Domus 872
July - August 2004
Domus
Borders, buffer zones, walls, control systems, protected areas: You only have to leave your house or watch the news to realise that the space about us ripples with boundaries. Our lives are marked by a succession of badges, passwords, entry and identification codes. These boundaries are another face of globalisation, framing the world’s flow of individuals, goods and information. They proliferate to defend privileges and customs; they are used to control territories and to regulate cultural and language exchanges.
For this reason, boundaries today are not merely lines or walls. Some boundaries are like funnels that channel disorderly flows of individuals and objects to a place – along a coast or border. Others seem to be impenetrable pipes, such as the sea corridors travelled by migratory flows like the boatpeople fleeing Vietnam or the Moroccan coasts. There are boundaries that emerge between the folds of two territories in conflict, such as the strip of desert cutting through the middle of Nicosia; but also boundaries that, like sponges, attract populations and investment to create new communities. Like phantom limbs, other boundaries continue to function even when they no longer exist.
But above all, everywhere in the world, there are enclosures: made of barbed wire or concrete, such as those surrounding the Olympic zones in Athens. They can also be immaterial, like those protecting the America’s Cup bank investments, or mobile like the lines of control which paramilitary groups in Colombia redefine on a daily basis.
Boundaries are the sensors of contemporary world dynamics. Like dynamic ‘devices,’ they vibrate with the energies and resistance that drive current history for the better and not just for the worse.
Contents
Calendar
Ettore Sottsass. Pictures from a window
Athens Olympic Games 2004. Spectators and expectations
A month from the start of the Games, many of the sports infrastructure building sites are still at work. We discuss this with Hariklia Hari e Yorgos Tzirtzilakis. Photography by Francesco Jodice
Giancarlo De Carlo. Can non-places be (re) transformed into ‘places’?
A space only becomes a place if it is lived
Renzo Piano 2004. Paul Klee Zentrum, Bern
Renzo Piano and Maurice Muller explain the origins of the idea for a museum dedicated to the great Swiss artist
Massimiliano Fuksas. The art of montage
Marco Belpoliti and Paolo Rosselli describe the Ferrari Product Development Centre at Maranello. Text by Marco Belpoliti. Photographs by Paolo Rosselli
Droog and around
A journey in Holland, hotbed of talents, to celebrate 10 years of Droog and present a new generation of designers
Alinghi’s Power
Domus presents the new boat that Alinghi will sail for the America’s Cup circuit and questions the power of the Swiss armada
For Mario Merz
Jannis Kounellis remembers his lost friend. With a text by Manuela Gandini
Scott Lash. Paris/Shanghai
Extensive city versus intensive city?
A12. Rooms in the forest
In Otterlo, a wooden labyrinth accommodates the works of a group of contemporary artists
Asymptote. Exhibition hulls
The design project for the next Venice Biennale of Architecture metaphorically interprets the historical spaces of the Arsenale. Text by Marco De Michelis
Interview: Richard Hamilton
Hans Ulrich Obrist interviews Richard Hamilton. Part two
Toyo Ito: Ripples on the Water
The Japanese architect explaines his idea for a mobile installation
Bruno Latour. Welcome to an Idea?
After the grand ideas of Modernism, is the future the new idea?
Art Graft: Dominique Gonzales Foerster. ALPHAVILLES
Post-it: Books
Rassegna: The new lamps
Panorama
El Topo: David Zink Yi
Edited by Maurizio Cattelan, Massimiliano Gioni and Ali Subotnick (Wrong Gallery)
