Languages are constantly transforming as humans interact, change habits and ways of doing things. This is not a radical observation. More intriguing to ponder is whether languages also transform us and the world in which we exist. Does it matter what words we use about the world? Could we, by shaping a language, also shape the world? Would the world look different if other words had been used? This work is about the urban environment, and how it is transformed by people interacting with the world that surrounds them by evoking more just living conditions. It is also an effort to demonstrate how the urban environment could be imagined in ways that differ from the neoliberalist view. Other imaginations, arising from different perspectives on and incentives for development, such as equity and inclusiveness, might produce another city entirely. From urban practices in four different contexts in Sweden, South Africa, India and Brazil, this book investigates four dynamics of change: conflicts, commons, networks and hybridity. From this framing, new concepts and radical imaginaries emerge, presented here as a Language of the Becoming City.
New Yorkers and visitors alike have long hailed Queens as the melting pot of America for the diversity of languages, populations, and cuisines represented in the borough. However, less has been said and studied about the architectural diversity of its housing stock. From the brick buildings of Sunnyside Gardens inspired by the English Garden City movement, to the Tudor and Queen Anne Victorian-style houses that have been personalized by their inhabitants, Rafael Herrin-Ferri has spent the last seven years documenting these houses through a photo-survey of the borough. Much like a field guide or scientific study, the subjects in All the Queens Houses are methodically photographed as standardized house-portraits to capture the architectural style and context of the neighborhood. While there may not be people photographed in the houses and streets shown, the vibrancy of the human spirit shines through the architectural details of each portrait. By painting a portrait of Queens through its idiosyncratic housing styles, Herrin-Ferri celebrates the rich multiculturalism, spirituality, and diversity that has given Queens its well-deserved title of the “World’s Borough.”
Join Open House New York for a discussion with Rafael Herrin-Ferri about his extraordinary photography project, culminating in the book All the Queens Houses. While the book was published in 2021, Herrin-Ferri has continued his work documenting the diversity of Queens houses on the website All the Queens Houses and on Instagram at @allthequeenshouses.
This event will be hosted live on Zoom. You will receive the link to the event content in your order confirmation email, and in a reminder email before the event starts. The event will be recorded and shared with all ticket buyers.
In All the Queens Houses, Spanish-born architect and artist Rafael Herrin-Ferri paints a portrait of the incredible diversity of Queens by documenting over two hundred examples of its highly idiosyncratic housing styles with color photographs and short interpretive texts. Together with renowned urbanist Joseph Heathcott, he will discuss how this eclectic mix of vernacular architecture reflects the history of the “World’s Borough”and also provides a model for future development.
We welcome you to join us for an online event on the "fifth dimension" and its different applications around the world. Guido Callegari and Ambrosini Gustavo from the Politecnico di Torino Department of Architecture and Design, Italy, will be disscussing their book Roofscape Design: Regenerating the City Upon the City (2021). They will talk about strategies for reusing city rooftops in an era of “no net land take” and land shortages in the city, and about the novel architectural development of roofs, presenting contemporary international examples. The lecture is part of the building competition "Layer 2.0", which includes fascinating lectures on conservation in Tel Aviv- Yafo.
Liebling Haus - The White City Center was co-founded by the Tel Aviv-Yafo Municipality and the German government in a historical and cultural crossroad at the heart of Tel Aviv. The Center’s mission is to promote architecture, conservation, and urban development, focusing on modern architecture. The Liebling Haus serves as an urban hub for the community, fostering local and international dialogue and cooperation in the fields of conservation and architecture research, professional training, and knowledge. More information on the Liebling Haus: www.whitecitycenter.org
Free admission, pre-registration required. You can register here.
This autumn, the Vlaams Bouwmeester Team and the Flanders Architecture Institute are joining forces for an exciting program around 40 years of architectural competitions. The traveling exhibition 'Open Call' will be shown one last time, in an expanded version with new audiovisual material. It accompanies the 'Coming of Age' exhibition, which the Flanders Architecture Institute is devoting to architectural competitions in Flanders and Brussels in the period 1980-2000. On this occasion, two new publications will be published, also in partnership between the VAi and the Team Vlaams Bouwmeester. Register now for a special opening night!
Vernissage and opening talk 40 years of competition culture On November 26, we will present both exhibitions and present two brand new publications.
Following the Open Call exhibition, a series of interviews took place with, among others, Team Vlaams Bouwmeester. We let these voices have their say in a video.
We conclude with a lecture on the role of the Open Call procedure within the architectural culture in Flanders and Brussels and an announcement of the side program.
Program Welcome by Sofie De Caigny (Flemish Architecture Institute) Explanation Open Call expo Explanation Coming of Age expo
Book presentations More than a competition - The Open Call in a Changing Building Culture and Celebrating Public Architecture Intro lecture by Erik Wieërs (Vlaams Bouwmeester) Lecture by Irina Davidovici (ETH Zurich)
Publication Celebrating Public Architecture The lavishly illustrated English-language book 'Celebrating Public Architecture' will also be published by the Berlin publishing house JOVIS. The German architecture critic Florian Heilmeyer examines the built results of two decades of Open Call there. More information
Exhibition 'Open Call. 20 years of architecture in public order' After presentations in Ghent, Brussels, Hasselt and Kortrijk, the exhibition 'Open Call. 20 years of architecture in public commission' one last time. She was supplemented for the occasion with new video testimonials. More information
Exhibition 'Coming of Age' Under the title 'Coming of Age', the Flanders Architecture Institute highlights the most controversial architectural competitions in Flanders and Brussels from the period 1980-2020 on the basis of original documents and objects. More information
Publication More than a competition On the occasion of the opening of the two exhibitions, the new publication 'More than a competition' will also be published. The book includes a series of essays on the evolution of the public building culture in Flanders, and the role played by the master builder and the Open Call in this.
Goethe-Institut New York 30 Irving Place New York, NY 10003 USA
Home office, undertourism, online shopping - the consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic have changed how we engage with our cities. Is the dense urban center already a thing of the past, an object of nostalgia? How can cities cope with the inevitable states of emergency we'll encounter because of climate change?
In their new book The City After Corona, authors Doris Kleilein and Friederike Meyer explore the pandemic's effects on urban development and examine which architecture, infrastructures, and public spaces are suitable for crises. Join us for a conversation presenting their findings, moderated by Mariana Mogilevich, the Editor in Chief of Urban Omnibus and author of The Invention of Public Space (2021).
COVID Policy In an effort to ensure the safety of our staff and audience, we are limiting the capacity for this event to 50 people - please register to attend. Proof of vaccination is required to attend, and we ask that all attendees wear a mask.
Virtual Conference, Hosted by Technische Universität Berlin
Since 2018, the collaborative research centre CRC 1265 “Re-Figuration of Spaces” has brought together more than 60 researchers from the disciplines of sociology, architecture, urban planning, geography, media and communication studies. Following the central hypothesis of the CRC that the radical changes in socio-spatial orders which have emerged since the late 1960s require a new concept and theories beyond globalisation, the forthcoming international conference will invite renowned international scholars and a wide-ranging academic audience to discuss preliminary research outcomes. How can the concept of the refiguration of spaces help make conflictual transformation processes more tangible and enable a better understanding of the underlying dynamics which shape new conflicts and challenges? How do these conflicts manifest themselves in spatial knowledge, in new forms of digital communication and decision making, or in knowledge circuits, mobilities and flows across globally connected societies.
Confirmed keynote speakers include Ulrich Brand, Robin Celikates, Keller Easterling, Serene Khader, Walter Mignolo and Raquel Rolnik.
Online Book Launch Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden
Activism at Home offers a unique study of architects’ own dwellings; homes purposely designed to express social, political, economic, and cultural critiques. Through thirty case studies by architectural scholars, this book highlights different forms of activism at home from the early twentieth century to today. The architect-led experiments in activist living discussed in this book include the dwellings of Ralph Erskine, Paulo Mendes Da Rocha, Charles Moore, Flora Ruchat-Roncati, Kiyoshi Seike, and many others. Offering candid appraisals of alternative living solutions that formulate a response to rising real estate prices, economic inequality, social alienation, and mounting environmental and cultural challenges, Activism at Home is more than a historical study; it is an appeal to architects to use the discipline’s tools to their full potential, and a plea to scholars to continue bringing architecture's activist practices into focus—whether at home or elsewhere.
17.00 Presentation of the book by the editors, Isabelle Doucet and Janina Gosseye
17.15 Conversation about the publication with invited guest Irina Davidovici
Join us as Rafael Herrin-Ferri discusses his new book ALL THE QUEENS HOUSES with photographers Adolfo Steve Vazquez and -Ines Leong. Co-hosted by the Queens Foundation for Architecture.
The borough of Queens has long been celebrated as the melting pot of America. It was the birthplace of North American religious freedom in the seventeenth century, hosted two World’s Fairs in the twentieth, and is currently home to over a million foreign-born residents participating in the American experience. In 2013, Spanish-born artist and architect Rafael Herrin-Ferri began to paint a portrait of the “World’s Borough”—not with images of its diverse population, or its celebrated international food scene, but with photographs of its highly idiosyncratic housing stock. While All the Queens Houses is mainly a photography book celebrating the broad range of housing styles in New York City’s largest and most diverse county, it is also a not-so-subtle endorsement of a multicultural community that mixes global building traditions into the American vernacular, and by so doing breathes new life into its architecture and surrounding urban context.
This publication is made possible in part by the Queens Council on the Arts with public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council.
Conceived as a catalogue of notes and tools used in the field, The Things Around Us: 51N4E and Rural Urban Framework reveals how 51N4E’s and Rural Urban Framework’s architecture is less a series of finished objects than the manifestation of a series of processes. Landing somewhere between question and reaction, proximity and contrast, and assonance and distance, the project is a manifesto of a position, the story of two approaches to context, and a testament to the very possibility of making architecture with and within context today.
Join us for a conversation with 51N4E and Rural Urban Framework on how both offices see making architecture as a choreographic process. To register, click here.
Part of the #readCCA book presentations, this event will be moderated by Francesco Garutti and Andrew Scheinman.
