2012

past forward

The last three decades saw significant change across social, political, and environmental registers. The conjunction of capital flows, mass urbanization and increasingly interconnected cultural and financial networks have reshaped the way we understand, produce and discuss architecture resulting in a breathless cycle of formal and aesthetic transformations. This restless appearance of change conceals an increasing sense of inertia or perhaps even of confusion, in that an intellectual project has yet to accompany the overiding sense of technical virtuosity. 

This cycle of competitions aims to hold a mirror to the discipline to reflect the changes of the last thirty years by re-visiting three competitions that radically transformed architectural culture: The Peak (1982), Yokohama Port Terminal (1994) and Blur Building (1999). All three winning entries emerged under unique conditions to take up critical positions on the predominant tendencies of their time. Though they have radically different ambitions, these three projects continue to reverberate throughout contemporary architectural culture in some way, introducing new attitudes to the ground, surface and atmosphere.  

Any current condition lacks coherency and the task of this competition is not to assert one, but to begin the work of constructing a passage between the indistinct and the articulated. This competition cycle aims to discover new possibilities in the recent history of architecture by returning to these singular moments of disciplinary transformation, looking back in order to discern how far we have moved and in what direction. 

With abbreviated versions of the original brief, all three competitions will launch simultaneously in April 27 and conclude in July 17 of 2012. Participating architects in the original competition will act as jury in the current competition: Zaha Hadid and Patrik Schumacher (The Peak), Alejandro Zaera-Polo (Yokohama Port Terminal) and Charles Renfro and Ricardo Scofidio (Blur Building). Each architect or team of architects will act as the juror for his or her respective competition, with assistance provided by the Think Space curator.  The deliverables for the new competition cycle will match as closely as possible the original requirements for each competition. There is no limit to the number of competitions that can be entered.  

At the end of the competition phase the winning architects will have their work exhibited at Storefront for Art and Architecture  in New York City alongside the competitions panels for the original competition. A symposium at the conclusion of the cycle will bring together the winning architects from the original competition, as well as the winning architects from the new cycle in a conversation about the shifts and transformations evidenced across the different projects.

As with the previous ThinkSpace competition cycle in 2011, the emphasis within the 2012 cycle of competitions will be on conceptual innovation within the field of architecture. 

Adrian Lahoud

Guest Curator of THINK SPACE 2012

VIDEO

guest curator

Adrian Lahoud 

Adrian Lahoud is an architect, urban designer and researcher. Through private practice, teaching and writing he explores the disputed, conflicting and often paradoxical transformation of cities. In 2010 he guest-edited a special issue of AD titled Post-traumatic Urbanism, forthcoming is Project for the Mediterranean exploring research on scale and complexity through speculative infrastructure in North Africa, the Middle East and Southern Europe. He forms one third of the curatorial collective ‘N’ and has been exhibited internationally most recently at the Gwanju Design Biennale.

Currently he is Course Director of the Urban Design Masters at the Bartlett and Lecturer at the Centre for Research Architecture, Goldsmiths.