Future Faculty: Post-Socialist Russian City Project

When: Wednesdays | 19:30-22:00 (Round Table Discussions) | 6-8 hours during day (Workshops)

Where: Auditorium U, Faculty of Architecture TU Delft (unless otherwise announced)

To Do: Please complete the weekly assignment in preparation for round table discussions.

Subscribe: To indicate your availability for workshops, please fill out the form linked.

April – September “The Post Socialist Russian City”

April 8 | Round Table Discussion 1 “The Collective”

After a short introduction to the project, we will begin discussion on “the Collective.” What does “the Collective” evoke in you? Architect and Russianophile, Bastiaan Kwast will be giving a short presentation on Russia and private/public space in the 20th century, followed by a round table discussion.

Architect and Philosopher, Leslie Kavanaugh will join the roundtable discussion.

Please check out the slides and notes from this meeting.

April 15 | Round Table Discussion 2 “the Neighborhood, Pt.1″

We consider the definition of neighborhood. What makes up a neighborhood? What are examples of “ideal neighborhoods”. How does “neighborhood” fit into “the collective,” or how does the collective express itself in the neighborhood? We approach the neighborhood as a module or starting point of our discussion.

Dimitri Zadorin will present a brief history and evolution of pre-fab housing in Russia with an emphasis on communal space followed by a presentation by Leslie Kavanaugh on the relationship of the development of “collective” in philosophical terms.

Please check out the slides and notes from this meeting.

April 22 | Round Table Discussion 3 “The Neighborhood, Pt.2″

In continuing our study of the neighborhood, we consider design interventions on the neighborhood scale. We consider examples of interventions (i.e. products, services, events) that improve the neighborhood quality.

Anna Fenko a psychologist and industrial design researcher from Moscow will be giving a talk, on consumerism as a driving force of the evolution of post-socialist urban spaces.

Loucas Papantoniou, an industrial designer will be giving a short presentation on participatory and co-design.

Please complete assignment 3 before the meeting and upload results to: info@futurefaculty.org

May 12 | Round Table Discussion 5 “Forces on Society” (Tuesday in Amsterdam)

Tahl Kaminer is one of the founding members of 66 East. He is a registered architect and has an MSc. Architectural History and Theory degree from the Bartlett, UCL, London. Tahl recently finished his doctoral research at the TU Delft, where he studied the relation of architecture to society in a thesis named ‘Architecture and Negation’.

May 13 | Symposium Contextmapping

We will visit the contextmapping symposium (guerrilla style) organized by Professor Pieter Jan Stappers from IDE. In this half day event, PhD students from Studiolab, Liz Sanders from MakeTools and Jane Fulton Suri, from IDEO will be presenting their work.

Round table discussion is planned on Tuesday May 12 in Amsterdam

May 20 | Round Table Discussion 6 “David Harvey and Interventions”

Leslie Kavanaugh (architect and philosopher) is invited to lead the next round table discussion. The discussion will focus on what architects and designers can do to create a different sense of possibilities in a confused world. It will be a continuation to understand ‘the collective’ as it will also be an extension of the micro interventions that you proposed at the previous meeting.

May 27 | Round Table Discussion 7 “From Early Russian Cinema to Nostalgia”

Marc Boumeester (filmmaker) will lead this round table discussion on themes such as early Russian cinema, Russian development of the basic cinematic theory and we will look at film fragments and formulate recommendations for future interventions.

Part 1. Presentation and discussion

Proposition 1: Since the arrival of immersive media design, the odds seem to be in favour for a regeneration of the unbound experiment and free-spirited discovery of media-art expressions, in a way which is only truly precedented by the European Avant-Garde movement of last centuries early decades.

After a swift introduction on the (early) Russian cinema, its major partakers (Eisenstein, Vertov, Pudowkin) and the Russian development of the basic cinematic theory (which has not lost any significance in almost a century), we will look at the movements contemporary validity and conclude why – apart of the general rapidly changing socio – economical and cultural climate – also the major Russian “peoples” emotion (nostalgia) caused an un-natural death to this movement.

We will look at some fragments of films by: Duchamp, Léger, Man Ray, Sokurov, Eisenstein, Vertov, Kalatozov, Tarkovski, Ivens and others.

We will use the esprit and vectorism of the immersive movement to deepen our understanding of tangible and non-tangible micro-intervention

Part 2. Minimal presentation and maximal discussion

Proposition2 : Non-tangible Micro-interventions have a major impact on socially deformed areas, but only if they are:

of low cost
self maintaining
non intruding
introducing a new structural narrative

We will discuss some examples of existing work and try to classify the parameters and terms which are applicable to this theme. In the next phase we will brainstorm on practical interventions for the specific site(s) at hand, and try to formulate some recommendations for future intervention.

We will look at some work by: Greyworld, Illustrious, Semiconductor, Cristo, Duchamp, Documenta and others.

June 10 | Round Table Discussion 8 ”The development of the Afrikaandermarkt in Rotterdam”

In this round table discussion Dennis Kaspori will discuss the new development proposals for the Afrikaandermarkt in Rotterdam. A vital part of the neighbourhood though it is being kept secluded; Dennis will show previous work whereby the neighbourghood acts in collaboration with the architect and other parties.

Dennis Kaspori, architect and a founding member of The Maze Corporation, an office for research and design on issues related to the urban condition, public space and housing. He is focused on the development of an engaged architectural practice that seeks new spatial solutions for these issues in close collaboration with other fields of expertise (philosophy, art, graphic design, economy and software-development).

June 17 | Round Table Discussion 9

“How can architects and industrial designers adapt mass production and pref-fab techniques in order to design a sustainable collective living space?”

Bart Goldhoorn will talk about the Biennale project that he is currently preparing for September 2009. It will focus on the so-called Micro Rayon 2.0; new microrayons whereby architects use pre-fabrication and mass production techniques to create non standard buildings versus the existing principles of building a microrayon. Also he will show the condition, conflicts and possible additions for existing micro rayons in Russia.

Next to this Axel Kilian will show his unorthodox design approach on architecture and design.
Axel Kilian currently is an Assistant Professor at the TU Delft and holds a PhD and SMArchS in Design and Computation at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. His research focuses on Design Exploration in Architecture and Design based on computational models.

June 22 | Round Table Discussion 10

The evening will centre around the margins that architect, planners and designers forget in public space. We will focus on new ways/methods to interpret public space, Jan Konings calls them ‘infiltrations’ in order to have a more dynamic collective space. Jan and Timo will show examples of micro urban projects that they conducted and plan to develop in the future.

Jan Konings is an industrial designer. He is co-founder of the office Ral2005, that specializes in design for public space. Previously he co-founded the office Schie 2.0 and together with Jurgen Bey he had the design office Konings.
Timo De Rijk is a design-historian at the Faculty of Industrial Design at the TU Delft. Next to that he is a guest-lecturer at the Design Academy Eindhoven. He is editor of the Dutch Design Annual and has published several other books such as ‘Under Cover’ (with Ed van Hinte) and ‘The World According to Concrete’ (editor).

June 24 | Round Table Discussion 11

In this meeting Gerrit Oorthuys would like to share his historical expertise on Moscow and St.Petersburg with us. Gerrit will talk about how both cities developed and how you can divide Moscow in several layers of time and also will give us insight in important architectural places. For this he will show dia’s from his personal archive that he collected during several visits to Russia.

Gerrit Oorthuys (architect and historian), in the 80’s he taught at the TU Delft and Rietveld Academy in Amsterdam. During the Khrushchev period, Gerrit was able to do research on Constructivist in the Russian archives. This resulted in several exhibitions, trips to Russia and further research. Together with Rem Koolhaas he did a research project on the work of Ivan Leonidov