dimanche 28 février 2010

There is an architectural invention I believe James Wines (SITE) created that fascinates me. It consists in designing architecture as it is expected to be, yet this paradigm is being frozen, corrupted and dramatized in a way which cannot be ignored and therefore which question this paradigm. This technique is a perfect architectural adaptation of what the Situationnists were calling Detournement, a form of acknowledgment that resistance towards establishment can be only accomplished by this same establishment's weapons and pictorial objects and therefore the hijacking of those weapon in order to flip them back towards their system of production.This invention has been re-used by Edouard Francois for his renovation of the Fouquet's Hotel in Paris.

samedi 27 février 2010

In his Bunker Archeology (1975), Paul Virilio establishes an inventory of bunker typologies and tries to determine what the essence of those militaries architecture might be.The plans and sections inserted in the book illustrate spaces which are not anymore framed by walls as usual but rather spaces within the walls. The interior space is thus felt like tunnels and cavities inside a concrete mass, the wall itself.However those walls have an important characteristics which is that they are not anchored in the ground, allowing themselves to slightly move whenever a bombshell explode nearby.You can also read the two articles (here and here) we already released on boiteaoutils and the one written by Geoff Manaugh for BLDGBLOG.

The stunishning and poetic work of Vincent Mauger is perfectly fitting in this (UN)WALL thematic. Maugers use of simple material as concrete block, brick cardboard or plywood, that are cheap and daily used to build walls, shows a new face when it comes out as art pieces. The simple absence of ciment or any junction between brick or pipes just let us reading the landscapes and the constinuous surfaces.

vendredi 26 février 2010

Erika Hock creates some very interesting installation illustrating a force developing enough energy to break a wall. The device is pretty simple since it only implies a set of adjustable straps but the process it sets up is so powerful that it can be seen as a wall breaking machine that pressure the wall so intensively that it breaks down little by little.

Ladonia is a micronation within Sweden territory, proclaimed in 1996 by the artist Lars Vilks after he built a monumental labyrinthine sculpture on it in 1980. This splendid structure called Nimis is at the center of an extremely long trial that ended in the decision of demolition but thanks to an issue of ownership it actually never happened (however another sculpture has been removed by a crane boat in 2001).

If you want to read more about Ladonia or even ask for the citizenship you can visit the national website.

mercredi 24 février 2010

I already did a post on Sarah Oppenheimer's work (read it here) but I thought it would be relevant to make it reappear for this (UN)WALL theme. This artist considers the wall as a plain monolithic mass and achieve some piercing into it revealing what is supposed to be the internal material composing the wall. She then plays with the visitor's point of view by the various directionality of the piercing she achieves. This way, the wall that used to be a screen preventing the vision becomes a vision device that makes us look at things in a different way than if the wall did not exist in the first place.

Reading about our (UN)WALL theme, redactors from La Periferia Domestica kindly sent us their own selection dealing with the Wall and the Hole in a smart phonic association of those related notions.Our own selection will follows all along the end of the month and March.

mardi 23 février 2010

Francois Bellanger from Transit-City recently released a very interesting article about how Western Polices are now using drones in order to increase the control they already have on the city. The post is written in French but you can also read the Guardian's article about it and go back to the two others posts (here and here) about drones on boiteaoutils.The appearance of those drones in urban security seems pretty ineluctable, therefore the resistance we may propose should probably be acknowledging their presence and inventing some means of hijacking or neutralizing them...

The steel house has needed fifteen years (starting from 1974) to be built by its designer, the sculptor Robert Bruno. One hundred and ten tons of steel have been used to build it and the result recalls Andre Bloc's sculptures/architectures in which the space is before all a poetic expression of the artist' desire.

lundi 22 février 2010

The Great Hanshin Earthquake occurred in 1995 in the Kobe region and modified in a couple of minute the entire structure of the city killing approximately 6000 people.Ryuji Miyamoto did a series of photographs of the post-apocalyptic Kobe completing thus his theme of Architecture of destruction started with the destruction of the Kowloon Walled City and Hans Poelzig's Grosses Schauspielhaus' death in Berlin.I definitely recommend his photographs books even though they become pretty rare to find them...

dimanche 21 février 2010

In 1992, Japanese artist Tadashi Kawamata (see previous posts here and here) was commissioned to create an installation around the abandoned Small Pox Hospital on Roosevelt Island (NYC). Faithful to his craft language - he was using it for more than ten years already - Kawamata and his team produced a wooden labyrinthine structure whose rough aspect was strongly contrasting with Manhattan skyscrapers.What is interesting here is not as much the final product than the three months that this group of people led by Kawamata needed to achieve the construction lightly embracing the heavy stones of the severe hospital.