wednesdays 44

Since September 2003 the 5th Architecture Biennial in Sao Paolo has been showing a combination of international thematic exhibitions and, for the first time, national presentations. Instead of a glossy show of national (built) achievement, under the title ‘Metropolis’ there is going to be an active analysis of the future of the city on the basis of concepts and examples of architecture. At the same time the continually tightening constraints on architecture in urban space are being addressed. The teams selected to represent Austria by the curator Angelika Fitz are presenting innovative counter-positions to centralistic urban planning strategies and all demonstrate dynamic interventions in the urban fabric. Wednesdays 44 is presenting the Austrian contributions as well as general impressions from Sao Paulo.

Presentation of the programme:

Angelika Fitz

curator of the Austrian contribution

Teilnehmende ArchitektInnen:
– Klaus Stattmann
(Promenade Akzidental) proposes “performative interstructures” which are no longer landscape but not quite architecture, recalcitrant spatial configurations inviting a variety of usage/occupation.

– the next ENTERprise
(Generative Tactics) are staging fleeting and simultaneously spatially intensive structures as a counter-argument to architecture that is increasingly being business-managed and defined by rigid factors.

– Wolfgang Tschapeller
(CATSCAN) uses existing buildings or leftover structures in the city as urban landscape, as 3-dimensional building sites. In equally parasitic fashion ‘Guestrooms’, for example, are docked onto various buildings in the city and address, among other things, the abundance of space.

“However, what lends specific political potential to the architectural and urbanistic approaches of the three participating teams of architects, Wolfgang Tschapeller, the next ENTERprise und Klaus Stattmann, is their transversal performative nature which runs across the functional differentiation of the social sphere. Their multiple transversal movements run along unexpectetd routes and are manifested in forms difficult to reference.”
(Angelika Fitz)