The first survey of Friedman's work and research was presented as an exhibition at NAI in Rotterdam in May 1999. There was also an accompanying catalogue, published by NAI Publishers.
Monday, December 04, 2006
NAI
The first survey of Friedman's work and research was presented as an exhibition at NAI in Rotterdam in May 1999. There was also an accompanying catalogue, published by NAI Publishers.
Actar
Friedman just published a new book with the Catalan publisher Actar.
'Pro Domo' is "a collection of fragments of scattered topics," a set of "milestones" selected by the author himself. In his words, these highlights are not meant as a testament nor do they, “form a coherent whole”. Instead, they form a personal selection chosen “according to their sentimental value” and span fifty-year period of production dating from the foundation of GEAM. The book includes building structure studies, urban design theories, observations on regional development, as well as design manuals for self-construction and competition projects.
Do it
Yona Friedman participated to the Do-it project, a serie of manuals and exhibitions, curated by Hans Ulrich Obrist, where artists offer instructions to realise their work.
This is his proposal from 2002.
To build a city
1 Draw any regular or irregular contour line showing the floor plan of the home you desire (not necessary to indicate partition walls)
2 The scale of the drawing should be 1 cm = 1 m
3 send us back by e-mail or fax your drawing
4 all the drawings sent back will be displayed together within a grid (an "infrastructure") of 10 cm / 10 cm mesh model
5 the collection of all drawings (floor-plans) sent back will be pasted onto the grid: the whole collection will represent the urban plan of "Utopia - City"
6 Do not forget to inscribe your name into your plan.
Paris, 18.4.02
This is his proposal from 2002.
To build a city
1 Draw any regular or irregular contour line showing the floor plan of the home you desire (not necessary to indicate partition walls)
2 The scale of the drawing should be 1 cm = 1 m
3 send us back by e-mail or fax your drawing
4 all the drawings sent back will be displayed together within a grid (an "infrastructure") of 10 cm / 10 cm mesh model
5 the collection of all drawings (floor-plans) sent back will be pasted onto the grid: the whole collection will represent the urban plan of "Utopia - City"
6 Do not forget to inscribe your name into your plan.
Paris, 18.4.02
Utopie Realizzabili
Several Italian authors have been writing recently on Yona Friedman works and books.
"Utopie Realizzabili" review.
"Utopie Realizzabili" debate.
"Utopie Realizzabili" review.
"Utopie Realizzabili" debate.
Friday, December 01, 2006
Wednesday, November 29, 2006
Tuesday, November 28, 2006
The second round in Paris
We said we went a couple of times visiting Yona, even though we reported about the first meeting, we didn’t really say much about what happened during the second one. Quite hectic, interesting and fun.
We started preparing the meeting a couple of days before actually leaving Italy. We then went to Paris, prepared, excited and all hyped up, thinking that we would have met the master, spread our papers and drawings all over and that he would have been involved in the typical brainstorming-design session.
So, we reached his place thinking we would have updated him on what done up to then, and then continued from there on with him.
Yona, on the other hand, listened to everything we said for then twisting our starting point. He pushed us to experiment ourselves his design approach. We wanted him to be the conceptual engine of our work, starting from our analysis. He pushed us to learn his method and then come up ourselves with concepts for the square.
‘Ookeey, here is the iron wire, I think you can do some experimentations now’
But before that we had nice, long chats on various topics, from autoconstruction to uncopyrighted architecture, typical tea-cup conversations.
His house is incredibly fascinating, with very much sculptures, drawings, carpets, models spread all over. Doesn’t look like a museum at all though, it is rather very cozy, warm and chaotic. Beautiful and immediately familiar.
Yona and ourselves spent quite some time in chatting about the value of participation and autoconstruction in architecture, being this some of the most important aspects of yona’s work as well as of the competition we are participating in. Autoconstruction for Yona means give to the people freedom of improvisation and of construction with whatever material they have. Main focus becomes then transmitting knowledge to people for them to be able to construct themselves their own cities, public spaces and houses.
This means a different approach for the architect, designer or artist, that has to be designing techniques and processes then, rather than buildings. Very cheap and easy techniques that people can do themselves, following instructions firstly to then move away and improvise.
So, for instance, practically, would mean designing visualizations of possible buildings or actions sequences and instructions rather than designing the building itself.
A do-it-yourself architecture like this would mean an author less architecture. Regarding this issue Yona could not stand in a clearer position:
‘I think that it’s a misunderstanding of architecture…let’s take Gehri for example, he makes an artwork and it has to be done like that, and this is an error. Great architecture generally has come by masons who were not inventing the arc at all. The interesting aspect about arc and domes is that they became generalized and used by people. There is no patent that goes with this things.’
‘so, you can see them as techniques…’
‘yes, you can see them both as techniques and social interventions’ ‘I think Le Corbusier’s importance was far less his own buildings, but more the other people who was following him and produced things. There is no other way to do it. Architecture it’s not patents.’.
‘twenty years ago, when I was talking about this things, I was told I am an utopian. And now it’s credible’ I think now somehow public opinion accepts this things that they did not accepted 20 years ago’
Back in the street, we headed to the Palais De Tokyo (http://…). The palais was hosting an exhibit, but the ground floor has a space available for people for working, with all sorts of services.
We put our heads down and started sketching, drafting renderings but mostly doing and re-doing models, with various materials, bought and recovered…a flower seller even gifted to us a net he used to dress his shop window, but that would have nicely served the purpose for our model.
Back to Yona again then, with all our models: some were ‘cloudy’, some other geometrical.
Yona’s reaction was very gratifying. Apart the comments and the exchange of suggestions and advices, was truly nice to have Yona asking us ‘can I take a photo of these models?’.
I was almost asking back ‘can I take a photo of you taking a photo of our models?’
Then the comments session.
‘It is important to close the nodes in the bottom (for giving rigidity)’
‘not all these loops should be the same’
‘but yours is so beautiful’
‘I try never to go in the same direction with loops…it’s also very important how you tight the loops (and shows how to tight a node)’
‘did you also use any instruments to bend the wire?’
‘just with my hands, up to 6mm you can bend it with your hands’
(All the models both ours and his, are on yona’s table, and yona takes snaps)
‘in reality it is a different thing, in a different scale will not be the same thing, it will give a different feeling’
‘do you want to make a model with us using the computer?We could also do a 3Dscan of some of your models to replicate it with the computer, what do you think about it?’
‘The real model follows rules that are easy to put on the computer. Mathematically speaking, a computer is listening a shape, making it smoother and smoother, and this smoothening doesn’t exist in reality.’
‘Advices for next steps then?’
‘I would do one step further, you will get a few people from the town and you will make it with them. My experience in participation tells me that every person has is own interpretation’ clearly hints Yona.’
Last step of this working session was to interview him. The interview transcript will be posted soon.
Working session over and back in a smoky bar again, discussing and debriefing among us.
Parallely, we have thought of involving Ove Arup (http://…) for technical consultancies. The story basically sounded like: ‘hey we are working with Yona Friedman, and actually we would love to realize one of his never-realized-almost-unrealizable structures…in a square…in bologna…the periphery’ ‘cool, sounds nice and challenging’.
We started preparing the meeting a couple of days before actually leaving Italy. We then went to Paris, prepared, excited and all hyped up, thinking that we would have met the master, spread our papers and drawings all over and that he would have been involved in the typical brainstorming-design session.
So, we reached his place thinking we would have updated him on what done up to then, and then continued from there on with him.
Yona, on the other hand, listened to everything we said for then twisting our starting point. He pushed us to experiment ourselves his design approach. We wanted him to be the conceptual engine of our work, starting from our analysis. He pushed us to learn his method and then come up ourselves with concepts for the square.
‘Ookeey, here is the iron wire, I think you can do some experimentations now’
But before that we had nice, long chats on various topics, from autoconstruction to uncopyrighted architecture, typical tea-cup conversations.
His house is incredibly fascinating, with very much sculptures, drawings, carpets, models spread all over. Doesn’t look like a museum at all though, it is rather very cozy, warm and chaotic. Beautiful and immediately familiar.
Yona and ourselves spent quite some time in chatting about the value of participation and autoconstruction in architecture, being this some of the most important aspects of yona’s work as well as of the competition we are participating in. Autoconstruction for Yona means give to the people freedom of improvisation and of construction with whatever material they have. Main focus becomes then transmitting knowledge to people for them to be able to construct themselves their own cities, public spaces and houses.
This means a different approach for the architect, designer or artist, that has to be designing techniques and processes then, rather than buildings. Very cheap and easy techniques that people can do themselves, following instructions firstly to then move away and improvise.
So, for instance, practically, would mean designing visualizations of possible buildings or actions sequences and instructions rather than designing the building itself.
A do-it-yourself architecture like this would mean an author less architecture. Regarding this issue Yona could not stand in a clearer position:
‘I think that it’s a misunderstanding of architecture…let’s take Gehri for example, he makes an artwork and it has to be done like that, and this is an error. Great architecture generally has come by masons who were not inventing the arc at all. The interesting aspect about arc and domes is that they became generalized and used by people. There is no patent that goes with this things.’
‘so, you can see them as techniques…’
‘yes, you can see them both as techniques and social interventions’ ‘I think Le Corbusier’s importance was far less his own buildings, but more the other people who was following him and produced things. There is no other way to do it. Architecture it’s not patents.’.
‘twenty years ago, when I was talking about this things, I was told I am an utopian. And now it’s credible’ I think now somehow public opinion accepts this things that they did not accepted 20 years ago’
Back in the street, we headed to the Palais De Tokyo (http://…). The palais was hosting an exhibit, but the ground floor has a space available for people for working, with all sorts of services.
We put our heads down and started sketching, drafting renderings but mostly doing and re-doing models, with various materials, bought and recovered…a flower seller even gifted to us a net he used to dress his shop window, but that would have nicely served the purpose for our model.
Back to Yona again then, with all our models: some were ‘cloudy’, some other geometrical.
Yona’s reaction was very gratifying. Apart the comments and the exchange of suggestions and advices, was truly nice to have Yona asking us ‘can I take a photo of these models?’.
I was almost asking back ‘can I take a photo of you taking a photo of our models?’
Then the comments session.
‘It is important to close the nodes in the bottom (for giving rigidity)’
‘not all these loops should be the same’
‘but yours is so beautiful’
‘I try never to go in the same direction with loops…it’s also very important how you tight the loops (and shows how to tight a node)’
‘did you also use any instruments to bend the wire?’
‘just with my hands, up to 6mm you can bend it with your hands’
(All the models both ours and his, are on yona’s table, and yona takes snaps)
‘in reality it is a different thing, in a different scale will not be the same thing, it will give a different feeling’
‘do you want to make a model with us using the computer?We could also do a 3Dscan of some of your models to replicate it with the computer, what do you think about it?’
‘The real model follows rules that are easy to put on the computer. Mathematically speaking, a computer is listening a shape, making it smoother and smoother, and this smoothening doesn’t exist in reality.’
‘Advices for next steps then?’
‘I would do one step further, you will get a few people from the town and you will make it with them. My experience in participation tells me that every person has is own interpretation’ clearly hints Yona.’
Last step of this working session was to interview him. The interview transcript will be posted soon.
Working session over and back in a smoky bar again, discussing and debriefing among us.
Parallely, we have thought of involving Ove Arup (http://…) for technical consultancies. The story basically sounded like: ‘hey we are working with Yona Friedman, and actually we would love to realize one of his never-realized-almost-unrealizable structures…in a square…in bologna…the periphery’ ‘cool, sounds nice and challenging’.
Pictures of the models (part two)
Models made once back to Milan
The conceptual and the 1:50 scale models...
The conceptual and the 1:50 scale models...
Thursday, November 16, 2006
Chien
Probably the most intruiguing book of Yona, seems to be this one. The following is the description from its French publisher.Yona Friedman
Vous avez un chien.
C'est lui qui vous a choisi(e)
Vous avez un chien se présente sous la forme d’une bande dessinée qui met en scène un/e chien/ne et son/sa maître/sse. C’est un manuel d’éducation pour tous ceux qui vivent avec des animaux domestiques ou d’autres êtres vivants. Ecrit par Balkis Berger-Dobermann, qui partage la vie des Friedman depuis plus de douze ans, Vous avez un chien aurait pu s’intituler « Comment dresser ses maîtres», mais l’auteur a préféré s’en tenir à un titre plus « général » et moins « anthropomorphe ».
Vous avez un chien est aussi un livre pour ceux qui ont des chats, des canaris, des poissons rouges. Il énonce selon des principes simples «comment vivre avec les autres, sans être maître, ni esclave» pour reprendre le titre d’un autre ouvrage de Friedman.
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