ACHA ZABALLA ARQUITECTOS
Indigo
(OFL Lectures)

> Acha Zaballa Arquitectos | Indigo. A Blue-Green Approach

> First Edition: Winter 2016

> ISBN 9788894139457

> Language: English

> Pages: 40

> Price: € 10.00

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The urban development has been characterized by the ability of ongoing innovation and the continuous improvement. Now a day, in a context of global economic crisis, the planning development inherited from the post-industrial era seems exhausted. Today the appropriate use of resources and the accurate assessment of social priorities remain to be the objective. We wonder how the innovation provided by technology, which is increasingly accessible, is helping to improve our cities, to conserve resources, to generate new ways of sharing the public space. In parallel to technological progress, and somehow due to it, the renaturalization of urban areas is becoming a priority. We wonder in what way it matters this longing for the approach to the natural issue in the concept of urban development with the goal of equality and a common identity based on diversity.Considering this background we are seeing an increasing number of proposals thatsuit their scale to available resources, promote flexibility and give the highest prominence to public spaces; proposals arising from bottom-up processes aimed to generate connections that enrich social relations and help to boost the vital pulse, creativity and, as a result, the economy. Within this context we focus this lecture in our proposal for a specific case: the revitalization of Forus area in Stavanger (Norway). ‘Indigo’ is a re-naturalization strategy with special emphasis on identity. It connects the concept of phenotypic plasticity in biology with the hillside construction of two opposed neighborhoods in the city of Medellin. And it allows the description of reusing architectural fragments of demolished constructions to coexist in the same text as the tempting idea of thinking of architecture like an extended phenotype of the human body, like a big prosthesis that synthesizes specific ecosystems with genetic and behavioral necessities.

 
CAMERACRONICA MAGAZINE #13
Giuseppe Terragni

> ISSN 2281—1311

> First Edition: 2016

> Language: English and Italian

> Pages: 40

> Price: € 10.00

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MICHELE SBACCHI
Reversible Doctrine
(OFL Streams)

 

> Author: Michele Sbacchi

> Title: Reversible Doctrine | Essays on the unstable discipline of architectural design

> First Edition September 2016

> ISBN 9788894139440

> Language: English

> Pages: 144

> Price: € 12.00

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The book addresses the issue of reversibility of the discipline of architectural design. It is based on the assumption that architectural thinking is complex and unstable.
The study spans the extreme ends of architectural thought. On one hand, it aims at describing the reversibility of architecture and, on the other hand, it critically reconsiders some “fundamentals” of architectural thought. Indeed, despite the apology of instability, and praise for reversibility the book tries to focus on some archetypical “thinking tools” and the way they have been used within architectural theory. Principles, rules, abstraction as well as type and scheme are traced in their complex itineraries within architectural design especially in their early development in classical theories culminating in the Renaissance Neoplatonism. The impact of Cartesian thinking is taken into account as far as it acted to reverse architecture leading it towards its contemporary pragmatic and instrumental status. Within this frame a special place is given to the key notion of “construction” which ties together the above mentioned thinking tools and has been in certain cases at the core of architectural design. The role of “construction” and, more specifically “logical construction,” within architectural knowledge is analyzed in Giorgio Grassi, with reference to thinkers like Descartes, Kant and Foucault. To achieve this aim some of the realms that both Foucault and Grassi have “inhabited” are considered in detail, namely taxonomies and handbooks.
Other topics like the use of wood, clothing, landscape, secularization help to broaden the problematic field. The book owes much to Heideggerian thought. Yet it is vaguely permeated by an underlying discomfort with the load of that tradition. To some of the conservative and pessimistic views brought about by that line of thought, these writings attempt to substitute a more positive attitude.

 
CAMERACRONICA MAGAZINE #12
Landscapes and Power

> ISSN 2281—1311

> First Edition: 2016

> Language: English and Italian

> Pages: 36

> Price: € 10.00

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ELEANNA HORITI
Urban Tools
(OFL Lectures)

> Eleanna Horiti | Urban Tools. Exploring an Alternative Architectural Vocabulary

> First Edition: Summer 2016

> ISBN 9788894139433

> Language: English

> Pages: 32

> Price: € 9.00

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A somewhat meandering train of thought aiming to explore the necessity and utility in creating and developing sets of ‘peripheral’ structures and facilities to be used as urban tools, in order to target issues that have arisen or have become accentuated as a result of political and social processes. Presenting a set of examples of urban tool units either belonging to the vast and varied category of temporary shelter, or adhering to the concept of public space reinvestment, in an attempt to explore and interconnect issues such as precarity, transience and the need for shelter to the concepts of space reappropriation, the creation of contextualised infrastructure and the notion of welfare structures. Raising awareness of the existence of parallel realities within cityscapes and the gaps created in urban continuity and functionality. Raising awareness of the need for architectural proposals to not just create structures, but to initiate discussion and expand concepts in order to enable and facilitate alternative uses of urban spaces or utilities, while aiming to enhance exchange between the different strata within societies, enabling buildings/structures to become answers. A brief navigation through the urban context and the controversies surrounding the efforts to address needs imposed by transformative factors (mass migration, immigration, increase in the numbers of the shelterless) resulting from economic policies applied during the last third of the previous century and the subsequent globalisation. Acknowledging the fact that instead of real political solutions being sought, more often than not, political obligations are being transferred to the design realm. Questioning the possible existence of preemptive architecture, inasmuch as it is intended to prevent social iniquity and understanding that, as a rule, architects arrive ‘after the fact’, called upon to confront [already] established social situations/patterns.

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