RIEAch Research Institute for Experimental Architecture

RIEA.ch is an institution with the purpose of advancing experimentation and research in the field of architecture, in response to changing political, economic, technological and cultural conditions in the contemporary world.
http://www.riea.ch/

RIEA blog


Talk about thinking outside the box: an “urban outhouse” that collapses when the occupant exits; an altar device that computerizes reactions of participants; and, more recently, a floating mobile cityscape that provides additional public spaces.
Such are some of the concepts that Bryan W. Cantley — professor of art — has envisioned over the years as a theoretical architect. In addition to teaching 3D design, he also runs his own architectural studio Form:uLA.
http://calstate.fullerton.edu/news/inside/2008/cantley.html

Form:uLA blog 

LW quotes

In the outside world today, I think architecture has to be not the safe and known but the unknown space. Architecture has to provide the new territory, the new place to go hunting or to find something authentic because the outside world has become so surveilled, controlled, predictable. In my work, I have been trying to create unknown spaces.

 Architecture is a discipline which is defined by limits, just like any other discipline. While one may try always tries to break through those limits, they cannout be circumvented. They have to be confronted.  I think that for me this reality is very critical. I can only challenge the limits of my discipline if I know them. So that is the problem: when a drawing or a construct breaks through the limits and becomes something else, or breaks through the limits and remains architecture, it is because the limits of the discipline are known and confronted. There are many borderlines that are important to explore. There are borderlines that we cannot say clearly carry architectural conditions or structural conditions—they are hybrid in a way. One of your questions here is about the social significance of architecture—that is one of the limits challenged by any formal architectural condition, a pragmatic one. It has to be true. The architectural form is confronted with the inhabitant. Whatever habitation means, however broadly you interpret it, it is still a very archaic condition. The body of the inhabitant is a very archaic condition.

Lebbeus Woods

It is amazing to find an architect that inspires you so much, tells about everything you believe in architecture and makes you nod to each sentence you read about his work.
Theory, experimentation and extravagant thinking about spaces, concepts and understanding of contexts creates extraordinary pieces of work.
The way he manages to confront the social crisis, issues in order to create new.

I’m not interested in living in a fantasy world ... All my work is still meant to evoke real architectural spaces. But what interests me is what the world would be like if we were free of conventional limits. Maybe I can show what could happen if we lived by a different set of rules.
Woods, Lebbeus and Nicolai Ouroussoff (Reviwer). "An Architect Unshackled by Limits of the Real World." in: New York Times. August 25, 2008.

Architecture and war are not incompatible. Architecture is war. War is architecture. I am at war with my time, with history, with all authority that resides in fixed and frightened forms. I am one of millions who do not fit in, who have no home, no family, no doctrine, no firm place to call my own, no known beginning or end, no "sacred and primordial site." I declare war on all icons and finalities, on all histories that would chain me with my own falseness, my own pitiful fears. I know only moments, and lifetimes that are as moments, and forms that appear with infinite strength, then "melt into air." I am an architect, a constructor of worlds, a sensualist who worships the flesh, the melody, a silhouette against the darkening sky. I cannot know your name. Nor you can know mine. Tomorrow, we begin together the construction of a city.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lebbeus_Woods

Alderney Street- Horizontal

Uncomfortable areas

                                      


Here I extracted the "bad" areas of Victoria to see and experiment to see how it would look materialised into deconstructed landscape.

Alderney Street- Vertical

 

Stenciled Victorian style building. Pattern is set vertical, which helps identify the building.

Colin Rowe works

Rome is the result of historical stratification and the setting of different urban forms. These parts of the city coexist in a formidable "collage" as defined by Colin Rowe. The city is therefore an interesting case study for the anlysis and comprehension of the urban complex and of the architecture.
http://www.urbanlabroma.it/progettoDida.asp?ID=163&sog=