Park Fiction in London: Architecture as Initiative

Architecture as Initiative
Tuesday, February 13, 2007,
14.00 Lecture Hall
Curated by the APRI cluster with Celine Condorelli
Architecture as Initiative is a half day symposium at the Architectural
Association. The symposium will bring together architects and spatial
practitioners who are involved in self initiated projects and who see
architecture as a political and social act embedded and born out of
strong links with its context. Their initiatives define a form of practice
which does not necessarily rely on a single commissioning client but
which takes its mandate from a close engagement with a wider user
group or public.
DRAFT SCHEDULE
14.00 - 14.15 Introduction by APRI Cluster
14.15 - 14.45 Jon Broome
Sustainability works, London UK
Title to be confirmed
14.50 - 15.20 Lucie Stephens
New Economics Foundation, London, UK
Title to be confirmed
15.25 - 15.40 Refreshment Break
15.40 - 16.10 Celine Condorelli
Supportstructure, London, UK
Title to be confirmed
16.15 - 16.45 Mathias Heyden
K77 & Hier Entsteht, Berlin, Germany
Title to be confirmed
16.50 - 17.20 Christoph Schäfer
Park Fiction, Hamburg, Germany
Title to be confirmed
17. 20 - 17.40 Refreshment Break
17.40 – 18.40 Where is the project?
Round table 01: South Jury Room
Who is the Client?
Round table 02: North Jury Room
18.40 Drinks
Round Tables
17.35 – 19.00
North & South Jury Room
Two round table discussions will follow the presentations in the
afternoon. Invited guest will give trigger talks - 3 minute
announcements of particular interests and preoccupations, which will
frame and structure the discussion around specific questions.
The trigger talks are not meant to answer the questions raised but
highlight specific interest or issues in relationship to them.
The round table sessions will be chaired and recorded for a possible
later publication.
Round Table 01: Where is the project?
- How can the strategic implementation of a socially engaged
project be designed -across different scales- and what kind of
practice does it frame?
- Is the role of architecture to provide a vision or the means
towards the formulation of one? How is that vision articulated
strategically rather than as an image or a promise?
- Can the open or participatory project only exist outside the
institutions that shape our environment?
- How do we recognise and assess participatory projects or
initiatives since their qualities are largely invisible?
- Is there an aesthetics of such processes?
Round Table 02: Who is the client?
- What are the reasons, invitations and motivations that lead
towards open and participatory projects and who plays a role in
them?
- How do we set up productive models for a shared authorship of
the environment without loosing the potential of expertise?
- How are existing hierarchies negotiated?
- How does one keep a project open and dynamic, and the process
away from the idea of a final, static result?

Alternative Practices and Research Initiatives Cluster
Andreas Lang & Susana Gonzales

Architectural Association
36 Beford Square
London WC1B 3ES

www.aaschool.ac.uk