Infrastructural Landscape and Ecosystem Regeneration

Lesia Topolnyk interviews Floris Alkemade, the State Architect of the Netherlands. For the Dutch Design Rides Lesia Topolnyk designed an object related to her graduation project. The object was placed on top of one of the taxis, which bring visitors to locations across the Dutch Design Week. The designed object represents the idea of an extrapolated historic street, an informal decision-making place. To Lesia it is important that her work is contextualized, mentally or physically. Therefore, complementary to the object, she decided to turn the taxi itself into the debate-space, creating a Debate-Ride. Besides riding along with visitors, she invited Floris Alkemade to discuss several topics related to the interlocking realm of politics and architecture, which is the theme of her award winning graduation project:Un-United Nations Headquarters.

Mohamad Nahleh presents his project that is a favourite of the participants and winner: 185 en-counters. The study reveals a method of materializing the power of dwellers in Karm El-Zeitoun, Beirut and their spaces in the form of architectural interventions by devising a series of public installations. These interventions are positioned on leftover plots deemed unusable. They benefit from the insignificance of residual plots by injecting within them seemingly innocent public spaces that provoke abusive interference.

Sara Pellegrini and Domenico Spagnolo present their award winning project:Waliców, Fortress of Memory. This project proposes the rehabilitation and critical integration of a core of three buildings from the early twentieth century that have survived devastation. The three buildings, located in Ulica Waliców, along with the free areas left over by years of war destruction, eloquently focus the dimension of memory and the documentary depth of Warsaw Ghetto’s history.

Lesia Topolnyk presents her award winning project:Un-United Nations Headquarters. Underpinning logic of Un-United Nations Headquarters is that the unity is impossible as a stable (final) situation and ‘the political’ per definition implies (potential) conflict and therefore the need to debate. All outcomes of such debates are a temporary ‘solution’, which indicates that ‘temporariness’ is a crucial notion. Therefore instead of the utopian idea of stability, the project proposes a perpetual instability, a constant renegotiated temporariness.

Mariano Vilallonga presents his project that is a favourite of the participants and nominated by the jury: La Non Trubada. The ‘eighth’ Canary Island has been seen, mapped and photographed by many. Even some people claim to have been in it, despite the fact that its existence was never recorded. From the compilation of existing documentation, it was decided to build the island on the back of a whale 9 km long.

Ena Kukić presents her nominated project Kenopsia : Sarajevo War Tunnel Museum. A The Sarajevo Tunnel is a passage constructed in 1993, during the Siege of Sarajevo. It was built under the airport runway to link the besieged city of Sarajevo with the Bosnian-held territory on the other side.

Maarten de Haas presents his award winning project Following up the Foregoing. A forbidding gold-coloured data centre and a small run-down building housing the caretaker share a site in the heart of Rotterdam. Together they confront us with the human condition of our time: an existence between the virtual and the sensorial, the all-inclusive and the personal, the managed and the accidental...