This year's theme - “cities of the future” - is not new to the Meuse. For seven years now, he has been the head of the research center The Why Factory (T? F), established by the Urban Department of the Delft University of Technology and MVRDV. At T? F, students comprehensively study the future of cities and publish collections of futurological projects at the end of each year.
Maas's presentation was titled "Extreme World: This Year's Project." He showed students Strelka released by T? F in 2012.
City Shock, a collection of ten projects about extreme trends that could affect the landscape of Holland from 2018 to 2047. The genre of projects can be described as “urban mocumentaries”. Trends are fictional, and projects are presented in the form of publications from the newspapers of the future: workshops for visualizing new urban landscapes side by side with descriptions of the consequences of these trends for the spatial organization of Dutch cities and the way of life of their inhabitants. For example, we are all accustomed to the idea that the level of the World Ocean is rising due to the melting ice of the Arctic and Antarctic, and many cities on the coast will not be happy with this. City Shock, on the other hand, examines the scenario of a decrease in the level of the World Ocean. What then will happen to Amsterdam, Venice and other cities on the water?
The collection also contains projects about urban transport of the future - and a lot more about that. Strelka students will do something similar. They will have to identify, for further study and development, 13 global trends in various fields - from demography and transport to IT and urban planning, which are directly related to the Russian reality. Winnie Maas noted that architecture is too slow to respond to changes in society and new industries, and urged students to accelerate. They accelerated in the literal sense of the word - they began to identify trends immediately after the end of the presentation.
The fact that the students all together quite independently choose the trends to study is one of the differences of this academic year at Strelka from previous practice, when the topic and approach to it were set by the heads of the studios. But the students are not at all left to themselves: in addition to the curator, the educational process will be guided by the institute's full-time teachers, who have appeared this year - Dasha Paramonova, Kuba Snopek, Brendan McGetrick and Nicholas Moore. Paramonova and Snopek (2010/2011 Strelka graduates) and McGetrick (director of the Strelka Knowledge project) have been working at the institute for several years, but Moore, who graduated last year, has just joined the team. However, he has relevant experience - before entering Strelka, he taught architecture and design at the Rhode Island School of Design. According to Nicholas, the topic of this year is interesting for him because of the opportunity to understand only the emerging types of human activity (such as terraforming, for example) and their impact on our planet. The study of global trends, in his opinion, is a very important occupation, as it allows predicting new conditions and opportunities for design. By the way, due to the specifics of this year's topic, which requires spatial thinking in the development of projects, Strelka has recruited 26 architects and urbanists for the course - more than ever before. Another 16 students are specialists in journalism, design, culture and art, sociology, political science, marketing, anthropology and IT.
The introductory presentation raised some questions from Archi.ru, to which we asked Anastasia Smirnova to answer.
Why is the topic of this year the study of global trends and cities of the future? Is instability - political, economic, environmental, social - felt more and more acutely in the real world? Do you want to instill in students some kind of responsibility for the future? Or is it due to the fact that this year Winnie Maas became the curator of the program, who has already researched this topic with his students in Delft?
- Thinking about the future is terribly difficult. It seems that we are all about him - distant and not very - constantly thinking. However, unlike the past, which is multidimensional, nonlinear, impossibly diverse, has no end and edge, the future is a time that is mainly described by stereotypes. Apparently, due to the lack of sufficient material for reflection, and also in view of the sad fact that somewhere out there in a foggy perspective, the death of an observer always looms.
There is a whole gallery of cliches - visual and not only - and we all resort to them: it is worth, for example, to say "city of the future" and immediately before our eyes some multistage structures begin to pile up, flying vehicles and creatures in something tight-fitting and streamlined. Is it interesting? The study of such futuro memes is included in our plans, but I would like to try to construct a more concrete, more human, detailed, odorous, tangible future. One of the well-known methods - a technique in literature and rhetoric called "hyperbole" - deliberately exaggerate everything, bring it to a certain extreme, to the maximum to enhance expressiveness - this, in fact, helps to think and invent at the limit of their capabilities.
Moreover, design is generally a fairly effective way to predict the future. Look, this academic year we are celebrating the anniversaries of two art projects at once - 100 years since the publication of the first magazine of Russian futurism (1914) and the centenary of Kazimir Malevich's "Black Square" (1915). We still feel the consequences of these two projects, although, perhaps, the energy of that avant-garde begins to dry up and something fundamentally new is replacing.
And Vinnie Maas - yes, we invited him precisely because he is a rare modern architect who is really sincerely interested in futurology. True, he has never worked with such multidisciplinary teams, for him Strelka's experience is new and, in my opinion, requires special efforts. What is wonderful …
What result do you want to get? Serious research of emerging trends and, accordingly, more or less realistic projects? Or are you ready to see the wildest fantasies, which today will probably be perceived as something transcendent, impossible, and therefore useless?
“At Strelka we are engaged in what is called research-based design - research-based design. With this approach, design in the broadest sense of the word is born from a good understanding of the situation in whatever area you are working on. You can collect and analyze the data yourself or, if you don't have time, find the right experts. Therefore, the answer is this: we are only interested in those transcendental fantasies that will be based on a serious study of existing trends and tendencies. I am sure that in this case, fantasies will not be useless. And we are also looking forward to unbearably strong visual images - without stamps.
This year, full-time teachers have appeared at the institute. They say that it was one of the wishes of the students of previous years - to have a "mentor" to whom you can always turn. Is this really the explanation, or is there something else behind the appearance of full-time teachers?
- It really helps the students. On the other hand, there is a certain number of lecturers and graduates of the institute who understand the Strelka method well, are engaged in this type of design and can clearly explain how it is done. It is important that we are all like-minded people. For example, Paramonova, Snopek, Moore are my former students and current colleagues. I have known Brendan McGetrick for many years from my work at OMA / AMO and once invited him to teach at the Education studio. We have a lot of common topics and projects in our discussion, we have a collective drive. And we no longer need a large number of specialists from outside, because together we invent and test on ourselves a certain type of multidisciplinary education - which is nowhere else. Therefore, yes - it is much more than just a staff of teachers.
This year the course will have much less lectures from invited specialists and more independent work of students. Moreover, the students themselves will come up with a sub-theme of the general big theme and its interpretation, in contrast to the previous rather "dictatorial" practice, when everything was determined by the head of the studio. Why did Strelka decide to move in this direction?
- We do not believe in dictatorship. We believe in independent work, when at any moment of time a student - yes, let's forget about students for a moment - any designer understands what he is doing and why. We have already tried the story with studios, it works, but with such a hierarchy, responsibility - for the quality and choice of the topic, for the quality of the brief, for the final result - always rests with the head. And this is an understandable, painfully familiar scheme. We want each project team to be responsible for the wampuku they produce. And the institute can help with good advice, evil and fair criticism, experts - in many ways. In addition, we have a three-month introductory course during which students, like astronauts, go through a series of training flights. That is, not immediately - into open space. Let's see what happens - the risk is great.
Does Strelka feel the complex, if not marasmic, socio-political and economic background that exists in Russia today? How does it affect (if it does) the educational activities of the institute?
- This is not a background, this is our daily life. And we at Strelka have always understood that by exploring the absurd and paradoxical Russian reality, we are studying ourselves. At the same time, Strelka has a unique position for design: we can see that Russia is part of a diverse world and will always remain with it, despite all sorts of mystical national characteristics. This year, we deliberately decided to deal with the trends of the future, because there are a lot of large-scale problems that no country in isolation can solve. This is a reality that no one can undo. And we hope that our training projects will clearly illustrate this.
