An unconventional digital environment
The challenges the entire world has faced recently have also become challenges for designers, architects and urbanists. Calls for new models that would transform decades of self-complacency into practices dealing with the politics of relations, neighbourhood, energy flows, and ever changing urban dynamics have merged with calls for political commitments that demand care, empathy and awareness of the other.
The current state of affairs has also brought changes into the functioning of numerous institutions in the field of architecture. Among them is the Future Architecture Platform, and its 27 architecture museums, festivals, publishing houses and other organizations were forced to find other ways to reach out to their audiences.
How are they adapting to the consequences of immediate health crisis? How are they going to work in the coming months? And how are they approaching their audiences?
From rooms
In this pandemic era, we have become hyper-aware of the materiality and dimensions of our rooms. During periods of self-isolation, it is likely a room where you will while the time away. The era of video conferencing has exposed our private rooms online. These days, we glimpse each other’s decorated walls or books on shelves in call after call. The fragments of these rooms become part of our own spaces, blurring the boundaries of public and private spheres, of what is tangible inside and what is immaterial elsewhere. The opportunity to peek into these unfamiliar spaces of the others—and have our own projected outwards—is at once entertaining and unsettling. Such was the mindset of twenty-seven leading European architectural institutions when they opened their doors virtually through the Future Architecture Rooms platform.
Peek behind the scenes
So far, more than 130,000 people have visited the rooms where the members of the Future Architecture platform, led by Anastassia Smirnova, concept curator, have constructed a context for exchange, knowledge transfer, discussion, education, and presentation. A space that can respond to the effects of the pandemic, without being disrupted by them. In the rooms the curators and producers, directors and managers as well as their collaborating architects, critics and publics are free to communicate as they wish. Every room features a short video allowing us to peek behind the scenes of some of the most interesting critical projects in Europe, joined under the common theme Landscapes of Care.
Help to shape the most groundbreaking architectural happenings through Europe
FA platform leader and director of MAO, Matevž Čelik, believes that the virtual sphere can function as a place to temporarily fill the void caused by this emerging situation and help stakeholders in architecture maintain genuine contact as well as exchange knowledge and ideas with each other.
“Since everyone involved in international coalitions like Future Architecture has been chained to the screens by the pandemic, we wanted to provide a more enjoyable way to meet online and connect. I want the platform as a building to remain constantly open to everyone and I hope that in Future Architecture Rooms people will always find new potential partners, friends and inspirations.”
The identification of new potentials is also the theme of the platform’s upcoming annual open call. Where emerging designers and architects with their ideas can help to shape the most groundbreaking architectural happenings and events that form the core of the European Architecture Program. Titled Landscapes of Care, this year’s open call will provide a broader space for reflection, debates and proposals about the future of architecture. Applications will be open from November this year.
Future Architecture Rooms is a project by Museum of Architecture and Design in Ljubljana.
Director: Matevž Čelik
Creators
Anastassia Smirnova (SVESMI), concept curator
Milan Dinevski (MAO), executive curator
Anna Kulachek, graphic designer
Maksim Karalevich, digital designer
With the participation of James Taylor-Foster (ArkDes), Bika Rebek (Some Place) and Ana Dana Beroš (DAISAI).
For general and press inquiries please contact Maša Špiler: masa.spiler [at] mao.si
