#14: UNSOLICITED ARCHITECTURE
Out now!
VOLUME is a collaborative project by Archis + AMO + C-Lab + …
‘Perhaps the time has come to design not as solicited by client, site or available budget, but to design unsolicited architecture and find clients, sites and budgets for it.’ Ole Bouman >
Volume presents the UNSOLICITED practice – a powerful idea generator, a solid business plan and an idealistic design approach.
In order to actively grapple with the questions and challenges of our age, architects have to redefine their role, transform themselves from extremely competent executors of assignments into entrepreneurs
and producers.
At the end of the 20th century the architect’s social position slipped away from him. The architect as social engineer, as organizer of social relationships, as the one who inspires political decisions, as a professional power player in the game of spatial distribution appears to be a remarkable intermediate phase in architecture’s century long development. His professional choice in recent decades has been reduced to supplying designs and assembling materials in a spatial configuration with a certain esthetic quality.
But is there still or once again the desire, the possibility, the need for an engaged attitude? Recent years have seen an increasing number of initiatives by architects and artists which could easily be gathered under the moniker of ‘unsolicited architecture’. There is an ocean of problems and possibilities to discover and chart, that know no natural responsible parties.
Courage demands leaving the safe and trusted logic of the assignment behind in order to tread the field of venture development.
This issue of Volume discusses essential tools to permit architects to reclaim their professional autonomy. In the first part, Volume sits ‘Around the table’ with forward-thinking practitioners who see a different role and responsibility for architects compared to a few decades ago. The central part of the magazine presents the portfolio of the Office for Unsolicited Architecture founded by Ole Bouman in collaboration with students of the MIT. All projects introduce a new form of practice that pro-actively seeks out new territories for intervention, addresses pressing social needs and takes advantage of emerging opportunities for architecture. The third part marks the unsolicited world according to young architects and artists from around the globe.
Special supplement: The second issue of Noise magazine by Studio Beirut
Volume 14 was conceived and edited by Archis.
Upcoming events
**18th January – Rotterdam, Volume in conversation with Liam Gillick and Dominic Molon at the opening of Gillick’s exhibition at Witte de With ‘Three perspectives and a short scenario’
** 7 February- Maastricht, editor in chief Arjen Oosterman lectures at the ‘Research on Research IV: Urban Research’ symposium at the Jan van Eyck academy
** 15-18 February- Naples, Volume and Domus execute an open editorial meeting
**March – Rotterdam, Series of gatherings at the NAi (Netherlands Architecture Institute) on
Unsolicited Architecture
FACTS
Editor in chief: Arjen Oosterman
Contributing editors: Ole Bouman, Rem Koolhaas, Mark Wigley
Features editor: Jeffrey Inaba
Editorial consultants: Carlos Betancourth, Thomas Daniell, Markus Miessen, Kai Vöckler
Design: Irma Boom, Sonja Haller
Format: 26.7 x 20 cm, 160 pages
Publisher: Archis Foundation
Distribution: Europe, Asia and USA by Idea Books and IPS Pressevertrieb GmbH
ISBN: 978-90-77966-14-3
Press Contact: Niloufar Tajeri, +31 (0)20 3203926, nt@archis.org