Product Description

AV Proyectos 101 MOS

+ SNøHETTA, LE MONDE HQ IN PARIS · ST. PETERSBURG, PARK COMPETITION · SIX KINDERGARTENS IN DETAIL · WILLIAM KENTRIDGE · DANNY LYON

AV Proyectos 101 MOS

MOS. A Small Studio in New York
The year when the studio began is uncertain, somewhere between 2003 and 2005, but they didn’t have an office space and their name – !@#? – was too difficult to use. In 2008 they set up their studio in New York and became MOS, an acronym of their names. They define themselves as a studio that “benefits and suffers from contradiction: architects who want to be artists, writers who want to be architects, illustrations that want to be buildings, video games that want to be paintings (…) MOS creates projects that “are at once one thing and something else, familiar and strange, childish and sophisticat- ed, naive and knowing, precise and vague (…)” Eleven of them are presented here.

Tuchkov Buyan Park. Competition in St. Petersburg
For over a hundred years, St. Petersburg residents have dreamt of having an urban park on Vatny Island. The proposal submitted by WEST 8 and Studio 44 made the first place in the competition organized by the DOM.RF foundation and directed by Strelka KB, whose objectives included designing a park with direct access to Neva River, integrated into the historic city center, and with panoramic views of its most emblematic monuments. The brief also required reusing the existing foundations, creating a sustainable ecosystem from zero, and including a pedestrian path to connect the park with other green areas. The following pages feature the winning proposal and the second and third prizes.

Nursery schools. Six Examples
The construction of school buildings began mainly during the 19th century. First were the universities, next came the secondary schools, and finally the primary levels. The turn of preschools came much later, in the second half of the 20th century with the Reggio Emilia approach, designed to stimulate creativity and sociability, and with the experimental ideas of Bakema, Habraken, and Van Eyck. However, these examples did not hold in the long run, and today, on the whole, the design of nursery schools continues to be little more than a matter of adapting existing buildings and schools thought out for older children. Hence the importance of examples conceived from the outset for the very littlest ones.

Snøhetta en París. Le Monde Headquarters
In 2014, Le Monde Group organized a competi-tion to build its new headquarters in Paris, next to Charles de Gaulle bridge, and invited eight international offices to participate. The winning scheme – by the Oslo-based firm Snøhetta and the local team SRA – was announced in January 2015, shortly after the Charlie Hebdo attacks, when the city was still recovering from the shock. Despite the complexity of the plot, divided in two by the central area, the selected project proposes a single bridge-shaped building that stresses notions of opening and transparency – so present in Norwegian culture –, and represents the connection between the newspaper and its readers.

William Kentridge. That Which Is Not Drawn
Convinced that the ethical duty of every artist is to question the pillars of the dogma with the tools of uncertainty, ambiguity, and contradiction, William Kentridge (South Africa, 1955) has built a varied creative discourse that has turned him into a reference of world contemporary art. Privileged witness of the radical changes his country has lived between the collective guilt of the apartheid and the scars that still mark the present, Kentridge is an artist deeply rooted in his territory. However, his work doesn’t manage to transcend the localized origin of his discourse in a universal message on the dis- section of power and the unbeatable strength of the survivors and the humiliated.

Danny Lyon. Before & After Manhattan
Carried out with archaeological intention, the work completed by Danny Lyon in 1967, when he was just 25 years old, is a unique and imperishable document on twenty-four hectares of building in the heart of New York prior to their demolition in a wave of real estate speculation. His photographs, often before and after shots of an urban block, reflect the debate that began in 1960 between those in favor of the friendlier, more liveable city with small-town customs defended by Jane Jacobs, and the followers of the urban renovation model based on speculative interests backed by Robert Moses. The following pages show some of the images that portray Lower Manhattan in flux.

MOS, A Small Studio in New York
Housing No. 9, Harlem, New York (USA)
Housing No. 10, Athletic Track No.1, Oaxaca (Mexico)
Mixed Use No. 4, Mexico City (Mexico)
Cabin No. 1, Hudson, New York (USA)
Studio No. 4, Hudson, New York (USA)
House No. 15, St. Louis, Missouri (USA)
House No. 16, Saratoga Springs, New York (USA)
House No. 17, Greensboro, North Carolina (USA)
House No. 18, Columbus, Indiana (USA)
House No. 14 (location varies) & House No. 19, New York (USA)

Tuchkov Buyan Park, Saint Petersburg (Russia)
WEST 8 + Studio 44
Herzog & de Meuron + JV Vogt
AB Chvoya + Karavan

Kindergartens, Six Examples
MAD Architects
Courtyard Kindergarten, Beijing (China)
Tezuka Architects
Yoshino Nursery School & Kindergarten Project, Mutsu (Japan)
Sarquella + Torres Architects
Bang Nong Saeng Kindergarten, Dum Yai (Thailand)
TRACKS
École La Ruche, Pertes-en-Gâtinais (France)
Eduard Balcells, Ignasi Rius, Tigges Architekt
Escuela El Til·ler, Cerdanyola, Barcelona (Spain)
Equipo Sarrablo
Virolai Petit, Barcelona (Spain)

Le Monde Headquarters, in Construction
Snøhetta
Paris (France)

William Kentridge, That Which Is Not Drawn
Animated Films, Drawings and Collages

Danny Lyon, Before & After Manhattan
The Destruction of Lower Manhattan