research project that responds to the recent and overwhelming abundance of non-calls for gustatory exploration of urban spaces. In this paper, we share experiences from nearly three years of nonrepresentational, absurdist, and impractical research. During that time, we licked hundreds of surfaces, infrastructures, and interfaces in cities around the world. We encountered many challenges from thinking with, designing for, and interfacing through taste, including: how can and should we grapple with contamination?, and how might lickable interfaces influence more-than-humans? We discuss these challenges to compassionately question the existing framework for designing with taste in [Human-Computer Interaction].” [credit]

 

Dan Graham, Two-Way Mirror Punched Steel Hedge Labyrinth (1994-96)

  • Designer: Dan Graham
  • Location: Minneapolis Sculpture Garden, part of the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, Minnesota, United States
  • Date: constructed 1994-1996
  • Size: 7.5 x 17.15 x 42.3 feet
  • Materials: stainless steel, glass, arborvitae

“Relating both to landscape and corporate architecture, Graham’s pavilions sometimes create a kaleidoscopic, psychedelic experience relating to “child’s play,” recreating apparatuses for children in a playground setting. Graham says, “my use of two-way mirror glass in pavilions is not a critique of the alienation of the corporate building; in many ways the work I do tries to create a kind of pleasure area in relationship to the corporate office building, or to use Foucault’s notion, my wish being to create a kind of ‘heterotopia.'”

Dan Graham (1942-2022) was born in Urbana, Illinois and grew up in New Jersey. Since the 1960s, Graham’s work has explored the meeting between architecture, pop culture, and our built environment. Celebrated for his glass and mirror pavilions, Graham also considers himself a writer-artist paramount to his practice. His work incorporates criticism, photography, video, performance art, as well as influences from music and magazine pages. … One of the most important quasi-functional works that Graham [did] was a design for the mezzanine section of the Hayward Gallery in London, involving displays of classic and contemporary cartoons for children and adults of all ages. ” [credit]

Richard Fleischner, Chain Link Maze (1978-79)

Chain Link Maze, 1978-79 (destroyed), Galvanized chain link fencing, 8′ x 61′ x 61′, University of Massachusetts, Amherst.

—

“Adjacent to the University of Massachusetts football stadium in Amherst stands an 8-foot-tall chain-link fence encompassing an area some 60 feet square [by Richard Fleischner (1944-)]. …

The work sits, as do most of Fleischner’s projects, delicately on its terrain—it does not so much structure the natural, open site as it asserts itself discreetly, sensitively on the slightly rolling topography as a neat, geometrically concise object. Once through the corner entryway, we are confronted with a long corridor, the beginning of a path that winds, multicursal, toward a central inner chamber. Decisions must be made, and confusion is possible as we look through the wire grid at spaces beyond our reach. Both entry and path are ample, affording no sense of claustrophobia. One is struck instead by the open, hospitable feeling of the first corridors as they trace the perimeter. Comfortable strides are possible within the labyrinth; one can even turn or stop easily. It is not long before one of several decision points is reached—several paths can be taken but no great mistake can be made. It is as if the artist wants to coax us gently through this experience. There is no threat here but instead a fuller, more rewarding task of finding one’s own way. We are separated spatially but never visually from the outdoor environment as we can almost always see shimmering details through the various layers of mesh.

As one traverses the walkway, patterns of light reflect off the metallic walls, sometimes creating moiré-like surfaces, at others seeming almost flat and mat-colored. Fleischner has given us a visual labyrinth as well as a participatory maze. In no other maze are almost all the parts visible even as we are confined to a specific track. Depending on how many layers of chain link we gaze through (and this can vary from one to almost a dozen), details of the environment and other figures in the maze fade in and out of our sight. This seems then the perfect visual accompaniment to the fugitive spatial experiences we all undergo within a labyrinth.

In Chain Link Maze, Fleischner uses intuition to achieve his means—physical, optical and psychological experiences that depend on carefully measured spaces. In a broader context, a work like this directly engages some of the notions, particularly American, of the unbounded, natural environment. Fleischner works directly in the landscape, sometimes using concepts from rarified historical traditions. He has reasserted his ability visually to grasp the given landscape in a particularly American fashion, while simultaneously structuring situations within that landscape derived from conventions of garden design, architectural history and spatial perception. —Ronald J. Onorato ” [credit]

Pezo von Ellrichshausen, 120 Doors Pavillion (2003)

  • Designer: Mauricio Pezo and Sofía von Ellrichshausen (Pezo von Ellrichshausen architecture firm)
  • Location: Ecuador Park, Concepción, Chile
  • Date: 2003
  • Materials: wood, tubular steel

“The 120 Doors Pavilion, installed in Ecuador Park, in the city of Conception, Chile, is a structure of tubular steel tubes supporting wooden standard doors. The doors are arranged in 5 continuous and consecutive perimeters; the outer one with four sides of ten doors each and, inwards, sides of eight, six, four and two doors.

From the authors’ description of the work:

These five perimeters operate as fences that confine a progressive sequence of interiority and depth of the space. Seen from the outside the exterior perimeter is a compact horizontal block. In the interior space is closed laterally and opens to the sky and the ground. This configuration establishes a series of paths along narrow spaces, vertical in section, that dissolve into a cubic central space confined within the smallest perimeter.

With this, what we were really looking for was a way to evidence how relative and artificial the distinctions of limits within a work of architecture are and, hence, within one of art. We are interested in exploring the points of transmission, or friction, between one place and another. We think of the doors as a turning point that subverts temporally the definition of space, adding a dynamic dimension to the construction of walls in a work of architecture, something that could be seen as a key that regulates the fluctuation of forces.

After a brief installation in a public park, the doors were donated to public housing and the structure was the only thing that remained in the place, apparently indestructible due to its nakedness or, as Breuer said about his chairs, because its volume occupies no space.

Two years later (2005) the duo proposed a reduced version of the pavilion featuring “only” 36 doors that was installed in Santiago, Chile.

Heath Bunting and Kayle Brandon, D’Fence Cuts (2001)

“Heath Bunting emerged from the 1980s art scene committed to building open, democratic communications systems and social contexts. Throughout his career, he has explored multiple media including graffiti and performance art and has staged numerous interventionist projects, as well as being a pioneer in the field of Internet Art. Bunting began collaborating with artist Kyle Brandon in 2001.” [credit]

These artists devised a circular tour (see map), and by night stealthily cut some fences as part of their Borderxing project. BorderXing serves as a pratical guide to crossing major international borders, legally or illegally. It was a type of physical hacking of space, cutting anything that impeded their walk – D’Fence Cuts. Below is an excerpt from their tour de fence catalog:

“tour de fence is the answer to your real needs. while the internet promised to level out all barriers, tour de fence enables you to surmount the fences out there that people erect to obstruct your way every day. from wire netting to ru­ stic fence, from steel door to close security system, tour de fence offers you the necessary know-how for unhampered movement. tour de fence is the direct way.

learn offroad mobility within high security architecture. cross over stretches of land in the right direction. penetrate the underground area of your city. tour de fence puts an end to the relocation of your movements into virtual space. use the tour de fence! become a tour de fence amateur team. pass this handbook on to others. propagate tour de fence.

by doing so you will become part of the international tour de fence community. as a reader, a free-climber or by sending one of the 24 tour de fence postcard in this book.

participate now! tour de fence’s vision is to do what we want.

…

tour de fence acknowledges fence as metaphor for private property. fence as a supposedly temporary, often mobile barrier performing functions of inclusion and exclusion, entrapment and guided freedom, decoration, safety, user boun­ dary, protection from hazard, flow control, visual screening and user separation.

fence is a permeable filter system defining permitted use and users. light, wind, insects, water, plants and sound pass unhindered while high order life forms such as·humans, fish, cattle and cars are engaged:

development of fence.

up to now the vertical has generally been private while the horizontal public. increasingly, vertical fences are being rotated to the horizontal and enlarged over large areas of land, as all use and users are embraced in total control.

tour de fence recognises the transformation of framed freedom into restricted open-range roaming; the re-alignment of unknown possibilities into known re­ peatables. users are permitted to skate across flattened surface of fence, but not to pass through – the fence is everywhere.” (credit)

Michèle Magema, Across the Souvenirs (2010)

This work has multiple sections: déambulation, where the artist silently walks across the screen carrying two bags wearing a white dress; Expansion, where the artist walks up stairs and across the screen – the image is doubled and reflected with reduced opacity and there is piano music playing; Transcription, where the artist walks across the screen in a white dress with a piece of chalk drawing a hip-height line across a black wall, then erases the lines with water – again the image is doubled during the drawing, but not the erasing, and music is present for the erasure.

“My work exists within an intermediary zone, a sort of matter space of a frontier I have produced and that I situate within the countries of France and the Democratic Republic of Congo. I am a cultural hybrid endowed with a composite identity. The plurality of my parents provide me with the authorization to interrogate my own history and that of a nation, the place of my birth, as well as the continent of Africa at large. The relationship that I maintain with my own personal history or histories and to history as a larger entity permits me to formulate a critical acquisition to write the concept of exitism. Exitism is a representation that is largely shared with history and even with practices at times. As the material of my work is always simple. I use historical facts that I interpret through the prediction of scene. Through these frontal images I expose my body that I use as a metaphor for the relationship between the human being and the world at large. My work sets up a direct relationship that centered on the world the field of society and politics. – Excerpts from Global Feminisms: Michèle Magema 2010″ [credit]

Stalker Collective (1995-), Rome, Italy

“Stalker is a collective of artists and architects, founded in 1995 in Rome, Italy, focused on local research and activities, with particular attention to marginal areas, mainly urban voids and spaces in transformation. Their practice is based on urban explorations, listening and interactions that enact a creative flow within the investigated area, its people and their collective memory and imagination. These processes aim at generating social and environmental relationships capable of self-organizing themselves and evolving. The activities of Stalker promote sharing of knowledge, collaborations and awareness-raising inside different communities towards their territory and their cultural environment.” [credit]

The 1996 Stalker Manifesto (by Lorenzo Romito) is available at the end of Walkscapes: Walking as an Aesthetic Practice (2017). Stalker proposes the transurbance as a means of mapping the unique spatial and social conditions of the contemporary city.

Article about “EUR(H)OPE Charade,” Hidden Histories 2021, Roma

“Stalker is a collective of architects and researchers connected to the Roma Tre University who came together in the mid-1990s. In 2002, Stalker founded the research network Osservatorio Nomade (ON), which consists of architects, artists, activists and researchers working experimentally and engaging in actions to create self-organised spaces and situations.
Stalker have developed a specific methodology of urban research, using participative tools to construct a ‘collective imaginary’ for a place. In particular they have developed the method of collective walking to ‘actuate territories’, which for them is a process of bringing space into being. Stalker carry out their walks in the ‘indeterminate’ or void spaces of the city, which have long been disregarded or considered a problem in traditional architectural practice. Referring to their walking practice as ‘transurbance’, the group views it as a collective mode of expression and a tool for mapping the city and its transformations, of gathering stories, evoking memories and experiences, and immersing themselves with others in a place. They use this knowledge and experience to address urban planning and territorial issues, focusing especially on the interstices of the contemporary city-region. Starting with the edges of the Tiber river on the outskirts of Rome, Stalker have since used this method in many other cities including Milan, Paris, Berlin and Turin.” [credit]

“Since their early walks, Stalker/ON have developed an approach to architecture that is profoundly participatory. Using tactical and playful interventions, they aim at creating spatial transformations through engaging in social relations, because as they have observed, the built environment takes too long to respond to the needs and desires of those who inhabit it. Places on the periphery and communities that are marginal take centre stage in Stalker/ON’s projects, working with amongst others the Roma and gypsy populations of Europe, Kurdish migrants and the homeless. Their projects show a commitment to those that society abandons and their method collectively tries to build projects with them. Through listening, making use of creative tools of mapping, walking, interventions and participation, Stalker/ON initiate processes of self-organisation that create convivial, social spaces.” [credit]

Other Work

  • Francesco Careri, “Transborderline,” Architectural Design 71, no. 3 (2001): 87-91.
  • —, Walkscapes: Walking as an Aestheic Practice (Barcelona: Gustavo Gili, 2003).
  • Francesco Careri and Lorenzo Romito, “Stalker and the Big Game of Campo Boario,” in Architecture and Participation, ed. Peter Blundell Jones, Doina Petrescu, and Jeremy Till (Abingdon: Spon Press, 2007), 249-256.
  • Peter Lang, “Stalker on Location,” in Loose Space, ed. Karen A. Franck and Quentin Stevens (New York: Routledge, 2001).
  • Lorenzo Romito, “The Surreal Foil,” Architecural Design 71, no. 3 (2001): 20-23.
  • “Stalker – Laboratorio d’arte urbana – Roma,” StalkerLab, www.stalkerlab.it.

References About

Quotes

ON/Osservatorio Nomade is an interdisciplinary research project initiated and promoted by Stalker, which proposes ways of interventions based on spacial practices of exploration, listening, and ralation, activated through creative tools of interaction with the environment and the inhabitants and with the archives of memories. Such practice aims to catalize the development of self-organized evolutive processes, through the establishment of social and environmental relations. The interventions build up a sensible, complex and dynamic mapping of territories and communities, through an interdisciplinary approach, activating interest and easly accessible. Such operative practice is a unique tool for knowledge sharing and contributes to the dissemination and widening of communities conciusness towards their territory and cultural environment, able to draw effective feedbacks through creative participation in territorial and urban management.
– Stalker/ON website, http://www.osservatorionomade.net

Stalker’s fundamental thesis for their manifold interdisciplinary strategies is that architecture, as a solid mass, cannot “change as quickly as the community that lives within it”. That is why they are pursuing the route of participative work with the residents in order to initiate a process that will produce an adaptive understanding of architecture and urban planning – through a community that is interested in their buildings and in the opportunities for adapting them.
– Urban Drift, Talking Cities (2006), http://talkingcities.org/talkingcities/pages/180_en.html

The idea is to rediscover, in the metropolitan territory, a sense that springs from the experience of the present state of things with all its contradictions, from an unopinionated perspective, free of reassuring and at the same time frustrating historical or functional justifications.
– Francesco Careri, Walkscapes: Walking as an Aestheic Practice (Barcelona: Gustavo Gili, 2003); see also www.stalkerlab.it

Giulia Fiocca

Architect, independent researcher and activist on urban and social trasformation focusing on the marginal realities and communities, leftover spaces, informal urbanism and self-organised social and cultural practices. Based in Rome. Studies among Rome, Vienna and Barcelona (Master ‘Metropolis’ in Architecture and Urban Culture at UPC). Since 2006 part of Stalker/Osservatorio Nomade partecipating several projects: Campagnaromana (2006), Rieres//Rambles in Barcelona (2006), Campus Rom: learning from Roma people and back (Rome, Serbia and Macedonia) (2006-08). Since 2009 promoting with Lorenzo Romito Primaveraromana, a Common Design Project for Social Chance in Rome. Visiting professor at architecture faculty, Southern Illinois University, Carbondale (2010). Co-founder of Stalker Walking School (2012).

Lorenzo Romito

Independent researcher on urban changes, artist and activist.Architect (1997), prix de Rome, Academie de France, Villa Medici, Rome (2000-1). Co -founder of Stalker in 1995 (www.stalkerlab.org), Osservatorio Nomade in 2001 (www.osservatorionomade.net), Primaveraromana in 2009 (primaveraromana.wordpress.com). Stalker Walking School in 2012 (walkingoutofcontemporary.com). Under those firms the work has been exposed and published worldwide.
Teaching experiences, walks, seminars and workshops with several schools including T.U. Delft, I.U.A.V. Venezia, H.E.A.D. Geneve, Parsons, the New School of Design New York, H.F.G. Karlsruhe, E.T.H. Zurich, Roma Tre Univ.

Aldo Innocenzi

was born in 1964 in Rome, where he lives and works. In 1995 he was among the founders of Stalker / ON. His work is centered on the creation of situations, which may favor changes in the urban fabric. Through strategies of participatory planning, his work re-qualifies spaces, relations and political practice.
Among his works: Stalker attraverso i territori dell’attuale (Roma,1995), Ararat-Campo Boario (Roma, 1999-2002), Immaginare Corviale (Roma, 2004-2006), Savorengo ker(Roma, 2008-2009), Museo Relazionale (Genazzano, 2012).

Pia Livia Di Tardo

Designer for public communications, specializing in graphic arts and visual communications. Di Tardo has a Law degree, and a Master’s degree in Multimedia Design from IED in Rome. She is Coordinator for public communications and web design for the Strategic Plan for the Metropolis and Region of Bari, Puglia, Italy.
Visual-graphic and web designer for the Laboratory of Urban Art Stalker / ON Rome, collaborated with the Faculty of Architecture of Roma Tre, the University IUAV of Venice (Arts and Design) and in the Academy of Fine Arts in Rome and Frosinone.

Andrea Carlson, You Are on Potawatomi Land (2021)

Andrea Carlson presented a site-specific large-scale (15’x266’) installation along the Chicago Riverwalk entitled, You Are on Potawatomi Land (2021). The sheer scale of the work required walking to take in the full text: “Bodéwadmikik ėthë yéyék – You are on Potawatomi land,” and it was situated on a recognized public walking space. The site of the work is near the former sandbar in the Chicago River that lends its name to the Sandbar Decision, a US Supreme Court case that “denied the Pokagon Band of Potawatomi ownership of the unceded land that was built into the lake by settlers.” In Carlson’s words, this work is “… meant to reaffirm Native people where they live and where they seem invisible, which is often the case in urban environments.”

Credits: Lee, JeeYeun. “Don’t Look to My Work for Reconciliation”: A Conversation with Andrea Carlson,” Monument Lab. Accessed February 13, 2022: https://monumentlab.com/bulletin/dont-look-to-my-work-for-reconciliation-a-conversation-with-andrea-carlson