(Young Architects 11) The Architectural League of New York, Anne Rieselbach, Teddy Cruz - Foresight-Princeton Architectural Press (2010)

Young Architects 11
Foresight
Foreword by Teddy Cruz

Introduction by Anne Rieselbach
Bureau E.A.S.T.
Frida Escobedo Lopez
Ether Ship
ex.studio
Fake Industries
Phu Hoang Office
Princeton Architectural Press

The Architectural League of New York
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© 2010 Princeton Architectural Press and Library of Congress

the Architectural League of New York Cataloging-in-Publication Data
All rights reserved Foresight / foreword by Teddy Cruz ;
Printed and bound in China introduction by Anne Rieselbach. —
13 12 11 10 4 3 2 1 First edition 1st ed.
p. cm. — (Young architects ; 11)
No part of this book may be used or ISBN 978-1-56898-887-0 (alk. paper)
reproduced in any manner without written 1. Young Architects Forum. 2.
permission from the publisher, except in Architecture—Awards—United States.
the context of reviews. 3. Architecture—United States—History—
21st century. 4. Young architects—
Every reasonable attempt has been made United States. I. Architectural League of
to identify owners of copyright. Errors or New York.
omissions will be corrected in subsequent NA2340.Y6799 2010
editions. 720.92’2— dc22
2009039595
Editor: Becca Casbon
Designer: Paul Wagner
Cover design: Pentagram
Special thanks to:

Nettie Aljian, Bree Anne Apperley,
Sara Bader, Nicola Bednarek,
Janet Behning, Carina Cha, Tom Cho,
Penny (Yuen Pik) Chu, Carolyn Deuschle,
Russell Fernandez, Pete Fitzpatrick,
Wendy Fuller, Jan Haux, Linda Lee,
Laurie Manfra, John Myers, Katharine
Myers, Steve Royal, Dan Simon,
Andrew Stepanian, Jennifer Thompson,
Joseph Weston, and Deb Wood
of Princeton Architectural Press
—Kevin C. Lippert, publisher
Contents
Acknowledgments 8
Foreword Teddy Cruz 9
Introduction Anne Rieselbach 12
Biographies 17
Bureau E.A.S.T. 20
Frida Escobedo Lopez 46
Ether Ship 72
ex.studio 98
Fake Industries 124
Phu Hoang Office 150
7

Board of Directors
President Directors Life Trustees

Calvin Tsao Amale Andraos Christo and Jeanne-
Michael Bierut Claude
Vice Presidents Walter Chatham Ulrich Franzen
Annabelle Selldorf Kevin Chavers Barbara Jakobson
Leo Villareal Arthur Cohen Suzanne Stephens
Mitch Epstein Roger Duffy Massimo Vignelli
Ken Smith Leslie Gill
Nat Oppenheimer Maxine Griffith
Michael Sorkin Frances Halsband
Tucker Viemeister Hugh Hardy
Vicki Goldberg Steven Holl
Elise Jaffe
Executive Director Wendy Evans Joseph
Rosalie Genevro Craig Konyk
Paul Lewis
Secretary Frank Lupo
Vishaan Chakrabarti Thom Mayne
Richard Meier
Treasurer Kate Orff
David Thurm Gregg Pasquarelli
Mahadev Raman
Lyn Rice
Mark Robbins
Susan Rodriguez
Aby Rosen
Karen Stein
Robert A. M. Stern
Billie Tsien
8
Acknowledgments
Calvin Tsao, President
The Architectural League’s Young Architects Forum, initiated in 1981, has consist-
ently identified significant work by successive generations of young professionals.
Participants are selected through a juried portfolio competition, open to architects
and designers who are ten years or less out of undergraduate or graduate school.
In addition to creating a site-specific installation of their work, winners present lectures
to the design community, are the subject of video podcasts, and subsequently edit
their work and text for this yearly catalog.
An annual theme developed by the Young Architects Committee shapes the
competition, encouraging entrants to critically examine their work in light of current
issues in architectural design and theory. The committee, a group selected each year
from past participants in the Young Architects Forum, also asks prominent members
of the design community to serve with them on the jury.
Thanks go to this year’s enthusiastic and tireless committee members—Ana
Miljacki, Mark Gage, and Julio Salcedo—for their work developing the competition
theme, “Foresight,” and the thought-provoking text for the call for entries. Fellow jurors
Paola Antonelli, Nader Tehrani, and Teddy Cruz—who has also written the foreword to
this publication—brought their combined experience to help select an impressive
group of winners. We further thank League staff members Anne Rieselbach, program
director, and Nicholas Anderson, program associate, for their continued directing,
curating, and administering of the Young Architects Forum. We also thank Jennifer
Kinon and Michael Bierut of Pentagram for the competition and exhibition graphics,
as well as photographer David Sundberg of Esto, who once again documented the
exhibition.
The Young Architects Forum is made possible in part by the generous and
long-term support of Dornbracht, Susan Grant Lewin Associates, and Tischler und
Sohn. The League’s programs are also made possible, in part, by public funds from
the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs and the New York State Council on the
Arts, a state agency. Finally, we also gratefully acknowledge the continued support
of the LEF Foundation for this publication.
9
Foreword: Transcending the Foresight Divide

Teddy Cruz
Estudio Teddy Cruz
A conversation that came up during the jury of the Architectural League’s Young
Architects Forum brought to mind another day from the previous year, when I
attended the opening of the Venice Architecture Biennale. I thought of the huge
divide between the architectures of excess displayed inside the Arsenale, and the
economic precariousness of the world outside of it. It was unsettling to witness some
of the most “cutting edge” architectural practices present themselves as silent props
for the free-market economic and political systems that were so wildly floundering
that September. In my mind, this contrast magnified the powerlessness of our
profession against the context of the world’s most pressing sociopolitical and
economic realities. Yet as I was meandering through about a hundred portfolios,
meditating on this year’s theme, “Foresight,” what resonated most with me was
how this unprecedented moment of crisis could actually become an opportunity
to anticipate and rethink the institutions of architecture, practice, and research.
A sense of pessimistic optimism drives this period, as we confront the double
meaning of this crisis: on the one hand, to expose the unprecedented conflict
inscribed across the economy, the environment, and the social and political value
systems of a globalized world; and on the other, to make this very conflict the
operational device to redefine our normative idea of the institution of architecture,
inspiring expanded models of practice and research.
Foresight: Making Different Arrangements?

There is an overwhelming perception that this moment calls for fundamental
change, but what does this really mean? Climate change, for example, tends to be
seen solely as an environmental crisis, when in reality we must confront it as a
cultural one. Across all these current crises, institutions of urban development need
to redefine themselves, forming a different type of interface with the public and
generating new ways of thinking and acting beyond ideological polarities and
reductive problem solving.
It is saddening to see how even the progressive agenda of the Obama
administration, so far, has been defined by conventional thinking when referring to
issues of urbanization—that a main idea behind producing new jobs is simply to buy
more cars, or that “investing” in public and transportation infrastructure manifests
itself solely as fixing bridges or building more roads.
10 Young Architects 11
Similarly, I recently witnessed a presentation by Jim Kunstler, the author of The

Geography of Nowhere. As he recounted his travels across the United States, he
described how, in unprecedented ways, different audiences across the country were
clamoring for solutions. He then suggested that he saw this sense of urgency with
skepticism, feeling that the solutions being sought were only to maintain a status quo
and not to fundamentally rethink everyday practices.
Foresight Across Divided Agendas

But as I dwell on the question of foresight that the 2009 Young Architects Forum
advanced, and the frustrating status quo even in this era of “change,” I cannot avoid
thinking how the debate continues to be polarized between the politics of the right
and the left. I would like to speculate on three current and problematic foresights
across the following divided agendas in the architectural spectrum:
1. A project of apolitical formalism, made of hyperaesthetics for the sake of
aesthetics, continues to press the notion of the avant-garde as an autonomous
project, needing distance from the institutions to operate critically in the research of
experimental form. (Instead, I would argue that it is a project of radical proximity that
can produce new aesthetic categories, problematizing the relationship of the social,
the political, and the formal.)
2. The cheap politics of architectural identity, packaged as a stylistic
neoconservatism, sponsored by new urbanism’s aspiration for a homogeneous
middle class protected by picket fences and Victorian porches—the Truman Show/
homeland security of urbanism—hijack the debate away from the true troubles of
urbanization: the defunding of social and public infrastructure and the economic
gap dividing enclaves of megawealth and the circles of poverty that surround them.
(I would say what is needed here is a committed reinvestment to research a creative
triangulation across new interpretations of density, social, and environmental
networks, and an urban pedagogy that will allow us to rethink the meaning of
infrastructure and “ownership.”)
3. A project of social justice in architecture, as expressed in the most benign
efforts such as Architecture for Humanity, continues to polarize the meaning of
aesthetics and design, equally contributing to the widening of the gap between social
and formal systems. In this context, emergency relief efforts are always biased toward
Foreword 11
fixing short-term problems, not communities in the long term. (Again, I would argue
that a reversal of thinking must open the idea that architects, besides being
designers of buildings, can be designers of political processes, economic models,
and collaboration across institutions and jurisdictions. Ultimately this social justice
implies the politics of aesthetics.)
I am not trying to argue here for a foresight that searches for the middle ground
across these divided agendas. Rather I advance a need for a critical recontext-
ualization of our different approaches and procedures. Ultimately, it does not matter
whether urban development is wrapped by the latest morphogenetic skin, pseudo-
neoclassical prop, or LEED-certified photovoltaic panels if all approaches continue
to camouflage the most pressing problems of urbanization today. Without altering the
exclusionary policies constructing the socioeconomic and political grounds of our
society, our profession will continue to be subordinated to the visionless environ-
ments defined by the bottom-line urbanism of the developer’s spreadsheet and the
neoconservative politics and economics of a hyper-individualistic ownership society.
No advances in urban planning can be made without redefining what we mean
by infrastructure, density, mixed-use, and affordability. No meaningful breakthroughs
in housing design can occur without advances in housing policy and the economy.
As architects, we can be responsible for imagining counter-spatial procedures,
political and economic structures that can produce new modes of sociability and
public culture.
As a previous Young Architects Forum winner, I am thankful that the Architectural
League of New York continues to open up this cultural platform and allow this debate
to take place and unfold. I cannot avoid imagining that some of the best propositions
that would allow a way out of this conundrum are in the hands of a new generation
of architects who can hopefully transcend the clichés of this ideological divide. Some
of the best propositions I saw in the Foresight portfolios were those that perhaps
belong to a new agenda: projects that want to be impossibly comprehensive, blurring
the boundaries between urbanism, architecture, landscape, and infrastructure. Their
foresight is in making architecture that is conceived as infrastructure and is intended
to create community, both of which consider density as a way of inserting complexity
into the one-dimensionality of institutions and practice, closing the gap between
artistic experimentation and social responsibility.
Introduction
Anne Rieselbach, Program Director
Each year, the Architectural League’s Young Architects Forum competition committee
works to draft a theme that reflects current concerns and challenges entrants to
contextualize the underlying ideas that shape their design and practice. The summer
of 2008 was an increasingly turbulent time. At each successive meeting throughout
the late summer and fall, the daily news brought continued reminders of the multiple
factors destabilizing an already-deteriorating environment. Responding to the eco-
nomic, sociopolitical, and climatic fluxes, entrants were asked by the committee to
show work that relies on foresight to imagine an effective role for architecture now
and in the future.
The call for entries defined foresight as an ability that “relies on the surveying,
researching, and engaging of the present toward particular, desired outcomes in the
future.” Entrants were posed a series of challenges: What problems can architecture
solve? What problems can it not? Is architecture a vehicle to be used to address our
most pressing problems and challenges? Or is it something else?
Architects have the ability to concretize information—translating into physical
form what might otherwise seem abstract. Whether through theoretical speculations
or pragmatic designs, the winning works demonstrate innovative ways to illuminate
questions and envision solutions. Some of the projects provide commentaries
on contemporary socioeconomic problems, others take on design solutions for
environmental challenges, while some create structures to respond sensitively to
particular places—and many simultaneously explore all of these concerns. The
installations created by the competition winners for the League’s Young Architects
Forum spotlighted these concerns.
Underlying Sung Goo Yang’s work is the concept that architecture begins with
“virtual foresight,” rather than a real product. Architects create designs to sell the
vision of what will be, rather than the real. Taking the imagery of virtual foresight a step
further, Yang displayed a series of unbuilt designs for pavilions, bridges, and urban
spaces. Framing these projects were a series of intricate patterns that Yang trans-
formed from being “simple records of the process,” to compositions that “morph” the
final designs in other directions. The repetitive geometries of some suggest structural
forms, while the abstracted textures of others seem to line a mysterious inner realm
removed from time and place.
Introduction 13
Phu Hoang believes that “intersections between political crises and rapid
ecological change can provide architects with opportunities for architectural
innovation.” His response to the competition theme included a series of research
initiatives that project “present futures”—new kinds of spaces, organizations, and
forms intended to initiate radical change. His firm’s installation, the Geopoliticizer,
shows his No Man’s Land, Every Man’s Land, and Foodopolis initiatives. Each
proposal was vertically superimposed with Google Earth satellite views that overlaid
bathymetric charts of underwater levels. The layered information contained within the
Geopoliticizer revealed the internal logic of more traditional renderings of the firm’s
architectural projects displayed on the adjacent wall.
Much of Frida Escobedo Lopez’s work—primarily residential design—addresses
questions about what makes a place desirable or decadent, what forces shape the
configuration of cities, and how places relate to the hopes and desires that lie in their
collective imagery. A photomural backed her installation, transporting visitors from
the gallery to the shores of Caletilla Beach, Acapulco. According to Escobedo, this
“wallscape” was intended to blur the line between decorative surface and emotional
setting. The place-making took habitable dimensions, with furniture designed for
the Bocachica Hotel used to create a reading corner. Visitors could view portfolios
featuring the firm’s work, flipbooks, and other collected objects and images while
sitting in the real lounge chair mirrored in the wallscape.
A collaged field of randomly organized photographs illustrated ex.studio’s diverse
projects in far-flung locations, including Italy, Senegal, Spain, Portugal, and Mexico. At
every scale—from urban design schemes to pavilions, and from objects to landscape
interventions—their work integrates architecture, design, and sculpture, exploring the
relationship between art and function. The wide variety of sites, scales, and processes
influences Patricia Meneses’s and Ivan Juarez’s open-ended approach to design.
Every new project provides them the opportunity to discover and experiment, lending
each project a “special character that reveals diverse possibilities for the next.” Many
projects place an emphasis on the participatory in design, construction, and use.
The centerpiece of Aziza Chaouni and Takako Tajima’s installation for their firm,
Bureau E.A.S.T., was part of their Out Of Water project, an information-packed display
designed to outline and respond to the world’s looming water shortage by analyzing
14
15
existing technologies and the future of water infrastructure. A freestanding, kiosk-

like toilet stall displayed case studies for a new water culture in arid climates.
The underlying methodology and design reflect their concern with research and
process—often working with cross-disciplinary teams. Other projects, such as their
recently completed curating of the Casablanca Biennale and the ongoing Fez River
Project, were revealed when visitors pulled out printed vinyl sheets wrapped on toilet
paper-like rolls mounted on the gallery wall below a vinyl supergraphic, which used
piped plumbing patterns to identify the “streams” of their work.
Urtzi Grau and Cristina Goberna, principals of Fake Industries, built a system of
ten “communication machines,” composed of LED screens and bookracks mounted
on tripods, to display their speculative projects. The firm’s often-provocative work is
directed toward finding design opportunities inherent in the consequences of the
current economic downturn—notably related to foreclosures, real estate, and credit.
A series of videos and take-away “instant books” documented their unorthodox
solutions, which include explorations of alternate forms of domesticity necessitated by
foreclosures, planning strategies that take advantage of the burst real estate bubble
and prevent similar future occurrences, and new ways of making architecture whose
main requirement is to bypass credit agencies.
No single aesthetic, methodology, or design solution unifies the work of the
competition winners. Unlike recent years, when winning work frequently displayed
common design features—such as an emphasis on the potential of various CNC
production techniques—distinct design languages set each group of projects apart
from the others. Nevertheless, whether documentary, constructed, or transgressive,
all of the work employs architects’ unique analytic and design tools to respond to
the present with an eye to the future.
17
Biographies
Aziza Chaouni and Takako Tajima are principals of Bureau E.A.S.T., with offices
in Los Angeles, Toronto, and Fez, Morocco. The firm’s primary focus is to sustainably
integrate design into the environment. Their Fez River remediation and urban develop-
ment scheme won the Holcim Gold Award for Sustainable Construction (Africa
and the Middle East) in 2008, the Great Places Planning Award (given jointly by the
Environmental Design Research Association, PLACES journal, and Metropolis
magazine), and the Holcim Gold Award (International) in 2009, and is a finalist for
the 2009 INDEX:Award.
Chaouni is currently an assistant professor at the John H. Daniels Faculty of
Architecture, Landscape and Design at the University of Toronto. She is the director
of the research board of Docomomo Morocco, and winner of the Progressive
Architecture Award in 2007 for her project Hybrid Urban Sutures: Filling the Gaps in
the Medina of Fez. Chaouni received her B.Sc. in Civil Engineering from Columbia
University and her M.Arch. from the Harvard Graduate School of Design. Prior
to founding Bureau E.A.S.T., Tajima was a senior designer at Urban Studio in Los
Angeles, where she worked on design reviews of major projects for the cities of Santa
Monica, Santa Ana, and Pasadena. Her work in landscape architecture includes
a proposal for an eco- and agri-tourism resort outside Shanghai, China, which was
awarded an ASLA Professional Honor Award. Tajima received her B.Arch. from
Carnegie Mellon University and an MLA and an MUP from the Harvard Graduate
School of Design.
Frida Escobedo Lopez founded her Mexico City firm in 2006, after acting as
codirector of perro rojo from 2003–6 (with Alejandro Alarcón). Her built and current
work includes Casa 24, Casa 602, Casa Negra, and Villa 49, part of the Ordos 100
project. Her renovation (with José Rojas) of the Bocachica Hotel in Acapulco is
currently under construction. In 2006, the firm received first place in an affordable
housing competition, and in 2005 Escobedo was awarded a Young Creator’s Grant
from the National System of Arts, Mexico, for the Caja Gris.
Escobedo received her B.Arch. from the Universidad Iberoamericana, where
she currently is a faculty member.
Sung Goo Yang established his Boston-based firm Ether Ship in 2008. His work
spans scales from urban design to fashion runways to abstract digital animations and
designs—all expressing his interest in the interplay between image and form. In 2006,
Yang received a grand prize for his Saemangeum Silts project for the UIA-UNESCO
Celebration of Cities 2 International Competition. Yang won a Merit Award for the same
project in 2007 from the BSA/AIA Unbuilt Architecture Design Awards.
Yang studied architectural engineering at Korea University, where he was a
founding member of the “A-GENE-DA” Design Group, and received his M.Arch. from
the Harvard University Graduate School of Design. He was recently a guest critic and
lecturer at Seoul National University.
With offices in Barcelona and Mexico City, ex.studio was founded by principals
Ivan Juarez and Patricia Meneses. Their firm has developed projects at many differ-
ent scales, from buildings to objects to city and landscape interventions. With work
in Europe, Africa, Asia, and Mexico, ex.studio conceives each project in relation
to its physical context and its potential to be enriched by diverse views and disciplines.
Their work has garnered awards including: an AR award for emerging architects;
the Young Architects Prize given by the College of Architects in Barcelona; the
Torsanlorenzo International Landscape Prize, Rome; the New Generation Award from
Contractworld in Hannover, Germany; and the National Grant for Mexican Young
Architects, from the National Fund for Culture and Arts.
Ivan Juarez graduated from the architecture school of San Luis Potosi University,
Mexico, and specialized in landscape architecture at the School of Architecture
of Barcelona, where Patricia Meneses also received her architecture degree.
They have been guest lecturers and professors at several institutions, including the
University of Westminster, United Kingdom; the University Alcalá, Madrid; the
Architekturzentrum, Vienna; the Royal Institute of British Architects; the International
University of Catalonia; the Instituto Europeo di Design; the College of Architects,
Barcelona; the Contemporary Art Foundation, Cadiz; and the Universidad
Iberoamericana, Mexico.
Biographies 19
Cristina Goberna and Urtzi Grau are principals (with collaborators Ariel Boles,
Cornelia Herlz, and Cristian Zanoni) of Brooklyn-based Fake Industries, “a
conglomerate that explores the potentials of architectural agonism and false
constructions.” Their work, both speculative and built, examines alternative forms of
domesticity and the urban landscape. Their individual and joint work and writings
have been published internationally. In 2008 they were winners of Europan 9.
Goberna graduated from the School of Architecture of Sevilla, where she
cofounded the multidisciplinary group La Casita. Grau graduated from the School
of Architecture of Barcelona. Both Goberna and Grau received M.S. degrees in
Advanced Architectural Design from Columbia University.
Phu Hoang is the founder and principal of Phu Hoang Office, a New York–
based practice with projects as small as one thousand square feet and research
initiatives larger than one million square feet. Regardless of scale, the work seeks
opportunities within the overlooked boundaries between architecture and politics—
whether directly political or within the intricacies of environmental policies. The practice
was awarded an honorable mention in the 2007 Sudapan competition as well as in
the 2007 Environmental Tectonics competition. Hoang holds a B.Sc. degree from the
Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta and an M.Arch. degree from Columbia
University in New York. He is a studio coordinator in the graduate architecture program
at the University of Pennsylvania.
Bureau E.A.S.T.
22 Les Abattoirs
24 Resuscitating the Fez River
26 Fez River Site 1: R’cif Plaza
28 Fez River Site 2: Andalous Playground
30 Fez River Site 3: Chouarra Leatherworks and Gardens
32 Douar Tensift: Time-shares
34 Aquaponic Shelter Kit
36 Hybrid Urban Sutures
40 Desert Ecotourism
42 Out Of Water
Foresight 21
If foresight does not allow us to ascertain the future, it at least allows us to

design for one that we wish to come into being. In our eyes this would be a
future of leanness, in which the built environment is carefully tailored to innovate
while respecting ecologies and social equity; and architecture, landscape, and
infrastructure hybridize to reinforce each other while eliminating redundancies.
Foresight is incorporated in our work as a design methodology in its
own right. We believe that design production should not be limited solely to
a client’s immediate needs or to our current aesthetic concerns, but should
rather project itself into the future in order to prolong its relevance for its milieu.
The survival of our buildings and landscapes is predicated upon their ability to
adapt to new conditions, and thus, every project requires us to start anew in
our consideration of what sustainability means to a particular context.
Anticipating what is to come in our cities, landscapes, and environments
is at the core of our design strategies and is based on rigorous research,
done in collaboration with other experts. The most illustrative example of how
we work is our collaboration with landscape architect and materials expert
Liat Margolis on the ongoing Out Of Water (OOW) research project. OOW
investigates where high-risk urban arid zones will be located in fifty years and
identifies existing tactics and technologies or develops conceptual ones to
tackle water shortages in these areas. The knowledge we gain in this research
will be transferred to projects we are working on in arid climates around the
world (the Moroccan Sahara, the deserts of the United Arab Emirates, and
Los Angeles, among others).
22 Bureau E.A.S.T.
Les Abattoirs
Casablanca, Morocco, 2009
Morocco’s first contemporary culture biennial, and the first of its kind in North Africa,
Les Transculturelles des Abattoirs was held in the former slaughterhouses of
Casablanca, known as the Abattoirs de Casablanca. For the event, the slaughter-
houses were transformed into a vast exhibition space, hosting a wide range of art,
architecture, video installations, dance performances, and concerts. Curated by
Bureau E.A.S.T., the architecture component of Les Transculturelles introduced a
series of micropublic spaces into the abattoirs. Nestled inside the larger space of the
slaughterhouses, these autonomous, small-scale mobile structures were designed to
encourage interaction and occupation. An international roster of architects contributed
installations for the event, including Atelier Bow-Wow (Tokyo), Office dA (Boston),
Khoury Levit Fong/Emergent Software (Toronto), Interboro Partners (New York), Eric
Ellingsen (Chicago), and Kilo Architectures (Casablanca). Team: Bureau E.A.S.T.,
Sacha Leong, and students from the École Supérieure des Beaux Arts de Casablanca
1 2
3 0 10m
0 10m
Les Abattoirs 23
1: Concept diagram 5: System axonometric

2: Woolen hook swing concept 6: Installation
3: Section
4: Plan
traditional Moroccan
sheepskin wrapped
and secured with zip ties
hooks used in the past

nylon to transport meat across
rope tracks the slaughterhouse
abattoirs
6
24 Bureau E.A.S.T.
Resuscitating the Fez River

Fez, Morocco, 2008
The city of Fez is composed of three parts: the medina, a ninth-century medieval
walled city; the Ville Nouvelle, a colonial French-built quarter; and the sprawling new
construction of the peripheries. The city of Fez’s Department of Water and Power
(RADEEF) is currently implementing a plan that will channel the city’s sewage into two
treatment plants. As a result, the Fez River will soon be free of blackwater and regain
its potential as a public amenity. If rehabilitated, its impact will be extremely salient to
the unique urban context of Fez. Indeed, the medina’s intramural population not only
lacks public open spaces, but is also experiencing a rapid deterioration of its envi-
ronment due to over-densification and aging public infrastructure. Along with its
initiative to remove sewage from the river, the RADEEF commissioned Bureau E.A.S.T.
to propose a rehabilitation plan that would not only help remediate the river but also
introduce new parks and plazas along its banks within the area most lacking in public
open space, the medina. The key interventions within the medina are: the R’cif Plaza,
the Andalous Playground, and the Chouarra Leatherworks and Gardens. This project
won the Holcim Regional Gold Award (Africa and the Middle East) in 2008, and the
Holcim Gold Award (International) in 2009.
Site 03: Chouarra

Leatherworks and Gardens Site 02: Andalous
Playground
JNANE SBIL
Area: 78,625 m2
Hamams
Mosques Site 01: R’cif Plaza
Masjid
PLACE MOKHFIYA
Zawiya / Qobba / Rawda Area: 2,625 m2
Medina Waterways at grade

Waterways underground
Master Plan Public open space
1
Resuscitating the Fez River 25
1: Map of the medina

2: Water quality improvement plan
3: Fez River watershed
Floating “restorer”
technology
Rainwater harvesting Bank stabilization

overlay district
Upland erosion
control
Constructed
wetlands
Storm-water
management
Rainwater harvesting
Rainwater harvesting
overlay district
Soil phytoremediation
Green street
Oued Sebou Watershed holds:

6% of Morocco’s surface area
28% of surface water resources
20% of underground water resources
Fez River leaving the medina
Fez River entering the medina
3
26 Bureau E.A.S.T.
Fez River Site 1: R’cif Plaza
The R’cif Plaza site sits above a portion of the Fez River that was paved over when
Morocco was still a French protectorate. As the medina’s main intermodal trans-
portation hub, the site is currently one large paved surface brimming with organized
chaos. Cars, motorcycles, donkeys, and buses all occupy the same area and wait
to load and unload goods and people. Fortunately, the city is now in the process of
eliminating vehicular access into R’cif Plaza. No longer needed to accommodate cars
and other vehicular traffic, the R’cif will be transformed into a major public plaza and
a critical threshold for the new pedestrian river axis. Programs in the new R’cif Plaza
include but are not limited to an amphitheater, outdoor cafes, a native garden that
doubles as a storm water infiltration zone, gateway forecourts, street vending, a
farmers’ market, pick-up and drop-off areas, and a zone to hire and load donkeys.
Recycled leather canopy
Cable support system
Poles supporting canopy
New stairs toward 2

river + bus route 3
4
3 5
1
Recycled wood benches
6
9
1 2 10
Fez River Site 1 27
1: Site program axonometric

2: Site plan
3: View within R’cif Plaza
4: View toward the open auditorium and river
4
28 Bureau E.A.S.T.
Fez River Site 2: Andalous Playground
Before its current incarnation as a parking lot, the Andalous site was where hides from
the Chouarra tanneries were laid out to dry. Thus, below the paving that now covers
the site, chromium deposits from decades of use are presumably leaching toxins into
the water table. The Fez River Project proposes removal of the soils from the lot for
off-site phytoremediation and the importation of clean soils. The Andalous site is
slated to become a pedestrian-only zone, due to the same underlying initiative that will
eliminate cars from the R’cif. The site will become the medina’s first playground with
site furnishing and play equipment created from salvaged materials. It will also include
a constructed wetland that will help clean the river and provide a new wildlife habitat.
It will provide areas for passive recreation and serve as a demonstration garden for
educating the public about the riparian ecosystem.
Recycled leather canopy
Cable support system
Storm-water
retention wetland
Benches
Playground using
recycled tires
Recycled wood
benches
Poles supporting
canopy
1 2
Fez River Site 2 29
1: Site program axonometric 4: View from the playground toward the

2: Site plan Chouarra tanneries
3: View toward the playground from the
Chouarra tanneries
4
30 Bureau E.A.S.T.
Fez River Site 3: Chouarra Leatherworks and Gardens
Predicated on removing a major point source of pollution and on revitalizing an

embattled industry, the Chouarra tanneries will become the Chouarra Leatherworks
and Gardens. The leatherworks will provide training and information to would-be
leather entrepreneurs with opportunities to learn from artists-in-residence. The new
facility will also provide existing craftsmen with mixed-use workshops, retail spaces,
and a community center. Exhibition spaces and showrooms will be shared among the
medina’s entire craft community to encourage collaboration and cross-pollination of
ideas. The central tannery area will become a public botanical garden that provides
a respite from the bustle of the medina. A cafe will open for visitors, medina residents,
and shoppers. During the project’s implementation, the tanneries will also function
as a nursery for propagating riparian plants for the river and constructed wetlands.
Team: Bureau E.A.S.T., Reem Alissa (landscape systems expert), Marco Cenzatti
(industrial districts expert), John Ferri (construction expert), Bonnie Kaplan (historic
restoration expert), Alex Toshkov (historian), Faiza Zemmouri (economist), Hester Ezra
and Marieke van den Heuvel (artisinal craft/design experts)
Cafe
Administration + visitor center
Training center + craftsmen
common spaces
Original tannery buildings,

to be rehabilitated into
a leather design center
New buildings
added illegally,
to be removed
1 2
Fez River Site 3 31
1: Site program axonometric 4: Phasing strategy

2: Site plan 5: View toward the Leather Arts and
3: Phytoremediation process Design Center
Phase 1 Phase 2 Phase 3 Phase 4

Removal of Removal of toxic earth Phytoremediation Planting of pits +
4 illegal construction for ex-situ remediation + of paths using Indian Mustard seating inside pits
building rehabilitation
5
32 Bureau E.A.S.T.
Douar Tensift: Time-shares

Marrakech, Morocco, 2007
Over the past five years, the city of Marrakech has experienced unprecedented
growth in tourism, straining the limited water resources of the city and causing its
once-luxuriant palm groves to decay. In this damaged landscape, a developer asked
us to propose a new typology of accommodation: low-impact, luxury time-shares that
meet the requirements of a five-star resort (private swimming pools, spa, restaurants,
and sport courts) while being sensitive to the city’s arid environment. We resolved
these conﬂicting demands by introducing a large central pond to the site that acts as
|a natural water filtration system, employing local earth-building methods and passive
ventilation, creating a vegetable garden that supports the restaurant, and planting
a palm tree nursery that promotes the rehabilitation of on-site and nearby palm groves.
Team: Bureau E.A.S.T., MS Archid, Dan Brunn Architecture, Liat Margolis, and
Zaneta Hong
Natural swimming
pool emerging from
central pond
Senior suites
Stepped natural
filtration system
Restaurant
Central pond filled
Spa with aquatic plants
Palm grove
Parking replanting project
Junior suites
Planned municipal road
Vegetable Palm tree nursery

garden
Clay tennis courts
1
Douar Tensift 33
1: Site plan
2: Sectional perspective
3: House interior
Textile shade
laminated with
photovoltaic film
Green wall with tensile cable
system + climbing vines
Water runnel
Cleansing biotope
Vegetated slope with

native ground cover
+ palm species
Interior
courtyard
Subterranean
wetland gardens
2
3
34 Bureau E.A.S.T.
Aquaponic Shelter Kit

Design study, 2008
As the number of displaced populations around the world increases, it is crucial

to rethink a model for disaster relief that might act as an incubator for sustainable,
nonpolluting food production with immediate and long-term economic potential. As
a possible solution, we propose the Aquaponic Shelter Kit. It combines the structure
of a basic pitched tent with an aquaponic system of sustainable food production that
integrates aquaculture (fish farming) and hydroponics (the cultivation of plants in a
nutrient solution). This symbiotic system is an easy-to-assemble, solar-powered
emergency shelter kit that could provide displaced populations with shelter, food,
and, in the long term, means for income generation. Because it is based on a closed
cycle of production without reliance on soil, it can be deployed anywhere, even on
brownfields where traditional agriculture must be avoided. Team: Bureau E.A.S.T.
and StudioKuo
Unused space Unused surface Aquaponic kit Rain
Sun
Quilted tent fabric

O2
O2
Shelter Removable for harvesting
O2 O2 O2 O2
Subsistence and replanting
+ =
O2
O2
O2 O2O2 O2 O2
Skill
Sustainability Solar panels
N2 O
Self-sufficiency Power source for
N 2O
pump and indoor light
N2O
N2O N ON O
NO N2 O
NO NO
N 2O
NO
NO NO
rld water 5 to 7 tons

wo For 1 ton of fish of vegetables can Demountable structure
be produced
co
produced
velopping
nsu
70% Fish waste

mptio
used for
farming
De
Fish nutrient Fertilizer

n
Inner lining
1 2
Aquaponic Shelter Kit 35
1: Concept diagram 4: View of the elevated pond

2: Exploded axonometric from the bedrooms
3: Building sections
12'-0" 12'-0"
5'-10"
Roof cover with drainage (optional)
Solar panel, used Double-skin plastic sheeting,
for water pumping with aquaponic components
Window for Perforated plastic pocket
natural ventilation Hermetic root holder,
made of coconut fiber
Gravel
PVC tubes
8'-0"
PVC connectors
Fish tank
Interior of tank, lined
4'-0"
with asphalt paper

Interior insulating sheeting (cotton
fabric with fire-retardant treatment)
Habitable area = 288 sq. ft.

Growing area = 108 sq. ft.
Aquaculture volume = 950 gal. Metal stake
Plant pockets = 100 Ground protection
3 Maximum fish in tank = 900 sheeting (vinyl)
4
36 Bureau E.A.S.T.
Hybrid Urban Sutures

Fez, Morocco, 2006
This project investigates the relationship between infrastructure and urban fabric in
the context of Middle Eastern historical city centers, the medinas. In doing so, it
proposes a new model of intervention in historic fabrics and generates formal and
programmatic innovations from a highly loaded and restrictive world heritage site, the
medina of Fez.
In the midst of current trends that oscillate between the blunt mimicking of
the traditional courtyard typology and the deployment of kitschy, ostentatious
regionalism, this project develops a response that is sensitive to both the Fez
medina’s stringent building regulations and the integrity of the existing context while
utilizing an aggressively creative architectural language. At the same time, the project
addresses and resolves the triple stigmas of the medinas: the lack of infrastructure,
public facilities, and open green areas.
At the beginning of the 1970s, the Al Quaraouiyine University—which had
constituted the main cultural and spiritual center of the Fez medina—was dismantled
and moved to the outskirts of the Ville Nouvelle, the colonial, French-built area of
the city. This intervention deprived the medina of its major historical landmark and
cultural outlet, which not only offered several public lectures a week and a space for
encounters, but also symbolized the pride of the local population.
As a solution, this project proposes a university organized as research centers
placed along the river axis, connected to a heterotopic network of classrooms
embedded into the existing urban fabric and built on sites presently containing
collapsed buildings. The role of each research center is twofold: to resolve the
infrastructural rupture existing along the river axis and to offer public programs that
can be shared by the community and the medina. Each chosen site is an exercise in
how the university could act both as an urban connector and as a public space,
catering to the changing needs of a population that longs for modern forms of leisure
and service.
This project is the first serious attempt of its kind, both on the level of urban
analysis and specific architectural intervention, to have been undertaken in Morocco.
This project received a Progressive Architecture Award in 2007.
Hybrid Urban Sutures 37
1: Mapping of heterotopic network

of classrooms
1 minute
2 minutes
3 minutes
4 minutes
1 5 minutes
6 minutes
7 minutes
8 minutes
University
research centers
Classrooms 9 minutes
Open space
Built context
10 minutes
Vehicular road
River
WALKING DISTANCES FROM

RESEARCH CENTERS TO CLASSROOMS
1
38 Bureau E.A.S.T.
2: Mapping of selection criteria

3: Final selection
4: Programmatic diagrams
MAPPING OF
FINAL
SELECTION CRITERIA
SELECTION
Hospital
Existing Quaraouiyíne University
Small clinics
High school Main mosques University sites along spine
Secondary school Small mosques Selected lots with ruins
Primary school Zaouias (cooperatives) Boukrareb axis
Neighborhood Commercial arteries Secondary street network
2 3
PROGRAM DIAGRAMS
7 Minutes Walk
5 Minutes Walk
4 Minutes Walk
7 Minutes Walk
2 Minutes Walk
5 Minutes Walk
10 Minutes Walk
SPORT FIELD
PARKING
PUBLIC GARDEN BRIDGING + LIFTING

EXHIBITION
(Rehabilitated Tanning Pits)
GALLERIES
FINE ARTS
AUDITORIUM
(CINEMAS)
STITCHING
THEOLOGY
LIBRARY
STUDENT CENTER
ARCHITECTURE
BOOK MARKET
HISTORY
SOCIOLOGY
DONKEY STOP
LIFTING
SEATING STEPS
ECONOMICS
PARKING
4
Hybrid Urban Sutures 39
5: South perspective
6: View toward bus station access stairs
6
40 Bureau E.A.S.T.
Desert Ecotourism
Sahara Desert, Egypt, 2006–7
Since the start of the twentieth century, efforts to introduce tourism to the Sahara
Desert have unfortunately produced typologies that for the most part disrupt or
irreparably damage the oasis ecosystems in which they have been embedded.
Fortunately, alternative typologies have recently emerged that successfully negotiate
the pitfalls of their predecessors by adopting local materials, utilizing natural ventilation
systems, harnessing wind and solar power, employing innovative water management
systems, and interacting with local cultures and economies. This research project
analyzed and documented three examples of this new generation of eco-conscious
desert lodge. One example, Adrère Amellal, is located near the Siwa Oasis, nestled in
the Western Desert of Egypt. Here, abandoned traditional Siwan houses have been
restored into ten suites and seventeen rooms, which use natural ventilation systems to
eliminate the need for air conditioning. The main objective of the project is to offer an
alternative approach to tourism that capitalizes on the natural and cultural assets of
the region while ensuring their preservation. Emphasis is placed on offering visitors
an experience that allows them to enjoy the desert landscape, learn about its unique
geological and ecological features, and gain insight into the history, culture, and
traditions of its people. Equally important are the benefiting and strengthening of the
local community and its economy by employing local workers, using local products
and traditional skills, reviving extinct crafts, and transferring know-how and
experiences to the community. This project was funded by the Appleton Traveling
Fellowship. Team: Bureau E.A.S.T., Nayla Al-Akl, Veronica Cheann, Ryoji Karube,
Stella Pantelia
Alger Tunis
Rabat
Tripoli
Cairo
Al Karm
Adere Ecolodge
Amellal
Sahara Ecolodge
Airport
Wadi Gamel
Oasis Camp
World Heritage Site
Closed borders
Open borders
Nouarkchott
Border checkpoints
Main roads Khartoum
Main dirt roads
Bamako Niameye
Successful ecotouristic
projects N‘djamena
Selected sites
1
Desert Ecotourism 41
1: Sahara map
2: Wastewater reclamation
3: Site plan
4: Construction system
Ventilation
shaft
Waste-
water Sediments
Stone
inlet
retaining
walls Concrete
tank Gravel
Wetland
Plastic To salt lake +
(bamboo Clean water
2 sheet vegetable fields
+ papyrus) outlet pipe
Adrere Amellal
(White Mountains) 7
Clay
6
Bamboo ceiling
6
4 5 Small windows
1 2 oriented in direction
6
3 6 of the lake breeze
8 to optimize natural
Salt Lake ventilation
Palm tree trunk
8 Wood shutter
.1.5
screen
.2 .45
9
Outer wall kershif
10
(clay + salt blocks)
3.3
Inner wall
(sandstone + clay)
.8 .1
1. Garage Foundation
(sandstone +concrete)
2. Storage
3. Administration Sand
4. Restaurant Gravel
5. Bar Soil
6. Rooms
3 7. Water remediation 4
system + wetland
8. Private villa
9. Agricultural fields
10. Spring + pool
42 Bureau E.A.S.T.
Out Of Water
Research and traveling exhibition, 2009
While water scarcity is a problem of global proportions, it is particularly significant

and potentially irreversible in arid zones. Today, 14 percent of the world’s biomes are
arid, another 14 percent are semiarid, and 2 percent are Mediterranean climate zones.
Given global warming, today’s arid zones are bound to change and expand.
According to the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), one quarter of the
Earth’s land mass is already threatened by desertification. The United Nations projects
that in the next ten years fifty million people will be living in deserts, potentially causing
major ﬂuxes in migration, political tension, and general instability. Climatic pressure
is exacerbated by other factors such as population growth and increases in industrial
and agricultural consumption. Finding ways to inhabit the desert sustainably will not
only mitigate the effects of water scarcity but may also slow down desertification.
Faced with a future shortage of water, how will existing and future cities and
landscapes adjust to the drastic environmental shift? Out Of Water is a response to
this looming challenge. The goal of the exhibition is to reimagine urban futures through
the use of water technologies and to delineate an expanded vocabulary of water
resources, water quality, and infrastructural/architectonic relationships to our urban
environments. The first part of the exhibit documents contemporary case studies and
technologies for the collection, conversion, and distribution of water in arid climates.
The second part showcases speculative scenarios for a new water culture in arid
climates by a select group of architects, landscape architects, material technologists,
and urban planners. Team: Bureau E.A.S.T. and Liat Margolis; research assistants:
You-Been Kim, Danny Tseng, Shannon Wiley, Fadi Masoud; exhibition fabrication:
Scott Powers, Larry Norris, Johnny Bui, Tadashi Kikuno, Jacqueline Urbano
+ =
1
Out Of Water 43
1: Mobile toilet concept

2: Mobile toilet instructions
3: The exhibition at the University of Toronto
Step 01 Step 02 Step 03
2 Step 04 Step 05
3
44 Bureau E.A.S.T.
4: Mobile toilet axonometric diagram

5: An occupied mobile toilet
WATER QUALITY
1 2 3 4 5
1. Potable / desalinated
2. Treated three times
3. Treated twice
4. Treated once
5. Contaminated /
saline / raw sewage
01
PROJECT KEY
HIGH NOT
INFRASTRUCTURAL
INTEGRATIVE
COLLECTING 01
> 10000L
4
WIND
N
LANDSCAPE
> 1000L LOW INTEGRATIVE
1
3 5
> 100L
1. Water input quality
2 2. Water output quality
ARCHITECTURAL
3. Energy consumption
> 10L NUL
HIGHLY-
INTEGRATIVE
4. Integration
5. Scale
PERFORMANCE DIAGRAM
5
Out Of Water 45
6: Sample project panel
6
Frida Escobedo Lopez
48 Casa 24
50 Casa 602
52 Casa Negra
54 1854 bis
55 Proyectos Monclova
56 Social Equipment Guide
60 Affordable Housing
61 Hotel Bocachica
64 Gray Box
66 Ordos 100
Foresight 47
In architecture—especially in Mexican architecture—you can never be certain

of what the final result will be. We build 1:1 models, as our colleague Francisco
Pardo would say. The difference between what is anticipated and what actually
happens is what we call the path. It is affected and influenced by various forces,
some of them very clear, some hidden or invisible, while others change too
quickly to be considered.
As a small, young office, we have found that almost coincidentally, our path
has dealt with the residual and the forgotten: from decadent suburbs that are
being subdivided, to run-down tourist spots, to unused rooftops and basements.
We have become increasingly interested in questioning what makes a place
desirable or decadent, what the forces that change the configuration of cities are
(powerful or marginal, formal or informal), and the close relationships these
forces have with some of the hopes, desires, and wishes that lie in the collective
imagination.
The following projects examine the surrounding conditions under which they
took place, in an attempt to find their individual and collective drives (<>).*
*In his conference paper “The Subversion of the Subject,” Jacques Lacan defines drive as ($<>D)—
the relationship (<>) of the speaking subject ($) to the demand of the Other (D). We are interested in (<>).
48 Frida Escobedo Lopez
Casa 24
Mexico City, Mexico, 2003–4
In collaboration with Alejandro Alarcón
During the late 1990s, the growth of suburban areas in Mexico City was restricted
as part of the Bando 2 program, which intended to slow down the spread of the city
in areas that had no infrastructure to support expansion while promoting the
redensification of the central area of the city, with its underused infrastructure. Over
the past 30 years, the city’s four central districts have decreased in population by
1.2 million inhabitants.
In 2001, the government gave out fifteen thousand credits for housing extensions
and ten thousand credits for new multifamily units in the central area of the city.
This represented a big break for many developers. Some architecture offices saw a
clear opportunity to work with an increasingly growing niche market that hadn’t been
addressed before. Young, educated adults with mobility who had grown up in the
suburbs longed for a cosmopolitan, urban life: within walking distance, mixed-use,
accessible. For a sector of the population, the dream home changed from the house
in the suburbs seen in postwar American movies to the lofts that appeared in more
current television series. Neighborhoods like Colonia Condesa or Colonia Roma were
transformed into new, hip residential areas.
This migration was more influenced by the pull than by the push: the old and
the poor stayed behind. The once-idealized middle- or upper-class suburbs started
to go into decline, and their plots were subdivided, since families were no longer
as numerous and the average family’s income was not enough to pay the bills of a
very large household.
Our office found an opportunity in these new emptying spaces in the suburbs.
Casa 24 was the first of three houses we built in Tlalpan, an area in southern Mexico
City. It is located next to one of the first golf courses in the city, the Club de Golf
Mexico. The client was an empty nester with a big house facing the golf course who
asked us to make a small apartment in the backyard so she could eventually rent it
out and have a secure income in her elder years.
Finding a potential new territory on the rooftop of the house, we proposed the
opposite: to leave the backyard untouched and to build a new apartment on top of
the original house. We included in the program a small office with independent
access so she could work at home without actually feeling her intimate space was
compromised. In this way, she could have the best of all worlds: she would lower her
expenses, have a secure income by renting out the original house, save time and
Casa 24 49
1: Exterior view
2: View from the neighboring rooftop
3: Interior
money by working at home, and still enjoy the same views and the same open-
space feeling she was looking for when she first came to the Club de Golf Mexico in
the early seventies. The new apartment became a parasite in every aspect, as it
benefited from the original structure and plumbing, while the rental of the original
house provided the economical resources to pay for the new building and future
maintenance expenses.
2 3
Casa 602
Mexico City, Mexico, 2003
Casa 24 was such a success with the client’s friends and family that her mother-in-
law asked us if we could build something similar for her: a duplex house where she
could live with her sister on one floor, and rent the other for regular income. She was
looking for two things: to be close to her family and to feel protected in a closed,
controlled community.
This led us to start thinking about the potentials of reorganizing the dream houses
of the now-obsolete suburbs. We found a one-story, sixteen-thousand-square-foot
house that was subdivided into seven plots, a few blocks away from Casa 24. We
built a duplex in what used to be the area occupied by only the master bathroom,
reconstructing the first floor and using a light structure for the second floor. A new
skin conceals the new and the old blocks in an almost ephemeral way. It was thought
of as fast and nonpermanent architecture, as transitory as the dwelling conditions in
the suburbs are.
1 2
3 4
Casa 602 51
1–4: Model views

5: Exterior view
6+7: Construction site
6 7
Casa Negra
This home/studio for a young couple sits on a sloped field on the outskirts of the city
near the old road to Cuernavaca, a popular weekend and holiday spot for capital
dwellers. Nearby, some dining places and viewpoints serve as nighttime gathering
places for teenagers and couples. A double-height box standing on four twelve-foot
pillars forms a single living space that faces the urban landscape through one large
window. A voyeuristic and introverted object, Casa Negra resembles a parked vehicle
looking at the city lights at dusk.
2 3
Casa Negra 53
1–4: Exterior views

5: Access detail
6: Exterior ramp
7: Ramp detail
4 5
6 7
1854 bis
Residual space is often disregarded as potential territory. Even medium- or

high-density buildings have small, forgotten spaces that could provide room for new
uses. This is the case in a two-story penthouse in a central district of Mexico City.
The building’s rooftop, which was previously uninhabited except by a staircase exit,
became a library with a terrace. Finding some small cracks in the urban planning
regulations, we managed to apply for a minor work license to enlarge the staircase
exit and to add some storage space to it. The project neither broke the rules nor
followed them.
1 2
1+2: Model
3: Exterior view
3
Proyectos Monclova
Proyectos Monclova is a Mexico City–based contemporary art gallery founded

in August 2005 by Jose Garcia and Alejandro Romero. For this art space, we
renovated an old apartment building’s basement in the Roma neighborhood.
Instead of the typical all-white gallery space, we decided to underline the somber
feeling of the basement and make the gallery dark gray. With the help of some
strategic lighting, the art pieces really stand out in this dark environment, and
everything else seems to be erased. Together with the 1854 bis project, the gallery
was a complementary contrast to the work we were doing while thinking about
the consequences of the Bando 2 program.
Interior
Social Equipment Guide

Mexico, 2005–6
According to Alejandro Aravena, head of the “do tank” Elemental, the quality of a
housing unit depends on its capacity to gain value over time, and for that you need
the presence of good public space. Most of the time in mass-produced housing
developments and irregular or marginal settlements, small-scale economic activities
and local services are not available. This leads to poor patterns of dwelling and
coexisting. Sometimes the problem is solved by the dwellers, who create spontan-
eous commerce or make agreements for shared labor (such as group child care
or collective kitchens).
These solutions are only temporary and do not cover the real needs of the
neighborhoods. Poverty worsens these conditions, and the social group most
vulnerable to risk situations are single-parent households, especially female-headed
ones. Actions to balance these inequities include acknowledging the heterogeneity
of poverty and understanding household dynamics on different levels (such as access
to opportunities and resources, the relationship between domestic and extradomestic
work, and the distribution of domestic work between the members of the family).
In order to confront the challenges of poverty and urban development, the
Ministry of Social Development (SEDESOL) designed the Habitat Program as a tool
for articulating social and urban/territorial policies. The program implements a series
of actions that combine the improvement of basic infrastructure in urban marginal
zones with the delivery of social services and actions for community development.
As a part of this series of actions, we were asked to design a guide that contained
the basic information (plans, sections, elevations, program, area and volume calcu-
lations, illustrative sketches, and models) for the development and construction of
prototypes for social services equipment in areas of priority attention. This guide
was divided into six volumes covering the following issues: community development
centers, arts and crafts schools, child care centers, elder care centers, and centers
for victims of domestic violence.
We developed a series of modular units that could be combined according to the
needs of each community. In this way, they are able to build the equipment in phases,
arrange them according to the configuration of the plot, or adapt and combine
different services.
1: Units
1
1D 1C 1A
cw egarots cw
2O 2M 2L 2K 2J 2I 2H 2G 2F 2E 2D 2C 2B 2A
oitap noitepecer /raterces elucibuc eciffo moor gniteem moor yrdnual evihcra/noitpecer egarots nehctik moor kaolc noitazilirets srotcerid noitpecer egarots rewohs/cw cw
moor eciffo
3P 3N 3M 3L 3J 3I 3F 3E 3D 3B
gniteem/egnuol gniniart oitap erac yad cw eciffo s ´rotcod nehctik /yrdnual moorssalc egarots
tisoped nenil
4P 4O 4N 4M 4L 4K 4J 4I 4H 4G 4F 4D 4C
moor ecnerefnoc oitap moor vt/egnuol erac yad gniniart cw moor gninid oitap nehctik oitap tnempiuqe
moor esoprup-itlum egarots
5P 5O 5N 5M 5L 5H 5G 5F 5C
erac yad erac yad gniniart erac yad elucibuc eciffo )3 fo ylimaf( mrod mrod derahs /srewohs ylppus
moor esoprup-itlum oitap/loohcs-erp yramirp gnisserd egarots
6O 6N 6L 6K
drahcro ytinummoc )4 fo ylimaf( mrod ecarret/moor gninid ecaps laicremoc
Social Equipment Guide
7Q 7P 7O 7N
pohskrow egral llah secca moor ecnad pohskrow
57
2–5: Possible configurations
CHILD CARE CENTER

2 E2+D1+L2+K2+J3+M2+K2+O5+J4+L4+M5+M4+P5+H4+F4+C2+D4+F2
CENTER FOR VICTIMS OF DOMESTIC VIOLENCE

3 A2+F4+B3+E3+L5+D2+E2+N5+L6+P5+G5+N4+O4+I4.
Social Equipment Guide 59
ELDER CARE CENTER

4 A2+F4+B3+E3+L5+D2+E2+N5+L6+D5+N4+O4+I4+N6+H5
ARTS AND CRAFTS SCHOOLS

F5+J3+Q7+C4+C5+E2+N5+K2
5
Affordable Housing
Guerrero and Chiapas, Mexico, 2006
In collaboration with Alejandro Alarcón and Eduardo Maceda
The first concern when conceptualizing this housing project was to cover not only
basic needs, but to give space for enjoyment and interaction. With a very restricted
budget (eight thousand dollars), we developed a self-expanding home. The house
starts as a 366-square-foot construction with a living room, kitchen, bedroom, and
bathroom, and it can expand to have up to three additional rooms, increasing the total
area to 517 square feet.
The hot and humid climate of Guerrero and Chiapas makes porches typical
intermediate spaces in local homes, where afternoon napping and people-watching
take place. The house we designed sits twenty-two inches above the ground to avoid
humidity, and the living room can open up to the outside completely to recreate this
porchlike condition. Small considerations—like a patio for washing or hanging clothes
where one can communicate with neighbors on their patios, a small access ramp that
can double as a spontaneous play place for children, and front and back yards that
help illuminate and ventilate every room—make subtle but significant changes that
improve the quality of the house and allow it to gain value over time. This project won
first place in the Second Competition for Affordable Housing, held by the National
Forests Commission (CONAFOR), the National Institute for the Workers Housing Fund
(INFONAVIT), the National Trust Fund for Popular Housing (FONHAPO), the Housing
Institute of Chiapas, and the Housing Institute of Guerrero.
1+2: Model
1 2
Hotel Bocachica
Acapulco, Guerrero, Mexico (under construction)
In collaboration with José Rojas
Hotel Bocachica is a 1950s hotel located on Caletilla Beach, a very popular spot
for families and locals in Acapulco. Its surrounding neighborhood, Las Playas, used
to be the place where the original jet set traveled to, but now it is quite run-down.
For the hotel, we renovated the original building and added new local design
elements and techniques. The vicinity has developed its own very particular physiog-
nomy. Locals often use 1960s modern images and ideas and revitalize them in their
own understanding, mixing in new tropical handiwork and design concepts, and this
is what we tried to develop throughout the entire hotel’s architecture, interiors, and
furniture, as well as in its graphic identity (stationery, website, and so on).
To our surprise, the hotel has begun to gain interest with groups of people who
would not have thought of Caletilla as a cool place to be before. Maybe it is true that
the texture of the past has an exclusive, aristocratic aura that no scenery or makeup
can reproduce, and maybe that is what can make a place desirable.
1: Notes
2: Original facade (Photo: José Rojas)
1 2
3: Pool concept rendering

4: Room concept rendering
5: Bar concept rendering
6: Exterior rendering
7: Pool construction site
3 4
5 6
7
Hotel Bocachica 63
8: Room 12: Bar parasols construction site

9: Bar before construction, 2007 13–16: Model views
10: Bar sketch
11: Bar parasols model
8 9
10 11
12
13 14 15 16
Gray Box
Mexico City, Mexico, 2004–5
What are the actions that change the growth logic of a city? What turns an
underprivileged area into a privileged one? What influences us? What shapes and
changes our collective imagination?
These questions were our first draft for the 2004–5 Young Creators Grant,
awarded to us by the Mexican National System of Arts (FONCA). Later, our field of
study became power structures and how they constitute the urban spheres of the
city. If the city could be read in terms of spaces of coexistence, as Peter Sloterdijk
describes in his book Spheres, and one could distinguish the thresholds between
these spaces, one could find a field of opportunity—the potential for change. Power,
as a defining condition of these spheres, could be read as a dichotomy that
operates through fear and desire.
We took a small section of the city as sample tissue. Tepito, a neighborhood
famous for being the largest black market in Mexico City, gathered the conditions of
both formal and informal power as defining forces of its physiognomy. Though it is
full of information, Tepito is a very elusive place to do research in. It is impossible to
take pictures, and questions aren’t welcomed. It changes every day. Few insiders
are willing to help. We made diagrams based on maps made both by locals and by
outsiders of the neighborhood’s consumption patterns. Objects were acquired,
classified, and analyzed in terms of origin, distribution method, price, and final
consumer. These maps could be translated to spatial records and models that
could somehow explain the intensities of use of the site. As a result, two juxtaposed
codes were found: obedience and resistance. The first code refers to the physical
shape of the city, created by “formal” power; and the second code refers to the
social use of the space, which is sometimes linked to “informal” power. These
diagrams of power also depended on resistance—without it, there would be only a
model of obedience. The relationships formed by power are obliged to vary
according to the game between discipline and insubordination, between fear and
desire.
By establishing a relationship between these codes and the rest of the city, it
became evident that informal power has a clear tendency to settle in the eastern
and northeastern neighborhoods of the city. Constructing diagrammatic models of
the superposition of historical growth of the city, the east side appeared to have a
vocation to be what is called a central periphery, a territory whose capacity of
Gray Box 65
1: Diagram mapping the consumption patterns of the neighborhood
significance by far exceeds its capacity of use. Tepito is actually a mythical, fictional
place, a representation of itself.
The diagrams and models were presented, along with some representative
objects collected during the research phase, in a closed container: a mute box that
would reflect the auto-imposed barriers set in an enclosed territory.
Technical Data:
1. Two 7.2 x 7.4 x 8.9-foot
containers made with .7-inch
wood conglomerate board set
on a steel structure
2. A Kenworth AeroCab Sleeper
with two display cabinets
containing objects found in situ:
shoes, movies, medicine
boxes, and food
3. A 3.9 x 1.3 x 2-foot display
cabinet made with .5-inch wood
conglomerate board,
polyethylene foam, a monitor,
and a DVD player
4. Two 3.9 x 3.9 x 2-foot display
cabinets made with .5-inch
wood conglomerate board,
polyethylene foam, and two
acrylic domes containing two
cardboard, brass, and
polyethylene foam models
5. A 4.9 x 2.9 x 2-foot light box
6. A 1.3 x 1.3 x 1.3-foot display
box, containing a map of
Mexico City
7. A 1.3 x 1.3 x 2-foot display
box, containing a time switch
1
Ordos 100
Ordos, Inner Mongolia, China (under construction)
The scope of this project is to develop one hundred villas in the city of Ordos, in Inner
Mongolia, China, for the client Jiang Yuan Water Engineering Ltd. FAKE Design, Ai Wei
Wei’s studio in Beijing, has developed a master plan for the project’s one hundred
parcels of land and will curate the project, while Herzog & de Meuron have selected
one hundred architects from twenty-seven countries around the globe to participate.
The project has been divided into two phases: the first phase is the development of
twenty-eight parcels, while the second phase will develop the remaining seventy-two
parcels. Each architect is responsible for designing a 10,800-square-foot (1,000-
square-meter) villa.
Ordos is situated in the Kangbashi district, on a sixty-square-mile plot of land.
It is known as China’s twenty-first-century energy bank, because of its large and
still unexploited amounts of energy resources, such as coal, gas, and oil. With the
second-highest per capita income in China and an annual economic growth rate of
40 percent, Ordos seems to be the perfect candidate for the creation of a new model
for urban development. As Bao Chongming, vice-mayor of Ordos, explained to Bert
de Muynck in an interview for Mark magazine that took place during the earliest site
visit in January 2008: “In the 1980s we looked at Shenzhen as a model for urban
develop-ment, in the 1990s we looked at Shanghai, and it is my hope that in the
coming twenty years when people look for a new model they will look at Ordos.” If
Shenzhen and Shanghai represented the economic changes that took place thirty
years ago with the “Socialism with Chinese characteristics” led by Deng Xiaoping,
what could this new model mean? It is not a case of urban reorganization or
replanning—Ordos will be a city built from scratch for a planned population of two
hundred thousand in a span of ten years.
Korean architect Minsuk Cho (Mass Studies), who is participating in the project,
pointed out that “Normally a city is composed of layers of accumulated history. Here
we have to come up with instant identity, character and all of that. How do you do
that?” The conflicts in the notion of context were not the only concerns that came up.
The high density of the Ordos master plan was a surprise for some architects who had
expected the villas to be more freestanding; for others it offered an opportunity to shift
the tendency of wealthy people to live isolated from others. There were also some
concerns about how one hundred different projects could coexist and compete with
each other, especially since the participating architects were given absolute design
Ordos 100 67
1: Notes
2: Sketches and notes
freedom. The master plan’s mock-up contains everything from a villa dug into a
dune to a previously unbuilt Adolf Loos house.
Ordos 100 may be an attempt to attract the media’s attention to a new area
(What better marketing strategy could you have than one hundred architects
promoting their own work around the globe?), but it is also a project about the dream
home of the twenty-first century. Even though there is no specific client for the villas,
a detailed program was given to us in the first phase of the project. This program
included, among other things, two kitchens: a western-style kitchen, which would be
for entertaining purposes only, and a traditional eastern-style kitchen, where all the
house meals would actually be prepared.
From a social-anthropological perspective, home is defined as the act of sharing
the same hearth. With this definition, we interpreted the project as being about a
single household in which two families shared two homes, one small and one big.
Each one coexists programmatically, but with its own clearly defined space and
materiality. The small house is hard and smooth, made of concrete. The big house is
softer, a suspended rectangular box with an irregular and porous surface made of
local bricks that form different moiré-like patterns, designed in collaboration with
Mexican artist Marco Rountree Cruz. The big house’s ground floor is open-plan, and
both the dining and living rooms can open up to the outside. In this way the big house
works as an extension of the garden visually and programmatically, in a playful effect
of interrelation and separation.
1 2
3–5: Site model
4 5
Ordos 100 69
6: Preliminary models 9: South facade sketch

7+8: Interior sketches 10: North facade sketch
7 8
9 10
11: Axonometric
12+13: Facade pattern, made in collaboration with
Mexican artist Marco Rountree Cruz
11
12 13
Ordos 100 71
14: Axonometric
15+16: Facade pattern, made in collaboration with
Mexican artist Marco Rountree Cruz
14
15 16
Ether Ship
74 Busan Film Factory

76 Foreshore and Footprint
78 Gwangbokdong Street Renovation
80 Daejeon Renaissance Urban Design
82 Water Purification Unit
84 Bodø Culture Complex
86 Incheon City Tower
88 Vogue House
90 Vogue Runway
92 Ether Art
94 Movement in Slowness
96 Water Break
Foresight 73
One of the intriguing characteristics of architecture is that the architect’s work

is based on the representation of ideas rather than the physical artifact itself.
The limitation of scale is one of the fundamental reasons for this. Despite this
elementary characteristic, it is interesting that architecture only generates profit
and public interest after its physical manifestation. While it is the close integration
of materials, scale, and human life that creates this physical artifact called
architecture, its roots are based on the more elusive materials of foresight and
imagination. This contradiction is the reason why the struggles and potentials of
many works of architecture disappear as the design enters its final phase of
physical manifestation. The fact that many of architecture’s initial problems fade
away without adding value is just as much an unfortunate truth as the contradictory
nature of architecture.
The once-held belief that there must be a medium that would allow for the
transmission of light through the far reaches of space resulted in the imaginary
substance known as ether. Similar to science’s invention of ether, there is a
theoretical vessel that guides the imagination toward its final goals of an archi-
tectural practice. Ether Art is the product of these early architectural investigations,
which, once freed from the limitations of reality, have developed into works of art
in their own right. The Ether Ship is the vessel that carries each work of Ether
Art to and from its architecturalized counterpart. Ether Art furthermore acts as
the source of inspiration for each successive architectural project in my work.
74 Ether Ship
Busan Film Factory
In 2003, the South Korean city of Busan completed the construction of an enormous
bridge over the sea known as the Kwangan Bridge. The space between this bridge
and Kwangan Beach required a new identity. The design creates a physical
connection between the bridge and the beach, while proposing a new city for the
Busan film industry—one of the most renowned in Asia—that allows the full extent of
the cinematic experience, from production to consumption, filming to screening. This
project won the Grand Prize in the Busan International Architecture Competition.
Team member: Hyungdu Bae
1
Busan Film Factory 75
1: Plan
2: Top view
3+4: Perspectives
2 4
76 Ether Ship
Foreshore and Footprint
Thirty years ago, the South Korean government initiated plans to turn the
Saemangeum silts, the fifth-largest shoreline in the world, into usable agricultural
land. Today, hampered by public outcry for the project’s lack of ecological concern,
the considerable development already made in this area has been halted, awaiting
a final verdict from the supreme court. In 2006 South Korea started exporting its rice
overseas, and the government’s initial intention for domestic agricultural development
of the shoreline was no longer valid, yet it had already invested 3 trillion won (2.4 billion
dollars) in a dam construction for the area. In this situation, I proposed converting
the dam into a bridgelike structure that would allow water to flow back and reconstitute
the silt land, while using the bridge itself as the foundation for a new city develop-
ment. This bridge, whose surface area is larger than that of Manhattan, becomes
an important point of connection between two existing cities, Muan and Kunsan,
on either side of the bridge. This project won the grand prize in the UIA-UNESCO
Celebration of Cities 2 international competition, and was exhibited at the 2006
Venice Biennale. Team Members: Hyunil Oh, Jungjun Song, Hyekwang Shin
2
Foreshore and Footprint 77
1: Night view of the city

2: Sectional model
3: Master plan
3
78 Ether Ship
Gwangbokdong Street Renovation
Gwangbokdong is a trendy district filled with fashion shops, bars, and clubs for young
people in Busan, South Korea. As a popular destination in the city, it is overwhelmed
with signboards and other disorganized urban obstacles, making the area congested
and diminishing its charm. Within this context, neighborhood connecting units are
proposed to reorganize this urban congestion. Each connecting unit is a band made
from one material that covers the facades of two facing buildings and the section of
street between the buildings. In addition to connecting the facades of the two
buildings, a connecting unit reflects their programmatic components onto the streets.
If a building has information technology–related shops, the unit would be made of
glass or glossy metal; if a building has a traditional pub or teahouse, then the material
could be wood. The ground-level signboards and outdoor furniture of each unit start to
organize the streetscape based on the module of the unit. With the progressive
addition of these units, Gwangbokdong will once again find its own unique identity.
This project won a Merit Award in the 2007 BSA/AIA Unbuilt Architecture Design
Awards. Team members: Hyungdu Bae, Sangwook Park
1
Gwangbokdong Street Renovation 79
1: Section 4+5: Street view

2: Master plan 6: Street perspective
3: Street view at night
4 5 6
80 Ether Ship
Daejeon Renaissance Urban Design
For the Daejeon Renaissance city center proposal, three kinds of landscape elements
are at work. First is a pocket park at ground level; second, a green platform occupying
certain floors of buildings; and lastly, roof gardens on top of each building in the
Renaissance area. These landscape elements form a continuous green surface that
stretches to the city’s boundaries. The plant-covered surface helps unify the buildings
in the area, and a pathway is created through the continuity of the landscape elements,
offering public accessibility from the plaza of Daejeon Station to the roof gardens of
the highest buildings. This strategy gives high-rise residents access to landscape
elements that are not usually easily reachable from their homes. This project received
an honorable mention in the International Ideas Competition for Daejeon Urban
Renaissance.
2
Daejeon Renaissance Urban Design 81
1: View of roof garden and green platform 5+6: City perspectives

connection 7+8: Nightime city perspectives
2: View of green plaza in front of Daejeon Station
3: View of Renaissance zone
4: View of west stream area
5 6 7 8
82 Ether Ship
Water Purification Unit
The Water Purification Unit is one of my personal research projects regarding urban
production space. It is another way of reading and designing urban areas, starting
with urban production programs—such as water purification plants, infrastructure,
or power plants—rather than consumption programs—such as shopping malls,
museums, or even schools. The project consists of drifting, water-purifying mechan-
isms. The natural pressure difference created by a unit’s downward-extending tubes
pushes water through a hole at the bottom, purifying it as it makes its way through the
filter mechanisms in the body of the unit. Through chemical and electrical filtration
techniques, the water is purified to a drinkable state and stored in a water tank at the
top level. People can get water on the top level from a water fountain connected to
the tank. The water purification units can be combined in different configurations to
become bridges or fishing and tanning decks. Amidst these usages, people are free
to drink the collected water. Team member: Joo Hyung Oh
2
Water Purification Unit 83
1+2: Perspectives
3: Section and plans
3
84 Ether Ship
Bodø Culture Complex
This project’s site, in the city of Bodø, consists of three discontinuous parcels of land.
In particular, the project’s west parcel, adjacent to the waterfront, is completely
separated from the other two parcels to the east, which are within the urban fabric and
across the water. On these parcels, the city wanted to construct a cultural complex
containing a theater, a library, a rhythmic center, and a community center. Although
these elements are separated, the consistent language of their architectural and
landscape designs allows them to be read as part of the same urban fabric. Framed
through the windows of a library in the east block, one can see important boat exhibits
in a museum to the west. The main entrances of each building are located a half level
below grade, and it is through these different level conditions, inside underground
plazas, that their various activities are revealed. Because of the area’s long winter, this
underground area has more accessibility than a ground-level open area, and inside
the plaza people can have visual connections with others entering buildings, enjoying
the shops, or crossing to another building. Team member: Joo Hyung Oh
2
Bodø Culture Complex 85
1+2: Night views from sea 4: Interior view of museum

3: East blocks perspective 5+6: Underground plaza
3 4
6
86 Ether Ship
Incheon City Tower
Incheon City Tower is a project for Chongla, a future urban district at the edge
of Incheon, a city near Seoul. Even though the tower will be located at the center
of Chongla, it needs to refer to the broader context of Incheon. Each of the tower’s
platforms is uniquely oriented to give people views of Incheon’s important vistas,
such as Incheon International Airport, Incheon Bridge, Gongchon Stadium, the
Songdo district, and Bupyung Park. Likewise, for people within the city looking toward
the tower, the platforms act as referential markers that reengage Incheon’s inhabitants
with its important districts. As such, the tower becomes an important representational
device for both those within the tower and those in the city looking toward the tower.
Team member: Kiduck Kim
4 5
Incheon City Tower 87
1–3: Perspectives 5: Elevation

4: Master plan 6: Night view
6
88 Ether Ship
Vogue House
Vogue magazine commissioned a design to explore elements of fashion through

architecture. The proposal incorporates two forms with minimal surface area,
intertwined with one another. Minimal surface areas are a common concept in fashion,
seen in the process of making a piece of clothing by cutting only as much fabric as is
needed in terms of area and size to fit a body. Wires connecting these two surfaces
act structurally as tension members, allowing the Vogue House to sway like fabric as
wind and natural forces act on the structure.
1
Vogue House 89
1: Viewing platform
2–7: Perspectives
2 3
4 5
6 7
90 Ether Ship
Vogue Runway
Vogue magazine commissioned a proposal for a runway for the fashion designer
Youngmi Woo. Woo’s works often capture the sensations of rain and water. The
models for her designs have appeared carrying umbrellas, jacketlike shrouds covering
their heads, and other similarly imaginative accessories. Set against the conditioned
spaces of fashion show arenas, such design motifs arouse a sense of ambiguity
between subject, object, and surroundings that has become the trademark of Woo’s
designs. The runway proposal heightens this sense of ambiguity. Thousands of
columns bathed in light descend from the ceiling of the runway, conjuring the image
of falling rain. The lightly wetted runway surface reflects the ceiling onto the floor,
creating an ambiguous yet uninhibited space.
2
Vogue Runway 91
1–5: Perspectives
5
92 Ether Ship
Ether Art
Despite the immense foresight and imagination required in a work of architecture,

the potentialities of these initial ideas fade away as the design approaches its final
manifestation. This is similar to how ether became the theoretical vessel that carried
light through the universe. After scientists found out that the universe did not need
ether to carry light, it went out of existence. Once relieved of their architectural
limitations, abandoned potentialities find themselves reborn and transformed into
works of art. Ether Art is the derivative of all architectural processes made by Ether
Ship. Ether Art is more than simple evidence of past processes: it forms unique
works of art developed in their own right.
1
Ether Art 93
1: Memory of Dream
2: Depth of Suicide
3: Yellowsubmarine
4: We are all connected
5: 4 Axis Wind
6: Superpattern
3 4
5 6
94 Ether Ship
Movement in Slowness
Motion and change are concepts that are central to Asian philosophy. Rather than
striving for permanency, this way of thinking understands that all things change,
no matter how long it takes. Such motion and change is a continuous phenomenon.
At the same time, there is a belief that this change is a cyclical phenomenon observed
in and learned from nature. The spring that changes but returns every year, the
sun that inevitably rises in the morning—these form the periodicity that resides in
change. Movement in Slowness—whose structure is derived from one of Ether
Ship’s architectural projects—is a five-minute-long animation showing the structure’s
movement and change. The basic structure slowly transforms into a radically twisted
shape, then turns back into its original form, and then starts to change again. With
this looping change, the structure represents Asian philosophy, a belief in changes
and cycles. Movement in Slowness was exhibited at BAUM Gallery, Seoul, and the
MIT Museum’s 2008 Art/Design/Technology exhibition.
1
Movement in Slowness 95
1: Top view
2–6: Morphed views
7: Top view
2 3
4 5
6 7
96 Ether Ship
Water Break
As part of the Ether Art series, these patterns were derived from the earlier Water
Purification Unit project. The filters that constitute the most important parts of the
purification system are patterned in the interior, while the exterior poché was carried
over from existing plan documentations. Several iterations that had been abandoned
during the architectural design process have been reconsidered and transformed
into inspirational pieces. Water Break was exhibited at Yechong Gallery, Seoul.
Team member: Joo Hyung Oh
1
Water Break 97
1: Exhibition view
2–7: Work samples
2 3
4 5
6 7
ex.studio
100 Tambabox
104 Dream House
106 Flow: Vegetal Canvas
110 Nest Architectures
112 Pathway and Landscape Observatories
116 Taste Lab: El Bulli
120 Travelling Showroom Portugal
Foresight 99
Our studio didn’t start from a certain project or a specific assignment, but from
the desire to create spaces from which we could reflect, research, and act in
different fields of contemporary culture. From the beginning, we never conceived
of architecture as just a specialization, but as a wider vision of understanding and
questioning the environment that surrounds us, in which every project can enrich
itself through diverse views and disciplines. The work created in our studio does
not start only from architecture but is nourished by different sources: cinema,
music, dance, painting, or literature are, in many occasions, what give guidelines
to our spaces.
For us, every project has been a constant search—we don’t use a pre-
determined system or repeat a former work. In each project we want to be able
to discover and experiment with new possibilities. Every project has a special
character that reveals diverse possibilities for the next one, acting as an open
window that drives us to another work.
Our projects—in which we investigate and experiment with new ways of
relating space to society—explore the relationship between art and function,
integrating the disciplines of architecture, design, sculpture, and installation.
In this context, we have developed numerous projects at different scales,
in countries such as Italy, Senegal, Austria, Spain, Portugal, Switzerland, and
Mexico. We conceived of each project’s reason and function in terms of its
physical context, and they could not have been generated in any place other
than the one of their conception and realization.
100 ex.studio
Tambabox
Tambacounda, Senegal
To the east of Dakar, where the landscape extends into the savannah, is
Tambacounda, the capital of Eastern Senegal, which groups together three regions:
Tambacounda, Bakel, and Kédougou. Culturally, the region is one of the country’s
richest. Tambacounda’s great cultural wealth is due to its geographic situation. Its
traditions and customs have been preserved, yet at the same time it is a place of
dynamic multicultural encounters, the result of its shared borders with five other
countries: Gambia, Mali, Mauritania, Guinea Conakry, and Guinea Bissau.
Tambabox is an object-space created from the extraordinarily varied and complex
world of industrial textiles that most Senegalese use to make their boubous—
traditional formal outfits consisting of three pieces of clothing: a pair of tapered-ankle
pants, a long-sleeved shirt, and a wide, sleeveless gown worn over the pants and
shirt. Tambabox consists of an inner space enveloped by an assembly of textile
canvases. The fabrics that delimit this architecture are murals in which the body is
partly transformed, becoming part of the linen cloth. They are complex fragments
that describe the variety of the landscape and its people; towns that coexist in their
markets, their cities, or their vast and wide horizon. Tambabox emerges from the
landscape looking for an almost impossible intimate place. It defines a new space,
contrasting with the concepts of construction and landscape of the surroundings,
which are related to open spaces of ample horizons.
The piece works like a structure interposed between the sunlight and the interior
space it encloses. The textile planes act as filters that sift natural light from the
outside. During the day, lighting in the space varies through different reflections and
colorations, with light figures developing through the fading backgrounds. At night
the space is transformed into an illuminated polychromatic box, contrasting with the
surrounding intense darkness.
Tambabox is a static piece that, in contact with the body, becomes an animated
object as a provocation transmitted by the skin. The result is a space where sculpture,
architecture, and movement come together—a project that explores space through
the corporal experience of the people.
Tambabox was a collaboration between ex.studio and local craftsmen, carpenters,
and tailors—fundamental characters of great tradition in Senegal. It was proposed as
an open space where different art disciplines—dancers, musicians, actors, and
painters—could take part in the same poetry.
Tambabox 101
1: Exterior view
2: Illuminated polychromatic box at night
3: Interior space
2 3
102 ex.studio
4: Project drawings
5: Close-up
a b c d e
a e c
4 b
5
Tambabox 103
6: Interior space
6
104 ex.studio
Dream House
Huesca, Spain
Conceived as a space for self-reflection, Dream House proposes an interactive and

sensitive intervention within an urban tree that would transform this natural element into
an introspective human refuge.
The Dream House emerges from the tree as a lighted chrysalis, exploring the
relationship of human beings with their built and natural environments. Rather than
taking us away from the urban experience, the piece places us within it, although
instead of offering another take on high-density built space it suggests that we cling to
the trees, both preserving and using them for a space of reflection. Dream House
proposes new ways of occupying and imagining space by making use of nature as a
main element in a dialogue between nature, human beings, and inhabited space.
1 2
Dream House 105
1: Top view
2: Dream House’s lit chrysalis
3: An introspective urban refuge
3
106 ex.studio
Flow: Vegetal Canvas

Bilbao, Spain
Flow proposes the creation of a surface formed by multiple vegetal modules—

integrated fragments forming a great chromatic mosaic—where diverse varieties
of flowers and plants dissolve together in a canvas of multiple ranges, textures,
and scents.
Location
Flow is located next to the Cadagua River, in the center of Azoka Square, the social,
sporting, and cultural center of activities of the Bilbao neighborhood of Zorroza.
Zorroza is located at the extreme western end of Bilbao, between the Basurto
neighborhood and the Cadagua, which is the natural border between the municipal
areas of Bilbao and Baracaldo. The particular characteristics between Zorroza and
the rest of Bilbao have created a strong sense of identity for those in the neighborhood.
Azoka Square is delimited by important natural and urban elements: the river; the
nearby hills; the A-8 highway; apartment buildings; sporting, social, and cultural
centers; as well as industrial buildings in disuse.
Relationship with the Neighborhood

Inspired by the cultivation patterns of rural fields, Flow proposes the creation of a
fragmented landscape inserted into the city square, reinterpreting the diverse urban
pieces that form the square’s surroundings into a series of small fragments that
interlace and dilute into a great natural canvas of diverse colors of the city.
The project is related to its surroundings and to Zorroza through multiple scales
and visual levels. On the one hand, it establishes an urban-scale relationship with the
buildings that delimit the square: from the interiors and higher levels of the buildings
around the square, it is possible to observe the patterns of the colorful vegetal canvas
in full. On the other hand, Flow establishes a more approximately scaled relationship
at the ground level, where the natural canvas appears as a big garden within the city,
in which people can recognize and observe in detail each one of the species that form
the project.
Flow 107
1: Flower surface
Vegetal Grid
The project is an 1,184-square-foot grid, made up of 336 modules. Flow uses 155
varieties of flowers and plants of diverse colors and tonalities: from purple to blue,
pink to red, passing through orange, yellow, and green, and ending in a darker brown.
Some of the species used include flowers like petunias, tagetes, impatiens, begonias,
surfinias, celosías, lobelias, ageratums, verbenas, guineanas, stipas, and cinerarias,
as well as aromatic herbs such as thyme, oregano, lemongrass, rosemary, and mint.
Modular System of Geotextile Cultivation

The identically sized units that form the grid were made with a modular cultivation
system, with each unit being twenty-two inches wide, twenty-four inches long, and
one inch thick. The system uses plants that were grown within soilbags made of an
agricultural geotextile that is water permeable and photodegradable, and that contains
a substrate adapted for the good growth of the plants. The plants were precultivated
for eight weeks in a greenhouse outside of Bilbao before being placed on-site. Once
its plant has sprouted, flowered, and taken root in the substrate, each module reaches
a degree of homogenous growth.
1
108 ex.studio
2: Flow in relation to the urban context

3: Vegetal canvas
3
Flow 109
4: Chromatic plan and plan showing 5: Growing process with geotextile system
flowers and plants used 6–8: Details
6 7 8
110 ex.studio
Nest Architectures
Navacerrada, Madrid, Spain
The contemporary city has modified the nature surrounding it, altering the relationship
between constructed and unconstructed contexts, diluting and extending the limits
of the city in an undefined way and forcing nature to abandon its intrinsic character.
This transformation from the natural landscape to the artificial landscape has
generated mixed environments of contact and transition between both surroundings.
The project Nest Architectures, situated on the border between the Guadarrama
mountain range and the city of Madrid, is an inverse intervention into urban and natural
spaces that explores new ways of defining the border between the two spaces. The
work creates a new hybrid landscape, built with vertical wood elements that form an
artificial forest—a forest to be walked through, and, at the same time, act as a housing
complex for the mountain’s inhabitants: birds.
We proposed for Nest Architectures to be an open and unpredictable work that
leaves space for new encounters, without having direct control of them. In this way,
the piece has a dialogue with the landscape, reflecting new ways of coexistence and
passage between natural and built surroundings.
The work is formed of 14 wooden poles of different heights (from 14.1 feet up to
21.3 feet), in which two elements, support (pole) and volume (birdhouse), work as one
homogeneous wooden piece. The wood defines the cycle of transformation of the
piece, in which the process of change determines the physical conception of the work.
With the passage of time, the Nest Architectures will transform along with the
surrounding landscape.
1 2
Nest Architectures 111
1: Model 4: Detail
2: Elevation 5: Front view
3: Nest architecture 6: Multiple views
3 4
6
112 ex.studio
Pathway and Landscape Observatories

San Michele di Ganzaria, Sicily, Italy
This project was an instantaneous construction in the landscape of Sicily. It is

composed of pathways of the senses that connect San Michele di Ganzaria’s Linear
Park (a former railway and train station) to a small lake at the base of a hill. The route
begins with a natural passage under the railway line, where the visitor enters a field
of finocchio flowers, walking on a path that ends on a platform suspended over the
lake. Along the pathway, visitors discover small pavilions that act as reflection spaces
and observatories of different landscapes.
The intervention explores architecture, art, and landscape, experimenting with
different instruments and materials through hand-constructed elements built in Linear
Park to discover the hidden landscape. Small viewing pavilions made of natural
materials that come from the area (river canes, hay, firewood, ropes, and earth) are
integrated into the project.
The project is the result of a collaboration between ex.studio, as directors of the
workshop Construire Naturale, and students of architecture and landscape: Eliana
Baglioni, Claudia Biondi, Claudia Brunelli, Francesco Garofalo, Alice Palazzo, Antonio
Privitera, and Silvia Salvatorelli. The project was curated by Marco Navarra and
Alessandro Rocca.
1 2 3
Pathway and Landscape Observatories 113
1: Inside the natural passage through 4: Site plan

a field of finocchio flowers
2+3: Pathway
4
114 ex.studio
5–8: Site and sections

9+10: Pavilion for skywatching
5 6
9 10
Pathway and Landscape Observatories 115
11: View from the former railway

12: Platform over the lake
11
12
116 ex.studio
Taste Lab: El Bulli

Montjuïc, Barcelona, Spain
Taste Lab is a space that combines the sense of taste with the other senses,
interacting with the gastronomic experience created by the restaurant El Bulli.
The project proposes a large, transparent container space that creates a visual
dialogue between the exterior and interior spaces it delimits, where nearby
buildings from the 1992 Olympics (Olympic Stadium, Palau Sant Jordi, and the
Telecommunications Tower) on the hill of Montjuïc function as main protagonists
that interact with the Taste Lab. The interior of the Taste Lab contains three luminous
volumes of different proportions, which create a space of transition between the
inside and the outside. A central prism forms the foyer, and two smaller prisms
are connected to the central one, creating a progression of illuminated planes.
The foyer leads into a large, open space—lit by numerous points of light that reflect
in the ceiling, multiplying to form a great interior constellation—that can hold
350 diners.
1
Taste Lab 117
1: Aerial view of the Olympic buildings in Montjuïc

2: Entrance
3: Interior view
3
118 ex.studio
4: Plan
5: Sections
5
Taste Lab 119
6–10: Interior views of the main hall

11: Taste Lab exterior
6 7
8 9 10
11
120 ex.studio
Travelling Showroom Portugal

Porto, Cascais, Algarve, and Madeira, Portugal
This project is a travelling, easily stored and moved showroom that explores the
relationship between space, transparency, and light. Inspired by the bright sunlight
of Portugal, and by a particular type of door with an elliptical shape in the Bairro Alto
area of Lisbon, this showroom interprets the door in a series of vertical suspended
planes made of translucent white screens. The screens create a sequence of spaces
that expand and contract, where the visitor is introduced into a visual game between
the interior and exterior. Clothing is displayed in niches between the arched planes.
Directional white lights add to the sense that the showroom is an ethereal, floating
space. The itinerant showroom was created for the Portuguese fashion designers
Dino Alves, Katty Xiomara, Luis Buchinho, and Storytailors, and visited several cities
in Portugal.
1
Travelling Showroom Portugal 121
1: Translucent volume
2: Interior
2
122 ex.studio
3: Plan
4: Elevation
3 4
Travelling Showroom Portugal 123
5: Exterior view
6: Vertical suspended planes
6
Fake Industries
126 Foreclosure Fantasy No. 1: Free NYC Apartments

128 Foreclosure Fantasy No. 2: House for Cesar
130 Foreclosure Fantasy No. 3: Khlebnikov’s (musical) Houses
131 Foreclosure Fantasy No. 4: The Illegal Hotel
132 Real Estate Nightmare No. 1: Chunks!
136 Real Estate Nightmare No. 2: Golf!
140 Real Estate Nightmare No. 3: Superphosphates!
142 Credit Dream No. 1: DCR (NYC Department of Citizenship
Recruitment), or How to Create Invisible Schools,
No Credit or Walls Required
144 Credit Dream No. 2: Circuit
146 Credit Dream No. 3: The Log-In Project, or How to Refute the Idea
of Architectural Success as a Straight Consequence of Talent
148 Credit Dream No. 4: I Love Japan
Foresight 125
On Foresights
What matters right now is figuring out how to deal with the consequences.
Think backwards, recall. Earlier foresights offer a bygone sort of delight: none
got closer to this extension of capitalist disaster. Architects’ honeymoon with
economic power is over, and it is turning into an unfriendly divorce. We are
left with its costs: no trust, overpriced assets to dispose of, and a traumatized
progeny of users stripped of ownership of their homes. For the time being the
government mediates, but the various stimulus packages avoid architecture.
In these conditions, we would prefer not to offer conciliatory solutions or
moralized futures, or even dystopian cynicisms. Rather, we will arrange archi-
tectural operations in a tripartite array—foreclosures, real estate, and credit—
that refers as much to their original meaning as to the last economic turmoil, i.e.,
the dramatic increase of foreclosures, the burst of the real estate bubble, and
the extreme lack of credit; nothing but the conditions in which we operate.
What follows is a map of the opportunities we found under such conditions:
(1) Foreclosure Fantasies—alternative forms of domesticity that have emerged
from foreclosures, i.e., occasional commissions that originated in the unpleas-
ant possibility of a client’s future eviction, or under pressure of an already
implemented one; (2) Real Estate Nightmares—planning strategies that take
advantage of the burst and prevent future real estate bubbles, focusing on those
lots that economical chance or lack of time saved from speculative develop-
ment; (3) Credit Dreams—forms of architectural implementation whose main
requirement is to bypass credit agencies. Our humble contribution to the
disclosure of the discipline’s future is a set of architectural operations tested
against the present conditions. It is for the daring fool or the impudent
soothsayer to draw images of the future with such materials.
126 Fake Industries
Foreclosure Fantasy No. 1: Free NYC Apartments

New York, New York, 2006
Author: Cristina Goberna
New York is one of the most expensive cities in the world. One could hardly rent a
studio for less than fifteen hundred dollars a month or sublet a room for less than eight
hundred dollars. The campaign Free NYC Apartments unveiled two strategies to get
an apartment for free—specifically a loft in SoHo, a unit in the projects in Queens, or a
studio in Brooklyn—by faking homelessness or practicing prostitution through the
website www.craigslist.org. The strategies were printed on tabloid-size posters and
made public by different means of distribution.
Poster 1: Free Apartments by Faking Homelessness

In 1979, a homeless man named Robert Callahan brought a class action suit before
the courts against the city and state of New York, arguing for a person’s state
constitutional right to shelter. After the trial, the city agreed to provide refuge to all
homeless men, and by 1983, to all homeless women as well. Since then, a number of
drop-in centers provide visitors with nighttime shelter facilities. Similarly, homeless
people can enter an intake center and live there during a two-year health care and
1 2
Foreclosure Fantasy No. 1 127
1+2: Miniaturized reproduction of a tabloid-sized information about how to get an apartment for
poster used in the Free NYC Apartments campaign free in New York
3: Collaboration of homeless people with Free NYC 4: Vandalization of NYC subway poster frames
Apartments, delivering posters displaying
reintegration program. Indeed, a number of the individuals that successfully finish that
program are offered free ownership of an apartment in New York City. Our first poster
displayed instructions for getting a free apartment by faking homelessness. It provided
specific information about the necessary steps for entering the intake centers’
program, but also denounced abuses committed within their walls.
Poster 2: Free Apartment in Exchange for Sex through Craigslist

In 1995, Craig Newmark launched www.craigslist.org, an interactive website in which
users could freely publish advertisements. Nowadays it has become the prominent
site for apartment listings in New York. Exceptionally, a percentage of the ads offer free
apartments in exchange for a myriad of different sexual practices. The second poster
of the Free NYC Apartments project reproduced a number of those advertisements.
Distribution Strategies
The posters were made available to the public in three different ways: homeless men
were hired to deliver them on Fifth Avenue in exchange for the money they typically
made per hour; a free advertisement was posted in the Village Voice; and the frames in
the New York subway system used to post official communications were vandalized to
display the Free NYC Apartments posters.
3 4
128 Fake Industries
Foreclosure Fantasy No. 2: House for Cesar

Barcelona, Spain, 2006
Authors: Cristina Goberna, Urtzi Grau, and Cristian Zanoni
A Typological Cautionary Tale

Cesar lived in a brand-new, high-ceilinged, over-windowed apartment in the old city of
Barcelona—a loft, they called it. However, he was incapable of enjoying, working,
cooking, disrupting, practicing, procrastinating, or eating comfortably in the room he
lived in. “Where did the loft’s promises go?” he wondered. “Isn’t it the typology of
possibility, where almost anything can happen?” It wasn’t, and we knew it. His white
cube was trapped in the same thematized branding as the rest of the city. Therefore,
we proposed that he pack all these ordinary activities into a glowing container—a
living machine, we call it—and leave the rest of the floor plan open for boredom. Now
Cesar wanders around his house happily bored—diving into the light and the noise,
both equally white—always with a bone in his mouth.
House for Cesar is a renovation of a 450-square-foot office for a client evicted from
his house. Behind a massive glowing door, a walk-in closet encloses Cesar’s domestic
life: the kitchen, the bathroom, the laundry room, and the stairway that climbs to his
bedroom hanging from the ceiling. Once the door is closed, only office space is left, lit
by a glowing wall that has become Cesar’s corporate identity.
1
Foreclosure Fantasy No. 2 129
1: Unfolded, 360 degree interior view of the 4–9: Views around the glowing door and the
renovation (Photo by Francisco Dulanto) spaces it hides
2: Exploded axonometric of the renovation
3: Exploded axonometric of the glowing door
2 3
4 5 6 7
8 9
130 Fake Industries
Foreclosure Fantasy No. 3: Khlebnikov’s (musical) Houses

Brooklyn, New York, 2007
Authors: Urtzi Grau and Dean Lukic
Khlebnikov’s (musical) Houses is basically two boxed bedrooms for a nine-hundred-

square-foot loft in Brooklyn, New York, best described in 2008 by Dean Lukic, one of
its inhabitants, as follows: “Bed-room, a bed that is a room, that is a space. It floats
(positioned on four blue wheels), but only when it is pushed hard since it’s heavy; but
still—a ‘portable habitat.’ So: a floating bed, but heavy, wooden, enclosed with walls
and a high, transparent ceiling. Reminiscent of a cupboard in which one would hide as
a child and from where one would watch the world pass by. Or else, a boat in which
one would escape oppressive conditions (a refugee boat), escaping toward
something new. But let’s not carry ourselves so far; the point of Khlebnikov’s house is
that it’s neither a piece of furniture nor a representation of a boat, but rather, it is a
block, a bunker that provides not only security but super-security. And its large walls,
which also work as doors, are the sources of both agitation and mollification. There
have been some questions of the possibility of asphyxiation (“Will I be able to breathe
in there?”) The answer is YES, you can both breathe and suffocate. A few have died
already. But if you survive you’ll have the ride of your life: the original two houses have
already been successfully tested for sexual activity, reading philosophy and comics,
arguments and gentle conversations, whipping, thinking and nonthinking, and for
being silent. Further exercises are expected in the near future. Thus: the house is a
block and a blocking; it is a block of memory, a block of sleep, a block of a mouth, a
block of thought. And, consequently, it is a blocking of dreams. It is a house of bad
poetry but, at the same time, of immense power.”
1: Exploded axonometric of one

of the boxes
2: Come in!
3–6: Interior images
3 4
1 2 5 6
Fake Industries 131
Foreclosure Fantasy No. 4: The Illegal Hotel

Architectural offices are partially supported by recently graduated interns. The

least-respected group in the office hierarchy, interns work for free, prepare coffee,
make photocopies, barely sleep or eat, and require external financial support in order
to enjoy such privileges. The Illegal Hotel explores the internal contradictions of
architectural production embodied in the figure of the intern. It envisions interns
eventually becoming labor pets, who would never need to see the daylight or leave the
office again.
For a well-known architectural firm located in a centrally situated loft in Manhattan,
we designed a series of sleeping pods for interns, disguised within the lighting system.
The lamp-pods are deployable, and once opened, are accessible from the ground
and can be interconnected. Each lamp-pod houses two individual mattresses. The
pods can fold back to lamp mode in seconds, avoiding the danger of unexpected
inspections by city officials. Now interns can really belong to the office, plugged into
the electric system like any other drafting device!
1+2: Sequence of deployment in a generic work host interns during the sleeping hours, only to
space: The sleeping pods are closed and function disappear again at dawn.
as lamps during the day, then open at night to 3: Section and plan of a sleeping pod
1 2 3
132 Fake Industries
Real Estate Nightmare No. 1: Chunks!

Cáceres, Spain, 2006
Authors: Cristina Goberna and Urtzi Grau
How to Reimagine Aldea Moret’s Identity in Five Easy Steps:
Introduction
The winning entry of the Europan 8 competition, Chunks! proposes strategies to
manage the archipelago of empty lots that forms the neighborhood of Aldea Moret.
Ranging from self-organized landscapes to public space regulations, the strategies
are cost-free, sustainable, and managed by local agents. But more importantly, they
prevent speculative development from happening in the neighborhood.
1. State of the Question and General Hypothesis (Fig. 1)

Aldea Moret is an ensemble of histories, uses, and disjointed planning that defines an
archaeology of uncompleted solutions. It remains basically empty, and obsolete
mining infrastructure breaks it apart. We propose rebuilding its identity through friction,
by managing its empty spaces and taking advantage of the superimposition of
different legalities, iconic elements, and infrastructure.
2. Methods (Figs. 2–4)

Aldea Moret’s vast reservoir of empty lots presents a variety of typologies and
qualities. Once classified, we group the lots into Areas of Identity (AI): seven sectors
that will enjoy autonomy in the management of their empty spaces. Each one will
include an observatory bridge, i.e., a participative space from which social and urban
policy will be coordinated.
3. Strategies (Fig. 5)
Despite AI organizational autonomy, we define nine strategies to manage social,
economic, and structural frictions. Avoiding formal, user-based, or infrastructural
models, the strategies deploy a mix of regulations and architectural mechanisms
that operate in the fields of nature, property rights, and potential activation. Each AI
implements a combination of three strategies different from the rest of the sectors.
The strategies regarding nature are (a1) Productive Ecology: artificially intensified
orchards; (a2) Mobile Parks: green, nomadic public space; and (a3) Subversive Fields:
alien ecosystems incompatible with the existing ones. The strategies regarding
property rights are (b1) Speculative Inhibition: constrained schedules for the
Real Estate Nightmare No. 1 133
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134 Fake Industries
6
development of empty lots; (b2) Micro-Rents: renting in mandatory short periods of

time; and (b3) 2x1: every site, house, and apartment receives a piece of an empty lot
along with obligation for its care. Lastly, the strategies regarding potential activation
are (c1) Architectural Competitions: reactivation of the public debate through archi-
tectural media; (c2) Catalogue of Urban Items: nomadic public infrastructures such
as party packs, park packs, and container packs; and (c3) Wraps: abnormally
regulated envelopes, i.e., extrusions, strips, and shadows.
4. Possible Scenario (Fig. 6)

Given the unfitness of traditional planning to document this context, we propose
using real-time notation to control the process we have triggered.
5. Discussion (Fig. 7)
The open-ended nature of Chunks! prevents visualizations of its outcome, but
know-ing that renderings are prerequisites for the success of any competition entry,
we decided to use the renderings of all previous Europan winner entries as illustrations
of our proposal.
136 Fake Industries
Real Estate Nightmare No. 2: Golf!

La Laguna, Canary Islands, Spain, 2008
The Proletarian Cultural Locomotive, or “Whatever Happened to (Sub)Urban

Landscape Delirium?” or even, “Do Condos Dream with Suburban Sheeps?”—
Golf! is an urban proposal given honorable mention in Europan 9 that takes the most
successful form of suburban development in Spain, the golf course, transforms its
individual courses into urban blocks, and rethinks each of the golf course’s elements
as social activators integrated into the ecological management of the compound.
How can we imagine the city at a time when its delirium seems defeated by the
suburban lawn? Whereas the inexorable decadence of the city begins in the urgency
of its inhabitants to leave, the weakness of the suburbs is its fatal absence of density,
its irremediable infrastructural inefficiency. Not by chance, the golf course was the
omnipresent tyrant in the zenith of the antiurban real-estate bubble. While the masses
invest in turf and the architectural profession disregards golf’s banal success, we
say, “We like golf courses!” We like them not because of the ecological collapse they
imply, or the way they domesticate the landscape, or even for the lack of sociability
they promote. Rather, we pursue the virus of utopianism implicit in their redundant
emptiness because we envy their capability to hybridize the natural and the artificial,
and aspire to the generic impunity of their underused infrastructures.
Hence, we wonder, is there any civitas left in the suburban dreams of the social-
democratic consensus? If so, we will find it in La Laguna, an island in the suburban
ocean of Canary Islands tourism that seems an ideal stage to redefine the golf course
as a laboratory for the European city. This proposal is a ten-point manifesto for a
Golf! Urbanism:
a. The surface of Golf! will be neither natural nor artificial, but a grass/asphalt
gradient.
b. The topography of Golf! will form funnel-like urban blocks, granting sustainability
and energetic autonomy.
c. In the soft landscape of Golf! electric golf cars will take the place of suburban
pets and SUVs.
d. In Golf! each element of the golf course—from the green to the rough—
will be reimagined as a social activator integrated into the ecological management
of the blocks.
e. The housing units of Golf! are hyper-minimum quadruplexes, i.e., six-hundred-
square-foot beautiful, domestic nightmares surrounding the golf courses.
f. The three-meter span of Golf! hyper-minimum quadruplexes allows for a

mountain range of typologies.
g. In the blocks of Golf! only vertical growth will be permitted.
h. In Golf! the lawns will get out of the closet, moving to the fronts of houses and
turning suburban hierarchies inside out.
i. In the upside-down gardens of Golf! the street will finally reach the living spaces.
j. Golf! will be nothing but a menagerie of public activities and private sports
requiring a negotiated form of collective management.
The Fairway: The closely mown area that runs in

between the tee box and the green will conceal furtive The Golf Net: These tensegrity structures, between
leisure and house the preexistent ecosystem, such as 10–20 m. high and connected by light textiles, will be
The Golf Cars: Ready for use at several charging stations Vinagreras (Rumex lunaria L.), Tedera Común, Tabaibas used to recover misguided golf balls and other UFOs, to
and for rent for less-than-one-hour periods, these Salvajes (Euphorbia Aphylla), Berodes (Kleinia Neriifolia), practice climbing and jumping, and to cultivate vertical
vehicles will be use for neighborhood internal circulation. Cardones (Euphorbia Canariensis). hydroponics.
1 2 3 1 2 3 1 2 3
The Green: The culmination of a variable-dimension golf

hole—where the flagstick and cup are located and where The Flagsticks + the Holes: The goal of the golfer is to
a golfer will “putt out” to end the hole—will conceal, introduce the ball in the hole marked with a flagstick. In
under artificial grass, a funnel to recover rainwater that this case, the holes will also act as public electrical plugs The Lake: A water hazard—an obstacle that increases
will work as a geyser, pumping pulverized water back into in wireless internet–accessible areas, while the flagsticks the difficulty of the hole—will house swimmers and
the atmosphere and improving the extreme weather will display photoelectric cells and will light the field miniature boat freaks as well as provide water supplies
conditions of the Canary Islands’ climate. during the night. for migratory birds on their way to Europe.
1 2 3 1 2 3 1 2 3
The Rough: The area outside of a fairway that generally

features higher, thicker grass or naturally growing,
unkempt and unmoved vegetation—designed to be The Sand Bunkers: The dunes that stand in the way of
punitive to players who miss the fairways—will grow the ball, increasing the par of the hole, will become The (Local) Trees: The Fayas, Pinos Canarios, and even
self-managed orchards that the neighbors will cultivate, suburban beaches, housing sun lovers and sandcastle some Dragos located in the outer limits of the rough will
phagocytizing the water of the hole and utilizing the builders, draining and filtering the rainwater recycled for feature hanging platforms for public use and hold and
sociability of those on holiday in the countryside. maintenance. camouflage the rainwater tanks.
1 2 3 1 2 3 1 2 3
138 Fake Industries
140 Fake Industries
Real Estate Nightmare No. 3: Superphosphates!

Cáceres, Spain, 2008, under construction
In recent years, highly speculative real estate operations have surrounded the
abandoned mining complex of Aldea Moret—a nineteenth-century industrial
development in Cáceres, Spain—endangering its major urban and architectural
elements. In 2007, the bursting of the real estate bubble stopped private plans to
redevelop it. The Cáceres City Hall and the regional government took over the site and
asked for an alternative model of development, integration of advanced preservation,
sustainability, and participative planning polices into the abandoned mining complex’s
new status as a National Industrial Heritage Site. The project Superphosphates! is our
answer to such a call, and its first phase—planning—is currently under development.
Superphosphates! is a strategic plan that defines the steps to transform the mining
village into a center for innovation in the context of Cáceres’s candidacy to be named
the 2016 European Capital of Culture, a title awarded once each year to a different
European city. The plan recycles the site’s obsolete mining infrastructure, securing it
against future redevelopments. The existing galleries, lighting systems, mineral
deposits, and ruined concrete buildings recover structural functions, adapted to
the new needs of the neighborhood. The mining infrastructure maintains its iconic
presence while contributing to the ecological reorganization of sewer systems,
electricity, gas, wireless networks, centralized water, garbage treatment facilities,
and so on. Ultimately, Superphosphates! reimagines the mining village as a prototype
of a self-managed, sustainable, 850,000-square-foot neighborhood, reducing Aldea
Moret’s dependence on the centralized urban systems of Cáceres.
Initially implemented in the form of a book compiling strategies to contain the real
estate speculation, Superphosphates! is currently being developed as a set of urban
regulations for the urban planning department of Cáceres’s city hall.
1
1: Images from the Superphosphates! 3: Cover and spread from the Superphosphates!
book book displaying different strategies to contain
2: Proposed massing future speculative developments
44 45
La Galeria : Camino subterráneo

que se hace en las minas para descanso, ventilación,
comunicación y desagüe.
Superfosfatos! recupera la memoria de las infraestructuras

de la mina al construir una galería subterránea e inteligente
que nutra de telecomunicaciones, electricidad, desagües,
recolección de pluviales, recolección subterránea de basura,
al ámbito objeto de estudio y sirva de semilla para un traza
mayor a lo largo de Aldea Moret y la rivera del Calerizo.
En otras palabras, una red enterrada que aúne los últimos
avances tecnológicos, que se situé siempre siguiendo la traza
de las vías, con voluntad de extenderse en el futuro, como
dotación urbana y pública.
3
142 Fake Industries
Credit Dream No. 1: DCR (NYC Department of Citizenship Recruitment),

or How to Create Invisible Schools, No Credit or Walls Required
The Department of Citizenship Recruitment (DCR) was a New York City–based

network of underground academies that trained illegal aliens to succeed in the
process of becoming U.S. citizens. It was organized after the 2005 approval of federal
law HH4437:
“Anyone who assists a person to reside in or remain in the United States knowing or in
reckless disregard of the fact that such person is an alien shall in the case where the
offense was not committed for commercial advantage, profit, or private financial gain, be
imprisoned for not more than 5 years, or fined under title 18, United States Code.” (Senate
Congressional Record S2826, April 4, 2006)
“Any property, real or personal, that has been used to commit or facilitate the commission
of a violation of this section, the gross proceeds of such violation, and any property
traceable to such property or proceeds, shall be subject to forfeiture.” (House
Congressional Record H11946, December 16, 2005)
Besides its board of advisors, which included artists, urban activists, lawyers,
and architects, the DCR network had more than fifty volunteer instructors. Due to
the obvious legal implications, their names were never disclosed. The courses were
self-organized, and study materials were available online at www.freenyc.tk. DCR
offered didactic material and advisory support for three different courses: Free NYC
Marriage Course, Free NYC Political Asylum Intensive Course, and Free NYC General
Refugee Intensive Course. All three were meant to facilitate access to U.S. citizenship,
and the training included acting classes, costume advice for immigration interviews,
information lectures, classes, a website, and a wide web of legal advisors.
Throughout 2006, several courses were spontaneously organized in public spaces
of New York that lack video surveillance, such as Starbucks cafes. That same year
DCR launched an informal poster campaign in the New York subway system, targeting
boroughs with the largest illegal immigrant populations. The posters focused on
images that explained the procedure to obtain U.S. citizenship.
Credit Dream No. 1 143
1: Poster used in the DCR campaign 4+5: Posters used in the DCR campaign
2: Study material downloadable from the
NYC DCR website
3: Website: www.freenyc.tk
2 4
3 5
144 Fake Industries
Credit Dream No. 2: Circuit

Barcelona, Spain, 2002–4
Interviewer: Can you define Circuit?

Architects: Circuit was a fashion show that happened twice a year. We worked as its
art directors for two years. Circuit was part of Barcelona Fashion Week, yet it didn’t
have enough credibility or credit to enter the area where the official events were being
staged, so we proposed to distribute the shows throughout the streets of the city.
I: What role did you play—being architects—as art directors?

A: The work began with the definition of the overall concept for the season. Next,
joining efforts with the production crowd, we searched for locations. We chose public
spaces that exacerbated the contradictions of fashion catwalks, where the elitist nature
of the event had to be negotiated against the ordinary life of the city.
I: Did it transgress fashion show logic?

A: There were eight fashion shows a day, and in each season, Circuit lasted for three
days. One has to also count parties, art shows, screenings, and so on; so there
were around thirty events for each Circuit. And every event was precisely scripted
and happened in a public space. Since we had almost no budget, we orchestrated
the repositioning of the fashion show’s traditional elements, i.e., the red carpet, press,
public, backstage, and lights. Within that constrained framework we attempted to
redefine the fashion catwalk show, using the city as background. The public left the
“safe” environment where such events usually happen. Imagine, VIPs surrounded by
ordinary citizens. The uptightness of the show relaxed. The fact that the general public
was not familiar with the codes of a fashion show added freshness to the events
through the critical gaze of the observer.
I: But it seems that you did not design anything at all.

A: Actually, that was the idea.
I: What do you mean?

A: The lack of credit—i.e., no budget—reduced props to zero. Coordination and
organization was our way to innovate. The shows were optimized in terms of time
because we could only afford two installation teams and there were eight shows in
eight different locations a day. We had an hour to install, then the audience was
1: Fashion show in the medieval shipyard 3: Models in fish tanks on the streets of the old
Las Atarazanas fisherman neighborhood La Barceloneta
2: Fashion show in the Barcelona Aquarium 4: Backstage at the fashion show in La Barceloneta
(Photos by Adrià Goula)
seated, fifteen minutes for the show, and half an hour to dismantle, then run to the
following location and reuse all the equipment. One installation crowd did the even
shows, the other, the odds.
I: That seems rather poor for the kind of events usually organized for fashion weeks.
How did you manage without designing the stage for the events?
A: The environments we found in the city worked much better than overdesigned
scenography—just take a look at the pictures.
1 4
146 Fake Industries
Credit Dream No. 3: The Log-In Project, or How to Refute the Idea of
Architectural Success as a Straight Consequence of Talent
Authors: Cristina Goberna and Ingrid Campo-Ruiz
In times of crisis, why not look for a shortcut to gain success in New York in exchange
for money?
Architecture students’ idea of success usually follows a linear pattern: be a brilliant
student while at the university; get invited by a respected professor to collaborate in
his office; work there nonstop for a while, doing architectural competitions on the side
and maybe writing at night or during weekends; win a contest that allows the winner to
open a small office; start socializing, exhibiting, publishing, and so on. This project
explores ways to skip that path and plug into the New York architectural scene by
paying reduced amounts of money.
The Protagonists: Log-In, a False Architectural Group

In November 2006, the authors created a fictional team of architects named Log-In
and gave them a fake portfolio and CV. A week later, properly dressed in black, they
met with a local public relations office to learn how to enter the New York architectural
network. Log-In described themselves as follows:
Log-In goes beyond built architecture, exploring different networks related to the
discipline. Log-In was formed in the year 2000 in Madrid, Spain. Ever since, its work has
been widely published in Europe. It has organized workshops on architectural networks in
Madrid, has exhibited its work in Shanghai, Copenhagen, and Barcelona, and has lectured
at the GSAPP at Columbia University, New York.
The Discovery: The Secrets of the Network

During the meeting, the PR team sketched out the moves and contacts needed to
plug in to the New York architectural scene. The resulting web was a complex structure
governed by a series of protocols that defined access, hierarchy, and boundaries.
Access was restricted by the architects’ past professional achievements, level of
information, and amount of funding. The position in the hierarchy was conditioned
by the architects’ contacts and financial support. The network boundaries varied
according to the architects’ capacity to interact with various participants of the network
in real time, but also according to their capacity to be physically present in New York
and the economic status of their clients. The required behavior for plugging in to the
1–3: Cover and interior pages of the spoof of

Log magazine
4: Closed-captioned television image of the
meeting between the architects and the PR firm
network included excellent communication skills, a prosperous appearance, and a

high level of ambition. The interchange of information necessary for accessing the
network was to have up-to-date knowledge of works-in-progress and recent success
in the network, but also credibility and a decent level of discretion. Most importantly,
a specific sense of rivalry was required that could be best defined as adversarial
awareness: a strong sense of privacy combined with a high level of competitiveness.
The Publication: Log-In, a Spoof of Log Magazine

The results of this investigation were edited as a spoof of Log magazine and slipped
inside real issues of Log in a number of well-known bookstores around New York.
2 3
1 4
148 Fake Industries
Credit Dream No. 4: I Love Japan

Barcelona, Spain, 2002
Authors: Urtzi Grau, Ema Dünner, Jorge Meneses, Ana Otero, and Ana Xambo
Fifteen industrial fans inflating a prêt-à-porter collection, more than one thousand
square feet of digital wallpaper displaying western clichés about Japan, a minimal-
industrial-postnoise DJ and his video counterpart jamming through seven coordinated
projectors and an equal number of speakers, three hundred hipsters eager to find their
picture in VICE or next month’s edition of Purple—all these things came together in
a fifteen-hundred-square-foot room, designed by a postmodern architect who never
moved on from critical regionalism. And still, the commission seemed suspiciously
clear from the very beginning: a fashion show with neither models nor a catwalk, to
present a collection that had Japanese inspiration as its alibi. How far we moved away
from the original intention is still a question. Conversations with the client were initially
haunted by empty and floating signifiers, Empires of Signs, and other semiotic
anxieties. Today, what definitely seems clear is that the materials we used differed
from those of our regular construction sites. Not only because they required sexier
technologies, but because we got rid of almost anything that was not just pure action.
Temporary, fast, atmospheric, incontrollable, the mechanisms invented for I Love
Japan include masses of coolhunters, white noise and epileptic flashes, erotic aromas,
and glamorous fashion; i.e., high architectural intensity and shrinking space for
design decisions.
1
1: Set of instructions for installation and dismantling

2–5: Views of the show (Photos by Adrià Goula)
5
Phu Hoang Office
152 Geopoliticizer
156 No Man’s Land
160 Every Man’s Land
162 Water Wrapper
166 Platform for Justice
170 Foodopolis
Foresight 151
Crisis, Opportunism, and Present Futures

We believe that the overlooked intersections between political crises and rapid
ecological change can provide architects with opportunities for architectural
innovation. Through a series of research initiatives and competitions, we have
attempted to go beyond the traditional architects’ task of problem solving, instead
responding to crises by projecting “present futures” that require new kinds of
spaces, organizations, and forms. Architectural opportunism—without its pejo-
rative connotation—provides us with the means to transform political conflicts and
environmental issues into the present futures that would initiate radical change.
The current economic, sociopolitical, and environmental crisis invokes the
question: As architects, how do we imagine a different future while also responding
to present conditions? In addition, how do we design for change without relying
on the old architectural tropes of utopia, which leapfrog the present in search of
an elusive state of perfection? In contrast to a utopian vision, a present future can
capitalize upon the imperfect and chaotic realities of our cities. It is exactly these
imperfections and pragmatic conditions that form the constraints and variables
in our design process.
Our research initiatives use current political conflicts and environmental
disasters as the groundwork to formulate architectural questions. As a result,
a unique form of architectural research has evolved, one that begins with gleaning
information from news outlets, internet sources, and academic journals. Potential
sites are identified through the overlaying of fixed sociopolitical borders with
fluid natural boundaries. The resulting sites offer both unique constraints and
untapped opportunities. We define our research process as a means to formulate
questions related to the possibility of designing for present futures, rather than
simply provide answers.
152 Phu Hoang Office
Geopoliticizer
Installation, New York, New York, 2009
Political spaces are never fixed, but shift along with fluid natural geographies.
In fact, political, economic, and humanitarian crises are frequently framed by
debates over geography—that is, access to fluctuating natural resources. Modern
crises rarely have a singular cause or impact, however. Our work examines the
intersections between political and natural boundaries. We approach the misalign-
ments between these boundaries as geopolitical “loopholes”—potential sites in
which architects can intervene.
The Geopoliticizer was designed for an exhibition of the Architectural League’s
2009 Young Architects Forum. The installation amplifies and blurs the dissonances
between political and environmental spaces. Within the installation, the No Man’s
Land, Every Man’s Land, and Foodopolis research initiatives are reconfigured
by the viewer. For each proposal, we overlaid Google Earth satellite views with
underwater bathymetric charts. Satellite imagery, as a form of political space
and knowledge controlled by governments, is revealed as being far from neutral.
The bathymetric charts uncover locations where water boundaries will change
in the future, due to receding or rising water levels. The three research initiatives in
the Geopoliticizer installation all examine possible present futures that might be
realized in the misalignments between political and environmental boundaries.
1
Geopoliticizer 153
1: Overlaid bathymetric charts of Foodopolis 3: How can we design for both global and
2: Reflection and transparency diagram local impact?
Image of political space
Image of environmental
space
Reference point
Reflected point
Projection/reflection
line
Political/environmental
border misalignment
2 3
1
3 No Man’s Land
2+
3 3
2 Foodopolis
2
2 Foodopolis
3
3
+ 3 No Man’s Land
1 1
1 Every Man’s Land

3
4: View of the Geopoliticizer installation
4
Geopoliticizer 155
5: Front view of Geopoliticizer

6: Detail view of top plane
7: Detail view of bottom plane
5 7
No Man’s Land
Research initiative, Dead Sea, Israel/Jordan/Palestinian territories, 2007
The No Man’s Land project is sited in a narrow strip of unclaimed water in the middle
of the Dead Sea. The project proposes a remedy to an environmental crisis while
also altering the circumstances contributing to a long-standing political dispute,
speculating on the possibilities of a present future. Many of the political maneuvers
in this region are dictated by the control of resources. One of the most contentious
resources in the region—and in the world in general—is water. As the global map
of water resources shifts along political lines, how can architects engage in these
complex political dynamics and decision-making processes?
The rapidly receding Dead Sea is causing large-scale environmental, infra-
structural, and economic damage. Our proposal relocates the endangered tourist
resorts to an artificial archipelago moored in a no-man’s-land region. This region is
projected to become unclaimed territory as the Dead Sea recedes and the water
boundaries no longer align with political borders. The archipelago would provide
new tourist amenities, renewable energy production, and freshwater collection. One
of the ambitions of the artificial island complex would be to develop a new building
technology that extracts water molecules from the humid air above the sea. Our
proposal would integrate new technologies in water condensation processes into
a responsive building envelope. The purified water would be condensed by the
building envelope technology, then returned to the sea, with excess quantities being
redistributed to neighboring nations. This proposal for a future vision asks if it is
possible to shift the conditions of water supply in the region, thereby providing new
conditions for political change. No Man’s Land won the Short List Award at the
2007 Environmental Tectonics Competition.
No Man’s Land 157
1: View from beach island toward rainforest park

2: View from resort island toward hotels
2
3: Satellite/bathymetric view of No Man’s Land 5–7: What will the political and environmental
4: Site plan showing future growth borders be as the Dead Sea’s water recedes?
Palestinian
Territories
Jordan
Index
Resort Island
Beach Island
Nature Reserve
Island
Israel
Energy Production
Island
N
Water Production
Island
3 4
JORDAN JORDAN JORDAN

Jordan River
Jordan River
Jordan River
WEST BANK WEST BANK WEST BANK
North Basin North Basin North Basin
ISRAEL ISRAEL ISRAEL

South Basin South Basin South Basin
1968 2007 2050

Dead Sea Boundary Dead Sea Boundary Projected Sea Boundary
5 6 7
No Man’s Land 159
8: Resource management diagram 10: Exploded views of tourist islands

9: Island microclimates and natural ecologies
Revenue Israel
Energy & salt Jordan
Water molecules Palestinian

8 (airborne) Territory
Dry
Dry
Beach
ch
Humid
Wetland
Salt Marshes
Humid
Forest
F
Rainforest
Resort Island Microclimates
De
D e
Desert Beach
ch
Dry
Forest
Desert
D
Humid
Wetland / Salt Marshes

Rainforestt
Wetland
W
Beach
F
Forestt
9 Beach Island Microclimates Nature Reserve Island Microclimates
10
Every Man’s Land

Research initiative, Yucatan, Mexico, 2007
Every Man’s Land tests the ideas of the No Man’s Land project on a completely
different site—the oceanfront tourist developments of Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula.
Responding to the 2007 Sudapan competition brief, the project proposes a remedy
for ecological dilemmas while altering the circumstances contributing to a spatial
political problem—the segregation of the “all-inclusive,” monofunctional tourist
enclave. The proposal relocates existing tourist resorts to an offshore artificial
archipelago. This would fulfill developers’ and tourist industries’ desire for self-
dependence, without threatening the livelihood of local residents.
The Every Man’s Land project simultaneously addresses the crises of globally
diminishing freshwater supplies and rising ocean water levels. The present future
creates a global prototype in which freshwater is collected from evaporating ocean
water in solar-gradient energy ponds (energy islands). A portion of the water
by-product from this process is circulated within each building’s water envelope—
a new kind of high-performance building envelope that uses water to cool building
structures.
On a local scale, the coastal urban centers would be connected to the tourism
industry but would also be free to support new forms of economic growth outside of
tourism. Located between the new offshore island network and the burgeoning cities,
Yucatan’s natural beaches would now be accessible to both the local population and
the tourists. Additionally, the urban centers would no longer be required to grow as
infinite “linear cities.” A future vision for the Yucatan Peninsula’s beach resorts would
involve sociopolitical and ecological change simultaneously. Every Man’s Land was
given a Special Mention award for the 2007 Sudapan Competition.
A: Private resorts currently block

public access to water.
B: Rotate resort beaches to allow
public access.
C: Maximize waterfront exposure to
resort beaches.
1
Every Man’s Land 161
1: How can we maintain the resort developers’ 3: Site plan showing future growth
desire for maximum waterfront real estate while 4: View of roof structure from nature reserve island
reclaiming the beaches for the public?
2: Satellite/bathymetric view of Every Man’s Land
Index
Resort Island
Beach Island
Nature Reserve
Island
Energy Production
Island
Water Production
Island
Public Access
Beaches
Intercoastal Highway
Emergency Tropical
Storm Breakwater
2 3
4
Water Wrapper
Research initiative, New York, New York, 2008
The Water Wrapper proposal addresses an urgent need in our cities for ecologically
sensitive building envelopes that are also programmatically responsive. This future
vision would be the first of its kind—a facade literally made of water. The system
utilizes water to reduce a building’s energy requirements while also responding to its
programs and occupants. Water Wrapper works by releasing water particles into the
cavity of a glass building envelope; the water particles then absorb solar heat and
air pollutants. The overall pattern and density of water in the envelope would
respond to information gathered from a “global” (i.e., building-wide) network of
sensors that detect solar heat and air quality levels. “Local” water densities (i.e., at
the scale of the user) would be calibrated to building program input while also being
controllable by the user.
The Water Wrapper for the United Nations Secretariat building is a proposal that
intersects political space with ecological strategies, defining a present future for
responsive building envelopes. The building’s envelope is organized by the zoning
of each member nation’s share of space in the building, allotted based on their
responsibilities in the United Nations. All nations would have the power to effect
visible changes in the overall envelope, composed of the Water Wrapper’s network
of microclimate zones. This scenario would not only respond to the standard stimuli
(such as environment, occupancy, and use) but would also register each culture’s
definition of indoor comfort. The offices of tropical nations would form one kind of
pattern on the building’s exterior envelope; those of temperate-region nations would
form another. From the outside, visitors would be able to see an image of national
affiliations by climate and the relative dominance of nations from various climate
zones.
(1) Water particles can (2) Water particles can (3) Water particles can
absorb solar heat. absorb air pollutants. refract light.
1 (a) (b) (c) (d) (e)

Water Wrapper 163
1: What would a building envelope made of water

look like?
2: View of United Nations Water Wrapper
2
3: Wall section diagram 5: Interior view of responsive water systems:

4: Politics and indoor comfort diagram a. Water Wrapper with “global” and “local”
water arrays on
b. Water Wrapper with only “global” array on
Outer Single Glazing
Roof Photovoltaic
Solar Panels
Inner Double Glazing
“Global” and “Local” Water Nozzle

Patterns Front & Rear Solenoid
Water Valve Arrays
Water Catchment Tanks with Cover
/ Maintenance Walkway
“Global” Solenoid Valves and

Water Nozzles
“Local” Solenoid Valves and
Water Nozzles
Water Imagery Digital
Control System
Sensor System
(Solar Heat, Air Quality,
Occupancy)
Water Catchment Pool

Rain Catchment Tank & Water
3 Pump System
5a
5b
4
Water Wrapper 165
6: Water sequence diagram: 7: View of United Nations Water Wrapper

Layer a—“Local” water arrays 8: Interior view from typical office
Layer b—“Global” water arrays
Layer c—Historic curtain wall
a b c
7 8
Platform for Justice

Competition, Paris, France, 2006
How can a courthouse express the idea of justice in the capital of a democratic
society while meeting security requirements in a changing world? This was a critical
question addressed in our competition proposal for the national court building of
France. The competition required the adaptive reuse of an existing historic train hall in
Paris. We preserved this hall while also radicalizing the typology of a courthouse.
Instead of hiding the administration and support areas of the courthouse away from
public view, we elevated them and located them in a floating Platform for Justice,
viewable from other points of the city. The underside of this floating platform is clad in
metal that reflects images of the train hall’s roof and the supporting courtroom
structures. The courtrooms are stacked in order to support the platform above as well
as to create a new kind of courthouse organization.
The Platform for Justice inverts the relationship between the public and the inner
workings of the judicial system: the former train hall is converted into a lobby that is
also used as an urban public space. We designed an inventive structural system—a
non-orthogonal network of columns—that preserves the existing hall structure while
supporting the floating platform above. Resting on the columns is a network of trusses
that also frame light and view openings in the platform. This structural organization
remains discreet in order to accentuate the historic hall’s concrete structure.
1 2
3
Platform for Justice 167
1: View toward south entrance 4: View of platform above and historic

2: View toward north entrance train hall below
3: Site plan including housing developments 5: View of Platform for Justice
5
6: Plans, from top to bottom: level 6, level 4, level 1 8: View of platform roof
7: Transverse section 9: Train hall roof reflection diagram
+ =
8 9
Platform for Justice 169
10: Is it possible to address global security

requirements and remain a public building?
< Office Platform
<V
ierendeel Truss
System
< G lazed
Courtroom
Envelopes
<C
ourtroom
Pillars
<P
illar
Circulation
Network
< E xisting Historic

Train Hall
10
Foodopolis
Research initiative, New York, New York, 2009
Foodopolis addresses the politics, spaces, actors, and networks of the global food
system—from local to global trade and from farm to table. Today, an overconsuming
developed world has a responsibility to reform the global food system, in order to
increase food security in cities as well as to meet the needs of an increasingly malnour-
ished developing world. Foodopolis proposes a present future of floating hydroponic
farms to contribute to New York City’s food needs locally rather than relying solely on
remote sources. The innovative farms are paired with two new types of food markets:
global auction markets use digital communications to transmit real-time, fair-trade
food prices, making food exchange more transparent, while markets and outdoor
parks redefine the traditional farmer’s market to create new public spaces. Together,
the floating farms, markets, and parks will transform New York City’s postindustrial
waterfront into a network of urban food and public spaces.
1
Foodopolis 171
1: Sectional perspective through site
The question arises: How does a lettuce farmer outbid a Wall Street banker in
a city where land is valued as high as five thousand dollars per square foot? Our
Foodopolis proposal identifies a space that eludes New York City’s real estate
demands: the undevelopable water around Manhattan. Located just off the shore,
the floating farms are hydroponic and do not occupy any ground area. The farms
rise and fall with the tides and use captured sun, rain, and river water. A new urban
edge is formed—a food border that is visited by residents and tourists alike. City
residents can buy shares in allotments of one hundred square feet each and reap
the resulting produce as well as share profits in the nearby markets. Within these
public markets, suspended, automated food-processing systems create open public
zones below—spaces in which New York City’s future food systems and culture are
rebuilt and radically reconceived.
2: Interior view of floating farm 4: What is possible with an urban and decentralized
3: What can one hundred square feet be food distribution network?
used for in New York City?
3 4
Foodopolis 173
5: Site plan of development at West Side Highway

and Canal Street
6: New York City’s urban food network diagram
Key:
6
7: Aerial view
8: View from ship toward Foodopolis
8
Foodopolis 175
9: Interior view of market island

10: Floor plan of market island
11: View of Foodopolis model
1. Exterior Promenade
2. Interior Promenade
3. Public Food Event Space
4. Ventilation/ Humidification Openings
5. Food Conveyor Lifts
6. Food Packaging Mezzanine Above
10 11

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(Young Architects 11) The Architectural League of New York, Anne Rieselbach, Teddy Cruz - Foresight-Princeton Architectural Press (2010)

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Young Architects 11

Foreword by Teddy Cruz

Princeton Architectural Press

For a free catalog of books, call

© 2010 Princeton Architectural Press and Library of Congress

Special thanks to:

The Architectural League of New York

President Directors Life Trustees

Foreword: Transcending the Foresight Divide

Foresight: Making Different Arrangements?

Similarly, I recently witnessed a presentation by Jim Kunstler, the author of The

Foresight Across Divided Agendas

existing technologies and the future of water infrastructure. A freestanding, kiosk-

If foresight does not allow us to ascertain the future, it at least allows us to

1: Concept diagram 5: System axonometric

hooks used in the past

Resuscitating the Fez River

Site 03: Chouarra

Medina Waterways at grade

1: Map of the medina

Rainwater harvesting Bank stabilization

Oued Sebou Watershed holds:

Fez River entering the medina

Fez River Site 1: R’cif Plaza

Recycled leather canopy

Cable support system

Poles supporting canopy

New stairs toward 2

1: Site program axonometric

Fez River Site 2: Andalous Playground

Recycled leather canopy

Cable support system

1: Site program axonometric 4: View from the playground toward the

Fez River Site 3: Chouarra Leatherworks and Gardens

Predicated on removing a major point source of pollution and on revitalizing an

Original tannery buildings,

1: Site program axonometric 4: Phasing strategy

Phase 1 Phase 2 Phase 3 Phase 4

Douar Tensift: Time-shares

Planned municipal road

Vegetable Palm tree nursery

Clay tennis courts

Vegetated slope with

Aquaponic Shelter Kit

As the number of displaced populations around the world increases, it is crucial

Unused space Unused surface Aquaponic kit Rain

Quilted tent fabric

rld water 5 to 7 tons

70% Fish waste

Fish nutrient Fertilizer

1: Concept diagram 4: View of the elevated pond

with asphalt paper

Habitable area = 288 sq. ft.

Hybrid Urban Sutures

1: Mapping of heterotopic network

WALKING DISTANCES FROM

2: Mapping of selection criteria

PUBLIC GARDEN BRIDGING + LIFTING

While water scarcity is a problem of global proportions, it is particularly significant

1: Mobile toilet concept

Step 01 Step 02 Step 03

4: Mobile toilet axonometric diagram

> 1000L LOW INTEGRATIVE

6: Sample project panel