Archinect - News

Archinect Sessions #158: A Conversation with Nathalie Frankowski and Cruz Garcia of WAI Architecture Think Tank

2020-07-28T08:30:00-04:00

On today’s show Donna and I are joined by Cruz Garcia and Nathalie Frankowski of WAI Architecture Think Tank.

The last time we had Cruz and Nathalie on the podcast was for our Next Up series at the inaugural Chicago Architecture Biennial. We’ve since also had Cruz on the podcast to discuss the unfortunate changes at Taliesin’s School of Architecture, where Cruz and Nathalie were both visiting teaching fellows. On each of these instances we had a limited time with them to discuss highly specific aspects of their work, so we wanted to have them back on to learn more about their backgrounds, how they met, and what drives their work.

Paul in conversation with Cruz and Nathalie at the Chicago Architecture Biennial, in 2015

If you’ve been following them, you’ll know that they recently published a book on their work entitled Narrative Architecture. They’ve also published a powerful anti-racist manifesto on un-making architecture, as the fight for equality pushes forward, propelled by the ...

Next Up Mini-Session #15: WAI Architecture Think Tank

2015-12-11T20:27:00-05:00

Over Skype from their homebase in Beijing, WAI Architecture Think Tank partners Cruz Garcia and Nathalie Frankowski spoke with Paul Petrunia, on our latest Mini-Session for the Next Up series. Their contribution to the Chicago Architecture Biennial, a rumination on manifestos, looks to the potential forms of architectural persuasion in any medium.

Listen to our Next Up Mini-Session #15 with WAI Architecture Think Tank:

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WAI Architecture Think Tank’s shortlisted proposal for Moscow’s NCCA competition

2013-12-27T18:24:00-05:00

WAI Architecture Think Tank sent us their design for Moscow's New National Center for Contemporary Arts (NCCA) that was shortlisted in the top 10 designs during the competition. Heneghan Peng's design was chosen as the winner, as announced earlier today.

Images courtesy of WAI Architecture Think Tank

Click here to read more about the new NCCA competition in the News.

WAI Think Tank Video "Généalogie d'un collage"

2012-12-02T13:07:00-05:00

WAI Architecture Think Tank has released the video narrative “Généalogie d'un collage”. The video displays the creation of the collage ‘Cities of the Avant-Garde’ as well as one of the poems that were developed with the iconic image.

Music:
Asap Rocky “Peso” (2011)
Jan Garbarek & Agnes Buen Garnas “Rosensfole” (1988)
www.wai-architecture.com
www.waithinktank.com

Drawing Architecture - Conversation with Perry Kulper

2012-08-05T11:50:00-04:00

If “action painting” is produced by the dynamics of dripping, smearing, and sweeping brushstrokes of paint to reveal the complex character of abstract art, then “action drawing” would be something like juxtaposing lines, planes, volumes, typographical elements, photographs, and paper cutouts on a drawing that aims to uncover the intricate universe of architectural ideas.

Each of Perry Kulper’s architectural drawings is a cosmos of information and possibilities that resist the banal and simplistic reductionism so typical of contemporary architectural representation. Series after series, his drawings display objects as background, and background as object in a constant visual journey of an architecture that doesn't settle and always evolves: an architecture of ideas.

WAI Architecture Think Tank discussed with Perry Kulper the concept, intention, and potential of drawing architecture.

WAI: There was a moment in our academic experience in which we became very interested in the potential...

The Architecture of Photography - Conversation with Simona Rota

2012-07-30T15:04:00-04:00

From the eroded optimism of the heroic building-monuments in east-Europe, to the monochromatic banality of housing developments in the Canary Islands, the photographs of Simona Rota appear to be talking to us about the aspirations and shortcomings of architecture in both its megalomaniac and its quotidian streams.
Often lacking human presence, the photographs tell a tale of evaporated intentions, and failed dreams, making through the images a visual statement about the power of humanity to create, alter, and transform our environment.

Images of architecture about topics that transcend architecture, projects like Ostalgia, Instant Village, and Placelessness take us to a personal journey through some of the faces of modernity in Europe, while revealing simultaneously the seducing beauty of its ugliness, and the vulnerability of its invincible architectures.
We are drawn towards the fantastic journey of an upcoming visual story teller that equally dazzles us with an image of the ...

Le Poème de WAI

2012-01-15T12:38:00-05:00

In order to celebrate its third anniversary, WAI Architecture Think Tank has released “Le Poème de WAI”, a peepshow of the visual combustible that fuels WAI’s intellectual project.

A trait d'union between brainwash and brainstorm, Le Poème de WAI shows an abstract of the forces that shape the texts, narratives and experiments of WAI Architecture Think Tank.

Music:
Miles Davis, “Ascenseur Pour L'Echafaud” (c.1958)
Jan Garbarek, Eberhard Weber, “Chorus” (1984)

www.wai-architecture.com
www.waithinktank.com

Post(card) Ideological Icons

2011-11-28T05:14:00-05:00

What about revisiting the hardcore shapes of the avant-garde?

It has been almost a century since the air was heavily saturated with the combustible gas of ideology. Almost a hundred years have passed since everything from film, through art and architecture, to urbanism was susceptible to the slightest friction in the atmosphere sparking endless manifestoes and multiple visions of the perennial “new beginning”. But what happens when the ideological fire that fuels urbanism is extinguished, and in its place just smoke remains? What is left after the idealistic energy of the avant-garde has vanished and we are left with necrophilic icons of dead ideologies? Why aren’t we able to see the striking similarities and contrasting disparities between the avatars of yesterday’s ideological urbanism and today’s pop-architectural icons?

In the twenties imaginary taut wires, steel trusses, and structural concrete gave form to the muscular monuments of a Potemkinesque avant-garde. Utopia had...