Architectural League of New York Young Architects Forum website

The Young Architects Forum exhibition will open to the public on the first evening of the lectures on May 14th at the Urban Center, 457 Madison Avenue, New York City, and will remain on display through July 17th. The gallery is open Monday through Saturday (closed Thursdays) from 11 A.M. to 5 P.M. Admission is free. The exhibition will also be open on the evenings of the lectures.

Architectural League of NY Young Architects Forum website

What matters right now is how to deal with the consequences. Think backwards, recall. Earlier foresights offer a bygone sort of delight: none got closer to this extension of capitalist disaster. Architects’ honeymoon with economic power is over and it is becoming an unfriendly divorce. We are left with its cost: no thrust, overpriced assets to dispose off and a traumatized progeny of users striped from their home ownership. For the time being the State mediates, but the various stimulus packages avoid architecture. In these conditions, we would prefer not to offer conciliatory solutions or moralized futures, nor even dystopian cynicisms. Rather, this portfolio arranges architectural operations in a tripartite array: foreclosures, real estate and credit, which refer as much to their original meaning as to last year economic reorganization, i.e. the dramatic increase of foreclosures, the burst of the real estate bubble and the extreme lack of credit. Nothing but to the conditions in which we operate. In fact, what follows is the map of the opportunities we found under such conditions: alternative forms of domesticity emerged from foreclosures, planning strategies that take advantage of the burst and prevent future real estate bubbles and forms of architectural implementation whose main requirement is to bypass credit agencies. Our humble contribution to the disclosure of the discipline’s future is a set of architectural operations tested against the present conditions. It is for the daring fool or the impudent soothsayer to draw images of the future with such materials.

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Next Tuesday April 21st, 2009 at 6.00 pm, Cristina Goberna and Urtzi Grau (a.k.a. Fake Industries Architectural Agonism) will lecture on foreclosure fantasies, real estate nigtmares and credit dreams presenting the FINAL COLLECTION ever to be reproduced, renovated o redesigned, of the immature, generally ill-conceived and fairly sentimental DESIGN EFFORTS crafted by the architects, who none the less, despite their youth, really tried hard to create something of modest value and genuine emotion, and ever since have tried to stay interested enough to assemble, again, once and for all this EXHAUSTIVE SURVEY of the documentation regarding the famous works: Free NYC Apartments, House for Cesar, Khlebnikov’s (musical) Boxes, The Illegal Hotel, Chunks!, Golf!, Superphosphates!, DCR Department of NYC Citizenship Recruitment, Circuit 9 Move (on), Circuit 8 Shine, Reijkiavik Up Circuit 7, Circuit 6 Acuatic, The Log-In Prject, I Love Japan, The Invisible Monument, Ay Caremelles! and other selected projects to finally satisfy the requests of the audience.

ay caramelles from fake industries on Vimeo.

In February 2nd, 2009, the architectural festival Eme3 Collapse commissioned Fake Industries the design of an installation meant to activate and re-appropriate Caramelles Square for the people of Barcelona historic neighborhood el Raval. Since a fence —owned and operated by Barcelona City Hall— restrains the public from the square Fake Industries proposed get rid of this fence, recovering the square for the citizenry; an option presently unviable for Barcelona city officials and the neighbors of the square. 

Continue reading Ay Caramelles! beta

In later years highly speculative real estate operations have surrounded the abandon mining complex of Aldea Moret, a nineteen century industrial development in Caceres, Spain, endangering its mayor urban and architectural values. In 2007 the burst of the real estate bubble stopped the private plans to redevelop the site. Caceres City Hall took over the site and asked for an alternative model of development that had to integrate advanced preservation ideas, energetic and ecological sustainability, participative planning polices and the declaration of the abandon mining complex as National Industrial Heritage Site. Continue reading Superphosphates!

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How to imagine a city in a time when its delirium seems defeated by the suburban lawn?

Continue reading Golf, Honorable Mention Europan 9

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Bed-room, a bed that is a room, that is a space. It floats (positioned on four blue wheels) but only when it is pushed hard since it’s heavy; but still – a “portable habitat”. Continue reading Khlebnikov Wooden House

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Or how to question the representation of a collective memory chosen by the authorities and carried out by the architect. Continue reading The Invisible Monument

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“The Illegal hotel” is an installation of sleeping pods for interns disguised as the lighting system of an architectural office. It unveils the precarious life and the economic regime that the recently graduate architecture students confront when they leave the school. Continue reading The Illegal Hotel

This time-line offers a concise scan of the entire publications output of OMA since its foundation. This production ranges from one monograph every ten years in its early stages, to averaging one monograph every couple of months. The resulting graph reveals a massive body of publication which grows exponentially both in intensity and complexity and it distills from this production a number of models worth closer analysis, such as the ‘Project-Books’, ‘Book-Projects,’ and the ‘Monographs’.
The ‘Project-Book’ model, found in the cases shown in the lower half of the time-line; identifies the in-house production of books, brochures, dossiers, booklets or pamphlets which foreground the office’s designs in parallel with the concepts driving them.
The ‘Book-Project’ model, found in the cases shown in the upper half of the time-line, identifies both in-house and out-sourced production of books, brochures, dossiers, booklets or pamphlets where the publication itself is the objective. In these instances, a broader cultural discourse and its implications is explored independently from the architectural design.
The model of the ‘Monograph’, found in the cases along the dashed red line in the middle of the time-line, is feed from the previous two models through a kind of porous boundary. The yellow background producing the skyline behind the covers charts out the exact monthly page-count kept by the office in the articles published about OMA, offering a sense of the relationship between writing in the studio and writing about the studio. Continue reading OMA-AMO on paper

“Login Project” explores how to plug in the New York architectural scene by investing reduced amounts of cash. It delineates the connections, floodgates, speeds and behaviors that construct the city’s architectural network.

How to refute the idea of architectural success as a straight consequence of talent?. In times of crisis, why not look for a shortcut to gain success in New York in exchange for money? Continue reading The Log-In Project

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Cesar lived in a brand-new, high-ceiling, over-windowed apartment in the old city of Barcelona. A loft, they called it. However he was incapable to enjoy, work, cook, disrupt, practice, procrastinate, eat or fuck comfortably in the room he lived in. Continue reading House for Cesar

“Free NYC Apartments” explores three different ways of to get an apartment for free in NYC, specifically a loft in Soho, a flat in the projects in Queens or a studio in Brooklyn, by faking to be homeless, practicing prostitution or eventually becoming a successful artist, i.e. Enrolling in the Right to Shelter Program of the city of NY. Answering one of the craigslist’s adds promising a free apartment in exchange for sex. Becoming a renowned artist and living for free in an apartment pay by a landlord sure that your presence will raise the rents. Continue reading Free Nyc Apartments

The Department of Citizenship Recruitment was a New York-based network of underground academies for illegal aliens to be trained to succeed in the process of becoming US citizens organized after the approval of the US law HH4437: Continue reading Nyc Department of Citizen Recruitment

Go to ‘Un Cadavre’ Website

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The fight for Tafuri’s corpse began in a marshy stage, with all kind of pests (from frogs to mosquitoes) fighting over an already-putrid body. The initial confusion seemed like a National Geographic show on the alimentary habits of the scholarly fauna of the swamps; it quickly became a less rich ecosystem. Besides the odd interventions, only simple species of scavengers could be seen. It’s a pity; architectural imagination has always been too close to mausolea and too far away from bogs.

Continue reading Un Cadavre

Ctrl Ce documents the journey of sixteen European architects to the Post Professional program (AAD) at the Graduate School of Architecture Planning and Preservation of Columbia University (GSAPP) in New York. Continue reading Ctrl Ce Catalog

Chunks proposes to re-imagine the identity of a neighborhood –Aldea Moret– through friction; i.e. taking advantage of the superimposition of different legalities, managing the empty space and unveiling potential perversion of the infrastructure. Continue reading Chunks, Winner Entry Europan 8

Download ‘BAR Sinferencia’ poster

Go to ‘BAR Sinferencia’ Website

In October 22nd, 2005, the Bureau for Antropophagi and Representation (BAR) met in Barcelona. The first and last Bar Sinference counted with the inestimable collaboration of some of the most infamous BAR members, such as the attentive professor Bacterium, the unclassifiable Shrimp, the well-kwon Reus’ Hanger, the undauted Annah von Fulbright, the Professional Competition Looser (PCL), the erudite Rabi Zwi Chaim Yisroel, the exotic Habitual Contestant and, seated in the right end and almost vanished, Bartleby the Draftsman. The pleasant conversation dealt with slippery and obscure subjects such as architectural competitions and its juries, the unpleasant side of architectural practice and plausible forms of resistance, or the architectural competition as a form disciplinary autonomy. As temporary conclusion those present penned the first BAR manifesto, distributed in May 2006 via regular mail to to a wide range Spanish architectural professionals alike.

Continue reading BAR’s Sinferencia

Circuit! was a fashion catwalk that had not credit enough to enter the precinct of the Barcelona Fashion week albeit it was one of the partners of the event. It became a distributed event that took over the streets of Barcelona. Fake Industries, Architectural Agonism is proudly offering here the final collection ever to be reproduced, renovated o redesigned, of the immature, generally ill-conceived and fairly sentimental design efforts crafted by the art directors, who none the less, despite their youth, really tried hard to create something of modest value and genuine emotion, and ever since have tried to stay interested enough to assemble, again, once and for all this exhaustive survey of the documentation regarding the famous events: (1) Circuit 9 Move on, (2) Circuit 8 Shine, (3) Reykjavik Up Circuit 7 and (4) Circuit 6 Aquatic to satisfy the requests of the audience. Continue reading Circuit!