Product Description

ORIS 107 Awards in Architecture
MAGAZINE FOR ARCHITECTURE AND CULTURE OF LIVING

Magazine for Architecture and Culture Oris has been continuously published since 1999 as a Croatian-English edition in bimonthly rhythm.

ORIS 107 Awards in Architecture
MAGAZINE FOR ARCHITECTURE AND CULTURE OF LIVING

The focus of contents is survey of recent architectural practices. The magazine also covers events in the area of design, photography, and visual arts, as well as theory.
The editorial concept is based on promotion and valuing of architecture which represents cultural and social contribution; and the magazine, since its beginning, has been directed to authorial architecture and highly valued works with certain accent on the Middle European context.

Awards in Architecture

The October issue of Oris magazine, dedicated to the Days of Oris symposium and therefore edited on the basis of authorship and not a particular theme, has always been rather heterogeneous. Yet, if we had to isolate a recurring motif, it would probably be – the award in architecture. Nearly all the authors presented in the pages in front of you hold a large number of awards in their portfolios – due to both excellence of their work and growing number of circulating awards – and this year’s laureates of the most prestigious, Pritzker Prize, particularly stand out. But, despite the fact that architectural awards are a frequent topic not only in the professional, but also in a broader public dis- course, an analytical step backwards, that is discussing the possibilities and limitations of the architectural award as a social and economic tool in the neoliberal era, has seldom been undertaken. This year’s Pritzker Prize has been awarded to Catalan architectural collective RCR Arquitectes, what has been interpreted as a deviation from the canon and a strong message from the jury. In terms of quality, RCR’s architecture undoubtedly reaches the heights of its predecessors. It is innovative, consistent, and re ned, at the same time lying within the conventionally de ned frames of the discipline and following the ubiquitous imperatives of environmental and social consciousness. However, more than the architecture, it is the winners that draw attention. Rafael Aranda, Carme Pigem and Ramón Vilalta di er from the incredibly uniformed pro le of the previous Pritzker Prize laureates. Despite their marvellous body of work, they leave the impression of being architects next door, with their uncommonly common business model, tightly bound to the local context: they established their o ce in the town of Olot, where they, accompanied by their collaborators, still work, and have built most of their projects in their homeland region, thus staying out of the current of the globalised, highly professionalised and mass architectural production. Their work, deeply admired by architects for many years, remained out of reach for the broader public (some media have tried to exploit this to construct the anonymity myth), so the Pritzker jury’s decision shows a clear distance from the starchitects paradigm, strong individuals of global influence, dominating the world of architecture for the past two decades. Furthermore, the number of this year’s laureates indicates the inclination towards decomposition of the individuality of the author’s position, and the consequential hierarchy. Although the number three meets only the mini- mal criterion for an entity to be considered a collective, the prize was, for the first time in its forty year long history, awarded to a group of architects, and not to an individual or a duo. Finally, in the profession profoundly interwoven with patriarchal social relationships, it is highly significant that one of the three architects is a woman, thus becoming the third female Pritzker laureate in history, especially considering the Denise Sco Brown and Lu Wenyu controversies, whose omission provoked fierce feminist criticism. ¶ In the time of profession’s pervasive political partitions, awarding the Pritzker Prize to RCR has proved to be a wise decision, simultaneously challenging the routines, mildly altering the course, and uniting all the opposed sides. The jury’s satis- faction with its choice is con firmed by the jury citation, a brief textual commentary published along with the award conferral, that ends with an unexpected reflection upon the antitheses of the globalized world, where instances like RCR o er a wonderfully reassuring answer to the crisis in the profession and fears gripping the society as a whole, bringing hope for a brighter future. RCR’s Pritzker award (together with Aravena’s Venice Biennale, Kéré’s Serpentine Pavilion and Assemble’s Turner Prize) certainly indicates new tendencies in the evaluation of architectural work and the long- awaited institutional recognition of marginalised entities and practices, while collectivism, gender, and every other equality, as well as the awareness of the intricate relation- ship between economy and ecology, form the foundation of a progressive change. Nevertheless, the Pritzker’s gaze into the future is incomplete. In his volume entitled A er the Future, Italian theorist and activist Franco Bifo Berardi claims that our doubts about the future, epitomized in the closing refrain of the Sex Pistols’ song God Save the Queen, have emerged in the second half of 1970’s, with the economic crisis and the bleak reports by the Club of Rome on the unsustainability of the global economic growth. This fear has been growing over time, due to the collapse of the communist project, climate changes, and neoliberal com- modi cation of all spheres of life and labour. We are living, Bifo suggests, in the era a er the future, the era of in nite present, where the belief in progress has completely vanished from the horizon. On her blog Architecture A er the Future, architectural theoretician Ana Jeinić has pointed to the profound consequences of the crisis of the future for architecture, as a discipline intrinsically occupied with the project of the future. In the imaginary of the architectural profession, the award institution holds a specific position. Due to the limited public access to paper projects and the fixed location of the built work, awards stand as important professional and market mechanisms, connecting architects with the public, capital flows and, finally, other architects. Yet, every award is at the same time a projection of future, either literally, as a procedure binding a contest entry with its built form, or as a curatorial tool of institutions, a medium between past labour and future life. The idea of the future is an integral part of every award, because it is the very vitality of the concept that gives the award its social function of channeling architectural production and shaping the future world. Architectural avant-garde of the first decades of the twentieth century has empirically demonstrated that architecture alone cannot produce utopia, but it can only give shape to socially produced concepts of the future. In other words, progressive architecture is inseparable from progressive social practices. In that case, an award can be a transmission lever of the projection of the future from society to architecture. Yet, in the society without future, not even the architectural award can ful ll its intermediary role. Without emancipatory political frame, award is deprived of its social function, maintaining only the economic one. No ma er to what degree does the selection of laureates signalize the break with tradition, the awarded architectural worlds still remain only materializations of the dominant ideology – brilliantly structured but impotent micro-utopias, such as the ones in the famous Koolhaas’ drawing The City of the Captive Globe. However, this does not mean that awards should be abandoned altogether. On the contrary, it is necessary to revive their, as well as architecture’s, hope in the future by establishing their clearly de ned relation to the progressive social forces.
AWARDS IN ARCHITECTURE
FRANO PETAR ZOVKO
Pags: 47-50

RCR ARQUITECTES
INDOOR SWIMMING POOL, TARADELL, BARCELONA, SPAIN
WRITTEN BY LOVORKA PRPIĆ
Pags: 51-68

GO HASEGAWA
PILOTIS IN A FOREST, YOSHINO CEDAR HOUSE, APARTMENT IN OKACHIMACHI, JAPAN
WRITTEN BY SALVATOR-JOHN A. LIO A
Pags: 69-84

OFIS ARHITEKTI
WINTER CABIN ON MOUNT KANIN, ALPINE SHELTER SKUTA, GLASS PAVILION
WRITTEN BY DOMINIQUE BOUDET
Pags: 85-100

SCHMIDT HAMMER LASSEN ARCHITECTS
INTERVIEWED BY ANDRIJA RUSAN
Pags: 103-124

WALTER ANGONESE, ANDREA MARASTONI
DALLE NOGARE HOUSE, BOLZANO, ITALY
WRITTEN BY VERA GRIMMER
Pags: 125-140

PROARH
ISSA MEGARON HOLIDAY HOUSE, VIS, CROATIA
WRITTEN BY LOVORKA PRPIĆ
Pags: 141-154

ARCHITECTEN DE VYLDER VINCK TAILLIEU
KAPELLEVELD SENIOR HOUSING AND NURSING HOME, TERNAT, BELGIUM
WRITTEN BY VÉRONIQUE PATTEEUW
Pags: 155-168

VEDRAN MIMICA
THE BERLAGE AFFAIR
INTERVIEWED BY TADEJ GLAŽAR, MAROJE MRDULJAŠ
Pags: 169-188

LINA BO BARDI
GLASS HOUSE, SÃO PAULO, BRAZIL
WRITTEN BY RUTH VERDE ZEIN
Pags: 197-208

MIROSLAV BEGOVIĆ
EXHIBITION PAVILION OF THE ĐURO ĐAKOVIĆ FACTORY, ZAGREB, CROATIA
WRITTEN BY BORKA BOBOVEC
Pags: 209-220

TRANSFORMATION OF THE EXISTENCE. RADO RIHA
INTERVIEWED BY NUŠA ZUPANC, ANA KOSI
Pags: 221-234

A LE ER TO YOUNG WOMEN
WRITTEN BY IVA MARIA JURIĆ
Pags: 235-248

ÓSCAR MUÑOZ
DECOMPOSITION AND DESTRUCTION
WRITTEN BY MONICA AMOR
Pags: 249-258

BIOGRAPHIES
Pags: 259-267