Celeste Olalquiaga - Las Ruinas Modernas en la Era Digital

Este curso investiga la relevancia de las ruinas industriales y modernistas en la cultura hipermoderna. Ésta las invisibiliza y a la vez idealiza como restos de una era pre-tecnológica. Analizando casos específicos de abandono, preservación y recuperación de ruinas modernas en América Latina, el curso propone un marco teórico para pensar el tiempo y el espacio modernos a través de la materialidad histórica y específica de las ruinas. More information.

Ruinas Modernas - Celeste Olalquiaga

DOWNWARD SPIRAL: EL HELICOIDE'S DESCENT FROM MALL TO PRISON

Editors: Celeste Olalquiaga and Lisa Blackmore

Contributors: Pedro Alonso, Carola Barrios, Ángela Bonadies, Bonadies & Olavarría, Rodrigo Blanco Calderón, René Davids, Liliana De Simone, Luis Duno-Gottberg, Diego Larrique, Vicente Lecuna, Engel Leonardo, Albinson Linares, Sandra Pinardi, Iris Rosas, Alberto Sato, Elisa Silva, Federico Vegas, Jorge Villota. Designed by Álvaro Sotillo and Gabriella Fontanillas (VACA).

Downward Spiral is published by Terreform Urban Research in collaboration with Proyecto Helicoide and support from Archivo Fotografía Urbana and the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts.

Selected reviews: Leandro Benmergui for Artishock and Carlos Brillembourg for Art Forum.

UR author Sereypagna Pen at TAK Berlin

Sereypagna Pen, co-author of our forthcoming Graham-funded book Genealogy of Basaac, will be a featured panelist in the public prelude to the project “Encounters with Southeast Asian Modernism”.

Encounters with Southeast Asian Modernism sheds light on the history, significance and future of modernism in selected cities of Southeast Asia in the context of the Bauhaus centenary 2019. With partners in Jakarta, Phnom Penh, Singapore and Yangon, Encounters explores the impact of modernism at the crossroads between early globalisation, local conditions, and the search for an own identity, starting with the period of upheaval that accompanied the transition to independence after colonial times.

Full panel list:

Avianti Armand, architect, Avianti Armand Studio, curator, architectural scholar, Jakarta, Indonesia

Puay-Peng Ho, Professor, Head of Department of Architecture, School of Design and Environment, National University of Singapore

Sereypagna Pen, architect, urban researcher, Executive Director of The Vann Molyvann Project, Phnom Penh, Cambodia

Pwint, Professor, Deputy Head of Department of Architecture, Yangon Technical University, Myanmar

farid rakun, artist, researcher and instigator, ruangrupa, Jakarta, Indonesia

Setiadi Sopandi, architect, Indra Tata Adilaras Architects, curator, architectural scholar, Jakarta, Indonesia

Shirley Surya, Curator for Design and Architecture, M+ museum for visual culture, Hong Kong

Lyno Vuth, artist, curator, Artistic Director of Sa Sa Art Projects, Phnom Penh, Cambodia

Johannes Widodo, Associate Professor at the Department of Architecture, National University of Singapore

Win Thant Win Shwin, architect, planner, lecturer at the Department of Architecture, Mandalay Technological University, Myanmar

The panel will be moderated by Ute Meta Bauer, Director of the Centre for Contemporary Art, Professor at the School of Art, Design and Media, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore and Eduard Kögel, curator, architectural scholar, lecturer, Berlin.

Berlin / 30 August 2019 /

TAK at Aufbau Haus
Prinzenstrasse 85 F
10969 Berlin

Registration is free. See full schedule.

Images: Buddhist Library Yangon, National Sports Complex Phnom Penh, Hotel Indonesia Jakarta, Golden Mile Complex Singapore. Graphics: Alexander Lech

Sereypagna in “One building, many voices” Phnom Penh Post (2015).

Sereypagna Pen is the director of the Vann Molyvann Project and urban researcher based in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. He has been awarded scholarships and fellowships including the Chevening Scholarship (2017–18), US/ICOMOS and East West Center (2015–16), Sa Sa Arts Project (2014–15), Asian Cultural Council (2012–13) and Parsons’ School of Constructed Environments as a visiting scholar (2012). Pen’s work on genealogy of urban form Phnom Penh, genealogy of Bassac, and Phnom Penh visions has been the subject of several exhibitions and presentations in Cambodia and selected venues in Asia, Australia, and the US such as Phnom Penh SaSa Bassac, Art Stage Singapore, Bangkok H Gallery, PARSONS the New School, Taipei Biennale 2016, and Sydney Biennale 2018. He has contributed essays to scholarly journals and books including Cité De L’architecture & Du Patrimoine (forthcoming 2019), Chulalongkorn University’s Nakhara: Journal of Environmental Design and Planning(2015), and Parsons Design Dialogues (2014).

Sereypagna Pen, Schizoanalysis of White Building, 2015, Phnom Penh, Cambodia. © Sereypagna Pen.

Genealogy of Bassac presents a careful architectural study of an area in downtown Phnom Penh constructed on twenty-four hectares of landfill along the swampy floodplain of the Bassac River from the perspectives of artists and residents who have lived through five decades of genocide, exile, return, and eviction. It highlights a new creative generation in Phnom Penh whose emergence is a counter narrative to the current “casino urbanism” of the Cambodian regime.

On Lower Manhattan and Resiliency Projects - NYC

The latest issue of The Indypendent bravely tackles the rubberband ball of issues as the city proposes its $1.45 billion flood-mitigation plan, East Side Coastal Resiliency Project:

LES residents April Merlin (left) and Yvette Mercedes are helping to lead the charge to save the East River Park.Photo: Sue Brisk.

It raises questions about how other major coastal cities will respond to an escalating global climate crisis and to whose benefit; the legacy of housing segregation; the conflicting priorities of top-down city planning and neighborhood-based concerns; the values we assign private automobiles and mass transit; and the hollowed-out state of democracy in a New York where “the tale of two cities” persists.

Tom Angotti, UR author Zoned Out! Race, Displacement, and Urban Planning in New York City and professor emeritus at Hunter College, charges:

“This is about the consolidation in Lower Manhattan of a giant Noah’s Ark for the wealthy with beautiful waterfront views while the outer boroughs get flooded,” he told The Indypendent. There will only be a place for public housing, he added, “if there are opportunities for private investment.”

WATERPROOFING NEW YORK

Editors: Denise Hoffman Brandt and Catherine Seavitt Nordenson

Contributors: Lance Jay Brown; Nette Compton; Deborah Gans; Jeffrey Hou; Lydia Kallipoliti; Signe Nielsen; Kate Orff; Sandra Richter; Frank Ruchala Jr.; Thaddeus Pawlowski; Janette Sadik-Khan; Hilary Sample; Judd Schechtman; Gullivar Shepard; Michael Sorkin; Byron Stigge; Erika Svendsen, Lindsay Campbell, Nancy F. Sonti and Gillian Baine; Georgeen Theodore

Earlier this year, the city proposed an East River extension to protect Lower Manhattan at a cost of $10 billion. UR co-editor of Waterproofing New York and Director of the Graduate Landscape Architecture at CCNY, Denise Hoffman Brandt, responded in a Salon article:

“Unless you’re going to surround Manhattan with a wall, the water is going to get in somewhere and in some kind of situation,” she said, asking why a more holistic, citywide solution was not being considered. “How’s it going to look when Lower Manhattan is high and dry and the rest of the city is flooded?”

Vanessa Keith, author of 2100: A Dystopian Utopia - The City After Climate Change at CUNY Climate Action Lab (CAL). The event brought together “activists, researchers, and artists to reimagine climate politics through the lens of the city as both the frontline impact-zone and the potential source of grassroots, artistic, and scientific alternatives informed by the principles of climate justice, for A People’s Plan for Climate Action for NYC.”

Watch videos of the day long event, which included UR authors, Vanessa Keith and Tom Angotti, on the Center for the Humanities - CUNY website.