YONA FRIEDMAN Mobile Architecture, People’S Architecture
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YONA FRIEDMAN Mobile Architecture, People’s Architecture 23 rd June – 29 th October 2017 www.maxxi.art “My understanding of architecture is very similar to my understanding of music: anyone can build, just like anyone can sing; however, some singers are so prepared that they become artists” (Yona Friedman, 2017) Rome, May 2017 . The MAXXI dedicates the YONA FRIEDMAN. Mobile Architecture, People’s Architecture exhibition, curated by Gong Yan and Elena Motisi, which shall take place from 23 rd June to 29 th October 2017 to Yona Friedman (Budapest 1923), a legendary architect, an exuberant, creative artist transcending disciplines, whose thinking is extraordinarily relevant. This exhibition, which was organised by Power Station of Art , Shanghai – where it was presented in 2015 – is now hosted by the MAXXI with a new outfitting, conceived together with the architect. Friedman – who built an apparently floating modular structure in 2016 for the Serpentine Gallery of London – believes that anyone can use simple, flexible mobile structures to design and build their own architecture, such as houses and the “spatial cities” that fluctuate over real cities. On the occasion of the MAXXI exhibition, Yona Friedman’s famous Ville Spatiale reaches Rome, and brings a fragment, which interacts with the unpublished graphic elaborations hanging on the walls, into the museum. But there is more: the exhibition includes unpublished drawings dating back to the 60s, his mobile and “improvised” structures and the instructions required to build them, photomontages, videos and a collection of animation films . Given that Friedman believes that contemporary museums should exhibit what really matters for people, he has created a temporary Street Museum containing objects that belong to citizens, which have been collected thanks to an open call by the museum. Mobile Architecture… This exhibition is an open window on Friedman’s universal language, which, if applied in different contexts, can suit the ecological, social and sustainability needs of contemporary societies. By use of sketches, models and animations, Friedman tells the story of his famous Mobile Architecture theory, conceived at the end of the 50s, which questions the very nature of architecture and the identity of those who avail themselves of it from a sociological, psychological and building standpoint. At the same time, he explores the theme of improvisation, which he theorised as a “possibility” in the world of architecture. …People’s Architecture Friedman believes architecture should not be imposed on people, but rather be adapted to those who use it, keeping the daily life, needs, and wishes of citizens into account. It is a sort of “survival architecture” made of poor materials and simple shapes, built by craftsmen or even locals. Now more than ever, his work is extremely relevant: urban rearrangement can build a sustainable world, where the lives of people are valuable again. This vision, which may seem utopian, is in fact as realistic as all his other works are. THE MAXXI EXHIBITION Compared to the one in Shanghai, the Rome exhibition has been enriched with unpublished, original material produced exclusively for the exhibition , which explores core themes of Friedman’s research, such as the importance of becoming acquainted with the creative and building process and the relationship with “those who inhabit the city”, who can build their habitat autonomously with the instruments provided by the architect. Some of his animations are included in the exhibition, such as the large mural reproducing one of the architect’s drawings: a small dot asks “may I stay with you?” to another, which answers “please do!”. This is a simple, joyful understanding of architecture – and thus society – which is inclusive, democratic, and self-managed. Friedman has always believed that our thoughts are made up of images, and he has always explained his building techniques and thinking by use of drawings. Thus, the walls of Gallery 4 host the comic-style instructions to build many of his architectural structures, of which some have been built here in large full- scale installations . From Griboulli (1980 – 95) a tangle of metal wires conceived as a Rod Net Structure (1970) building system composed of rigid poles, linked by joints, which can be used to create any desired space, to the Ville Spatiale (1958 – 62), the core theme of Friedman’s work, namely an aerial grid above ground level with corridors and houses designed by those who live there, a 9-metre-long model of which has been built for this exhibition. This model interacts with unpublished visions dedicated to the city of Rome and the MAXXI which were produced for the exhibition. Moreover, the Street Museum (2017) was designed to contain 16 objects belonging to citizens, chosen for their meaning, which become “artworks” once exhibited inside glass cases. This shows how Friedman believes that the democratisation of museums can take place only when people have the possibility to show what matters to them. The museum also exhibits a model of one of the modules of the Museum of Simple Technology (Madras, India, 1982), built in the 80s by a group of Indian basket makers following the architect’s instructions through the Communication Centre of Scientific Knowledge for Self-reliance . This project and the manuals created by the architect interact here with a project for a refugee camp. The exhibition also includes an area dedicated to Boulevard Garibaldi , his home, his study, the place where he created and looked for inspiration. This section displays material linked to key moments of his life, from 1958, when he published the first manifesto of Mobile Architecture , to 2008. Friedman’s thinking also emerges from an abstract of the unpublished video-interview called Yona Friedman: an undisciplined inhabitant (2017), made by Sylvie Boulanger, Director of the CNEAI Centre National Edition Art Image, and the Film d’Animation he made together with his wife Denise Charvein in the 60s, including the Annalya Tou Bari documentary, which was awarded the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival in 1962. The YONA FRIEDMAN. Mobile Architecture, People’s Architecture exhibition includes a publication (Quaderni del Centro Archivi del MAXXI Architettura, Notebooks of the Archive Centre of MAXXI Architettura) with texts by Hou Hanru, Gong Yan, Manuel Orazi and an unpublished interview of Elena Motisi . The press kit and images of the exhibition can be downloaded from the Reserved Area of the Fondazione MAXXI’s website at http://www.maxxi.art/en/area-stampa/ by typing in the password areariservatamaxxi MAXXI PRESS OFFICE +39 06 324861 [email protected] YONA FRIEDMAN. Mobile Architecture People’s Architecture Yona Friedman, A Ideal World That We Can Build Together Hou Hanru, Artistic Director MAXXI “C’est la société du monde pauvre qui est en train d’inventer l’architecture de suivie.” 1 Yona Friedman The latest months in the Western world have been a real challenge. With the rise of all kinds of Populist and extremist voices and their political impacts – from the election of Donald Trump in the US to the qualification of Marine Le Pen in the final round of the French presidential election, along with their xenophobic ideologies and reactionary visions of society, economy and environment being widely propagated while terrorism threating major urban centres. A great part of the population is now trapped into a collective anxiety. Worse, a more profound sense of crisis is being shared by many, facing an uncontrollable process of acceleration of global dominance driven by “free exchange” of the market economy, further aided by drastic technological progress. The power structure of the world has been radically subverted and mutated. Along with the raise of new global players like China, Russia, India, Brazil and other non-Western nations, boundaries between the developed and under-developed worlds are no longer defined by geographic coordinates. Instead, they have become infinitely complicated, blurred and often redefined by divisions within each society. Social coherence and solidarity are in danger while uneven developments are producing new inequality and further division among people, and further impacting negatively economic, political, cultural and environmental conditions. How to survive these difficult times and render our life nice and valuable again has become a commonly shared urgency for all of us. And this is particularly crucial for those who work to improve the spatial conditions of our existence, namely architects, urban planners, designers and other creative professionals. How to respond to this challenging question is now an inevitable mission for the “creative class”. It’s not only about the survival of the others but also the survival the “creators” themselves. Making architecture is all about how to invent architecture of survival, as Yona Friedman, one of the most idealist but highly realistic practitioners of architecture, emphasized. 2 Yona Friedman, in much advance of his time, already initiated really critical and insightful thoughts on the question more than half century ago. He has been an enduring avant-garde making propositions resisting the current of the fervent embracement of Developmentalism widely spread across the world, in both the West and the Non-West, in the post-war modernisation process. He has been passionately and creatively striving to alternate the established model of architectural-urban development. For more than five decades, he has been persistently maintaining and developing his critical reflections on the issue and making innovative proposals to explored alternative solutions of constructing a sustainable world with architectural innovation and urban reorganisation. His proposals always appear to be simply and vivid, closely linked to the conditions of the everyday life of the grass-root population with materials at hand. They are in fact thrived from deep reflections on the most complex issues, both architectural and social, and encompass some of the most technically complicated and politically significant questions.