April 2016

Viceversa 4

Edited by

Davide Tommaso Ferrando

Critiques of architectures

“Critique is no more!”. This is one of the few beliefs upon which everyone agrees. On the contrary, woe to those that insist on understanding more than you actually need about God knows what. Thus, if the world has become incapable of reflecting because globalization and digitalization wanted it to be so, then woe to those who linger upon, clarify, woe to the cowards who don’t intend to ride the interactive speed of our times.

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Index:

Valerio Paolo Mosco · 4-5

Editorial

“Critique is no more!”. This is one of the few beliefs upon which everyone agrees. On the contrary, woe to those that insist on understanding more than you actually need about God knows what. Thus, if the world has become incapable of reflecting because globalization and digitalization wanted it to be so...

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Davide Tommaso Ferrando · 6-7

Critiques of architectures

The actual dynamics of the editorial market, characterized by the transfer of certain discursive functions from the printed to the digital sphere, are causing a deep transformation of architectural discourse, having opened, indeed, the way to new paths of experimentation, that several independent editors...

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Valerio Paolo Mosco · 10-13

Naked poetry

Any valuable work of art stands in contrast to its own times. This is the distinction between artworks that can be called poetic and works that can’t. The latter try their best to ride the tiger of the current moment, and in so doing they even try to run ahead of it, getting inevitably devoured. Architecture...

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Antonello Marotta · 14-25

Counterform in architecture and inner space

The philosopher Georges Didi-Huberman in his book La somiglianza per contatto. Archeologia, anacronismo e modernità dell’impronta [La Ressemblance par contact, Minuit, 2008] allows us to bring into focus the reflection upon traces, in the relationship between...

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Daniel Tudor Munteanu · 26-35

A haunting house

In the Greek movie Kynodontas1, the children of a middle-class family imagine the world beyond their quiet rural estate solely on the basis of their parents’ accounts, regardless of how laconic or misleading those may be. Airplanes, for example, are believed to be small toys that might fall into their garden. I...

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Mariabruna Fabrizi, Fosco Lucarelli · 36-43

The house for doing everything

The Amphitheater House is a 2007 project by Greek architect Aristide Antonas. Built in Hydra, a small town on an island close to the Piraeus, the port of Athens, the building is mostly used for short term stayings. Humble, yet subtle in its exterior features, the house is a...

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Cruz Garcia, Nathalie Frankowski · 44-49

Theory and tribulations of the free section

Criticism poses an old problem — Ito argued. He had majored in social sciences, and was now writing about the spatial manifestations of economic models. While a Marxist background provided him with a clear scope on historical and dialectical materialism, he was now...

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Tomà Berlanda · 52-57

Building in Malawi

The call from the editors of Viceversa was fairly loose and quite unexpected, an invitation to select works that would be of significance for me. My personal trajectory over the last 5 years has brought me in contact with many different realities in Sub-Saharan Africa, and for this reason I chose to talk about...

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Camillo Boano, Francisco Vergara Perucich · 58-81

Half-happy architecture

We thought and discussed a lot before writing this text. Few weeks ago, we witnessed that Alejandro Aravena was nominated to receive the Pritzker Prize this year and we were puzzled by the use and the abuse of the buzz-concept of “social architect”. After that then...

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Davide Tommaso Ferrando · 82-89

The plentifulness of scarcity

New York City, USA. A flock of steel beams and glass panels is spotted in the early morning while gently flying over the streets of Manhattan, headed towards an empty plot facing the Hudson river, where they magically assemble in mid air, giving shape to a dense complex of shiny skyscrapers. An inelegant...

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Jason Hilgefort · 92-101

HIGH.LIghting

Without a doubt, the High Line is one of the most iconic projects of this century. But more interesting than the design itself is how it has framed the relationship of spatial design (architecture, landscape architecture, urban design, etc) with its many “outside forces”. Whereas previously spatial designers...

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Lucia Tozzi · 102-111

Naples Underground

There is nothing to do, architects like soaring up high. They want to expand into light, into space, occupy the air, the sky, they want to cubate. They love extrovert and recognisable forms. Digging is stuff for moles, ants, for intellectuals at the most, for psychoanalysts. Worse still, for engineers. Geoff Manaugh can write as much as he...

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Luca Silenzi · 112-123

(Un)compromising

Architecture is positive, optimistic by definition. Everyday as designers we solve problems, we see beyond what is here and now. We put great effort turning any constraint in to a resource, a vantage point from which to come up with new ideas, to test new visions. But I think it’s time to liberate this...

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Léa-Catherine Szacka · 124-131

Curating as form of criticism?

Much ink has been spilled over the first Chicago Architecture Biennial (CAB). We know that the exhibition, taking place at the very hearth of United States’ modernity, was curated by art directors Joseph Grima and Sarah Herda. We were also told that the CAB, the first event of the genre to be...

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Ethel Baraona Pohl, César Reyes Nájera · 132-141

All of the ants left Paris

One night last summer, we were looking for Perseids stars in an urban hill, when suddenly a roar disrupted our peaceful night exploration. A wild pig emerging from the dark trotted to our position attracted by the smell of the peanuts we were impulsively eating...

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