Darkness Light Darkness, Jan Svankmajer

The utter brilliance of Jan Svankmajer

Stolen Shoe House

Angelo found this Dreamy Shoe House in Belle's Daddy's photostream, 

and since there was no way of sharing, I stole it.

The Austrian Phenomenon

Recently i caved in and bought The Austrian Phenomenon (Birkhäuser)

Its a huge book relentlessly documenting Austrian avant garde architecture 

from 1956 to 1973

I'm reading about HyperSpaces from the late 60s

Houses with two Horizons

People who want to live in plastic bubbles

plastic bubbles attaches to houses

suggesting that maybe they want to fly away, 

even though they're just a house.

Building Number Three: Pavilion for the Greek Ministry of Culture and Tourism

Here's some images from the just installed 

(and soon to be de-installed ) pavilion for the Ministry of Culture,
at the Thessaloniki International Expo

by Angelidakis, Argyropoulou + Mr Tzirtzilakis

Looking at all the other hyper-polished booths and pavilions, 

and with an eye firmly fixed on Greece's overall budget (as a country),

we decided to bypass any gloss, and just use stuff we found and stuff we will re-use.

We combined booths, to hint to the upcoming changes,

as planned by the Ministry: The Tourism booth was housed together with Young Greek Designers

vintage artist posters together with Campana Workshop chairs 

and Greece is for Lovers fantasmagoria

Bureau of Antiquities got a series of Mock Ups (recently reclaimed pieces)

mixed with official reproductions

: Copyville

Cinema cluster was a Tetris Mountain with five screens

Television Mountain, dirt from the Thessaloniki subway excavation, 

and reclaimed monitors looping the National TV archive.

Observation tower + Book Tetris Mountain

panoramic archipelago of department islands

Le Mepris

We were lost in a cloud of unawareness

white plaster, red eyes

Poseidon, arch enemy, blue eyes, blue lips

color check

contempt

big window, big rocks

big staircase

big sky

I see you as if for the first time

for X.

City of Tables: A Proposal

"His table became the world. Everybody came to his table, and they talked about everything. Once you put coffee on the table it became public space. If you put food on the table it became a home. With papers it became an office. Then you put a networked screen on the table and suddenly the world came to your table. Trees started to grow on the table and it became the base for a landscape. His table became the world"

Here's the proposal I submitted together with Point Supreme Architects, for the Greek Pavilion 

in the Venice Biennial of Architecture.

Taking Sejima's theme of "People Meet in Architecture", 

we chose the table as the par excellance vehicle for meetings. 

The idea was simple: Almost all public space in Greek cities 

is organised with the placement of tables, whether they are cafeteria tables, taverna tables or just fast food.

We proposed to inhabit the Greek pavilion with this city of tables. Some of the tables would function as display cases for projects, others tables would be displays for books, there would be tables for visitors to sit around,  rest and chat, maybe even have a light lunch. This city of tables would be a vehicle for displaying, discussing and researching architecture. A brief typological list of tables would include:

The Urban Table: Public space and its shifting functions would be the theme of this series.

The Environment Table: Architecture in the time of shifting climate 

and the economies behind Green.

The Archive Table: would present an eclectic survey of Greek architecture.

The Screen Table would evaluate the ways that nowadays 

we inhabit our screen as much as our buildings, with a sharp focus on social media.

The Meeting table would be a place to discuss the problems and solutions of this years Biennale.

The Table of Tables would evaluate all the above typologies of tables and more

etc.

Collaborators for this proposal included 

architect Keller Easterling (Yale), author of "Enduring Innocense" and much more, 

Sotiria Kornaropoulou, member of 51N4E

architect Markus Miessen, editor of "East Coast Europe", "The violence of Participation" and more

critic and writer Spyridon Papapetros (Princeton)

artist Angelo Plessas, Social Media and internet domination.

The Folk Fantasia of Bruce Goff

I have been meaning to post Bruce Goff's Bavinger house for ages. So long that I almost forgot about it,
and then I saw it again in the very nice blog of Daavid Mortl.

I have to admit I find Bruce Goff's architecture to be super challenging, because its sort of ugly-pretty. Goodbad. Funnysad. That sort of thing.
I do appreciate the folsky expressionisim, which like what might have happened if Northern California hippies time warped to Germany in the early 20th century.

looking at this I cannot believe that I'm living without a crystal garden (great photos here )

or a wooden carved bathtub? imaginary reception desk? suspended seating arrangement?
Whatever you are, I want you.

Ecosystem Beach reading

While on the beach I managed to read The Infrastructural City, edited by Kazys Varnelis. 

It is a contemporary take on Banham's Four Ecologies, updated to the fascinating mess that LA has become. 

Highlights include "Flood Cotrol Freakology" by David Fletcher which studies the evolution and disparate ecology of the LA River,

(a fake building that hides oil drills inside)

 Mark Ruchala's "Crude City" which talks about how LA has transformed itself from an oil city to an entertainment city, 

(a lonely tree that is not a tree but a cellphone antenna)

Kazys Varnelis' "Invisible City" on the surprising infrastructure of telecoms, 

Warren Techentin "Tree Huggers" on how trees shape the city, Ted Kane and Rick Miller "Cell Structure"  

and Roger Shermans' great "Counting on Change", 

an analysis of the hopscotch urbanism and exchange that takes places between awkward properties

Back from Ecosystem Beach

Just back from Antiparos, and the beach that I have used as an potential site for Menir House. While shooting some extra footage, I realised I never posted the photos of Menir Ecosystem, which was shown at Rebecca Camhi Gallery at Art Athina a few months back. It was a 3D print of Menir House on a cluster of white plinths. One of the plinths acted as a tiny beach for Menir House (photo-voltaic)

The other plinths accommodated the other members of the ecosystem: A copy of Paul Virilio's Bunker Archaeology, a beach plant and a framed image of the Menir House in it's alternate state where the photo-voltaic umbrella has turned into a wind turbine.

The Scientific Folklore Hallucinations of Dimitris Pikionis

Been looking at the drawings of Dimitris Pikionis recently, like this perspective study for a garden entrance, which I actually used to visit as a kid. I never knew the garden and what you saw in it was so precisely planned, though I could sense that the place was slightly spooky, and as kids we were told that this was the work of an important architect.
Pikionis was what we would call a Critical Regionalist, which means he updated modernism with a heavy dose of folk.
His seemingly simple folk landscape arrangements, were carefully, if not hysterically studied.

or were just entirely revolutionary, like this pavilion for the expo of Neo Faliro in 1938

private home

monument

super famous path towards the Acropolis

the magnificent drawings have a life of their own, they form a strange world of scientific folklore hallucinations.
Like this house that seems to have become one with an out of focus tree.

another garden

another gate

the Pourris residence (1953) of the first garden drawing.