Thursday, August 14, 2008

MEGASTRUCTURE RELOADED



Architects and artists:
Archigram, Archizoom, Alan Boutwell, Guenther Domenig & Eilfried Huth, Constant, Yona Friedman / Groupe d'Etudes d'Architecture Mobile, Eckhard Schulze-Fielitz, Superstudio

José Dávila, Simon Dybbroe Moeller, Ryan Gander, Erik Goengrich, Franka Hoernschemeyer, Gordon Matta-Clark, Victor Nieuwenhuijs & Maartje Seyferth, Tobias Putrih, Tomás Saraceno, Katrin Sigurdardóttir, Tilman Wendland

curated by Sabrina van der Ley and Markus Richter / European Art Projects

In the early 1960s, the London-based Archigram group around Peter Cook designed 
Plug-In City, a megastructure in the form of a both roomy and gigantic framework into which mobile units (Plug-Ins) for all sorts of purposes and needs could be slotted, moved, and removed. Nothing was predetermined; everything was to change according to the changing needs of its users. Around the same time, Constant Nieuwenhuys in Amsterdam was working on New Babylon, an urban landscape branching out like a rhizome covering existing cities, resting on columns and pillars. The "sectors" of New Babylon form one endless, convoluted spatial continuum, a tangle of levels and passages, joined by struts and braces. The interiors are neither fixed nor defined. Rather, space is redefined over and over again by "homo ludens," drifting through the labyrinthine passages, determined solely by creativity and the power of his imagination. 

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