Convivial Ground: Stories from Collaborative Spatial Practices 9783986120054, 9783986120047

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Stories from Collaborative Spatial Practices Constructlab / Joanne Pouzenc / Alex Römer / Peter Zuiderwijk (eds.)

THE STOOL



Content

8 Editorial: Tuning our Voices  by Constructlab / Joanne Pouzenc, Alexander Römer and Peter Zuiderwijk 19 The Convivial Ground Prologue by Joanne Pouzenc, 2019 32 GATHER



To Gather

55 Let Me Introduce You To … Story by Joanne Pouzenc, 2021 58 Once Upon Today Story by Mascha Fehse, 2019 63 Who Decides? Story by Joanne Pouzenc, 2019 67 Pixelated Relationships Story by Carla Rangel, 2019 72 Beyond The Coffee, And The Machine Story by Laëtitia Chamekh, 2018 76 What’s Cooking? Story by Johanna Dehio, 2019 80 EAT 97 Architects Also Need To Eat Story by Rebecca Acosta, 2021 102 Give A Man A Barbecue  Story by Joanne Pouzenc, based on a conversation with Pascal Lazarus, 2019 106 Brad Pitt Is Cool  Story by Joanne Pouzenc, based on a conversation with Pascal Lazarus, 2019 111 Red, Red Wine Story by Joanne Pouzenc, 2021

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1 14 Gotcha! Story by Joanne Pouzenc, 2021 118 The Housekeeper  Story by Joanne Pouzenc, based on a conversation with OST collective (Julie Guiches and Benoît Lorent), 2019 123 Nothing Planned Story by Sofia Costa Pinto, 2019 126 Talking To The Wall Story by Peter Zuiderwijk, 2022 132 The Unpredictable Drift  Conversation between Joanne Pouzenc, Alexander Römer, Mathilde Sauzet, and Malte von Braun, 2019

To Learn 54 Telling What We Really Want To Learn (And How) 1  Essay by Merril Sinéus, based on collective statements, 2021 176

DISPLAY

93 The Wall That Turns Decisions Into Skills 1  Story by Joanne Pouzenc, based on a conversation with Alexander Römer, 2019 198 Means To Distribute Ideas Story by Peter Zuiderwijk, 2019 209 Lingo Flows Story by Lucas Devolder, 2022 212 How I Heard The Cry Of The River Story by Merril Sinéus, 2021 217 Trial And Error And Trial Again Story by Joanne Pouzenc, 2021 220 Doubt Is Good  Story by Linus Lutz, based on a conversation with Alexander Römer, 2019

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LEARN

241 What Nobody Really Wants, Until They Really Really Want It Story by Joanne Pouzenc, 2021 245 The Hot—Very Hot—Hour Story by Joanne Pouzenc, 2021 250 The Fortune Teller  Story by Joanne Pouzenc, based on a fortune telling session with Merril Sinéus, 2021 257 Today I’ve Learned—Part I Story by Sara Belrhaiti, 2021 259 Today I’ve Learned—Part II Story by Sara Belrhaiti, 2021 262 Today I’ve Learned—Part III Story by Sara Belrhaiti, 2021 266 What Did I Learn?  Collection of learnings and connections by Merril Sinéus, 2021 272 COOK 90 Reflective Round Around An Italian Tea 2  Conversation between Antonin Basser, Naim Benyahya, Diego Sologuren, and Merril Sinéus 296 The Future School  Constructlab in conversation with Tiphaine Abenia and Hae-Won Shin, 2021 312 The Learning Community Essay by Joanne Pouzenc, 2022

To Work 3 30 334

Tuning In Story by David Moritz, 2019 A Coffee For Erik Story by Bert Villa, 2019

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40 The Community Factory, Unless It’s 3 The Factory Of The Community?  Story by Linus Lutz, based on a conversation with Sebastien Tripod, 2019 345 Them, The Making, The Makers And The Ones Who Make The Making Possible Story by Noel Madison Fettingsmith, 2020 352

WORK

371 A Motionless Theater  Story by Joanne Pouzenc, based on a conversation with OST collective (Julie Guiches and Benoît Lorent), 2019 374 Watching Each Other Improvise  Story by Linus Lutz, based on a conversation with Patrick Hubmann, 2019 378 Useful Lost Information Board Story by Joanne Pouzenc, 2021 382 The House With Too Many Doors Story by Joanne Pouzenc, 2021 387 The Auction To Get Less Story by Joanne Pouzenc, 2021 391 The Auction To Give Back Story by Joanne Pouzenc, 2021 396 We Should Design Our Waste  Story by Joanne Pouzenc, based on a conversation with Refunc (Jan Korbes, Denis Oudendijk), and Peter Zuiderwijk, 2019 400

REST

17 The Little Person Who Holds A Piece Of Wood 4  Story by Joanne Pouzenc, based on a conversation with Lucas Devolder, 2022

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420 600 Steps  Story by Angie Volk, based on a conversation with Alexander Römer, 2022 428 Conviviality, Work, Leisure, and Retirement  Thierry Paquot in conversation with Joanne Pouzenc and Alexander Römer, 2022 455 About the Constructlab Network 458 Image credits 462 Acknowledgements 463 Imprint 464 PLAY

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Editorial:

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“Gathering is a very political act, perhaps even the very essence of all political acts. Gathering happens on multiple scales, whether it is the gathering of one’s own thoughts, the encounter of two friends, a family gathering, the gathering of a community or of an assembly. Gathering is the precondition for exchange and debate, a debate allowing conflict to occur in the search for a common understanding. For every scale of gathering, a specific architectural form exists, supporting a certain quality of debate.”

This is how we opened our contribution to the 2019 Chicago Architecture Biennial. Titled How Together,1 the first book written on our collective practice consisted of an invitation, through a collection of texts, to share common stories. As hosts of this immaterial conversation, we started by sharing ours. We wanted to narrate our experiences, hoping that they would echo those of others. We wrote: “These experiences are not examples to be followed. These experiences are not solutions. They are just stories we would have shared with you, together, around a beer, a fire, a workshop, a dinner, a lecture, a nap, a coffee, a book, a … It’s an invitation to fill the gaps and use all common grounds the way you wish, to live—at least for a moment—

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together, whether you want to convey a message or to learn from someone else’s, whether you wish to actively participate or to simply be present. It’s not a ‘how to.’ It’s not a manual. It’s an anti-manual. In here you won’t find what to do or how to act. It’s an invitation to invent and implement your own way of writing your own common stories.” Today, four years later, we have more stories to tell and to share.2 1 Constructlab, Joanne Pouzenc, Carla Rangel, and Alexander Römer (eds.), How Together (Barcelona: dpr, 2019).

2 The gathered texts and related projects have been written and built by many hands. They’ve triggered endless conversations over several years. All stories were written between 2018 and 2022. Within that time, a lot has changed. At first we wondered whether we should only gather stories of the “new normal” caused by the global pandemic. In the end, we decided this wouldn’t reflect our practice. To situate each story in a specific moment of time, each date is specified in the table of contents.

At that time, even though commoning was already a shared issue within the community of spatial practitioners and a point of curiosity for local authorities and policy makers—if not yet adopted and applied to their territories—nobody could guess that togetherness would soon be globally and dramatically constrained. As the pandemic of COVID burst and spread out across the world in 2020, the need for community and belonging, the importance of the local and one’s neighbors became increasingly clear. In a sense, it was reaffirmed that we are all social creatures with brains that have evolved to form interhuman communities, and that digital exchanges result in a form of communication that only conveys a limited amount of information. Moreover, the pandemic raised new concerns and global consciousness about the absolute necessity of pushing care as the main agent for the future. Fischer and Tronto define care as including “everything that we do to maintain, continue, and

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repair our ‘world’ so that we can live in it as well as possible. That world includes our bodies, our selves, and our environment, all of which we seek to interweave in a complex, lifesustaining web.”3 We advocate that, applied to spatial practices, care is a practice that we can only apply together, and that togetherness can be fostered through design. Nevertheless, we believe that design does not necessarily lead to establishing the common ground that will be collectively cared for. We believe that we should not only aim to build common grounds, but also to build convivial grounds, understood through Ivan Illich’s definition of conviviality:

I intend [‘conviviality’] to mean autonomous and creative intercourse among persons, and the intercourse of persons with their environment; and this in contrast with the conditioned response of persons to the demands made upon them by others, and by a man-made environment. I consider conviviality to be individual freedom realized in personal interdependence and, as such, an intrinsic ethical value. I believe that, in any society, as conviviality is reduced below a certain level, no amount of industrial productivity can effectively satisfy the needs it creates among society’s members.4 3 Berenice Fisher and Joan C. Tronto, “Toward a Feminist Theory of Care,” in Emily Abel and Margaret Nelson (eds.), Circles of Care: Work and Identity in Women’s Lives (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1991), p. 40.

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4 Ivan Illich, Tools for Conviviality (London: Calder and Boyars, 1973).

It seems unclear exactly how, when and with whom Constructlab began to grow from an idea carried along an informal group of spatial practitioners to become a dynamic transnational network of designer-builders—as well as sociologists, urban planners, graphic designers, curators, educators, and web developers. Early bird members all give different answers to these questions, locating the date somewhere between 2006 and 2012, and the place somewhere between France and Germany. Breaking with traditional divisions of labor, Constructlab carries the creative process from the drafting table into the field, enabling design to respond to the possibilities and constraints posed by materials, site, environment, and utilization. Emphasizing collaboration, both with one another and with members of the community, we take on a variety of projects, permanent and temporary, bringing our creative strategies to bear on solving problems and raising awareness of social, environmental, and practical issues. We favor recycled and upcycled materials, and resources available locally. At the heart of our work, which includes commissioned projects throughout the world, is a desire to enhance feelings of community and heighten the sense of place. Despite the fact that its members gather around projects, Constructlab started as a project rather than with a project. Since the early 2000s, European architecture collectives have progressively structured and organized towards more traditional architectural practices with collective forms of governance. Constructlab, on the other hand, remains a one-of-a-kind practice, with a variable number of members and moving centers and landing grounds. Today, Constructlab has four core active associations—in Belgium, Germany, Switzerland, and France—and many hotspots in surrounding countries—Portugal, Italy, and the Netherlands—allowing for the network to expand, mingle, and exchange, while at the same time rooting in several localized territories. Our practice is based on the ground on which our projects are located. As much as we can, we start by inhabiting a space. We are present, on site. We take time to develop ideas, relationships, and networks. We gather resources, we involve local energies, we

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invite people to pass by, stay, appropriate, propose, act. Through our presence, we take time to build experiences and develop as many stories as there are possible interpretations of what we produce. Even though each project is unique, we have noticed that some characteristics repeat throughout all of the projects, becoming constitutive of our practice. Even though our practice is project-based, Convivial Ground is a book about the practice, not the projects. Once again, we would like to update and renew the invitation to write common convivial stories. Whereas How Together focused on qualities of togetherness through Constructlab’s experience, Convivial Ground builds up a new narrative, expanding the field of inquiry to other constitutive aspects of our practice. As such, the book unfolds stories along three main chapters: to gather  explores the conditions of togetherness. It questions the way in which projects can support communities to emerge, sustain and develop.



to learn looks at situations where the transmission of knowledge and know-how to broader communities is at the core of the projects, if not their only aim.

to work focuses on the working conditions of the collaborators, the rationalization of the production processes, and questions the economic models behind the creation of immaterial value. Each chapter is completed by essays and conversations that go beyond the empirical observation or the anecdote. Throughout the pages, drawings and sets of images from different projects are gathered and classified by typological function, creating a corpus of shapes and possible unlimited uses.

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If each chapter digs into the specificities of our spatial collaborative practice, giving hints and keys to understand its core values, the book also raises questions about the role of such alternative practice in the global landscape of spatial production. How are spatial collaborative practices contributing to the shaping of other forms of architecture and artistic pedagogy? How are they helping to create new professionals and new commissions towards more equitable, inclusive and integrated projects? How could spatial practices be valued in order to be useful for those who are most in need of spatial care? Nowadays, as we see a multiplication of offers for so-called tactical, transient or transitory urbanism, all claiming participatory processes and transitional change, it is tempting to compare projects based on their visual results, sometimes spectacular. Nevertheless, we believe that projects should be examined through their processes rather than their visible manifestation in order to understand their long-term impact and added values, most likely immaterial and unquantifiable. Within a project, a person can assist, instruct, compliment, teach, joke or tease. But he or she can also be assisted, instructed, complimented, taught, be joked about or teased. The mutual recognition of the other emerges through engaged acts of giving and receiving. Conviviality is routed in responsiveness. Perhaps conviviality can help in the evaluation of common grounds.

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Making a book is a project. Making a book is a long process. Making it with many hands doesn’t necessarily make it faster. As we sit in front of our screens, sharing the same information at the same time, we also sit in three different countries, having our own perspective on our lives, practice, and network. Through this book, we have tried to tune all our voices on an equal level, dealing with the distance from one to another. Facing the impossibility of finding the perfect consensus, we’ve decided instead to highlight our complexities— and contradictions. We hope you will see in this complexity the promise of a rich reading experience.

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DRUCK AM DREESCH

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Essay:

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Emergencism Community is as old as humanity and the need for the other as important as the need for water and food. Within all communities, organizing survival has led to the invention of different forms of sharing, in order to distribute resources, roles, and tasks. Clearly, the idea of a community in which every single individual is responsible for sustaining himself entirely would be unfeasible. Nobody can know everything, and even if they could, nobody can make everything. While the market based on common value has managed to offer a solution to transcend the conflicts and negotiations that come along with sharing, in a world of limited resources and limited growth, that system also increases inequality: when one gets more, another one loses out. The dematerialization of the relation to the other, made possible through free trade and the rise of technologies, has reached a new level. But while individualism is still possible in daily life, the current emergencies and contemporary challenges—ecological, social, political, economical—underline the necessity of global common action towards one possible future. It is up to us all to invent today the conditions of that action.

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Common Ground Is Not Enough Beyond Common: Convivial. On the opposite side of the extra-connected, extra-marketed society, the trend towards adopting new (old) ways of life, whereby needs are reduced to a minimum in order to assume self-sustainability, represents a new alternative for living a good life. But if reducing our needs seems like an appealing idea, it is only a partial solution. In one sense, movements such as minimalism or survivalism contribute to the negation of the need for community and the acceptance of the failure of society to find common answers to the contemporary challenges together. While those challenges are commonly identified—we call them “climate change,” “crises of capitalism,” etc.—commonly agreeing on the actions to implement to solve those issues together seems a utopian task. Working together implies acknowledging not only the common agreements, but also the individual discords. If community is only a need, it is tempting to let conflict rule, which divides that community into smaller opposing units with a centralized power. But if community is a desire, then desire rules over conflict and the search for common solutions, without discord, becomes possible. In that sense, common ground is not enough. A convivial ground could be an answer.

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Built upon the notion of “conviviality,” 1 the Manifesto for a Convivialist Society2 draws the baselines for a legitimate politics based on four main principles: the principle of common humanity—beyond all differences, there is only one humanity that will be respected by every single member of that one and only humanity; the principle of common sociality—humans are social beings and their largest asset lies in their social relationships; the principle of individuation—legitimate politics should allow every person to express their individual selves, by developing their abilities and empowering them to act without damaging somebody else’s individuality, in search of equal freedom; the principle of handled opposition—opposition as the free expression of individual opinion is inevitable, but it should not endanger the principle of common sociality that allows conflict to be fruitful rather than destructive. In that sense, if what we need is a common ground, what we desire is a convivial ground. How does this translate in terms of design?

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Welcome Conflict! In situations of constructive collaboration—or collaborative construction—conflicts often appear along the way, whether with the external actors of a project or within the community of the project itself. Conflict is then only the expression of different individual opinions that, instead of creating divides, can become a constructive tool and sometimes even a creative activity. If within a community, conflict can be embraced by learning to oppose without colliding, then the conditions of that community will be clear, defined and refined continuously throughout the project. That community starts with the gathering of individuals around a common aim, the definition of its mode of governance, its decision-making process, the nature of its collaborations, the roles of its members, and the rhythms and formats by which the above can be changed. In order to welcome conflict, the community therefore needs to develop a culture of assembly that acts as a democratic platform for the management of decentralized authority. Within an assembly of a community of designer-builders such as Constructlab, the nature of the conflicts expressed can address issues of living together—who was noisy yesterday night? Who forgot to close the door?— as well as issues of working together—cleaning up and 23

properly storing the tools, respecting shifts and basic security, etc. In fact, within this kind of community, the difference between living and working is hard to define. As in New Babylon, the urban megastructure project developed by Dutch visual artist Constant Nieuwenhuys between 1956 and 1974,3 the designer-builder-philosopher-community member is a Homo Ludens4, subordinated neither to work nor to leisure; he is an active producer of his own experience and of his surrounding space, at any time. Voluntary Community Within Constructlab’s practice, every project starts with inhabitation. Whether the projects take place in derelict industrial landscapes, abandoned warehouses, forgotten infrastructures or urban wastelands, the first action consists in building the support structure—the basic amenities that everyone needs for daily living—which will then accompany the freshly made community in charge of leading the project. As such, the first community that each project addresses is the community of designer-builders itself, the group of Homo Ludens performing a 24/7 action within a limited time and space. That community is able to mediate and pass over conflict, since it is constituted of voluntary members enrolled to live together in order to build their own experience and environment for a given 24

time. As the French anthropologist Alain Caillé puts it, “a voluntary association lies in two or more individuals pooling their material resources, their knowledge and their activity for a common end which is not primarily geared toward profit‐making.”5 Whatever the individual goal or aim, every member of the community has a project—and that can be very different from one member to another. Monetary reward plays only a small role in the motivation of its members and is often limited to basic subsistence. While one should question the nature of the entreprecariat as a recurring model within social community projects and associative work, economic equity within a project community allows decentralized and non-hierarchical authority and therefore annihilates all conflicts that arise due to pay and investments gaps. Convivial Community Parallel to the construction of the basic structures for collective living, the community builds its own identity and negotiates the rules of the group, distributing roles and tasks, rhythms and functions, logistics and missions. The first mode of governance is based on the experience of the members, constituting a force of proposition, and is able to evolve within the duration of the projects. Members are empowered to make new propositions according to 25

specific contextual issues encountered on site. In order to create the possibility of reinventing or improving itself, the community installs daily rituals to reflect collectively on individual needs or claims and to serve the project in the best way. The community builds up around convivial situations. Through their daily activities, mixing living and working, without prioritizing one or the other, the members of the community of designer-builders progressively become local residents of the context in which they find themselves during the course of the project. For the social and cultural anthropologist Tilmann Heil, conviviality occurs “where local residents engage in practices and discourses of living together, engaging with, confronting and embracing differences.”6 That community made of voluntary members is enriched by the diversity of its members, coming from different disciplines, cultural and personal backgrounds. Together, they shape their own local culture, specific to that group, that time, that space. According to Adloff, “conviviality represents a form of minimal sociality and minimal consensus that functions as a competence of intracultural, daily negotiation.”7

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May Space Be a Convivial Tool In his 1973 essay “Tools for Conviviality,” Ivan Illich described his concerns about the rise of an individualist society in which beings are disconnected from one another by means of the development of non-convivial tools, whose design and apparatus are so complex that they are necessarily operated and imposed by a central authority. Nowadays, most of our technologies are based on the model Illich observed, from our daily so-called connected objects to our public institutions. The spaces we inhabit, from houses as speculative products to monitored and controlled public spaces, suffer from the same phenomenon. Nevertheless, Illich’s definition of convivial tools outlines possible and necessary convivial spaces; spaces that “foster conviviality to the extent to which they can be easily used, by anybody, as often or as seldom as desired, for the accomplishment of a purpose chosen by the user. The use of such [spaces] by one person does not restrain another from using them equally. They do not require previous certification of the user. Their existence does not impose any obligation to use them. They allow the user to express his meaning in action.”

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According to this definition, any space that is easily comprehended, interpreted, in which anybody can project and implement any use, is a convivial space. Convivial spaces are the answer to uses rather than functions: when you plan without a use, people have the opportunity to propose one themselves. As such, the table—being the initial space around which the project community gathers to share the first of a long series of dinners—constitutes the first convivial tool/space. Whether it is used to prepare and share food, to work on, to sketch a design, to discuss a proposal, or to assemble, the table’s design, shape and proportions convey many different possibilities and qualities of encounters and therefore different meanings. But the long linear table often fails to gather bigger groups of people and triggers discussion amongst smaller groups according to their seating positions. In that case, another spatial typology is necessary—the circle—specifically adopted for assembly of the whole community. In many projects, since gathering is a basic need, another convivial space is implemented: the agora—a circular theater where a larger community can assemble. A space of representation, of discourse, of playfulness or of performance, the agora often becomes the central convivial space around which the community gathers. The agora, like the table, is a space for invitation, where the project community mingles with the local 28

inhabitants or the local actors by offering shared activities and by opening—finally—its convivial spaces to others. Conclusion-Fiction As in New Babylon, in a convivialist society, there is no leisure time, because all time there is active9. In order to experiment with creating that society, we have to rethink our systemic relation to working and living. If we know what tools and spaces trigger convivialist situations, the search for an absolute answer to the broader question of “How can we live together?” remains wide open. After almost twenty years of work on that question, observing that the radical potential of the 1960s and the possible transformation of society towards a collaborative and playful future was not embraced in the 1970s, Constant Nieuwenhuys surrendered his art to the inescapability of human violence. But if New Babylon failed, maybe it was not because of its design nor because of human violence . In the 1960s, inheriting from modernists precepts, radical architectural utopias concentrated on seeking one architectural form and spatial system adaptable to all environments as a response to the challenge of one global society. If the global answer has not yet been found, maybe we should instead look for partial ones. Perhaps our wish for an architecture of conviviality is grounded in local 29

solutions, encompassing all possible complexities and diversities of single, local contexts. Architecture, through the essence of its mode of production—the so-called project—allows us to apply and implement now and for a given limited time the solutions we envision. How can we live together? Let’s start by trying, here and now, around that table or that agora. Maybe we will fail. But as long as we have the same goals, we can always start again.

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1 According to the German sociologist Frank Adloff, the term “conviviality” “can be traced back to Jean Anthelme Brillat‑Savarin and his book Physiologie du goût of 1825. The gastro-philosopher understood conviviality as the situation, commonly at the table, when different people come together over a good long meal and time passes swiftly in excited conversations.” (Frank Adloff, “Practices of Conviviality and the Social and Political Theory of Convivialism.” Novos estudos CEBRAP, Vol. 38, no. 1 (2019), pp. 35–47.) Beyond its common use in contemporary French today, and its adoption into English, the term “convivial” in a philosophical sense was revisited by Ivan Illich in 1973 in Tools for Conviviality and more recently by Alain Caillé, Marc Humbert, Serge Latouche, and Viveret in works surrounding “The Convivialist Manifesto.” 2 “The Convivialist Manifesto, a Declaration of Interdependence”, www.altersocietal.org/documents/English/Manifesto-Eng.pdf, accessed on the 09/02/23, originally published in French in June 2013 under the title Manifeste Convivialiste. Déclaration d’Interdépendance. The convivialists call out the failure of both religious and political doctrines to answer simultaneously all four main questions that urgently need to be addressed today: the moral, the political, the ecological and the economic. They tackle the fact that all political doctrine is based on the principle that resources are unlimited (either the resource itself or its technological counterpart as possible replacement) and that conflicts between humans are born from the difficulty in satisfying material needs. As such, they consider the human as a being of needs and not of desire. They therefore identify as the only possible solution the possibility of infinite resources and continuous growth. 3 Founding member of the Internationale Situationniste, Constant imagined New Babylon as a realizable project for an architecture of situations that “envisages a society of total automation in which the need to work is replaced with a nomadic life of creative play, in which traditional architecture has disintegrated along with the social institutions that it propped up.” In New Babylon, the built environment is flexible and transformable by its inhabitants as per wish and/or need on a daily basis. The inhabitants are the playful explorers of a constantly moving environment, calling for daily negotiations and collaborations through the reconfiguration of social life through architecture.

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4 Constant borrowed the notion of Homo Ludens from the Dutch historian and cultural theorist Johan Huizinga from his eponymous book of 1938. The Latin word Ludens comes from the verb ludere, which itself is cognate of the noun ludus. Ludus has no direct equivalent in English, since it simultaneously refers to sport, play, school, and practice. Thinking about the potential of complete automation and its consequences for a society of work and production, Constant considers Homo Ludens not as a third category of humanity— close to Homo Sapiens and Homo Faber—but rather as the one category of human beings encompassing them all. Homo Ludens is a person who lives, makes and thinks through play. In his own words written in the exhibition catalogue published by the Haags Gemeentemuseum, The Hague, 1974: “As a way of life Homo Ludens will demand, firstly, that he responds to his need for playing, for adventure, for mobility, as well as all the conditions that facilitate the free creation of his own life. Until then, the principal activity of man had been the exploration of his natural surroundings. Homo Ludens himself will seek to transform, to recreate, those surroundings, that world, according to his new needs. The exploration and creation of the environment will then happen to coincide because, in creating his domain to explore, Homo Ludens will apply himself to exploring his own creation. Thus we will be present at an uninterrupted process of creation and re-creation, sustained by a generalized creativity that is manifested in all domains of activity.” 5 Alain Caillé, “Gift and Association,” in Antoon Vandevelde (ed.), Gifts and Interests (Leuven: Peeters, 2000), pp. 47–55.
 6 Tilmann Heil, “Conviviality. (Re‑)Negotiating Minimal Consensus,” in Steven Vertovec (ed.), Routledge International Handbook of Diversity Studies (London: Routledge, 2015), pp. 317–24. 7 Frank Adloff, “Practices of Conviviality and the Social and Political Theory of Convivialism.” Novos estudos CEBRAP, Vol. 38, no. 1 (2019), pp. 35–47. 8 Ivan Illich, Tools for Conviviality (New York: Harper and Row Publishers, 1973), p. 22. 9 Constant Nieuwenhuys, “New Babylon,” in Nick Axel and Marina Otero Verzier (eds.), Work Body, Leisure (Berlin: Hatje Cantz, 2018).

GATHER WE OFTEN GATHER IN A CIRCLE. A LARGE, MEDIUM OR SMALL ONE, MADE OUT OF WOOD OR PEOPLE. THE CIRCLES OFTEN HAVE DIFFERENT FLOORS AND A CENTRAL STAGE IN THE MIDDLE. AS IN CHILDREN’S GAMES, IT’S ALWAYS POSSIBLE TO INVITE SOMEBODY NEW IN BY STRETCHING THE DIAMETER OF THE CIRCLE. WITHIN THIS SPACE, WE ARE ALL ON THE SAME LEVEL. NOBODY TAKES A CENTRAL POSITION.

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AGORA FOR TRANSLATION ACTS

MON(S) INVISIBLE

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MON(S) INVISIBLE

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36 R COME REPUBBLICA MILANO

R COME REPUBBLICA MILANO

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MUSEUM OF ARTE ÚTIL

COMMON GROUND

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TEATRO DEL MARE

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LE COURS DE L’EAU, LA COUR ET L’EAU

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MERCATO DEI FRUTTI MINORI

SUPERORT

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THE ARCH

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MONT RÉEL

HALLO: PLATAFORMA TRAFARIA

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CAILLASSES

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CAILLASSES

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TO

GATHER

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Let Me Introduce You To …

Once Upon Today 63

Who Decides?

Pixelated Relationships 72

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Beyond The Coffee, And The Machine

What’s Cooking? Architects 97 Also Need To Eat Give A Man A Barbecue

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102

Brad Pitt Is Cool

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Red, Red Wine

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Gotcha!

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The Housekeeper

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Nothing Planned

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Talking To The Wall 132

The Unpredictable Drift

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54 CONSTRUCTLAB GATHERING

TOOLS = WORDS SPACE = SMALL CIRCLE, LARGE CIRCLE PEOPLE = AROUND 50 STRATEGY/FORMAT = PRESENTATION/MEMORY GAME INCLUSIVITY SCALE = VERY HIGH

Let Me Introduce You To … Some know each other, some don’t. They’ve arrived from different corners of Europe. They’re hosted by the team of the local art center. They understand they’ll be sharing a common experience. Some know what the experience might be, others don’t. Some have doubts. While arriving for the first gathering, they discover at the end of a parking lot a small hidden gate to the unknown. There, the hosts have set up a series of long tables under the cover of the local public school so that everybody can meet and rest before it all starts. Maybe it had already started as soon as they packed their luggage. Maybe it started a year ago as the idea to gather around water came into being. Some know each other, some don’t. Changing this situation becomes an urgent challenge. Tomorrow, they’ll all have to work together. How can they, if they don’t know who’s who? And what defines a person? Is it what they do, what they know, how old

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they are, where they grew up? Somebody needs to take the lead. Somebody needs to propose something. How can they do it without sounding like an Alcoholic Anonymous group:

“Hello, my name is XXX, and I’m YYY.” Ding, ding, ding. Somebody grabs a glass to capture the group’s attention. “I’d like to meet you all, so I want to propose something.” The proposal is that small groups should be formed. They should be made up of around five people, where no more than two to three people know each other within the group. As an act of collective memorization, each one will be given the task to present someone else. Within each group, they negotiate the aspects that seem important to present: details of daily life, origin, specificities, oddities, childhood … Everything but what’s already visible. Each group develops its own idea of what’s important. They share secrets and unknown details, small parts of who they are, or small parts of what they do, what moves them, what they love, each one after the other. All together, they have five minutes. What remains in the mind of each presenter will be shared.

“Are you all ready? Now, we form a bigger circle!” Presenting somebody else requires focused listening. One doesn’t want to misrepresent somebody. One wants to show respect to the intimacies shared. Every detail matters. Every spoken word is a treasure to cherish because it’s somebody else’s life. Of course, there will be other moments to meet each person individually, but the initial encounter is made within the group. This is what this portrait is about: picturing a group made up of many heads, hands, stories, memories, cultures, languages, feelings. “Let me introduce you to …” One after the other, they take the central role in the middle of the big circle. Switching between presenter and presentee, they can collectively build a blurry picture of everybody’s path towards that circle.

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They’ve all landed here. Together, they make a new whole. Now they all share the same information. At least tomorrow, they can name each other when saying good morning.

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Once Upon Today She shivers when she hears his words. They’re identical to hers— she put them down in the same order—now they’re recalled, retold, in front of the camera, replayed in loops. Woland, the devil himself, tells the protagonist of Bulgakov’s Master and Margarita that manuscripts don’t burn. Stories can hardly be extinguished, despite all efforts to burn their pages in the fireplace, made by the so-called master and by the author alike. The history of narratives is a very curious journey of manifestations, materializations, vaporizations and reappearances. Traces of these stories cross political camps, national borders, generations, and professions. When an idea is sparked, it can be multiplied in the heads around it and persist through its storyline. It can grow, become uncensorable or unreasonable, radical and powerful, or imprecise, defamatory and oppressive, for that matter. It can become a common goal, a shared fear, a mutual entertainment. Then the story takes one path or another: one speaks of a fiction, when one sees this constructed or deconstructed alteration to the real. One more likely uses the word “fake,” when one perceives a distorted image of reality. And yet, not only can satirical masterpieces not be silenced, but everyday narratives too. When he tells her, “Let me show you how

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to use this circular saw,” he reproduces widespread narratives of roles in which most of us are deeply entangled. Fictions are frequent encounters that linger in many corners. Given the amount of what we don’t know and what we don’t understand, fictions are extent our most reliable friends. A fictional character for whom an additional plate was prepared around the lunch table can be called upon. Luckily, this person never shows up, because every once in a while somebody from the office next door comes for lunch. Rather than waiting for something that’s likely to happen, the people around that table wait for something unlikely to happen, something unexpected and astonishing. The narrative is a simulation in a parallel universe: a dialogue between fiction and reality that throws suggestions back into our world of what should or could be tried. Some words have to be invented to complement a story, which functions as a common ground for the people who come together for lunch. Its invention is a journey from everyday practices into the unreal, into a time beyond what can be planned, an exercise in changing one’s perspective or an attempt to deconstruct what’s given. It’s debated, experienced and confusing.  t that moment, by going through the pages of that narrative A anti-manual, she thinks, “What do they mean by putting all these abstract associative bits and pieces together?—Isn’t the goal simply to involve some people and make something nice? Well, give a woman (or a man) something nice to eat, and she’ll be hungry after an hour; give her a nice story and she can write the next chapter.”

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CASINOTOPIA

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62 WEISSWASSERMACHEN

Who Decides? The doorbell rings every two minutes. Every time, the closest to the door opens it. Every time, the same surprise effect. Sometimes the door opener and the newcomer will meet each other for the first time. When exchanging their names, they hear their respective accents and locate each other on a mental map. Sometimes, the door opener and the newcomer have already met. The encounter turns into loud hugs and laughs. This time of the year is the occasion to gather in one place people who are usually distant. Within the next few days, everybody will have met everybody. Everybody will discover colorful personalities. It’s comfortable here; all know they have something in common. They’re here because they want to be. They’re here because they think what they do matters. They’re here because they need to share. They’re here for enjoyment. They’re here to go on. They’re curious to know in which direction. They’re all here. Amidst the general happy noise, a voice sounds out: “Shall we start?” One by one, people move to the other room, trying to carry the right number of chairs, pens, drinks while continuing the conversation. The move is so smooth that it seems orchestrated. People simply look, exchange and dare to ask each other for what is missing. Every guest spontaneously takes responsibility for the group. The seemingly organic meeting slowly transforms into an improvised assembly.

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64 CONSTRUCTLAB GATHERING

The group forms a semi-circle, facing what appears on the white wall or the free surface. The hosts of the session start to present what they’ve planned: timeframe, format, questions, ambitions, and celebrations. They know they’re here to work, but in these conditions, work and fun are almost the same thing. They can sense the unspoken wishes and criticisms by discovering the yearly projects of the other members. They wish they’d been there to share time and work. Together. They see what they would have done differently. They discuss the topic further. They compare it to their own actions. It makes them think. They’re inspired. Today, they discover the whole that they’ll all contribute to building in parts. They wish they had more time for such projects. Or maybe they wish they had more money for such projects. They wish they could do more; live it and live from it. “By the way, can I ask something? Who decides who’s paid or not? And how are projects distributed among the group?” asks a new member. “How do I know I’m a member?” asks another one. Whispers rise from the assembly. Someone explains how it works. Practically speaking. From there, one can build a proposal. The question isn’t who decides, but how the decisions are made. It needs consent. It needs compromise. If the group decides it should be a group decision, then it is. If the group decides there should be a guideline, then there is. Or, the group decides that no one decides. The project decides. A project can tell if it has the required qualities, ambitions and processes to become an interesting project for the group.

Decision making is a product of design.

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66 FREIRAUM

Pixelated Relationships

It takes us a couple of calculations to understand our time difference: some hours before for one, some hours behind for the other, and I find myself in the middle. (Side thought: if we all meet at a specific time through the wonders of communication technology, does it mean that we’re all momentary time travellers?) It seems that 16:00 Central European Time will work for everyone. Endless ringing and some dropped lines later, pixels finally start forming familiar faces. Hello, how are you? Where are you? I ask. On the other side of the line, my friend is surrounded by books. Hey, I’m good and you? Just visiting my parents’ house in the countryside for a couple of days. From afar, I feel in some way welcomed into his family home. Hi dears, ni...ce to fina...lly see y...ou! A third person attempts to join the conversation, but we lose her again before we get to say hello. Buzz buzz, my phone vibrates, the fourth person is running late but will join us shortly.

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CONSTRUCTLAB GATHERING

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Fifteen minutes pass before we can all sink into the call. Hello hello, where is everyone? (An essential question because I like to imagine the languages, weather differences and soils that separate us). I’m in the Swiss countryside, says the first friend. I’m in Colombia and had to come into town to get some internet, says another one. I’m at home in Valencia, and yourself? I’m also looking for a good internet connection in the south of Italy! It’s been a while since we’ve all seen each other in person. I share the context of a new invitation, a potential project that could bring us together in a couple of months. The others listen carefully because the connection is still unreliable. What does it mean to build a kitchen in the middle of an agricultural field? The kitchen itself marks the passage from land to culture, from raw to cooked ... We dive into the conversation, sharing questions, ideas and references from our surroundings or projects we’re currently working on. A honk and some music playing interrupts our conversation, a small glimpse into the Colombian street life that’s taking place behind our colleague. Celebrations start early, she mentions and proceeds to mute her microphone to stop the distractions. A conversation guided by scratchy audio and diverse backgrounds brings us all around a fictional table. We stretch our patience and our ears for the pleasure of exchanging ideas from a distance. A time span of five seconds separates the moment words leave our mouths to the moment they arrive at someone else’s ears. This conversation lag creates a certain rhythm. One talks, the others listen. Someone repeats what has just been said to verify its accuracy, then they proceed to answer back. When inspiration strikes the speaker, driven by his enthusiasm to share, he can lose track of the state of his audience. Non-verbal cues get lost in the transmission process; our body language struggles to fill the cyberspace in between us. Hey! Someone waves their arms, finally catching the speaker’s attention. Space to contribute to the conversation is once again made. We trace possible project lines and divide tasks so that

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we can all advance separately before our next meeting. We look forward with enthusiasm to the moment when we’ll all find ourselves in the same time zone, around a physical table. After our call, I look up the machinery of modern telecommunications (on Google, of course). I learn that Skype converts my voice signals into data, sending it over the internet from my computer and then restoring the audio on the receiving ends. Maybe then, it’s just my voice that time travels, accompanied by some pixels that recreate my movements and my surroundings.

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Beyond The Coffee, And The Machine It’s a big machine like the ones you see on coffee-shop counters. We don’t really know how to use it. Two people are grinding beans. There are special cups and tools. It’s a gift from Peter. For him, coffee is a tool to meet, to enjoy a break, to develop spontaneity, to link words and thoughts. He shows us how to deal with the grinding, the different choices of coffee and the importance of cleaning. Since the team is always changing, we hand over what we’ve learned and each of us experiments with being a coffee maker. One day, something stops working. The coffee machine struggles to fill a cup. People are laughing; it’s like an excuse to stay around longer. We almost forget about the coffee, talking about ideas we’ve had, texts we’re writing, the lock someone needs to fix, the benches others are building, the moving workplace, the meal someone wants to cook for dinner, the vegetables in need of water, the movements to relax the body and the movie to play at night.

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THE ARCH

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Another day, the machine sparks in all directions, the grinders chop too coarsely the beans and the coffee is really bitter. People make faces. We think that we could manage instead with a thermos full of coffee. A neighbor brings his own coffee machine and now we make the coffee faster. People ask what’s happening. They miss the choreography of the gestures that came with the old machine and they wait for it to come back. At this moment, we start to understand what it represents for the community and we decide to try it again. Then the machine goes down completely. Everybody is really embarrassed. Peter arrives fast with a new machine. He insists that we use it. We’re afraid of breaking it again, but we can’t say no. Peter believes in the coffee machine. People here believe in it too. We understand that: we need what the machine does. It’s not just the power of the coffee itself, but the way the machine provides a place where we say hello, where we connect to each other, chatting, telling stories about what’s happening all around. We have fun drawing in the foamy milk, adding spices or chocolate. Meeting around the coffee machine offers a specific moment to share what we did, what we do, what we will do, what we saw, what we see and how we feel. We think about the thermos again, that it would be easier, faster and more effective. But people continue to come, enjoying the coffee machine. It’s part of daily life here, important to share; it’s creativity. We don’t need to do it faster. We need to take time for coffee. When you listen to all the stories around this machine, when you observe, when you sit amongst the people having coffee, you can’t imagine letting it go.

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THE ARCH

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What’s Cooking? Reni doesn’t want to cook the moqueca de peixe with us tonight. We don’t understand why, but we can’t convince him. He comes back to our construction workshop the next week with a large black clay pot, a panela de barro, and a fish caught by his father in Bahia, his home town. We realize now that a good dish can’t be prepared without the right pot, ingredients, situation and care. In different places and on different occasions, we come together to share and discuss. We follow our curiosity. We follow knowledge and experience. We want to create experiences together. We believe everybody carries wisdom in their hands and their memories. Maybe without even knowing it. We believe a meal has the capacity to bring us together. And so does a fireplace. It provides the energy to process materials such as food or clay. And conversations. As it always does. During the next days, I spend time in São Paolo’s kitchen streets. I want to find out more about these pots. I become fascinated. And curious. I start an ongoing observation and experimentation on the differences between the various clay pots from different origins, the recipe and the ingredients for cooking a local dish, the people involved and the effect on the social situation in which the specific way of cooking, sharing and exchanging takes place.

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FIREKITCHEN

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78 FIREKITCHEN

During the first canteiro abierto we gather for three weeks with groups of neighbors and practitioners. We build the first movable and adaptable interior to facilitate a new cultural center in central São Paolo’s culturally mixed neighborhoods. We call it Firekitchen. We make it an applied research project. Two years later, we come back to Vila Itororo with the Firekitchen. Again, it deals with several interconnected thematic layers. Cultures, processes, and knowledges of food preparation, such as production and material cycles. Sharing and experiencing implicit knowledge. Cultivating conviviality, facilitating awareness. Facilitating transparency through an understanding of our everyday surroundings. Empowerment through the conduction of and participation in an exemplary process. In other words, the Firekitchen is a tool to incite curiosity about invisible processes and their interconnection. It makes them visible and experienceable. Not just a tool. This is a methodology. With it, we’re able to experience an exemplary production process. From raw material to a usable product. Though it deals with complexity, it isn’t complicated and can be understood without extensive knowledge or access. The sensual, archaic moment of putting one’s hands into the mud and cooking on the fire frees access to implicit knowledge. The fireplace constitutes the center of communication and cultural production, processing food or materials. We want to activate a process of revaluing and strengthening the local, the communal and the specific as a form of cultural update by experimenting with clay, fire, and food between tradition and today.

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EAT A LONG, THIN TABLE ACTS AS A HOST FOR MANY PEOPLE. SHARED DISHES ARE PASSED AROUND, AND CONVERSATIONS ARE OFTEN LIMITED TO ONE’S DIRECT NEIGHBORS. USED THREE TIMES A DAY, THE TABLE REPRESENTS NECESSARY MOMENTS OF PAUSE AND OFFERS THE OCCASION TO MIX AND SHUFFLE. AROUND THE TABLE, WE SHARE FOOD, CULTURES, SKILLS, AND BACKGROUNDS.

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LONGEST TABLE

ESSENTISCH & PFLÜCKGÄRTEN

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THE ARCH

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CASA DO VAPOR

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CASA DO VAPOR

KUNSTFORUM WORPSWEDE

TEATRO DEL MARE

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88 HALLO: PLATAFORMA TRAFARIA

BROEI / DEVIL CASTLE

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THE ARCH

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TABLE OF CONTENT

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KUNSTFORUM WORPSWEDE

ALDEA

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UNITO

94 COOKING LINE

W.O.W. ON TOUR ???

W.O.W. ON TOUR

LONGEST BENCH MON(S) INVISIBLE

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TOOLS = KITCHEN UTENSILS, ENERGY, PATIENCE SPACE = KITCHEN PEOPLE = 6 TO 10 STRATEGY/FORMAT = COOKING INCLUSIVITY SCALE = MEDIUM

Architects Also Need To Eat They arrive on July 14, a bank holiday in France. In contrast to the quietness of the town, the art center is bustling with activity. They’ll soon enjoy the fireworks. In the meantime, dinner is served in the primary school. Quiches, salads, and other goodies are waiting for them. It’s rather late. People are still arriving in dribs and drabs. “Hi,” “Bonjour,” “Hallo” ... They come from countries from all over the world, but mostly Europe, due to the peculiar years 2020–21. Some of them recognize familiar faces; for others it’s their first Constructlab experience. Not that it matters. Right now, they’re all together, involved in the same project:

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98 LE COURS DE L’EAU, LA COUR ET L’EAU

a collaborative architectural adventure, an event where expert architects, future architects, creators and artists will combine their energies towards one goal. They’re driven by passion and they’re working along with the art-center staff members.

There’s one common rule for all: People + Sleep + Food = Great Achievement.

For ten days, sixty people will draw up plans, cut wood, design, carry heavy furniture, and so on. They’ll also meet each other, play, dance, swim in the Aveyron river, sunbathe, and enjoy local drinks. How to feed sixty people when there are so many different activities to be part of? Is there a chef among them? In the end, architects also need to eat. The art center La cuisine has a kitchen and someone in charge of the food management, but it’s totally impossible for one person to cook for sixty people, and in any case, this would contradict the goal of the workshop. Everything is about collaboration and collective action. As a result, everybody will spend some time in the kitchen in order for all to eat. On the first day, they decide to assign the cooking to two teams per day, to allow people to keep up to date with the construction’s progress. With two new teams each day, change-overs are crazy. They have to find ways to make the kitchen easy to use, so an English-French map is drawn up on the slate wall, along with a permanent preparation list. There’s always something to do in the kitchen. Sometimes, it’s not clear what the finished dish will be. They have to decipher it from clues such as: “Slice 6 kg of onions,” “soak 7 kg of chickpeas” or “crack 80 eggs.” They’re all aiming towards the same goal: a delicious meal for all. At a certain point, each might dream of eating something different, but options are impossible with sixty people. Being part of the kitchen workshop

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changes their view: they begin to understand the amount of time needed to feed them all, and how to adapt when you cook for sixty people. They realize that repetitive tasks (like peeling ten kilograms of potatoes) makes room for small talk, songs, sharing, and transmission. It’s almost 1:00 p.m. Time for the last tasks, time to set the tables, time to have lunch. They’re tired but proud of their work. Someone explains how he learnt to butcher a chicken with a local farmer that day. They consider the results of their actions. They realize that they’re part of a learning process that has revealed a side of them they didn’t yet know. FALAFELS 3,5 KG CHICKPEAS (SOAK OVERNIGHT) 7 LEEKS 14 CLOVES GARLIC 4 BUNCHES CILANTRO 4 ZUCCHINI BLACK PEPPER CINNAMON CILANTRO SEEDS 7 TEASPOONS BAKING SODA SUNFLOWER OIL CLEAN THE VEGGIES AND CUT THEM INTO SMALL PIECES. BLEND ALL THE INGREDIENTS TOGETHER. TASTE AND ADJUST THE SEASONING. ROLL THE MIXTURE INTO BALLS OF THE SAME SIZE. FRY THEM IN SUNFLOWER OIL FOR ABOUT SIX MINUTES AT 150°C.

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LE COURS DE L’EAU, LA COUR ET L’EAU

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Give A Man A Barbecue The teams are all concentrating. Together, they finish the longest bench. Everybody is there and everybody works hard to build something. Students with well-designed moustaches are popping up among the teams of builders. Strange. They might be coming from local bars. This is a popular neighborhood. Close to the bench, those designers and those students, lies a car park that is the home of the homeless. We’re here to cook for the teams, and this is what we do. We prepare a giant dish of couscous. As usual, I light up a barbecue. I grill some stuff on it: it’s here, working, on fire, in the middle of it all. There’s energy coming from it. It creates space. It creates attention. Suddenly, a homeless neighbor comes closer to the fire and asks, “Hey, can I grill something here?” Of course. Why not use what’s there? The man comes back with two old fishes and starts to prepare them on the grill. Fast enough, he’s joined by about twenty of his car park neighbors. No-one feels any animosity. They give us a moment of their lives. They tell us stories of robberies within their community.

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After the barbecue, the robberies stopped. At least, for a little while. Maybe for longer. Maybe it was because of that moment. Maybe not. But I do think that moment was special. A common idea to help people in need is to offer an open table and distribute a healthy soup. But there’s a certain violence behind this idea, as well as in the choice of soup. Why do we mix the ingredients until they lose their colors, textures and specific tastes? Until they’re no longer recognizable? We often decide instead, not to invite people to eat, but to share a moment in which eating is part of the story. It’s very different. In the end, it was that man who invited us to share his fish. He was autonomous. He had his own food. And what we have are the tools and the material, ready to be used. We then share the ingredients and prepare them together. Then, food is no longer the subject. The moment is. We prepare that moment together. And we enjoy it. Indeed, the kitchen isn’t a place; it’s a moment. What we call the kitchen in theater is the moment of reunion between people. It’s neither the rehearsals, nor the end result. The kitchen is the moment of untold projects, the moment when everything starts to boil, where there are tensions and fights. In the kitchen, we defend an idea, we discuss the ways that led us to that idea, what kind of thinking lies behind it, how it came about. The kitchen is pure intimacy and every cook within it shares its most precious secrets. The kitchen is accessible to everybody since everybody sees, smells, touches, cuts, cooks, eats. There’s no need to know how: everybody thinks, everybody eats. The kitchen is pure knowledge and know-how brought to the most intimate level and what it creates always ends up within the body and can stay forever in the mind.

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BEGEGNUNGSHAUS POPPENBÜTTEL

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Brad Pitt Is Cool He grabs an apple in the kitchen, comes back and suddenly says: “Do you know Brad Pitt Syndrome?” She has no words and looks at him, surprised. “Brad Pitt is cool because he’s always eating something in his movies. In order to eat, you need to be in a secure place. Therefore, by eating, you evoke that sentiment of security and peacefulness in others as well.” At that moment, he stops talking. He looks at his apple and bites it as if it was the first one after a very long time. He’s proved his point. He looks very cool. Eating isn’t only about food. It’s also about taking a break. It provides a time for being together and sharing a moment. Eating alone is fast and functional. Eating together is long and dedicated. Eating together is also coming and going, taking and giving, sharing and caring. The table says much more than what we eat. The shape of it. A circular table. A long table. A long table with two ends. How uncomfortable it is to eat at the end of the table. The one taking that position thinks he can reign. But it’s not Jesus who sits at the end of the table. It’s Judas. At a table there’s no hierarchy if there’s no end. Or no table. The picnic blanket. Its red and white squares, and the pleasure they announce. The picnic always evokes Le déjeuner sur l’herbe. As bodies are relaxing, everyone is free to come and go. Nobody looks at the other’s plate. There are no plates.

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BEGEGNUNGSHAUS POPPENBÜTTEL

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BEGEGNUNGSHAUS POPPENBÜTTEL

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Societies have normalized the table. Codes are associated with eating. Codes and rituals. French service has several dishes presented one after another and served on plates. Nobody leaves the table in between. Moroccan service utilizes as many tablecloths as the shared dishes that will come. To know how much to eat from one dish, one needs to count the cloths. African service positions a big dish in the middle of the table and people pick directly from it. In Mexico, the moment of the table lasts a whole afternoon: people come, sit, eat and go. And then, as seats become free, new ones arrive. But beyond food and codes, modes of togetherness are at stake. Transform that moment into a moment that tells another story and just see how it ends. Find a way to gather vegans, vegetarians, the gluten intolerant and meat lovers around the same table. The table is for communion, not for division. The table is colorful and diverse. It has textures and colors. And all individuals have the right to eat what they like and how they like it, together. “When is the kitchen open?” somebody asks, “Whenever you want, for the next 72 hours.” he answers. “Where is the table?” somebody inquires. “WHAT is a table?” he corrects.

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DRIVING THE HUMAN

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TOOLS = MUSIC, ALCOHOL, BODIES, REPETITION SPACE = STAGE AND DANCE FLOOR PEOPLE = 20 TO 100 STRATEGY/FORMAT = BODY TRAINING, RELIEF INCLUSIVITY SCALE = HIGH (CONTAGIOUS)

Red, Red Wine They met two hours ago. They’ve come from different countries. None of them has English as their mother tongue. They’ll spend the next ten days together, sharing an experience, but so far, they know neither the project nor each other. They have many questions, but they haven’t asked them. They’re patient. They know the answers will come along the way. Most likely, more questions will arise over time. Some will be solved easily, others will take longer. Today is a special day. Of course, it’s the day they meet, but it’s also a national holiday in France. Night has fallen. It’s almost time. They’re joining the local citizens at a once-in-a-year spectacle. Tonight, the castle in which they’ll operate for the next ten days is to host a firework display. They find a seat and settle. “Make it burn!” the kids are shouting.

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Finally, it starts. Music, light, and the first rocket transform the landscape into a contemplative scene. The whole city looks in the same direction. Colors and sounds pop, stars burst, and then it ends with the famous bouquet finale. It’s not often that a project starts with fireworks. After it stops, the core of the village is still partying. Some activities for kids are taking place in the main square, while the bars distribute cheap beer and beverages to the parents. Within the city’s party hall, a local band plays randomly chosen pop songs, attracting those keen to party. It’s been almost two years since anyone danced together. Tonight, they’re allowed to dance again. Participants start to come into the main hall. And then they begin to dance. First three, then six, then fifteen. They don’t know each other, but they dance and sing, having fun, drinking and laughing. At the center of the group, they place a mountain of coats, clothes, and bags, and they turn around it as if in an ancient ritual. Tonight, dancing is more than dancing. Dancing is another way to meet, a common language. Without restraint, each body makes its own moves. Over the course of ten days, those bodies will find many other occasions to express themselves. Two days later, it will be in the main square, where another live concert is programmed. Two days after that, it will be within the courtyard in La cuisine, around the buvette. And again, and again, and again … until the end. Dancing, singing, drinking, improvised karaoke, dj sets, games, drinking, bumper cars, fun-fair rides, laughing, moving, relieving, breathing, and finally, sleeping. Every day, they will accumulate many feelings, impressions, learnings, stress, strength, emotions, thoughts, love. Every day they will relieve it through dancing. They let it go. All of it. They don’t care how tired they are. Celebrating is a genuine part of the project. It’s not mandatory. And they engage with it with the most remarkable dedication. Dancing is contagious. Dancing fades away boundaries. If they came with a certain idea of power and

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positions within the group, dancing restores horizontality and blurs hierarchies: they all have bodies; they’re all simple humans. Through dancing, participants, organizers, students, institutional representatives, workers, locals, etc. will all mingle together. As humans, they’ll all have danced together. They’ll all learn the moves. They’ll recognize each other through their steps. And sometimes, they might even synchronize their movements. “Danse en ligne!,” someone will propose. And they’ll all start to align.

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TOOLS = PAPER, SECRET WORDS SPACE = THE WHOLE SITE PEOPLE = ALL, ABOUT 50 STRATEGY/FORMAT = GAME INCLUSIVITY SCALE = HIGH, WITHIN THE PLAYERS GROUP

Gotcha!

It’s funny to catch fragments of the conversations that are taking place. Only a couple of days are enough to untie tongues and words. They’re all living together, even though none of them is home. They’re now starting to exchange on other topics, more personal, more trivial, more disconnected. Here and there one can hear stories about the weather, food, hobbies, memories, friendships. - Have you heard about the principle “bottle-up”? - The what? - “Bottle-up,” like “Bottom-up,” but you use it when participation in a project all pops at once, from the very bottom, like champagne.

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- Nope, never. -  Write it down. It’s a very important notion. B-O-T-T-L-E-U-P - Like that? - How did you write it? - B-O-T-T-L-E, like bouteille in French. - GOTCHA! It’s been two days now. Without having changed the rhythm of the construction site nor the daily routines, they’re playing a new game. They’re all included: the invited team, participants and the hosting team. They all have their own little secret, a word written on a card. They all have one targeted person, whom they must talk to and make them say the secret word. There’s no other rule. The more they catch, the longer they go on with the game, getting another secret word, another target, another challenge. “Gotcha!” is what they don’t want to hear. But they all definitely want to say it. Groups of new-born friends spontaneously start to form, but suddenly, the cards are redistributed and the players must go and talk to new people. They can pair up with others to play collaboratively, or they can work on their own. Those out of the game can help others to continue playing. They’re all very careful about who they trust. As all the possible strategies start to reveal themselves, the game fosters new group dynamics. New interactions. They stop talking only about the project, experiments, solutions and to dos. They talk about life and death, how they struggle to stay alive, how they creatively untangle seemingly stuck situations. They all have a plan. Good or bad. Efficient or not. Gaming triggers collaboration. Gaming opens new perspectives and destabilizes established orders. In that sense it creates other forms of languages: the one they speak, and the one they all feel when the adrenaline level secretly oscillates within each body.

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DE-CONSTRUCTLAB

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It’s been four days now. The challenge level is very high, both within the game and within the project. The number of players diminishes and pressure on the construction site rises as it comes to an end. Everybody is still very concentrated and yet it becomes more and more difficult to follow. Who’s still in? Who’s out? There are different ways to win: massive attack, resistance, patience, or even luck. The community of losers assemble to formulate a sweepstake. - By the way, are you allergic to cucumbers? - Who the heck is allergic to cucumbers? This is how it all ended. And how the favorite got caught. As simple as that. Very well done.

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The Housekeeper As we arrive, everybody is at work. The construction site has its own logic that we don’t yet know. Who is who? Who is doing what? Where is what we need? Where can we put our stuff? Where do we sleep? Who can we ask? But we don’t have to wait long for the answers to these questions. From the workers’ group, somebody stands up and comes directly to us. He’s been expecting us. He’s the housekeeper, the master of the keys, the caretaker of the site. He’s easy to recognize. He’s the one at whom everybody points a finger as an automatic gestural answer to all possible questions. He warmly introduces himself. We feel welcomed. We don’t have time to formulate our questions before he starts showing us around. First, we pass by the storage. His keyring is impressive. We wonder how long it takes to identify all those keys and what miraculous chambers they all open. From the storage, he gives us what will be our bedding for a couple of nights. He talks passionately about the place. He tells us community rules. He invites us to follow him. As we discover the building, we see how the place is inhabited. We put our bags and the bedding in our small bedroom. He guides us smoothly through the kitchen to the coffee machine. It seems as important as the bedroom. He teaches us how it works and asks us if we want to make our first coffee. We try it out together and

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continue our exchange. As he’s about to take his first sip, somebody comes in. “The delivery is here. Where shall we store the material?” He excuses himself and disappears. We can hear him moving away by following the jingling of his keys. Now we no longer have questions. More importantly, we know who to ask if new ones come up. The housekeeper is here to be at the disposal of the people and things on site. He doesn’t just keep the house; he takes care of it—of opening the doors, of deliveries, of people, of questions, of security, of repeating the instructions, of passing on the important information, of turning off the lights, of closing the doors, of harmonizing all the different rhythms of life that are present on the site. He takes responsibility. By being there, he allows the others to focus on their own tasks. He doesn’t only transmit information; he also gives his time. And presence. Any time. More people arrive. They discover the place for the first time with curiosity. Apparently, they come from the neighborhood. Who knows how they heard about the place, but what they did hear led them here. The group of worker-cook-inhabitants keep their eyes focused on what they do. The housekeeper looks at them, stops what he’s doing and approaches. “Hello. Welcome. How can I help you? … En français?... Comment puis-je vous aider?”

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122 CASA DO VAPOR

Nothing Planned June 22, 2013, a sunny Saturday. Everyone is looking forward to the coming summer holidays. On weekends, the population of Cova do Vapor triples. The inhabitants of Casa do Vapor have already been living there since April, and the arrival of summer makes them euphoric. Ever since they arrived in Cova, they’ve organized an activity in the house every Saturday: Imaginary House, Photo Treasure Hunt, Watercolor Workshop, Fishing Net Workshop, Kizomba Classroom, etc. The horizontality of the structure and of the decision-making process often contributes to the chaos. They’re overloaded by dealing with hundreds of things at the same time: the daily lunch, the collection of food at the local market, the stolen bicycle, the arrival of artists in residence, the empty gas tank, the volunteers willing to help, the child who brings books for donation, the resident who complains about the car parked in their space. It’s the day after the summer solstice and the day before the super moon. Not only is it the longest day of the year, but on that day, the moon offers a unique bright spectacle. Bianca, Iara and Tatiana, three of the nicest pre-adolescents residing in Cova, arrive in the kitchen and ask, “What’s today’s activity?”

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Sofia and Diana look at each other. They realize only then that it’s Saturday. They haven’t prepared an activity. Now it’s too late. They answer the girls with a desolate face: “Today, there will be no activity.” As soon as they finish the sentence, the girls turn around and leave the house. Okay. They’re all a little upset, but soon another matter comes up on the agenda. Thirty minutes later, the girls come back to the house, now in bathing suits, carrying towels and sunscreen. They pass by Sofia and Diana and say, “We’re going to the roof.” Sofia needs to solve a question in the library on the opposite side of the building, upstairs. From there, she sees Bianca, Iara and Tatiana; they’ve transformed the roof of Casa do Vapor into a solarium. There are different ways to see this situation. On the one hand, the pre-adolescents have found a way to have a nice, special Saturday. They formulated what they wanted. They evaluated what they could easily implement and they felt empowered to take action. On the other hand, Sofia is reminded of Guy Debord’s détournement, Hannah Arendt’s questions on public, private, and social space and Hakin Bey’s vision of tourism and the way we visit places. It’s all there, in that simple action, some bikinis and towels: appropriation of spaces, a sense of belonging, spaces of resistance, improvisation, vernacular architecture, problem solving, alternative solutions. The roof is now an architecture that is capable of hosting use and inspiring action.

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Talking To The Wall When the Biennial started, only a few large hand-painted statements were visible on the wooden wall that surrounded the central agora. To spark debate, all participants within the Biennial were asked to offer a single idea or strategy using clear and simple language. Visitors were invited to comment on these statements by adding handwritten notes. The idea of this reconfigurable wall installation was to give this mediating space an approachable and human feel. It should be evident that the structure was built by human hands: the boards should be kept in place with wooden wedges, the posters should be painted and glued by hand, and the notes should be presented as an optional tool. Now that the event is almost over, it’s hard to read any of the statements. All the walls are covered with thousands of handwritten comments on pink sticky notes. Courtney, who took care of the installation every day for three months, says: “The idea that people were sharing a perspective is what this space was about. I really enjoyed the chance to engage with this space.

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I live in Chicago, I grew up in Chicago, so I haven’t really been travelling internationally. But being in the space, I’ve been able to talk to people from Panama, New Zealand, London, Germany, Russia ... and I got all these perspectives, all these conversations, this healthy back and forth of communication, conversation and discussion and it’s like ... I’ve never travelled that far. It’s strange how it functioned, this collective exchange.” *** At an earlier point, when the project was still in development, there was a conversation with a journalist from Hong Kong. She talked about how protesters can overpower governmental PR with sheer numbers and creativity. How a 5,000-member secret group brainstorms via Telegram Messenger. How another team of 200 designers translate these concepts. How these outlines are digitally distributed overnight and how they reemerge the next morning on the streets of Hong Kong during another mass protest. It’s intriguing how the voice of this mass movement is reformulated every single day. Online behavior is influencing offline behavior in real time. We talked about the “Lennon walls” that emerged all over Hong Kong. Inspired by the original protest wall in Prague, people started posting thousands and thousands of sticky notes on walls, expressing democratic wishes for Hong Kong. Although social-media introduces this strategy to a wider audience, it’s this kind of physical experience that truly captures the moment. Why do these walls transmit so much energy? A student who’s part of the conversation talks about infinite scrolling and that a thousand messages online can’t be perceived as a sequence: “Before a reader is able to reflect on anything, the next wave of thought has erased the foregoing.” A thousand messages on a wall has a completely different effect. These accumulations of voices are richly layered. Observers have a physical overview; they can look for specific ideas, zoom in on clusters, follow conversational threads or put critical messages

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in context. These nuances are amplified by the overall spatial, tactile, and social experience. People who add a note to the wall are out in the open and therefore often more thoughtful and careful than when posting online. They put in the effort, which in itself is already a gesture of friendship and solidarity. As linguist George L. Trager once stated: “The meaning of linguistic forms proceeds from the context.” *** Courtney tells us more about the installation: “People engaged heavily with statements like ‘Which history deserves preservation?’, ‘What does an ethical landlord look like?’ or ‘We should keep oil in the ground.’ That last one erupted into a wonderful conversation. Somebody responded by saying ‘Why shouldn’t we use it?’ From that point on, it went back and forth, until the conversation went down the entire board. It was really intriguing to see so many people interacting. Pros, cons, agreements, disagreements: people were having a discussion rather than expressing unison. It went from one idea to another. Halfway through, someone just posted in big bold letters ‘Sustainable Energy.’ After that, it became a completely different conversation and people started to explore a way bigger subject. It was all very interesting.” Incremental information is a very powerful way to experiment with the way we communicate, but what about the handwriting itself? What is the power of the hand, the tool and traces it makes? Chuck, one of the last local sign painters in Chicago, thinks he knows the answer: “Your handwriting conveys nuances; it’s emotional and somehow fragile. It’s human and therefore relatable.” Chuck hand-painted all the statements for our installation in just four days on a wall of 2.5 m high by 40 m long. He said: “It’s amazing how your hand moves; it’s like muscle memory. I remember the day when I was learning and all of a sudden, it was like a light bulb moment: it just gelled. How I held the brush, the mark-making, it all came together. Following my

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stroke I was in the hospital for a month, and after that in a rehab place for an additional month. I had to learn to walk again and my speech and memory were messed up. The right side of me was knocked out. I had speech therapy, occupational therapy, physical therapy. I didn’t know if I could ever paint again. But miraculously it all came back. Somehow I think it’s hardwired. I think that the lettering even helped me to recuperate. I’m back on track now, but sometimes I have this little shiver—you can see it in my brushstrokes. The letters show where I am in life.” *** When we left Chicago, what remained was an infrastructure that still needed to be activated. Although we didn’t have a clue how it was going to be used, we did hope it would provoke some good conversations and discussions in our absence. Courtney ends the conversation: “Honestly, people are a lot nicer than I expected. I was anticipating a lot of harsh statements or even extreme views. But for the most part, when it came down to it, regardless of where that person was from, everybody had a general idea of ‘Be nice, love yourself and make peace, not war.’ That was genuinely the overall experience, at least for me, and I was there almost every day.”

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Architecture is usually understood as the built result of complex planning. Drawings, descriptive texts, excel tabs and calendars describe precisely all elements of a construction, in an attempt to annihilate all unpredictable aspects that would lead to harming the project or alteration in an architect’s work. But when the construction site is the project itself and when the inhabitants are not the recipients of a finished structure but rather the active participants of their direct environments, unpredictability becomes one of the resources of the project. The following conversation took place on Skype in June 2019, gathering Mathilde Sauzet (MS), curator and author, member of Les Commissaires Anonymes, Malte Von Braun (MB), organization and strategy consultant for project development with Joanne Pouzenc (JP) and Alexander Römer (AR) to discuss the place of unpredictability and uncertainty in collaborative projects.

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JP I’d like to ask you one question to start this conversation: how should we as designers deal with the unpredictable? How do we set goals that encompass uncertainty? What is the true value of unpredictability?

uation of control because they have an idea of what is a “better future.” As a designer I think a better future should be like this or like that. Because I planned it, I drew it, I put it out there, I built it up. In this sense, for a planner, a shift to accept, allow or make space for uncertainty within controlled plans or ideas is required.

MS How to predict uncertainty? Is it possible to predict uncertainty? The paradox JP is in the question. Yes. For example, if I’m curating or coordinatAR ing an event, I think it’s important to plan some We come from different backgrounds and I guess free time, whereas, as a planner, I don’t really what’s interesting is our know what will happen, different points of view. because this is where peoThe designer’s perspecple start to meet and talk. tive projects an idea, In fact, one could feel it’s a outlines a better future. In this sense the designer really unproductive time, gets quite easily into a sit- but for the public it might 134

be the most productive. In this sense, planning for the unknown becomes a part of the design. You can’t control nor can you value it, at least in a system based on material value. But it helps to build stronger relationships that might or might not be valuable in the future.

what we’re trying to build isn’t the architecture itself but the moment or the community around it. Or are we building the conversation?

MS I’d make a distinction between “giving free time” and “accepting a non-designed zone.” When a In architecture, you need designer (or the architect, to show the end result or the person who leads a before you even start to project) starts to work on plan. You bring people a topic, a site, it’s imporinto the construction site tant that he/she considers and the end result is the that some aspects won’t product itself. You don’t enter the project, won’t give time or space for be treated by the project, the unpredictable or the otherwise it implies a spontaneous. When we too hegemonic position. talk about a project where To plan free time would space or architecture isn’t mean, for me, to operate an end result but rather outside of the zone or the a tool or a support struc- time dedicated to design. ture, it’s different. Because We have to limit the space 135

of our action to allow things we can’t envisage to go on. It’s not about allowing them to appear, it’s about allowing them to survive in the project. Because before we arrive, many things are already going on, many things are alive. So first, the question is: how not to disturb them too much?

1 Mon(s) Invisible was part of the European Capital of Culture 2015. From the roof of a former army bakery in the Belgian city of Mons, the curators invited visitors to think about utopian visions for the city and its future inhabitants under the title “Mon(s) Idéal”: constructlab.net/projects/mons-invisible/

skate park. The agora in Mons (In)visible 1 had been designed to seat people in a circle. Different uses were finally made possible because the analyses of the situations were very open. But the proposiThen we need to identify tions of Constructlab were the zone of actions and focused and limited— the phases of transforwe’re professionals of mation. The designer analyses, not of solutions! shouldn’t transform the Projects might point and whole city, the whole plan one or two elements. neighborhood, the whole Then, we all know that a community. For example, sharp design proposition in Cova, for Casa do Vaallows various uses, many por, the project concerned attitudes: this is freedom. a small part of the village. When the proposal is The architecture itself precise, the freedom is was dedicated to certain preserved, in a way. activities: a kitchen, or a 136

MB If I may add a thought: from my perspective, I assume that either you think you can control everything and have full knowledge of the situation, of whatever you encounter in the realization, or not. And I would say, you never have full knowledge over a situation. Especially in a social process, where it’s as much about learning with or from each other. You can’t assume or predict beforehand every situation or every aspect that will occur. So by the inner logic of that, I always use a feedback loop process within a project or the situation I encounter. I base my planning on a preconception of a situation, but when I face the situation

new things occur. So I need a space or a format or some room to be able to adapt to that; to reobserve what the situation is, because at a certain time within the process, Iʼll see things in a way that I wasnʼt able to predict or to observe beforehand. So what I have to pre-plan is that Iʼll need to deal with uncertainty, especially if itʼs a collaborative design or construction process. MS The feedback loop, for sure, and even a sort of necessary empiricism. But I see a big danger when we start to include uncertainty in a method. It makes me think of how uncertainty is used in finance. I’m thinking about this book by Nassim

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Nicholas Taleb, The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable. It describes how bankers or speculators give enough space for these types of accident to happen. The accidents become a productive process. It seems to me dangerous that a designer would use randomness and wildness as a way to make transformation; there are already enough contingencies in projects! But then some designers would provoke these accidents because, as you said, Malte, since you can’t pre-plan them, provoking them is a way to control and therefore govern. We have to take care not to become this type of planner. Not to give space for crashing.

AR Iʼd like to bring back the position of the designer in that whole discussion. Weʼre speaking about complex scenarios. The complexity in itself is something we’re really interested in. Often it comes to that situation of somebody asking, “Please describe the project in one sentence.” Then I have two options: either I think, “Oh, I really have to try to find that one sentence,” and I’ll reduce the project to a one-sentence project only. Or “No, I don’t want to describe it in one sentence, because I think that’s not what it’s about. Itʼs about many things: this or that, or that or that.” At first, the person is totally lost. But somehow being lost

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doesn’t matter, it’s rather a question of taking a position. I can be precise on a specific aspect, on a specific skill that we have and we can develop. But then I have to step out of it and let it be, let it live its own way. And if I go into that moment with an idea of “It will be a catastrophe,” then it might go in the direction Mathilde was warning us about, or it will go in the direction in which something marvelous would come out. The thing that comes out can create something new. This is one part of the design process. The other part is the personal energy I need to design something. What do we call that energy? It comes from me, so it has to do with my ego.

MB And I think it’s connected to a very clear idea, an inner image of what you want or desire. You know, you need to have a clear goal, something you want to reach as a future state that’s clear for your inner self and it gives you the energy for that. MS The real, important question is the politics of that goal. If you start alone, you’re not obliged to formulate it, but from the moment that you start to engage with a community, you also have to send signs of what kinds of values you’re going to put into play. Conviviality is just a word, many values, with no politics associated with it. In companies, the

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tools of conviviality lead to very different goals from yours, Alex. Words are too complex. We have to find other forms to express our intentions: We can’t say “conviviality ” anymore, for example.

2 About “The Convivialist Manifesto,” see p. 31

from the same angle and they agree, not necessarily on the future aims, but rather on the status quo and on a need to act. They propose to go beyond conflict and to use conflict to seek understanding JP I think there’s something and propositions. Starting by defining a basic level interesting within the 2 Convivialist Manifesto — of understanding of what we’re looking together as far as I understood can be a way to engage, it—related to what you say, Mathilde: there, ideol- I think. ogies are not necessarily commonly shared among MB the authors; the writers And this is specifically come from different pothe common ground. Itʼs litical backgrounds, and both psychosocial, and even though they come psycholinguistic, and itʼs from the same socio-inone of the really basic tellectual group, they’re things needed to someusually not vehicles of the how arrive at meaningful same ideas. Nevertheless, and productive ways of they look at a problem interaction and collab140

oration. On my way to designing, on my way to encountering crises or problems, I need to readapt and understand that my presumptions about how things work and whatʼs important or not, could be not the right ones and that I might have to change them in order to be able to find the right solutions within the process. I mean my task is always about helping people to find common understandings and solutions for whatever situations.

point of action and I can still feel convivial just by the atmosphere.

MS Using this manifesto from the point of view of a designer presents a challenge. The people who wrote it are all intellectuals. They wrote it after having studied this term in history, epistemology and so on. If we use this term as actors or makers, we leave out parts of the complexity of the topic and we risk using, as you said Malte, the artificial layer of the term. That’s Conviviality as a “convivial why it’s confusing. Before ground” is for me much reading the manifesto, I too weak as a notion in was perplexed, but when order to capture that. I I read the text, I realized can be convivial without the authors wrote it from a having to make any com- different background, from mon decision or common a common perspective. 141

It’s a strategic position. However, even if it’s a manifesto, the form of expression is a deep text, addressed to the public sphere, for sure, but rather to politicized individuals and intellectuals. In the case of Constructlab’s projects, we address the users of urban space. So, how to translate the power of research, a text into a language of architecture, of physical forms, of images?

narrative text with lots of images that lots of people know. It’s not as physical as architecture, but it’s an artwork. It’s not theory. For urban space projects, it’s very important to gather people who create forms that present a certain aesthetic autonomy. Constructlab installations work like that for me. We need a common ground to start to make conviviality, rather than just thinking about it.

For Mons, I’d read a lot about invisibility, the texts of Walter Benjamin, Michel Foucault, Bruno Latour, Isabelle Stengers, Donna Haraway, Le comité invisible, and finally we decided to share first with all the actors of the project Invisible Cities, a

AR It’s a bit like what I said when we were talking about the situation of conviviality: we can create it when we build together. That’s a form of conviviality that we’re able to generate out of our practice. We could also decide not to 142

make a convivial moment out of the building site, in fact. It’s a bit like Patrick Bouchain, always speaking about that moment of convivial construction. Mathilde, it reminds me of this freedom that we discussed at the beginning, this free time, this free zone, that we encounter by introducing Calvino: with his texts, we have a space for imagination. We don’t design Italo Calvino nor a reading of Invisible Cities, we do architecture and art with Italo Calvino as a common ground. We use a piece of literature as a source of inspiration and a material of the imagination.

mon” and “convivial” is the same as that between “need” and “desire.” Our society is just starting to realize we’re based on needs. We need to work. We need to make money. I think what we need is to start thinking and implementing a society based on desire. By starting to ask people what they want instead of what they need, they might have a different answer. They might want to “save the world.” So how can they feel empowered to do so and in relation to the others?

MS At the beginning of Mons (In)visible, I was dealing with the constraints of the JP project and the demands The distance I understand of the local actors and I remember, Alex, you to exist between “com143

basically what individuals or communities ask for, we have chances …

explained to me the importance of proposing to the public something beyond or alternative to their current needs. That was a turning point for me, because in the method, I thought our task as designers was to propose a solution.

AR To fail!

Now in the participative projects, I see how the authorship is necessary: it’s a way to start from the desire of a creator or a group of creators. Then other actors will associate or confront their own desires. So first, we have to wonder what we’re searching for as the community of builders, of designers. If we imagine what the others would desire, or if we just realize

MB Yes, because they don’t know what they desire as you said, Joanne, so how could we? Perhaps they’re not in contact with an inner desire or wish, so how could you, from the outside, just as an observer, articulate, claim or define for the other what he or she desires? I mean, it’s a black box; you just can’t know what the other desires or wants, you can only assume it, which always makes it a guess until you communicate.

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MS We can also assume that collaborative practices like Constructlab are very different from a classical office of designers, mainly because the first users are the builders. It’s something very important to address. First of all, we do something for ourselves, and because it works for us, we invite people. And that’s directly linked to the conviviality we evoked earlier: if we make it for us, we’ll be open to others. MB Some of what you said earlier, regarding Alex’s proposition to go beyond current needs as a starting point for the collective design process in Mons, makes me think

of a statement in Gregory Bateson’s work. Coming from a cybernetic or an epistemological perspective, he studied how any communication can work as such and be viable as a system. The thought or statement in his work that resonated with what you said earlier concerning getting away from providing a solution as a designer to provide a participative process that develops a solution, is: “Make a difference that makes a difference.” Only that will allow for something new or something else to emerge. If you try to adapt to things that you think, that you presume, then you’ll just do the same as always and you

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won’t find new or more viable solutions. But if you make a proposal that engages people to go into uncertainty, or allows them to keep going with a certain level of unclarity about what the end result is—because you don’t define or set it from the beginning—then you don’t obtain what’s expected. Meaning that, to shift presumptions allows for new, for different solutions. This enlarges your degree of freedom in action, in realizing something.

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Even as they stop recording the conversation, they can’t stop talking. They continue developing some ideas. The tone is more relaxed. More spontaneous. They’d like to gather like that more often. They’d like to exchange more. Most likely, they will.

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LEARN

Telling What We Really Want To Learn (And How) 193

The Wall That Turns Decisions Into Skills

Means To Distribute Ideas 209

198

Lingo Flows

How I Heard The Cry Of The River 217

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Trial And Error And Trial Again

Doubt Is Good

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What Nobody Really Wants, Until They Really Really Want It

The Hot— Very Hot—Hour 250

The Fortune Teller

Today I’ve Learned —Part I, II, III 266

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What Did I Learn?

Reflective Round Around An Italian Tea 296

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The Future School

The Learning Community

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Essay:

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The old French language used to equate the word “adventure” with “destiny.” Nowadays, we experience each Atelier Collaborative of Constructlab as a real adventure in the sense of a singular, surprising event that suddenly happens in our lives. The reflections that follow are born of a “fortune-telling device” set up during Constructlab’s Atelier Collaborative “Le cours de l’eau, la cour et l’eau.” It consisted of an individual interview with each of the participants, during which, through cards, drawing and an intimate dialogue that was eventually established, a “red thread” emerged. This red thread links, for each participant, first the energies and skills with which he/she arrives at the atelier, then the creative force he/she is finding though collective learning, and finally the individual aspirations and new perspectives that he/she is considering for its future. I n the attempts during these interviews to answer sincerely the invariable question “What did you learn during this Atelier?”, a number of keywords emerged. From these KEYWORDS—IN BOLD TYPE in the texts hereafter—we have written and drawn a collective framework, thus mapping what we really want to learn.

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“It matters what matters we use to think other matters with; it matters what stories we tell to tell other stories with; it matters what knots knot knots, what thoughts think thoughts, what descriptions describe descriptions, what ties tie ties. It matters what stories make worlds, what worlds make stories.” Donna J. Haraway, Staying with the Trouble: Making Kin in the Chthulucene, 2016.

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As the danger of an earthly ecosystem on the verge of collapse becomes ever more prominent and as the major contemporary events like pandemics and climatic disasters generate existential insecurity and uncertainty about the future, our thirst for learning is growing, in order to better cope with it. While the places of knowledge are becoming a sanctuary, withdrawing into their fundamentals, while the channels of information and creation are confronted with increasingly strong institutional control, and while academic research freedom is reassessed, new communities of knowledge are emerging in territories in crisis, and are creating something akin to “collective arrangements of enunciation” according to the concept created by Deleuze and Guattari (Gilles Deleuze & Félix Guattari, Mille plateaux, 1980). Uncertain times catalyze this need for COMMON LANGUAGE, leading to the appearance of alternative places of exchange and collective learning. They are often materialized by the appropriation of emblematic public spaces, such as the ZAD—Zones à Défendre—the actions of the Occupy movement, or those of Extinction Rebellion, claiming the expression of a collectively constructed word then takes on a powerful political significance. In the sphere of learning, recent years have seen a number of examples of summer schools, popular and/or alternative universities, artistic and scientific groupings that emphasize the “cross-fertilization” of disciplines, which is necessary to reinvent the world. In reaction to a globalized capitalist system that tends to annihilate any initiative to modify it, these places seek other forms of alliance between environments: between research, art and civil society, beyond the norm, through local EXPERIMENTATION and the networking of creative individuals.

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Constructlab’s projects, throughout its fifteen years of existence, postulate that a link exists between the transformation of our environment and the creative empowerment of communities. Through the collective act of building, it above all mobilizes the “we” who will inhabit it, and attempts to create in a collaborative manner the spatial and social conditions for CONVIVIALITY (Illich, 1973) to happen. Constructlab proposes an immersion and a transversal reflection between craftsmanship, SHARING, architecture, and collective intelligence, putting into shape, through representations and transitional objects built on a 1:1 scale, this eminently contemporary challenge of renewing our COMMON NARRATIVE.

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“That the economy can be stopped at once, it does not have the inertia we imagined. That our homes are poorly designed walls for a life worth living. That outside these walls, that kilometer or two that we barely touch are real fragments of a planetary garden. After this observation, we could reflect on how another architecture, made of our bodies, could intensify the experience of inhabiting its different scales of life, how the action of building could become a lever for us to reappropriate it.” Susana Velasco, Ecole européenne supérieure d’art de Bretagne, 16/12/20, Rennes.

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Over the last fifteen years, Constructlab has responded to a number of commissions (institutional, associative) and has also completed several self-initiated projects. Its fabrication experiments have explored, in various spatial and social situations, how to design and build at the same time, and collectively. By accomplishing at the same time the fact of thinking a space, of drawing it, and that of making it tangible and materially constituted, the collective has thus attempted to reappropriate the architectural act in its completeness. By the same token, it tries to reinterpret it in its own language, in its own territory of action, at the crossroads of the worlds of urban art and tactical urbanism, and thus on the fringe of—in reaction to?—the regulations and standards that apply to the classical production of architecture. For the past years, Constructlab has been progressively implementing a more pedagogical format, inviting volunteer participants to take part in its constructive projects. These collaborative workshops are the result of a gradual expansion of the collective, which now has four national associations (in Germany, Belgium, Switzerland, and France), and around a hundred active members, of different professions and different ages. It is also the evolution of the practice of this collective, that has led it to become a network towards a stronger objective of transmission than at the beginning. Although the term “collaborative” may refer to Anglo-Saxon collaborative learning theories, Constructlab’s workshops aim above all to establish active and mutual learning between participants, whatever level of experience they originally have. The common objective is not to achieve constructive efficiency at all costs, but rather to combine the creative contributions of each participant in a fruitful and positive way. The plurality of disciplines, profiles, and cultures is thus both an asset and a challenge. It requires that the TOOLS and LANGUAGES specific to the situation are REINVENTED at each workshop, allowing each person to share their ideas and proposals.

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This effort made by each person to take these “paths of transversality” towards the others CONSTRUCTS A FAMILY of thought and action. This family reacts, by doing and through the experience of places, to the fragmentation and indifference generated by our contemporary societies. The constructive community thus constituted is aware that the challenge is certainly individual (learning to do things by oneself, practicing manipulation and experimentation) but that it is also broader, collective: acting with others requires accepting MUTUAL INTERDEPENDENCE as a positive force, and constant negotiation as a creative movement. Thus, the project is defined by SHARING, discussion, appropriation and LETTING GO. We work with the work of others, we detect its potentialities to develop the project, little by little and through a series of negotiated decisions towards what seems to be its collectively approved direction.

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“To ‘do’ architecture is to immerse oneself in a conflictual process of material production. Participation is not a productive encounter of multiple practitioners and stakeholders, but a set of conflicts, negotiations, maneuvers, and swindles between and within a multiplicity of agents.” Eyal Weizman, on Markus Miessen’s Crossbenching, Towards Participation as Critical Spatial Practice, 2016.

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This mutual interdependence certainly multiplies the forces at work (what a group is capable of is not the sum but the product of what each individual is capable of), but it also conjugates the doubts and dilemmas in the plural. Cooperating with others requires confronting one’s own views. Expressing one’s own ideas implies accepting the reception (good or bad) of others, and knowing how to welcome the conflict that may arise. QUESTIONING THE EASY SOLUTION, working on alternatives, making criticism a driving force, is then essential to creation. Together, it is important NOT TO GET DISCOURAGED, observe and understand, identify what we are certain of and what we are uncertain of, ALLOW OURSELVES TO DOUBT and finally make choices. At some times, we must TRUST, TAKE A RISK, depending on the degree of uncertainty involved. The discomfort of doubt is then calmed by action, and the oscillation between voluntarism and discouragement, the BALANCE BETWEEN DETERMINATION AND INDETERMINATION becomes a form of FREEDOM. It is not a matter of seeking truth, absolute knowledge or perfect choice, but rather of experiencing a “peaceful relationship” with “collective subjectivity,” and of LEARNING FROM FAILURE, when it occurs. I can be wrong. My point of view can change. I am able to listen to the points of view of others, which can change too. A permanent ADAPTABILITY needs to be achieved. I then know how to navigate by trial and error and successive attempts, towards a chosen common destiny. In our environment full of UNCERTAINTIES, it feels good to build with one’s own hands, to have the impression of being in control of one’s destiny. Constructlab’s collective exercises lead everyone to recognize and trust their own INTUITION. Intuition is a capacity that is not easily defined, and even denigrated in the classic frameworks of creative disciplines, whether architectural or artistic. This form of non-rational

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intelligence, which would call upon critical SPONTANEOUSNESS and commitment, TRUST IN OTHERS as well as SELF-RELATED THINKING, goes beyond the simple skills, the commonly defined knowledge, that we are used to transmit. The Ateliers Collaboratives are, then, the place for self-learning through experience. You learn to identify your own resources and skills, in yourself and in others, to grow and make the project happen. You learn to allow yourself to express your own intuition. It will sometimes be necessary to STOP TALKING AND LET THE BODY (and the hand) DO.

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Constructlab’s Ateliers Collaboratives are often managed and initiated by a small organizing team (tailor-made for each workshop, depending on the location or situation). This team invites a certain number of members of the Constructlab network, according to the subject (constructive, spatial and/or social) and their pedagogical skills. They will be the “tutors” of the different thematic teams of the Atelier. Several thematic and constructive parts are worked on (design and construction, and any other tasks around the construction itself). Some tasks will concern the logistics of the group, to enable it to live together during the few weeks of construction: accommodation, food and cooking, storage, supplies, tools, etc. Others will be dedicated to sharing the project with a wider public, whether they are local residents or occasional visitors. Each participant will change teams several times during the workshop, so as to experience various activities. Sometimes participants are all asked temporarily to work on a single task, when the strength of all is needed. The initial wish of an Atelier Collaborative is to achieve HORIZONTALITY among the participants, whether they are organizers, tutors or trainees. Even if some decisions are taken by the organizing team, each one will learn from others, as well as passing on what they know. It is assumed that everyone has a voice, and some skills to pass on. EVERYONE’S SPEECH (and experience) MUST BE TAKEN SERIOUSLY. The construction we build is only a medium to experiment with listening, generosity, and continuous learning. Designing and building at the same time means being careful that everyone has access to the same

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level of information. Guaranteeing this equality means allowing the project to be contradicted, leaving room for objections, alternatives and changes of direction. This in turn questions the need for productivity. What is important is no longer the result, but the richness of the path taken to get there. From the tutors’ point of view, it seems very important to CREATE AN ENVIRONMENT OF TRUST. Involving each one in the decisions from the start, contributing together to the creation of a peaceful learning place: these are some of the principles that are taken from the theories of active pedagogy. It requires tutors to be FLEXIBLE AND MULTI-TASKED and to adapt to the personalities of their team, to make themselves AVAILABLE, and open to the two-way learning dynamic between tutor and apprentice. From the trainees’ point of view, the main challenge of the Atelier Collaborative is TO TRUST AND NOT TO BE FEARFUL of each other. According to them, it is also necessary TO DARE ASK FOR HELP. The collective dimension of the project requires each TO FIND HIS/HER PLACE IN THE TEAM and to recognize that his/her design (and drawing) is intertwined with those of others. It means stepping out of one’s comfort zone, overcoming timidity, finding time and the mindset for reflexiveness, and flexibility to adjust proposals. EXPERIENCING ALTERNANCE REQUIRES EFFORT, but the consequenc-

es often go beyond the initial expectations of the Atelier Collaborative. When trust is established among participants, WELFARE and EMPATHY can be cultivated. LETTING YOUR EMOTIONS FLOW and your vulnerability be exposed to the eyes of all increases creativity tenfold.

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An immersive scheme such as the Atelier Collaborative is a place of non-institutional pedagogy, a place to UNLEARN before REASSEMBLING YOUR OWN KNOWLEDGE, through experience. Often, participants look for values specifically related to collective operations; such as the increased importance given to LISTENING (to oneself, to others), to dialogue, such as the time and space given to DEBATE, or the attention to the use of space, ADAPTABILITY and recognition. Often, they also find what they did not think they were looking for: their own way of answering their own questions, a personal way of arranging ideas with which they feel comfortable. In the Ateliers Collaboratives, EMOTION, UNCERTAINTY, and SELF-ESTEEM are considered as fundamental for the success of the collective action. They are meaningful, even though they are not taught in traditional educational curricula, and because everyone has already experienced them in their own professional practice, even at its beginning. The subject of lifelong learning arises in an increased way during an Atelier Collaborative. Far from one’s usual environment, among a group of previously unknown people with whom one must learn to cohabit and create, we are led to OVERCOME ourselves. We take back our own knowledge, recombining our everyday tools in a new way, and giving them a new meaning: “REALLY DOING WHAT I THOUGHT I KNEW I COULD DO.” is a form of EMPOWERMENT. We also (re)discover the PLEASURE of being in a learning or researching situation: we finally find the meaning of a life path, of the knowledge

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we have acquired. We FEEL USEFUL, developing a personal and professional attitude as well. Some have achieved a feeling of POSITIVE REINVENTION. To do so, everyone agrees that NON-PRODUCTIVE TIME is needed, and as much RELAXATION and PARTYING as work and creation.

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“We are used to thinking of the manufacturing process as a “project.” This means starting with an idea of what we want to achieve and having the raw materials in reserve to achieve it. And finishing when the materials have taken the desired shape. I prefer to think of making as a “growth” process. This from the outset puts the maker in the position of a participant in a world of active materials.” Tim Ingold, “The Materials of Life,” in Making. Anthropology, Archaeology, Art and Architecture, 2013.

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Far from a disembodied architectural practice, the collective Constructlab’s fabrications are working as much with the knowledge of use (occupation and appropriation of public or neglected spaces, for example), as with the know-how linked to the MATERIALS used (wood) and their arrangement (reuse). They testify to a renewed interest in “making” and a particular involvement in a direct relationship with the material, even though the technological evolution of the design and architecture professions has distanced them from the fundamental gesture of building, drawing, and making concrete. Since the construction sector depends almost entirely on the energy-intensive consumption and implementation conditions imposed by the industry, Constructlab tries to keep the relationship between design choices and constructive implications alive and autonomous by acting on the material supply chain, the choice of TOOLS, and the assembly of gestures. They are all the “ingredients” of its productions, and worth highlighting. Constructlab often chooses to work with WOOD, a biosourced and raw material, less transformed. For a long time now, we have been concerned with the life cycle of the wood that we use: the same boards sometimes travel from one project to another, the creative moments transform them, play with their ageing, and their reaction to uses, light, climate ... It is a way for us, to work with the material not as something inert that exists only to be shaped, but rather as a character in the history, in dialogue with the human forces in a given context, subject to the transformations of TIME. The collective makes central this relationship with material: creating the vehicles of the commons, even to the point of making the TOOLS and everyday objects necessary for construction and life on the construction site. The collective action of building at scale 1:1 and living on the construction site itself creates new and unexpected exchanges.

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We ENGAGE OUR BODIES, not only through the constructive gesture, but also through the fact of feeling the rhythm of the day together: dawn, work in the morning, lunch break, work in the afternoon, siesta, meal, tidying up ... Experiencing architecture in the building process challenges our relationship to reality, to immediacy, and redefines the dependence of our bodies with their surroundings. The great challenge of each Constructlab project is finding a BALANCE between nomadic and sedentary, between new and old, between FAST AND SLOW, between temporary and permanent, between the idea and the act, between the time of reflection and the time of action, so that one can nourish the other and vice versa. In the end, it is not the built object that counts (which is often temporary installations or artistic performances), but the gestures and interactions, the learning that takes place before, during and after the construction. Architecture is a medium that is transmitted and that in essence will be modified by others. We still have to treat better the duality between the short time of the Atelier Collaborative (generally a few weeks), which involve collective emulation, profusion of ideas, “creative explosion,” and the long time before and after the Ateliers, necessary to “tame” the environment in which the project is going to take place, to understand its issues, in order to fit in with the context.

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Building what you designed yourself means anchoring the architecture even more in its environment. It means paying attention to the materials, as we have said before, but also and above all to the POTENTIALITIES, resources and know-how that are available at the time and place we act. Beyond architecture, each Constructlab project is also a consequence of a situation, of a relationship between the invited collective and a commissioning group, of a TERRITORY (political, economic, cultural) that hosts it. It is a polyphonic narrative that (RE) CREATES LINKS not only between the members of the collective, but also with the participants; actors, inhabitants, visitors. The act of building together requires one to let go: no matter how much we plan, anticipate, draw, uncertainty remains due to the fact that several people are composing a story, writing without knowing its end. Often, we know little or even nothing about the working team, the place, its practices, its customs, its history ... We always end up with something other than what we had in mind at the start. It is a discovery, renewed with each project, which requires humility, adaptation and the ability to welcome doubt and turn it into a strength. The emergence of our temporary architectures is free from the normative and ideological constraints that permanent land occupation generates. On our inhabited building sites, we seek enchantment, surprise, unexpected emotion. We allow ourselves other collective imaginations. We change our way of life for a while, work and leisure merge, we test forms of collective economy no longer based on the objective of productivity, but rather on inventiveness and solidarity.

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Constructlab’s creations, in the sense that they concern space, and often public space, are a critical manifesto against the predetermination of the social norms. They seek tension between a constructed architectural object, which necessarily defines and disturbs, and the multiple possibilities that open up through its appropriation by uses that will invade it and give it a meaning. It is a form of DISOBEDIENCE offered by IN SITU work and open construction site, which Constructlab EXPERIENCES and TESTS. Is it then our RESPONSIBILITY to make them, first and foremost, moments of collective intelligence creation? Where we debate, where we question issues beyond us individually? When we organize and/or participate in Ateliers Collaboratives, is the pedagogical dimension that we are looking for as much about listening to the field as learning about the collective? We must care about keeping time for MEETING people in the places in which we act, so that our projects remain generous, open, desired by all, and that they benefit in a mutual way the participants of the projects as well as the inhabitants. Likewise, beyond the collaborative aspect, from the name given to the Ateliers, it is indeed a question of cooperative redistribution that we are now discussing in and around the collective, which is facing, like the society in which it evolves, a form of precariousness, fragility of relationships, as well as a need for more inclusiveness and diversity, and which is today beginning its reinvention.

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MON(S) INVISIBLE

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DISPLAY INFORMATION IS DISPLAYED CLEARLY, VERTICALLY, AT EYE LEVEL. BUT DISPLAY IS NOT ONLY ABOUT INFORMING. WALLS LITERALLY CARRY DEVELOPING IDEAS. WALLS INVITE PEOPLE TO TAKE ACTION AND TRANSFORM INFORMATION INTO CONVERSATION WHEN THE TOOLS TO COMMUNICATE ARE VISIBLY GIVEN. WHEN THE PAPER IS TOO SMALL OR WHEN INK VANISHES, WALLS ALLOW PEOPLE TO DARE TO SHARE IDEAS. 176

WEISSWASSERMACHEN

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DRUCK AM DREESCH

LE COURS DE L’EAU, LA COUR ET L’EAU

YART / BROEI

TEATRO DEL MARE

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COMMON GROUND

FREIRAUM MK&G HAMBURG

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LA JONCTION

DISPLAY / Z33

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LABORATORRE

WEISSWASSERMACHEN

MESSY KIOSK

STADTLAND

MUSEUM OF ARTE ÚTIL

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GIARDINO AMMIRATO

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LE COURS DE L’EAU, LA COUR ET L’EAU

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The Wall That Turns Decisions Into Skills It’s a sunny morning again. Luckily, it’s always sunny when a project starts. Sunny, but dusty. Participants are gathered in the middle of a construction site. They’ve just met the day before, with only time to share a name, a background in ten words, a reason to be here. Maybe they had time to exchange their visions, their ambitions, before they go into the unknown. They certainly know what experience they want to have. At least, they have an idea of what to expect. And that’s revealed, on that very first morning, while they’re in front of the wall. It’s time to choose. A giant table drawn on a wall will become crucial for the rest of the week. Their choice, at that moment will turn them into cooks, carpenters, singers or designers, at least for the next couple of days. The first to choose get served first, the next negotiate.

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LES NIDS VERTS EN ÉTÉ

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Soon enough, that choice that was so hard to make—Shall I stay with the new friends I met yesterday or shall I stick to what I wanted before?—will no longer matter. Soon enough, participants understand that there’s more than just one decision. The energy is common. All are part of a bigger project—whether it is to build a mountain, a mill, a swimming pool, a city island, a metavilla or an arch—with a bigger ambition than one’s own, and all the pieces gathered here are essential for it to work. The participants can choose their level of engagement: some will choose to only help, others will choose to help and learn—and then maybe help and learn with somebody else, by doing something else. Nobody needs to feel alone in his/her field. While exchanging, they get the help they want or need. It’s only a couple of days, the task is clear, the goal is known, the engagement voluntary. Even when the task is to build 600 pieces of the same part, it never lasts very long. Later, the time comes once again to make their choice on the wall. The groups were made. Today, they dissolve again, and mingle another way. So, what this time? Do they choose something they already know? Or do they try something new? As in the Bauhaus preliminary course, the collaborative workshops give a glimpse of it all and a lesson for life. Beyond each discipline—wood working, graphics, video, furniture making, cooking, performing, everything—a master is in charge of the new group. Sometimes a new workshop is made; sometimes a participant becomes a master. Because sometimes, something is missing. The teaching starts like in a game of Exquisite Corpse: one starts to work where somebody else’s work ended. Meanwhile, in the cooking workshop, the one that sustains the group, everything starts afresh each day. They come willing to learn a skill and gain experience. In fact, what they learn is intangible. They learn to become part of a group, they learn to negotiate with others, they learn to position themselves in a micro-society, they learn they can do crazy things, together. They learn to exchange and they exchange through experimentation, through making. Sometimes they reenact what

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they learn by talking to each other, and for that they also have the evenings, the dinners, the nights or the breakfasts. It’s practical and theoretical, empirical and poetical. It’s special. Within the strong pedagogical methodology made up of rhythms, disciplines and missions, participants learn to negotiate freedom. There, they don’t just experiment through collaborative work. They feel it. They get it. They come back again.

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Means To Distribute Ideas Today is very beautiful, it’s spring in the south of Italy. With every passing day the temperature rises. I’ve been here before. The same initiative, a different group of people, another “moment of activation.” When I enter the enclosed courtyard I see some familiar faces. One of the massive side-doors is open. You can now walk directly into the neglected park next door. Someone has scribbled “open building site” on a piece of paper. An English message written in Italy, it must be a “note to self.” I walk up the stairs and enter the kitchen. A group of people is preparing lunch. Most of them I don’t know. We follow a familiar kind of routine; I say hi and unsuccessfully try to describe my role as an observer and designer. I ask about the strange green leaves that are being prepared. I listen in on the conversation of how every local village has its own ideas about how to prepare this bitter delicacy, chicory. The moment I walk out on the big balcony I’ve embarrassingly forgotten everyone’s name.

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A couple of people are sitting outside. I’m listening in on the conversation: “How can we show local people what’s going on inside these fortified walls? The bricks are overpowering our desire to communicate.” Everyone is sharing ideas on how to solve this urgency. Last time I was here the collective aimed to “start a dialogue with the neighborhood” and “initiate collaborations and activate processes so people could take the city into their own hands.” Not much has changed: it is still the idea to co-create, educate, learn, and re-appropriate. The intention is always genuine, but once again I ask myself if the gap between intent and interpretation is breachable? I move back inside in search of some shade. I get comfortable on one of the couches and think about my position within the group. More unfamiliar faces start to occupy the space. Without much thought I open up my laptop and start designing a small questionnaire: Who are you? What are you doing here? What is your expertise? Just a little tool to surpass my own shortcomings. I start making pictures of everyone. What started as a fun little game has grown into a wall of who’s who within a couple of hours. There’s a lot of conversation about the results. The wall helps me to start some dialogs. The next couple of days I use to settle in. I bike around, observe, try to talk to locals and start to get acquainted with the group. On all levels I simply want to try and find the interstices. What is the core of a topic and what spatial and linguistic aspects of visual imagery could be used to carry a message? A man in the street tells me about this local expression: Manculicani! (Not even the dogs!). It’s used when you’re treated badly. “The Puglian dialect goes straight to the hearts of the unprivileged,” he tells me. I run into one of the radical farmers I met years earlier. This collective condemns European farming regulations because they think the standards are too low. We talk about the activation of the deserted park and how to grow vegetables in an urban environment. “To make a statement it’s crucial to grow without a permit,” the farmer tells me, “It’s the only way to tease the ones in power and force

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them to speak out.” Later I talk to one of the participants. She wants to “emancipate the local community” and “support others to take risks.” I ask her how she wants to achieve this. Does she know what “emancipation” and “taking risks” means in the south of Italy? We talk some more and ask ourselves if one always needs to understand the local ways or whether a certain amount of ignorance and exoticism can sometimes lighten things up. It’s been a week now. I’m picking up pace. In my mind, ideas, observations, words, and images are tumbling over each other. My aim is to try and connect the dots and create a wall of voices: a dazibao, like those encountered during China’s Cultural Revolution, a wall filled with posters and slogans that changes and grows over time. Not only do I want to capture the essence of the project as a whole, I also want to capture all individual ideas and try to connect them to local visual and linguistic cues. Additionally, I want to impose observations and voices from the local community. Insights that support or counter the ideas that are developed within the project. I start making signs that essentially propose and counter-propose—bold statements, subversive imagery, contradictory messages, doubtful questions and quiet observations. Am I spreading myself too thinly or is this part of the game? My wall of ideas is finished. I don’t know if I’m satisfied; it often takes some time to understand what I’ve actually made. Last time the end result was an urban campaign in the shape of a parade that marched through the suburbs. Only the sticker gave me instant gratification. It was melon season and instead of printing flyers I bought hundreds of melons from local farmers. I made a sticker and distributed them on the melons with wheelbarrows through the city. Only later did I understand the value of the project as a whole. The role of music and food, the idea of people gathering derives from a different kind of mindset. In hindsight, it was an amazing insight.

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I look at the insane amount of signs I’ve made within a day or two. I actually wasn’t able to breach the wall with all thoughts and observations gathered, but this place does suddenly broadcast a lot of energy. As always, the bold statements stand out, but that doesn’t mean too much. I already knew that the local community was used to strong political rhetoric. The streets are always plastered with posters for political parties. And it’s actually a small note with a recipe for chicory that eventually generates more power than all the other signs gathered. All of a sudden, I understand that locally, this bitter leaf stands for so much more; it defines home. On the plane back to my newborn I stumble upon a line from a poem by William Wordsworth: In common things that round us lie, Some random truths he can impart, the harvest of a quiet eye.

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GIARDINO AMMIRATO

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RAFTY STIEMER EXPEDITION

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Church: a fenced house-like building with a church sign Stiemer: a little stream running through the city of Genk Waders: rubber trousers with boots attached to keep you dry Expedition sled: one 50 x 180 cm section of raft, easy for one person to carry Blue straps: straps that are permanent and should only be tightened during an expedition Firekeeper: person collecting wood and maintaining the eternal fire Eternal fire: previously never used BBQ, fished out from a container, holding a fire while on the move Explorer: person walking and wading in front of the team, freeing the path, checking for hazards Containerpark saw: rusty saw with wooden handle not to be confused with the other saw Big wheels: recycled sunchair wheels used as flagpole holders

Lingo Flows Unsure whether we can unload our expedition gear on the parking lot behind the church* we drive with two fully packed cars to the start of the Stiemer*. Everybody puts waders* on and starts assembling the expedition sleds* constructed from a steel rack, blue barrels and blue straps*. Even though nobody answered when we knocked on the door, a man suddenly comes out of the church and asks what’s happening. Before anyone answers, he concludes that we’re going to explore the Stiemer and suggests that the cars can stay. Even before we enter the artery of Genk, it seems that it’s going well with the city; and that’s the whole point. The fire sled is being assembled and the firekeeper* prepares the ignition of the eternal fire*. The explorer* scrambles together her tools: a whistle, the containerpark saw*, peddles, a hammer and more. It seems that the axe is missing. It starts raining, but it bothers no one; it even triggers excitement. “Wow these waders are so perfect, you don’t have to think about anything. I guess I’ll wear

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Orange straps: non-permanent straps for luggage, combining sleds and other creative uses Flagpoles: formerly the poles of a steel rack, now flagpole, steering stick, high tentpole and low tentpole Small wheels: used to make the rack mobile, they hold the tarp and flags in place To ninjastar: to cut with a nameless tool looking like a ninjastar Backpacks: former green waste bins from Genk modified to be carried comfortably on the back Litskes, thingy, closer, orange ribbon: unnamable closing system for the backpacks Cold: forbidden word Wet foodbox: food storage box that scooped water when a sled capsized Dry foodbox: food storage box that didn’t go under water Caterpillar formation: six persons each push one raft in single file, stretching and compressing

these more in daily life!,” somebody yells. They go on with the preparations. The food is divided into two boxes for two sleds. It’s not clear what the system for the division of the food will be. “We’ll see!” The big wheels* are mounted horizontally with orange straps* on the frames, and flagpoles* are attached on top. Bacteria spreadsheet and map flags are hoisted through the small wheels*. Slowly but surely, everything is put together and pulled towards the Stiemer ready for the float-out. After doing a last check of the ninjastarred* backpacks* and closing the litskes* it’s time for lunch. While eating bread and homemade hummus we speculate on how long it will take us to eat the biggest pot of hummus we’ve ever seen. During the speculation the city photographer arrives. He doesn’t understand why anyone would want to do an expedition like this and surely not in this cold* and wet weather. He wants to photograph us while we start the trip in the water. That’s much easier said than done. During the first tests, one week earlier, it was clear that the sleds on their own are unstable in the water. Loaded with gear they seem even more unstable. From now on, there’s a wet and a dry food box*. While balancing the sleds and maintaining the fire, possible solutions are tested. Time passes, the photographer has to go. Two hours late, the six sleds start moving in caterpillar formation*. Nobody cares about the time; there are only smiles. The marconist* updates the log* and the cartographer* draws on the map. After about 250 meters, we encounter a waterfall with richeltje* and an hour later the sun has

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set and it’s time to get back on the land for the night. The sleds transform into an eating tent before they’re put together to form a BBQ for six sardines*. The next morning the sidesleepers* release everyone, the feet are retrieved and tentpoles become flagpoles again. The team is quickly back in the water and when it gets deeper and wider it’s time for the transformation. On Stiemer beach*, where the sun shines, they turn the sleds into rafts. The first friends of the Stiemer* propose that coffee is needed. From here on, it promises to be a lovely adventure …

Marconist: person communicating digitally with the outside world Log: WhatsApp group with people following the expedition, updated every hour with stories Cartographer: person updating map flag with route and other noteworthy information Richeltje: circa twenty centimeter high tricky step hidden under water about two meters behind a waterfall BBQ for six sardines: all sleds put together as one big raft with a roof tarp for comfortable nights Sidesleepers: person tasked with closing and opening the tent while everyone is comfortably in bed Stiemer beach: insignificant small sandy patch sticking out above the water Friends of the Stiemer: friendly people with a special heart for the Stiemer

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TOOLS = REGISTRATION, APERITIF, DRAWING THE FILTER PLAN AROUND A TABLE, SHADE SPACE = AT THE BUVETTE, UNDER THE CANOPY, IN FRONT OF LA CUISINE, AT THE TABLE UNDER THE AWNINGS PEOPLE = JEAN-LUC, JOANNE, ALEX, MARTA, KARL, NICOLAS, DELPHINE, NAÏM, ARTHUR, ANTONIN, LUCAS, SÉBASTIEN, MERRIL

How I Heard The Cry Of The River During this first walk on the island on the banks of the Aveyron and at the foot of the castle with the “spirits of the river,” questions emerge: who approaches this protected natural space, what are they doing there, how is the face of the banks changing? What use is made of the water of the Aveyron? Jean-Luc can help us answer these questions: he’s the elected representative of the commune in charge of energy. You have to meet him to know and understand the link between people and water. Next Monday, he’ll come to show us around the mill. Jean-Luc can help fulfill the deep need to link the intuitions of Constructlab (initially regarding the subject of the habitability of the courtyard in terms of the water supply) to the issues of the

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territory (the increasing scarcity of water resources, the energy spent on water treatment, of which no one is sufficiently aware). The afternoon arrives, and Jean-Luc makes an impromptu visit to the buvette of La Cuisine, which is an opportunity to introduce myself. I ask him, in his role of elected official and inhabitant, to pass on the information about the major issues of the Aveyron. We settle down on the deckchairs, then at the table, with Joanne joining us and recording the conversation.

Dams, large lakes, pumping, watering, freezing, sanitation, turbines, economy, water agency The next day, Jean-Luc comes back with Delphine, who’s also elected to the commune of Nègrepelisse and the community of communes, to discuss the subjects of the environment and waste. They’re at the entrance of La Cuisine with Nicolas, who’s involved in an environmental protection association and who regularly visits us to film the construction site. I join them. We talk about climate change and its consequences, and each of us discusses their own position on this subject, in relation to others. We need to feel together in the face of this phenomenon that’s beyond us. We enter La Cuisine. I invite Jean-Luc and Delphine to join the group working on the water filtration system for the project.

Resource, low water, water stress, scarcity, sensitive river, evaporation, common good, quotas, protection At this round table, where political as well as technical points of view are exchanged, the project is being defined. The drawing, which is the basis for the debate, allows the water circuit to be visualized, and also the mental path: to become aware of the scarcity of the resource, of the energy that needs to be deployed to move it to the places where people live, to filter it and make it usable for human activities. Each person speaks up, puts forward an idea, proposes a device. Antonin thinks of making a link with the city’s plant-purification steppe. Naïm proposes different

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systems for recycling water independently. Sébastien talks about his interest in learning by doing what he doesn’t yet know how to do. Delphine talks about the uses of water in Nègrepelisse, and how fragile the balance is between the Aveyron and those who live there. Common ideas enthuse the group: the agora of the swimming pond that brings people together in a physical and essential relationship with water, the manual supply system that makes people understand the effort necessary to draw water from the Aveyron. The next day, Jean-Luc, Delphine and Nicolas come back to see the progress of the construction, accompanied by another elected official from Nègrepelisse. The construction site becomes a place for informal meetings and exchanges on local politics. This is where the public debate on the subject of water can take place.

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TOOLS = PLASTIC BOTTLE, SOIL, SAND, WATER, GRAVITY, TILES, WOODEN STRUCTURE, WATER, GRAVITY SPACE = IN FRONT OF AND AROUND A LINE PEOPLE = 4 TO 6 STRATEGY/FORMAT = LABORATORY/EXPERIMENTATION INCLUSIVITY SCALE = MEDIUM (MIXED SMALL GROUP THAT GROWS KNOWLEDGE ALONG THE EXPERIMENT, BUT VISIBLE BY ALL)

Trial And Error And Trial Again Drip, drip, drip. Doubting faces look at a drop. Drip, drip. In the middle of the courtyard, a pallet lies on a high table, anchored by some bricks. On it are two five-liter bottles, each filled with a different mix of gravel and sand, which drip water that is continuously poured into them. Underneath, on a bench, glass bottles fill with the water filtered through the different minerals. The outcome is clear. Maybe it shouldn’t be. They can’t draw conclusions from one experiment. Progressively, they change one aspect, and do it again. They change the quality of the water they pour in the improvised laboratory. Then they change and adapt the mix in the filters. They search in parallel for other possible solutions, looking at references, at what others do. Once the expert comes in, the experiments become more effective. Think, copy, experiment. Change the thinking, change

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the protocols, experiment again. Look at the result, evaluate. Accept, or not. Change the protocols, experiment. Evaluate the difference. Evaluate the effort. Discuss the result, discuss the protocols, discuss the effort. Make decisions. Change scale. Go on, and on, and on. Drip, drip, drop. How much water do we lose when pouring on a slope? Does the angle of the slope influence the outcome? How much water does a tile absorb? First when it’s dry, then when it becomes saturated? The pourer changes, and the collected quantity alters slightly. The way they pour might be different. Change behavior. They try as many ways to pour as they can imagine. Slow, fast, all at once. Change the angle, the distance … or maybe the mood. Or maybe the water. Maybe it’s because they’re looking at it in different ways that they get different outcomes. Before an outcome is revealed, anything is possible. The more they try, the more they understand how to tune the experiment so that they obtain the best possible outcome. Nevertheless, a question arises. What is the best possible outcome? What is success, and what is failure? A laboratory is full of uncertainties. At first, they know that they don’t know. They don’t know how. Or at least, not yet. Experimenting requires a certain patience and determination. Repeating the same process again and again. Making hypotheses, checking the result, changing one datum, checking the result, changing another, checking the result, learning from doing, 100 times or more if needed. The expected outcome dictates the experiment. What they know is what they want. What they don’t know, is how much effort they’ll have to make to get to what they want. They integrate failure as a possible outcome. Then they can go on serenely towards successful failures or failed successes. What they propose in the end is necessarily the result of numerous failures.

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Doubt Is Good It’s obviously some kind of construction site. But exactly what it is, we don’t know yet! And yes, this is where the music came from last night. Was anyone else disturbed by that? While drinking coffee together, you can’t avoid hearing someone talk about being lovesick and hungover (what a miserable condition!). Others—in fact most of them—are planning the day. Who can pick up so-and-so in the afternoon? When will the slats be delivered? Apparently, some are leaving today. Breakfast is over, at any rate. Two of them discuss something quite technical about PVC, but then they agree to postpone that topic. They ask me to help prepare some wooden boards. I could have been a miner; maybe they think I am. If I were the practical type, I would have joined the two, shaken their hands, grabbed a saw, changed into my working clothes. I might even have suggested using some different materials for this specific purpose, and they might have agreed. But I’ve never really used a saw, and so I join the lovesick and hungover. We all have three pairs of hands. We have hands to exercise our own skills and abilities. We have hands to help someone else. We have hands to learn: in other words, hands that don’t yet have a particular skill but might well be able to acquire it. My hands will be learning hands, so that later, I’ll be able to saw those wooden

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boards. They’ll probably be used, in some part of the second floor of this house or hut that everybody here is living in. It’s sort of a huge arch. And not only is everybody living in it, but it also contains the workshops and ateliers. In fact, it’s a proper building lodge that might even appear to date from a former time, if it were not for its somewhat eccentric shape. We live here, work here, eat together; we disagree, experiment, develop ideas and materials; we make many steps forward, and some backward. Someone might sing a song, someone might not like someone else’s food. Who are we? To ask this, I must have become a part of them. You can join, you can come by and stay for a while. Eventually, there will be nothing left but a gate made out of recycled plastic, for which our building lodge’s shape and stability will have worked as a support structure. Should we expect the gate to stay connected to the lodge, as a mere support structure, or will it be a social, artistic and community-shaping tool? Might it even work as a gate allowing a vision of the future? We don’t know yet!

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LEARN LEARNING IS A MOVING PROCESS, OSCILLATING BETWEEN DISCOURSE AND EXPERIMENTATION. IT HAS NO DEDICATED SPACE BECAUSE IT HAPPENS WHEREVER THERE IS A RELATION TO KNOWLEDGE THROUGH PEOPLE, OBJECTS, RESOURCES, IDEAS, CONTENT OR TOOLS. KNOWLEDGE TRANSMISSION RECLAIMS ANY TABLE AS A WORKSHOP TABLE, ANY GROUP OF CHAIRS AS A CONFERENCE HALL, ANY SPACE AS A CLASSROOM. 224

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THE ARCH

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THE ARCH ALDEA

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TOOLS = IMAGES, SCREEN, VOICES, EXPERIENCE, TIME LIMIT SPACE = CHAIRS IN FRONT OF THE SCREEN PEOPLE = ABOUT 40 STRATEGY/FORMAT = ONE TO ALL/CONFERENCE INCLUSIVITY SCALE = HIGH

What Nobody Really Wants, Until They Really Really Want It It’s today. It’s already been some days since they’ve met. They know each other’s names, they have a clue about who’s who, but they have no clue about who does what. In order to complete the picture, they propose a series of short conferences. There’s no format, only a timeframe. Five minutes. No more. It’s not a Pecha Kucha, but rather a Mama Kucha. It’s the same, but slightly different. Or maybe it has another name. People can present their work, an idea or a question, related or not to what they do, to get a better understanding of the scope of actions, to continue to meet and learn.

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It’s now. It’s 19:00. Everybody is sitting at the table, eating, after a hard day’s work. No-one makes a move. It seems that everybody—presenters and audience—is waiting for something to happen. Who should take responsibility for setting up the space? Who should gather the information for it to happen? Should it be those who proposed to speak, or rather the ones who will benefit from it? As nobody moves, the tension rises. 19:45. Action. One or two people help set up the screen outside. Maybe visible action will remind people they all need to engage. Or at least that they could engage. They need to gather the presenters, the images, transfer the files, create folders, check the technics, set up the stage, the chairs, and gather everybody to start. That’s a lot. They try their best. 20:15. Not yet ready. 20:38 … “Sorry, I’m tired, I need to go,” someone says. Indeed, they’ve waited too long. Apparently, nobody wants to sit and listen. They just want to chill. Why should they push hard for something nobody wants? Tonight, it won’t happen. Let’s do it tomorrow. The next day. Half of the work is done: file-transfer-check-set-up. They just need a short action, a timeframe and a common understanding. 19:00 once again. The same situation again. People sit, chill after work. They deserve it. Today, the construction site has progressed; structures have appeared. The transformation is visible. Again, it seems they don’t genuinely want what they first proposed. Again, the question arises and a common understanding seems to be reached. If they don’t want it collectively, and can’t make that collective effort, it won’t happen. At all. And so what? At that moment, they decide to postpone it to never, or rather to whenever. To whenever the common desire will be strong enough to diminish the effort and collectively engage to make it happen. They decide that a learning format shouldn’t be imposed by any kind of authoritarian force. It should rather come from the collective need or desire to learn and exchange. And that desire should be stated, conspicuous, and tangible. Days pass. Construction goes on, punctuated alternately by parties and chilling. As they approach the deadline, dedication

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to work increases. They want to go on, and finish properly what they initiated. Nobody talks about those short lectures anymore. It’s failed twice already. Today is the last day. During the final short meeting in the morning, they gather the common information, and then somebody speaks up. “What about the Mama Kucha? Can we do it tonight?” The rest of the group confirms. It seems that they’ve found motivation and the right moment. That night, at about 19:00, it’s not the same people who take the initiative to realize the set up. The screen travels again from inside to outside, carried carefully by four of the participants. Other participants spread the word, gather the chairs, transform the space. It seems it’s working out tonight. Maybe it will happen. All conditions seem harmoniously in place. The effort, once shared, is becoming bearable. It’s late, but it’s OK. 20:00. All of the bodies come and sit in front of the screen. They first watch themselves in a short movie that has been shot over a week. They laugh at some surprise moments they’d missed but someone captured. They have a beer, or a plate and they enjoy the moment together. Time for the presentations. The first ones start. The audience is tired, but thoroughly focused. Five minutes. Clap clap. Five minutes. Clap clap. As the sun goes down, the noise of the city fun fair at the gate of the art center rises up. The loud corny music that only the ones who grew up in France recognize is punctuated by the screams of kids in search of adrenaline. Five minutes. Whereas architects and creatives usually tend to overtalk when it’s about what they do, this time, they strictly respect the time frame. Five minutes is long enough. It’s difficult to stay serious in such conditions, but neither the presenters stop talking nor the public stop listening. In the end, the effort to make it happen is greater than expected, but because it’s collectively endorsed, effort turns into joy. And so does the desire to learn.

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TOOLS = AN HOUR SPACE = FREE PEOPLE = 50 STRATEGY/FORMAT = BREAK INCLUSIVITY SCALE = HIGH

The Hot— Very Hot—Hour What can you expect from a southern French summer but heat that not even the freshness of twilight can temper? Indeed, their weather forecast apps tell them that the week will be hot. And hotter every day. 25°. 28°. 30°. 31°. 32°. 35°. 38°. 38°. 38°. At least, outside, under the trees. Within the courtyard, surrounded by the radiating structure, it will be more. Much more. Certainly too hot to work. From day three on, every day, they’ll have a “hot hour,” they decide while looking at the wall calendar. “It’ll be too hot, so between 14:00 and 15:00 after lunch, we’ll take a break, but it will be a constructive break: we’ll propose some formats to distribute content or simply exchange, based on what we think could be useful for the workshop. So far, it could be anything. We’ll take some days to work on it and we’ll update the calendar.” As the first days pass, they observe the design process, meet people, go around the city and think about proposals for that hot

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hour. Taking advantage of the climatized space of the auditorium, they announce a first lecture on day three. It’s not mandatory, but everyone should take the opportunity to stop for a while and switch from body work to mind work. The one known as the “Curious man” starts to share his findings, showing the participants what’s around them that they haven’t yet had the time to observe while working within the art center: means to distribute and collect water in the surroundings, a swimming pond, endemic species, etc. Like a sort of mantra, the words flow through people’s minds. This hour of rest is precious. Some just close their eyes and enjoy the pause. Some listen carefully, or at least try to. Others are eager to start work again.

For the second hot hour, get your swim suits. We’ll go to the river. It’s getting hotter. How does swimming in the river relate to any kind of exchange? As they walk, the participants mingle in small groups. While some use this moment to share their experiments so far, some talk with the invited artists to get a deeper understanding of their environment. The water is fresh. Stones on the riverbed transform their gestures into the movements of unsynchronized robots. They enjoy the current or simply the shore. They might not even talk to each other, but they feel and experience their environment. Strangely, they hadn’t realized how close the river is. Refreshed, they move back to the art center and lay their towels at the entrance. The lines of colorful cloth subtly transform the art center into swimming heaven. While their installation is not yet ready, they can start to feel how it will turn out.

For the third hot hour, we … Lunch was late today. They’re a bit late in announcing what’s going to happen in the hot hour. Some haven’t waited. Half of the group has already gone back to the river. Others lie down in the auditorium to try to nap for a while. Some gather around a table or at the city bar to discuss life and projects. They’ve individually

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and spontaneously chosen what they want to do, what seems the most useful for them. What they all have in common is that they agree on the necessity of a break. In case they’d forgotten, the strength of the sun reminds them. In the course of the week, one hot hour smoothly switches to two. From 14:00 to 16:00. Whereas the first proposal was to fill up some content gaps and learn beyond the experience and the construction, what they realize is that content can’t be enforced. Learning is a voluntary process. And bodies and minds need space and time to process content. Pausing and rest were truly what was missing.

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TOOLS = CARD GAME, CANDLE, LISTENING SKILLS SPACE = PRIVATE ROOM, TABLE, DARKNESS PEOPLE = 1&1 STRATEGY/FORMAT = EVALUATION, SELF AWARENESS INCLUSIVITY SCALE = NONE – SECRET

The Fortune Teller All day long, the noise of the machines fills up the art center: wood and metal being cut in the courtyard, the sound of the compressor to restore the air chambers, charcoal burning close to the stone wall, sewing machines in the exhibition hall, the mixer and pop music in the kitchen, telephones and conversations in the offices. The whole art center bubbles with agitation, movement and an asynchronous symphony of sounds. Within this joyful chaos, added to by the different information presented on the glass walls, it becomes difficult to find rest. Or rather to take some rest. No space to rest. No time to rest. Too much to do. After a couple of days, big letters written in white chalk on a black board appear, close to the steel frame curtain on one aisle of the former castle. “Cartomancie, Fortune Teller” and an arrow pointing to what seems to be the only remaining secluded space

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within the art center. The corner round tower—a.k.a the book tower—has something sacred about it: the huge heavy metal door closing the round wall stone; the filtered sunlight coming from above down through a metal tube directly to the center of the round steel table; the effort to adapt to darkness and read the titles of the surrounding books in the shadow; the shape of the room echoing and elevating every whisper to a perfectly audible sound. Out of curiosity and upon the invitation of the new improvised fortune teller, they start one by one to join her around the table, on which is a candle and a proposed ritual. While it might seem difficult to switch from the uproar of the construction site to the quietness of a meditative session, the room, the fortune-teller’s attitude and the choreographed situation plunge everybody into their own selves. They open up as much as they want or need to. They tell what they want or need to tell, for themselves. They assume it will all be kept secret, as if there were some ethical code for a spontaneously self-appointed fortune teller. Maybe there is. “Where have you come from? Who are the three people who have impacted you the most here? What have you learned? Please ask a question about your future, related to the present situation.” She then unrolls a card game she has borrowed and initiates a conversation through symbols and open questions—as deep as the participants want it to go—with every single person in the group. As simple as it seems, even answering the first question can be troubling. Where have I come from? From home, transition, stress, clouds? From the train? Carcassonne or Belgium? The answers matter only for the one formulating them. The fortune teller offers the space and the time for each one to put into words both their expectations and their current situation. Already in joining the workshop, they’ve all made a conscious step towards “something else.” Whether learning new skills, meeting new people, getting out of a routine, experimenting, or dancing every two days after almost two years of social restriction, they all came longing for something.

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How to deal with emotions and thoughts within a collaborative workshop? How to deal with intensities? Born out of the identified need to portray all participants, the fortune teller idea has outperformed the planned outcome. While it’s impossible to value the long-term influence of the session on each member of the group, the possibilities it opens are endless: looking for meaning, making time to reflect on what they do, how they act or learn, participate in a self-evaluation, the diversity of the learnings at stake. The fortune teller was an unplanned character. Nevertheless, what was planned were the conditions in which she appeared. Having some undetermined roles within a project, characterized by free observers able to react through a proposal to a specific situation, or to respond to an unforeseen need, is central within learning processes. Planning for the unplanned is an attempt to reach completion and complexity within different levels of apprenticeship.

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Today I’ve Learned —Part I Today I’ve learned the importance of creating a collective narrative to report on the process that goes on from the beginning of a project. I learned screen printing techniques for the first time during the workshop, but above all I learned about all the work that’s done upstream to establish a visual identity and a collective narrative of the construction of the project. I was part of a group that worked on the operating mechanism of the pool. I understood the value of having people who navigated between groups and who made the links. They built—parallel to the physical construction—an intellectual construction of collective thought from the different pieces that we were each committed to achieving on our own. It was an association of images and representations of the pieces in construction that became a visual story, allowing us to give an account of what we were doing. We often lack perspective at the moment of creation. I’ve always done the project and then reflected on it at the end to capitalize on the experience. But here it felt as if the process of the creation and the reflection on the process of the creation were going hand in hand. I’ve realized that having a reflection established from the start—a reflection that doesn’t only serve the capitalization on the experience—creates a vivid vision of what’s being constructed in the mind. When we were constructing during the workshop, it wasn’t just about creating logos and texts for each group, it was about having

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people watch us make them and then give us their thoughts on what we were doing. It’s about having people capture the essence of what we’re doing during the action. When I’m at the cusp of the creation, I’m sometimes unable to summarize and verbalize my work in a succinct manner, because I’m usually drowning in ideas and am unable to prioritize the information and distinguish between a principle and a detail. I usually treat all the information generated with the same importance. But having people watching me making during the workshop, helped me quickly grasp what I was doing. It helped me take decisions faster over the course of the next days because I could get a clear idea of how ​​ my work stands out from the others. I capitalized on the narrative that was initially created to account for our work, and I used it to readjust and reorient my work every day.

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Today I’ve Learned —Part II Today I’ve learned to trust the process of the collaborative work when it gathers people around the same values. I’m writing this text on the evening of a day I spent drawing plans for housing units. This is basically my daily life in 2021. I work on projects and scales where it’s inconceivable to move to a site before having detailed the project to the administrators and the technique representatives. I came to the workshop with this idea for ​​my day-to-day construction of a project that takes months just for the drawing phases. Therefore, I had to remind myself at the beginning of the workshop that there are different ways of building projects, depending on time, scale, conditions, budget, human resources, etc. I also had to remind myself that I shouldn’t let my current mode of executing architecture stop me from digging directly into the construction phase, even if I have no clear idea of the final shape of the project and the measurements needed. With my workshop team, we started constructing the crane of the water system we were building based on a conceptual diagram. Then, we started cutting the wood before coming back to the drawing. Then we came back again to the wood work, then back to clarify the drawing, the measurements etc. Back and forth. Back and forth. The action took place quickly because our way of building the project wasn’t based only on the preliminary drawing of all the precise and ready-to-cut parts of the wood structure. We had an idea from the beginning and we executed it.

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The biggest decisions of our team weren’t made around the drawing table, but on the construction site instead. We only discussed around the table the narrative that drove us to work together on the project to remind us why we were here. We worked out the core of it all during construction. It’s one way of doing things, but there are so many and they’re all valid as long as they deliver a result. For example, the group next to us was working on the structure of the pool, and they operated differently: the whole drawing of their structure was pre-established before they started cutting the pieces of wood. I was following their methods, but I have to admit that working as we did with my team was more liberating for me. There were moments of doubts during the process, alternating with fleeting moments of confidence, the doubts waiting to be swept away by the birth of new ideas; the moments of stumbling, by the moments of trust. We were so present in the process and attentive to what each member of the team was saying. And the moments before the emergence of an idea when all of the team members’ minds aligned and combined was exciting. Suddenly, the magical idea forms without you knowing how you got to it. The fusion of the affinities, the fusion of energies: we are one. This trust in the collective group work that I had the chance to experience during the workshop happens when every person has a unique set of skill combinations. When people are in the right place and everything seems so obvious and easy, the magic of collaborative work can happen.

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Today I’ve Learned —Part III Today I learned that there are different types of creativities and all of them matter: from the creativity of the designing of the object to the creativity of its realization. I want to write about a kind of creativity I experience from time to time and that I find fascinating and yet hard to summarize in a phrase. Therefore, I’ll start with an example. If I create a form responding to a function, there will be creativity associated with conceiving the object itself, and then there will also be another kind of creativity related to its implementation, its mold, its manufacture, etc. The second creativity is what I want to discuss here: the creativity of the realization of the object, when the tools used and the ways of achieving the created object become objects of creativity themselves. I’d already experienced this creativity in my life, but it was a joy to find it again during this workshop during moments when we were being creative about the methods of assembling the construction. For instance, when we assembled the parts of the crane structure, we assembled 70% of the pieces of wood on the floor. We really prepared them and fixed them with screws before we lifted everything and continued the assembly of the 30% parts that were missing. The crane had to be assembled

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enough before erection so that we wouldn’t need to climb and work long hours on top of the wood structure. But it had to be light enough to be lifted and installed. We thought about how to work on the ground (horizontally) with all the wood pieces knowing that they would be placed vertically in symmetry when installed. We were working on the floor on the pieces while projecting their position when they were raised and installed. This meant we were very careful each time to make sure that we worked on the right side of the wood. We made a simulation of a huge set square on the floor, to be able to create the perfect 90° angle each time with very long wood planks. To achieve this, we took two of the largest planks we had (four meters) and nailed them to the floor at an angle of 90°. Then, whenever we wanted to nail two boards to create a 90° angle, we just slid them on the planks used it as a set square. We used a strap to align in a circle the pre-cut wood pieces for the creation of the wooden buckets of the water tower. We put the boards side by side in a circle and then we held them with the strap that we pulled to straighten them up into the round shape we wanted to give them. As architects and designers, we often refer to creativity as the “ideation of the concept.” But I’m interested in this other form of creativity that I still struggle to verbalize and express and that I only experience when I’m on site. I can’t find a better phrase in English than “the creativity of the implementation.” The French, “la créativité de la mise en oeuvre,” is more vivid and closer to what I personally experience.

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What Did I Learn? “COMMON LANGUAGE” “NARRATIVE” “SHARING” - the knowledge of action: inventing tools and languages to share one’s proposals - disseminating thoughts - inventing supports and languages (written and oral) specific to the situation, to one’s own practice - using the representation of the project, and the materiality of the project itself as a “transitional object” - building community, in reaction to the fragmentation of collective thoughts (COVID)

“CONVIVIALITY” “KINDNESS” “EMPATHY” “TO TRUST SOMEBODY” - creating an environment of trust - to take everyone’s word seriously “EMOTIONS” - letting one’s emotions flow out and to exposing them as part of the collective complexity (and creativity)

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“ISSUES OF THE TERRITORY” “ARCHITECT’S RESPONSABILITY” - architecture and craft as a medium for creating collective intelligence - using the project as a support to meet the territory and its people - the pedagogical dimension of the field, of the political and environmental issues: humility - legitimacy? By decentring, making visible what was not visible “(RE)MAKING CONNECTIONS” - encouraging participatory events - conducting surveys and interviews - taking the time for informal meetings - provoking meetings and surprise - allowing a meeting space (and time)

“POTENTIALITIES FROM THE SITUATION” - to be able to identify and combine systems of interactions and resources “PEDAGOGY” - two-way learning (teacher-led dynamic) “THINK COLLECTIVE” “LEADING” “CREATING A FAMILY” - working with the work of others - defining the project by sharing, appropriation and collective discussion - detecting what constitutes tension and collective potential - identifying and structuring a decision-making group - directing, implementing

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“LISTENING (to oneself, to others)” - listen carefully to reactions and criticisms - leave some room (and time) for debate “CREATING WHILE DOUBTING” - allow oneself to doubt, to question the “easy solution” - balance between determined/undetermined

“TO EXPERIMENT” “TESTING, TRYING” “NOT TO GET DISCOURAGED” - working on the alternative - working with multiple references and solutions - testing the project in situ - a space of freedom (of disobedience? and salvation ...) “INTUITION” - allowing one’s intuition to go out loud - it has to do with spontaneity and engagement, trust - stop talking and let the body do - creative vision

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“LEARNING FROM FAILURE (OR FROM CONFLICT)” “THE LETTING GO” - reappropriating acquired tools - building one’s own framework for action: identity (crisis of the) “TOOLS” “MATERIALS” “1 TO 1 SCALE” “ENGAGE THE BODY” - using the temporary transformation of places to scale 1:1 - the manipulation of real objects - a matter of strength - intelligence of body and gesture - architecture is not the only goal, but the gestures and interactions, the learning that takes place during its construction

“BALANCE” “SLOW AND FAST” “TO TAKE TIME” - working in iteration between proposals and criticism from the field - working in the in-between: the territory and the group - question of time: learning to balance the time to think and the time to act, and how both “feed” each other

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“NOT TO BE SCARED OF OTHERS” “REACH OUT TO OTHERS” “GOING OUT OF MY COMFORT ZONE” - dare to interact - being with others, overcoming shyness - otherness demands efforts - to feel empowered/allowed to take part of the collective movement

“KNOW HOW TO ASK” “BEING AVAILABLE” “POLYVALENCY” - finding one’s place among others - being able to express oneself and to act within a team - accepting the collective dimension of the project - observing oneself among others

“HORIZONTALITY” - collaborative-cooperative: one common goal (the “transitional object”), but a gain for each (redistribution) - questioning the need for productivity? - promoting generosity - permanent dynamic situation, permanent learning situation - continuous flow of information (everybody has to be aware, the same level of information for all)

“COMBINING SKILLS” “NEVER STOP LEARNING” “FINDING THE RIGHT PATH” “REALLY DOING WHAT I THOUGHT I KNEW” - discovering one’s own skills - surpassing oneself - continuous learning

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“LISTENING TO ONESELF” “SELF ESTEEM” “SELF CONFIDENCE” “TO ADAPT ONESELF” “AUTONOMY” “TO FEEL USEFUL” - finding a place, a goal, a purpose, that is coherent with its oneself - developing a personal and pro-active professional posture - self-esteem, self-confidence, self-knowledge

“CHILL-OUT” “HAVING FUN” “LAUGHING” “FREEDOM” - a different, collective, non-productive life experience

“POSITIVE REINVENTION” “TO BE HAPPY WITH LESS” - self-learning through personal experience - immersive experience, that challenges, shakes yourself - unlearning before building one’s own knowledge

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COOK THE KITCHEN TO PREPARE FOOD FOR MANY PEOPLE IS NOT THE SAME AS DOMESTIC ONES. A COMPACT ARRANGEMENT AROUND WHICH THE COOKS CAN STAND, IT ALLOWS TASKS TO BE SHARED. RATIONALLY ORGANIZING COOKING POTS, TABLEWARE AND INGREDIENTS, IT FACILITATES COMMON GESTURES AND WORKING CHOREOGRAPHIES.

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HOTEL EGON / IBA CAMPUS 2018

TEATRO DEL MARE

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LE COURS DE L’EAU, LA COUR ET L’EAU

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FIREKITCHEN

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JAMMIN KIOSK CASA DO VAPOR

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JAMMIN KIOSK

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MON(S) INVISIBLE

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BROEI / DEVIL CASTLE

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BACKHAUSWAGEN

BACKHAUSWAGEN

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TABLE OF CONTENT

282 UNLEARNING CENTER

KUNSTSTADT W.O.W. ON TOUR

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DALSTON MILL /

EXYZT

MON(S) INVISIBLE

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THE ARCH

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MAINHALL / OSTHANG PROJECT

JARDIN FABRIQUE NOURRITURE PASSE NATURE

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W.O.W. ON TOUR

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Conversation:

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On a sunny November morning, a few members of Constructlab escape from the Venice Architecture Biennale to get a coffee on a terrace. Naïm Benyahya, architect (Toulouse), leads Antonin Basser, landscape architect (Annemasse), Diego Sologuren, architect and artist (Lausanne), and Merril Sinéus, urban architect (Paris), to the campo Santo Stefano. Together, they exchange common memories of workshops shared in previous years. The discussion is heating up, the sun is getting higher, the teapot is steaming on the bistro table.

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argues: “A framework defines the objectives of the workshop. It then allows us to set a spatial limit, to organize work groups, and finally to present the material with which everyone works.” He draws a parallel with fencing, a sport he knows well and teaches to children. “If before warmAntonin evokes the question of the participa- ing-up I don’t propose a tory approach applied to framework to the children various project experienc- with a precise and concise es where participants are explanation of how things not designers, but inhab- are going to happen, itants, curious people, or they’ll be disorganized, actors in the local cultural excited, out of sorts. In a nutshell, my session will life. He is adamant: “A framework must be estab- be a failure!” Nevertheless, he specifies that this lished! This framework must be the first thing to framework must not be rigid but rather flexible design in regards to our and set up according to approach to the conduct the hazards of the project. of the participants in the workshop.” He further For some, the priority of Constructlab projects is to build, to produce. For others it is to imagine and design. But everyone agrees that it’s interesting to do both at the same time, depending on the situation and to a greater or lesser degree.

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They then explore their role in the project. Are they passers-by? Translators? Tutors? Antonin talks of their “duty of adaptability,” their “function as tools,” because what else are they in these processes? If the project is the medium, aren’t Constructlab’s team members tools and the participants the main actors? Naïm adds: “If we’re tools, I hope we’re Swiss Army knives!” The joke resonates because two of them, Antonin and Diego, live in Switzerland. But above all, the Swiss knife expresses in a common language the idea of multifunctionality and practical ingenuity adapting to different situations. In his opinion, this is their great ability: to adapt to the

situation, to the context, to the demand, to the resources that the environment and the encounters they make. It defines their way of designing and building; it allows them to leave room for the unexpected when it arises and to seize the opportunity to abandon the aforementioned framework if necessary. Merril wonders what their personal expectations of Constructlab projects are, and what they think they will learn from participating. Diego talks about the multiplicity of perspectives that are combined in a workshop, whether it is constructive or not. Within a project, a diversity of cultures, professions, and personalities come

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together, giving everyone the opportunity to discover other fields and other ways of doing things. Being in contact with different expertises allows members and participants to share and test other ways of working together and, to a certain extent, to coexist temporarily. He points out that through the crossing of these abilities or research lines, different methodologies adapted to each situation as well as specific tools are improvised and enrich the project. From the experiences of each of the participants in the workshops, and often also from their ability to transform ideas into constructive forms, the project

combines the strengths of all and multiplies them exponentially. It generates unexpected interdependencies, affinities, constant reassessment, and a strong community spirit. The act of building together in an intense and concentrated way leads the participants to open up naturally, to broaden the raison d’être of a constructive project and to consider and value its capacity to create encounters, exchange, and social change. In a way, the project is successful when social learning takes over the primary objectives of physical construction and imposes itself in the consciousness and daily life of the participants at large.

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The teapot is no longer steaming and the cups have been emptied. They realize Italy must be having an effect, because they’ve started talking more loudly and gesticulating. The heat of the sun and the sound of the bells of the nearest church remind them cruelly that one hour will never be enough to synthesize their ideas on these enthralling subjects. They’re already late for their next appointment.

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Conversation:

Conversation from the Future School, within the Korean Pavilion of the Venice Architecture Biennale, partly in person, partly online, with members of Constructlab, Tiphaine Abenia, architect, researcher, teacher at the EPFL (within Alice Laboratory) and co-curator of the French Pavilion, and Hae-Won Shin, curator of the Future School at the Korean Pavilion. 296

Joanne Pouzenc

We do things, we reflect on what we do, but the reflection back on what we learn, how we learn, why we learn it, what is the frame for it and so on is never really formulated. So now, we want—or need—to formulate. As a starting point, I’d like to tackle one question with you. I’m interested to know the influence of the kind of non-formal pedagogical practice with which we experiment within Constructlab: how can it enter the academic institution? And do you think it should? How can we look at our collaborative practice and take what’s good from it to universities?

Tiphaine Abenia

That’s a big question Joanne, to start with! Should non-conventional practices be integrated into institutions, or should they stay apart? As a first thought, I think that a strict division between conventional and unconventional, between formal and informal, doesn’t truly exist within collaborative practices. In the end, they’re always a bit blurred, even though they start from an institution to develop somewhere else, to have a different form of freedom, or the

other way around, when they start outside the institution and later find some anchor points in established universities. Let me take some examples: the studio Learning From in the Architecture School in Toulouse and the Alice design studio within the EPFL in Lausanne. Learning From was a design studio for master students in Toulouse that I taught with Daniel Estevez. It was built with the idea that architects can learn from a situation, a context, and the expertise of the inhabitants. It was both a studio for research and for action, taking place mostly in critical situations. We worked in South Africa (Johannesburg), but also in Spain and in France. In all those different situations the idea was the same: that learning and doing are inseparable, and that by doing we build a knowledge that may sometimes be tacit, but is still a real, precise, and valuable knowledge. Within Alice laboratory (Atelier de la Conception de l’Espace) at the EPFL in Lausanne, we’re a team of ten architects teaching first-year design students. Last year, we worked on

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different sites scattered around the Geneva area. With my students, we built a collaboration with the village of Aigues-Vertes, a non-profit-making organization of public utility supporting the building of a life project for people with intellectual disabilities such as autism. The EPFL and Alice laboratory provided a great framework to start with, and then the project grew beyond the conventional space of the studio, in dialog with this specific situation and its inhabitants. Those two design studios are looking for spaces of freedom to get in contact with current problematics and to experiment with collective practices in architecture, but they also benefit from the institutional framework supporting them. For instance, we have a year-long agenda to work with the students. This agenda comes with pedagogical aims, but also with a shared rhythm (two semesters, weekly studio time, etc.), a rhythm that was sometimes disrupted to welcome intensive periods of workshops, but that also allowed me to build collaborations with other studios sharing the same framework. Within

existing institutions, I would say that we look for enabling structures and frameworks. There’s always in these experiences a sort of blurry line for action.

Joanne Pouzenc

Interesting. Our interventions might indeed start by building that blurry line within the institution. I wonder also—and I’d like to address a question to the group to slowly open up the conversation—what kind of institution is Constructlab? And how do we make that blurry line?

Alexander Römer

Or are we ourselves the blurry line?

Naim Benyahya

Could we make a first step and define what an institution is?

Joanne Pouzenc

Defining an institution … Maybe Tiphaine, you could give us your definition of institution?

Tiphaine Abenia

Yes. The word “institution” is often pejoratively connotated as being de facto oppressive and coercive. I’d nuance it, in particular because in French,

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we make a difference between établissement and institution. This difference has been highlighted in the practice of education known as “institutional pedagogy” by Freinet or Oury, for instance. We’re part of an institution as soon as we collectively head towards a goal, making common decisions towards it. Within it, we can take diverse (and fluctuating) roles to achieve our objectives, the situation being in a constant state of flux. On the contrary, the établissement is the physical and the formal side that can sometimes be particularly technocratic and inert. It’s the établissement that establishes a hierarchy, gives you paperwork, and so on. As an example of an institution free from the alienating établissement, we’re developing the Truant School. It’s an école buissonnière, a platform for research and production outside of conventional or formal pedagogical institutions but still in dialog with an institution hosting part of its development: the ateliers bermuda. By way of collaboration, bermuda hosted the Truant School for its two first editions. There, we shared a collective moment, living and working together for ten days.

Joanne Pouzenc

It’s as if the Truant School was an institution instituted just for a moment in time and space. Space is so important. That maybe goes back to the question of the Atelier. An atelier—or workshop—is first a space but it’s also a “format,” or a situation, activated by action, like our Atelier Collaborative. Is our atelier an “instant institution”?

Peter Zuiderwijk

Are you aware of the notion of “instituting otherwise”? While “instituting” simultaneously supports and oppresses, instituting otherwise engages the seeming paradox of a practice that both questions and defends (public) institutions. It comes from the statement that institutes both support and oppress. And that’s the thing. Atelier doesn’t oppress. It’s not attached to any kind of oppressive or imposed typology. You can understand it any way you want. In an atelier as we practice it, you can have breakfast, you can sit down, there’s a bit of a conversation, and it will find its level. It’s in that sense an Otherwise Institution.

Tiphaine Abenia

What you say of institutions

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as support and vector of oppression, I think it’s important to highlight in every structure that we construct or take part in. There are two thoughts on structure in general: there’s one very structuralist thought, inherited from human sciences, that supports the idea that a structure induces one kind of behavior. In that sense, every structure has an active part: it can bring people together and activate some action or, on the contrary, limit those actions. Now, we started to question this first essentialist thought, looking at things the other way around. We observed that people can also impact a structure and change it through their action. There’s a kind of mutual interaction between the structure and the people: we, as inhabitants or as actors, can impact the material and immaterial structures in which we evolve. Within the different studios we discussed earlier, we weren’t talking only in terms of structural material elements, but also in terms of organization of people, and we saw, for example, that some structures that weren’t made for a certain use can be

“détournée”, altered, they can be used in other ways or flipped around, they can support another type of action and use. It’s in the actions taking place that we can really evaluate the capacity of a structure to be thought differently. That’s why action is so important.

Joanne Pouzenc

For me, what you just said resonates. It makes me think of when we propose collaborative workshops. In fact, we’re most likely building the frame in which we’ll operate them. So, at first, there’s a framework: we don’t work in an empty field. There’s always a context, a terrain, the hosts who invite us, and there are some collective rules that are sometimes not spoken but still exist. In terms of the variety of participants for example: there are those who know a bit more, those with or without skills, those who are curious, and those with certain motivations and so on. But there are also rules regarding how the structure develops. There’s a known goal, but between the moment we start and the end, the shape of the space can be totally different from what was imagined in the first place. It

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has something to do with the capability of an architecture or a structure to reinvent itself or to empower people to act, which is related to its materiality. Some materials have a greater effect on changing and transforming a building. We work a lot with wood. Wood allows the repetition of frames, for example, or the repetition of the same system all the time towards another shape. With wood, we’re always between architecture itself and its experimental 1:1 scale model.

Tiphaine Abenia

You might have seen those structures that the laboratory Alice has been building for a few years now with first-year students, and they’re very much like you describe. There’s a set of rules directly inspired by balloon-framing—for example, we use wooden elements. They have a certain dimension, they have certain mechanical properties, and they allow for certain types of connections. We also develop each year a type of node that can be dismantled and remounted, and we propose some proportions for the elementary three-dimensional cell. They form a set

of shared ingredients, a DNA for the studios to work with. We then talk about protostructure, both an imaginary reference system and a physical framework: the idea of proto is the idea of having an original frame, coming before and allowing the development of unexpected and heterogeneous events. We use the protostructure as a measuring device on site, as a shared reference system and as a physical frame. But, as we discussed earlier, there’s a mutual interaction between the structure and the people. Exposed to a very contextual site, the protostructure is also transformed and altered. For example, if there are trees on site, since we don’t want to touch any trees, we’ll need to apply a subtractive operation to change the original set of rules, to adapt and to react to a certain context. Another interesting thing in the built iteration of the protostructure is that alone, it can barely hold itself. It’s not stable. In order to make it stable, you need to inhabit it. So we have a multiplicity of projects from students interacting and negotiating with the protostructure. A first way to activate the protostructure is to put it in

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relation with existing contexts, but what makes it really stable is the act of inhabiting it.

Malte Braun

Compared with institutionalized learning spaces—what I understand as Academia—I see two sides. On the one hand, you have teaching and educating people towards certain professions, or areas of knowledge. On the other hand, you have teaching as an area of research, as field experimentation. When I think about these Ateliers Collaboratives, it reminds me that when research communities work together or work on a subject, they freely interconnect, discuss, debate, and something then develops. They learn among themselves and develop new things. But this is from the research point of view. The teaching side would rather be to make this knowledge available. That’s the power of the institution or the academy, allowing students to conduct a profession afterwards, etc. So isn’t this way of collaborative thinking already implied but not always accessible in the academic institution? How does that connect to you or to your work?

Tiphaine Abenia

What I’ve experienced the most, as a researcher and a teacher, is the development of research interest within pedagogical subjects. In Alice, it’s something I’ve rarely seen before: a research laboratory is in charge of the teaching. Alice—a research lab—is taking care of first-year design teaching for all students entering EPFL in Architecture. It’s a really strong idea: the possibility to question the boundaries between research and practice. In Toulouse, the workshops that took place with the communities led to certified training. Concretely speaking, the participants involved in the project received a course certificate at the end of the workshop attesting to the skills acquired. The idea that when we do a project, we actually do research, was also at the heart of the Learning From studio. This is something that I really believe in: each project is an investigation; we can learn a lot from a specific situation and this new understanding helps to reshape our way of designing. First-year students are building relevant knowledge of a situation, and their careful

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observations lead them to develop questions about a place that are worth sharing. Not to mention that there are more than 250 students in Alice, and just as many lenses to question a situation. You raised the importance of making knowledge available and I agree, diffusion is a central component, in particular for public institutions. Experimenting on a 1:1 scale and opening the construction site to the public is a way to make the experiment accessible to a larger community. Another way, common in academia, is through publications. In 2020, as COVID-19 struck, we had to abandon our plans to build life-size structures, but we proposed to the students to build a book instead. Not a portfolio, but a book assembling their trajectories, investigations, and project scenarios. No matter the formalization of the output (a book or a built project), both situations were the result of investigations, blurring the boundaries between research and project.

Merril Sinéus

I have a question for the Constructlab team. Do you think that during an Atelier Collaborative we are in fact building knowledge—as Tiphaine describes it—like a research laboratory could do?

Naim Benyahya

I’m not sure about the word “building.” I’d rather say that we create a common or collective knowledge, but each of us creates their own piece around a project. Within an Atelier Collaborative, there are different experiences and each of us has their own. But building a knowledge, like there would be just one—I disagree.

Bert Villa

Maybe it’s not about us wanting to reinvent already known things—like reinventing how to build a house—but that each of us, including all participants, learns a skill or learns a certain aspect of it in their own language, in their own tempo and that’s very valuable. It’s more about developing many small learnings and less about us, as a group, learning and developing a totally new concept from scratch.

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Tiphaine Abenia

This raises the question of whether knowledge should necessarily be universal, global. I don’t think so. It can rise from local experiments and be partial. I think in your work—and also in the work we discussed just before—what’s interesting is those layers of knowledge. What I observe with a huge group of students, for example in Alice, is that we’re not talking about one big, homogeneous understanding of the situation that we would have gained collectively in just one big step. We’re rather developing a multiplicity of small, localized, and precise readings that, once put together—very much like a rhizomatic approach—create more than a juxtaposition of little pieces of research. It creates a renewed, fragmentary, and rich vision of the situation. Those layers of knowledge slot together and support each other, from the most theoretical to the most pragmatic one—learning new tools: to use a saw for example. Here, not only do we gain a technical skill, but we also gain an understanding of some collective rules: what I can do with it, where and when I can use it, the impact it may

have on other parts of the construction site, etc. It’s learning to work together, to collaborate in a process. In many architectural schools, you can do your entire curriculum without having to actually be in contact or in discussion with other human beings outside the studio. Or even without being in touch with a real situation. It’s very much possible, and it’s a pity! I think that engaging with a situation, learning to negotiate, debate, disagree should be central in architectural education for the students to build a critical design thinking.

Hae-Won Shin

There’s a question regarding following up on how we share knowledge in studios and the different related formats within the Future School, on how we compile this program of more than fifty events together to bring communality as well as diversity of issues under one umbrella that’s shared through the exhibition. What we often do in architecture, is to share knowledge through end-ofyear shows or exhibitions or at the biennales. This questions what type of sharing, what kind of deep knowledge, can be

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exchanged through this type of exhibition. How much knowledge does the viewer take with them? Also within this context, where does this digital Atelier Collaborative program come in? People are listening online but might not share the same language. Language comes with culture. How is this knowledge being shared? It really raises questions. I don’t know whether you have thoughts on that?

Lucas Devolder

I think a very important aspect of learning is in fact relying on creating a common language. But a common language is not only a written language, it’s also a working language, or a material language. And something that’s very clear, from what I know of the Alice research lab, is that people start with something very simple—like learning how to handle a saw—and then design a node, and work within the given format. Only then, can you build the language, and then, your own project. You work alone, you develop your idea, your project, your node, and while you all bring it together, you’ve learned the language of using a saw. You’ve learned the difficulties of mak-

ing a node. While everything is put together, even if you don’t have the possibility to talk to all the other students, you understand the exhibition. You understand its language and because you do understand it, you see a node that you didn’t design. You didn’t talk to the person who designed the node, but you will understand what the process was and how it got there, and how the person sees the world differently, and has, in that way, made their project like it is. In Alice, it’s very clear how learning happens, and something similar happens in Constructlab’s projects. In Alice, it’s in fact a very simple straight line, from learning the language, exposing the idea and talking about it, not through words, but rather by showing what you made of the question. In Constructlab’s projects, every time you make something, the process needs to go faster. And that’s a very interesting point: how to create a language that enables you to communicate with somebody, to hand over information about something that a person has never learned.

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For example, in Nègrepelisse, suddenly we had to talk about plumbing and about how to connect tubes, but if people don’t know the language, it’s very difficult to be able to design with it. So you have to first talk and explain to people the words you use. You have to explain shapes. You have to explain everything so that people can communicate with you. And then, when the project is finished, everybody has spoken about all these different things. When you look at the final exhibition, the whole thing, then you can understand the process, the energy needed, even if you weren’t there all the time, and you weren’t involved in all its different aspects.

you make. Showing a fact—or an artefact—and putting what has been done on the table is something I find valuable in terms of pedagogy. It creates a level playing field. Everyone is then on the same level of understanding. We talk about what we did, what we made, and this is shared at the table. We can observe it. It’s not an abstraction, an empty rhetorical statement. We can discuss it. We can compare it. We can debate it, and this is a way to be inclusive of different knowledge and different practices. I think it’s a good attitude.

Tiphaine Abenia

Lucas Devolder

I can relate to what you say about the common ground that’s the first step and doesn’t necessarily engage words. Of course, there’s a sort of vocabulary, a semantic field in Alice. The term protostructure I mentioned earlier is part of it. But there’s something that I think is very important in what you say: this idea of not only using words to communicate your projects, but also showing what

What you did in the art center La cuisine, you did in a short time frame, right?

I was highlighting that even if it looks alike, in fact it’s almost opposite. In Alice you have half a year or more and the language as well as the common ground are simplified. It’s a very clear process. On our projects, we do have to go over the same process and it’s similar in a way, but we mix it up and we learn from mixing it up. We learn from having to learn a lot of different stuff in a very short time.

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And it’s not only because of the short length of each project, but rather that we decide to make it this way. As such, we voluntarily shift people to different groups, each group having a different focus. Everybody has to jump into a new group, every time, learning a new language, learning how to use it, how to work with it, and then, when you finally start to have a feeling for it, you move on again. But in that moment, you bring knowledge from another group, from another discipline to the new group. In that way we can connect a complex project like this because everybody has insights from the others. In that case, we were working with five groups. It’s the right scale to keep both the small groups and the bigger group. If there were more groups, each group would create on its own, with the risk that, in the end, it wouldn’t fit or connect together.

Tiphaine Abenia

I wouldn’t say that they’re opposite. We’ve extensively discussed the construction site, but this is only a small fraction of the year-one program (a few weeks only). The process of learning a lot of different stuff

in a very short time, from drawing to fundraising, is very much present and not always that linear. You say that people shift groups as soon as they almost feel comfortable: is that part of the rules of the Atelier Collaborative? So you never stay in your comfort zone? How do you organize this moving process?

Alexander Römer

The shifting is definitely part of the structure of the Atelier. We tend to propose a threeto-four days shift, and then sometimes it’s about negotiating not to shift. Some would like to stay where they are, because they feel they could go further. Sharing, whether it’s a skill, new knowledge or daily life is really important. In university, students definitely do have skills, but they’re not often asked to bring them within a project, as if knowledge needed to come from the school or the university and not from oneself, from outside. This is a big advantage within Alice, that time frame you refer to, because you can come to the point where that knowledge can come up through the institutional learning frame and finally cross it, while not transgressing it. In general, these

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kind of 1:1 scale projects within universities have exactly the same timeframe as ours. You go to a school of design to build a project and you’re given two weeks, but in those two weeks you barely learn how to use a saw, or whatever tool. There’s frequently not enough possibility to develop something within your own skillset and that, of course, we try to tackle within the Atelier Collaborative. It’s easier, because we act in the outside world. And then we come back to the aspect that I was mentioning when I talked about collective work, which is having a skill—in a collective you have to bring something in—and having a role. You’re an individual in a group of many, but you take advantage of that collective situation to such an extent that you can learn what you want to learn. Then, of course, you also help out. For example, on the one hand you’re thinking about a specific aspect, but on the other hand you help someone to do what she or he wants to do.

Tiphaine Abenia

And Constructlab works both in relation to institutions—formal and pedagogical institutions—

and outside of the institution—in a more informal way? How was it, in Montreal for example?

Alexander Römer

The Montreal project was upon the invitation of an institution. It was an art project that was entirely developed off site, but of course we’re sometimes almost a part of the institution.

Tiphaine Abenia

I’d like to go back to what Lucas said earlier: there shouldn’t be a disconnect between learning how to use tools and actually using them. I think sometimes the danger is to disconnect learning and applying what we learn. It happens often. It’s quite weird, and it supports the idea that when we’re studying, we’re just pretending to learn, as if it were a game, a bit like playing a role, the students pretending to be “architects” as we pretend to be teachers. Then, well … everyone pretends, and it’s a mess. I think the idea behind the action is that we don’t pretend. We’re actually learning by doing. Our actions have an impact that we can look at, that we can evaluate, that we can correct. This, in terms of consciousness and ethics, is extremely important.

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After more than an hour, they close the session, still questioning how the space they’re in—half real, half digital—has challenged the conversation. They thank everybody, Constructlab, Tiphaine, Future School, and turn off the connected screens to center back on normal life and interaction.

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THE INTERNATIONAL GARDENS

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Essay:

Among Constructlab’s practices, the Atelier Collaborative is a temporary workshop designed for learning together through the act of building. This essay revolves around the characteristics of this exchange format in order to reflect upon the way in which collective apprenticeship is articulated within collaborative practice—understood “as contextual practices that tend to hybridize the world of knowing and non-knowing, the world of design and the one of implementation.”2 It also asks how this practice informs us with regard to today’s collaborative work and production. Furthermore, it questions the possible—and desirable?—integration into pedagogic institutions of what we learn from those experiences, in terms of content as method. 312

Once upon a time in the year, while leaving winter behind, as the soft spring sunlight is celebrated by the song of birds, collaborative communities gather from all around in order to build up their yearly summer nests. Together, they create situations of collaborative workshop: places and times where they collaboratively gather, live, and build together. Made up of nomadic multicultural and interdisciplinary individuals, these communities are motivated by a multiplicity of common goals, sometimes even unformulated, towards a visible and tangible aim—the construction of a new structure. While the craftwork skills and abilities that these workshops renew each time are highly valuable for the learning community, the set of immaterial values they create—friendships, state of mind, experience, etc.—constitute a long-lasting outcome that might follow them beyond the experience and sometimes infiltrate other communities. As such, the community is constituted of older experienced members—setting up the conditions of collaboration and gathering a certain number and qualities of skills—mixed with new, inexperienced members, voluntarily involved. Taken individually, their skill set is not complete nor balanced, but collectively they are architect-designer-craft(wo)mencarpenter-cook-student-poet. The act of building might be what they initially gather around, but learning, exchange, and curiosity are the core motivation for most of the community members. Willing to expand individually and collectively its set of abilities through soft peer-to-peer and experiential transmission, the learning community progressively organizes and grows out of different principles that everyone will learn to apply on a dayto-day basis. As such, the principles are set in such a way that they can easily evolve and adapt to incorporate the realities of each situation as they emerge. 1 Kate Bielaczyc and Allan Collins, “Learning communities in classrooms: A reconceptualization of educational practice,” in Charles M. Reigeluth (ed.), Instructionaldesign theories and models, Vol. II (Mahwah/NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1999).

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2 Enrico Chapel, “D’un urbanisme global à une pratique de situations spatiales?”, in Mathias Rollot (ed.), L’hypothèse collaborative: Conversation avec les collectifs d’architectes français (France: Hyperville, 2018).

Collaborative principles

In order to formulate the principles that drive collaborative situations within workshops, it is interesting to look at the science of education rather than architectural theory. Reading through the observations on classroom communities of Bielaczyc and Collins3 informs us about contemporary collaborative communities, beyond schools and learning institutions. According to Christopher Alexander in his theory Network of Learning, “creative, active individuals can only grow up in a society that emphasizes learning instead of teaching.”4 Among the different principles upon which Bielaczyc and Collins draw in order to evaluate effectiveness within a learning community, they isolate and detail the following: community-growth, emergent goals, articulation of goals, going beyond the bounds, respect for others, the fact that failure is necessary and not a problem, structural dependence, depth over breadth, diverse expertise, multiple ways of participating, sharing, negotiating, and quality of result. Taking the community as the vehicle of knowledge production, these observations allow us to formulate principles for collaboration applied within the different iterations of collaborative workshops. Those principles are all independent from the others, but they function as a whole, as the community itself. The collaborators all have a common clearly stated and comprehensive aim. While the aim might initially be a proposal submitted by a few, the group as a whole has the possibility to 3 Ibid.

4 Christopher Alexander, A Pattern Language: towns, buildings, construction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977).

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collectively reformulate that aim, identify sub-aims and draw the path to reach that aim. Decisions are taken horizontally. There is no hierarchy among the collaborators. Everybody has the chance to state their opinion. Tools, time, and space are given for the collective statement of individual voices. Group discussions around singular ideas can happen either within a smaller group or within the whole assembly, depending on the issue. Nevertheless, while there is no hierarchy between individuals, the group recognizes several roles—hosts, coordinators, tutors, and participants—that are related to the moment each one joins the project: those who formulate the question (and organize and gather) and eventually assume institutional responsibility, those who formulate the first hypothesis, and those who join to experiment. Roles and responsibilities are shared within the group. Those roles shift according to the situation and are not coupled with a specific person. A collaborator can be successively a gardener, a builder, a researcher, a writer, etc. A collaborator can choose to take responsibilities, organize or propose an activity, take over some duty or delegate others. Roles are not attached to individuals, but certain roles need to be fulfilled. Roles are more often voluntarily chosen than imposed. The structure of the group is informal rather than absent and the rules of decision-making are open and available to everyone.5 All collaborators are voluntary members of the project. They are all free to be a part of it. In order to collaborate, they organize their stay along the project timeframe. For most of the collaborators this represents a personal investment that takes them out of their daily routine, reinforcing their engagement in the project.

5 “The Tyranny of Structurelessness,” www.jofreeman.com/joreen/tyranny.htm (accessed on the 04/09/22).

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The collaborators are made up of many voices, from different cultures, different backgrounds, different areas of expertise. Most likely, all collaborators are anti-experts in many disciplines. Collectively they develop a common language. Like Donald Schön’s “reflective practitioners,” each participant has relevant and important knowledge in a field, and their uncertainties may be a source of learning.6 Collaboration implies communication to share skills and knowledge. Action towards reaching the aim is led by the necessary common wish of constant improvement and experimentation. Failure is a necessary step. Success is the result of the sum of failures. The structure and materials used will be easily apprehensible: the whole structure will invite action, and be empowering. Architecture necessarily involves the transformation and assembly of rough materials into a thoughtful structure, but the different operations necessary for the transformations will be feasible and the tools needed common and accessible. The resulting structure might seem infinite—with no end—inviting use, transformation or recycling as a potential space or new resource beyond the collective action. The process of the project is an inviting open structure. People are welcome to discover, grow interest, and participate. Actions can be spontaneously planned in order to emphasize the invitation. Experimentation does not stop. It goes on beyond the design through permanent activation and use, through the project process with the participants, or through appropriation by local communities. Its activation, like the whole process, is visible, inviting, and empowering. 6 Donald A. Schön, The Reflective Practitioner: How Professionals Think in Action (New York: Basic Books, 1983).

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The principles of collaboration are not closed to the formulation of new principles, as long as they do not contradict the first principles stated here.

“What are we really doing here?”

Intuitively, we clearly identify different categories of activities, and the motivation to engage within those categories depends on their nature. On one side, there is work, associated with paid labor, and on the other leisure, associated with pleasure. As Thierry Paquot7 reminds us, the notion of leisure comes from the latin licere meaning “to be allowed.” Further, he explains that “leisure results from an authorization, as if, consciously or not, it is a question of accomplishing one’s work before freeing oneself from it and then having time for oneself, for nothing.” It is the capacity, ability or even freedom to do something, whatever it might be. It is free time that one uses the way one wants, time when one decides on one’s own what to do. Then, he concludes, “The Greeks did not work, at least not like us: some cultivated time for nothing else than the knowledge of oneself and others, the scholè, that is to say “leisure.” From that scholè comes our contemporary school, meaning literally “studious leisure.” If collaborative practices in architecture rely on the voluntary engagement of a group of people towards the common realization of a given task—most of the time constructive—then collaborators are more leisurers than laborers, and their activities belong more to their ability to transmit and exchange than to produce 7 Thierry Paquot, “Loisir et loisirs,” Hermes, La Revue, Vol. 71, no. 1 (June 4, 2015): pp. 182–88.

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and deliver a given outcome: the project is the process and how it is structured and develops, as well as its final outcome. The stories it unveils are complex and never complete narratives that go beyond shapes, forms, colors and technics. Each project born out of a collaborative situation encompasses its own development process as part of its narrative, incorporating its own future transformation and setting up its conditions. While joining a collaborative workshop, participants formulate a diverse range of motivations, from their interest in the commonly constructed narrative, theme or content—building an arch, deviating a river or constructing a mountain—to learning through developing knowledge and skills—learning new things, experimenting with materials, thinking-trying-and-doing-it-again, learning new techniques, nourishing reflections, strengthening skills, satisfying curiosity, experiencing collectiveness—meeting new people, exchanging and conversing, living a collective experience, building bridges to each other’s experience—or belonging to a project that aligns with their own shared values, to a certain social world8—socially engaged, participatory, ecological, multidisciplinary, locally engaged.9

8 “A social world must be seen as a unit of social organization which is diffuse and amorphous in character. Generally larger than groups or organizations, social worlds are not necessarily defined by formal boundaries, membership lists, or spatial territory … A social world must be seen as an internally recognizable constellation of actors, organizations, events, and practices which have coalesced into a perceived sphere of interest and involvement for participants. Characteristically, a social world lacks a powerful centralized authority structure and is delimited by … effective communication and not territory nor formal group membership.” David R. Unruh, “The Nature of Social Worlds,” The Pacific Sociological Review, Vol. 23, no. 3 (July 1980), p. 277.

9 Terminology employed by applicants to the Collaborative Workshop “Le cours de l’eau, la cour et l’eau,” July 2021.

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Studious leisure: serious fun or fun work?

Despite the non-hierarchical and democratic organization of the community, collaborators have different roles and status within the group. If roles are distributed within a project for its general organization prior to its implementation, other roles can be taken, redistributed and exchanged with more spontaneity during the development of the project and beyond. At first, before the group is constituted, three categories of collaborators are identified: 1. The hosts: they are members of the local community and/ or the invited institution or commissioner. They have specific knowledge about the place and the context but do not necessarily know how the project will develop or have experience of other collaborative processes. 2. The tutors, or facilitators: they are invited participants. Their skills are known—they are carpenters, woodworkers, metalworkers, gardeners, writers, graphic designers, etc.— and necessary for the realization of the project. Having experienced them throughout different projects, they know the collaboration principles and can transmit them to new members of the group. They receive a financial reward for their participation in order to cover their costs. 3. The participants: they apply to participate in the project. They state their motivation and invest their time, skills, and resources in the project. They have experienced collective participatory projects or are curious about collaborative practices and are willing to accept collective principles. They cover their own costs relative to their stay. Each of the different collaborators does

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not practice studious leisure in the same way. The sociologist Robert Stebbins identifies three forms of leisure that he defines as follows:   Serious leisure: systematic pursuit of an amateur, hobbyist, or volunteer activity sufficiently substantial, interesting, and fulfilling for the participant to find a (leisure) career there, acquiring and expressing a combination of special skills, knowledge, and experience.  Casual leisure: immediately, intrinsically rewarding, relatively short-lived pleasurable activity, requiring little or no special training to enjoy it.  Project-based leisure: short-term, reasonably complicated, one-shot or occasional, though infrequent, creative undertaking carried out in free time, or time free of disagreeable obligation.10 In particular, serious leisure practice offers “altruistic help done for the benefit of both other people and oneself.” Whereas the serious leisurer does not take significant pay out of their leisure practice, the practice nevertheless offers possibilities for a career relying on a “significant personal effort based on specially acquired knowledge, training, experience, or skill, and, indeed, all four at times.” Stebbins points out the diversity of durable benefits from serious leisure practice, highlighting different personal outcomes: “self-development, self-enrichment, self-expression, regeneration or renewal of self, feelings of accomplishment, enhancement of self-image, social interaction and belongingness, and lasting physical products of the activity (e.g. a painting, scientific paper, and piece of furniture).” Serious leisure practice offers both social and self-satisfaction that work can fail to provide, since work concentrates on providing financial security and self-sustainability whereas benefits such 10 Robert Stebbins, “Serious Leisure and Work,” Sociology Compass, Vol. 3, no. 5 (2009), pp. 764–74.

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as production of meaning and self-accomplishment or fulfillment are becoming increasingly scarce options. This phenomenon partly explains the growing success of new community spaces scattered through urban areas and in more rural territories, commonly known through the indefinite term “third spaces”11—fab-labs, solidary workshops, collaborative fabrication and crafts hubs, time-bank spaces—where transmission of knowledge and skills is the core of a newly identified product.

Horizontality, influence and trust

Collaborative workshops are not hierarchical organizations based on relations of authority. They are organized as egalitarian systems with flexible and revolving networks of influences. As Yona Friedman sums up in his approach to utopias and social-ecology, two types of utopia can be distinguished: the paternalistic one, in which some individuals are subordinated by others; and the non-paternalistic one, where “each person has the right to make decisions on matters affecting their life.”12 In the first ones, decisions belong to a certain group of individuals. In the second, they are shared among members of the group. In both cases, responsibilities are endorsed by the ones taking the decisions. Nevertheless, Friedman goes beyond the obvious: he states that all the utopias he considers and describes share an egalitarian society as goal, where no individual is considered superior to the others, while ironically, all of our technical organizations are based on hierarchical societies, therefore inducing the reproduction of a non-egalitarian system. In order to visualize the different 11 As Edward Soja describes it, a third space is “a fully lived space, a simultaneously real-and-imagined, actual-and-virtual locus of structured individuality and collective experience and agency.”

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Edward W. Soja, Postmetropolis: critical studies of cities and regions. (Malden, MA: Blackwell Pub, 2000), p.11.

types of subordination or cooperation within a group, Friedman introduces the notion of influence. Depending on which system or society we are situated in, influences can be shared and diverse: individual A can exercise influence on individual B in a specific domain, while B can influence A in another. Friedman defines schemes and factors of influence and dependency through mathematical calculations and vectorial representations in order to simplify the influence between persons, at first avoiding any theorizing of the relations between people and objects or objects to objects. In order to obtain the greatest equality within a group, the group itself has to continuously seek to balance the network of influences and dependences of all individuals within the group: “A society would be symmetric if the balance of ‘influence’ and ‘dependence’ would remain essentially the same when the direction of all influence arrows is reversed and, thus, even large changes in such a society would produce only minor changes on individuals.” Friedman’s influences within egalitarian society are necessarily built upon trust.13 In a collaborative workshop, as in any project built upon community, those relations of trust, influence, and dependency are always at stake: the balance is fragile and difficult to maintain within a longer period of time. Therefore, in order to help solidify this balance the collaborative workshop offers different hypothesis: The number of hosts, tutors and participants is seemingly balanced within the bigger group, and different formats of action will be proposed to encourage the mix of the whole. Different smaller groups with different constructive goals are established based on voluntary individual choices. If possible, the people gathered should not have the exact same skills so 12 Yona Friedman, “On Models of Utopias and Social Ecology,” Leonardo, Vol. 5, no. 1 (1972), pp. 37–41. 

13 To experience mechanisms of trust and cooperation, visit and play: https://ncase.me/trust/

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that the direction of the influences can vary through time. The choice of and the belonging to a group is constantly in question and can be revoked after three days if an individual expresses the desire—not necessarily justified—to change or if the project needs human resources for its common completion. If not based on friendship, the collaborative workshop proposes agents for trustful exchange, individual or collective, to maintain good levels of communications and pass through conflicting issues. Trust is built. It takes time. It deserves constant observation, care, and evaluation. It is the base of all collaborative projects: the institution’s trust to accept uncertainty and experimentation as a desirable process; the tutors’ trust to invest time and skills in exchange for pleasurable yet precarious situations; the participants’ trust in accepting to almost blindly engage material resources and personal strength. For all groups within the group, and despite the different checkpoints within the process, evaluation of the product—installation, skills, thoughts, relationships—occurs only after the process, and sometimes long afterwards.

Towards a new Collaborative School?

Experiencing some of Dewey’s project-based learning principles— active exploration, inquiry—based experimentation and design, dynamic classroom—and other active pedagogy proposals such as Freinet’s—local exploration of the milieu, spatialization of learning environments and tools—or Oury’s Institutional Pedagogy—engaging in liberated dialogue and cooperative councils—collaborative workshops constitute contemporary intensive laboratories for experiencing alternative approaches to learning and education.

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Knowledge has never been as accessible as today, and skills and crafts, in the fields of design and architecture as in many others, are becoming highly valuable products. The multiplication and success of online classes and video tutorials leads to the dematerialization of apprenticeship, undermining the importance of senses, emotions, and experience within a learning process, and contributing to the myth of self-made-(wo)men. But within collaborative learning, what one learns is not limited to skills and knowledge. It extends to a diverse set of relational abilities—negotiating conflict, respect for each other, evaluation and collective acceptance of foreign ideas, etc.—necessary for the broader life-exercise of citizenship. According to Mark Terkessidis, “even if we cannot always change the big picture, filling the gaps with collaborative approaches would be an important step towards a deeper democracy, a better coexistence, an equitable distribution of educational opportunities or a new quality of working conditions.”14 While the demand for other sources of learning is visible and quantifiable, and despite the good results obtained with active learning pedagogies, traditional educational institutions slowly introduce active pedagogy tools and techniques in the classrooms. Nevertheless, societal educational change—such as Finland’s experimentation with expanding phenomenon-based-learning in public schools—remain marginal. At the same time, educative experimentation is carried on outside of educational institutions: as testified by numerous artistic publications, artistic and cultural institutions nowadays lead some of the most cutting-edge pedagogical experiments, alongside civil society, whether through non-profit organizations or so-called cooperative third-spaces and other “labs.” Peer-to-peer exchange and collaborative solutions have quickly infiltrated domains of work and production. While third spaces, 14 Mark Terkessidis, Kollaboration (Berlin: Suhrkamp Verlag, 2015).

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if coupled with production workshops—wood, metal, and earth workshops, digital fabrication, etc.—and collaborative principles could represent a variation for long-term applications of “collaborative workshops”, what would be their educative counterpart? Wouldn’t a collaborative school benefit local environments, contributing to the collaborative building of architecture and urban environment through the active engagement of its (younger) inhabitants? Wouldn’t such an approach encourage the transmission of ecological, anchored, and situated sets of skills and knowledge? Isn’t experimentation in context a necessary trigger for curiosity, while at the same time engaging always up-to-date information? How rich would a network of “collaborative schools” be in encouraging young and old citizens to grow a more sustainable future together?

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Tuning In 334

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A Coffee For Erik

The Community Factory, Unless It’s The Factory Of The Community? 345

Them, The Making, The Makers And The Ones Who Make The Making Possible

A Motionless Theater 374

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Watching Each Other Improvise

Useful Lost Information Board

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The House With Too Many Doors 387

The Auction To Get Less

The Auction To Give Back 396

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We Should Design Our Waste

The Little Person Who Holds A Piece Of Wood 420

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Conviviality, Work, Leisure, and Retirement

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Tuning In When working on site we all hear the sounds, the voices and the noises of everybody and everything involved. Verbal communication and noises transmitted by tools, materials or machines … zieeeeew … prrrrr prrrrrrrr …. tschok tschok tschok tschok … ffffff … eeeeeuuuuuuuwwwwwwww … kriiii … zieeeeew zieeeeew … tack-tack-tack … zieeeeew, tack … tschok tschok … shwuuuozzzztttsch … tack-tack-tack … zieeeeewnnetschschikkktrrr … Through our ears we sense the common energy around us. We perceive the development of the project. We produce and add our own tones. We react when a noise sounds “wrong.” We are connected in the atmosphere of co-construction-work-noise. We tune in to the melody of the process. After all the time of planning and preparation, a special feeling when we pick up the tools and the first work-sounds are shrilling through the air. The start of turning 1:1 into reality is an elevating moment. We go on with the incorporated promise of the project, as day by day it becomes a vivid character of its own. It’s like witnessing a personality growing up, newly exploring its perception,

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in resonance with the world around it, with sounds and words and thoughts and situations and insights. And in the end there is a character, a common story. At times we organize a tool-tune orchestra. We gather with tools and materials to perform a sequence of progressive construction-sound-scapes. Our instruments? Hammers, saws, wood, cutters, packs of nails, screws, axe, electric screwdrivers, angle grinders, meters, buckets, etc. Within the orchestra the connection with one other is denser, the reaction more direct. And at the same time it is more abstract. It is delightful and also a bit peculiar to experience the work-sounds as a conducted sound experience. The noises are lifted out of their productive context, out of the progression of the project—uprooted voices—an abstract deduction of the process—a polyphony of navigated rhythms. A moment of collective beats. Every project has its own music. Every process has its tunes. And sub-tunes. And co-sub-tunes. And inter-sub-co-tunes. Not everybody is working with heavy machinery at the same time. We shift, we take turns. Everything is connected. Some are cutting carrots, preparing lunch. Some recycle waste. Some talk to neighbors. Some fire up the oven. Some write or sketch. Some day-dream. It all makes sense. Everybody takes self-responsibility. It works best when everybody follows his/her own tune while listening to what contributes to the melody of the project. Our orchestra doesn’t have a conductor. The melody itself is the guide. The energy on site is joyfully unique, including dissonance … and its resolution. It all merges—in tune.

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A Coffee For Erik

I’m really thankful that the scouts of Hasselt lent us these tents, although having to move back and forth to the construction site is starting to wear me down. I wake up in the army tent at 07:30. I take thirty seconds to visualize the day to come before I step out of the tent. From now on, it’s action time. As with every day. Go. Breakfast is being gathered by Eleonore on the way to the construction site at the museum. Everybody takes their own kind of transportation. I go via the hardware store to pick up some more screws, to feed the building team today. The team flies into the kitchen of the museum, by bike, foot, cars ... it’s difficult to have a big breakfast all together at the same time. Some of them look as if they had a few too many beers last night. Their hungover entrance makes us laugh. Their day will feel longer than ours. People from the museum arrive and make coffee in the kitchen. They come from home. Our home is here, where they work. We feel welcome. It’s nice to interact with our project partners in these close kitchen encounters. While

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grabbing an apple each, Lucas and I quickly go over the remaining to-do list for the construction and prepare the morning meeting. 09:00. Morning meeting. It’s always an adventure to find and get everyone to the construction site on time. Today is no different. Our morning brief deals with a variety of subjects. We’re trying to keep it short and to the point. We’re here to build, so let’s talk about construction planning. But quite quickly questions are raised that create bigger discussions. “Who lost the key to the black museum bicycle? Was it perhaps Léo, who’s by now deep in the south of France? Or did someone see it in the grass?” To be continued ... Sofie needs help. She needs to rebuild the scaffolding to reach the top of the five-meter high column. She’s making beautiful process drawings. She wants to display them around the construction. I promise to help, after sitting together with Rien from the museum to take a look at the latest version of our contract. In the meantime, Lucas is running around preparing the construction drawings and helping people set up their working spaces. We didn’t get much chance to check with each other how we feel about the contract, and in general, how the project is evolving. Shouldn’t we focus more on the integration of De Serre? It would be nice to have more talks about how the scenography of the seating area could be designed. Peter enters the room and asks Rien and me when and how it would suit us to make A0 prints. Erik arrives in his van. He’s so positive. He made the roof textile at such short notice, and now he’s paying us a visit to see the site. I should welcome him and offer him a coffee. He’s a very friendly man. He doesn’t make a fuss about any of our last-minute requests. All he wants for the extra work is a coffee and a moment together. He’s very persistent in reminding me about this,

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in a comical—but very clear—way. We finally finish the contract. We’re already three weeks into the project. It’s finally time to sign! Lucas and Gabriel are finishing the frames of the barn doors. It’s still not clear what kind of hinges we should use. We’ve never built doors this heavy. We have one final talk about it, after having discussed it for four days now. Alex joins in. We decide on forty centimeter long horizontal hinges. Eleonore offers to help by looking for them in local stores, but we need to be sure. I head for the army depot shop, which will soon close for lunch. As I leave I run into Sofie. She reminds me she still needs help with the scaffolding. Whoops! We gather two other people and rebuild the thing in ten minutes. Leontien is joining us for two days and helps where she can, filling in the gaps, assisting the artists, talking with visitors. I’m very happy she joined. Filling those gaps sometimes feels like the most important job I do. I’m late. I rush to the army depot store. It’s closing, but they keep it open for me; such nice people. After half an hour of picking out custom hinges and bolts that look as if they’ve been sitting in the store for ten years or more, I arrive back on site just in time for lunch. Yousra is making lunch. She’s very active socially and culturally within the local network. She makes the most wonderful lunch. At this moment, all the rushing stops and preoccupied minds free up and we talk about where we’re going to swim in the evening. I lean back against a tree and close my eyes for a few minutes. I hear Erik arriving back from the bike tour with Peter and rush over to offer him that coffee, finally!
 These days, it’s challenging for us to be able to help everywhere while maintaining an overview that allows for spontaneous moments of linking ideas with people. These projects are about creating a framework in which the public can connect and on which they can build, with ideas, but also by adding elements to the physical space. The trick is being able to carry out a

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fully-packed construction day while still noticing interest from passers-by. Only then, by keeping our eyes open, can we create sparks with them and hopefully get them involved. There’s often an interesting tension between these two aspects: the conviviality of our on-site presence and the responsibility to build a qualitatively safe structure that hosts those social moments. This tension is already there in the first design talks: are we designing something that’s structurally impressive and monumental? To attract a lot of people? To enliven the neighborhood? What’s the limit? Maybe we’re instead designing the togetherness, the interactions through workshops and programs. Maybe, in fact, it’s about building the link between both the structure and the moments, so that the “magic” happens. Maybe it’s about all of it together.

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The Community Factory, Unless Itʼs The Factory Of The Community? He’d already called four people this morning and talked directly to many more. His right thumb was feeling a little sore; he didn’t quite know why. Who cares, really? A lot of wood, rather big pieces, had to be carried around. Also, he’d spent some hours sawing. He’d given some instructions on how to proceed, made suggestions, listened, asked questions, been surprised. On how to proceed with what? With what they’d been building for weeks. Beyond that, as with most people around here, he had some ideas about their joint meals. Around here? In the factory of the community. At least, this had been his description of the place, or his name for it, the night before. That night, after all, she’d asked him to talk to her about what, from his perspective, they were doing here. “Tell me what we’re doing here, essentially,” she’d said, thus ignoring the fact that the notion of an “essence” might sit rather ill with their multifarious

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project. The factory of the community: a place that belongs to the community but, more than that, a place where the community lives together, works and builds together, produces various objects together and, by doing so, establishes and reinforces, and maybe even in some sense produces, togetherness. It was a place where the process of living and working together became visible and somehow opened up the community. Also, the realm of this factory’s products wasn’t confined to concrete objects (all that wood around the place would eventually be used) or to togetherness or to the idea thereof. Rather, it also encompassed elements such as knowledge, skills, tools, and memories. Maybe he would have agreed that it also encompassed stances, feelings, impressions. He suspected that yesterday’s ideas and the way he’d put them were indeed not quite clear, but surely this didn’t make these ideas false. Granted, she might have been right in that the notion of a factory and of a factory’s production line could look incompatible with what they were really doing. It’s all about efficiency! No, for sure, that was pretty much contrary to how they were thinking or wanted to think. But couldn’t one somehow turn around these disconcerting notions, imbibe them and then give them a different tone? How to make sense of the nature of their very own production lines, if in fact, they had any such thing here? “Don’t think, but look!” As he was sitting there, watching all the others chatting, carrying around stuff, trying out new things, as laughter mixed with the shrill noise of three power drills, he was feeling confident once again that he was actually on to something. This one guy apparently didn’t really know how to bring the material into the shape it would need to eventually have for it to be integrated into the bigger structure that the others were working on. But the fact that he was doing this job was no mistake. Or was it? This guy was now leaving his spot, the result of his work somewhat scattered, left behind, and he was starting to discuss a range of colors and how they could be brought into different patterns somewhere else.

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It might have been a coincidence that, at the same time, the power drills had come to a rest and that their three handlers were now gathering around those oddly-shaped left behind pieces, and at least one of the three seemed to discover something. Was this to be described as a ruptured production line? Perhaps, rather than ruptured, he would have described its form as taking many turns. These turns were sometimes unexpected but they were expectedly unexpected. A lot of strategic planning (four phone calls only this morning!) had taken place in order to make this organic form possible in the first place. Also, since the extent to which a process is to be seen as efficient or not depends on its desired outcome, it probably wasn’t even clear anymore whether the factory of the community was an inefficient factory. After all, who around here was intending to define what exactly their common products needed to be and how exactly they needed to be and what they should look like to begin with?

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Them, The Making, The Makers And The Ones Who Make The Making Possible The making and the makers started with Noel and his tools that filled a suitcase. With three weeks until the Chicago Architectural Biennial opening, they and Patrick were the only confirmed way for Constructlab to make How Together, which included a fifty-three foot diameter circular wall, a twenty-foot diameter agora, and three to five instruments for action. They headed to Chicago. They headed south. By the time they made it to Chicago Maker Space, which would be host to most of the making, Noel and bag had become one as the straps dug into his flesh. Eli and Sam Merritt were fitting the space out to facilitate projects for the Chicago artists, engineer, and fabricators who needed space and tools. However, getting materials in and out of the third floor would be a challenge due to a broken freight elevator. The building now hosted a gym with packed daily workout classes, a recording studio, a martial arts dojo,

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and ironically, an elevator repair company. They were now Noel, a suitcase of tools, Chicago Maker Space, the Brothers Merritt, and a broken freight elevator. As Patrick arrived, they made it together to May’s Airbnb, a modest single-family home. A loud Labor-day party was being held to the south, and an argument to the north. McKinley Park is up-andcoming to some, dangerous to others, home to mostly Hispanic or Latino families, and the site of the closest Airbnb to both the Chicago Maker Space and CAB’s storage space. When they opened the door to May’s place, they saw a sparsely furnished space, each room lit with various tones of clinical industrial lighting. The bedding looked and smelled as if it had been picked up that morning from a second-hand store, and there were exactly four cups, four forks/spoons/knives, four plates and one small pan. This was a space not a home, but the only option. After a few camping-like meals and May reluctantly bringing over a 1970s coffee pot, it became a part of them. They were now Patrick, Noel, a suitcase of tools, Chicago Maker Space, the Brothers Merritt, a broken freight elevator, and May’s place. They walked right into the Chicago Cultural Center because anyone can. An exemplary piece of public infrastructure, it’s constantly in use for everything from an accessible shelter from brutal cold winters or scotching hot summers, to public marriage ceremonies, and providing constant cultural programing. They met the administrators, registrars, coordinators, director, and curators who make the making possible. Walking through the exhibition halls that would host the Chicago Architecture Biennial, they garnered re-use materials even before the exhibition was in use. They settled into the Garland Gallery, which would be the site for How Together and Common Ground for the Biennial itself. The only common experience in the space was the chill and loud echoing noise of the air conditioner that made talking to each other difficult, and impossible to imagine groups of twenty to sixty engaged in conversation. When they asked for it to be turned down or off, they learned about a complex system of

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labor relations and civic bureaucracy. After they offered to find a DIY solution, the lesson was taught again, with the addition of a vivid picture of union protest. They were now Patrick, Noel, a suitcase of tools, Chicago Maker Space, the Brothers Merritt, a broken freight elevator, May’s place, A/C noise, and the ghosts of union workers. They needed material to build, and the past biennials provided plenty. The evening before they had become slightly more international when Gabe, a Quebecois architect, arrived at May’s place. They walked through McKinley park toward a series of industrial buildings. Some sections or floors of these were leased out for small businesses and artist studios. The others were owned by the city of Chicago and stored an untold number of things. The furthest east one was a storage space for the City of Chicago’s Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events. Here, they met Dan, a forklift-truck driver and gracious host of a building that used to be filled with union workers in Chicago’s industrial past. They picked their way through the models, plinths, and didactics of the past biennials, making selections for agora, wall, and instruments. The dust was thick as it came off unused proposals for future cities, collecting on their shoulders, hands, and faces. They were now Gabe, Jim, Rebuilding Exchange, Patrick, Noel, a suitcase of tools, Chicago Maker Space, the Brothers Merritt, a broken freight elevator, May’s place, those who make the making possible, dust, and work. When Damon’s truck and a few precision tools joined them, they entered a new epoch of production. They had mostly been traversing the near south and southwest side by foot. The Chicagoans among them had never walked the city that much. This optimized their slowness, making space for conversation to bring them together, and observation to influence how they would work. It also made drinking and eating in Chicago worry-free with no car to crash, and long walks to ease digestion. They escaped the forces of production with a strict evening regimen of brewery then dinner. The price of craft beer and the deserts of the Maker

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Space and CAB storage incentivized cooking at May’s place, so leftover dinner could be lunch. However, the depressing ambiance of May’s place and lack of kitchenware was a deterrent. The pressure to eat out was magnified when Alex joined them. He wanted to try Chicago’s signature take on pizza known as Deep Dish. They would eventually get some, though it served mostly as an instigator of exploration. They started going towards deep dish, but ended up at Green Street Meats, Marz Brewery, Parson’s Chicken and Fish, Skylark Lounge, or Pete’s Fresh Market. They were now Beer, Alex, Gabe, Jim, Rebuilding Exchange, Patrick, Noel, a suitcase of tools, Chicago Maker Space, the Brothers Merritt, a broken freight elevator, May’s place, those who make the making possible, dust, and Damon’s Truck. Beer, walking, and mobility were not the only things holding back production. To complete the installation they needed hands. These became many, first when Kendall and Brianna joined them for the construction of the agora and the structure that held the wall, and then when Lexi created the flyer and Kathy made it social, bringing many people to them for a night of making in Chicago Maker’s Space. The focus of the work was using the deconstructed material from CAB storage to transform the structural pieces of agora into functional seating. John Preus, a Chicago master of transforming waste into works of art, brought his family for the night of making. By the end of the evening, they had nearly completed every piece of the agora, with a healthy balance between functional and rebelliously not, as well as sleek and maximal. They were now Many, Kendall, Brianna, Lexi, John, Beer, Alex, Gabe, Jim, Rebuilding Exchange, Patrick, Noel, a suitcase of tools, Chicago Maker Space, the Brothers Merritt, a broken freight elevator, May’s place, those who make the making possible, dust, and Damon’s Truck. Just as they were all coming together, those who make the making possible named the impossible: How Together was infringing intellectual property rights. Though the CAB material had been claimed by the dust, the ideas and proposals are owned by

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architects, firms, and institutions with great lawyers. The repurposing of this material was an easy win for CAB: an opportunity to reduce their storage footprint plus the cultural capitol that comes from presenting practices within a circular economy. What was missed was the transgressive content of Constructlab and of How Together as a place of praxis rather than contemplation. Their goal was to transform these physical concepts into useful objects for action. First the agora as a site for gathering, holding constructive conversation between individuals and/or groups. The instruments were absurd forms due to the materials they were made from, but functional objects for action: a table on which to write, plan, and coordinate; a printer to distribute information either in small meetings or posters to spread the word; a coffee maker to sustain conversation, and a bench to recover on. They conceded to further abstract the models, didactics, and proposals so that no individual or singular object would receive the brunt of the critique, nor initiate any attack on CAB. Those who make the making possible took on the role of editor and in the end the instrument functioning as a table had to be removed. They were now Diplomatic, Many, Kendall, Brianna, Lexi, John, Beer, Alex, Gabe, Jim, Rebuilding Exchange, Patrick, Noel, a suitcase of tools, Chicago Maker Space, the Brothers Merritt, a broken freight elevator, May’s place, those who make the making possible, dust, Damon’s Truck and Anti-architects. Though those who make the making possible had to be the bad cop when it came to repurposing, they quickly shifted to good cop when they changed Airbnbs from May’s Place to the Best Front Lawn in Humboldt Park. Peter arrived to welcome them into their new home. Peter was in charge of content display within the installation—specifically, the large hand-painted quotes from various 2019 CAB contributors that would cover the circular wall surrounding the space. Southwest Signs Inc. presented craft distinct from the rest of them. Chuck had been painting signs since the 1960s, his craft had been his work and therapy during his life. After a stroke he explored his muscle memory to slowly recover mentally and physically. Each phrase was painted beautifully.

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As the signs were being painted and the space was being installed, the other CAB contributors began arriving to participate in their own installation. Faces, personalities, and stories began to match the phrases they were painting. The Best Front Lawn in Humboldt Park, beer, and their cooking enticed a few to join them. Miguel Robles-Duran from Cohabitation Strategies and Urban Front had joined them earlier for lunch on the Chicago River to release the installation steam. Now, on the lawn, he was deconstructing late-capitalism. Just as the counter case was being made that Beyonce was a contributor to an anti-capitalist movement, Adrian Blackwell entered the literal field of debate. Although his Anarchitecture Library (against the neoliberal erasure of Chicago’s common spaces) did not feature any of the songbooks from Lemonade, he joined their conversation with ease. The contradiction-spotting shifted from pop culture to themselves when naming their complacency in participating in a biennial funded by Big Oil. They began to confess their sins of participation: consenting to contribute (although this was between curators and artists not BP executives), their destructive choice to travel by car or plane, their distance from the ground swell of Chicago and US artists who refused to participate, and so on, until they were exhausted with impossibility. They made work that facilitated action, held power for organizing, named structures that oppressed, and illuminated pathways towards radical and just futures, but in the end they would have to acknoweldge the contradiction of fighting against while being payed by the oppresser. They wanted to do this with words of protest, but this required pasting the hand-painted signs onto the circular wall. That’s when they discovered their numbers did not include a wheat-paste artist, wall-paper specialist, or exhibition installer. Because Expo Chicago, and literally every art department in every university in Chicago had an opening the same weekend as CAB, all these people were already booked. They just had to become an expert paste team to get the signs onto the wall. In the midst of this scramble, Carla had arrived from Montreal, and would become an expert among them in the meantime. When the pasting marathon was at the

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point between over-halfway and nearly-there, real doubt crept in that they could do it together. Ruptures in the togetherness were as visible as the wrinkles in the paper on the hand-painted signs. As one person stepped up in response to another’s lack of energy, hierarchies were visible and blame individual. Happy accidents were now irritating mishaps, and the impossibility was not an abstract theory but potentially blunt failure. Held in tension rather than igniting, they continued making. Eventually gaining enough expertise to complete the entire circular wall, they spun around to see the walls now filled with the phrases of protest, each in the language of the contributor who authored it. The next day the final contributor, Joanne, arrived almost simultaneously with the publication they worked on to complete the installation. The book was a pocket-sized series of stories from previous projects letting others know how many things joined the making. The book was the final contribution and an offering to others to join them in the next making. Soon, the light was finalized, the first coffee pot made, the Post-it notes made available, the agora, wall, and instruments made so others could visit and do their own making. The result revealed the necessity of a series of contributions to a Constructlab project. The temporality of the making allowed them to remain united enough to be a model collective. Constructlab’s ability to conjure up the next person, happening, or detour is the magic the Biennial wanted to display. The agora, walls, and instruments would eventually be harvested from the cultural center then re-used, but the model would be active in another part of the world as Constructlab got ready for the next contributor to join them.

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WORK THE WORKSHOP ALLOWS FOR THE SAFE REPETITION OF GESTURES. IT IS A CONSTRUCTION LINE TRANSFORMING RAW MATERIAL INTO FINISHED MODULES, WHERE EVERY TOOL HAS A DEDICATED PLACE. ITS SPATIAL ORGANIZATION IS BASED ON A PRECISE SEQUENCE OF RATIONALIZED MOVEMENTS: RECEIVE, CLASSIFY, ALIGN, CUT, ASSEMBLE.

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MAIN HALL / OSTHANG PROJECT

METAVILLA / EXYZT

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MAINHALL / OSTHANG PROJECT

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MUSEUM OF ARTE ÚTIL

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EDEN / VILA ITORORÓ

R COME REPUBBLICA MILANO

FRIBOURG-SUR-MER

W.O.W. ON TOUR

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HOTEL EGON / IBA CAMPUS 2018

CASA DO VAPOR

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THE ARCH

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WALDRAUM

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PARASITE

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SUPERORT

HOTEL EGON / IBA CAMPUS 2018

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THE BIG ROOF JARDIN FABRIQUE

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SUPERORT HALLE(N)BAD

BAUPALAST

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THE ARCH

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A Motionless Theater It’s good to be back. The photographers came here before to see the site when it was still empty. They’ve imagined how it would be to live in it. They’ve imagined the energy it would take to build it; the energy they’d find there. This time, it’s not the same site. This time, it’s full of movement. They have experience on similar projects. They know what they want to get. The image is clear. As for the project itself, it will be collaboratively built. The storyline is known. It will be a reproduction of that medieval image that first inspired the project. For one moment, they’ll transform the Arch into a motionless theater. The construction site is now a backstage. We, designers-builders-cooks-researchers are now designers-builders-cooks-researchers-costume supervisors-prop man-stage manager-partners in crime and soon to be actors in a constructed opera. As a ghost of a glorious past, the landscape has its own magic. The superstructure of the Arch is impressive. The building is already the main character of a permanent theater set. Traveling and zooming in. Looking closer, even more impressive are its inhabitants: how to capture who we are in one still image? How to understand what we do if we all do many things at once? How can one image translate the complexity of the place?

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They start by looking around. They observe. That night, they present themselves to the group. They explain what they do, what they want to do, why they’re here. They tell us what they need. Some of the Archers are willing to help. But first they want to know us better. They want to understand who we are individually. What they propose is rather simple: the next day, we’ll gather the objects and tools that characterize us the best, what we do and who we are. There can be many for each one, since everybody seems to have six pairs of hands. In order to picture the group as a whole, they’ll picture its members individually, and then they’ll put the pieces together to portray the team. It’s a chance for them to meet the whole group individually. And for us to meet them. We don’t only meet each other; we also meet each other’s tools. One after the other, we discover the studio. Some don’t like to be photographed. But in the studio, we can take time. We can ask questions. We can exchange roles. We can exchange tools. We prepare for what will come. Together we look at what we’ve done. We select the pictures. We discuss how we see ourselves. We get to know each other. Through the pictures, they want to respect the personality of each one so that everybody recognizes him/herself in the final portrait. We’re not only building an image, we’re building trust. Soon enough, it’s time for the big construction. Over a series of different, successive sets, we build the image floor by floor. The small group in charge of the set today is having fun directing their friends: “Can you put your leg down? Yes, like this, yes … a bit less … don’t move”—“Please give me flowers for the upper floor”—“Burn some paper on Pascal’s barbecue” Behind the camera. In front of the camera. Around the set. Everybody has a role to play. Nobody is only an actor in the scene. But we all act to make that scene happen. In many different ways. From the first screws to welcoming people; from shutting down at night to playing music; from preparing common food to sorting colorful plastic; from building the structure to portraying a dynamic process.

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We gather again for the last time. Now the photographers are also Archers. Today we gather to see what the built image looks like. They share the different shots with the group; we laugh together, we discuss, we choose the right scene. We choose together to fix in an image, the identity of our community. The photographers see from outside what we’ve been doing for the last few months. We look at the wide picture as a representation of the whole. We look at the details and recognize each other with all our paradoxes and complexities. All in one image. All in one set. That picture doesn’t just represent the moment, it represents the time that has passed, the energies that were brought together, the richness of all those personalities and the diversity of skills and abilities, the capacity to bring all of it together and the space as the scene of something we’ll always remember. In that picture, some see just an image. Some will hear the music, smell good food or burnt plastic, feel the weight of wood or the vertigo of the climb. Some will see the community. It’s not just a picture. It’s an anthropology of the construction site.

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Watching Each Other Improvise What does gathering really mean? The fact of the matter is that we’re together, we have our dinners, we’re all in the same apartment. We’re in one big exhibition space, everyone is cutting and sawing, we stay here all day. But we’re not in close contact. We’re not talking to one another all the time. People come and go. We’re about ten. We’re not making one big building but many small structures. And everyone has to do one part of the exhibition. Several small buildings and huts. It’s like a city. We build a city and we work in this city that we build. We’re all working on our own. Yet we’re working together. This is no classical, big architectural project. In such a project, people also work on their own, they are specialists. And they also work together, in some sense. Eventually, they will all have build that skyscraper together, in some sense. But in such a project, hundreds of people don’t make the decisions, or rather, they just decide small things. One star architect has an idea, decides to do it like that, takes major responsibility for the whole thing. We make decisions all the time. I’ve been working on this shape for a few days now because I like it. That’s one reason. No one

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has told me to do it like that but I felt it might fit in. I’ve seen others try out similar things, and also things that are quite different. Yesterday, I took a walk and I went to an old local shop that sold wooden ornaments and I talked to some people there. Maybe I will change that shape. It’s my responsibility whether I will or not. I don’t follow any directives. With that skyscraper, again, you have economical and geographical factors, you take them all into consideration, and then you calculate, and you design a twenty year-business plan for the building. I prefer to plan short-term instead of building big things that become obsolete after some years, or become units that are isolated from the world. I prefer to improvise. The world is in constant change; there are countless factors that you can’t calculate but to which you need to respond. I met someone in that shop and that person might stop by later. And we might work on something. Or we might discuss something. Or I’ll learn something new that I’ll then decide to make room for. Maybe I’ll carve something totally different. We have utopian ideas of working together, of improving the quality of daily life, of activating public spaces. But we get there by improvising. Just as, later, I might decide to make changes, someone else might see that and decide to react to it. This will be that person’s responsibility.

Weʼre all improvising. Weʼre all making decisions. And weʼre all watching each other improvise. Decisions become shared ones. We will have built this city together.

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W.O.W. ON TOUR

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TOOL = MARKER, INFORMATION SPACE = WINDOW PEOPLE = 50 STRATEGY/FORMAT = COMMUNICATION INCLUSIVITY SCALE = HIGH

Useful Lost Information Board

Questions like “Please, can you tell everybody that … By any chance, do you know where is the … Have you seen ...?” resonate in the courtyard from mouth to ear. As the group forms, dynamics and flows shift. Who is in charge of gathering information? Most importantly, should somebody be in charge of gathering information? The construction site adapts. As soon as the second day, an information board appears. From now on, all information can be written here. The nature of the information varies. From organizational messages to pure information—where to find the

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DRUCK AM DREESCH

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marker to write on the wall?—to suggestions or claims—for food, music, respect—the wall fills up. At first, only a few took advantage of the board. Then, as words start to accumulate, more and more grab the marker to add a line. Sharing information is at the core of the project. As hypotheses on water flows and connections develop throughout the days, information flow and collective responsibility develops. In the end, the most important thing is not the message itself, but that the message reaches its target. They all share liability. They all share responsibility in the information flow. The amount and the nature of that information varies according to the intensity of the days. There is no possible hierarchy of information, since there is no possible hierarchy within the group: roles define and refine slowly as the project goes on. Nevertheless, when the fast transmission of collective information is needed, recourse to centralization can be useful, at least to some. One might choose to delegate, whereas others might choose to carry the sole responsibility, even if the weight of information is too heavy for one. To enter the kitchen, everybody passes by the common board. Cheese was a common request written on the board. Cheese was a gift. But not everybody will have the same access to that gift, depending on when they arrive to eat. While questioning the efficiency of the board in conveying information to the group, the notion of respect to one another and of the impossibility of collective equity rises. When the problem is brought up, somebody refills again the wooden plates with cheese they personally bought from the market. That day, the board worked well. The day after, more chicken failed to appear. The board failed. For each message, its own medium.

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LABORATORRE

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TOOLS = KEY, KEYCHAIN SPACE = THE WHOLE SITE PEOPLE = 1 + X STRATEGY/FORMAT = TRUST AND RESPONSIBILITY INCLUSIVITY SCALE = EXCLUSIVE

The House With Too Many Doors Built around a closed mineral courtyard, the architecture of the art center deliberately uses radical language to separate inside and outside. Like a fortress, a double steel-framed wall guides the visitor to the lateral wings. But those wings are only reflections. The glass façade, with its scrupulously repetitive structural rhythm, intensively reflects the courtyard. Glass, glass, glass, glass. The whole building is organized around the same rhythm. Parallel lines punctuate the ceiling, structure, and the glass façades. Glass, glass, glass, glass, door. Within the façades, camouflaged three meter-high heavy doors hide themselves, silent, as if they want to stay invisible or worse: closed. The visitor is always a bit confused. What’s inside? Are they not inside already? Should they open the door? Isn’t it private? Where are the toilets? What’s to be seen?

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If entering La Cuisine is a tremendous effort for the first-time comer, escaping might be even harder. “Here, this is the key. The general pass.” As she receives it, she doesn’t quite understand what it means. At first, it’s just a key. A tiny normal key with a fragile keychain. A key she shouldn’t lose but which looks as if it could be easily lost. In fact, it’s not a key. It’s the key. The key to open it all. The key to all possible secrets, doors, and lots of important stuff. Despite its small size, the key carries giant trust. When giving someone the key to your home, you believe its recipient will take good care of what you love most. You have no choice but to believe. Imagine when home is a castle, and it’s not even yours. And if trust is the most welcome guest within a relationship, it always invites its evil twin named responsibility—responsibility towards a building and all its material affairs, an institution and all immaterial matter, and all people within it with related feelings and emotions. As reality strikes, she’s daunted, perhaps not strong enough to carry the weight of that piece of metal, but at the same time proud, willing to honor that trust. But while she understands the weight of the symbol, she doesn’t yet realize how big is the task. The material task. Have you ever tried to close up a house with twenty doors? At first, it starts slowly, the explanation made simple. That one door needs to be closed last. After the other doors. And the alarm. And the lights. And cleaning up the spaces. Easy. But every day, as if that task were a vicious video game, the mission gains complexity. Level one: closing the main wing. Level two: closing the main wing and the other wing, plus four doors. Level three: closing the main wing, the other wing and the buvette. Level four: closing the main wing, the other wing, the buvette, and securing its revenues. Level five: doing the same, but forgetting something on the way and doing it all again in the right order. Level six: doing the same, in the right order but something doesn’t work. Looking for a solution. Finding it or not. Deciding to let go and trusting that letting go won’t harm the given trust. Level seven: doing it all, but while people have

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drunk too much and would do anything—truly anything—to stay locked in. Level eight: doing it all until level seven, while being drunk herself. Level nine: doing it all, all over again, every night, and never encountering the same challenge twice. And since she has the key, opening up in the morning. Every day. Sleeping less. Making mistakes, until she finds others she can trust and empower, finally sharing duty, responsibility, and the key. Architects rarely design houses and castles with this many outside doors—so many that it’s almost impossible to understand who’s inside and who’s outside. Few buildings claim almost as a statement separate electrical centralized systems, hidden switches, untold rules, non-openable metal doors, and such heavy glass doors. Now she knows why. She wonders to what point a building should dictate behaviors, gestures, and movement. Most likely, it shouldn’t. She wonders how it all would be without any doors. At least, she knows she would like it better.

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TOOLS = WORDS, PENS, PAPER, BEER SPACE = AROUND A HIGH TABLE PEOPLE = 16 + 2 STRATEGY/FORMAT = NEGOTIATION INCLUSIVITY SCALE = LOW

The Auction To Get Less

“Let’s get together for a little chat!” As they all arrive around the table, they’re curious to hear the new ideas that each group has developed. It’s time to connect, time to put things together, time to organize. Resources are limited. They all know it, but they all have needs. How will they negotiate so that all needs are satisfied? Quite organically, the group defines its priorities. Every part of the machine is essential to the whole. Nevertheless, as they have to start somewhere, they decide to start at the end, or rather with the outcome. The pool is the central piece. Everything else leads to it.

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- OK, we have 300 planks. How many do you need? - 150! - OK. You? - Well, if they have 150, we also want 150! They all know he’s joking. It’s not about getting the same as the other. It’s not about equality. It’s about necessity. It’s about getting it right. It’s about negotiating. It’s about finding ways together to get to the common aim. - - - - - - - - - -

Well, OK, forty. They have 150, you have forty. What about you? How much do you need for the crane? There are short ones, there are long ones… I would suggest we take all the long ones. Is that OK with you? OK. We need fifty for the plants. Did somebody plan the water slide? Here we have 150 + 40 + 50 + the long ones. And you? Please tell us you need four. We need four.

Laughter punctuates the negotiation. It sounds like an auction, but reversed. Instead of outbidding, everybody adapts, reduces, underbids. Design decisions will come out of “what is” instead of “if only.” While decisions about size, shape and function are theirs to make, material can’t be redefined. Quantities are factual. Wood is wood. Metal is metal. Water is water. And water flows in its own way. Water imposes its rules. Here, water is the common ground. “Actually, we don’t even need four. We’ll take the chutes. How do you say chutes? … Leftovers! We’ll take the leftovers. But, just so you know, we’ll take ALL the leftovers.” “Please,” she adds, with a polite smile. They’ve all been served. Once quantities are dispersed, the discussion needs to evolve. Someone takes a piece of paper and starts to draw. They’ve so far looked at a plan. Now they need to

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take some highs, to change the way they look at it. Pens appear magically in the hands of some as if they were an extension of their bodies. Together, they add information to the common drawing. First come sketches of the structures, then blue water and red water make the link. Lines create flows, dynamics and cycles. The project is about movement. It’s about the resulting designed and planned movements within the structure, as well as the movements and dynamics needed to generate it. While the drawing becomes more and more technical, some clusters start to appear. Sublanguages emerge and several non-related conversations pop around the table. By the end, they’ll be all set. By the end, they’ll have a negotiated representation to share. And they’ll have laughed about making it real.

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TOOLS = WORDS, PENS, PAPER, BEER SPACE = AROUND A HIGH TABLE PEOPLE = 14 STRATEGY/FORMAT = NEGOTIATION INCLUSIVITY SCALE = LOW

The Auction To Give Back They’re halfway through the construction site. A lot has been done. A lot is left to be done. The flying plumber’s plans are now clear, but only on paper. Pressure on time, material, resources, and clarity rises. They all know this project is a challenge. They’re all realistic. Positively and joyfully realistic. - 200. - What do you mean by “200”? - You have 200 euros left. - For each group? - No. Total. For all groups. Ouch. Yesterday, while the construction was going on, every group was heading directly to the budget manager from the art center to speed up the process, get the necessary material and continue working. It didn’t mean they weren’t aware of the other’s needs, nor asking for unnecessary material. They kept it down

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to the really unavoidable resources. But those resources have a cost, and what somebody takes from the whole can’t be given to somebody else. Once again, they need to share information and distribute resources. - OK guys, it’s time to gather again around the high table! - Same protocol as last time? - Yes, let’s get some beers and come over please. First: wood. Wood scarcity has introduced a black market, organized anonymously around the space of la buvette. Starting with “one plank = one beer,” the market price reached “one plank = 2.5 beers + a hug” in less than twenty-four hours, making it the most fickle currency in the current global market. Now, wood is fine. The teams now know with more precision what they really need and give back some planks to the common available resources. The market price crashes back to “one plank = 1/2 beer” and “one beer = a hug.” They’ve spontaneously created their own speculative bubble, hugs and beers based. Second: money. They all know they won’t make it with 200 euros. So they decide to approach the question differently. Let’s start with the needs, then find solutions. Every team gives its estimate of what is needed to get it done. Some make efforts to find replacements. From the common pot, it’s possible to add 800 euros in material. 500 + 400 + 160 + 32 + 10 + … = 1,450. It is still too much. Now that they’ve shared, they all know the status quo. They all need to scale back, but the needs evoked are already estimated at their very lowest. “Wait!”, says the flying plumber. “I might need only two pumps out of four. And we can give back three timers”.

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Two pumps @ €99.90 x 2 + three timers @ €36.80 x 3 = €310.20 -  And if we give back the four empty sand bags, we might get around 100 euros deposit back! €310,20 + 4 x €25 = €410,20 - And we can use plastic bags instead of rubber boots, if needed. €410.20 + 3 x €10 = €440.20 After complex negotiated calculation, punctuated with laughter and sips of beer, they’re again able to count. - If our calculations are right and if you all stick to your words, then we’ll be in deficit of 8 euros. Everybody claps. The act of negotiation within a collaborative practice depends on consideration and respect of the other’s needs, encompassing all possible contradictions and complexity. Around that rectangular table a group of strong egos aligns. Nevertheless, what governs is not the accumulation of individuals. The ruler is the accumulated result itself and all invisible operations in between, relying on support and empathy. It’s not about the “+,” it’s rather about the negotiated “=”.

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We Should Design Our Waste Now that the design and the concept are cleared, we meet to discuss the materials. Our budget is tight. Very tight. We have enough to build the basics and make it fly. We have nothing to cover it. But mainly, it’s not about money, it’s about finding the best way to give the parasite its meaning. We need a skin. We start with an ideas ping-pong session. “It should disappear,” “We need to work with what’s there”, “A skin is slick and continuous” … He comes back with a periodic table of materials. From car parts to washing machine façades, offset printer plates, office folders and old kitchen sinks, all possible materials are listed and categorized. Our skin will be fireproof, waterproof, soundproof, durable, cheap, light, available locally, in big quantities. Most important, it will be idiot-proof. Nothing is decided yet. All is open. We don’t know what the skin will be like, but we know what the material will do.

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PARASITE

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Between knowing what we need and finding the right resource, we need a long period of research and experimentation. So far, everything is only hypothetical. What we have is ideas, creativity and intuition. But intuition without experimentation doesn’t do the job. We first have to gather knowledge, material resources, touch what we have, perforate, disassemble, reconnect and understand the material by playing with it, so we understand properties, strength and weak points, specific connection points and more. Material exploration is only intended to explore. No more. We need to go to the limit, to bring the material or the object as far as it tells us. We do it consciously but without aim. Even if it takes time, even if we explore a material we won’t use this time, we gain knowledge and expertise that will be useful one day. Learning is never in vain. Combination is the key. If it’s difficult to give a new meaning to one object as one piece, it rather easily becomes something else, something new, when combined with other specimens of its own species. As if togetherness also applies to objects. Together, through the creation of new combinations, new relationships, new connections, we go beyond repetition. And strangely enough, the new meaning we give to a series of objects through second life can sometimes last longer than the first intended use: think about how long people walk around in car tire sandals. So were car tires made solely as car tires? Or were they intended eventually to become sandals? We believe everything is a resource. If it’s possible to make a sandal from a car tire, we like to turn the question around—sometimes absurdly—and be surprised by its answer. Is it possible to make a car tire from a sandal? We know it works when, by looking at a refunctionalized object, we forget what its primary function was. Or maybe its function was already to be refunctionalized? If we designed our waste products, all objects would be #refunctionalized. We finally find it. Black boards! The city has just updated it’s classrooms with brand new white ones. Giving them to us seems a relief; storing waste takes energy and space. For us it’s a

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treasure. But there is no one black board model. There are many. They all look the same but are all different. Some are heavy and made from glass. Others are composites from paper and wood. They’re very light but sensitive to humidity. Others are produced from massive chipwood boards. We love that idea: our skins are different but put together, they look like one. Black boards are the perfect skin. Vandalizing black boards is art. The skin is alive, tattooed, showered, dirty, slick.

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REST EVERY PROJECT STARTS WITH INHABITING THE SPACE. THE CONSTRUCTION SITE IS ALSO THE SPACE OF DAILY LIFE. DEPENDING ON THE PROJECT’S TIMESPAN, DIFFERENT SPACES OF INTIMACY ARE INTEGRATED, FROM CAMPING FIELDS TO SHELVES OF TENTS, WOODEN CABINS OR POP-UP HOTELS. FLEXIBLE SPACES CAN HOST NEW GUESTS AND CONTRIBUTE TO EXPANDING THE COMMUNITY.

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The Little Person Who Holds A Piece Of Wood All the pieces are on the floor. They’re all prepared, all properly cut, aligned, waiting to be put together and finally become a useful object. This group is building the kitchen shelves. They have all they need: power tools, timber, metal connectors. But before it can all stand proudly up, it still needs some thought. While one person can make it on their own, it’s better to have several hands, and usually hands come with heads, and thinking together might come in handy when it comes to using an unknown object for the first time. The connector is complex. It looks technical. It has multiple holes, with different shapes and dimensions. Some look familiar, with a recognizable keyhole shape. Others form broken lines, like an invitation to fold. Somebody is looking at the manual. The others hold the tools and wood. “The little person holding a piece of wood is walking upside down, heading left,” says the one with the manual. Suddenly, they see what they hadn’t seen before: the hole in the middle of the connector, the most singular one. At first, they thought it was some kind of a brand mark, but through that sentence, it has all become clear: the hole is the image of a a self-confident person holding a piece of wood. And to get the little person to walk upside down towards the left, they need to turn the connector around. Suddenly, all the pieces are in the right position. They can assemble the first connection, understand the second one, and then make the same gesture

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again and again, but each time with more ease, and with the satisfaction of getting a giant structure done as if completing a Meccano puzzle. At first, the little person wasn’t there. There was just a plate of metal, with holes. At that point, the connector had exactly the same function as the one with the little person: same holes, same shape, same pattern. But without the little person, it was almost useless. It’s not just about getting an object able to do the job. It’s about getting an object able to empower anyone to do the job. And then, it’s about getting an object able to empower anyone to do the job in the easiest and fastest way possible so that the user wants to do it again, or wants to share the technique with someone else, even a kid or a grandmother. You don’t want to keep it a secret that there’s a piece of metal that fits in your pocket, that you can use and fold to connect pieces of wood or any kind of object you can drill through and create a stable 3D node. All of it with one piece with a little person on it! And that little person is the one telling you how to turn it around. And from that one node, you can create any object you like. With it, you could even do, and undo, and do again, differently, later, using the same material endlessly for any structural need you might have. It’s a lot to deal with, this small piece of metal. That little person is carrying much more than a piece of timber. He carries hope that it’s possible to make a productive work—in terms of efficiency calculated through the classic ratio “Cost vs. Time”—that also has technical, ecological, and convivial virtues. That piece of metal is easily reproducible, and accessible, without involving big engineering or heavy machines. It could have been another shape, but nothing could replace that little person who must have his head and hands pointing in the right direction. Since then, it hasn’t been uncommon to see that little person assuming other purposes than those it was designed for. But that’s another story.

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600 Steps A mountain made of 600 steps, of 600 wooden triangles. Bolted to a structure that resembles an upside-down agora, the steps form the shell of Mont Réel. Mont Réel, an undertaking that seems a bit megalomaniacal: building a mountain. But it’s actually pretty down to earth. destack saw stack organize sort gather together connect screw together store arrange and sort measure align screw The sequences it takes to build this mountain are repetitive. Different teams work on them, approaching the top of the mountain together. First, the foundation is created, a strong supporting structure. Then it’s covered with steps. They’re both path to the top and boundary of the interior. The sequences repeat and repeat and repeat: they repeat 600 times. destack saw stack organize sort gather together connect screw together store arrange and sort measure align screw

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Mont Réel is a miniature version of Mount Royal, and like its big counterpart, it’s a meeting place, a public space, a space occupied by the public. It’s not royal, it’s real. A mountain built by many, by amateurs and professionals, a built metaphor. A metaphor of collaboration, pragmatism, a reference to the finite nature of things. A reference that can’t be repeated often enough. destack saw stack organize sort gather together connect screw together store arrange and sort measure align screw The togetherness comes from the invitation to build the mountain. It goes out to everyone, not just people who it’s assumed can do it. The small scale of the steps allows even rookies to learn to produce them quickly. And they learn through repetition, they learn to check themselves, they learn procedures and their limits, they inevitably set limits for themselves in order to be more efficient in repetition, to get closer to the goal—the top of the mountain. With many hands doing the same thing over and over again. destack saw stack organize sort gather together connect screw together store arrange and sort measure align screw The construction process of the steps is pragmatic. This pragmatism results from being bound to materials, people, and the limitations that come with it: the limitation of resources, time and energy. Finiteness becomes tangible, becomes applicable. And that’s why the craft gesture must be precise. Mont Réel turns into

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a test laboratory for energy-saving operations; the urge to work sustainably, to live sustainably, becomes a physical experience. destack saw stack organize sort gather together connect screw together store arrange and sort measure align screw Manual work has an assembly-line character, a humdrum beat. The tool is an extension of one’s own hand. The gesture with which it’s operated acquires its own pulse. Repetition creates the potential for improvisation, the potential to find creative solutions. And through this, innovation comes not from technological progress, but from a return to artisanal collaboration, from a shared rhythm that moves mountains, builds mountains. destack saw stack organize sort gather together connect screw together store arrange and sort measure align screw

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427 LES NIDS VERTS EN ÉTÉ

Conversation: Excerpts from a conversation between Thierry Paquot (TP), Joanne Pouzenc (JP), and Alexander Römer (AR) January 5, 2022, online

Translated from French by Joanne Pouzenc Original quotes from Illich’s works are included in French in the notes

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TP The French word conI vivialité comes from the Upon Conviviality relatively recent English “conviviality.” Anthelme JP Brillat-Savarin, who lived Among all the questions in the United States for a we ask ourselves, there’s while—as a deputy of the perhaps one with which we could begin. Through Third Estate, he opposed the Terror and had to go your reading of Ivan Illich’s texts, you propose into exile—borrowed this a singular understanding word, which he used three times in The Physiology of the terms conviviality of Taste, published anonyand convivialism. As architects, when we make mously in 1825. He qualia collaborative project, we fies as “convivial” a state of mind proper to sharing, wonder if there are any without hierarchy, so that conditions to observe in order to be able to reach, the guests at a meal are on equal footing even through the project or though they’re sociologthrough the practice, a ically differently marked. certain conviviality in They’re commensals who Illich’s sense. Perhaps needn’t respect etiquette. we need to start talking about what convivialité in Around the table as a convive, any social hierarIllich’s sense is. chy is blurred, respect is 430

mutual, discrimination is absent. This is conviviality. A common spirit. It’s from The Physiology of Taste that Illich borrows this term in the sense of “something that’s accessible to all.” Something convivial is something that doesn’t crush. It’s something that doesn’t humiliate anyone. It’s something that everyone can control and that empowers them. Thus, everything that goes in the direction of a convivial tool, a convivial institution, a convivial gathering corresponds to an emancipating, egalitarian, generous climate. When conviviality is deployed, nobody is subjected to an institution, subordinated to a technical system, dependent on a “radical

monopoly” that “mutilating professions” impose. In this case, autonomy and freedom are twin sisters. I llich began by analyzing the Church as the first multinational firm, with more than 800,000 employees—he’s a priest, let’s not forget—in Disparition de l’ecclésiastique in 1967, the first draft of which dates from 1959. Then, he opposed compulsory schooling and suggested de-schooling society in 1971 in Une société sans école. In 1973, in the midst of the oil crisis, he wrote Énergie et équité: “more than the thirst for fuel, it is the abundance of energy that leads to exploitation.” He continues with an “epilogue to the industrial

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age,” which he entitled La convivialité, in 1973. “When an equipped activity exceeds a threshold defined by the ad hoc scale,” he observes, “it first turns against its end, then threatens the entire social body with destruction.” Further, he writes: “I call convivial society a society where the modern tool is at the service of the person integrated in the community, and not at the service of a body of specialists. Convivial is the society where the human controls the tool.”1 By “tool” he means the school as well as the hammer, a nuclear power plant as well as public transportation. In order to illustrate this thesis he publishes in 1975 a radical critique of the hospital—

1 Thierry Paquot originally quotes Illich in French: “Lorsqu’une activité outillée dépasse un seuil défini par l’échelle ad hoc, elle se retourne d’abord contre sa fin, puis menace de destruction le corps social tout entier.” And further “J’appelle société conviviale une société où l’outil moderne est au service de la personne intégrée à la collectivité, et non au service d’un corps de spécialistes. Conviviale est la société où l’homme contrôle l’outil.”

“The medical enterprise is a threat to health” is the first sentence of Némésis médicale. For him these institutions are not convivial, they subjugate individuals, distance them from vernacular production and confiscate the common. Moreover, beyond a certain threshold, they become counterproductive; that is to say, they turn against their objectives: schools unlearn, hospitals make people sick, transport is time-consuming, etc.

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JP Do you think there can be a convivial city? A convivial architecture?

2 “Habiter, c’était demeurer dans ses propres traces, laisser la vie quotidienne écrire les réseaux et les articulations de sa biographie dans le paysage.”

Architects, he gave a lecture entitled L’art d’habiter—The Art of Dwelling, TP Illich is interested in archi- in which he confided that tecture, not only because “to inhabit was to remain in one’s own traces, to let several of his friends are daily life write the netarchitects (John Turner, works and articulations Joseph Rykwert, Jean of one’s biography in the Robert ...) as is one of landscape.”2 With produchis brothers, Sacha, but also because it’s a major tivism, humans are losing part of everyone’s life. the art of inhabiting, However, he didn’t devote which is, he points out, any work specifically to “an activity that is beyond the city or to architecture, the scope of the architect.” even if H20, les eaux de For him, the one who is l’oubli, in 1988, deals with housed “has no need of the mapping of cities and the art of living—but only the space of networks in of an apartment; just as a sensory approach to the he has no need of the art territories that humans of suffering because he configure. In 1984, for the relies on medical assis150th anniversary of the tance, and he has probaRoyal Institute of British bly never thought of the 433

art of dying.” Further on, he adds, “The inhabitants occupying the space they model have been replaced by residents housed in modern constructions produced for them, duly registered as housing consumers protected by rental contract or mortgage legislation.”3 As we can see, in his eyes, architects belong to the “mutilating professions,” like teachers, doctors and nurses, social workers, and street educators. Convivial architecture would be one that maintains both vernacular production and respect for commons. He warns: “ In the modern shelter consumer, the distinction between private and public space does not replace the traditional distinction

3 “Les habitants occupant l’espace qu’ils modèlent ont été remplacés par des résidants abrités dans des constructions modernes produites à leur intention, dûment enregistrés en tant que consommateurs de logement protégés par la législation sur les contrats de location ou les prêts hypothécaires.” 4 “Chez le consommateur d’abri moderne, la distinction entre espace privé et espace public ne remplace pas la distinction traditionnelle entre le logis et les communaux articulée par le seuil – elle la détruit. Pourtant, ce que le logement en tant que bien de consommation a occasionné à l’environnement demeure jusqu’ici inaperçu de nos écologistes. L’écologie continue d’opérer comme une auxiliaire sinon une jumelle de l’économie. L’écologie politique ne deviendra radicale et efficiente qu’à condition de reconnaître que la destruction des communaux entraînée par leur transformation en ressources économiques est le facteur environnemental qui paralyse l’art d’habiter.”

between the dwelling and the commons articulated by the threshold—it destroys it. Yet what housing as a consumer good has done to the environment has so far gone unnoticed by our ecologists. Ecology continues to operate as an auxiliary, if not a twin, of economics. Political ecology will only become radical and efficient if it recognizes that the destruction of

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the commons caused by their transformation into economic resources is the environmental factor that paralyses the art of living.”4 For him, the world has become uninhabitable: “It is necessary to disconnect from the construction of garages, certainly comfortable, and to self-construct one’s dwelling by self-constructing (...) If convivial architecture is not self-evident, in spite of a few rare experiments of earthen, straw, wood, stone dwellings, the convivial city seems even more unlikely. We would have to abandon the standards that the market spreads everywhere and get back in touch with the vernacular and

the common, to detoxify ourselves—let’s admit it—from the consumer society (…) Humble and fanciful architects who put their constructive skills at the service of the inhabitants and elaborate with them their residence open the way to a convivial architecture.” II Of Language JP A  bout language and attempts to unify certain languages—to come back to more down-to-earth notions—in our practices, finding a common language is a question that systematically arises at the beginning of a project. We don’t limit language only to spoken language,

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Lorraine, at the turn of the ninth/tenth centuries, in order to control people’s speech. He then observed that in most “Third World” countries—as they were TP called at the time—an L anguage is one of Ivan expression that no longer Illich’s major concerns. exists—the countries that He read a lot, in several had not yet entered the languages—he spoke fourteen!—including poet- “consumer society,” that ry, which he loved to recite the powerful considered and comment on. He was “underdeveloped,” thus the formerly colonized careful to supervise the countries—an individutranslation of his books, which he rewrote in part. al, even if he or she did In most of his writings, et- not have schooling, was ymology comes into play. multilingual. In Mali or He’s careful to choose the Senegal, for example, this one person speaks Fulani, right word and hates the a little Bambara, a little plastic words that have Arabic if he’s a Muslim, been so abused they no longer mean anything. He and a little French beexplains how the “mother cause the colonial admintongue” was an invention istration has bequeathed of the Church in the mon- its language to the newly astery of Gorze, abbey of independent state. He we also integrate practical languages: cutting wood, playing or dancing require certain languages, etc.

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noted that schools reduced multilingualism, especially among the working classes, who were deprived of their dialects and other patois. T hen, when he wrote Le travail fantôme (Shadow Work), Illich introduced Elio Antonio de Nebrija, a Spanish Jesuit who published the first Castilian grammar in 1492—the very year Christopher Columbus discovered the Americas. He then took it to the King and Queen of Spain, and said to Isabel the Catholic, “Your Majesty, with this grammar you will conquer the world.” It was a premonitory sentence because the division of South America would later be made according to the linguistic

domination, Spanish and Portuguese. For Illich, the major event of 1492 was not the discovery of America, but the first Castilian grammar that unified the popular and vernacular languages and gave them a kind of language police. Grammar serves good speech. It’s also a kind of violence. All of a sudden, one can no longer be inventive, improvisational, hybridizing, or have a more or less approximate understanding of a language, but one must observe a standardized mastery of a language. Christopher Columbus, born in Genoa, speaks Genoese with only one or two sailors. He speaks Portuguese with his wife from Lisbon and

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Spanish with the Queen, and writes in a Latin that Cicero wouldn’t understand. We’re caught in our own linguistic network, which expresses the incredible impoverishment of our relationships. I’m stuck with my French or with a basic English that ignores the sense of nuance and the very impertinence of this language. It’s a delicate matter to find the right words for what you want to express. Can you imagine the work of the architect who wants to involve the inhabitants? He must be incredibly open-minded and show great linguistic inventiveness in order to let everyone speak. He must succeed in formulating what the other person can’t say. This is very

difficult, it can’t be learned and requires incredible listening skills, great humility and a lot of time, which in our mercantile society is obviously always quantified and budgeted. This is why participation or collaborative work is never paid! We prefer to impose norms in order to try to listen to the differences. We enter into an existing scheme rather than thinking that we can build a scheme together that will certainly not be schematic because it will pay attention to the nuances, and therefore to the meaning of words.

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III On Commons And Resources, Production And Situated Savoir-Faire JP W  ithin our practices— which we could one day perhaps call convivial practices—there are dynamics set up in such a way that we don’t refrain from changing the language, or changing the rules as things develop. In the same way, a convivial space would allow—if it’s found to be unsuitable— for its possible transformation, or that people can act upon it, seeking an adapted form. This is something that I think is very important when we talk about institutions—

whether it’s an educational institution or any other type of institution: once you’ve put things into place, it’s very difficult to go back. In the same way, in architecture, once you’ve built something solid, it’s very difficult to deconstruct. With the given frameworks, how can we produce collaborations, architectures or societies that take into consideration their own evolutions? TP Ivan Illich explained very well that the great misfortune of the technical society was to have progressively suppressed the commons, the communaux, in order to be able to transform the vernacular into merchandise.

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This is a terrible impoverishment. For him, a “convivial” architecture would comprehend what humans express, as well as reflecting their living community. For example, I’m living in a cereal producing community, therefore I have straw. If I have straw, then I’ll have a straw habitat and I’ll try to use straw as much as possible, both in the structural work and in the finishing work. This straw will be recovered from a cereal whose flour is used by a local baker. There’s a joyful chain of interdependencies. This also serves to valorize the know-how that we’re losing, dispersing. I’m more interested in the current “BTP,”5 the BoisTerre-Paille-Pierre—Wood-

5 Traditionally, the acronym BTP is used in French as the contraction of “Bâtiment, Travaux Publics”—Building, Public Works— and refers to the construction industries such as concrete, cement, aggregates and steel industries. The new “BTP”—Bois, Terre, Paille, Pierre, as Thierry Paquot quotes it, refers with the same acronym to the claim for renewable, local and vernacular construction techniques.

Earth-Stone-Straw—because it turns out to be an alternative to reinforced concrete and represents a true reconquest of the vernacular know-how that’s progressively getting lost. This vernacular know-how goes along with the vision of a society based on the communal lands that have been confiscated by productivist capitalism. If we want to reclaim the vernacular and its commons, we must oppose—even if we’re peaceful—productivist capitalism. I observe this with many groups of young architects with whom I dialogue, and I realize how much they

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struggle against the multinationals of the other BTP—Bâtiment, Travaux Publics—concrete manufacturers like Bouygues, Vinci, Eiffage, Lafarge, Veolia, etc. They exist in every country in the world—even if in France we have the particularity of having very powerful multinationals on a global scale, which is not the case for other industrial sectors. The French BTP also owns communication, media, and leisure industries. To fight against them is to fight against a whole culture. It’s not simply about saying “I have a friend who’s a nice architect. He works with straw. He did an internship to build with raw earth or adobe. It’s super good, it’s ecological, etc.” No. It’s

not only that. It’s an act of opposition to another culture that wants to be borderless, independent of any territory, aboveground in a way, and that imposes its own logic, a logic of forever more, of impoverishment of each of us towards homogenization. IV Vernacular And Re-Use TP Vernacular architecture is based on three phrases: “case-by-case,” “tailormade,” and “made-with” the inhabitants and the living community. This confirms a break with globalization. Specialization is rejected and singularity is exalted.

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We favor diversity, heterogeneity in opposition to the global capitalist system, which aims at homogeneity, as we can see, everywhere. There are the same skyscrapers in Dubai, Shanghai, Mumbai, New York, Paris, etc. If we give priority to local know-how and materials, it means recognizing our presence in places that have specific territorial qualities. Today, however, we want to deny these particular territorial qualities and make people believe that any territory is worth the same as another. No. A shoreline is not a mountain. A valley is not a plateau, etc. And yet, curiously, we’re going to build the same supermarkets, the same stadiums, the same airports and

public facilities, whether we’re by the sea or on top of a mountain. This is a struggle. It’s not just a point of view. This is why the word “convivial,” understood in the common sense as “friendly,” isn’t enough! Bouygues, Vinci, Eiffage, Veolia, can even use the word “conviviality” in their communication vocabulary—and they certainly do. They certainly present themselves as “ecologists”: “I have a new extraordinary reinforced concrete that integrates into the landscape ... See how ecological I am!” One ton of reinforced concrete generates one ton of CO2. We should no longer build with concrete. In fact, maybe we shouldn’t build at all. There are too many buildings in the world.

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from less than twenty kilometers away. There are still cereal fields at the gateways to Paris. The same architect used wood that he went to find three or four kilometers away. AR This is quite exceptional. T his notion—“re-use”—is related to the idea of using But at the same time, material that comes from we can reuse wood that the environment in which hasn’t been used enough we’re located. For example, or that has been badly used elsewhere. This is in a city, you may not be able to find straw, but you what Patrick Bouchain can recycle what’s already did when, for example, there. There are many ex- he recovered wood that amples that come to mind. had been planned for a facility in Eurodisney in Marne-la-Vallée, and that TP  wasn’t used in the end. He Yes, and it shows that used something that was there’s a specific ecoloconsidered waste, somegy in each territory, an thing to get rid of as it was ecology in the sense of cluttering things up and it interdependencies or finally became a school, a interactions. I recently visited a school in Rosny- circus, a cultural facility, or sous-Bois built with straw anything else. Maybe we should stop building. We must rehabilitate, rearrange, re-organize, reuse. Isn’t “re-use” a beautiful verb?

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AR  We also had a project together with Patrick Bouchain, quite some time ago, in 2007. It was a small structure in a workers’ garden for a popular university—the University of Taste—and we used a decommissioned framework as a structure. We also produced a kind of treasure map at the time, a map of materials in Normandy, in the environment of the town of Argentin, to be able to locate materials that could potentially help us without ending up with a huge stock of materials. For that, we made a public call informing people that we wished to build with what was left in their garages, gardens, etc., and so that we didn’t have to

have everything at home, we made our map. We knew then exactly where we could go to get windows, where we could go to have a coffee—because that was also included in the application, for all the hands that helped us. These are just anecdotes, but they seem quite meaningful today. V Work, Labor And Employment TP It also shows that capitalism—which I tried to demonstrate in Désastres Urbains—makes jobs more precarious. It’s broken down a lot of knowhow that used to hinder it. This is a paradox, because capitalism has created

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a very particular social relationship: the salariat. Marx analyzed this phenomenon very subtly, and now, what he could never have imagined is taking place: capitalism wants to get rid of the wage-earner and set up the internship, the précariat, self-employment, etc. Everyone becomes their own “wage earner.” Everyone becomes their own “employee” at the service of a firm or an institution. Precariousness of employment is coupled with precariousness of territories. And no one sees this. Some territories are abandoned, some are in the middle of a crisis, in depression, they even say. A territory can be as depressed today as a human being; that’s to

say that it’s lost all sense of existence because it has the impression that it’s no longer useful. We’re shown territories as vacant territories, without any quality, but I think that every territory is rich from the qualities of the people who live there. However, we must stimulate this richness. If you say to people, “You’re long-term unemployed, you’re useless, you’re expensive for society,” you’ll inevitably get a depressed society. But if you say to the most disadvantaged: “You have unsuspected wealth within you, share it with others …,” it becomes the starting point of a renaissance.

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JP T his reminds me of what Bernard Stiegler started with the revenu contributif—contributory income—and the project of Plaine Commune applied to a lage territorial scale. It seems very complex to me. To try to summarize it, perhaps not very well, the proposal of Plaine Commune is to value the contribution of the inhabitants to the common good within their own communities with systems that are very technical or technological, such as the management of energy, waste, etc., but at the same time focus on non-technical assets such as common care and services. In fact, it’s a kind of common capitalization around the community

management of a given environment. I wonder if the contributory income could become a potential alternative to the salariat, the more classical wage-earning system, in relation to what you mention about the precariousness of work, which we’ve implemented in spite of ourselves. TP When you read or re-read Ivan Illich for the umpteenth time, as I did, you realize that he explains very well that full employment is a historical exception that only concerned a very small part of humanity at a given time. When he wrote his books in the 1970s, he already knew that the majority of people who work in the

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world aren’t wage earners, and don’t benefit from legal protection, labor law, etc. And even when there is labor law, it’s often violated by the company or even by the state. As a result, UN technocrats have coined the term “informal sector” to refer to this fringe. We’re talking about informal work in the great megalopolises of the world, in the “Third World,” of work without pensions, without social insurance, without the right to strike, etc. In fact, this is the dominant sector and we should examine the status of the “informal” worker on a planetary scale, to measure what it truly represents. In Le chômage créateur and Le travail fantôme, Illich takes

the example of women: they’re cab drivers when they take their children to school, they’re nurses, they’re cooks, they’re managers, they’re sex workers ... they do what’s called the double work day. This work is never taken into consideration; it’s not counted and doesn’t enter into the famous GNP, this index that quantifies our happiness, it seems. It’s clear that there’s a whole body of work that’s hidden and not valued. Additionally, there’s also “ghost work,” the work you do to transform what the market has sold you. You buy a piece of kit furniture, you go and get it, you deliver it and you assemble it. This is “ghost work,” at your own expense! I don’t buy this

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kind of furniture. I prefer to buy a piece of furniture that’s already been used and that whispers memories to me when I open the drawer. VI Voluntary Work, School Or Leisure JP I n the projects we carry out, the question of the status of the participants arises. Sometimes, we do projects that we call “collaborative workshops.” In these collaborative workshops, we don’t talk about knowing or not knowing, because in the end, it doesn’t have any reality for us: we find ourselves in different roles, and we have knowledge in one field, none in others, and

others know things that we don’t know. We work on sharing and we rely on networks of competences. On these occasions, we invite people who come voluntarily to help and who find their own interest in it. This is a question we ask ourselves today: is it leisure? Is it work? And what’s the limit between those notions? Is the difference scrupulously at the level of the monetization of this work, on its valuation, and what type of value can be associated with it? When you learn something, isn’t it already capital? When we receive 100 euros, is it capital? And if these 100 euros are equivalent to a week of work, is it still work? Do we really work if we do it voluntarily?

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I was looking at your definition of leisure and your writings on this notion. In the same way that there seem to be several statuses behind the word work, there seem to be as many behind the word leisure. Are we heading towards that? Towards a work-only or leisure-only society? Aren’t there any ways in-between to be uncovered? TP I’ve written a lot about these questions, in the magazine Hermes in particular. From an etymological point of view, the word “leisure” in Greek is skholé, which will result in Schule, school, etc. It means “free time (temps gratuit).” (The Greeks didn’t speak in those

terms, of course.) It’s time for nothing else than the knowledge of oneself and of others. Leisure is an activity without economic or rational purpose. It serves no purpose. Yet it is essential. In order to practice skholé, I must be free from the obligation to work—let’s not forget that Athenian society is based on slavery. The Romans translated skholé as otium. In French, the word loisir comes neither from otium nor from skholé, but from the Latin licere, which will give the word licite in French. “Leisure” is something that’s attributed to us. It’s something that’s not given as it is for the Greek who practices skholé. It’s something that relates to “Thou shalt not work on Sunday because

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it is the Lord’s day.” It’s a day off. At one time, unemployment—this “day off”—was a positive quality. By the end of the nineteenth century, the word “unemployed” changes its meaning. “To be unemployed” becomes “not to work.” “Not working” means being apart from society, being penalized, not having an income. In the past, on the contrary, days off were days that had great value. We did what we wanted, it was festive! In our society, marked by industrialization and productivism, work is given a significant value. It’s even this value that will found capitalism: to simplify, it’s through the exploitation of work that the capitalists will be able to enrich themselves with

surplus value. Labor will become a constraint, and this is already inscribed in its Latin etymology: the word travail in French comes from the Latin tripalium, which designates an instrument of torture. More precisely, it’s the tripod with which one tortured the bandit who wouldn’t confess to what he was accused of—he was impaled! And this also corresponds to the Christian ideology. Due to the “original sin,” “you will feed yourself by the sweat of your brow.” Within work is suffering. A woman who gives birth “goes into labour.” We have this idea that it’s a kind of curse. Work is always experienced as a kind of punishment and not as something that allows one

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to realize oneself. I was always surprised when I read Charles Fourier, to see how much he advocated for work. We often have the image of the phalanstery as a place of enjoyment, where everything is allowed, etc. Yes, but at the same time, Fourier says that the ideal day is one in which one sleeps only three hours, because spending eight hours sleeping is a waste of time. It’s necessary to work. It’s through attractive and appealing work that one realizes oneself. It’s through work that one acquires a capacity for aesthetic, artistic, sexual, physical, productive, creative enjoyment, etc. This perception of work is essential in order to understand that it’s not

a penalty, a curse, but rather an opportunity. The proof is that in the profession you practice, architecture, if I understand correctly, one dies at work at 100, or at 90, or unfortunately younger. But one never stops being an architect. VII Retirement And Retreat TP For me, retirement is an activity that must begin in the first year of work. I wrote an article on this in Le Monde diplomatique a long time ago, in which I said that it would be good if high-school students could leave school with their degree, for example, and then be given a

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year of paid retirement, a year where they can do what they want, because retiring at sixty or sixtyfive is absurd. You lose know-how, you lose skills, you lose a whole network of relationships that are extremely important. Among intellectuals, I observe—because I’m closest to them—how many produce their important books during their retirement, like Henri Lefebvre or Edgar Morin. That’s where the Americans are smart: they bring them in to teach in their universities! “Work” and “leisure” have always been opposed. In Vers une civilisation des loisirs? published in 1962, Joffre Dumazedier explains that leisure belongs to training, to the blossoming of

each individual, to rest, and also to distraction. It’s the “consumer society,” an expression that appears for the first time in 1959 in an editorial by Jean-Marie Domenech in the magazine Esprit, that changes the situation. Leisure becomes consumption. We do work only to be able to consume. Already, Günther Anders in L’obsolescence de l’homme published in 1956 explained that the destiny of the human being from now on was to consume. We must consume to exist. And if one doesn’t consume, if one doesn’t have a television, a car, lots of objects in one’s kitchen, one is a bad American. And a French author, Bernard Charbonneau, explains how consumers are them-

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selves consumed. We’re dispossessed of our ability to create our own leisure activities. They belong entirely to the industrialized system and are in no way convivial!

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454 HALLO: PLATAFORMA TRAFARIA

ABOUT THE CONSTRUCTLAB NETWORK Constructlab is a transdisciplinary designbuild network that brings together architectural concepts and construction. While breaking with traditional divisions of labor, the organization engages a team of multi-talented designer-builders—as well as sociologists, urban planners, graphic designers, curators, educators and web developers—who carry the creative process from the drawing board to the field. Their shared vision of a collaborative way of working combines the creative with the practical, the thinking with the doing. Active since the beginning of the 2010s, Constructlab has developed and built many projects internationally, from mobile activating devices to long-term structures, public space activation or scenography of cultural institutions. Usually, not only network members are involved in these endeavors, but also friends and accomplices, residents, amateurs and activists. At the heart of this work, which includes commissioned and 455

self-initiated projects throughout the world, is a desire to enhance feelings of community and heighten the sense of place. Constructlab projects thus evolve as structures that create temporary forms of community, togetherness, and cohabitation. Interpersonal dynamics become part of the designs through cooking, parties, and the sharing of basic everyday needs. The network’s origins can be found in other collaborations that have dissolved or changed—just as Constructlab is constantly changing, with new members joining and new elements emerging. One of its starting points can be seen as an evolution of the Parisian collective EXYZT. Founded in 2002 by five architects, it brought together for a few exciting years a transdisciplinary team that not only worked together on temporary housing solutions in metropolises, but also inhabited them collectively. When the group disbanded, its energies developed into the potential for the network of Constructlab. The pillar of living together, alongside collaborative project work, is now an integral part of their way of operating. 456

In addition to its communal approach, Constructlab strives for the rediscovery of a constructive intelligence in materials and situations, enabling designs to respond to the possibilities and constraints posed by them. This requires a practice that incorporates social, ecological, and temporal perspectives and an environmental awareness: using recycled materials, building with a view to future reuse, focusing on low-tech and simple solutions that promote accessibility and an openness of process. Resulting situating mechanisms involve a consideration of zeitgeist and discourses that go beyond design and construction—Constructlab becomes a laboratory for social processes of togetherness, a catalyst for deceleration, rethinking and community in a world increasingly focused on singularization, optimization and profit. Constructlab.net

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IMAGE CREDITS (t) top (m) middle (b) bottom of page specified #COSTRUIRELIMPROVVISO for Mare Culturale Urbano, Milan, IT, 2016 © Constructlab 226(b) AGORA FOR TRANSLATION ACTS a series of public events hosted by the Institut für Raumexperimente on occasion of The World is Not Fair – The Great World’s Fair, 2012, initiated by raumlaborberlin in cooperation with Hebbel am Ufer at the former Tempelhof airport, Berlin, DE, 2012 © Constructlab 33(t&m) © Institut für Raumexperimente, Berlin 33(b) ALDEA with and for Inland Village, supported by Goethe-Institut, Madrid, ES, 2018 © Constructlab 93(b), 240(b) BACKHAUSWAGEN phase 3 of the project Baupalast, Dragonerareal, Berlin, DE, 2019 © Constructlab 280, 281 BAUPALAST collective project with Guerilla Architects and others, Berlin, DE, 2019 © Constructlab 369 (collective drawing) BEGEGNUNGSHAUS POPPENBÜTTEL part of a series of workshops with Urban Design at HafenCity University and Poppenbüttel Hilft e.V., Hamburg, DE, 2017 © Constructlab / Alex Lambert 104, 105, 107, 108 BERG CAMP part of Der Berg, by raumlaborberlin and Club Real, for Volkspalast, Berlin, DE, 2005 © Constructlab 403(t)

BROEI / DEVIL CASTLE Ghent, BE, 2020 © Pommelien Koolen 89 © Michiel De Cleene 279 © Leontien Allermeersch 416(t) © Alice Martha 416(b) © Constructlab / Lucas Devolder, Bert Villa 418

CONSTRUCTLAB GATHERING yearly meeting of the international Constructlab network in various cities since 2015 © Constructlab / Joanne Pouzenc 54, 64, 242, 388 © Constructlab / Juliane Mylena Kühr, Peter Zuiderwijk 68, 69

CAILLASSES within a residency at the Embassy of Foreign Artists, Geneva, CH, 2020 © Dylan Perrenoud 48, 236(t), 412 © Constructlab / Sébastien Tripod 49

COOKING LINE workshop with students of ESAAA Annecy, FR, 2014 © Constructlab 94(t)

CASA DO VAPOR self-initiated project with Associação dos moradores da Cova do Vapor and EDA (Ensaios & Diálogos Associação), Cova do Vapor, PT, 2013 © Constructlab / Miguel Magalhães 122 © Constructlab / Eduardo da Conceição 125 © Constructlab / Samuel Boche 225 © Constructlab 84, 85, 276(b), 360(b), 401, 415(b), 474, 475, 480(t) CASINOTOPIA temporary home for the student Club Casino at FH Potsdam, Potsdam, DE, 2016 © Constructlab / Maria Garcia Perez 60, 61 COLLABORATIVE ARCHITECTURE competition Austrian Pavilion Venice Architecture Biennale, with space&design STRATEGIES, University of the Arts Linz, AT, 2022 © Constructlab / Alex Lambert 222 COMMON GROUND for the 3rd Chicago Architecture Biennial, Chicago, US, 2019 © Constructlab 39, 130, 182, 411(t)

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DALSTON MILL / EXYZT project by EXYZT as part of Radical Nature, Barbican Centre, London, UK, 2009 © EXYZT © Brice Pelleschi 284(b) DAR STOOL part of Simulizi Mijini / Urban Narratives programme, residency at Nafasi Art Space, Dar es Salaam, TZ, 2016 © Constructlab 227, 465 DE-CONSTRUCTLAB de-constructing the German pavilion, as part of the World Garden Exhibition Floriade, 2022, Almere, NL, 2022 © Constructlab / Ana Salom 116, 261 DISPLAY / Z33 with and for House For Contemporary Art Z33, Hasselt, BE, 2019 © Michiel De Cleene 185(t) © Gion Von Albertini 185(b) © Constructlab / Bert Villa 335, 336 DRIVING THE HUMAN Seven Prototypes for Eco-social Renewal, festival scenography for Skills e.V., Berlin, DE, 2021/22 © Constructlab / Alex Lambert 110 DRUCK AM DREESCH for the opening of M*Halle, Mecklenburgisches Staatstheater Schwerin, DE, 2022 © Constructlab / Peter Zuiderwijk 16, 17, 379 © Constructlab 178, 467(t)

EDEN / VILA ITORORÓ at Vila Itororó Canteiro Aberto for Instituto Pedra, São Paolo, BR, 2015 © Camila Picolo / Collection Instituto Pedra 190, 410(b) © Marcos Vilas Boas 232, 233, 356 © Constructlab 239(b) ESSENTISCH & PFLÜCKGÄRTEN a collaboration with Atelier Le Balto, Berlin and modulorbeat for Freiraum Weberplatz, by European Green Capital – Essen, DE, 2017 © Atelier Le Balto 81(t) FAN KIT TO GO for Wroclaw’s Brat Alberta football team as part of Future Architecture Platform, Museum of Architecture Wrocław, PL, 2017 © Constructlab / Katarzyna Aleksandrowicz 238(b) FIREKITCHEN ongoing research © Constructlab / Johanna Dehio, Mascha Fehse 77, 78 © Constructlab 275 FREIRAUM for the Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe (MK&G) Hamburg, DE, 2020 © Constructlab 183 © Thomas Rustemeyer 66 FRIBOURG-SUR-MER Pont de Saint-Jean, Fribourg, CH, 2018 © Constructlab 358(t), 478(t) © Christophe Dargent 478(b), 479 GIARDINO AMMIRATO for Free Home University at Ammirato Culture House, Lecce, IT, 2016 © Constructlab 191, 236(b) © Constructlab / Eliana Manca 230, 231 © Constructlab / Ana Salom (after drawing by Anastasia Kuznetsova– Transforming Solidarities) 202-207

H(EAT) workshop INSA, Strasbourg, FR, 2016 © Constructlab 238(t)

LA JONCTION with AIDEC, Forum Pointe de la jonction, Geneva, CH, 2021 © Constructlab 184

HALLE(N)BAD guest professorship at FG IG, Burg Giebichenstein, Halle, DE, 2016 © Constructlab 368(t)

LABORATORRE self-initiated arts residency, with University of the Arts, Linz, Vila Nova de Gaia, PT, 2022 © Constructlab 186(b) © Constructlab / Maria Garcia Perez 381

HALLO: PLATAFORMA TRAFARIA with Hallo Festspiele Hamburg and EDA (Ensaios & Diálogos Associação), Trafaria, PT, 2016 © Constructlab 47, 88 © Constructlab / Eduardo da Conceição 454 HOTEL EGON / IBA CAMPUS 2018 Open Factory Eiermannbau, Apolda, DE 2018 © IBA Thüringen / Thomas Müller 237(b), 273(t), 360(t), 366(t), 408, 409 JAMMIN KIOSK as part of One Architecture Week, Plovdiv, BG, 2016 © Constructlab 276(t) © Constructlab / Silvia Georgieva 277 JARDIN FABRIQUE series of workshops with ESAAA Art School and Bonlieu Scene National at Haras d’Annecy, FR, 2012-13 © Constructlab 288(t), 367(b) KUNSTFORUM WORPSWEDE Atelier Collaborative for Künstlerhäuser Worpswede, DE, 2016 © Constructlab 86, 93(t) KUNSTSTADT scenography of sharing transformation by Cittadelarte–Fondazione Pistoletto at Kunsthaus Graz, AT, 2012 © Constructlab 283(t), 468

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LE COURS DE L’EAU, LA COUR ET L’EAU Atelier Collaborative with la Maison de l’Architecture Occitanie Pyrénées, ENSA Toulouse, and CAUE82 for La cuisine, art and design center, Nègrepelisse, FR, 2021 © Constructlab 41(b), 98, 101, 179, 192, 256, 274, 469, 480(b) © Nicolas Fournier / Association Survol 41(t) © Constructlab / Alex Lambert 214, 215, 246, 247, 264, 265, 384, 385, 392, 393 © Constructlab / Mathilde Gintz 237(t) © Constructlab / Merril Sinéus 251, 252, 253, 266-271 © Constructlab / Sebastien Tripod, Antonin Basser 218 LE MANABLE with Sonia Vu, NAC (Association Notre Atelier Commun), Michel Onfray at Jardin de la Ville, Argentan, FR, 2007 © Constructlab 415(t) LES NIDS VERTS EN ÉTÉ residency in Cantercel, site experimental d’architecture, FR, 2020 © Constructlab / Alex Lambert 194, 195, 344, 426, 427 LONGEST BENCH with the neighborhood, by the Mobility Department of Brussels, Anderlechtsepoort, BE, 2019 © Constructlab 96(t) LONGEST TABLE as part of Annecy paysage, Bonlieu Scène nationale, Annecy, FR, 2016 © William Pestrimaux 81(b)

MAINHALL / OSTHANG PROJECT with Atelier Bow-Wow, as part of the Osthang project by raumlaborberlin for Darmstädter Architektursommer, DE, 2014 © Constructlab 287(t&m), 353(t), 354(b), 471(t) © Kristof Lemp, Darmstadt / lempinet.com 228, 229, 287(b), 354(t)

MONT RÉEL for Goethe-Institut Montreal and Consulat général de France à Québec, Montreal, CA, 2017 © Goethe-Institut Montreal / Ashutosh Gupta 46(m&b) © Constructlab 46(t) © Constructlab / Miguel Magalhães 422, 423 © Constructlab / Maria Garcia Perez 425

MERCATO DEI FRUTTI MINORI with Casa delle agriculture in Castiglione, Lecce European Capital of Culture, IT, 2019 © Constructlab 42

MUSEUM OF ARTE ÚTIL with Bureau d’Etudes, Collective Works for Arte Útil by Tania Bruguera at Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven, NL, 2014 © Collective Works / Peter Cox 38, 189 © Constructlab 355

MESSY KIOSK part of Living the City. About Cities, People and Stories, Tempelhof airport, Berlin, DE, 2020 © Constructlab 187 METAVILLA / EXYZT by EXYZT for Patrick Bouchain, curator French Pavilion, 10th Venice Architecture Biennale, IT, 2006 © Julie Guiches / EXYZT 353(b) MON(S) INVISIBLE Ile De La Réunion with Les Commissaires Anonymes within the section Mon(s) idéal, for the European Capital of Culture 2015 Mons, Bergen, BE, 2015 © Constructlab 34, 35, 96(b), 278, 410(t), 411(b), 414(m&b) © Constructlab / Miguel Magalhães 148, 149 © Constructlab / Suzanne Laborie, Miguel Magalhães, Maria Garcia Perez 174, 175 © Benoit Lorent / OST collective 284(t), 285 © OST collective 467(b) © Constructlab / Mascha Fehse 331, 333 © Studio Public 402, 414(t), 467 © Julie Guiches / Studio Public 403(m&b), 414(t)

NOURRITURE PASSE NATURE agricultural fields of Zone Sensible with Parti Poétique, Saint-Denis, FR, 2018 © Constructlab / Chiara Sgaramella 288(b) PARASITE with Refunc and StudioC, residency space in ZK/U (Zentrum für Kunst und Urbanistik), Berlin, DE, 2017 © Constructlab, Refunc / Ishka Michocka 365(b) © Constructlab 365(t) © Constructlab / Joanne Pouzenc 397 PIAZZA LABORATORIO URBANO in Palagiano, IT, 2015 © Constructlab / Peppe Frisino 471(b) R COME REPUBBLICA MILANO with Cohabitation Strategies, Landscape Choreography, Balletto Civile for Mare Culturale Urbano, Milan, IT 2014 © Constructlab 36, 37, 239(t), 357 RAFTY STIEMER EXPEDITION through Stiemerbeek, for Stiemerlab, Genk, BE, 2017 © Constructlab / Simon Verschelde #LZSB 470 © Constructlab / Juul Prinsen 208

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STADTLAND IBA Thüringen exhibition, Eiermannbau Apolda, DE, 2019 © IBA Thüringen / Thomas Müller 188 © OST collective 466(t&m) SUPERORT with Clemens Bauder for Supergau für zeitgenössische Künste 2021, Hof bei Salzburg, AT, 2021 © Philippe Gerlach 43, 366(b), 368(b) TABLE OF CONTENT exhibition at Stadtgalerie Saarbrücken, DE 2022 © Constructlab 92, 282(b) TEATRO DEL MARE by Constructlab, part of Lungomare Gasthaus, curated by Angelika Burtscher, Lisa Mazza, Daniele Lupo, Bolzano, IT, 2013 all images Courtesy Lungomare © Daniel Mazza 40, 87(t) © Constructlab 181, 273(b), 413 projects in images © Masses & Motets by Luigi Coppola, 40(b) © Trattoria Circolare by Åbäke, Martino Gamper & Alex Rich / 300 Linear Meters (Seating and Tables) by Simone Simonelli 87(b) © rollin’ carpet by Gonzague Lacombe 181 © 300 Linear Meters (Seating and Tables) by Simone Simonelli 413 THE ARCH for the City of Genk, BE, 2017 © Constructlab 44, 45, 82, 83, 90, 91, 234, 235, 240(t), 362, 363, 404, 405, 406(t), 466(b), 476, 477, 361(b) © Constructlab / Sébastien Tripod, Mascha Fehse 73, 75 © Constructlab / Bert Villa 119, 120 © OST collective 286 © Benoit Lorent / OST collective 361(t&m) © Constructlab / OST collective 370 © Julie Guiches / OST collective 406(b), 407

THE BIG ROOF New Narratives, Atelier Collaborative for der Große Garten, Gerswalde, DE, 2020 © Constructlab 367(t) THE INTERNATIONAL GARDENS as part of the exhibition Baustelle Europa at Kunsthaus Dresden, DE, 2016 © Thomas Rustemeyer 310, 311 THE STOOL 2014–ongoing © Constructlab

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UNITO Cittadelarte–Fondazione Pistoletto at University of Torino, Turin, IT, 2015 © Constructlab / Dagmar Dudinsky 94(b) UNLEARNING CENTER with Martin Schick at BlueFACTORY, Fribourg, CH, 2019 © Constructlab 282(t) WALDRAUM workshop space for Brücke-Museum, Berlin, DE, 2020 © Constanze Flamme 364(m&b) © Constructlab 364(t)

W.O.W. ON TOUR Constructlab’s mobile Workshop on Wheels, Berlin, DE, 2016–ongoing © Constructlab 226(t&m), 358(b) © Constructlab / Anna Herbert 289 © Tine Jurtz 359 © Visuranto, Grit Koalick 377 W.O.W. bike the bicycle trailer version of Workshop on Wheels, France, 2020–ongoing © Constructlab 472, 473 W.O.W. Apartment on Wheels with nGbK Hellersdorf, Offener Kanal Europa, Draußenstadt Berlin, DE, 2022 © Constructlab 95(m&b), 283(b) W.O.W. Kistenflitzer for New Patrons / Neue Auftraggeber, Steinhöffel, DE, 2022 © Victoria Tomasco 95(t)

For further information about the projects, go to Constructlab.net

YART / BROEI Gentse Feesten, painting by Trois Pont Collectief, Ghent, BE, 2022 © Constructlab 180

WEISSWASSERMACHEN Kultur- und Bau-Festival Weisswassermachen Stadtraum Parcour, with Institut für Resilienz im ländlichen Raum, Weißwasser/O.L., DE, 2022 © Visuranto, Grit Koalick 62, 341, 375 © Tine Jurtz 177 © Constructlab 186(t)

NOTE: The editor and publisher would like to thank image rights holders who have kindly given their permission for publication. Every effort has been made to identify all rights holders before publication. We would ask any rights holders we did not manage to contact to get in touch with the editor.

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS When working within a collective practice, it is difficult to evaluate the influence that each person, each encounter, each situation has upon a project. Moreover, a quantitative approach to acknowledging those who have been involved in the making of this book has no basis for us: there is no such thing as a minor participation! The network has been founded, developed and solidified over the years thanks to contributions so rich and diverse that we cannot attempt to enumerate them. One thing is certain: this book is intended for all those who have crossed the path of Constructlab. And they are all part of this book. All those who have contributed for many years, with energy, expertise, criticism, curiosity, and good or bad moods are the essence of this book. All the numerous collaborators, inhabitants, neighbors or friends who have wielded a screwdriver or a saw, baked a pizza, brought wood for the bread oven, written a text, made coffee, taken care, opened a door, helped out with a tool, shared a recipe or a technique for a day, an hour or a minute in at least one of our projects are part of our stories. All the colleagues and other initiatives, collectives, networks or groups that explore similar tactics and ideas and help, each one in their own context, to bring to the forefront other ways to produce and practice spaces; all the members who were once involved and went away; all the art centers, associations, municipalities or institutions that have at one time called upon Constructlab, have allowed us to grow. And all the institutions, art centers and municipalities that contribute around the world to create convivial situations through artistic and cultural proposals, we wish through this book to thank you. It is a book for all of you who trust what we do, and make, together.

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IMPRINT © 2023 by jovis Verlag GmbH Texts by kind permission of the authors. Pictures by kind permission of the photographers/holders of the picture rights. All rights reserved. A book by Constructlab Editors: Joanne Pouzenc, Alexander Römer, Peter Zuiderwijk Copy editing: Melissa Larner Project management jovis Verlag: Franziska Schüffler Graphic Design: Collective Works, The Hague, NL Lithography: Bild1Druck, Berlin Printed in the European Union. Bibliographic information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data are available on the Internet at http://dnb.d-nb.de jovis Verlag GmbH Lützowstraße 33 10785 Berlin www.jovis.de jovis books are available worldwide in select bookstores. Please contact your nearest bookseller or visit www.jovis.de for information concerning your local distribution. ISBN 978-3-98612-004-7 (Softcover) ISBN 978-3-98612-005-4 (E-Book)

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PLAY PLAYFULNESS HAS NO GIVEN SHAPE. NEVERTHELESS, PLAYFUL SITUATIONS EMERGE FROM EACH PROJECT. PLAY OFTEN OCCURS AT THE INTERFACE BETWEEN THE PROJECT COMMUNITY AND THE LOCALS. PLAY DOES NOT NECESSARILY NEED A PLAYGROUND: PLAY HAPPENS IRREMEDIABLY WHENEVER IT IS ALLOWED.

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DAR STOOL

THE ARCH STADTLAND

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MON(S) INVISIBLE

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LE COURS DE L’EAU, LA COUR ET L’EAU

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RAFTY STIEMER EXPEDITION

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MAINHALL / OSTHANG PROJECT PIAZZA LABORATORIO URBANO

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W.O.W. ON TOUR

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CASA DO VAPOR

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THE ARCH

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