Informujemy, że Društvo Arhitekata Zagreba ogłosiło kolejny konkurs w ramach cyklu koncepcyjnego cyklu Think Space. Tematem przewodnim tegorocznej edycji Think Space są granice, a konkurs, który trwa obecnie jest zatytułowany „Moral Borders”. Termin nadsyłania prac upływa 28 października.

Przewodniczącym jury jest tym razem Hrvoje Njirić, światowej sławy architekt z Zagrzebia, enfant terrible chorwackiego środowiska architektonicznego, koncentrujący się na wyrażaniu doświadczenia codziennego poprzez przestrzeń w miejsce tworzenia hermetycznych i autystycznych struktur. Współtworzy pracownię njirić+arhitekti.

Poniżej wklejamy informację dostarczoną przez organizatorów, pozwalającą zorientować się w założeniach tej odsłony konkursu i zapraszamy do uczestnictwa!

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MORAL BORDERS:
AN EXERCISE ON IMPERFECT DUTY: Affordable utopias

The higher the buildings, the lower the morals.
Noel Coward, English playwright (1899-1973)

The central philosophical concept in the moral philosophy of Immanuel Kant is the categorical imperative. According to Kant, human beings occupy a special place in creation, and morality can be summed up in one ultimate commandment of reason, or imperative, from which all duties and obligations derive. He defined an imperative as any proposition that declares a certain action (or inaction) to be necessary. Duty is the necessity to act out of reverence for the moral law set by the categorical imperative. He divides duties into two subsets – perfect and imperfect duties. Imperfect duties are circumstantial, meaning simply that you could not reasonably exist in a constant state of performing that duty. Since these depend somewhat on the subjective preferences of humankind, this duty is not as strong as a perfect duty, but it is still morally binding.

With the book „Morality and Architecture“ (1977), positioned as a critique of the Hegelian Zeitgeist, David Watkin has relaunched the perrenial debate about the classical and the modern, about the tradition and progress, about acting morally. The featured architects and thinkers such as Pugin, Viollet-le-Duc, Wright, Le Corbusier or Stirling all had claimed that their chosen style had to be truthful and rational, reflecting the needs of contemporary society. However, Watkin has advocated the other „morality“, rooted in tradition and classicism. The first half of the 20th century has witnessed a number of positions and initiatives also based on the Zeitgeist and on the urge to relate architecture to the very needs of people – from the Constructivists’ utopias and the elaborate optimism of the Broadacre City to the built ideals of industrials such as Bata or Van Nelle. The architecture has been the „will of the epoch translated in space“ and it’s makers the true promotors of the social sensitivity and public good. Even in the post-war period utopian ideas proliferated as a result of a newly gained hope.

On the contrary, at the onset of the new century it has become evident that social domain has been completely overshadowed by the consumers’ culture, that the articulation of civic ideals has ceased to be a point of concern and that architects no longer have any impact on shaping the contemporary conditions. The notion of morality has been taken aside and it’s borders erased. The limits of the discipline have become totally blurred and morally twisted.

The escalation of the market economy in the recent decades has resulted with a complete exclusion of architects as credible civic agents. „The faustian bargain“, as Koolhaas puts it, accepted widely by the architects themselves, has promoted them into the members of the star-system and their work has gained the media presence indeed, but it’s creators became more and more eliminated from the decision-making and their public role significantly diminished.

If we want to think about architecture as the social project today, it requires some support, more than ever. If we tend to believe it is possible to reinstall it, there are some questions to be answered. How to recreate any form of idealism as a necessary prerequisite, even if it is provisional, simulated or temporary? What forces can we mobilize to improve the weak impact on the public sector? How to regain the trust of the society? How to treat vague moral borders of our discipline? And finally, how to articulate the first utopias of the 21st century and how plausible can they be?

Men are more moral than they think and far more immoral than they can imagine.
Sigmund Freud (1856-1939)

Go beyond borders.

Go beyond stereotypes, patterns and typologies that exist within architectural manuals, developer’s portfolios, tourist guides, government’s laws. This competition calls for a radical examination of the present-day conditions in order to create a morally diverse framework for action:

1. WHO. Recognize your subject. While architects often declare that they are working at the service of society: “architecture for the people”, the concept of “people” is still an abstract and objectified term. In an attempt to define this subject, architects and thinkers have created “modulors”, “universal man”, “uberman” and others more. Here we ask you to define a new subject that defies inherited notions of user/subject/community and makes a close reading into contemporary disregarded, prohibited or persecuted modes of being. We ask you to identify and define a new subject through 2 categories:

a/ his/her/their tools of action (developer)

b/ his/her/their desires. (users/settlers)

2. WHERE. Offer a place of inhabitation, a map [geographical, informational, conceptual]. Find a site for the subject related to the set of tools of action and desires you find essential in the constituency of this subject. Argument the size of the area.

3. HOW. Recognize the agent that carries out the venture of creating this new architecture, of giving voice to this new society. Is it a government, a religious state, a telecomunications company, an indigenous tribe, a group of activists,…or your family ?. Think about the means of construction and development of the project. Think about the currency of this new moral-architectural system [capital based, object based,…]

4. WHAT. Synthesize your own utopia, a settlement of a new breed, a territory of newly related activities of dwelling, working and leisure. Prove a certain level of credibility, explain the possibility of implementation – produce an affordable utopia, however provisional or temporary it might be. Clarify your interpretation of morality as an operative position. Rethink neighborhood. Be immoral more than you can imagine. Construct the necessary infrastructure for enhanced action. Provide with a new typology that houses and enhances the possibility of action for the idetified subject/group.

5. SYNTHESIS. Perform your imperfect duty by indicating a set of circumstantial tools you will use. Tools could range from non-dimensional ones like an activists’ action plan to steer up the process, „what if“ scenarios or Calvino-like storytelling to the devices more common to our profession (scale, density, time, etc.) or on the contrary – borrowed from other distinct sciences. Could your tools be described as surprising, disturbing, motivating or even sinister or perverse? Could you think of such a „dark labour“, a morally questionable action which would eventually bring out some positive results? Take your (im)moral position.

General guidelines:

I.TEXT: 800 words
Each entry should contain a text that describes the five ok steps in no more than 800 words.

II. PANELS: 3 [format A2 vertical, in 300 dpi]
Panel 1_ WHO [subject]/WHERE[site]/HOW[developer]
Panel 2_ WHAT [Tools]
Panel 3_ Synthesis – An Utopian Settlement

[Representation: Rethink the morals of representation, rethink the past; rethink frivolous and decorative. Fight the morality of nostalgia, of recent diagrammatic nostalgia, of parametric nostalgia. Question the morality of form, style or aesthetics. Create your own morals of representation.]