Archinect - News

Chief curators for the 2019 Oslo Architecture Triennale are announced

2017-12-19T15:46:00-05:00

After a yearlong search and an open Call for Curator, the 2019 Oslo Architecture Triennale has finally selected a winning proposal for the upcoming event. The jury has picked the curatorial team comprised of Interrobang founder, Maria Smith; Canadian designer educator and Interrobang Associate, Matthew Dalziel; British critic and think tank director, Phineas Harper; and Norwegian urban researcher and artist, Cecilie Sachs Olsen.

Chosen from 71 submissions and entitled "Common Futures," the theme questions the unbridled growth and rapid pace of industrialization underwent by societies throughout the 20th century. The proposal posits instead the alternative concept of Degrowth, an economic ideology that questions infinite economic growth as the one-way future for the whole of humanity.

"With this concept, the Triennale could be a platform to establish an understanding of a potential architecture of degrowth: defining it, questioning it and challenging both architects, architecture c...

Ruimteveldwerk maps 'modes of movement' for asylum seekers in Oslo

2016-09-13T18:30:00-04:00

According to estimates by the Norwegian Directorate of Immigration, up to 60,000 people will seek asylum in Norway this year alone, most of them from Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan. Many of these newly-arrived people have little knowledge of where to go to find basic resources, not to mention where to make friends. How do you spread information among a constantly changing group of people who don’t have either the visibility or the vocality of the rest of a city’s population?

For Modes of Movement, one of the 2016 Oslo Triennale commissioned ‘intervention strategies’, the Belgian collective Ruimteveldwerk met with asylum seekers in Oslo to gather information and anecdotes about places they found useful or appealing. They then converted their findings into a city guide, which delineates fundamental resources like medical centers and shelters, alongside places where asylum seekers can simply meet one another and share stories and experiences.

Like the rest of the intervention strategies in ...

Bollería Industrial / Factory-Baked Goods expose and disrupt the banal rituals of airport travel

2016-09-09T13:08:00-04:00

Airports can be hell, as any traveler knows. From endless check-in lines to depersonalized security checkpoints to the dull monotony of waiting rooms and transit halls, the experience of traveling has become something of a 21st century ritual. You’ll (probably) get to your destination, but first you have to go through the (securitized and regulated) motions.

“By means of boredom, oddly familiar scenarios, and the climate-controlled atmospheres of in-transit buffers, the spaces and technologies of the airport relax our sensory spatial apprehension to camouflage the control parameters to which passengers are submitted,” write the Madrid-based design studio Bollería Industrial / Factory-Baked Goods in the text accompanying their installation Managing Distance, one of five commissioned “intervention strategies” of the In Residence component of the 2016 Oslo Architecture Triennale.

Comprising five different physical devices placed around the sleek Oslo Airport in Gardermoen, their interven...

OMA and Bengler rebel against the sharing economy (sort of)

2016-09-08T12:18:00-04:00

OMA teamed up with the digital consultancy and product development studio Bengler—who also converted the firm’s massive data set into a website—to put together an installation-cum-digital platform for the 2016 Oslo Triennale. Dubbed PANDA, the “counter-organizational platform” both critiques the sharing economy and, in classic OMA-fashion, wryly critiques that critique.

A red plastic strip curtain demarcates a space that could have been teleported from the basement apartment of a hacker. A grid of sticky notes inscribed with the names of various sharing platforms adorns one wall, while on another a poster maps their global impact. On a desk a six-monitor computer displays various images of countercultural resistance, tagged and sorted by theme. Next to it sits a bottle of Provigil—a wakefulness medication commonly (ab)used for all-nighters by college students—and a stack of news clippings exposing the ills of the sharing economy.

A special PANDA WiFi network is accessible throughout t...

Winners of the "Behind the Green Door - A Critical Look at Sustainable Architecture through 600 Objects" book giveaway

2014-08-07T13:00:00-04:00

Time to announce the winners of the Rotor + Oslo Architectural Triennale "Behind the Green Door" book giveaway we had last month.

Based on the acclaimed exhibition and one-year-long research of Belgian creative collective Rotor for the 2013 Oslo Architectural Triennale, Behind the Green Door questions the concept of sustainability, its paradoxes, and its widespread influence in architectural development and urban planning in recent decades.

The winners are:

Jenny V. - Chicago, IL
Wendy L. - New York, NY
Michael B. - San Antonio, TX
Yaprak H. - Montreal, Canada
Chuck F. - Los Angeles, CA

Congrats! Thanks to everyone who participated.

Want to enter another giveaway? Check out the Àlvaro Siza book giveaway we just launched!

Win a copy of "Behind the Green Door - A Critical Look at Sustainable Architecture through 600 Objects", published by Rotor and the 2013 Oslo Architectural Triennale

2014-07-18T13:04:00-04:00

In need of a fresh perspective on sustainable design that goes beyond the ooh-ing and ahh-ing at all things deemed as green? The book Behind the Green Door - A Critical Look at Sustainable Architecture through 600 Objects could help with that. And Archinect is giving away five copies to our readers!

For a chance to win, fill out this survey by Friday, July 25th. Winners will be selected at random. Good luck!

The book's title says it all. Based on the acclaimed exhibition and one year-long research of Belgian creative collective Rotor for the 2013 Oslo Architectural Triennale, Behind the Green Door questions the concept of sustainability, its paradoxes, and its widespread influence in architectural development and urban planning in recent decades.

Six hundred supposedly sustainable objects from Rotor's exhibition -- including building models, samples, specialized construction tools, campaign posters, and footage of lobbyist gatherings -- are presented and contextualized in the book. In ...