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à flot

Location
Lausanne

Country
CH

Year
2024

Surface
25 sqm

Budget
35.000

Materials
Steel, wood, concrete

Thanks
Lausanne Jardins
Atelier La Grange
La Ressourcerie Fribourg
Société cooperative 2401 (Julien Pathé)

Intro
A F L O T is a device laying under the water surface that invites swimmers from the Geneva lake to gather and experience it through their bodies and senses. It was conceived as an interactive architecture which would add to the variety of swimming objects that can be found along the lakeshore. Through the executive process, and due to "potential" security issues, its presence was demanded to be clearly marked with buoys, signals, lights and beacons so as to make it safe and visible for other lake users. These elements implied an absurd contradiction with the essence of the installation. The project was finally cancelled by local authorities. Ironically, an object which was meant to disappear underwater, ended up literally disappearing from the venue LAUSANNE JARDINS 24.
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Lampyridae

Location
Argiartean, Donostia - San Sebastián

Country
Spain

Year
2022

Materials
Scaffolding, flanges, light bulbs

Team
Edorta Subijana
Orma

Intro
Lampyridae are light-emitting creatures made of scaffolding structures assembled in a unconventional way holding a light sphere. Their scale and situation in space offers an interactive promenade.
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RI-TORN

Location
Risøy - Haugesund

Country
Norway

Year
2021

Surface
10 Ha

Team
Juan Roque Urrutia

Intro
RI-TORN, a defined, yet open, framework for growth.

We propose Risoy’s revitalization as a model for urban development that merges sensibilities, rights, and interests through an adaptative strategy. The proposal is a time-based system constructed together: celebrating and integrating differences, taking care of the vulnerable, and offering space for the new. The project sketches an interdependency within a territory with two differentiated areas: a charismatic neighborhood and a busy shipyard shifting towards sustainable activities.
Regenerating Risøy’s represents an exceptional opportunity for Haugesund. The settlement of initiatives within the island will be the materialization of civic agreements, ultimately becoming a destination as it consolidates the sense of place-making for its community.
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Transducer

Location
Basel

Country
Switzerland

Year
2021

Surface
120 sqm

Budget
200k CHF

Team
Constructlab + Squadra

Intro
In the industrial production of building materials, economic efficiency and productivity dictate to what degree materials and human power are used, exploited, or neglected. This strictly economic logic produces vast amounts of waste and results in a loss of valuable knowledge and know-how. The cycle of continuous renewal is not only harmful to the environment, but it also deprives individuals of their power over the objects and materials they interact with on a daily basis.

“[...] the technical object must be saved. It must be saved from its present miserable and unjust status. [...] It is, therefore, necessary to modify the conditions in which it is found, in which it is produced, and in which, above all, it is used, because it is used in a degrading way” (Gilbert Simondon, interview with Anita Kechickian, 1983). It goes without saying that we consider building materials to be technical objects of the highest order.

We believe that the reuse and repurposing of construction materials will enable emancipation from the industrial cycle. Through associated forms of knowledge and craftsmanship, new sustainable social and pedagogical approaches can be explored as part of the building process.
In order to be guided from one path to another, repositioned, and reworked; these materials seem to need a module specifically devoted to their transformation: a transducer. Throughout this process, they establish a special relationship with their carers and provide them with skills and knowledge in return.

The pavilion is built over railway tracks. In the beginning, it primarily consists of storage spaces and a series of machines that help transform the in situ reused components into manufactured building elements. It generates the conditions for its own construction. Once structurally complete, the machines and tools remain for the transformation of other materials and the realization of events and workshops throughout the summer. Through its integration into a site formerly devoted to production and transportation, our project builds on this productive spirit and symbolically celebrates what has shaped its direct environment within a new system of values. To this tangible process are added all the advantages of social reactivation, ecological awareness, and a restoration of the human being into the site.
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© Jon Egia

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© Jon Egia

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BroadWindow

Location
Bilbao

Country
Spain

Year
2021

Materials
Metal, wook, grid, plastic bottles

Size
5x0.5x0.5 m

Team
In collaboration with Sébastien Tripod

Thanks
Baulan, Jordi Gómez (ornithologist), Jon Ander Sologuren (botanist), Cristina Stadlbauer (researcher).

Intro
According to the philosopher and researcher Baptiste Morizot, the ecological crisis must be conceived in terms of a “crisis of sensitivity”. He invites us to rethink our relationship to the living world and its stimuli (Manière être vivant, Actes Sud, 2020). Although we inhabit a built environment we tend to underestimate and neglect the complexity of living species that inhabit them as well.

Certain traditional typologies, architectural inexactitudes, or interstices of our aging constructions, have long offered an appropriate shelter for multiple organisms. The old walls host often rare flora and fauna which represent not only a historical and cultural but also an ecological heritage. Today, the processes of transformation and renewal of the urban fabric, driven by market interests, lead to the disappearance of shelters and the restraint of biodiversity. In most cases, cities are evolving without inquiries and keeping a prudential distance between humans and the rest of forms of life.
Following this observation, “towards an Ecology of shelter” wishes to launch the research on how habitat and dwelling could be affected and how they could trigger possible transformations of constructive and architectural paradigms. We find it essential to propose experimental initiatives towards the climatic challenges of our times, which open new ways of re-empowerment of cities threading new alliances with all living beings with whom we share the world.

A metal structure is implemented on the façade of a modernist building initiates a process of strategic actions, oriented by experts and researchers. The device expands one of the windows in the search of connecting the inside and the outside. The architectural element is conceived as a prototype which opens up new ways of how to envision the city of tomorrow in terms of tectonics and in its relationship with the environment.
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Strato-Logique

Location
Lausanne

Country
Switzerland

Year
2021

Budget
5K CHF

Materials
Metal profiles,

Size
5x1x1 m

Team
In collaboration with Sébastien Tripod.

Thanks
Antonin Basser (landscape architect), Noémi Evéquoz (biologist), Bernard Genton (ornithologist) Nicolas Galeazzi (artist), Christina Stadlbauer (researcher).

Intro
Implemented on the rooftop of a multifunctional building, a metal structure deconstructs a skydome and creates a buffer element that hosts an experimental ecological process. Zucchini, pea vines, and wild hops coexist with bird nests for swifts, the mycelium of Oyster Mushrooms, and other invited species. The device seeks to thread the interdependence of the human and the non-human with the assumption that the result is indeterminate.
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TAB

Location
Izola

Country
Slovenia

Year
2020

Budget
2k

Materials
wood, metal, cable, soil

Size
850 x 125 x 125 cm

Team
Brad Downey
Rok Pahor

Thanks
Rok Pahor
Tinatin Gurgenidze

Intro
Throughout 2020. the pandemic state made evident the general lack of quality of the architectural standards in highly populated areas. One of the forms in which this is manifested is in the fact that constructions have been turning their back to nature. In such context, nature is commonly regarded either as a luxurious accessory attribute or a common ground that not everybody would appreciate or look after.

The proposal pretends to create awareness of the importance of daily and domestic contact with other forms of life through the installation of a mechanical device that can bring, vertically and temporarily, a tree, a vegetable garden, or a beehive to our window. Furthermore, the vertical construction might trigger a series of unexpected shared relationships since it can serve as a traveling communitarian space that can engage the neighbours.
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TAL

Location
Lisboa

Year
2020

Materials
wood, plywood, iron

Size
35x3 m

Team
Tiago Pombal
Manuel Henriques
Isabel Antunes
Sara Battesti
Beatriz Gama
Sonja Lakic
Bruno Melo

Thanks
TAL
Future Architecture Platform
MAXXI
MAO
Estonian Museum of Architecture
Gate 7

Intro
Design for the exhibition "Handle with care: tales of the invisible" at the headquarters at the Palace Sinel de Cordes, headquartes of Trienal de Arquitectura de Lisboa.

Conceived as a single element that hosts an evolutive narrative, the scenography crosses the space intersecting with the existing architectural elements. Its configuration shows three differentiated parts which allow the content to be approached in three different ways according to its nature.

A continuous element develops from a table, to a platform and a canopy offering a changing experience in the way the space and the works are perceived. In addition, a series of sculptural elements, which emerge as extensions of the main structure of the scenography, introduce complementary information to the main exhibition content and therefore add a counterpoint to the promenade.
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Plug-in pulpit

Location
Desire Lines Residency - Oslo Triennale

Country
Norway

Year
2019

Materials
Wooden Joists, panels, paint, e-scooter

Size
84x85x270 cm

Team
collaboration with Brad Downey
photos by Henrik Haven

Thanks
Desire Lines Residency - James Finucane, Hanne Ugelstad Pål and Bjørn Ola, Kari Veiteberg.

Intro
Conceived as an artifact designed to attach to a city E-scooter, the plug-in pulpit becomes an urban gig worker.
The sculpture has the possibility to move, as well as to suggest an undetermined number of unexpected uses.
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© Nicolas Delaroche

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© Nicolas Delaroche

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© Nicolas Delaroche

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EDR

Country
Switzerland

Year
2018

Surface
150 m²

Team
Kuník de Morsier Architectes SIA

Intro
Located in the Vallée de Joux, between the lake and the forest, this wooden construction placed on a mineral base enables new relationships between the inhabitant and the wild. A large roof and a developed facade multiply the relations with the outside and transform the facade, usually considered as a limit, into a space as such, connecting the inside with the outside, and enabling it to be inhabited.

The mineral soil, continuous, unfolds on the sloping ground and receives a series of low walls which are supported by the wooden frame. The interior is not designed as a ground and a floor, but rather as a succession of spaces located at different heights and accessible by a series of steps, stairs and ladders, and nets that run through each other. Each space is unique, as much by its topology (its position relative to the others) as by its relation with geography. Reflective surfaces in the window openings increase the play of light and reflections and echo the reflections on the surface of the lake.
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the cross

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deconstructed swiss cross

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the plug

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on the river

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transportation procession

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plans

Watermill (steckdose)

Location
Kraut Festival - Luzern

Country
Switzerland

Year
2017

Materials
30x30 mm wood joists - 4mm wood pannels- glue - L35mm profiles - electrical installation - cable- plug

Size
3x3x1.5m

Team
collaboration with Brad Downey - technical (and emotional) assistance Reto Leuthold - Paul Lipp - Timo Müller

Thanks
Kraut Festival - Alice Busani - Esther Leupi

Intro
Set up on the river Reuss in Luzern, the mill reveindicates the power of water, a source of energy that has contributed to the development of the city since it’s foundation.
A white cross with the form of a sauwastika rotates with the water, transforms the movement through an alternator into electricity and offers a power plug at the other side of the wall. The sculpture generates a minimal architectonic function, it creates, within an impersonal transit way, a punctual space for use, detention, comfort.
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the ladder

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the ladder

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the ladder

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transporting

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the tunnel

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the tunnel

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the platform

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the platform

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the platform

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transporting

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the bar

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on the fields

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The tunnel, the platform, the ladder…

Location
UM-Festival 2016 - Fergitz - Uckermark

Country
Germany

Year
2016

Materials
aluminium, Dibond, revits

Size
300x300x150 cm

Team
collaboration with Brad Downey
building assistance Nicholas Kashian

Thanks
UM-Festival 2016 - Marc Wellman, Ilona Kalnoky, Ferdinand von Hohenzollern, Fergitz.

Intro
This L-shaped infrastructure is made of three parts, the tunnel, the platform, and the ladder. The horizontal passage can either be at the top or the bottom of the construction depending on the placement of the object. The vertical ladder is united with the horizontal passage. The viewer can engage with the object through an ascension of the round bars.

The tunnel, the platform, the ladder…functions as a standalone piece as exhibited in the water in a natural landscape, or as an attachment, complementary, to another building in an urban landscape. Unlike the tunnel, the ladder is open to whomever may be within reach, and invites an audience to transform into participants.

The stoutly, yet sleek construction heightens the experience of ascension, burrowing, and connecting with an unusual immediacy, and evokes possibilities unnaturally found in a singular place within cities or in nature. How often can one face a tree to climb it, rest on a limb, and travel beneath it? The duality to The tunnel, the platform, the ladder…rests in its interactivity, which, when pursued, results in the participant wrestling the ideas of constraints and confinement in order to find a way out.

[Rose Pacult]
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WoW

Location
Berlin

Year
2017

Surface
10 sqm

Team
Constructlab
Elisa Saturno
Patrick Hubmann
Alexander Römer

Intro
W.o.W is a workshop on wheels.
It is a big toolbox, and a tiny workshop. Its structure, when unfolded through simple yet unexpected mechanisms, just like a toolbox, reveals a fully equipped working space. Inside, there is space for storage of tools, materials and objects; on the upper space, the structure can host people overnight.
W.o.W is a moving project, built on a trailer: it doesn’t belong anywhere, it belongs everywhere. W.o.W is a temporary hub where sociality and mingling are encouraged through building, where learning low tech building techniques and material acknowledgment empower people to express their creativity. W.o.W engages reflections about material availability, up-cycling, pre-cycling and re-cycling.
W.o.W is a tool to generate projects.
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Dust

Materials
wood, acrylic paint, cable

Thanks
Sybille Neumeyer, Ties ten Bosch, Galen Gibson

Intro
The post-minimalist, stylised sculpture Dust is suspended, by cables, in air. The hanging flat wood board is carved in a corner, and it is opened in a twenty-point geometric shape that is, proportional to the surface, small. The tactile, multi-planed shape expands under the top, painted wood board, which lies perfectly flat, and is neither strained or stretched. In effect, the multi-planed sculpture finds tension in the work underneath, parallel to the physical surface on top. This extension beneath resembles an exaggerated, caricatured molecular makeup, and is, in effect, an unidentifiable but certain scientific form. Using negative and positive space to create this illusion, Dust shifts our gaze from the three-dimensional to volume in order to redirect the question from a closed surface to an expansive future—how is possibility produced in ,,significant’’ emptiness? Like a storage space beneath the piece, there is the magic of disappearance. Space is not constituted as simulative setting, but the consistent deploying practice of expressions, turning and reshuffling.

Fog covers the street, and intermittently,
Indecision floats white.
The vacuum returns to concrete
Unhurried, the haste, confused surprise
And indiscretion of dusk.

The perception of space is an illusion produced by the definition of its’ limits. Space can be light, energy, sound, life; but also nothingness, silence, air, dust.

A hanging plateau is occupied by a vacuum: an implied space, an absent form; a piece of void, quietness; suspended dust in the air.

[Rose Pacult]
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VII

Year
2016

Materials
palm tree wood - epoxi - electric installation

Size
16x13x24 cm

Team
Brad Downey - Nicholas Kashian

Intro
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front view

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reinforced structure for foundation

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foundation ditch

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1st stage: foundation basement

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floor platform

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2nd stage: temporary structure for assembling

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3d stage: floor placement

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4th stage: 20mm rebar welding

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5th stage: top part assembling

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unprogrammed alternative uses

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plans

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axonometries

Watertower

Location
Koudougou

Country
Burkina Faso

Year
2016

Budget
10 m E

Team
Kéré Architecture
Marta Migliorini

Intro
As part of the Infrastructure to supply the school of Schorge, this watertower has been conceived in connection with the local well and the orchard, within the didactic programme for the children. The process of design and construction has been, once again, in relationship with the local needs, techniques, resources and materials.

The structure is composed of 16+16 20mm concrete rebars welded forming a hyperboloid which acquires a somewhat iconic presence. It bears a 3000 liter water tank on the platform situated 6 meters above the ground. The construction process, although planned very rapidly, was carried out succesfully, with very scarce means, but with an efficient coordination between the designers and the workers.
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exterior façade

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integrated in the landscape of Burkina Faso

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innner courtyard

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classroom

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truss beams assembling

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Exterior wood log façade

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construction in progress

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axonometry

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constructive axonometry of a module

Lycée Schorge

Location
Koudougou

Country
Burkina Faso

Year
2016

Surface
350 sqm

Budget
0,5 M E

Position
project manager - designer - construction site supervisor

Team
Kéré Architecture

Thanks
Dominique Mayer
Yara Pavel
Marta Migliorini

Intro
Financed by the German Stern Stewart Institute, Lycee Schorge is an attempt to bring quality education to the kids of one of the poorest countries of West Africa and the world: Burkina Faso. The participation of the architectural team is, therefore, not superficial. Design, construction and further adaptations have been carried out within a direct and participatory process in which every single agent was involved.

Architecturally, the school is developed around a courtyard; one of the most noticeable elements of the West African architecture; which represents the space for encounter, for discussion, for celebration. The classrooms have been conceived according to very simple cross ventilation and shading principles, with no use of active engineering elements. The main element of the building is a large metallic roof which protects the laterite stone architecture from the strong African sun and enables the circulation of air beneath.
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Reinventing a chair

Location
Koudougou

Country
Burkina Faso

Year
2016

Materials
steel rebars

Size
Variable

Intro
The components of a system can configure a new reality for perception. Its projection may reinvent its meaning and come up with a new dimension for rationality.

The series explore the interaction of two structural elements of a steel chair in relationship with each other. Their shadow is the third element, which emphasizes the geometrical expression.
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Meroe Royal Baths

Location
Meroe

Country
Sudan

Year
2015

Surface
615 m²

Team
Kéré Architecture
Alice Busani
Daniel Heurmann
Yara Pavel

Intro
First excavated in 1912 under the University of Liverpool, the Meroe Royal Baths are now the focus of a joint research project between the German Archaeological Institute and the National Corporation for Antiques and Museums. Dating back to the first century AD, the complex is thought to have serviced two nearby palaces from the great African Kingdom of Kush in what is now modern-day Sudan. Located 200 kilometers northeast of Khartoum, the ancient city of Meroe sits on the eastern bank of the Nile and is still today marked by temples, palaces, and more than two hundred pyramids.
The proposal consists of a protective shelter that keeps the architectural heritage of the site. A 60-centimeter thick wall of mud brick not only offers protection against eroding winds and outside forces, but it also aids
in maintaining a stable interior climate. Vaulted brick ceilings and courtyards help to promote natural ventilation and humidity control inside, creating an optimal condition for the artifacts. A series of partially-suspended walkways offers visitors to experience the historic ruins. To minimize damage to the ruins, a combination of foundations and structural systems will work together to support all new construction. Furthermore, the shelter will maintain its structural stability while allowing for further research and excavation to continue.
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Table uns-table

Location
Moscow

Country
Russia

Year
2015

Materials
wooden table, cherry, cigarette butt, measuring tape, level, hammer

Intro
A slight presence is meant to alter the stability of a system; derange its equilibrium and reconfigure the physical laws which describe it.
It may seem a concrete gesture, or a consequence of an abstract process.
But, if the system was already unstable?
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axonometric view

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detail drawings

Railway Object

Location
Moscow - Outline 2015

Country
Russia

Year
2015

Materials
wood, steel, mounting hardware, railroad wheels

Size
3x1,5x4 m

Team
collaboration with Brad Downey
technical support Alexander Schelkin

Intro
An object can have two different meanings depending on the context where it belongs.
In the platform, the object serves for connection. It is an architectural piece. It has a use.
When it moves through the rails, the object becomes a sculpture, an absurd form which carries people nowhere.
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urban concept

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plans, elevations, sections

Lamp Parasite

Location
Moscow

Country
Russia

Year
2015

Materials
steel, wood, paint, railroad wheels

Size
1,5x1x1

Team
collaboration with Brad Downey
technical support Alexander Schelkin

Intro
A Soviet era cast iron street lamp is shaped by a parasitic white box. The box functions as a container of light.
A long ladder comes all the way up to the light and enters the box through a formless hole, which allows the light and shadows to combine symbolically.
A surreal image: architecture becomes light.
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Rationalism with grass

Location
Moscow

Country
Russia

Year
2015

Materials
hay bales, cages

Team
collaboration with Brad Downey

Thanks
Outline Festival

Intro
The coexistence of two different geometrical natures results in the birth of a dynamic and animated relationship.
The cages reaffirm the Cartesian; the search for pureness, abstraction, rationality.
Hay softens, jokes, brings the pieces to the sensorial world and makes them human-scale.
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hanging wooden canopy
photo: Erik Jan Ouwerkerk

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seating space
photo: Erik Jan Ouwerkerk

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seating finishing
photo: Erik Jan Ouwerkerk

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axonometric view

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structural plan

Africa Canopy

Location
Louisiana Museum - Humlebæk

Country
Denmark

Year
2015

Team
Kéré architecture

Intro
Common in African mythologies, the powerful symbol of the great tree is used as a bridge between two seemingly contrasting cultures. Just like the canopy of a great tree, the design provides the most basic form of shelter from the elements while remaining open and accessible. The wooden terrain below the canopy provides informal seating where visitors can gather, reflect, and encounter each other in an intimate setting. The articulated ceiling structure is dramatized by a programmed high-intensity daylighting system that mimics the arc and movement of the sun throughout the day. The installation highlights the powerful ability of architecture to embody cultural narratives, traditions, and aspirations.

Taking cues from traditional architectural forms and practices from a traditional village in rural West Africa, this architectural installation aims to highlight the importance of shading and sheltering as a way of protection from over-exposure to the sun as well as an inherent space-making device for community gathering. The design makes use of two major elements : an over-hanging ceiling component and an open communal gathering space underneath. The entirety of the installation is made of locally sourced unbarked willow branches and logs.
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outer wall

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inside view

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central core

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outer corridor

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outer corridor

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outside view

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exploded axonometry

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level plans

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constructive system

Camper Pop-up Store

Location
Weil am Rhein

Country
Germany

Year
2015

Team
Kéré Architecture
© Vitra

Intro
As an addition to the Making Africa exhibition at the Vitra Design Museum, the project aims to create a fully-functioning shop with an embedded atmosphere of virtual, sensory, and communal interfaces. Located inside the Buckminster Fuller geodesic dome on the Vitra Campus, the interior retail space is shaped by an interactive boundary.

Conceived as an interactive wall system made of lightweight composite timber panels, the architecture supports all functions of the store including product display and showroom, stock storage, welcome desk, transaction counter, fitting area and customer lounge. The spacing and structure of the wall elements allow for a visual and acoustic permeability, promoting a sense of discovery, exploration and chance encounters between visitors.
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concept

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detail drawings

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assembling axonometry

Suit Suite

Location
Berlin

Country
Germany

Year
2015

Materials
wood, wheels, paint

Size
2x1,2x2,1 m

Team
collaboration with Brad Downey

Thanks
Ane Nicolás Rodriguez

Intro
Architectural Performance together with the artist Brad Downey.

An architectural suit is designed to fit around Brad.
The artist becomes the exhibition.
The artist becomes the display. The display moves.
The artist becomes a place to lean on while you look at art.
The artists’ place is for you to put your empty champagne glass.

The sharp, simple, white, abstract geometry generates inner and outer spaces that trigger or are a product of flux. Humorously, the suit has an initial parasitic condition upon the gallery space, while maintaining the original functional, interactive, touchable, and usable intention. The audience can lean on the artist and look at art, sit on the artist, or drink on the artist, while the artist remains anonymous (no one can see their face, just clothes).

The artist uses his mind and body to change the behaviours of the visitors, and determines how he will be used like the predetermined regulations of the architecture in place. The built space, usually the matrix to behave on, turns into something also with this additive strategy. The suit’s enclosure allows the artist to be used.

In effect, the artist has become a joke. He is unable to communicate with the audience, but the audience needs him in order to be there and to continue their evening. The artist is a ghost, shelled in an expensive wood suite. At the very end of the gallery performance, Diego lunged forward, breaking the piece, and surprising himself.

At the end of the gallery performance, Sculptor Brad Downey, the anonymous artist within the suit, wrote me an email about the work Suit Suite “He seemed very happy at the end of the day, then very sad for breaking it. He looked shocked when it got fucked up.” Diego, by breaking the suit, allows for the artist to rejoin the event and interact without a facade imposing restrictions.

[Rose Pacult]
fig. (1)
[1]origin

fig. (2)
[2]limits

fig. (3)
[3]leaking

fig. (4)
[4]take off

fig. (5)
[5]flight

fig. (6)
[6]dropping

fig. (7)

Urban Patch

Year
2012

Intro
Concrete is defined there where it confronts totality [1]. It may be confused with the limits of the real [2], it may remain metaphysical [3], but it can definitely escape from itself [4] in search of its own meaning. [5]
However, it could be condemned to isolation, shrinking and, at some point, vanishing. [6]
fig. (1)
Birdview of Plan d'Aou

fig. (2)
urban diagrams

fig. (3)
conception diagram - the dream of the inhabitant made real

fig. (4)
scenario 1 - orthodoxe city

fig. (5)
scenario 2 - the green city

fig. (6)
scenario 3 - the interactive city
(most desirable)

fig. (7)
catalogue of typologies

fig. (8)
the result of a mixed boulevard

fig. (9)
view of a boulevard

Ruban d’Aou – EUROPAN 12

Location
Marseille

Country
France

Year
2013

Surface
13 hA

Team
vGH Company

Intro
Plan d’Aou neighborhood is part of the so-called Marseille-Nord territory. The setting is at present a strategic stake for the social landlords. Its placement and its geographical advantages gave way to independant real estate operations that have not really improved the urban and social relationships within the area. The harsh urban operations from the 1960s and the subsequent scars, after further interventions, have created a hermetic urban area. The settlements of housing units have been made along dead end streets; the isolating parking spaces surround and encircle the buildings. Each operation remains a succession of islands that float independently in this rocky plateau.

In Marseille the public space is often the scenario for the improbable encounters. The idea of appropriation is one of the characteristics of the Mediterranean culture and this sociologic phenomenon is transcribed into numerous interstices of the city. The public space is at the mercy of their inhabitants who invade it without reserve, mainly in a chaotic way. More than anywhere else, the model of the modern neighborhood, offers, through its improvised urban planning and at the present inefficient, non-defined spaces which have become areas places for meeting, for trading and for expression. It is precisely, within this Mediterranean context where this kind of social practice can become a coordinating tool, inasmuch as it is internally managed by local communities. Marseille is in France the capital of the «do it yourself».

The proposal is affirmed as an urban alternative for a settlement problem. It is based on the search for the hierarchy and the sense within the un-ruled spaces, public wasteland, wild car park sites, abandoned green areas. The project intends to give these spaces a communal and participative value. Therefore, it is the inhabitants that become the principal actors of their environment. The population identifies itself with the neighborhood, with the belief that a feeling of belonging to a heterogeneous totality will arise with time.

The « boulevards » that are created are thought for the total community of Plan d’Aou and could eventually also be extended to the surrounding areas. Different plots are proposed, which could be shared between individuals or groups, with the intention of offering spaces for common activities which could be developed according to their collective needs. This association of programmes will permit the inhabitants share their values and hence re-shape these places in order to serve for a bigger community.

diego sologuren

diego sologuren

à flot

Lausanne

CH

2024

25 sqm

35.000

Steel, wood, concrete

Lausanne Jardins Atelier La Grange La Ressourcerie Fribourg Société cooperative 2401 (Julien Pathé)

Lampyridae

Argiartean, Donostia - San Sebastián

Spain

2022

Scaffolding, flanges, light bulbs

Edorta Subijana Orma

RI-TORN

Risøy - Haugesund

Norway

2021

10 Ha

Juan Roque Urrutia

Transducer

Basel

Switzerland

2021

120 sqm

200k CHF

Constructlab + Squadra

BroadWindow

Bilbao

Spain

2021

Metal, wook, grid, plastic bottles

5x0.5x0.5 m

In collaboration with Sébastien Tripod

Baulan, Jordi Gómez (ornithologist), Jon Ander Sologuren (botanist), Cristina Stadlbauer (researcher).

Strato-Logique

Lausanne

Switzerland

2021

5K CHF

Metal profiles,

5x1x1 m

In collaboration with Sébastien Tripod.

Antonin Basser (landscape architect), Noémi Evéquoz (biologist), Bernard Genton (ornithologist) Nicolas Galeazzi (artist), Christina Stadlbauer (researcher).

TAB

Izola

Slovenia

2020

2k

wood, metal, cable, soil

850 x 125 x 125 cm

Brad Downey Rok Pahor

Rok Pahor Tinatin Gurgenidze

TAL

Lisboa

2020

wood, plywood, iron

35x3 m

Tiago Pombal Manuel Henriques Isabel Antunes Sara Battesti Beatriz Gama Sonja Lakic Bruno Melo

TAL Future Architecture Platform MAXXI MAO Estonian Museum of Architecture Gate 7

Plug-in pulpit

Desire Lines Residency - Oslo Triennale

Norway

2019

Wooden Joists, panels, paint, e-scooter

84x85x270 cm

collaboration with Brad Downey photos by Henrik Haven

Desire Lines Residency - James Finucane, Hanne Ugelstad Pål and Bjørn Ola, Kari Veiteberg.

EDR

Switzerland

2018

150 m²

Kuník de Morsier Architectes SIA

Watermill (steckdose)

Kraut Festival - Luzern

Switzerland

2017

30x30 mm wood joists - 4mm wood pannels- glue - L35mm profiles - electrical installation - cable- plug

Lausanne Jardins
Atelier La Grange
La Ressourcerie Fribourg
Société cooperative 2401 (Julien Pathé)

Edorta Subijana
Orma

Brad Downey
Rok Pahor

Rok Pahor
Tinatin Gurgenidze

Tiago Pombal
Manuel Henriques
Isabel Antunes
Sara Battesti
Beatriz Gama
Sonja Lakic
Bruno Melo

TAL
Future Architecture Platform
MAXXI
MAO
Estonian Museum of Architecture
Gate 7

collaboration with Brad Downey
photos by Henrik Haven

collaboration with Brad Downey
building assistance Nicholas Kashian

Constructlab
Elisa Saturno
Patrick Hubmann
Alexander Römer

Kéré Architecture
Marta Migliorini

Dominique Mayer
Yara Pavel
Marta Migliorini

Kéré Architecture
Alice Busani
Daniel Heurmann
Yara Pavel

collaboration with Brad Downey
technical support Alexander Schelkin