In the last days of August, the first in Russia online Architecture Festival 360 FEST will take place - "a mix of lectures, workshops and tutorials on the main software for architects." It was organized by three young architectural companies SA lab, ARCHSLON and SYNTHESIS, which on the very first day of open registration received 300 applications from 41 cities in Russia, Kazakhstan, Czech Republic, Hungary and other countries. We will tell you why it is worth registering if you have not already done so.
Focus on museums
The theme of the festival sounds like "New format of museums". The lectures and the workshop are aimed at taking a close look at the museum space from different angles and unleashing its potential in a new reality, where the digital world absorbs the physical at a speed doubled thanks to quarantine.
Digital design experience
Anyone can send a portfolio and join the workshop, which will last all four days of the festival. Participants in teams of four will create an interactive museum space-game, working with the programs Rhino, Grasshopper, Sketchup, 3DMax, UNITY, Blender, SubstancePainter, Zbrush, AfterEffects, Keyshot. Experience is not important, the main thing is the desire to improve your skills. The work of the groups will be supervised by the organizers of the festival - SA lab, ARCHSLON and Synthesis, which managed to get into more than one rating of promising young architectural companies.
When all major architectural events were canceled or postponed to the next year, our condition was close to shock: in the summer, SA lab was to take part in four major international exhibitions. After a short numbness, we saw an opportunity in the forced pause. In the physical world, it was impossible to work, go to meetings, construction sites, everything was transferred to the digital world, where conventions and formalism quickly collapsed. Amazingly, the lockdown brought people closer together. During this period, the DIGITAL FUTURES forum was held online for the first time, and for the GEEK PICNIC 2020 festival, the SA lab team moved the pavilion to the digital space. This experience confirmed the belief that the hybrid environment is our new reality, which hides great opportunities.
Hermitage-level cases
The theoretical part of the festival also looks cheerful and fresh. Lecturers will be lecturers from MARSH, MARCHI, British, RANEPA, NRU HSE and the Moscow School of Cinema, and experts were invited from different fields. Ksenia Malich, for example, oversaw the architectural program of the Hermitage 20/21 project for ten years, including an exhibition by Zaha Hadid and Santiago Calatrava. Architectural journalist Alexander Ostrogorsky will tell you about the history of museums. Ksenia Bisti will share her personal experience of designing exhibition spaces from the position of an architect. Independent curator Khristina Ots will use examples from world practice to show how architecture influences the creation of an exhibition. ABTB architect Kirill Koblov will tell you how to correctly build a strategy for work in competitions.
In May, the guys from ARCHSLON and SA lab invited me to participate in a "secret" project at that time. The idea of an online festival seemed to be in the air for a long time, the question of implementation is what is interesting. If you describe the process - imperceptibly and naturally during online meetings, the idea took shape, details emerged. This is an experiment for me. It is interesting to check how natural and native the process can be for an unprepared audience, and even in an online format. I see the project as a challenge for everyone. Will students be able to withstand the intense pace and new design environment? Will curators and teachers be able to build the correct sequence of tools, methods and organize transparent communication? It seems to me that something interesting will definitely turn out!
Hybrid format
One of the most important tasks of the festival is to prove that the virtual world is an alternative, but full-fledged environment for creativity, in which one can effectively work, meet, discuss, study, formulate ideas, implement them and ultimately create full-fledged architectural works. Curators are trying to create a synthetic environment in which both worlds - physical and virtual - fully complement each other.
The idea arose in the first weeks of total quarantine, when all the most important offline cultural events were canceled and everyone began to actively master online communication. The idea that the future is not just around the corner, but in the digital environment, has not left us for the past year and a half. Our experience of participating in competitions every time more and more clearly suggested that modern architecture, created in three-dimensional space, cannot convey even a part of its potential, being exhibited on flat tablets. Experience in architectural practice gradually led us to the realization that virtual architecture has a unique degree of freedom, unattainable in the familiar physical world. Therefore, my colleagues and I began to discuss a hybrid format that allows you not to lose the feeling of being in the physical world, but at the same time turns into online.
Reward for tenacity
Lectures can be listened to for free, and participation in the workshop costs 1999 rubles, but half of this amount will be reimbursed if the listener completes all the tasks and listens to all the lectures. The best works, selected by the jury, promise to be published on leading architectural portals. A special prize is an out-of-competition selection in the direction "Design and Architecture" of the forum of young cultural and art workers "Tavrida". At the end of the festival, all participants will have a virtual exhibition and even a party.
Festival program and registration here.
