In the last several years, a crisis of capitalist development has redefined our understanding of cities in terms of international policy making, political constituencies and individual and collective political expressions in the urban realm. Inter Unit 8 has been experimenting with possible new scenarios for this political readjustment at a global scale, departing from its most basic expressions in the city. As a result, students have constructed innovative political arguments by experimenting with the relationship between everyday material activities–such as waiting for a bus, dancing, chatting in the streets, or wheeling and dealing in the city squares–and a particular material organization. In these common everyday practices, students have found the materials from which to reconstruct the political experience in the city. Manifested in public and constructed as a physical material expression, these everyday practices acquire a political value — understanding the political as what Hannah Arendt described as action in public — and redefine new models of the interaction between the individual and the collective in the public arena.

29.1.10

Brief 04 W2

W3 Permeability/Porosity
01-05 Feb

Building on the discussing from the first term, the politics of skin openings will be reassessed through students’ designs throughout this week. Each student will provide an efficient system of openings for the skins that is consistent with the political argument being presented.

Readings
Steven Holl, Experiments on Porosity, The Architectural Review, 2006.

References
Steven Holl, Sarphatistraat Offices, Amsterdam, 1996-2000.
Francois Roches I' ve Heard About: Hypnotic Chamber, 2006.
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Design and research work of Intermediate Unit 8 Architectural Association School of Architecture London UK