Thursday, 4 September 2008
Wednesday, 30 July 2008
Tuesday, 20 May 2008
Put the charcoal on, too!
While you are at it, wish us success - and courage; we have been shortlisted for the Cypriot exhibit at the 11th Venice Architectural Biennale, curated by Sir Peter Cook. Yes, on the image above highlighted are our, Dear ARCHITECTS', names (for those of you who can read Greek). Click to enlarge.
MAKE SOUVLA - NOT WAR!
Fare forward to a Souvla Venicoise!
Wednesday, 14 May 2008
35°10’25 N 33°21’54 E
And another proposal for the Cypriot exhibit at the 11th Venice Architectural Biennale
Tuesday, 13 May 2008
Make Souvla - Not War!
Dear Architect's proposal for the Cypriot exhibit at the 11th Venice Architectural Biennale, under the title In Cyprus -Relax as Architects- Reinterpret, curated by Sir Peter Cook.
Here is Omada Ergasias' proposal.
Sunday, 4 May 2008
TOUCHING THE CITY: PROJECT 02 BENCHSPACE WALK WORKSHOP
Site 03
The Memorial Park, Guys
Existing between cultural manifestations and utopian configurations of nature the urban bench is a paradoxical figure. Originally and predominantly intended to be a mono-functionalist object, it struggles to accept its presence amidst the claiming of nature by cultural gestures -such as landscaping and gardening- and of cultural elements by natural processes. However much the materials and forms allude to Bucolic utopias, this uneasiness is on the one hand ingrained on the bench-object, often transforming it to a memorial of times, spaces and people, and on the other, the naturalistic idealism of its placement is upset by sights and odours, that don’t really smell of roses. This dialogue between nature and culture, monumentification and process as it takes place on the bench seems to not have interested the larger part of benchspace development or functions. Yet what are the relationships that can indeed sprout out of a reclaiming of culture, in the shape of its bench-space intervention, by nature? How does this transforms our understanding of using the bench - and of remembering the bench? And how does nature’s presence in that pivotal cultural space, the city, is reconfigured?
The Memorial Park, Guys
Existing between cultural manifestations and utopian configurations of nature the urban bench is a paradoxical figure. Originally and predominantly intended to be a mono-functionalist object, it struggles to accept its presence amidst the claiming of nature by cultural gestures -such as landscaping and gardening- and of cultural elements by natural processes. However much the materials and forms allude to Bucolic utopias, this uneasiness is on the one hand ingrained on the bench-object, often transforming it to a memorial of times, spaces and people, and on the other, the naturalistic idealism of its placement is upset by sights and odours, that don’t really smell of roses. This dialogue between nature and culture, monumentification and process as it takes place on the bench seems to not have interested the larger part of benchspace development or functions. Yet what are the relationships that can indeed sprout out of a reclaiming of culture, in the shape of its bench-space intervention, by nature? How does this transforms our understanding of using the bench - and of remembering the bench? And how does nature’s presence in that pivotal cultural space, the city, is reconfigured?
Tuesday, 22 April 2008
Sunday, 6 April 2008
Saturday, 5 April 2008
Touching the City: Benchspaces
Impromptu vs. Restricted Potential Benchspaces
A couch for a bench
And another one
vs.
Potential benchspace restricted to pigeon use. No sitting, no skateboards.
A couch for a bench
And another one
vs.
Potential benchspace restricted to pigeon use. No sitting, no skateboards.
Friday, 4 April 2008
Comings And Goings
If you can read Greek, here is a brief architectural appraisal of the geo-political re-definition of Ledras street, and in extenso the division of the city of Nicosia, as this has been taking place since yesterday morning.
Tuesday, 1 April 2008
Thinking the Bench[space]
A bench is a chair is a stoop...
Within the realm of definitions a bench[space] is hard pressed, cornered, even, before Joseph Kosuth, as far as its making present, its awareness, is concerned. However, the amnesia within which the bench[space] seems to exist contradicts most of its objects' formal characteristics: against walls, mostly upright, stiff, surrounding trees, encircling squares, delineating, even in parabolas, paths. Memorial benches, with memorial plaques – commercial, personal or arcane- essentially in memorial parks, attempt to transpose the bench[space] from its public to the private and back again. Few escape. Within this process the bench[space]'s relations with not only the memory of itself but with our remembrance of the bench[space] are radically altered. And ultimately with its use-value.
What is a bench for anyway?
One can not remember how many times (another) shoelace malfunction has forced a stop at a near-by bench[space] mid-way through a walk to step in it – the bench[space] and the malfunction. Or how many times a coffee-cup was placed onto an armrest only to be pushed over. Anyway if anyone would start remembering, by means of archiving and recollecting, such uses of the bench, he or she could easily claim an art-historical position between Yoko Ono and Richard Long as maybe another name to be dropped by research students.
But one will always remember a drunk escapade into a locked embankment garden and all the kisses punctuating the night, cigarettes graciously smoked on bench[spaces] after the smoking ban, free wi-fi network searches in metropolitan squares' bench[spaces], eyeing cruising parades in municipal gardens and afternoons akimbo under the sun in hotter climates. Others can also remeber us asleep on public buildings' porches and verandas.
Most of these are also engraved, imprinted, retold, in one form or other, onto such bench[spaces], in a gesture of reclaiming the privateerting nature of the public existence of bench[spaces] from PPPs and PSPPs. Or as an extension of the virality of public relations and social networking.
Others are abandoned.
Bench[space] Marks: A Spot
The social function of remebrance sites – congregational or not – long since gasping to catch up with our collective biography, our engagement with cities and locales begins no longer with legends but with bits of information. In an age of extreme proliferation of recording technologies, it is the bench[space] that can still challenge the digital camera's output for a place in our personal pantheon of heroic memorials. Whereas the camera captures and reproduces, the bench[space] receives and disseminates. The innumerable photographs circulating hard disks and external drives in digital form, preserve, flickrs. The bench[spaces], scattered, marked even in Memorial Parks, mark, memory. A letter of marque: the bench[space]. A hope, a hop, an ollie even in absentia of the anti-skateboarding technologies which have marked the marked bench. And after David Hasselhoff singing, who cares about what the walls may remember?
Dedication
How are we then to inscribe the bench[space]? Can the anonymous ink suffice? The pen-knife, would it be enough? Softly does it in such ocassions. When three are not a crowd and when such corner gin places, around the world, are welcoming islets. What are you looking at? As your are sitting next to me, across me, your body into mine.
Stuhlhockerbank by Yvonne Fehling and Jennie Peiz
Within the realm of definitions a bench[space] is hard pressed, cornered, even, before Joseph Kosuth, as far as its making present, its awareness, is concerned. However, the amnesia within which the bench[space] seems to exist contradicts most of its objects' formal characteristics: against walls, mostly upright, stiff, surrounding trees, encircling squares, delineating, even in parabolas, paths. Memorial benches, with memorial plaques – commercial, personal or arcane- essentially in memorial parks, attempt to transpose the bench[space] from its public to the private and back again. Few escape. Within this process the bench[space]'s relations with not only the memory of itself but with our remembrance of the bench[space] are radically altered. And ultimately with its use-value.
What is a bench for anyway?
One can not remember how many times (another) shoelace malfunction has forced a stop at a near-by bench[space] mid-way through a walk to step in it – the bench[space] and the malfunction. Or how many times a coffee-cup was placed onto an armrest only to be pushed over. Anyway if anyone would start remembering, by means of archiving and recollecting, such uses of the bench, he or she could easily claim an art-historical position between Yoko Ono and Richard Long as maybe another name to be dropped by research students.
But one will always remember a drunk escapade into a locked embankment garden and all the kisses punctuating the night, cigarettes graciously smoked on bench[spaces] after the smoking ban, free wi-fi network searches in metropolitan squares' bench[spaces], eyeing cruising parades in municipal gardens and afternoons akimbo under the sun in hotter climates. Others can also remeber us asleep on public buildings' porches and verandas.
Most of these are also engraved, imprinted, retold, in one form or other, onto such bench[spaces], in a gesture of reclaiming the privateerting nature of the public existence of bench[spaces] from PPPs and PSPPs. Or as an extension of the virality of public relations and social networking.
Others are abandoned.
Bench[space] Marks: A Spot
The social function of remebrance sites – congregational or not – long since gasping to catch up with our collective biography, our engagement with cities and locales begins no longer with legends but with bits of information. In an age of extreme proliferation of recording technologies, it is the bench[space] that can still challenge the digital camera's output for a place in our personal pantheon of heroic memorials. Whereas the camera captures and reproduces, the bench[space] receives and disseminates. The innumerable photographs circulating hard disks and external drives in digital form, preserve, flickrs. The bench[spaces], scattered, marked even in Memorial Parks, mark, memory. A letter of marque: the bench[space]. A hope, a hop, an ollie even in absentia of the anti-skateboarding technologies which have marked the marked bench. And after David Hasselhoff singing, who cares about what the walls may remember?
Dedication
How are we then to inscribe the bench[space]? Can the anonymous ink suffice? The pen-knife, would it be enough? Softly does it in such ocassions. When three are not a crowd and when such corner gin places, around the world, are welcoming islets. What are you looking at? As your are sitting next to me, across me, your body into mine.
Stuhlhockerbank by Yvonne Fehling and Jennie Peiz
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