Nikolaus Hirsch


Book Description

In several theoretical essays, dialogues on collaborative projects and reflections on his own work, the architect Nikolaus Hirsch explores the critical transformations of contemporary space and its effects on spatial practice. On the threshold to disciplines such as visual and performative arts ("Planning the Unpredictable" with William Forsythe) he questions the notion of "boundary" as a phenomenon of social and political discourse, as a conflict between collaboration and authorship, as well as a physical limitation that negotiates between stable and unstable conditions. Nikolaus Hirsch is an architect based in Frankfurt am Main, who teaches at the Architectural Association in London and at UPenn in Philadelphia. His work includes the internationally acclaimed Dresden Synagogue, the Hinzert Document Center, the European Kunsthalle in Cologne and United Nations Plaza (with Anton Vidokle) in Berlin. He has curated ErsatzStadt: Repräsentationen des Urbanen at the Berlin Volksbühne. His work has been awarded a number of prizes, including the World Architecture Award 2002, and has been shown in exhibitions such as New German Architecture in Berlin, Utopia Station at the Venice Biennial and Can Buildings Curate, AA London/Storefront Gallery in New York.




Cybermohalla Hub


Book Description

The Cybermohalla project takes on the meaning of the Hindi word mohalla (neighborhood) in its sense of alleys and corners, relatedness and concreteness, as a means for talking about one's "place" in the city. Initiated by the Delhi-based research institute Sarai/CSDS and Ankur, Nikolaus Hirsch and Michel Müller developed a project that involves approximately seventy young practitioners, the Cybermohalla Ensemble, who engage with their urban contexts through various media. Cybermohalla Hub, a hybrid of studio, school, archive, community center, library, and gallery is a structure that moves between Delhi and diverse art contexts including Manifesta 7 and, most recently, the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art in Denmark. The Cybermohalla experiment has been engaged in rethinking urban life, and reimagining and reanimating the infrastructure of cultural and intellectual life in contemporary cities. The book not only documents the architecture of the project, which functions as an attempt to "build knowledge," but also publishes insights that have emerged from the project as a whole. Contributors Can Altay, Cybermohalla Ensemble, Rana Dasgupta, Hu Fang, Naeem Mohaiemen, Hans Ulrich Obrist, Jacques Rancière, Raqs Media Collective, Superflex, et al.




Architecture and Choreography


Book Description

Architecture and Choreography: Collaborations in Dance, Space and Time examines the field of archi-choreographic experiments—unique interdisciplinary encounters and performed events generated through collaborations between architects and choreographers. Forty case studies spanning four decades give evidence of the range of motivations for embarking on these creative endeavors and diverse conceptual underpinnings, generative methods, objects of inquiry, and outcomes. Architecture and Choreography builds histories and theories through which to examine these works, the contexts within, and processes through which the works emerged, and the critical questions they raise about ways to work together, sites and citations, ethics and equity, control and agency. Three themes frame pairs of chapters. The first addresses disciplinarity through works that critically reflect upon their discipline’s tools, techniques, and conventions juxtaposed against projects that cite or use other art forms and cultural phenomena as source material. The second interrogates space and the role of spatial dispositifs, institutions, and sites, and their hidden and not-so-hidden conditions, as conceptual drivers and structures to subvert, trouble, unsettle, remember. The third asks who and what dances, finding a spectrum from mobilized architectural bodies to more-than-human cybarcorps. Modes of collaboration and the temporalities and life cycles of projects inform bookending chapters. Architecture and Choreography offers vital lessons not only for architects and choreographers but also for students and practitioners across design and performance fields.




Superhumanity


Book Description

A wide-ranging and challenging exploration of design and how it engages with the self The field of design has radically expanded. As a practice, design is no longer limited to the world of material objects but rather extends from carefully crafted individual styles and online identities to the surrounding galaxies of personal devices, new materials, interfaces, networks, systems, infrastructures, data, chemicals, organisms, and genetic codes. Superhumanity seeks to explore and challenge our understanding of “design” by engaging with and departing from the concept of the “self.” This volume brings together more than fifty essays by leading scientists, artists, architects, designers, philosophers, historians, archaeologists, and anthropologists, originally disseminated online via e-flux Architecture between September 2016 and February 2017 on the invitation of the Third Istanbul Design Biennial. Probing the idea that we are and always have been continuously reshaped by the artifacts we shape, this book asks: Who designed the lives we live today? What are the forms of life we inhabit, and what new forms are currently being designed? Where are the sites, and what are the techniques, to design others? This vital and far-reaching collection of essays and images seeks to explore and reflect on the ways in which both the concept and practice of design are operative well beyond tangible objects, expanding into the depths of self and forms of life. Contributors: Zeynep Çelik Alexander, Lucia Allais, Shumon Basar, Ruha Benjamin, Franco “Bifo” Berardi, Daniel Birnbaum, Ina Blom, Benjamin H. Bratton, Giuliana Bruno, Tony Chakar, Mark Cousins, Simon Denny, Keller Easterling, Hu Fang, Rubén Gallo, Liam Gillick, Boris Groys, Rupali Gupte, Andrew Herscher, Tom Holert, Brooke Holmes, Francesca Hughes, Andrés Jaque, Lydia Kallipoliti, Thomas Keenan, Sylvia Lavin, Yongwoo Lee, Lesley Lokko, MAP Office, Chus Martínez, Ingo Niermann, Ahmet Ögüt, Trevor Paglen, Spyros Papapetros, Raqs Media Collective, Juliane Rebentisch, Sophia Roosth, Felicity D. Scott, Jack Self, Prasad Shetty, Hito Steyerl, Kali Stull, Pelin Tan, Alexander Tarakhovsky, Paulo Tavares, Stephan Trüby, Etienne Turpin, Sven-Olov Wallenstein, Eyal Weizman, Mabel O. Wilson, Brian Kuan Wood, Liam Young, and Arseny Zhilyaev.




Institution Building


Book Description

This book presents a study that conceptualizes, tests, and practically applies the spatial strategy for the European Kunsthalle. The investigation is the result of the activities incorporated into a two-year work practice from 2005 to 2007, an iterative "applied research" informed by resonances between theory and practice. The developed approach attempts to constructively question ideas of "stability" and "instability" and--in doing so--proposes a specific strategy for the European Kunsthalle that positions it within a local, regional, national and international contemporary discourse. Nikolaus Hirsch, Philipp Misselwitz, Markus Miessen, and Matthias Görlich have developed three spatial strategies: an unstable configuration, a stable strategy as well as a model that consolidates the potentials of both variants towards a, albeit slowly, growing institution. The proposal acts as a laboratory that plans a collective structure consisting of individual components. It results in a network of possible spatial options stemming from programmatic modules and leads to numerous possible spatial configurations. This alternative institution is a showcase of a growing phenomenon problematizing the relationship between authorship and institution. As time spans of exhibitions become shorter and programs become more differentiated, architecture in itself becomes exhibition--renegotiating the default role models of artists and architects. Contributors Shumon Basar, Andrea Phillips, and Jan Verwoert




Do We Dream Under the Same Sky


Book Description

Published in conjunction with the eponymous installation at Art Basel 2015, DO WE DREAM UNDER THE SAME SKY is an extension of the collaboration between artist Rirkrit Tiravanija, architects Nikolaus Hirsch and Michel Müller, and chef Antto Melasniemi. Designed by Hirsch and Müller as an outdoor shelter, the installation, made of modular bamboo and steel, welcomes visitors to engage in discussions while participating in the convivial atmosphere of shared food. This supplemental publication includes interviews, texts, images, and poems that illuminate the installation's properties of self-sufficiency and how it was conceived as a new component of Tiravanija and Kamin Lertchaiprasert's ongoing project "the land," a self-sustaining artistic community near Chiang Mai, Thailand. At the end of the festival, the structure will be transported to Thailand and will be the first building block of a new workshop on the land. In a continuation of conversations among artists surrounding the land, this book explores urbanization in a post-rural condition, the act of building as a collaborative process, and land as a concept that can exist outside of ownership. A discussion with Hirsch, Tiravanija, Melasniemi, and Jörn Schafaff reflects on the way in which the installation builds on the land's objectives relating to improvisation, collaboration, and the questioning of institutional structures. Also featured in the book are recipes developed by Melasniemi on the occasion of this installation-as-workshop, where the public is invited to participate in the cooking process. DO WE DREAM UNDER THE SAME SKY is a project by Rirkrit Tiravanija, Nikolaus Hirsch, Antto Melasniemi, Michel Müller with Angkrit Ajchariyasophon, Sophie Aschauer, Uthit Atimana, Marc Bättig, Klaus Bollinger, Felix Broecker, Carlotta Brucker, Leonardo Bu]rgi, Letizia Calori, Jessica Coates, Claireban Coffey, Nico Dockx, Raphael Fellmer, Michael Gass, Philipp Gasser, Matthias Görlich, Manfred Grohmann, Raphaela Grolimund, Philipp Gru]newald, Somyot Hananuntasuk, Carl Michael von Hausswolff, Karl Holmqvist, Pierre Huyghe, Duangporn Injan, Dueanthalay Injan, Kosit Juntaratip, Dong Kirativongkamchon, Komol Kongjarern, April Lamm, Paphonsak Laor, Kamin Lertchaiprasert, Daniela Leykam, Suwan Limanee, Glorimarta Linares, Kim Boris Löffler, Hector Madera, Therdsak Mahawongsanant, Violette Maillard, Chus Martinez, Philipp Misselwitz, Kritya Notanon, Tepparit Nuntasakun, Hans Ulrich Obrist, Tommaso Pagnacco, Intha Pankeaw, Philippe Parreno, Robert Peters, Thaiwijit Poengkasemsomboon, Tobias Rehberger, Anastasia Remes, Marion Ritzmann, François Roche, Natalia Rolon, Jirasak Saengpolsith, Heikki Salonen, Jörn Schafaff, Ilka Schön, Thasnai Sethaseree, Hanes Sturzenegger, Superflex, Molly Surno, Achim Vogelsberg, Emmi Wegener, Sasiwimon Wongjarin, Eveline Wüthrich Contributors Nikolaus Hirsch, Karl Holmqvist, April Lamm, Antto Melasniemi, Philipp Misselwitz, Michel Müller, Jörn Schafaff, Rirkrit Tiravanija




Art and Subjecthood


Book Description

"This book is based on the conference 'Art and subjecthood: the return of the human figure in semiocapitalism' ... organized by the Institut f'ur Kunstkritik on July 1, 2011, at the Staatliche Hochschule f'ur Bildende K'unste/St'adelschule in Frankfurt am Main"--P. 6.




Gwangju Folly II


Book Description

"The eight follies present a 'detour into delirium' throughout the city of Gwangju, and at times they are even moving targets (on the metro or a mobile hotel), galvanizing the space between the everyday and the utopian, examining the present-day constitution of public space as a political arena"--Gwangju Biennale website.




Architecture and Authorship


Book Description

Architecture and Authorship is a collection of 17 essays by leading international architectural historians that explore issues of authorship, ownership and 'copyright' in architecture. The book includes both contemporary and historical case studies, tracing how since the fifteenth century, architects and architectural movements have endeavoured to maintain their status by defending what they see as their own unique territory - the origins and intentions of their work, and their signature style. Case studies include domestic space; eighteenth century landscape gardens; the Berlin of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century; postmodernism and the 'Death of the Author'. The book also explores the work of luminaries from Ernst Neufert and Cedric Price to Lewis Caroll, Rem Koolhaas, and Peter Eisenman. The result of the Annual Meeting of The Society of Architectural Historians held in Vancouver in 2005, Architecture and Authorship is global in scope and farreaching in its implications. An alternative look at the history and culture of architecture, Architecture and Authorship includes original research into themes that are of increasing importance to contemporary architectural theory and practice relating to indemnity, ownership, gender, and the writing of history.




The Proposal


Book Description

With 'The Proposal' Magid attempts to bring together Barragán's professional and personal archives by probing the architect's official and private selves, and the interests of various individuals and governmental and corporate entities who have become the archives? guardians. Magid, with permission of the Barragán family, commissioned a small amount of Barragán's cremated remains to be transformed into a diamond. The stone, set in a gold ring, was offered to Zanco in exchange for the return of the professional archive to Mexico. Magid's artwork directly engages the intersections of the psychological and the judicial, national identity and repatriation, international property rights and copyright law, authorship and ownership, the human body and the body of work