Inscription

Ecological culture is playing an increasingly important role in today's urban design. It is the pivotal point from which new ways of looking, proceeding and operating can be formulated, producing a set of arts of doing in and for the ecological city. 
The changes that our societies and environments are currently undergoing are putting our way of being in the world in crisis. They thus question our capacity to act as a project or, more concretely, to create prospective visions and to anchor tangible ambitions in them. 
This context encourages us to imagine new ways of acting that allow us to deal with uncertainty. We must go beyond fear - not let it be - and invent actions capable of fitting into the climate regime to come.

Moving from a logic of autonomous objects to objects in relation opens up new perspectives on interfaces, forms and processes. Structured around these three chapters, the exhibition shows how ecological culture can colour, inform and renew project culture. 

 

 Superonda Talks is a lecture series organised each semester by a laboratory at EPFL Architecture to open up discussion on a particular research theme.

A program proposed by Prof. Charlotte Malterre-Barthes, RIOT laboratory.

JENNIFER NEWSOM & TOM CARRUTHERS (Dream the Combine)
with AMY PERKINS (Assemble)

All the lecture are also broadcast live on Zoom.
Meeting ID : 646 5060 5823

“Hot, hot, hot, hot/ Hot, hot, hot, hot”
(Yeon Kim / Troelsen Thomas / Sigvardt Mikkel Remee, “Hot Summer,” in Strictly Physical, ed. Monrose (Universal Music Publishing Ab, Emi Music Publishing Denmark A/s, Culture Technology Group Asia, S M Entertainment Co Ltd, Ctm Outlander Music Lp, 2007).

Because it relies on extracted materials, isn’t construction unsustainable by design? Pressure is increasing for the sector actors’ to diligently address the harm caused by the built environment, from new construction to usage and demolition, begging the question of whether real ‘sustainability’ in architecture and planning is possible. For the industry, the temptation is great to adopt strategies of simulated commitment instead of investing in actual change toward less emissions. NGOs have called out large companies for ‘low integrity’ pledges, pointing at the systemic social, political, and ecological injustice the built environment creates via material, wealth, culture, and labor extractivism.1
While institutionalized greenwashing hollowed the term ‘sustainability,’ how do architects and designers position their work beyond the inadequacy of a flattening universalistic understanding of a ‘sustainability beneficial to all’? What emancipatory forms of practice allow for accountable and revolutionized construction modes? How to face the mistakes of the past and form new values grounded in humility? In this lecture series, we will discuss how the discipline of architecture corrects course in the face of a climate crisis of unprecedented magnitude—beyond greenwashing.

1. Silke Mooldijk, Thomas Day, Sybrig Smit, Eduardo Posada, Frederic Hans, Harry Fearnehough, Aki Kachi, and Takeshi Kuramochi Carsten Warnecke, Niklas Höhne., Corporate Climate Responsibility Monitor 2022 (Cologne: New Climate Institute, Carbon Market Watch, 2022).

The Teatro dell’architettura Mendrisio of the Università della Svizzera italiana presents the exhibition ‘WHAT MAD PURSUIT. Aglaia Konrad, Armin Linke, Bas Princen’, from 7 April to 22 October 2023, promoted by the USI Academy of Architecture and curated by Francesco Zanot.

Through a selection of photographic works by Aglaia Konrad (Salzburg, 1960), Armin Linke (Milan, 1966) and Bas Princen (Zeeland, 1975), the project explores the relationship between architecture and photography, and that between the latter and the context in which it is shown, focusing on the complexity of an interweaving that places the works at the centre of a constant process of negotiation between subject and exhibition space. The exhibition questions the documentary function of photography, here understood as a device that simultaneously records and transforms reality, while also contradicting its conception of a two-dimensional image by exploring its materiality, body and presence.

THE EXHIBITION

Devised specifically for the spaces of the Teatro dell’architettura Mendrisio, the exhibition ‘WHAT MAD PURSUIT. Aglaia Konrad, Armin Linke, Bas Princen’ is an original project that brings together photographic works by three international artists who work with this medium through different methods and approaches: Aglaia Konrad, Armin Linke and Bas Princen.

By presenting some 50 works created by the authors at different places and times with equally heterogeneous purposes, the exhibition explores the intersections between photography and architecture, represented space and exhibition space.

In the artistic practices of the three authors, the internal space of the frame and the external space become objects of study but also of radical re-vision through the mediation of photography. Each work or cycle of works activates new interpretations of subjects already submitted to processes of representation and interpretation, introducing further layers of significance that intersect with the previous ones. Instead of depicting (once and for all), here photography triggers a chain reaction of resignification that is at least theoretically endless. The photograph rekindles and restarts. It is a matter of intersections, interactions, overlaps, reactions, interferences.

In the photographic series Shaping Stones, Aglaia Konrad combines buildings by well known architects with anonymous works, both ancient and contemporary, united by the use of the same material and by a mode of representation, black and white photography, that makes it possible to obtain an amalgam as coherent as it is extraneous to any recognised category.

Armin Linke re-uses the pre-existing images in his archive, taken around the world in the course of his career. He mixes them together to form a new narrative that goes beyond the original context of production, challenging the very notions of chronology, linearity, history and uniformity.

Bas Princen photographs other representations, questioning what happens to them once they are duplicated and converted into two-dimensional images. In his work, details of pre-existing elements, such as paintings, objects and photographs, usually grasped in their entirety, are subjected to a further process of interpretation, giving rise to new and independent images capable of detaching themselves from the original ones. The artist also questions the very two-dimensionality of photography through a printing technique based on relief and endowed with an unusual sculptural quality.

The exhibition itinerary, covering two floors, is configured as a juxtaposition and recombination of the works, which are entwined with each other to acquire new meanings and interpretations. While Bas Princen’s works, printed on rice paper, give contours and a body to photographs, Aglaia Konrad’s images adapt to the surface of the wall to which they are applied, while Armin Linke's photographs make the most of the architectural features of the exhibition space through devices that bring out its rhythm, materials and technique, engaging in a dialogue resolved in a distinctive form of ‘installational choreography’.

‘WHAT MAD PURSUIT. Aglaia Konrad, Armin Linke, Bas Princen’ challenges all attempts to simplify photography in order to express its complexity and layered character. In reflecting on the theme of dwelling, the works in this exhibition have a similar relationship with the Teatro dell’Architettura in Mendrisio: they do not simply occupy a space, but make it their home.

Co-presences

Seeing the co-presence of systems of thought as enabling new ways of understanding disciplinary fields, the Mendrisio Academy of Architecture has always based its educational offering on the inclusion of different modes of knowledge and a fruitful openness to various possible forms of understanding. Practising crosscutting approaches involving disciplinary critical discourse and theoretical thought, their histories and design practice then becomes fundamental whenever we prepare to rethink the role and potential of architectural design in the contemporary world.

This new cycle of public lectures therefore seeks to renew interest in an active dialogue between different forms of discourse – conceptual-reflective and pragmatic-operational – with a series of public encounters with important scholars, researchers and designers, who in their different roles gravitate around the academic community of Mendrisio

Free entrance subject to availability.
The Lecture is also streamed live on www.arc.usi.ch

 Superonda Talks is a lecture series organised each semester by a laboratory at EPFL Architecture to open up discussion on a particular research theme.

A program proposed by Prof. Charlotte Malterre-Barthes, RIOT laboratory.

SARAH GRAHAM & MARC ANGÉLIL (AGPS)
with ALIA BENGANA (ALICE lab)

All the lecture are also broadcast live on Zoom.
Meeting ID : 646 5060 5823

“Hot, hot, hot, hot/ Hot, hot, hot, hot”
(Yeon Kim / Troelsen Thomas / Sigvardt Mikkel Remee, “Hot Summer,” in Strictly Physical, ed. Monrose (Universal Music Publishing Ab, Emi Music Publishing Denmark A/s, Culture Technology Group Asia, S M Entertainment Co Ltd, Ctm Outlander Music Lp, 2007).

Because it relies on extracted materials, isn’t construction unsustainable by design? Pressure is increasing for the sector actors’ to diligently address the harm caused by the built environment, from new construction to usage and demolition, begging the question of whether real ‘sustainability’ in architecture and planning is possible. For the industry, the temptation is great to adopt strategies of simulated commitment instead of investing in actual change toward less emissions. NGOs have called out large companies for ‘low integrity’ pledges, pointing at the systemic social, political, and ecological injustice the built environment creates via material, wealth, culture, and labor extractivism.1
While institutionalized greenwashing hollowed the term ‘sustainability,’ how do architects and designers position their work beyond the inadequacy of a flattening universalistic understanding of a ‘sustainability beneficial to all’? What emancipatory forms of practice allow for accountable and revolutionized construction modes? How to face the mistakes of the past and form new values grounded in humility? In this lecture series, we will discuss how the discipline of architecture corrects course in the face of a climate crisis of unprecedented magnitude—beyond greenwashing.

1. Silke Mooldijk, Thomas Day, Sybrig Smit, Eduardo Posada, Frederic Hans, Harry Fearnehough, Aki Kachi, and Takeshi Kuramochi Carsten Warnecke, Niklas Höhne., Corporate Climate Responsibility Monitor 2022 (Cologne: New Climate Institute, Carbon Market Watch, 2022).

Blauer Montag:

Prof. Dr. Georg Vrachliotis, Architekturtheorie, TU Delft

Ungeachtet gewisser disziplinimmanenter Eigenschaften und manueller, ja handwerklicher Komponenten wird auch die Architektur von der zunehmenden Digitalisierung unserer Gesellschaft erfasst. Bekanntlich führte dies in einem ersten Schritt zum Ersetzen des Handzeichnens durch CAAD-Programme und zum relativ bezugsfreien Entdecken virtueller Formen und Welten. Allen Unkenrufen zum Trotz hatte die erste Digitalisierungswelle jedoch auch positive Aspekte: Die Architektur war gezwungen, sich mehr Klarheit über sich selbst zu verschaffen, was auch zu einem besseren Verständnis ihrer Prozesse geführt hat. Diese Transformation allerdings vollzog sich vor allem im Zeichen kapitalistischer Effizienz: mehr Austausch, mehr Geschwindigkeit, mehr Präzision usw. 

Heute befinden wir uns in einer zweiten Digitalisierungswelle. Sie wirkt viel tiefgreifender, weil sie nicht nur auf weitere Effizienzsteigerungen angelegt ist, sondern die Prozesse grundlegend verändert. So lassen sich mithilfe von Building Information Modeling (BIM), digitaler Fabrikation oder digitalen Planungstools bspw. digitale Zwillinge generieren, die dazu beitragen, Konflikte und Fehler im Prozess zu verringern. Für die Architektur ist das insofern problematisch, als sie kaum Möglichkeiten hat, darauf Einfluss zu nehmen, und weil ihr damit der Spielraum genommen wird, Prozesse iterativ, also durch schrittweises Wiederholen und Lernen, zu entwickeln.

So wird die Architektur zum Spielball von Entwickler:innen und Programmierer:innen, die von der Disziplin meist keine Ahnung haben. Dabei geht es uns keineswegs um eine Ablehnung oder gar Verweigerung der Digitalisierung – diese ist allumfassend und bringt ohne Zweifel auch viele Vorteile – den herrschenden Techno-Enthusiasmus aber teilen wir nicht. Wir wollen die Instrumente und Methoden, die wir zur Verfügung haben, weiterhin hinterfragen und experimentell ausloten können.

Im Rahmen der Vortragsreihe Blauer Montag am Departement Architektur, Gestaltung und Bauingenieurwesen wollen wir Beispiele aufzeigen, wie man kreativ mit diesen Instrumenten und Werkzeugen umgehen kann, fragen, welche Reflexionsräume das für die Disziplin bereithält, und eine historische Einordnung versuchen. 

Activisms:

Harquitectes, Barcelona

Activism refers to individual or institutional actions that advocate for specific goals. These goals include, for example, environmental, social, or political actions to tackle climate change or to address social inequalities. As architects, we could pursue the goal of designing places to stay, public spaces and buildings that are not only oriented towards economic interests and profit, but promote a building culture that is oriented towards the common good.

However, how this activism can be concretely implemented and practiced in architectural practice is not always easy.

For this reason, the topic of our upcoming lecture series is what activist work could mean in practice and also in studies, and how we as architects can act on our own initiative and take responsibility for our built environment.

Three established architectural collectives will present to us in what way they develop their own projects, organize themselves as a collective, and what activist work in architecture means to them.

Inscription

Ecological culture is playing an increasingly important role in today's urban design. It is the pivotal point from which new ways of looking, proceeding and operating can be formulated, producing a set of arts of doing in and for the ecological city. 
The changes that our societies and environments are currently undergoing are putting our way of being in the world in crisis. They thus question our capacity to act as a project or, more concretely, to create prospective visions and to anchor tangible ambitions in them. 
This context encourages us to imagine new ways of acting that allow us to deal with uncertainty. We must go beyond fear - not let it be - and invent actions capable of fitting into the climate regime to come.

Moving from a logic of autonomous objects to objects in relation opens up new perspectives on interfaces, forms and processes. Structured around these three chapters, the exhibition shows how ecological culture can colour, inform and renew project culture. 

 

The Teatro dell’architettura Mendrisio of the Università della Svizzera italiana presents the exhibition ‘WHAT MAD PURSUIT. Aglaia Konrad, Armin Linke, Bas Princen’, from 7 April to 22 October 2023, promoted by the USI Academy of Architecture and curated by Francesco Zanot.

Through a selection of photographic works by Aglaia Konrad (Salzburg, 1960), Armin Linke (Milan, 1966) and Bas Princen (Zeeland, 1975), the project explores the relationship between architecture and photography, and that between the latter and the context in which it is shown, focusing on the complexity of an interweaving that places the works at the centre of a constant process of negotiation between subject and exhibition space. The exhibition questions the documentary function of photography, here understood as a device that simultaneously records and transforms reality, while also contradicting its conception of a two-dimensional image by exploring its materiality, body and presence.

THE EXHIBITION

Devised specifically for the spaces of the Teatro dell’architettura Mendrisio, the exhibition ‘WHAT MAD PURSUIT. Aglaia Konrad, Armin Linke, Bas Princen’ is an original project that brings together photographic works by three international artists who work with this medium through different methods and approaches: Aglaia Konrad, Armin Linke and Bas Princen.

By presenting some 50 works created by the authors at different places and times with equally heterogeneous purposes, the exhibition explores the intersections between photography and architecture, represented space and exhibition space.

In the artistic practices of the three authors, the internal space of the frame and the external space become objects of study but also of radical re-vision through the mediation of photography. Each work or cycle of works activates new interpretations of subjects already submitted to processes of representation and interpretation, introducing further layers of significance that intersect with the previous ones. Instead of depicting (once and for all), here photography triggers a chain reaction of resignification that is at least theoretically endless. The photograph rekindles and restarts. It is a matter of intersections, interactions, overlaps, reactions, interferences.

In the photographic series Shaping Stones, Aglaia Konrad combines buildings by well known architects with anonymous works, both ancient and contemporary, united by the use of the same material and by a mode of representation, black and white photography, that makes it possible to obtain an amalgam as coherent as it is extraneous to any recognised category.

Armin Linke re-uses the pre-existing images in his archive, taken around the world in the course of his career. He mixes them together to form a new narrative that goes beyond the original context of production, challenging the very notions of chronology, linearity, history and uniformity.

Bas Princen photographs other representations, questioning what happens to them once they are duplicated and converted into two-dimensional images. In his work, details of pre-existing elements, such as paintings, objects and photographs, usually grasped in their entirety, are subjected to a further process of interpretation, giving rise to new and independent images capable of detaching themselves from the original ones. The artist also questions the very two-dimensionality of photography through a printing technique based on relief and endowed with an unusual sculptural quality.

The exhibition itinerary, covering two floors, is configured as a juxtaposition and recombination of the works, which are entwined with each other to acquire new meanings and interpretations. While Bas Princen’s works, printed on rice paper, give contours and a body to photographs, Aglaia Konrad’s images adapt to the surface of the wall to which they are applied, while Armin Linke's photographs make the most of the architectural features of the exhibition space through devices that bring out its rhythm, materials and technique, engaging in a dialogue resolved in a distinctive form of ‘installational choreography’.

‘WHAT MAD PURSUIT. Aglaia Konrad, Armin Linke, Bas Princen’ challenges all attempts to simplify photography in order to express its complexity and layered character. In reflecting on the theme of dwelling, the works in this exhibition have a similar relationship with the Teatro dell’Architettura in Mendrisio: they do not simply occupy a space, but make it their home.

Blauer Montag:

Rosa Menkman, visuelle Künstlerin und Medientheoretikerin, Utrecht (in englischer Sprache)

Ungeachtet gewisser disziplinimmanenter Eigenschaften und manueller, ja handwerklicher Komponenten wird auch die Architektur von der zunehmenden Digitalisierung unserer Gesellschaft erfasst. Bekanntlich führte dies in einem ersten Schritt zum Ersetzen des Handzeichnens durch CAAD-Programme und zum relativ bezugsfreien Entdecken virtueller Formen und Welten. Allen Unkenrufen zum Trotz hatte die erste Digitalisierungswelle jedoch auch positive Aspekte: Die Architektur war gezwungen, sich mehr Klarheit über sich selbst zu verschaffen, was auch zu einem besseren Verständnis ihrer Prozesse geführt hat. Diese Transformation allerdings vollzog sich vor allem im Zeichen kapitalistischer Effizienz: mehr Austausch, mehr Geschwindigkeit, mehr Präzision usw.
 
Heute befinden wir uns in einer zweiten Digitalisierungswelle. Sie wirkt viel tiefgreifender, weil sie nicht nur auf weitere Effizienzsteigerungen angelegt ist, sondern die Prozesse grundlegend verändert. So lassen sich mithilfe von Building Information Modeling (BIM), digitaler Fabrikation oder digitalen Planungstools bspw. digitale Zwillinge generieren, die dazu beitragen, Konflikte und Fehler im Prozess zu verringern. Für die Architektur ist das insofern problematisch, als sie kaum Möglichkeiten hat, darauf Einfluss zu nehmen, und weil ihr damit der Spielraum genommen wird, Prozesse iterativ, also durch schrittweises Wiederholen und Lernen, zu entwickeln.
 
So wird die Architektur zum Spielball von Entwickler:innen und Programmierer:innen, die von der Disziplin meist keine Ahnung haben. Dabei geht es uns keineswegs um eine Ablehnung oder gar Verweigerung der Digitalisierung – diese ist allumfassend und bringt ohne Zweifel auch viele Vorteile – den herrschenden Techno-Enthusiasmus aber teilen wir nicht. Wir wollen die Instrumente und Methoden, die wir zur Verfügung haben, weiterhin hinterfragen und experimentell ausloten können.
 
Im Rahmen der Vortragsreihe Blauer Montag am Departement Architektur, Gestaltung und Bauingenieurwesen wollen wir Beispiele aufzeigen, wie man kreativ mit diesen Instrumenten und Werkzeugen umgehen kann, fragen, welche Reflexionsräume das für die Disziplin bereithält, und eine historische Einordnung versuchen.

Ido Avissar, founder of the architecture office LIST in Paris, and Mio Tsuneyama, co-founder of the architecture office mnm studio in Toyko and London and visiting professor at EPFL, will discuss the operative perspectives of troubled times, or how to invent ways of acting in which the project becomes a trajectory of open and multiple potentialities, capable of being updated according to the turbulence. In the context of the exhibition Sympoïétique. Arts de faire de la ville écologique.

The discussion is also web cast live on Zoom.
Meeting ID: 646 5060 5823

 Superonda Talks is a lecture series organised each semester by a laboratory at EPFL Architecture to open up discussion on a particular research theme.

A program proposed by Prof. Charlotte Malterre-Barthes, RIOT laboratory.

SARAH GRAHAM & MARC ANGÉLIL (AGPS)
with ALIA BENGANA (ALICE lab)

All the lecture are also broadcast live on Zoom.
Meeting ID : 646 5060 5823

“Hot, hot, hot, hot/ Hot, hot, hot, hot”
(Yeon Kim / Troelsen Thomas / Sigvardt Mikkel Remee, “Hot Summer,” in Strictly Physical, ed. Monrose (Universal Music Publishing Ab, Emi Music Publishing Denmark A/s, Culture Technology Group Asia, S M Entertainment Co Ltd, Ctm Outlander Music Lp, 2007).
Because it relies on extracted materials, isn’t construction unsustainable by design? Pressure is increasing for the sector actors’ to diligently address the harm caused by the built environment, from new construction to usage and demolition, begging the question of whether real ‘sustainability’ in architecture and planning is possible. For the industry, the temptation is great to adopt strategies of simulated commitment instead of investing in actual change toward less emissions. NGOs have called out large companies for ‘low integrity’ pledges, pointing at the systemic social, political, and ecological injustice the built environment creates via material, wealth, culture, and labor extractivism.1
While institutionalized greenwashing hollowed the term ‘sustainability,’ how do architects and designers position their work beyond the inadequacy of a flattening universalistic understanding of a ‘sustainability beneficial to all’? What emancipatory forms of practice allow for accountable and revolutionized construction modes? How to face the mistakes of the past and form new values grounded in humility? In this lecture series, we will discuss how the discipline of architecture corrects course in the face of a climate crisis of unprecedented magnitude—beyond greenwashing.

1. Silke Mooldijk, Thomas Day, Sybrig Smit, Eduardo Posada, Frederic Hans, Harry Fearnehough, Aki Kachi, and Takeshi Kuramochi Carsten Warnecke, Niklas Höhne., Corporate Climate Responsibility Monitor 2022 (Cologne: New Climate Institute, Carbon Market Watch, 2022).

Activism refers to individual or institutional actions that advocate for specific goals. These goals include, for example, environmental, social, or political actions to tackle climate change or to address social inequalities. As architects, we could pursue the goal of designing places to stay, public spaces and buildings that are not only oriented towards economic interests and profit, but promote a building culture that is oriented towards the common good.

However, how this activism can be concretely implemented and practiced in architectural practice is not always easy.

For this reason, the topic of our upcoming lecture series is what activist work could mean in practice and also in studies, and how we as architects can act on our own initiative and take responsibility for our built environment.

Three established architectural collectives will present to us in what way they develop their own projects, organize themselves as a collective, and what activist work in architecture means to them.

The Teatro dell’architettura Mendrisio of the Università della Svizzera italiana presents the exhibition ‘WHAT MAD PURSUIT. Aglaia Konrad, Armin Linke, Bas Princen’, from 7 April to 22 October 2023, promoted by the USI Academy of Architecture and curated by Francesco Zanot.

Through a selection of photographic works by Aglaia Konrad (Salzburg, 1960), Armin Linke (Milan, 1966) and Bas Princen (Zeeland, 1975), the project explores the relationship between architecture and photography, and that between the latter and the context in which it is shown, focusing on the complexity of an interweaving that places the works at the centre of a constant process of negotiation between subject and exhibition space. The exhibition questions the documentary function of photography, here understood as a device that simultaneously records and transforms reality, while also contradicting its conception of a two-dimensional image by exploring its materiality, body and presence.

THE EXHIBITION

Devised specifically for the spaces of the Teatro dell’architettura Mendrisio, the exhibition ‘WHAT MAD PURSUIT. Aglaia Konrad, Armin Linke, Bas Princen’ is an original project that brings together photographic works by three international artists who work with this medium through different methods and approaches: Aglaia Konrad, Armin Linke and Bas Princen.

By presenting some 50 works created by the authors at different places and times with equally heterogeneous purposes, the exhibition explores the intersections between photography and architecture, represented space and exhibition space.

In the artistic practices of the three authors, the internal space of the frame and the external space become objects of study but also of radical re-vision through the mediation of photography. Each work or cycle of works activates new interpretations of subjects already submitted to processes of representation and interpretation, introducing further layers of significance that intersect with the previous ones. Instead of depicting (once and for all), here photography triggers a chain reaction of resignification that is at least theoretically endless. The photograph rekindles and restarts. It is a matter of intersections, interactions, overlaps, reactions, interferences.

In the photographic series Shaping Stones, Aglaia Konrad combines buildings by well known architects with anonymous works, both ancient and contemporary, united by the use of the same material and by a mode of representation, black and white photography, that makes it possible to obtain an amalgam as coherent as it is extraneous to any recognised category.

Armin Linke re-uses the pre-existing images in his archive, taken around the world in the course of his career. He mixes them together to form a new narrative that goes beyond the original context of production, challenging the very notions of chronology, linearity, history and uniformity.

Bas Princen photographs other representations, questioning what happens to them once they are duplicated and converted into two-dimensional images. In his work, details of pre-existing elements, such as paintings, objects and photographs, usually grasped in their entirety, are subjected to a further process of interpretation, giving rise to new and independent images capable of detaching themselves from the original ones. The artist also questions the very two-dimensionality of photography through a printing technique based on relief and endowed with an unusual sculptural quality.

The exhibition itinerary, covering two floors, is configured as a juxtaposition and recombination of the works, which are entwined with each other to acquire new meanings and interpretations. While Bas Princen’s works, printed on rice paper, give contours and a body to photographs, Aglaia Konrad’s images adapt to the surface of the wall to which they are applied, while Armin Linke's photographs make the most of the architectural features of the exhibition space through devices that bring out its rhythm, materials and technique, engaging in a dialogue resolved in a distinctive form of ‘installational choreography’.

‘WHAT MAD PURSUIT. Aglaia Konrad, Armin Linke, Bas Princen’ challenges all attempts to simplify photography in order to express its complexity and layered character. In reflecting on the theme of dwelling, the works in this exhibition have a similar relationship with the Teatro dell’Architettura in Mendrisio: they do not simply occupy a space, but make it their home.

The Teatro dell’architettura Mendrisio of the Università della Svizzera italiana presents the exhibition ‘WHAT MAD PURSUIT. Aglaia Konrad, Armin Linke, Bas Princen’, from 7 April to 22 October 2023, promoted by the USI Academy of Architecture and curated by Francesco Zanot.

Through a selection of photographic works by Aglaia Konrad (Salzburg, 1960), Armin Linke (Milan, 1966) and Bas Princen (Zeeland, 1975), the project explores the relationship between architecture and photography, and that between the latter and the context in which it is shown, focusing on the complexity of an interweaving that places the works at the centre of a constant process of negotiation between subject and exhibition space. The exhibition questions the documentary function of photography, here understood as a device that simultaneously records and transforms reality, while also contradicting its conception of a two-dimensional image by exploring its materiality, body and presence.

THE EXHIBITION

Devised specifically for the spaces of the Teatro dell’architettura Mendrisio, the exhibition ‘WHAT MAD PURSUIT. Aglaia Konrad, Armin Linke, Bas Princen’ is an original project that brings together photographic works by three international artists who work with this medium through different methods and approaches: Aglaia Konrad, Armin Linke and Bas Princen.

By presenting some 50 works created by the authors at different places and times with equally heterogeneous purposes, the exhibition explores the intersections between photography and architecture, represented space and exhibition space.

In the artistic practices of the three authors, the internal space of the frame and the external space become objects of study but also of radical re-vision through the mediation of photography. Each work or cycle of works activates new interpretations of subjects already submitted to processes of representation and interpretation, introducing further layers of significance that intersect with the previous ones. Instead of depicting (once and for all), here photography triggers a chain reaction of resignification that is at least theoretically endless. The photograph rekindles and restarts. It is a matter of intersections, interactions, overlaps, reactions, interferences.

In the photographic series Shaping Stones, Aglaia Konrad combines buildings by well known architects with anonymous works, both ancient and contemporary, united by the use of the same material and by a mode of representation, black and white photography, that makes it possible to obtain an amalgam as coherent as it is extraneous to any recognised category.

Armin Linke re-uses the pre-existing images in his archive, taken around the world in the course of his career. He mixes them together to form a new narrative that goes beyond the original context of production, challenging the very notions of chronology, linearity, history and uniformity.

Bas Princen photographs other representations, questioning what happens to them once they are duplicated and converted into two-dimensional images. In his work, details of pre-existing elements, such as paintings, objects and photographs, usually grasped in their entirety, are subjected to a further process of interpretation, giving rise to new and independent images capable of detaching themselves from the original ones. The artist also questions the very two-dimensionality of photography through a printing technique based on relief and endowed with an unusual sculptural quality.

The exhibition itinerary, covering two floors, is configured as a juxtaposition and recombination of the works, which are entwined with each other to acquire new meanings and interpretations. While Bas Princen’s works, printed on rice paper, give contours and a body to photographs, Aglaia Konrad’s images adapt to the surface of the wall to which they are applied, while Armin Linke's photographs make the most of the architectural features of the exhibition space through devices that bring out its rhythm, materials and technique, engaging in a dialogue resolved in a distinctive form of ‘installational choreography’.

‘WHAT MAD PURSUIT. Aglaia Konrad, Armin Linke, Bas Princen’ challenges all attempts to simplify photography in order to express its complexity and layered character. In reflecting on the theme of dwelling, the works in this exhibition have a similar relationship with the Teatro dell’Architettura in Mendrisio: they do not simply occupy a space, but make it their home.

The Teatro dell’architettura Mendrisio of the Università della Svizzera italiana presents the exhibition ‘WHAT MAD PURSUIT. Aglaia Konrad, Armin Linke, Bas Princen’, from 7 April to 22 October 2023, promoted by the USI Academy of Architecture and curated by Francesco Zanot.

Through a selection of photographic works by Aglaia Konrad (Salzburg, 1960), Armin Linke (Milan, 1966) and Bas Princen (Zeeland, 1975), the project explores the relationship between architecture and photography, and that between the latter and the context in which it is shown, focusing on the complexity of an interweaving that places the works at the centre of a constant process of negotiation between subject and exhibition space. The exhibition questions the documentary function of photography, here understood as a device that simultaneously records and transforms reality, while also contradicting its conception of a two-dimensional image by exploring its materiality, body and presence.

THE EXHIBITION

Devised specifically for the spaces of the Teatro dell’architettura Mendrisio, the exhibition ‘WHAT MAD PURSUIT. Aglaia Konrad, Armin Linke, Bas Princen’ is an original project that brings together photographic works by three international artists who work with this medium through different methods and approaches: Aglaia Konrad, Armin Linke and Bas Princen.

By presenting some 50 works created by the authors at different places and times with equally heterogeneous purposes, the exhibition explores the intersections between photography and architecture, represented space and exhibition space.

In the artistic practices of the three authors, the internal space of the frame and the external space become objects of study but also of radical re-vision through the mediation of photography. Each work or cycle of works activates new interpretations of subjects already submitted to processes of representation and interpretation, introducing further layers of significance that intersect with the previous ones. Instead of depicting (once and for all), here photography triggers a chain reaction of resignification that is at least theoretically endless. The photograph rekindles and restarts. It is a matter of intersections, interactions, overlaps, reactions, interferences.

In the photographic series Shaping Stones, Aglaia Konrad combines buildings by well known architects with anonymous works, both ancient and contemporary, united by the use of the same material and by a mode of representation, black and white photography, that makes it possible to obtain an amalgam as coherent as it is extraneous to any recognised category.

Armin Linke re-uses the pre-existing images in his archive, taken around the world in the course of his career. He mixes them together to form a new narrative that goes beyond the original context of production, challenging the very notions of chronology, linearity, history and uniformity.

Bas Princen photographs other representations, questioning what happens to them once they are duplicated and converted into two-dimensional images. In his work, details of pre-existing elements, such as paintings, objects and photographs, usually grasped in their entirety, are subjected to a further process of interpretation, giving rise to new and independent images capable of detaching themselves from the original ones. The artist also questions the very two-dimensionality of photography through a printing technique based on relief and endowed with an unusual sculptural quality.

The exhibition itinerary, covering two floors, is configured as a juxtaposition and recombination of the works, which are entwined with each other to acquire new meanings and interpretations. While Bas Princen’s works, printed on rice paper, give contours and a body to photographs, Aglaia Konrad’s images adapt to the surface of the wall to which they are applied, while Armin Linke's photographs make the most of the architectural features of the exhibition space through devices that bring out its rhythm, materials and technique, engaging in a dialogue resolved in a distinctive form of ‘installational choreography’.

‘WHAT MAD PURSUIT. Aglaia Konrad, Armin Linke, Bas Princen’ challenges all attempts to simplify photography in order to express its complexity and layered character. In reflecting on the theme of dwelling, the works in this exhibition have a similar relationship with the Teatro dell’Architettura in Mendrisio: they do not simply occupy a space, but make it their home.

The Teatro dell’architettura Mendrisio of the Università della Svizzera italiana presents the exhibition ‘WHAT MAD PURSUIT. Aglaia Konrad, Armin Linke, Bas Princen’, from 7 April to 22 October 2023, promoted by the USI Academy of Architecture and curated by Francesco Zanot.

Through a selection of photographic works by Aglaia Konrad (Salzburg, 1960), Armin Linke (Milan, 1966) and Bas Princen (Zeeland, 1975), the project explores the relationship between architecture and photography, and that between the latter and the context in which it is shown, focusing on the complexity of an interweaving that places the works at the centre of a constant process of negotiation between subject and exhibition space. The exhibition questions the documentary function of photography, here understood as a device that simultaneously records and transforms reality, while also contradicting its conception of a two-dimensional image by exploring its materiality, body and presence.

THE EXHIBITION

Devised specifically for the spaces of the Teatro dell’architettura Mendrisio, the exhibition ‘WHAT MAD PURSUIT. Aglaia Konrad, Armin Linke, Bas Princen’ is an original project that brings together photographic works by three international artists who work with this medium through different methods and approaches: Aglaia Konrad, Armin Linke and Bas Princen.

By presenting some 50 works created by the authors at different places and times with equally heterogeneous purposes, the exhibition explores the intersections between photography and architecture, represented space and exhibition space.

In the artistic practices of the three authors, the internal space of the frame and the external space become objects of study but also of radical re-vision through the mediation of photography. Each work or cycle of works activates new interpretations of subjects already submitted to processes of representation and interpretation, introducing further layers of significance that intersect with the previous ones. Instead of depicting (once and for all), here photography triggers a chain reaction of resignification that is at least theoretically endless. The photograph rekindles and restarts. It is a matter of intersections, interactions, overlaps, reactions, interferences.

In the photographic series Shaping Stones, Aglaia Konrad combines buildings by well known architects with anonymous works, both ancient and contemporary, united by the use of the same material and by a mode of representation, black and white photography, that makes it possible to obtain an amalgam as coherent as it is extraneous to any recognised category.

Armin Linke re-uses the pre-existing images in his archive, taken around the world in the course of his career. He mixes them together to form a new narrative that goes beyond the original context of production, challenging the very notions of chronology, linearity, history and uniformity.

Bas Princen photographs other representations, questioning what happens to them once they are duplicated and converted into two-dimensional images. In his work, details of pre-existing elements, such as paintings, objects and photographs, usually grasped in their entirety, are subjected to a further process of interpretation, giving rise to new and independent images capable of detaching themselves from the original ones. The artist also questions the very two-dimensionality of photography through a printing technique based on relief and endowed with an unusual sculptural quality.

The exhibition itinerary, covering two floors, is configured as a juxtaposition and recombination of the works, which are entwined with each other to acquire new meanings and interpretations. While Bas Princen’s works, printed on rice paper, give contours and a body to photographs, Aglaia Konrad’s images adapt to the surface of the wall to which they are applied, while Armin Linke's photographs make the most of the architectural features of the exhibition space through devices that bring out its rhythm, materials and technique, engaging in a dialogue resolved in a distinctive form of ‘installational choreography’.

‘WHAT MAD PURSUIT. Aglaia Konrad, Armin Linke, Bas Princen’ challenges all attempts to simplify photography in order to express its complexity and layered character. In reflecting on the theme of dwelling, the works in this exhibition have a similar relationship with the Teatro dell’Architettura in Mendrisio: they do not simply occupy a space, but make it their home.

The Teatro dell’architettura Mendrisio of the Università della Svizzera italiana presents the exhibition ‘WHAT MAD PURSUIT. Aglaia Konrad, Armin Linke, Bas Princen’, from 7 April to 22 October 2023, promoted by the USI Academy of Architecture and curated by Francesco Zanot.

Through a selection of photographic works by Aglaia Konrad (Salzburg, 1960), Armin Linke (Milan, 1966) and Bas Princen (Zeeland, 1975), the project explores the relationship between architecture and photography, and that between the latter and the context in which it is shown, focusing on the complexity of an interweaving that places the works at the centre of a constant process of negotiation between subject and exhibition space. The exhibition questions the documentary function of photography, here understood as a device that simultaneously records and transforms reality, while also contradicting its conception of a two-dimensional image by exploring its materiality, body and presence.

THE EXHIBITION

Devised specifically for the spaces of the Teatro dell’architettura Mendrisio, the exhibition ‘WHAT MAD PURSUIT. Aglaia Konrad, Armin Linke, Bas Princen’ is an original project that brings together photographic works by three international artists who work with this medium through different methods and approaches: Aglaia Konrad, Armin Linke and Bas Princen.

By presenting some 50 works created by the authors at different places and times with equally heterogeneous purposes, the exhibition explores the intersections between photography and architecture, represented space and exhibition space.

In the artistic practices of the three authors, the internal space of the frame and the external space become objects of study but also of radical re-vision through the mediation of photography. Each work or cycle of works activates new interpretations of subjects already submitted to processes of representation and interpretation, introducing further layers of significance that intersect with the previous ones. Instead of depicting (once and for all), here photography triggers a chain reaction of resignification that is at least theoretically endless. The photograph rekindles and restarts. It is a matter of intersections, interactions, overlaps, reactions, interferences.

In the photographic series Shaping Stones, Aglaia Konrad combines buildings by well known architects with anonymous works, both ancient and contemporary, united by the use of the same material and by a mode of representation, black and white photography, that makes it possible to obtain an amalgam as coherent as it is extraneous to any recognised category.

Armin Linke re-uses the pre-existing images in his archive, taken around the world in the course of his career. He mixes them together to form a new narrative that goes beyond the original context of production, challenging the very notions of chronology, linearity, history and uniformity.

Bas Princen photographs other representations, questioning what happens to them once they are duplicated and converted into two-dimensional images. In his work, details of pre-existing elements, such as paintings, objects and photographs, usually grasped in their entirety, are subjected to a further process of interpretation, giving rise to new and independent images capable of detaching themselves from the original ones. The artist also questions the very two-dimensionality of photography through a printing technique based on relief and endowed with an unusual sculptural quality.

The exhibition itinerary, covering two floors, is configured as a juxtaposition and recombination of the works, which are entwined with each other to acquire new meanings and interpretations. While Bas Princen’s works, printed on rice paper, give contours and a body to photographs, Aglaia Konrad’s images adapt to the surface of the wall to which they are applied, while Armin Linke's photographs make the most of the architectural features of the exhibition space through devices that bring out its rhythm, materials and technique, engaging in a dialogue resolved in a distinctive form of ‘installational choreography’.

‘WHAT MAD PURSUIT. Aglaia Konrad, Armin Linke, Bas Princen’ challenges all attempts to simplify photography in order to express its complexity and layered character. In reflecting on the theme of dwelling, the works in this exhibition have a similar relationship with the Teatro dell’Architettura in Mendrisio: they do not simply occupy a space, but make it their home.