Architecture Week 2008

This year, unfortunately, I did not have enough time to investigate the London Festival of Architecture, but the little I saw of it, disappointed me slightly. For me, London's Festival of Architecture was always synonym for innovation, character and extravagance. Or at least, that is what I would expect to see. It should have the audacity and guts to push the boundaries outside of our expectations. The street installations I saw were a little too timid in my point of view and some, honestly, a bit amateurish, especially the events at Exhibition Road.


A few events did save my day though: the events at Montague Place such as the lovely food market and the installation 'This is Tomorrow Too' were relaxing and playful and invited the general public to interact. The Architectural Jelly Banquet at the Bartlett School of Architecture was also a fun surprise and showed that the architectural world was able to take themselves not too seriously sometimes, which culminated in a jelly wrestling competition and some fantastic unofficial jelly battles!

Architecture and Climate Change - Jan Gehl

Jan Gehl's talk at the RIBA during the London Architecture week in June was very uplifting. His attitude towards city planning was tinted with hope, optimism and a very big portion of fun. He spoke about the importance of making people want to be in the city, feeling safe and 'sweet', as he put it. His talk was based on a research on the city of London he did for Ken Livingston in 2004 "Towards a fine city for people". Unfortunately, only little has been applied from this research since then. Even Jan Gehl had to admit it.

Some of his most important points were:

• People are the main attraction in a City.
• An agreeable journey to the bus stop is also part of the public transportation strategy.
• We need to invite people to walk and cycle everyday
• "Be sweet to people and they will feel happier (sweeter?) to be in the city."
• A good city is a city where people stop walking and sit down
• Give people space for spontaneity (spaces in the public realm for events, politics, culture, events unfolding organically and naturally)
• Things to avoid: one-way lanes, detours, obstacles, sudden disappearance of pavements, etc.
  
• Create longer crossing times
• See pedestrians as priority, not cars
• Taxis with bicycle racks
• Transport welcoming bicycles

His last slide, showed a main road where cycles were in the middle and cars on either side with small car signs painted on the road. This showed the irony of our car monopolised society. What if, during the 50's and 60's when cars seemed to have revolutionised our world, they did not take over? How did we even let this happen? Many of Jan Gehl's pictures were showing people having to slalom between cars to be able to access shops, restaurants, their workplace. etc. and these images are very true, since when did cars become a priority before humans? This is maybe the main philosophical question we can extract from this talk. The question is not just how are we building more sustainable cities, how do we 'green' our public realm, but more asking questions about the grassroot problems where these issues actually came from.

After the flood @ A+D Los Angeles

The After the flood exhibition at the Architecture and Design Museum in Los Angeles was partly organised by the Make it Right project and the German based architecture firm Graft. After the flood exposed the problem of efficient housing response after natural catastrophes. The exhibition focused on the housing designed for the competition organised by Architectural Record and Tulane University.

This was a rather small exhibition but the subject is very close to my heart. The notion of emergency architecture in response to disaster situation is a very compelling subject. This exhibition showed through the different competition entries from all over the world, a few videos and installations that this problem was affecting everyone around the globe, not just americans.

The solidarity within these proposals stroke me and made me conscious that presenting such subjects to the public was an important task, not just a curatorial exercise but a socio-political statement.