03.03 > 07.03.2008 - Christian Kieckens Architects

Nikolaus HIRSCH
Philipp MISSELWITZ
Aleksandra JAESCHKE
Andrea DI STEFANO
_ Nikolaus HIRSCH (Frankfurt) has taught at the AA in London, and at UPenn in
Philadelphia. His work includes the Dresden Synagogue,Bockenheimer Depot
Theater (with choreographer William Forsythe), „Soundchambers“ for Museu
Serralves in Porto, and the Hinzert Document Center. Current projects include
Unitednationsplaza in Berlin, an art laboratory in Delhi and the European
Kunsthalle. Curated „ErsatzStadt” at Volksbühne Berlin and is member of the
“Curating Architecture” program at Goldsmiths College in London.
_ Philipp MISSELWITZ, architect and curator (Berlin and Istanbul) has taught at
the University of North London, the AA and the University of the Arts Berlin.
Initiated the project ‘Geographies of Conflict’ which led to the publication “City of
Collision – Jerusalem and the Principles of Conflict Urbanism”. Leading the
research project ‘Spaces of Production’ on behalf of the European Kunsthalle
Cologne. Curatorial activities include “Shrinking Cities” and “Liminal Spaces”,
conferences in Ramallah, Jerusalem and Tel Aviv and an exhibition in Leipzig.
_ Aleksandra JAESCHKE, °1976 Poland. Co-founder of studio AION and the Italian
branch of the research & design network OCEAN. Studied Graphic Design and
Architecture, graduating from the AA in 2005. Worked in the UK, Spain and Italy.
In her work, she focuses on processes of formation leading towards novel models
of material organisation and investigating the essential relationship between
structural and functional performance across scales and domains.
_ Andrea DI STEFANO, °1973 Italy. Architect, critic and curator. Studied History and
Theory of Architecture at IUAV in Venice and graduated from the AA in 2005.
Co-founded the AION architectural studio and the Italian node of OCEAN.
Collaborated with the New York-based design studio biothing. Organized
workshops and curated exhibitions, including the Architectural Section of the
Prague Biennial in 2003.
Corps Exquisite
On the basis of their model for the European Kunsthalle (www.eukunsthalle.
com) Nikolaus Hirsch and Philipp Misselwitz will investigate the potentials of
a growing, accumulative art institution. The workshop will act 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. Traditionally
an art institution’s plan, with its exhibition spaces, offices, storage facilities,
restrooms, auditorium, café etc., forms a coherent entity that is designed by
a single author. The new strategy breaks from this assumption and divides
the space into autonomous yet related components.
The project follows the hypothesis that the permanent negotiation between
stability and instability is not seen as a problem or deviation from an ideal
condition, but instead considered as a chance to develop a new typology
of art institution: a growing site that acknowledges the change of artistic,
social and economic conditions, using them as a point of departure for its
architectural strategy.
The time-based, growing art institution is comparable with the logic of
“Corps Exquisite”: a procedure by which an image or a story emerges
from the collective putting-together of individual segments. The result is a
network of possible paths starting from a beginning and branching out in a
number of different directions.
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The Matter of Intimacy
One day I went to a factory producing socks and tights to ask them whether
they could make a light shade for me. We don’t make light shades they
answered. And I said: you’ll see that you will! (Bruno Munari)
Like material fetishists, we will dive into the intimate materiality of socks
and tights to let them express their latent desires. Oscillating between
architecture and fashion we will unravel the sex appeal of the inorganic.
Through soft models and hard diagrams we will sample across variations in
membranes behaviour in order to abstract emerging performative patterns
and develop trans-scalar structural prototypes.
sampling: The process of taking a sample of a signal at evenly spaced
intervals of time in order to convert an analog signal into a digital
representation.
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2.
3.
The graduate, Mike Nichols, 1967
Falkland Lamp, Bruno Munari, 1964
Patterned hosiery
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