Marcos Cruz Architect

2011-01-26T11:39:00.159Z

News / Events 2011 2011-2010-2009-2008-2007-2006-2005-2004-2003-2002-2001-2000

Forthcoming

Lecture at Universidade Lusofona, Lisbon 03-04-2012
Keynote Speech at the Conference Biomimicry Challenge, Syracuse University, 23/25-03-2012
Lecture at Georgia Tech, Atlanta 22-02-2012
Seminar talk at the V&A/RCA/UCL Skin Workshop, Victoria Albert Museum, 13-02-2012

01-02-2012

Seminar talk 'Inside-out Urbanism' to the MArch UD at the Bartlett School of Architecture, London UK.

20-01-2012

Crits at the ESAYT UCJC, Madrid.

Critics: Jaime Bartolome', Pablo Gil, Fernando Jerez, Marcos Cruz

19-01-2012 - 18-02-2012

marcosandmarjan's Nurbster II table exhibited at 'Turning the Tables' show, Great Western Studios, London UK.

Location: Great Western Studios, 65 Alfred Road, London W2 SEU

Curator: Yael Reisner

Participants: Will Alsop; GilBartolome'; Cinimod; Peter Cook and Yael Reisner; Barnaby Gunning; Bernd Felsinger; Sixteen Makers; Helen&Hard; Naja de Ostos; Sandra and Rudolf Knoebl; Heng Zhi; marcosandmarjan

The tree of dining by Helen&Hard

Nurbster II by marcosandmarjan

19-12-2011

Unit 20 crits at the Bartlett School of Architecture UCL, London.

Critics: Colin Fournier, Jose Sanchez, Marjan Colletti, Hannes Mayer, and Marcos Cruz

30-11-2011 - 07-12-2011

marcosandmarjan's Nurbster II table exhibited at 'Turning the Tables' show, Testbed 1, London UK.
Location: Testbed 1, 33 Parkgate Road, London SW11 4AU
Curator: Yael Reisner

Introduction by Yael Reisner

Proposing the exhibition to TESTBED1, evolved from one’s architect’s instinct to promote and reveal the architect as maker whilst retaining the yardstick of an exhibition that might give a genuine joy to the aficionados of design. Architects, unlike product designers or artists, still lack the system of networking via agents, galleries or others and their design stays in the private realm of development without reaching the public domain.

The aim of exposing a wide range of new tables - from cutting edge innovative ideas through to customized solutions designed around specific architects’ needs - has resulted in wide range of forms and intentions. It exhibits displays that are fast to re-assemble, or domestically suitable in an affordable context, through such varied approaches as the selection of a tree in the forest as the best tree of dinning or perforating steel sheet for best stress forces, vs. perforating steel for best laid table.

Architects who often focus on architecture – as one of the most complex visual arts – collaborate with many disciplines, who are all involved in the long a process of its making, from generating the design to the built end product on site. Nevertheless, some of them take a delight in directly making the real thing, and tables seem a great example of a pleasurable (yet relatively short) task that architects can enjoy making: right up to the moment of having the prototype in hand.

An incredibly wide range of CNC cutting machines and 3D printers enables today’s processes to be more affordable than even five years ago, cutting different materials, in almost no time, or laying others in tight layers. (Robots are now entering these processes, though not sufficiently cheaply as yet.)

Now more than ever before projects are led by drawing. A sketch that captures an idea is articulated and perfected through a three dimensional digital drawing - and there lies the real artistic craft of the architect these days. They have become the makers of 1:1 building fragments and objects - a revolutionary shift, turning them from the visionaries who often lead design processes through the crafts of others to the crafty makers themselves. Yet with the manufacturing now often dependent on the machine, the artistic qualities resides and is controlled by the drawing; surely a meaningful change of character.

03-12-2011

Bartlett Unit 20 Student Sam Welham distinguished by the IAB-SP with his project 'CO +/+ Incident', as part of the International Student Competition for the 9th Sao Paulo Biennale (9a BIA), Sao Paulo Brazil.

Tutors: Marcos Cruz, Hannes Mayer and Marjan Colletti
Jury: Ado Franchini, Italy; Amilia Malavolti, Italy; Francois Chas, France; Ligia Pinheiro, Brazil; Mila Giannini, Brazil; Patrizia Pedrelli, Italy; Paul Maitre-Devallon, France; Yutaka Shiki, Portugal + popular vote.

29-11-2011

Lecture at the FAU - Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

18-11-2011

Unit 20 crits at the Bartlett School of Architecture UCL, London.

Critics: Marco Poletto, Izaskun Chinchilla, Ricardo de Ostos, Michael Wihart, Susana Soares, Sara Shafiei, Hannes Mayer, Justin Nicholls, and Marcos Cruz

10/11-11-2011

Jury member of the Taiwan Tower International Competition (Stage Two), Taichung Taiwan.

Jury: Yu-Chien Ann; Adele Naude Santos; Hidetoshi Ohno; Chao-Lee Kuo; Sheng-Fong Lin; Shuenn Ren Liou; Marcos Cruz.
Prizes: Sou Fujimoto, Japan (First Prize); SOMA ZT, Austria (Second Prize); Stefan Dorin, Romania (Third Prize); CRAB Studio, London (Honourable Mention); HMC Group Inc, USA (Honourable Mention).

09-11-2011

Lecture at URS127 Gallery / TamKang University, Taipei Taiwan.

08-11-2011

Public Presentation of WIW project at the Sheraton Hotel Taipei, Taiwan.
Project: World-in-a-World / Chong Qing Nan Lu Towers, Taipei
Design Team: marcosandmarjan
Collaboration: David Edwards; Aleksa Rizova; Tze-Jun Wei; Ergin Birinci
Client: Glory Yeh Art Park Ltd, Taiwan

01-11-2011

Lecture at Nottingham Trent University, Nottingham.

10/11-2011

Interview 'Marcos Cruz y la conciencia del tiempo' in resvista SU CASA, Costa Rica.
http://www.revistasucasa.com/contenido/articles/987/2/Especiales-Sucasa-63/Paacuteginas2.html

21-10-2011

Talk at the event This is Tomorrow, Universidad de Castilla-La Mancha, Toledo.

20-10-2011

Jury member for the International Housing Competition This is Tomorrow, Fundacion Fiscac/Universidad de Castilla-La Mancha/Colegio de Arquitectos de Castilla-La Mancha, Toledo.
Jury members: Frederico Soriano, Jose Luis Pardo, Juan Luis Morazo, Donatella Fioretti, Marcos Cruz

19-10-2012

Crits at the ESAYT UCJC, Madrid.

Critics: Fernando Jerez, Marcos Cruz

13/14-10-2011

Lecture at the Conference Public and Private in the Contemporary Age: Sliding Broders, Faculdade de Letras da Universidade de Lisboa, Lisbon.
Speakers: Bernardo Carvalho, Thierry Paquot, Jose Pedro Regatao, Julien Glauser, Jorge Figueira, Didier Fiuza Faustino, Marcos Cruz

We take great pleasure in announcing the Congress Public and Private in the contemporary age: Sliding Borders, organized by the Centre for Comparative Studies of the University of Lisbon, and to be held in the Faculty of Letters of the University of Lisbon in October 13-14, 2011. This conference proposes a reflection on the theme of Public and Private and on the changes related to these two concepts from the second part of 20th century. The borders between these two concepts have been gradually sliding, as well as our needs and sensations. Man as social animal and as entity in continuous cognitive evolution tries to develop new strategies for his protection and exposition, relation and isolation. Our intimacy is more represented, exposed, nevertheless more and more unreachable and protected, distant from the other because of a continuous over-exposition. And above all does public means belonging to Everybody or to Nobody nowadays? To what extent does Privacy correspond to Intimacy and vice versa? Our intent in this occasion will be to determine the alteration of our time considering fundamental paradigms of our social living and questioning them beside the contemporary age. The main interest of this conference is the exchange of opinions and scientific results between different areas of study, but our reflection will focus on the way the concepts of private and public are changing, and how these changes are recognizable in our society: in the organization of spaces, in its rhythms and in its relationships, in its juridical organization, in the description of its demands and frustrations, even in the concept and image of the human body and its exposition and manipulation. Our need of privacy and of public exposition changed deeply in the last 60 years, we propose to start from this point of view in order to define the main paradigms to understand our own reality and man’s new necessities and expectations.

2/3-09-2011

Jury member for the Taiwan Tower International Competition (Stage One), Taichung Taiwan.
Jury: Yu-Chien Ann; Adele Naude Santos; Hidetoshi Ohno; Chao-Lee Kuo; Sheng-Fong Lin; Shuenn Ren Liou; Marcos Cruz

5 Shortlisted Teams: Sou Fujimoto Architects, Japan; Stefan Dorin, Romania; HMC Group Inc/Raymund Pan, USA; CRAB Studio with Tai Architect and Associates and Buro Happold, London; Soma ZT/Martin Oberarscher, Austria
www.twtower.com.tw

August 2011

Unit 20 student Wendy Boon Ting Teo featured in 'Wallpaper Graduate Directory 2011', Wallpaper, London UK.

http://www.wallpaper.com/directory/graduate/2011/grads#54703

Wendy Boob Ting Teo, model of New Taipei Central Station

19-08-2011

Lecture 'El retorno de lo Figural' at the Veritas Festival, Veritas University, San Jose Costa Rica.
Organiser: Juan Carlos Sanabria (Director of the Veritas University)
Speakers: Jorge Ayala / [Ay]a studio; Esteban Zamora; Benjamin Garcia; Juan Robles; Janet Echelman; Ruben Sepulveda y Margarita Flores / DearArchitects; Javier Rojas; Zoom Arquitectos; Pietro Stagno; Juan Lalinde; Marcos Cruz / Bartlett; Marcos Poletto / Ecologic Studio; Datum Zero

Touring the End-of-Year Exhibition at the Veritas University, Marcos Cruz and Juan Carlos Sanabria

19-08-2011

Interview by Randall Zuniga for revista SU CASA at the Veritas Festival, San Jose Costa Rica.

July 2011

Unit 20 students Wendy Boo Ting Teo and Richard Beckett featured in 'Highlights from the UCL Bartlett School of Architecture Summer Show', The Telegraph, London.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/property/propertypicturegalleries/8586385/Highlights-from-the-UCL-Bartlett-School-of-Architecture-Summer-Show.html?image=8

01-07-2011 - 08-07-2011

Unit 20 exhibition at the Bartlett Summer Show.
Location: Slade School of Art, University College London

Photography: Tze Jun Wei

01-07-2011

Bartlett Summer Show opening.
Guest opener: Itsuko Hasegawa
Location: Slade School of Art, University College London

24-06-2011 - 26-06-2011

Participation at the Studioplex exhibition, IE University, Segovia, Spain.

Student work by Aleksandrina Rizova and Wendy Boon Ting Teo

24-06-2011 - 26-06-2011

Presentation and participation at the International Architecture Education Summit 2011, Madrid/Segovia, Spain.

Organisation: Instituto de Empresas (IE) and University California Los Angeles (UCLA)

Photography: Mar Agra

Participants: Thom Mayne (Distinguished Professor, Department of Architecture and Urban Design, UCLA, Los Angeles), Javier Quintana (Dean, School of Architecture, IE University, Segovia/Madrid), Martha Thorne (Associate Dean for External Relations, School of Architecture, IE, Segovia/Madrid), Hitoshi Abe (Chair, Department of Architecture and Urban Design, UCLA, Los Angeles), Stan Allen (Dean, School of Architecture, Princeton University), Rob Docter (General Director, Berlage Institute, Rotterdam), Mark Wigley (Dean, Graduate School of Architecture Planning and Preservation, Columbia University, New York), Peter Cook, Odile Decq (General Director, Ecole Speciale d'Architecture, Paris), Monica Ponce de Leon (Dean, A. Alfred Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor), Donna V. Robertson (Dean, College of Architecture, Illinois Institute of Technology, Chicago), Ingeborg Rocker (Associate Professor of Architecture, Graduate School of Design, Harvard University, Boston), Urs Hirschberg (Dean, Faculty of Architecture, TU Graz), Wang Shu (Head of Architecture Department, China Academy of Arts, Hangzhou, China), Branko Kolarevic (Associated Dean, Professor and Chair in Integrated Design, University of Calgary), Hans-Juergen Commerell (Director ANCB - Aedes Network Campus Berlin), Winy Maas (Director of 'The Why Factory', Delft University of Technology, Delft), Yasuaki Onoda (Professor, Department of Architecture and Building Science, Tohuko University), Brett Steel (Chair, Architectural Association School of Architecture, London), Neelkanth Chhaya (Dean Faculty of Architecture, CEPT University Ahmedabad), Nobuaki Furuya (Professor Department of Architecture, Waseda University, Tokyo) and Marcos Cruz (Director, Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL, London).

20-06-2011

Lecture 'Sublime Flesh and Neoplasmatic Design' at the University of the Arts (UdK), Berlin.

18-06-2011

Presentation at the LUSO 2011 Summit, Nottingham University.

Lecturers: Mario Baptista Coelho, Steve Lewis, Claudio Sunkel, Manuel Forjaz, Fernando Pinho, Ricardo Zozimo, Miguel Soares, Marcos Cruz, Joao de Vallera
Organisation: PARSUK

19-05-2011

Radio Interview at Planeta Beta, Circulo de Bellas Artes, Madrid.

Interview by: Enrique Encabo, Inma Maluenda with Izabela Wieczorek and Juan Roldan.

19-05-2011

Final crits at the ESAYT UCJC, Edificio de Tabacalera, Madrid.

Critics: Jaime Coll, Judith Leclerc, Marcos Cruz

13-05-2011

Unit 20 final crits at the Bartlett School of Architecture UCL, London.

Critics: Colin Fournier, Ricardo de Ostos, Murray Fraser, Christine Hawley, Justin Nicholls, Marjan Colletti and Marcos Cruz.

12-05-2011

Lecture 'Marcos Cruz - explora,coes recentes' at the Faculdade de Arquitectura da Universidade Tecnica de Lisboa, Portugal.

Photography: Dilen Magan/ M.A.D.

11-05-2011

Lecture 'The Inhabitable Flesh of Architecture' at the Universidade de Evora, Portugal.

14-04-2011

Unit 20 and Unit 22 crits at the Bartlett School of Architecture UCL, London - an event with Salvador Perez Arroyo and Andres Perea.

Critics: Salvador Perez Arroyo, Andres Perea, Izaskun Chinchilla, Carlos Jimenez, Marjan Colletti and Marcos Cruz.

Photography: Marcos Cruz

01-04-201

Unit 20 crits at the Bartlett School of Architecture UCL, London.

Critics: Theo Spyropoulos, Fernando Jerez, Marjan Colletti and Marcos Cruz.

15-03-2011

Critic at PhD Research Project, Bartlett School of Architecture UCL, London.

Critics: Dr Sharon Morris; Dr Mette Ramsgard Thomsen; Sean Griffiths; Dr Marcos Cruz

Presentations: Jaime Bartolome; Eva Branscome; Joanne Bristol; Pablo Gil; Ruairi Glynn; Popi Iacouvou; Christiana Ioannou; Thomas-Bernard Kenniff; Laura Kuch; Tim Long; Christos Papastergiou; Felix Robbins; Nina Vollenbroecker.

Organisers: Dr Willem de Brujin; Prof Jonathan Hill; Dr Yeoryia Manolopoulou

10-03-2011 - 11-03-2011

Member of re-validation team of MA Design Interactions, Royal College of Art, London.

Panel: Alan Cummings (Chair); Jeff Willis; Jane Pavitt; Mat Hunter; Marcos Cruz

09-03-2011

Unit 20 crits at the Bartlett School of Architecture UCL, London.

Critics: Marcelo Spina, Roberto Bottazzi, Peter Zellner, Kasper Ax, Marjan Colletti and Marcos Cruz.

10-02-2011

President's Medals Crit at the Royal Institute of British Architects, London.

Chair: Ruth Reed (RIBA President)

Critics: David Chipperfield, Peter Blundell Jones, Marcos Cruz

Students: Jack Hudspith (Bronzemedal winner 2010); Jonathan Schofield (Silvermedal winner); Clare Richards (Dissertation winner 2010)

2010-05-05T20:58:00.163+01:00

News / Events 2010
2011-2010-2009-2008-2007-2006-2005-2004-2003-2002-2001-2000

07-12-2010

Unit 20 crits at the Bartlett School of Architecture UCL, London UK.
Critics: Colin Fournier, Ines Dantas, Johan Voordouw, Paula Morais, Alessandro Ayuso, Marjan Colletti and Marcos Cruz.

04-12-2010

Lecture at architecture symposium 'COAST (architecture by/on/in the sea)', Arts University College, Bournemouth UK.
Organisation: Simon Beeson
Keynote speech: Sir Peter Cook
Speakers: Dennis Crompton; Mike Davies; Yael Reisner; Richard Horden; Roger Zogolovitch; Marcos Cruz
http://www.aucb.ac.uk/newsevents/architecturesymposium.aspx

30-11-2010

Lecture 'Nurbsters, Foldsters and Neoplasmatic' at the Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning - University of Michigan, Ann Arbor USA.
http://www.tcaup.umich.edu/news_and_events/events/archives/2010-2011/?event=0000c0a8de10000007e05a010000012aa706756e6ddb0957

29-11-2010

Lecture 'Nurbsters, Foldsters and Neoplasmatic' at the Beyond the Fringe Lecture Series, UCLA, Los Angeles USA.

24-11-2010

Lecture 'Nurbsters, Foldsters and Neoplasmatic' at AbsolutLab, Madrid Spain.
http://www.absolut-lab.com/es/evento/30/Nurbsters_Foldsters_and_Neoplasmatic_Design

04-11-2010 to 05-11-2010

Marcos Cruz invited jury for the Taiwan Tower Conceptual Design International Competition.

Location: Taichung, Taiwan
Jury: Yucheng Ann (Taiwan) - Dean of College of Design, Shih-Chien University; J.J. Pan (Taiwan) - Principal, J.J. Pan and Partners, Architects and Planners; Marcos Cruz (UK) - Director, Bartlett School of Architecture UCL; David Tseng (Taiwan) - Architecture Professor, National Chiao Tung University; Craig Hodgetts (USA) - Director, Hodgetts+Fung Design and Architecture; Junjieh Wand (Taiwan) - Media artist; Watanabe Kunio - President, Structural Design Group
Judging Results: Stefan Dorin (Romania) with Craciun Mihai Bogdan (USA) - First Prize; Cook Robotham Architectural Bureau Limited (UK) - Second Prize; Irma Maria Coello munoz with Leticia Gemma Montero Amice, Tomer Shimon kenin and Alvaro Guinea Martin (Spain) - Third Prize; Pablo Gil Martinez and Jaime bartolome Yllera (Spain) - Honourable Mention; Nicolas Laisne Architect (France) - Honourable Mention; Spatial Practice Ltd (Switzerland) - Honourable Mention; CYS.ASDO (Taiwan) - Honourable Mention; Institute of Architecture University of Applied Arts Vienna / Tze Chung Ma, Chien-Sheng Liu, Xinyu Wan, Emre Icdem (Austria) - Honourable Mention
http://www.twtower.com.tw/

29-10-2010

Unit 20 crits at the Bartlett School of Architecture UCL, London UK.

Critics: Hannes Mayer, Marjan Colletti and Marcos Cruz.

12-10-2010

Lecture 'Pensamiento lateral / Proyectos laterales. El caso Bartlett' at the Universidad de los Andes (Auditorio Mario Laserna ML-A), Bogota' Columbia.

http://arquitectura.uniandes.edu.co/scripts/index.php?lang=en

11-10-2010

Lecture 'Experimentalismo/Experiencialismo - El caso Bartlett' at PEI, Universidad Pontificia Javeriana, Bogota' Columbia.

27-08-2010

Opening of 'Exuberant and Sublime Flesh' exhibition at the Venice Biennale, Italy.

Location: Austrian Pavilion
Curator of the Austrian Pavilion: Eric Owen Moss
Curator of Exuberant and Sublime Flesh: Marjan Colletti
Student work in show: Yousef Al-Mehdari, Ben Cowd, David Edwards, Peter Griebel, Tobias Klein, Jay Williams, Sara Shafiei, Johan Voordouw, Hannes Mayer, Vicky Patsalis, Jason Chan, Kasper Ax, Yaojen Chuang
Sponsored: Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL

Photography: Marjan Colletti

29-06-2010

Keynote Lecture 'Lateral Design' at ENHSA-EAAE Conference: Educating Architects towards Innovative Architecture', Yildiz Technical University, Istanbul Turkey.

04-05-2010

Seminar talk 'Inside-Out Urbanism' to the MArch UD at the Bartlett School of Architecture, London UK.

29-04-2010

Lecture 'Neoplasmatic Architecture' at Syracuse University, New York State USA.
http://soa.syr.edu/videos/ensemble.html?videoID=pVvVx3tAq0KiPlZyvtVDIw

24-04-2010

Opening of the 'Food Junction Kiosk' at the Reveal Festival, Camley Street Natural Park, London UK.

Organisation: Stefanie Mills and Marina Chang from the Development Planning Unit, UCL
Design: marcosandmarjan with Unit students (Aleksandrina Rizova, Richard Beckett, Wendy Teo, Linda Hagberg, Amanda Bate, Leonhard Clemens, Luca Rizzi Brignoli)
www.food-junctions.org.uk
www.casa.ucl.ac.uk/fj/?p=496

Photography: Paul Smoothy

16-04-2010

Lecture 'Sublime Flesh' as part of the Design Computing Community, at the RIBA, London UK.

Location: Wren Boardroom, 66 Portland Place, London

Speakers: Tim Lucas & Emmanuel Verkinderen; Eugene Lim; Rory Campbell-Lange; Uli Horner; Gregory Epps; Marcos Cruz
www.design-computing.com

13-04-2010

Unit 20 crits at the Bartlett School of Architecture UCL, London UK.
Critics: Peter Cook, Caroline Rabourdin, Stephan Lengen, Marjan Colletti and Marcos Cruz, et al.

06-04-2010

Symposium 'Sublime Flesh' at Christ Church Spitalfields, London UK.
www.sublimeflesh.blogspot.com
Organiser and Moderator: Marcos Cruz
Speakers: Rev Rod Greene, Sir Peter Cook, Ali Mangera, Robert Harbison, Yael Reisner, Marjan Colletti
Media: M.A.D. London

29-03-2010 - 11-04-2010

Opening of 'Sublime Flesh' exhibition at Christ Church Spitalfields, London UK.
Location: Christ Church Spitalfields

Curators: Marcos Cruz with Lisa-Raine Hunt
Design: marcosandmarjan with Unit 20 students (Aleksandrina Rizova, Richard Beckett, Wendy Teo, Linda Hagberg, Luca Rizzi Bringoli, Amanda Bate, Leonhard Clemens)
Manufacturing of Exhibition Tables: Special Thanks to Emmanuel Vercruysse - CADCAM workshop at the Bartlett School of Architecture UCL and Guan Lee at Grymsdyke Farm.
Manufacturing of Models: DMC London

Student work in show: Yousef Al-Mehdari, David Edwards, Sam White, Tobias Klein, Jay Williams, Kenny Tsui, Johan Voordouw, Hannes Mayer, Vicky Patsalis, Jason Chan, Kasper Ax, Yaojen Chuang, Laurence Dudeney, Leonhard Clements, Aleksandrina Rizova, Amanda Bate, Richard Beckett, Lucca Rizzi Bringoli, Wnedy Teo, Linda Hagberg, Jenna Al-Ali.
Sponsored: Christ Church Spitalfields, University College London / DMC London, Grymsdyke Farm + Mesa Studio, BDP

Photography: Paul Smoothy
Opening Recption Monday 29 March 19.00-21.00
Exhibition Continues 30 March to 11 April
Opening Hours Mon-Sat 11.00-18.00, Sun 13.00-18.00
(Exhibition closed on 2 and 3 April for Good Friday and Easter Saturday)

26-03-2010 - 01-04-2010

marcosandmarjan workshop 'Fluid Flesh', at Ecole Speciale d'Architecture, Paris France.
www.esa-paris.fr/Workshop-marcosandmarjan-Fluid/html
workshop-esa-marcosandmarjan.blogspot.com

Photography: Guy Vacheret

25-03-2010

Lecture 'Exuberant Flesh', at Ecole Speciale d'Architecture, Paris France.

24-03-2010

Seminar talk 'Inside-Out Urbanism' to the China Research Group at the Bartlett School of Planning, London UK.

19-03-2010

Sir Peter Cook and Eric Owen Moss in conversation with 'London Eight' exhibitors, at Sci-ARC, Los Angeles USA.
Location: M.H.Keck Lecture Hall

19-03-2010

Opening of 'London Eight' exhibition, at Sci-ARC, Los Angeles USA.

Location: Library Gallery
Curator: Sir Peter Cook
Exhibitors: marcosandmarjan + Yousef Al-Mehdari; CJ Lim + Pascal Bronner; SmoutAllen + Johan Hybschmann

18-03-2010

Final Crits - marcosandmarjan winter studio, at UCLA, Los Angeles USA.
Critics: Hitoshi Abe, Peter Cook, Kivi Sotamaa, Roland Wahlross-Ritter, Dana Bauer, Dina Krunic, Marjan Colletti, Marcos Cruz, et al.

15-03-2010

Lecture 'marcosandmarjan' (back to back with Marjan Colletti), at LA FORUM, Los Angeles USA.

16-02-2010

Interim Crits - marcosandmarjan winter studio, at UCLA, Los Angeles USA.
Critics: Hitoshi Abe, Kivi Sotamaa, Dina Krunic, Natalia Traverso-Caruana, Marjan Colletti, Marcos Cruz, et al.

21-01-2010

Lecture 'Neoplasmatic Design' for the MA Design Interactions, at the Royal College of Art, London UK.

11-01-2010

Crits - marcosandmarjan winter studio, at UCLA, Los Angeles USA.
Critics: Hadrian Predock, Kivi Sotamaa, Dina Krunic, Georgina Huljich, Michael Osman, Marjan Colletti, Marcos Cruz, et al.

04-01-2010

marcosandmarjan run a winter studio at UCLA, Los Angeles USA.

Start of term with intro presentation by Marcos Cruz

Research topic: Alimentary Convolutions - from kitchen interface to Agropolis

Location: Lecture Hall, Perloff Hall

The return of the Figural

2010-03-26T12:13:00.000Z

Marcos Cruz, Marjan Colletti (marcosandmarjan) (2010)

Published in: Beyond (Trends and Fads),

#3 2010, Sun Architecture, Amsterdam Holland

Introduction

This is an argument about the return of the figural.

In a few brushes, we argue that this return is part of a historic progression in which past figural ornaments are being reassessed in a current architectural debate about ornamentation in the digital realm. Different from décor, ornamentation is here understood as a far more architectural ingrained phenomenon that implies a structural, tectonic and aesthetic depth.

From a petrified to a painted dimension, we seek to establish a clear difference between the abstract, the figurative and the figural in digital architecture.

Figural Ornaments

By Marcos Cruz

The human body identified as an extension of architecture can be understood as part of a long history of figural ornamentation in architecture.

From Greek and Roman times, throughout the Medieval period a plethora of petrified ‘bodies’ as well as animals and vegetation motifs occupy walls and façades of buildings as information screens to describe religious narratives. Buildings at that time do not just speak through the language of architecture itself, but also communicate historic, functional, and moral aspects through the richness of imagery inlaid in them.[1]

A taste for grotesque figures develops especially with the setting of gargoyles in Gothic cathedrals.

The passage from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance, however, brings with it the transition from figural ornaments as communication tools to décor.

It is at this stage in history that the image of the human body acquires major importance, namely through a repertoire of figures that conquer the wall outside its former religious context. As Alina Payne describes in her article ‘Reclining Bodies’ (2002), this is demonstrated through a variety of ‘parapet figures, reclining nudes on window pediments, caryatids or modified caryatids, figures on balustrades standing sentinel at entrances, not to mention varied figural bas-reliefs embedded in walls’.[2]

One witnesses a growing ‘sculpturalisation’ of architecture in which figures become more and more free-standing and employed to enhance the formal and tectonic expression of buildings. Rhythmic and vertical compositions as well as structural values in columns, beams and arches are reinforced through the metaphoric representation of bones and muscles of bodies.

Walls become understood as more than walls; they become flesh as Payne mentions in the case of Alberti: a combination of both human and architectural flesh.[3]

With the logic of the contrapposto, for example, architects start enhancing the expressive power of a building to that of a carefully choreographed posture of twisting and dancing bodies. For Payne, the figural ornament thus augments the combination between structural and corporeal references, allowing ‘texture, light, shade, and movement to enhance the tactility of the architectural elements of the façade’; an increasingly integrated wall corporeality takes place.

Figures inhabit walls and façades in which ‘the architectural details belong to sculpture in the same way that the geometry of the bodies placed along pyramids and diagonals suggests that they belong to architecture’.

In other words, the Renaissance accomplishes a significant transformation, in which figural ornaments change from a ‘sculptural motif into an architectural one’.

Figures cease being exceptional signature objects.

Figures become one of many that anonymously ‘inhabit’ the architecture.[4]

In the Baroque period many more figures are introduced into walls achieving an unprecedented excess of sensuous attraction.

An exponent of such phenomenon can be seen in the eighteenth century in Late Iberian Baroque and the majestic effects achieved with the implementation of gilt carvings (Talha Dourada).

The church of S. Francis in Porto (18^th century), for example, stands out as a case of high exuberance and splendour. Various architects and decorators progressively enrich the church in this period with outstanding gilding techniques, forming a rather eclectic ensemble of motifs and spaces, which in turn creates an extraordinary opulent universe of niches, ornamental patterns, rhythms, and an exceptional group of figures.

Differently from the more tectonically rooted version of Italian Baroque, such work is rather decorative, nonetheless achieving an extraordinary three-dimensional depth and fantasy in its topological surface. Hence, although lacking any structural function, the Talha Dourada is fascinating for the haptic intensity and embodied dimension that the interior cladding of gold leaf creates within otherwise rather austere Romanic and Gothic stone settings.

In this brief history it becomes manifest that the phenomenon of figural ornamentation is the reflection of a conspicuous human aspiration to ‘inhabit’ walls both physically and metaphorically. The merger of the human flesh within the architectural flesh is celebrated and accomplished in an unparalleled theatrical manner.

As never before, exuberant and opulently ornamented scenarios exploit a sensory engagement of the body in architecture.[5]

But from the eighteenth and nineteenth century onwards the exposure of bodies is to be gradually erased from architecture. As the German historian Jan Klaus Philipp explains, the loss of the long-lasting relationship between buildings and figural ornaments comes to an end as the result of architecture’s drive for structural and material truth and the understanding of the figural as being pure decoration.

More than relying on figural complexity, architects become obsessed with the veracity of contours, tectonics, as well as textures in buildings, which are understood as truly architectural values that in turn help differentiate architecture from other disciplines in art and science.

The modern era of abstraction takes its pace.

Digital Figural Ornamentation

By Marjan Colletti

Within a contemporary architectural debate, one could argue that it is the recent proliferation of digital techniques that allows going beyond Modern abstraction and the above-mentioned separation of tectonics and ornamentation in architecture.

Observe, for example, how small variations in software protocols, tooling systems and fabrication mechanics can result in the more or less exuberant articulation of ornate textures, surfaces and volumes.

Within digital design, there is a twofold conceptual synthesis to be seen between digital ornamentation and tectonics.

The first propels towards 'pure form' through abstraction, the latter towards the 'purely figural' through sensation. Both these vectors are delineated in Gilles Deleuze's book Francis Bacon: the Logic of Sensation[6] and are described as painting's chance to escape from the figurative in art.

In the context of digital figural ornamentation, the term figurative may stand for the first instance of digitality: ‘cyber’ representation, depiction, narration, illustration of what is not corporeal, body-related, in other words, figural.

Within architecture’s digital domain it can be argued that it is possible to trace a similar distancing from the contemporary digital design equivalent of the figurative in painting, the hyper-real rendering[7] – that simulation that replaces the real with a fictitious and artistic self-representation of its own – digital – properties and characteristics.[8]

Only by avoiding hyper-fake hyper-realism digital design can manage to articulate something purely original beyond the figurative rendering.

As mentioned above, the first trajectory targets abstraction.

The abstract, immaterial, and partly indeterminate nature of the visual arts in the early 20th century had deeply inspired the non-figural 2-D graphic domain of Modern architecture.

Similarly, in the 21^st century, it is still Modern art with its need for geometric clarity and control (i.e. structural and material/digital ‘truth’) in particular that provides the most likely reference material for most of contemporary digital design, which is now mostly described within 3-D software modelling environments. Here, abstraction equals ornament; flat ornament.

Abstraction has no body, and neither has architecture.[9] In parametric and scripted generative techniques for example, a similar generative logic and morphological syntax produces myriads of complex, patternised, ornamental topologies with more and more 'mental' attributes – albeit that the intellectual endeavour here usually drifts towards the generic and the dogmatic, and away from the phenomenological and the experiential.

The computer is used to perform an intellectual task that goes beyond simulation, representation and simulation of representation. Such task is a digital, intrinsic cerebral expression of a synthetic, subjected and almost spiritual blurred code of abstraction: the articulation of a mediated system for a possible symbolic structure or strategy for digitality itself. It implies a code that is predominantly non-narrative and non-representational, yet being a mimetic[10] graphic mental system.

The value is that of aesthetics and application, understood as bodiless decoration, as software programming, and as global applicability – as method.

This trajectory appears as elegant.

But there is a second, less traveled path that leads away from decoration towards the re-inclusion of the figural into digital architecture.

By using the computer to perform a sensorial task, digital design is shaped by purely sensual neural experiences, by the exuberant dynamic form, by isolated, deformed and dissipated forces of convoluted, folded and distorted figures/shapes/lines/Gestalten. It builds up an architectural repertoire rooted in a different set of exuberant references and precedents.

Think of the Baroque and its passions, tormented visions and metaphysics; with all its magnificent figural, sensual, exuberant examples – Pietro da Cortona's The Triumph of Divine Providence (1633–9) or Gianlorenzo Bernini's The Cathedra Petri (1647–53) – that blur the dimensions of space (3-D) and time (4-D).[11]

In recent times, similar features transpire in what may be called the contemporary ‘cyber-streamlining’ fever, sustained by an ever increasing amount of slick, fleshy, lofted furniture and building proposals – a very similar trend to that of the ‘streamlining fever’ of 1930s America.[12]

The justification for the dynamic ornament is again very similar and to do with the manufacturing protocols: such machines and materials had then, and still have now, constraints that usually demand sharp and thin edges to be smoothed down.

Ornamentation at this point is not intellectual; it is to do with the visual consumption of the unequivocal athleticism and ergonomics of shapes and forms.

In this instance, the values of ornament are not aesthetic and application, but esthesis and performance.

Performance is understood as sensorial task or, better, as graphic meta-task (what is to be performed is the performing of a task), and as staging (the reality of the task is not identical to the real-life task).

Without an intellectual structure (or strategy), the ultimate task is for the body/figure to become the ornament, or for the ornament to become the body. Eventually, for the ornament (and hence the body) to become architecture.

Here, ornament and architecture are not flat but convoluted.

This is exuberant.

Albeit arguing in favour of ornamentation, one cannot disregard the fact the danger of misinterpretation and superficiality, i.e. decorative abstract wallpapering, and crude formal contortions.

As ever, even though inherent to the thinking and tooling of digital architecture, ornament cannot be the only feature of architecture. After all, inhabitation is not an abstract thought, it is mere fiction, and space is not only the modeling of forces, of friction.

But then again, digital figural ornamentation should not belong to the everyday, as much as Bacon or the Baroque do not consider themselves, in Waldemar Januszczak's words, 'perfectly formed, exquisite, delicate, so civilized, precious', but rather as the imperfect pearl that gives the name to style: 'blobby, exuberant, misshapen, difficult to handle, and exciting in a deformed kind of way’.[13]

Conclusion: Aesthetics of the figural

Both past and contemporary figural ornamentation implies a bodily dimension of architecture that, against the tendency for abstraction in the Modern era, is essentially impure. It accepts blurry and unclear conditions, along with deformed and grotesque (and ugly) phenomena, while playing out the sensuous (even sexual) as perfectly valid aesthetic criteria.

However, a lot of the contemporary architecture is still lead by a formal drive for purity in the digital realm that, in the way it is being handled, risks bringing about a new Digital Modernism of ‘clean’ aesthetics that are corpologically empty.[i]

Perhaps we should start re-evaluating a less outspoken history of the figural within the Modern period that goes from Kurt Schwitters down to Carlo Molino, Bruce Goff, Pancho Guedes, Gaetano Pesce, Haus Rucker and Archigram, in which the bodily and sensuous (in the context of a technological belief that was neither mechanical nor abstract but rather experiential) were inherently necessarily conditions. They precede the return of the figural.

Wigley: ‘The rejection of decoration in favour of the cultivated eye is explicitly understood as a form of architectural purification.’[ii] Any ornamental voluptuousness or sensual excess is removed in favour of an architectural experience whereby ‘pleasure [is] purified of pleasure’, as Pierre Bourdieu emphasizes.[iii]

[1] Translated by the author from Jan Klaus Philipp, in Architektur Skulptur. Die Geschichte einer Fruchtbaren Beziehung, Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, Stuttgart / München, 2002, p. 63.

[2] Payne, Alina, ‘Reclining Bodies: Figural Ornament in Renaissance Architecture’, in George Dodds, and Robert Tavernor (ed.), Body and Building. Essays on the Changing Relation of Body and Architecture, The MIT Press, Cambridge Massachusetts, 2002, p. 96.

[3] Ibid., pp. 112-113.

[4] Ibid., pp. 108-110.

[5] I am here reinterpreting Natália Marinho Ferreira-Alves’ descriptions of Northern Portuguese Baroque churches. She argues that ‘for the complete understanding of the [Baroque scared space] one has to consider the important role of music played on organs (the majority of organs having great boxes of guilt carvings); the monotonous tune of litanies; the syncopic rhythms of Latin, a language used by priests during the celebrations that just few could understand, and which therefore filled it with mystery; the opulence of liturgical utensils, and the unimpaired vision of hangings with rich embroideries; the inebriating odour of incense emerging from the thuribles, which was mixed with the acrid smell of burned candles, and whose flickering light contributed to intensify the mystic ambience of spaces. “As a fascinating expression of the Baroque, interior spaces of churches covered with gold aimed for a sensory stimulation.”’ Translated from Natália Marinho Ferreira-Alves, A Escola De Talha Portuense e a sua Influência no Norte de Portugal, Edições INAPA, Lisboa, 2001, p. 17.

[6] Gilles Deleuze, Francis Bacon: the Logic of Sensation, trans. Daniel W. Smith, Continuum, London 2003 (first published in France, 1981), p. 2 et al.

[7] The hyper-real rendering is here understood as the commercial illustration and depiction of architecture that in all its sophistication and accuracy is not particularly intended to convey any theoretical, strategic or spatial properties. It is clear that such hyper-real simulations are per se 'hyper-fake'.

[8] In fact, they are neither part of Realism as reality is not altered by the absence of reality effects, nor of Surrealism, which makes a clear distinction between what is real and what is imaginary. Instead, 'hyper-fake' renditions embed the unreal in its very own Baudrillardian ‘real's hallucinatory resemblance to itself’. Architecture becomes a figuration of a hyper-fake simulacrum. Jean Baudrillard, Symbolic Exchange and Death, Sage Publications, London, 1993 (First published in France, 1976).

[9] As known, Islamic architecture omits bodies and figuration, and instead constructs a taxonomy of patterns and ornaments that express a basic tenet of the religion: not to be misled into an imaginary and idolatrous world. Ornamentation here is not mere decoration, it has an intellectual, mental, metaphysical bias. That the Middle East has experienced an urbanistic/architectural/financial boom has also well served such developments.

[10] ‘Mimetic’ here is derived from ‘mimesis’ (world making) and not from ‘mimicry’ (simulation). This differentiation is crucial, as the latter pretends that CAD performs best when simulating something – usually reality, structure, etc. Digital mimesis, on the other hand, is understood as world making, imagination and interpretation.

[11] One can also think of Jain and Hindu Indian temples, or those of the Mayas, Incas and Aztecs. All of these architectures manifest a truly exuberant figural architectural ornamentation. Different to Islam, religion here promotes the creation and representation of a hyper-world of fetish and of simulacra, of eccentric avatars and sexual idols.

[12] Once again there is no need for dynamic-looking, animate formed projects. However, this occurrence has a justification: smooth (Deleuzian) spaces, NURBS geometries and parametric models are described by complex, distinct entities that can be easily manufactured – milled, printed, thermoformed or cut – by specialist CAD/CAM machines. László Moholy-Nagy, Vision in Motion, Paul Theobald and Company, Chicago Illinois, 1947, pp. 53–54.

[13] Waldemar Januszczak, ‘Baroque! From St Peter's to St Paul's’, BBC documentary, Episode 1, first broadcast on BBC4 11.03.2009.

[i] A closer look at recent trends that are to a large extent driven by digital/topological preoccupations shows that what was originally an avant-guard of language and thought is becoming now a mainstream in contemporary architecture with a conspicuous Modernist touch. Apart from the fact that this is lead by a hand full of seminal international figures, which spread their thoughts through a waste number of sophisticated publications, exhibitions and buildings, they are supported by a clear networked of leading educational institutions which help disseminating what is at the end consumed almost everywhere.

[ii] Ibid., p. 3

[iii] Bourdieu, Distinction, 2000, p. 491

Later Design - Towards a more experimental approach to architectural education

2010-03-26T11:53:00.027Z

Marcos Cruz (2010)

Published in: Archithese (Universitäre Räume),

3.2010, Zurich Switzerland, pp. 60-65

There are many types of architects today, many of which are involved in practices that are not strictly related to the building industry, such as film, graphic/web design, advertisement, engineering, interactive design, writing, etc. As a result, I advocate an architectural education that, against the idea of a Universalist all-knowing architect prepared for such vast knowledge, allows for more differentiated, varied and even specialised routes in academia that enable students to develop their own architectural personality.

As it has often been described, there are many changes occurring in our profession that have to be understood outside the traditional disciplinary boundaries, and we, architects, are thus forced to rethink our field of action including both professional practice as well as education. This is not just in the way in which we understand our own human body and its natural habitat, but also how the profession is exposed to advances in technology, such as a huge range of new computer-aided design and manufacturing procedures, intelligent environments, developments in a microscopic and nanoscopic scale, etc. Moreover, wireless technologies are improving very fast and being introduced everywhere, ‘now completing the long project of seamlessly integrating our mobile biological bodies with globally extended systems of nodes and linkages’, as William Mitchell has argued.[1] There is also a large amount of research made in the realm of time-based, interactive and responsive architecture, while design in biology and the medical sciences is being approached in new and innovative ways. All of this is becoming of significance to architecture due to its inevitable technical, aesthetic, as well as cultural implications.

This is partly why a school like the Bartlett is shifting to a much more research-driven culture (including Research-by-Design) where such changes are being investigated. Staff and students are involved in particular design agendas that go beyond the education of basic knowledge and skills. There is also a greater cross-disciplinary involvement of the school with other parts of the university, which in turn encourages undergraduate and postgraduate courses to develop conjoint research projects with other departments, including Planning, Energy, Environment, Engineering, along with collaborations with external offices and industries. A great advantage of this approach is that this will not just bring the academic production, often criticised for its self-indulgent and overtly eccentric mannerisms, closer to the ‘needs’ of the outer world, but also help schools to push the boundaries of the traditional architectural practice in a both speculative and realistic ways. A further benefit of this shift towards a far deeper research-lead teaching culture is that a lot of future innovation in architecture is probably laying in the interface between different disciplines, which does not imply loosing architecture’s disciplinary identity, but, in fact, strengthen it via a more inclusive design discourses. In the end, schools should aim to use this as a vital instrument to develop more resource-efficient design in the future, and find new ways to confront the environmental, social and cultural challenges that our profession is exposed to.

I still observe in many academic institutions today a pervasive pedagogic attitude that discourages and even inhibits a ‘risk-taking’ approach to architectural design, partly due to prevailing modernist heritage that has been taught for a long time, or simply due to more recent prescriptive teaching methods in terms of parametric design. Either way, ‘risk’ should not be interpreted as a means to accept academic complacency with low quality work; much the contrary, it should imply a way to encourage staff and students to step into unexplored territories where ‘mistakes’ and ‘failure’ are a necessary and accepted condition. In this context, it is worth mentioning Edward de Bono who speaks of the importance of ‘Lateral Thinking’ in creative problem solving.[2] Likewise, we, architects, should perhaps aim for more ‘Lateral Design’ as a means to find new answers for an increasingly complex world that is intensively scrutinising its unbalanced environment, volatile finances and diminishing resources. We need more non-linear thinking systems that do not seek for obvious and predictable outcomes. The notion of ‘lateral’ implies here thinking ‘out of the box’ and more synthetic action that is prone to generate creative ideas across a variety of disciplines by exploring intuitive, rather free flowing design possibilities. In other words, one is here talking about promoting an experimental work ethos that relies on a multiplicity of divergent thinking modes, which in turn have proven in our Unit 20 at the Bartlett to produce an amazing array of original and innovative design propositions.

But we should not think of architecture in experimental terms without also seeing it as an inherently experiential condition. I am referring to an architecture that is in both conceptually and phenomenologically multi-layered and ‘convoluted’, as my partner Marjan Colletti would argue, and where the body is back in the centre of our preoccupations; an architecture that is not the result of a thin, one-line thinking process, but rather the construct of a deep embodied Convoluted Flesh.[3] Like in psychology, where sensory and emotional awareness is understood to precede cognitive perception, the spatial experience of buildings should precede conceptual design, and, consequently, the practice of architecture precede the theoretical interpretation of it. It is tragic to see how many students today are deprived of an experiential culture that strongly reduces their conceptual thinking, while turning design bodiless, often culturally decontextualised and spatially rather empty.

A way out for many students is the refuge in purely skill-driven design modes, where those with better (computational) techniques stand out. But this is obviously not enough, even though the masterly control of tools and techniques is very important in a time where software and equipment is changing with unprecedented speed. We know that architecture schools are competing like never before for good and motivated students in a global world where anyone can be anywhere at any time. Hence, to be on top of the game, schools have to be proactive and forced to invest in cutting-edge equipment and staff that offer students the opportunity to reach out for innovative design solutions. A school that is not well equipped with a proper high-tech workshop, for instance, is inevitably out of touch and with little chance to fight for excellence in research and teaching. There is also a straighter relationship between academia, practice and industry that needs to be fostered in order to re-establish the crucial triangle between these complementary fields. More than the schism between academia and practice that affects so many institutions, at least in the United Kingdom, this straighten relationship could have much greater impact in the way how schools of architecture are able to contribute decisively to the development of our future built environment.

It is however, fundamental to maintain and foster the old and long-established studio culture as a basic pre-condition from where students learn the shared experience of architectural design. There are academics that argue this to be a model of the past, but it has proven too often that the idea of the atelier, as opposed to the office, is a much more enjoyable, and, above all, most efficient way in which architects develop a true culture of dialogue and teamwork. This allows them (within a necessarily competitive surrounding) to recognise their own strengths and engage with a wider community of experts and critics, particularly when they are proactive in exhibiting and discussing their work through international competitions, exhibitions, etc. as many of our Unit 20 students do. Bear in mind that the contemporary architecture student is not isolated in front of a drawing board as in the past, but rather a networked ‘virtuoso’ that should be able to develop a personal language and critical approach to contemporary architecture.

I stated in our introduction to the Unit 20 book, now eight years ago that for me ‘each project is an adventure; a fight to discover, through experimentation, a method in which ideas and information can be integrated into a final credible outcome.’[4] And this has not changed for me since. Ultimately, I value the very few schools like the Bartlett, because they are in essence schools of design, or better said, schools of Lateral Design, because they see current and future challenges as an opportunity to engage in risk-taking research that is original, experimental, experiential and multi-layered. And that should continue to be its genuine strength.

Images and captions:

Exhibitions of Unit 20

Sublime Flesh, Christ Church Spitalfields, London (numerous)
Framework gallery, Berlin (Steve Pike, Keith Watson)
Actions re Form, Munich and Coimbra (Tom Foster, Steve Pike, Jen Ritter)
SaraBen at …., New York (Sara Shafiei, Ben Cowd)
Dreamspace Gallery, London (Yaojen Chuan, Yousef Al-Mehdari)
Architectural Hinterlands, Arup Gallery, London (Johan Voordouw)
Royal Academy of Arts Summer Show, London (Tobias Klein)

[1] marcosandmarjan. ‘Convoluted Flesh’, in AD – Protoarchitecture, Analogue and Digital Hybrids (guest-ed. Bob Sheil), July/August 08, Vol 78 No 4, John Wiley & Sons, London, 2008, pp. 36-43

[2] Cruz, Marcos; Perez-Arroyo, Salvador. ‘Unit 20 – Ground Zero: Looking for New Territory’, in Unit 20 – Projects by Unit 20 of the Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL, University of Valencia / Actar, 2002, p. 31
[3] Mitchell, William J., ME ++ The Cyborg Self and the Networked City, The MIT Press, Cambridge Massachusetts, 2003, p. 58

[4] De Bono, Edward. The Use of Lateral Thinking, Cape Publishing, 1967

Mixed-Use Skyscraper, Damascus Syria

2010-02-27T11:43:00.000Z

Urban Projects - 2009-10 - DS10 - University of Westminster

Mixed-Use Skyscraper, Damascus Syria - Competition entry for eVolo Design Competition 2010 [Special Mention]
Design team: Rocky Marchant, Ergin Birinci
Supervision: Marjan Colletti, Kasper Ax, Damjan Iliev, Marcos Cruz

Food Junctions Kiosk

2010-02-27T11:39:00.004Z

Installation 2010 marcosandmarjan

Kiosk for the Development Planning Unit at the Food Junctions Reveal Festival, Camley Street Natural Park [built], London UK

Design team: marcosandmarjan with Unit 20 students (Richard Beckett, Linda Hagberg, Wendy Teo, Aleksandrina Rizova, Luca Rizzi Brignoli, Leonhard Clemens, Amanda Bate)
Organisation: Stefanie Mills, Marina Chang from the Development Planning Unit at UCL.

Molly Wally

2010-02-27T11:37:00.003Z

Installation-2010 marcosandmarjan

Exhibition wall and table for the London Centre of Nanotechnology at the 350th Royal Society Exhibition, Royal Festival Hall [built], London UK

Design team: marcosandmarjan

Collaboration: Tze-Jun Wei, Camille Tenart, Sebastien Tabourin, Hubert Ducroux

Manufacturing: MESA studio at Grymsdyke Farm

2009-11-25T16:55:00.160Z

News / Events 2009
2009-2008-2007-2006-2005-2004-2003-2002-2001-2000

17-12-2009

Guest critic at the Architectural Association (AADRL), UK

Critics included Patrick Schumacher, Ropert Soar, Marcos Cruz, Theo Spyropoulous, Marta Malle-Alemany, among others.

15-12-2009

BD announces new Director of the Bartlett School of Architecture UCL, UK
See announcement by Elizabeth Hopkirk in Building Design. UK
See announcement by Andrea Klettner in The Architects' Journal, UK
See announcement on Jornal Publico, Portugal
See announcement on Arquitectos.com.pt, Portugal

See announcement on UCL website, UK

25-11-2009

Seminar talk 'On Models' at the University of Westminster, London, UK

02-11-2009

Lecture ‘Neoplasmatic Design’ at the 3M Prime Lecture Series, Haus der Gegenwart, Munich, Germany

21-09-2009

Presentation and panel discussion at the Digital Architecture Conference, Building Centre, London, UK

26-06-2009

Opening of Unit 20 exhibition at the Bartlett Summer Show, University College London, UK
See review of Bartlett Show by Barbara Ann Campbell-Lange in Building Design, 07.07.2009

11-06-2009

Opening of DS10 exhibition at Open 09, University of Westminster, UK

04-06-2009

CPD Presentation ‘Neoplasmatic Design’ at tp Bennett, London, UK

26-05-2009

Presentation and panel discussion at Design Provocations / Creative Capital, Hospital Club, London, UK

26-05-2009

Guest critic at the Architectural Association (AA Inter 3), UK

19-05-2009

marcosandmarjan and Unit 20 work included in Perdidos exhibition at Fundación Arquitectura COAM, Madrid, Spain

Work by Kenny Tsui

Work by Johan Voordouw (upper image), Ben Cowd, marcosandmarjan and Yousef Al-Mehdari (lower image)

05-05-2009

Lecture ‘Crossing the Boundaries’, panel discussion and guest critic at Jornadas Internacionales, Universidad CEU San Pablo, Madrid, Spain

09-04-2009

Lecture ‘Inlucent Interfaces/Inhabitable Interfaces’ and guest-critic (Studio Huang) at EPFL Lausanne, Switzerland
Critics included Jeffrey Huang, Bernard Cache, Marcos Cruz, among others.

26-03-2009

Crits of Unit 20 at the Bartlett School of Architecture, University College London, UK
Critics inlcuded Peg Rawes, Gianluca Amadei, Andrei Martin, Damjan Iliev, Marjan Colletti, Marcos Cruz, Christiana Ioannou, and Christos Papastergiou.

23-03-2009

Lecture ‘The Body and the search for Inhabitable Interfaces’ at the University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, Canada

16-03-2009

Crits of DS10 at the University of Westminster, UK
Critics included Andrei Martin, Laura Petruso, Ricardo de Ostos, Marjan Colletti, Kester Rattenbury, and Marcos Cruz.

09-03-2009

Lecture ‘Convoluted Flesh’ (back to back with M Colletti) at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts School of Architecture, Copenhagen, Denmark

05-03-2009 – 11.03.2009

marcosandmarjan run a workshop at CITA - Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts School of Architecture, Copenhagen, Denmark

03-03-2009

Presentation and panel discussion at Living Architecture, Dana Centre/Science Museum, London, UK
http://www.danacentre.org.uk/events/2009/03/03/484

28-02-2009

TV Broadcast about Marcos Cruz’s work on RTPN (interview with Isabel Lopes Gomes), Portugal

19-02-2009

Lecture at Sobre as Ruinas do Futuro on the occasion of Fantasporto – Porto International Film Festival, Teatro Rivoli, Porto, Portugal
http://jpn.icicom.up.pt/2009/02/20/fantasporto_2009_marcos_cruz_acredita_que_o_futuro_da_arquitectura_esta_na_biotecnologia.html

26-01-2009

Student presentation and panel discussion about DS10 projects at the American University of Cairo, Egypt
Critics included Prof. Magda Mostafa, Dr. Amr Abdel Kawi, Dr. Omar Nagati, Arch. Yahia Shawkat, Dr. Marjan Colletti, among others.

09-01-2009

Review of Marcos Cruz’s work
Prado Coelho, Alexandra. ‘Vamos poder vestir os nossos edifícios?’, in Jornal Público / P2, Domingo 11 Janeiro 09, Portugal, pp. 10-11

Towards an Inside-out Urbanism, Cairo: The Whirling Hub

2009-11-19T10:51:00.013Z

Marcos Cruz, Marjan Colletti (marcosandmarjan) (2009) [1]

Published in: Magaz Magazine, Cairo Egypt, Oct-Nov 2009.
Intro: Water Flows, Urban Streams, and Cultural Torrents

In a time where the world is increasingly global, yet also ever more fragmented, marcosandmarjan and their design/research unit DS10 at the University of Westminster in London (www.ds10.org.uk) investigate cities at the crossroads of Western/Christian and Middle Eastern/Islamic culture. After Venice (2006) and Istanbul (2007), the unit explored a third city – Cairo, known in old times as the city of a thousand minarets and hundred domes, of countless Ottoman mosques, madrasas, mausolea, Sufi institutions, Jewish synagogues and Coptic churches.

The theme of the year revolved around the notion of fluid conditions, which in a city like Cairo can be interpreted in a variety of manners. The Nile, one of the biggest rivers in the world, represents an extraordinary water reservoir with a hydrological flow that has attracted to its margins different cultures from antiquity to our days, some of which have created the most important civilizations of our human history. Cairo is nowadays a 17 million whirling hub with urban streams that are of unparalleled richness, density and complexity. Yet its infrastructure is prepared for 4 millions only. But Cairo is also one of those cities in which the cultural torrents of civilization have often been exposed in the most dramatic manner. In a time of complex religious divergences between the Western and Middle-Eastern world, it has again a decisive importance in the future of world politics. Hence, the ambition was to look at these critical issues, whilst interpreting flows in environmental, urban and cultural terms.

Context: Sustainable Development and Revitalization of Transit Hubs

Questions about local and global policies, traditions and cultural specificities were discussed within the context of the 7th IAHH International Student Design Competition 2009 under the theme ‘Sustainable Development and Revitalization of Transit Hubs’.[2] The competition brief asked for innovative design solutions for an evolving humane habitat, involving new strategies for a sustainable development, the use of advanced technology, and a multidisciplinary approach to restructure policies, programming, planning and design for conservation, development and redevelopment.

Cairo is a city in rapid transformation and expansion, being characterized by a sprawl of shopping malls and other large-scale infrastructures, along with an infinite array of new mono-programmatic, self-sufficient, yet also deeply unsustainable and segregated suburbs. However, old parts of town and areas around transit hubs are being neglected. And as stated in the competition brief, old city centres, suburban and district centres around transit hubs are calling for immediate attention.

The crucial motivation of projects developed in DS10 was a new and holistic approach in urban design that seeks going beyond past models defined, for example, in Lynch’s The Image of the City (1960), Venturi and Scott Brown’s Learning from Las Vegas (1972), and Rowe and Koetter’s Collage City (1984), or even Deleuze and Guattari’s Rhizome theory applied to urban design (A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia, 1987). This method involved a rather new ecology-driven understanding of urbanism in which the concept of sustainability (as mentioned in the title of the competition) was understood as far more than an exclusively low-tech or hi-tech issue. Instead, a variety of social, cultural and political factors were taken into account. The influence of local traditions, the development of socio-economic conditions, and, above all, the decisive role of design in the spatial/formal re-qualification of contemporary cities allowed for a coherent employment of innovative technologies in the field of renewable energies and materials.

In this context, a range of digital techniques, such as intense 3D modelling in addition to CNC, CAD/CAM and rapid prototyping were implemented. This process focused on new experimental design solutions that were not only based on the usual planimetric and predictive thinking. As has already been argued in the early 90s, ‘very few processes and operations that take place today can take place in the form of a plan, the classical product of urbanists’[3]; and that is precisely what determined all present work to be explored with a high level of formal, material and spatial three-dimensional complexity, overcoming the exclusive and thus reductive utilisation of plans, diagrams and maps. The city and its endless interfaces were materialised as a dynamic convolution of multiple three-dimensional cartographies, constructs and operations, as an urban manifold, or, in other words, understood as an ever-mutating Urban Flesh.

Sites and Projects: From surgical incisions to visionary statements

Areas of 10 to 20 hectares were chosen in a range of places in Cairo, varying quite substantially in terms of context and concept. This included surgical incisions in extremely vulnerable and degraded areas of the city (Redevelopment of Ezbet Bekhit by Clare Phillips and Hannah Darby); an operative and formally significant strategy applied to the very heart of modern Cairo (Revitalization of Ramses Station and surroundings by Eoin O’Dwyer, Charles Page and Eisuke Hiyama, project featured); a rather more contextual attitude in Old Cairo (Regeneration of Bulaq Bus Station by Sana Hasan and Alia Khonji); as well as a visionary understanding of the city both in large empty urban plots and desert (New Urban Extension at the former Imbaba Airport by Joel Rocky Marchant and Dean Dyson, and Agro-City by Kapil Amarnani Chawla with Nisha Patel, both projects featured).[4]

As specified in the competition brief, all projects aimed at the development of areas around transit hubs, providing new commercial activity. They also meant to enhance these hubs as city centres or district centres with a number of different shopping facilities, formal and informal markets, and a whole range of services and supporting small-scale workshops. The areas around the chosen hubs were thought to attract educational and cultural activity, along with entertainment facilities and important open spaces in the form of gardens and parks. All projects focused on a sustainable development model, providing affordable public transportation facilities and mixed use development, including the design of 500 to 2000 dwelling units and approximately 250 to1000 or more jobs in different establishments and work communities suited to location and urban context.

Conclusion: Inside-Out Urbanism

In order not to fall into the common trap of a linear 'zooming-in' design process, of a two-dimensional zoning strategy, and of a traditional top-down design approach, which still determines so many urban projects to be generated from ‘outside’ and therefore from an unavoidable ‘distance’, DS10 opted for a bottom-up approach. This was initiated by a more architectural and ‘intimate’ scale and was capable of involving experiential qualities, inhabitation and use. Altogether, such approach was understood as a new type of Inside-Out Urbanism, suggesting that particular small-scale operations were essential in determining the outcome of the larger scale. Urban design was worked out from within rather than from without.

Projects

1) Revitalization of Ramses Station and surroundings (honorable mention at the 7th IAHH International Student Design Competition 2009) (DS10 students Eoin O'Dwyer, Charles Page, Eisuke Hiyama).

The proposal looks at the city’s most important transit hub: Ramses Station with its adjoining bus station to the north and Ramses Square to the south. The revitalisation of this part of this problematic transit hub is thought to yield major benefits for the city as a whole, placing greater emphasis on public transport in an attempt to reduce the current reliance on the car. The main strategy is to increase levels of operativity, connectivity and performance, yet also the visual presence of such critical site.

In fact, all of Cairo’s growth in the past 50 years has been outwards, creating an ever-growing urban expansion, detracting from the city centre and further detaching parts of the city through insufficient infrastructure. Together with responding to the pollution threat, the proposed densification of the site (in mass and height) gives up as much open space as possible for an urban lung: a shadow park to fight the high levels of pollution and to provide a new pedestrian focal point to the city.

As Cairo currently lacks a contemporary cultural focus, the new Ramses Station area is proposed to host besides housing, educational and sporting opportunities for the young, which in turn help integrating the proposal with the existing city rather than creating a new isolated hub, and, most significantly, to accommodate the new temporary Egyptian parliament on the north-eastern end of the site.

2) New urban extension at the former Imbaba Airport (DS10 students Tocky Marchant, Dean Dyson).

Surrounded by harsh mazes of dense social housing, a large motorway and agricultural bands, the old Imbaba Airport site is a dramatic and unexplored urban void within the city with great commercial and industrial potential, and with ample residency waiting to respond. The organisational strategy of the project is based on an armature of public space running from east to west. A new residential corner is strategically located to allow the existing streets of social housing dissipate and open up to this newly proposed urban setting. Nested in behind the primary boulevards are more secluded streets acting as more intimate zones for those living directly in the communities.

The swirling diagram for the residential plan is purposely responding against the sweeping dessert winds protecting from the tunnelling effect experienced along existing, overtly narrow street-corridors. Throughout the scheme there is a continuous typology designed to accommodate future growth. The construction of dwellings relies on manual techniques, local materials, and traditional building systems that represent centuries of experience managing the environment. The residential walls are built out of Kershef - indigenous rock like salt that maintains moderate indoor temperatures. Furthermore, a technically sustainable envelope for all residential buildings is created through the manipulation of parametric modelling, providing an array of variable components that allow regulating natural ventilation and sunlight at a specified time of the day, and month of the year.

3) Agro-City (DS10 students Kapil Amarnani, Nisha Patel).

The overloaded infrastructure of Cairo has led the city to create a multiplicity of satellite cities with their own new infrastructure. These satellites are now merging and spreading into the desert, while over the years the green delta that resided beside the capital is being consumed by the city’s growing urbanisation. A 20 hectare site is chosen to test new and innovative sustainable development strategies that deal with the major challenges faced by the Egyptian government: a high pace of demographic growth, a limited annual quota of freshwater from the Nile, and the unsustainable rise in food imports.

The urban development of Agro-City occurs in the interstices of several existing irrigation circles organised in a grid. As a start, the system provides an expansion strategy involving all farmed land and also a university campus that makes use of, as well as controls the agricultural surrounding. Both farming plots and academic infrastructure attract a large and varied number of people to this new settlement. In order to allow for such an expansion, a series of urban morphologies are studied and optimised around the circular fields. In addition, agricultural activity is also incorporated in the urban zones as small-scale farming plots in order to supply domestic needs.

The design prospers from a development, which has urban masses overlaying each other both in horizontal and vertical angles. The three-dimensionality of the scheme is initially developed as a block set-up and then moulded into a large artificial dune landscape. The geometric permutations and fluctuations of the roof shape are then adapted to dominant winds, optimising ventilation and shading, at the same time offering a vast surface to embed diverse energy-gaining mechanisms.

Notes:

[1] Dr Marcos Cruz and Dr Marjan Colletti are both founders and partners of marcosandmarjan, a studio that combines the practice and teaching of architecture, along with experimental design research. They are also Senior Lecturers and Unit Masters of DS10 at the University of Westminster and Lecturers and Unit Masters of Unit 20 at the Bartlett School of Architecture – University College London, UK.

[2] All projects relied on the kind support of several lecturers, critics and consultants, including Dr Ahmed Sherif – American University of Cairo; Dr. Amr Abdel Kawi – Magaz magazine, Egypt; Andrei Martin – KPF / UFO London / University of Westminster; James Haig-Streeter – EDAW London; Jean Sillet – University of Westminster; Dr. Magda Mustafa – American University of Cairo; Prof. Murray Fraser – University of Westminster; Ricardo de Ostos – Architectural Association / Naja de Ostos; Richard Difford – University of Westminster; Dr. Sonia Arbaci – Bartlett School of Planning, UCL; Omar Nagati – American University of Cairo.

[3] Statement by Rem Koolhaas in an interview by Alejandro Zaera in El Croquis - Oma/Rem Koolhaas 1987 1993, n.53, Madrid 1994, p. 22.

[4] Other projects included a new hub for the southern City of the Dead (by Tim Fry and Desmond Hung); a new southern entrance for the Giza Pyramids (by Catriona Caldwell and Heba Layas); and a new Ramses Station by (Paul Richardson), among others.

Others

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Workshops

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Critic, Juries, Reviews

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Senior Lecturer at University of Westminster

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Lecturer at UCL

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Curated Exhibitions (individual and marcosandmarjan)

2009 ‘DS10’ at OPEN 09 - summer show of the University of Westminster, London, UK

2009 ‘Unit 20‘ at the Bartfest 09 - Slade School of Art UCL, London UK

2008 ‘DS10’ at OPEN 08 - summer show of the University of Westminster, London, UK

2008 ‘Unit 20‘ at the Bartfest 08 - Slade School of Art UCL, London UK

2008 'Taichugng Expo project' at TADA - Taiwan Centre for Art, Design and Architecture, Taichung, Taiwan

2007 ‘DS10’ at OPEN 07 - summer show of the University of Westminster, London, UK

2007 ‘Unit 20‘ at the Bartfest 07 - Slade School of Art UCL, London UK

2006 ‘Unit 20‘ at the Bartfest 06 - Slade School of Art UCL, London UK

2005 ‘Unit 20’ at the Bartfest 05 - Slade School of Art UCL, London UK

2004 ‘Unit 20’ and ‘marcosandmarjan’ at the Bartfest 04 - Slade School of Art UCL, London UK

2004 ‘Bartlett Experiments’ at Tokyo Institute of Technology, Japan

2003 ‘Resurface - Unit 20’ at the 1st Rotterdam Biennale - NAI, Rotterdam Holland

2003 ‘Actions re Form’ at Architekturgalerie München, Germany

2003 ‘Actions re Form’ at CAPC, Coimbra Portugal

2003 ‘Unit 20’ at the Bartfest 03 - Slade School of Art UCL, London UK

2003 ‘Unit 20’ at the Bartfest 03 - Slade School of Art UCL, London UK

2002 ‘Unit 20’ at the Bartfest 02 - Bartlett School of Architecture UCL, London UK

2002 ‘Unit 20’ (organisation: Salvador Perez Arroyo and Karen Willcox) at the University of Valencia, Spain

2001 ‘Unit 20’ at the Bartfest 01 - Bartlett School of Architecture UCL, London UK

2000 ‘Unit 20’ at the Bartfest 00 - Bartlett School of Architecture UCL, London UK

2000 ‘Flesh and Vision: Seis ensaios de arquitectura’ at Forum da Maia, Maia Portugal

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Solo Exhibitions (individual and marcosandmarjan)

2010 ‘London Eight' exhibition at Sci-Arc, Los Angeles
Curated by Sir Peter Cook
Participants: CJ Lim and Pascal Bronner; Marcos Cruz/Marjan Colletti and Yousef Al-Mehdari; Mark Smout/Laura Allen and Johan Hybschman.

2008 ‘Taichung Expo’ at the TADA Centre, Taichung, Taiwan

2005 ‘Interfaces/Intrafaces’ solo exhibition at Architekturpavillion - TU Braunschweig, Germany

2005 'marcosandmarjan – Interfaces/Intrafaces’ at Cons2quence Series on Fresh Architecture solo exhibition - iCP, Hamburg Germany

2005 ‘marcosandmarjan / The Splinewall’ at Feng Chia University, Taichung Taiwan

2005 ‘marcosandmarjan experiments’ at Feng Chia University, Taichung Taiwan

2004 ‘Bartlett Experiments’ at Tokyo Institute of Technology, Japan

2002 ‘marcosandmarjan’ at Novas Tendências na Arquitectura - Galeria Maus Hábitos, Portugal

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Group Exhibitions (individual and marcosandmarja)

2009 ‘marcosandmarjan’ in ‘Perdidos’ at Fundación Arquitectura COAM, Madrid, Spain

2008 ‘marcosandmarjan’ in ‘The Urban Tendency’ at P3 gallery - University of Westminster, London, UK

2006 ‘Marcos Cruz: Hyperdermis’ at ENTRY 2006 - Perspectives and Visions in Design, Zollverein, Essen Germany

2006 'FLL' in Habitar Portugal - Centro Cultural de Belém, Portugal

2006 ‘75th Lisbon Book Fair’ at 238th General Summer Exhibition - Royal Academy of Arts, UK

2006 ‘Lofting House’ in ‘A Casa Portuguesa - Modelos Globais para Casas Locais’ at Consejeria de Cultura de la Junta de Extremadura, Badajoz Spain

2006 ‘Lofting House’ in ‘A Casa Portuguesa - Modelos Globais para Casas Locais’ at Palacio de Congressos y Exposiciones de Mérida, Spain

2006 ‘Lofting House’ in ‘A Casa Portuguesa - Modelos Globais para Casas Locais’, COADE, Cáceres Spain

2006 ‘El Coral’ in Meta.morfosis exhibition at MEIAC - Museu Estremenho Iberoamericano de Arte Contemporaneo, Badajoz Spain

2005 ‘Lofting House’ at ExperimentaDesign 2005 - Cordoaria Nacional, Lisbon Portugal

2005 ‘marcosandmarjan’ at Metaflux - Casa Municipal da Cultura F. Távora, Aveiro Portugal

2005 ‘FIA’ at l’Atalante - Academia das Artes dos Açores, Ponta Delgada, Azores Portugal

2005 ‘Xiyuan’ at 237th General Summer Exhibition - Royal Academy of Arts, UK

2005 ‘marcosandmarjan’ at Metaflux - Fundação Tomi Othake, São Paulo Brazil

2004 ‘marcosandmarjan’ at Metaflux - Cordoaria Nacional, Lisbon Portugal

2004 ‘marcosandmarjan’ at Avatar Exhibition - Bartlett UCL, UK

2004 ‘marcosandmarjan’ at Mladá Britská Architektura - Jaroslav Fragner, Prague Czech Republic

2004 ‘marcosandmarjan architects’ at Metaflux - 9th Architecture Venice Biennial, Italy

2004 ‘marcosandmarjan’ at Bartlett UCL, London UK

2003 ‘Marcos Cruz: The Inhabitable Flesh of Architecture’ at Bartfest 2003 - Slade School of Art UCL, London UK

2003 ‘marcosandmarjan’ at Intimacy / Spot on Schools' - Beyond Media/Oltre I Media – 7th international festival for architecture in video - Stazione Leopolda, Florence Italy

2003 ‘The Bagpipe / Floating Vessel’ at Exposição Geral de Arquitetos - 5. Bienal de Arquitectura e Design de São Paulo, São Paulo Brazil

2003 ‘marcosandmarjan’ at Influx - Silo Norte Shopping, Porto Portugal

2003 ‘Actions re Form’ at Architekturgalerie München, Germany

2003 ‘Actions re Form’ at CAPC, Coimbra Portugal

2002 ‘New Tomihiro Museum’ at Biennale di Porto Ercole 02 - Forte Stella, Monte Argentario Italy

2002 ‘Marcos Cruz: The Inhabitable Flesh of Architecture’ at Bartfest 2002 - Slade School of Art UCL, London UK

2001 ‘Marcos Cruz: Fleshscape’ at Bartfest 2002 - Slade School of Art UCL, London UK

2000 ‘Marcos Cruz: Inhabitable Flesh - MPhil/PhD work’ at Delft University of Technology, Delft Holland

2000 Marcos Cruz at ‘Flesh and Vision: Seis ensaios de arquitectura’ at Forum da Maia, Maia Portugal

1999 'Marcos Cruz: Fleshscape' Final MArch Exhibition - Bartlett UCL, London UK

1998 'Marcos Cruz: Fleshscape' at Bartfest 1999 - Bartlett UCL, London UK

1997 Marcos Cruz at ‘Fragmentos de uma Expedição’, Galeria ESAP, Porto Portugal

1996 Marcos Cruz at ‘6 Propostas para o Mindelo’, Sta. Casa da Misericórdia, Vila do Conde Portugal

1995 Marcos Cruz at ‘7 projectos para Campanhã’, Junta de Freguesia de Campanhã, Porto Portugal

1994 Marcos Cruz at ‘Sombras’, Sala Toc, Vila Nova I la Geltrú, Barcelona Spain

1994 Marcos Cruz and Duarte Soares Lema at ‘Zaragoza Ribera Norte’, Bienal de Arquitectura e Urbanismo, Zaragoza Spain

1992 Marcos Cruz at ‘10 Anos Escola Superior Artística do Porto’, Galeria ESAP, Porto Portugal

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Others

2005/06 marcosandmarjan
'El Coral - museum extension for MEIAC, Badajoz Spain [unbuilt]
Design team: marcosandmarjan;
Collaboration: Shui Liu

2005 marcosandmarjan - 'Lofting House'
housing project for Moita, Lisbon Portugal [unbuilt]
Design team: marcosandmarjan;
Collaboration: Tze-Chun Wei, Wanda Yu-Ying Hu, Po Chuan

2005 marcosandmarjan - 'Feira Industrial dos Açores'
Ponta Delgada, Azores Portugal [unbuilt]
Design team: marcosandmarjan;
Collaboration: João Albuquerque, Marco Sacchi, Shui Liu

2005 marcosandmarjan - 'Nurbster V - Lisboa Folie'
Lisbon Portugal [unbuilt]
Design team: marcosandmarjan;
Collaboration: João Albuquerque

2004 marcosandmarjan - 'Bai Jia Zhuang Retail and Office Building’
Beijing PRChina [unbuilt]
Design team: marcosandmarjan with J. Lu and S. Pike

2003 marcosandmarjan - 'New Godet Club'
Istanbul Turkey [unbuilt]
Design team: marcosandmarjan;
Collaboration: Jia Lu

1998 Marcos Cruz
Refurbishment of a restaurant in Cais das Pedras, Porto Portugal [unbuilt]
Design team: Marcos Cruz, J. Albuquerque

1998 Marcos Cruz
Primary school, Equatorial Guinea [unbuilt]
Design team: Marcos Cruz, Duarte Soares Lema

1998 Marcos Cruz
One family house in Mindelo, Vila do Conde Portugal [unbuilt]
Design team: Marcos Cruz

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Competitions

2009 marcosandmarjan - 'Khataba (Al Jadida) Agrpolis'
competition for a Self-Sufficient City in Cairo
Design team: marcosandmarjan;
Collaboration: Rocky Marchant, Sana Hassan, Nisha Patel, Heba Layas, Kapil Amarnani Chawla

2008 marcosandmarjan
Invited competition for a Christmas tree at Heathrow Terminal 5
Design team: marcosandmarjan

2008 marcosandmarjan - 'Dunes'
invited competition project for a sales centre in Cairo, Egypt
Design team: marcosandmarjan;
Collaboration: Tim Culverhouse, Damjan Iliev, Justin Lau, Abdur Razzak, Haroon Iqbal, Arvind Varsani

2008 marcosandmarjan - 'The Boomerang'
invited competition project for a tower in Dubai

Design team: marcosandmarjan and Salvador Perez-Arroyo, Madrid;
Collaboration in London: Ben Cowd and Johan Voordow

2004 marcosandmarjan - 'Xiyuan'
invited competition for an entertainment complex in Beijing PRChina [first prize, followed by stage C proposal]
Design team: marcosandmarjan with Jia Lu - in competition phase with Jia Lu and Steve Pike;
Collaboration: Nat Keast, James Pike, Shaun Siu Chong, Sirichai Bunchua;
Renderings: Mark Exon, Kenny Tsui;
Model: Keith Watson, Sirichai Bunchua, Andy Shaw

2002 marcosandmarjan - 'New Tomihiro Museum of Shi-Ga'
Azuma Village Japan
Design team: marcosandmarjan;
Collaboration: Andres de Aguilar, Jens Ritter, Steve Pike;
Photography: Wanda Yu-Ying Hu, Steve Pike, Jens Ritter;
Renderings: Jia Lu

2001 marcosandmarjan - 'Hyperdermis'
100% Rubber, UK

2001 marcosandmarjan - 'New England Biolabs’
Massachusetts USA
Design team: marcosandmarjan;
Collaboration: Shao Ming;
Photography: Yu-Ying Hu, Jens Ritter;
Molecular Biology: Orlando de Jesus;
Engineering: Daniel Bosia / Ove Arup and Partners

2000 Marcos Cruz - 'Palos Verdes Art Centre'
Los Angeles USA
Design team: Marcos Cruz, Wanda Yu-Ying Hu, Gwenola Kergall;
Renderings/Text: M. Potter;
Layout: D. Leong;
Engineering: T. Sheehan / Ove Arup and Partners

1998 Marcos Cruz - 'Cais do Rio Douro'
Pinhão Portugal
Design team: Marcos Cruz
Landscape Architecture: M. Cudell;
Engineering: A400

1997 Marcos Cruz - 'New Portuguese Embassy Berlin'
Berlin Germany
Design team: Marcos Cruz, Rui Cunha;
Collaboration: João Diogo;
Landscape Architecture: Laura Costa;
Engineering: A400

1996 Marcos Cruz - 'Raval - UIA96'
Barcelona Spain
Design Team: Marcos Cruz, Luis Guimarães, Julia Sübai, Katja Siller

1994 Marcos Cruz - 'Zaragoza Ribera Norte'
Zaragoza Spain
Design Team: Marcos Cruz, Duarte Soares Lema;
Collaboration: Ana Paula Cachola, Luis Guimarães

1991 Marcos Cruz - 'La Casa Più bella del Mondo',
Reggio N’Emilia Italy
Design team: Marcos Cruz, Ana Paula Cachola, Luis Guimarães, Benita Azevedo, António Pinto with Nicolau Brandão

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Built Projects

2009 marcosandmarjan
Installation for Ermida Nossa Senhora da Conceição, Lisbon [in progress]

Design team: marcosandmarjan with Unit 20 students

2009 marcosandmarjan
Recording studio for the Working Mans Club in Bethnal Green, London [in progress]
Design team: marcosandmarjan with DS10 students

2009 marcosandmarjan -'Nurbster IX'
exhibition installation for Unit 20, Bartfest 09, London UK
Design team: marcosandmarjan with Unit 20 students

2008 Marcos Cruz
Refurbishment of a flat in Soho, London UK [in progress]
Design team: Marcos Cruz;
Collaboration: Tim Culverhouse, Tze-Chun Wei

2008 marcosandmarjan -'Nurbster VIII / Sponge - Blister Wall'
exhibition wall for Unit 20, Bartfest 08, London UK
Design team: marcosandmarjan with Unit 20 students

2007 marcosandmarjan -'Nurbster VII'
exhibition installation for Unit 20, Bartfest 07, London UK
Design team: marcosandmarjan with Unit 20 students

2005 marcosandmarjan-'Nurbster VI - Floating Arabesque'
exhibition installation at iCP, Hamburg Germany
Design team: marcosandmarjan

2005 marcosandmarjan - '75th Lisbon Book Fair'
general Fair layout, cafeteria and auditorium, Lisbon Portugal
Design team: marcosandmarjan;
Collaboration: João Albuquerque, Marco Sacchi, Shui Liu, Wanda Yu-Ying Hu;
Graphic Design: Barbara Says;
Associate Architects: Guedes Viinikainen;
Construction: Contubos;
Laser cutting: Lasindustria;
Photography: Virigilio Ferreira, Ute Klein, Leonardo Finotti

2005 marcosandmarjan - 'Nurbster III - Splinewall'
exhibition Installation for FCU & Bartlett Digital Architecture Workshop, Taichung Taiwan
Design team: marcosandmarjan with workshop students

2004 marcosandmarjan - 'Nurbster II'
exhibition Installation for Metaflux at the Venice Biennale, Italy
Design team: marcosandmarjan;
Collaborators: Nat Keast, Samuel White;
Laser Cutting: Zone Creations

2004 marcosandmarjan - 'Nurbster I'
exhibition Installation for Unit 20, Bartfest 04, London UK
Design team: marcosandmarjan with Unit 20 students

2003 Marcos Cruz     - 'Resurface'
exhibition installation for the 1st Rotterdam Biennale, NAI, Rotterdam Holland
Design team: Marcos Cruz;
Collaboration: Sirichai Bunchua with Unit 20 students

1998 Marcos Cruz
Housing block with 32 flats in Suzão [built with alterations], Valongo Portugal
Design team: Marcos Cruz, Jorge Albuquerque,
Engineering: A400

1997 Marcos Cruz
Two family houses in Vila nova da Pedra [built, with strong alterations], Maia Portugal
Design team: Marcos Cruz, Sonia Arbaci,
Engineering: Isolino Morais

Arhitekturata kato organizam

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Teodora Vasileva (2007)

Article about Marcos Cruz's Hyperdermis project published in INTRO
Bulgarian culture and life-style magazine, No 36, May 2007, p. 88

Архитектурата като организъм

текст: Теодора Василева

графики: Маркос Крус / marcosandmarjan

Маркос Крус е роден през 1970 в Порто, Португалия, в португало-немско семейство. Следва архитектура в Порто и Барселона, а по-късно в Bartlett School of Architecture в Лондон, и то при Питър Кук, основателя на известната през 60-те и 70-те години архитектурна група Архиграм. Досещаш се, че Маркос Крус е някой, който не се страхува да преминава граници. Такава е и архитектурната му визия за бъдещето – невероятно трансгранична, която трудно се описва с традиционните архитектурни термини. Това, от което винаги се е интересувал в архитектурата, е функцията на стената. Според него традиционната концепция при проектирането на жилища, при която ползването и организацията на “празното” пространство са водещи и при която от социална, политическа и функционална гледна точка ролята на стената е била сведена до тази на обикновена преграда, отдавна вече не е на мода. Според Маркос тази концепция е отстъпила пред визията за помещение от съвсем нов тип: “Аз смятам, че зад съвременните физически стени може да се открие много повече, а именно един разнообразен, обитаем свят от материална “стенност”. За това е важно да се анализира значението на връзките между човешкото тяло, стените и обитаемото пространство”.

Утопията за жилището като биотехнологичен организъм преследва Маркос Крус. И затова някогашният ученик на Питър Кук се опитва да привлече и други науки като например молекулярната биология, неврологията и нанотехнологията в създаването на една съвременна архитектура, която да е напълно в духа на нашето време.

В проекта му “Хипердермис” сградите оживяват и се превръщат в един интелигентен организъм, който реагира ситуативно и автономно както на живота в него, т.е. на обитателя си, така и на външните фактори като например климата. Помещенията са способни да регулират своя размер и материя и да ги нагласят според личните изисквания и моментното състояние на обитателя; стените мутират в обитаеми интерфейси и са същевременно мебели за сядане, за съхранение на вещи или средства за комуникация. А от външната обвивка излизат пипала с отвори обърнати към слънцето - една визия, която на моменти звучи много зловещо.

Според архитекта този обитаем мултифункционален интефейс предвижда пет различни вида ползване: “in-wall seats”, “relaxing cocoons”, “comminication suits”, “storage capillaries” и “gestural tentacles” в буквален превод съответно “седалки в стената”, “пашкул за релаксация”, “комуникационни костюми”, “капиляри за съхранение” и “мимични пипала”. Всъщност “in-wall seats” са вид мебели за сядане, които използват свойствата на интелигентните, запълнени с реактивен гел двупластови стени. Според позицията и движението на обитателя формата на стената се променя и се нагажда на телесната анатомия. “Relaxing cocoons” пък са един вид вградени легла. Те приличат по своята същност на матка - едно защитено място, на което обитателят може да се оттегли за възстановяване. Т. нар. “comminication suits” пък са дигитални “интерфейси”, в които обитателят може да влезе и в които временно един вид да облече вградените в стената електронни ръкави, в които са разположени микроскопични, оптични фибри и сензори. Те постоянно дават на тялото информация и свързват нервната и мускулната му система с глобалната дигитална мрежа. А пък променливите форми на т.нар. “storage capillaries” са всъщност една най-обикновена система от гардероби и складови помещения. Според Маркос Крус тя може да се сравни с разпределението на мазнините в човешката кожа: при прекалено много излишни вещи стените на сградата се разширяват и издуват. Най-накрая идват и т.нар. “gestural tentacles” – контролиращи окончания, които предпазват обитателя от смущаващи външни фактори. Те са изключително чувствителни, сравними със сензори за движение, оборудвани с контролни монитори; могат да отхвърлят нежелани действия.

С проекта си "Хипердермис" Маркос цели да развие у обитателя на едно подобно жилище усета му за архитектура. За да може да разшири диапазона от чисто човешко любопитство до желанието за докосване той експериментира с меки, лепкави дори неприятни материали, които в почти всяко едно нормално съзнание биха предизвикали отвръщение. Но това съзнание може да се промени когато архитектурата започне по-тясно да си сътрудничи с молекулярните науки и биологията, за да може живеенето в бъдеще да бъде по-ефективно и функционално, но същевременно и по-богато за сетивата ни, едно изживяване.

Agora / Dream and Vision - marcosandmarjan

2009-11-18T17:15:00.012Z

Mario Antonio Arnaboldi (2005) [1]

Published in: L'Arca, Milano Italy,
Settembre n.206, 2005, p.46.

Lo studio professionale Marcos and Marjan, che opera a Londra, è composto dagli architetti Marjan Colletti e Marcos Cruz che hanno recentemente svolto una sofisticata ricerca sulla rappresentazione e sulla tecnica costruttiva dell’architettura, aprendo nuovi orizzonti al progetto contemporaneo. L’evoluzione che sta subendo il progetto, unitamente alla ricerca svolta dai giovani architetti londinesi, ha fermato la nostra attenzione proprio su ciò che più stupisce. Trovare cosa è in grado di segnare la continuità e di sradicare i vecchi schemi romantici, e superati, è un apporto considerevole alla cultura progettuale contemporanea, soprattutto per impedire la costruzione di spazi ripetitivi che non possono più essere in grado di generare accoglienza nell’uomo contemporaneo.

In Italia, ancora oggi, in alcuni casi, si ripete l’aspetto parziale dell’architettura, dove i Concorsi pubblici e importanti continuano a celebrare un’architettura ormai morta da tempo perfino nella mente intelligente della cultura del progetto, e questo genera solo fatti incresciosi, come il risultato del Concorso per il futuro Palazzo di Giustizia di Trento, piuttosto che il Concorso a inviti della nuova direzione della Casa di Risparmio di Firenze, mentre ancora, si sta attendendo il risultato di quello bandito per la sede della Provincia di Arezzo. Insomma, la vecchia architettura del ventennio è oggi sostituita da quella di una sinistra semi/colta. Una volta in commissione e poi come concorrenti, i progettisti romantici si alternano, quasi in modo paradossale: con questo atteggiamento si ottengono gli incarichi.

È meritorio e piacevole rilevare la bravura di intenti e lo sforzo di ricerca dei due architetti Colletti e Cruz, che sembra non diano pace alle loro creatività ma, soprattutto, si sforzano di esprimere al meglio l’evidenza della loro professionalità, che, senza ombra di dubbio, intendono imporre a un pubblico internazionale. Può essere scontato che questa ricerca progettuale e formale tragga le sue origini da un’incalzante evoluzione della tecnologia, ma ciò non è sufficiente a porre un velo culturale a ciò che viene proposto. L’implemento dato dalla filosofia e dal pensiero, destinato a comporre il comportamento, è destinato a unire il sentimento di tutti, fa sviscerare i contenuti di queste forme, dando loro una parvenza non di superficialità ma di contenuti veri dell’architettura. Appaiono forme con precise relazioni e correlazioni fra tecnica e pensiero, tra funzione e forma. Insomma, un’espressione che si sforza d’essere progetto d’architettura e non un semplice gioco di volumi.

La città, la produzione, la statica, insieme all’equilibrio dello spazio destinato ad accogliere l’uomo, sono il connubio dell’intero procedere dei progetti proposti dallo studio Marcos and Marjan. Concreto è il progetto Xiyuan Entertainment Complex, che sarà realizzato a Pechino: l’architettura appare, qui, come un sapere complesso. L’idea dell’intervento è alimentata da molteplici connessioni ai circostanti domini del pensiero, diretto a costruire la forma per abitare i luoghi del tempo libero dell’uomo pechinese. Come ogni sede dell’intelligenza del topos è stretta d’assedio dalle culture circostanti e più discoste, ai cui orizzonti tende il proprio sguardo selettivo. Il progetto appare come un legamento, una disposizione, un fondamento, una regola, una delimitazione, un diktat, in una parola, uno strumento capace di concentrare specifiche categorie concettuali che riflettano altrettante figure dispositive dello spazio: secondo un doppio movimento che procede dall’idea astratta all’assetto concreto e dal luogo reale torna poi al principio, modificandolo. Del resto è apparso anche nelle coupures epistemologiques operate nelle avanguardie filosofiche, scientifiche e artistiche, come ormai appare catastroficamente anche dalla dissipazione entropica dei recenti paesaggi metropolitani. Il recente approccio al progetto spesso si basa su regole matematiche, che portano a manipolare la materia in modo magmatico che, fra l’altro, presenta ampi margini di sovrapposizioni, lungo i quali si avvia un percorso esplorativo per ricostruire alcuni fondamenti della pratica architettonica, contrastando il riduzionismo disciplinare dilagante ancora fra i romantici del progetto. Ecco come può apparire allora la crisi del grande stile razionalista, inteso come capacità di ridurre il mondo dell’essenziale, di dominare la proliferazione del molteplice in una laconica unità di significato, di analizzare, soprattutto, la posizione contraddittoria di Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche rispetto al razionalismo.

Il padre ideologico di questo nuovo modo di procedere rimane ancora Jacques Derrida, che ha consentito di sottolineare la circostanza che, nonostante il rigore e le precauzioni delle sue analisi, esse sono tutte rette da un presupposto inconsapevole, da un’ipotesi che non ha alcun valore assoluto, ma che agisce come fosse l’evidenza più inoppugnabile e che quindi diventa un dogma come lo è stato agli inizi il decostruttivismo. Appunto questi sono i presupposti che consentono alle scienze storiche d’essere tali e all’uomo di vivere, come le scienze sanno aiutare a farlo. Presupposti e non evidenze. Interpretazioni e condizioni indispensabili dell’agire: ma non verità. Senza rendersene conto, mascherando il proprio gesto, Derrida solleva questi presupposti delle scienze e della vita comune al rango di evidenze assolute e di verità incontrovertibili a un rango che non potrebbe esistere, se è vero che noi ci muoviamo all’interno di un’atmosfera, insomma nello spazio architettonico, storicamente condizionato e dunque tale da non consentire nessuna evidenza e verità assoluta. Una volta compiuta questa operazione, favorita dal consenso di cui quei presupposti godono, si può concludere affermando che al pensiero e alla conseguente creatività non può competere alcuna verità né alcuna evidenza assoluta.

È proprio il pensiero di Giancarlo De Carlo, un architetto vero, dedito alle battaglie civili e progettuali, ad aver promosso l’idea di un progetto come strumento di ispirazione sociale. Il progetto architettonico per lui è da considerare strettamente legato ai processi e alle idee che lo hanno generato e alimentato nel loro realizzarsi.

È la stessa adesione che appare dal lavoro dello studio Marcos and Marjan, che nega qualunque forma lessicale dell’architettura del passato e tende, in continuità, a modificare il linguaggio spinto da un’attenta ricerca scientifica e filosofica. È proprio la creatività che in questi progetti diventa una questione di metodo, insomma una sorte di dote naturale che si sviluppa con procedimenti scientifici tesi a promuovere le loro capacità innovative. In estrema sintesi, Marjan Colletti e Marcos Cruz dimostrano la capacità di produrre idee progettuali, in grado di trovare delle relazioni e dei nuovi modi per esprimerle. Hanno la capacità di ispirare, motivare e guidare i loro progetti in una sorta d’organizzazione. Queste doti, però, sono di solito ritenute non programmabili ma, più semplicemente, sono condizioni fondative per il successo, perché sono la chiave per capire le innovazioni che assicurano e preservano la competitività.

Esiste allora, una chiave per fare, non un mero dono della sorte, ma un insieme integrato di strumenti gestibile in modo sistematico e orientato? La risposta è che questa chiave esiste ed è la Programmazione Neurolinguistica-Pnl. Essa mette a fuoco il processo della creatività e non i contenuti o i prodotti, enfatizza strategie e principi generalizzabili nonché abilità trans-contestuali e non limitate tecniche frammentali. Inoltre, è incentrata sull’idea che negli esseri umani i processi d’apprendimento della memoria e della creatività dipendono da una serie di programmi neurolinguistici che operano per lo più efficacemente per realizzare particolari obiettivi o specifici risultati. Questa tendenza filosofica attuale calza con il progetto svolto da Colletti e da Cruz e conferma il pensiero di Robert D. Dilts e Gino Bonissone e spresso nel loro libro: Skills for the future. Leadership creatività e pensiero innovativo.

Teaching Activity

2009-11-18T16:59:00.002Z

Teaching Activity

Vamos poder vestir os nossos edifícios?

2009-11-18T11:44:00.014Z

Alexandra Prado Coelho (2009)

Article published in Jornal Público / P2
Domingo 11 Janeiro 09, Portugal, pp. 10-11
See http://ipsilon.publico.pt/artes/entrevista.aspx?id=220423

Poderemos, no futuro, ter paredes de látex que sirvam para comunicarmos com os outros? O arquitecto Marcos Cruz acredita que sim. A sua tese sobre “o corpo habitável da arquitectura” ganhou um prémio do Royal Institute of British Architects. É também, diz Cruz, uma resposta aos “produtos brancos” da arquitectura portuguesa.

A arquitectura contemporânea “é fria”. A arquitectura contemporânea “falhou o corpo”. Se isso não tivesse acontecido, talvez hoje já tivéssemos um envolvimento diferente e mais intenso com a arquitectura. Poderíamos, quem sabe, ter paredes de látex que funcionariam como fatos, com sensores que nos permitiriam comunicar uns com os outros à distância. “A pessoa podia sentar-se dentro dessa pele hipersensível. E vestir a arquitectura tornar-se-ia um acto literal”, afirma Marcos Cruz.

Foi destas ideias que este arquitecto português a viver e a trabalhar em Londres partiu para a tese de doutoramento que lhe valeu o prémio do Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) para a Outstanding PhD Thesis 2008. Uma tese a que chamou The Inhabitable Flesh of Architecture (o corpo habitável da arquitectura).

“Muita da arquitectura que se faz hoje não é feita pensando em quem a usa e a vive. É feita para agradar a arquitectos e para alimentar todo um discurso montado dentro das academias, e que é muito auto-referencial”, diz Marcos Cruz, em conversa com o P2, durante umas curtas férias de Natal no Porto, cidade onde cresceu e onde estudou arquitectura.

Na mesa à nossa frente está uma cópia da tese, cheia de imagens, algumas desenhadas por Marcos, outras de peças de artistas plásticos que trabalharam massas, formas mais ou menos disformes, matérias orgânicas. Marcos, que propôs que a conversa decorresse na Casa da Música, vai enumerando as suas referências e fala de eXistenZ, de David Cronenberg, ou Coma, de Michael Crichton, de Barbarella, de pintores como Bosch e Bruegel, de artistas plásticos como Louise Bourgeois ou a francesa Orlan, que usa cirurgias plástica para alterar o próprio corpo.

São imagens de objectos cheios, maleáveis, mutantes, viscosos, viscerais. Não há aqui lugar para brancos, para linhas puras. “Não é uma coincidência que num país com tanto caos como Portugal tenha havido essa necessidade do branco, das linhas puras”, diz. Mas ele nunca se identificou com isso. “Já não sou dessa geração, e essa é uma das razões porque não me considero ‘sizesco’, ainda que o [arquitecto Álvaro] Siza tenha sido uma referência importante enquanto estudava. O meu Portugal já não era esse Portugal caótico, por isso não conseguia sentir-me parte dos produtos brancos da arquitectura portuguesa”.

Fez um caminho sempre para mais longe desse universo. E encontrou o que procurava quando foi para a Escola de Arquitectura Bartlett, em Londres, onde hoje dá aulas. “A Bartlett é uma das poucas escolas onde se faz arquitectura experimental. Preparamos os alunos para terem uma mentalidade inovadora”. Para quem lá anda, “a arquitectura não tem limites, está toda por descobrir”.

Começou a interessar-se pela ideia da “flesh”. “Há uma metáfora que os arquitectos usam que é a da pele. Os edifícios têm pele. Mas é uma pele plana, sem espessura, sem profundidade. Muita da arquitectura comercial que se faz é uma chapa-quatro de pisos com uma pele bonita à volta. Não é mais do que uma membrana superficial que nos deixa frios, indiferentes”.

Marcos procurava algo mais profundo, e a palavra “flesh” surgiu-lhe como a ideal. “Não é ‘body’ nem ‘meat’, é uma palavra que pode ter um sentido espiritual, metafórico, biológico”.

Mas mesmo numa escola com as características da Bartlett, os seus trabalhos causaram algum desconforto. “As pessoas olhavam com cepticismo para as minhas maquetas em látex e diziam ‘isto é muito estranho, é muito feio’. Mas não era o lado estético que ali me interessava, era poder trabalhar com uma arquitectura que era flexível”. Era, para ele, uma forma de ultrapassar “a arquitectura à nossa volta, que é muito dura, muito estática”.

Ao contrário de outras áreas, como as artes plásticas, por exemplo, que foram ao ponto de “remover a questão do belo”, na arquitectura não houve um momento de ruptura, afirma. “Nas escolas em que estudei, aqui, havia professores que diziam ‘para quê essa vanguarda toda, se continuamos a fazer como os romanos?’. Eu tinha uma sensação de claustrofobia criativa brutal. Podíamos de facto continuar a fazer o que os romanos faziam porque já estava tudo inventado”.

A esta espécie de paralisia soma-se, por razões sociais, uma perda de funções da arquitectura. “Hoje já não precisamos de um espaço arquitectónico para comunicar; a arquitectura já não carrega consigo a memória necessária para a sociedade continuar; e já nem sequer é a carapaça de protecção mais importante que temos – um cartão de crédito pode dar-nos mais segurança do que um edifício”.

É preciso, por tudo isto, que a arquitectura encontre um novo sentido. Para Marcos Cruz isso passa pela relação com o corpo. Um corpo que descreve como “ciborguiano”. A primeira parte da tese de doutoramento traça a evolução do corpo ao longo da História – do clássico ao moderno, passando pelo grotesco e o burguês. E o que Marcos defende é que o corpo grotesco medieval – “que é deformado, bizarro, com uma pele porosa” – é o que mais tem pontos de contacto com o corpo ciborguiano de hoje. São ambos corpos que fascinam ao mesmo tempo que repugnam.

“Há no corpo contemporâneo um lado estranho, imprevisível, que nós aceitamos e que há 20 ou 30 anos não aceitaríamos. Nas artes plásticas existe um mundo imenso de artistas que o deformam, manipulam, misturam com outros corpos, com animais, vão para além dos limites da nossa pele e da nossa anatomia”. Em arquitectura, o que se está a tentar fazer é ainda muito pouco. Marcos Cruz reuniu alguns dos exemplos mais vanguardistas no número de Novembro/Dezembro 2008 da revista Architectural Design, que foi convidado a editar. Chamou-lhe Neoplasmatic Design e, enquanto passa as páginas da revista, com um evidente entusiasmo, explica porquê. “O neoplasma é um tumor, cresce gerindo-se pelas suas próprias regras”. Fascinou-o a variedade de neoplasmas artificias (Synthetic Neoplasms) - termo por ele inventado – encontrados nas artes plásticas, e, em particular, o neoplasma do filme eXistenZ, que se torna vivo ao ser colocado na coluna vertebral dos jogadores.

Mas ao mesmo tempo que foi mergulhando cada vez mais neste universo ciborguiano, sonhando com o uso de pele artificial e com edifícios com paredes de látex que, em vez de separarem as pessoas, permitem-lhes comunicar, Marcos foi também sentindo que ainda faltava alguma humanidade a todo este mundo. Foi por isso que achou necessário olhar para certos edifícios do nosso passado mais recente que demonstravam uma relação especial com o corpo. Decidiu reler a história da arquitectura do século XX de uma nova forma e encontrou exemplos importantes em arquitectos como Domenech i Montaner, Alison and Peter Smithsons, Charles Moore, Rudolf Schindler e Richard Neutra, Jorn Utzon, e tambem Le Corbusier (interessaram-lhe, por exemplo, os confessionários à escala humana da igreja de Ronchamp).

Reconhece que tem ainda poucas oportunidades de pôr em prática a arquitectura que quer fazer. Uma dessas ocasiões surgiu com a construção, em 2003, em Graz, na Áustria, do edifício Kunsthaus, também conhecido como the friendly alien – um projecto de Peter Cook e Colin Fournier do qual fez parte na fase de concurso. A cobertura em acrílico, que tem por baixo uma membrana em borracha, é mediatizada, e pode ser usada para passar filmes, por exemplo. O projecto inicial era mais ambicioso, era ter uma cobertura flexível e fazer com que o edifício fosse “quase um ser vivo” que se movesse como os bancos de corais. A tecnologia disponível na altura não permitiu ir tão longe, e o projecto teve que ser adaptado à realidade.

O mesmo aconteceu em Lisboa, quando Marcos e o seu sócio Marjan Coletti (conheceram-se na Bartlett e juntos formam o atelier marcosandmarjan) foram convidados a desenhar o pavilhão da Feira do Livro, em 2005. “Fizemos imensos projectos mais arrojados e complexos, até percebermos que havia 500 mil euros para gastar na feira inteira. Tivemos que refazer o projecto numa noite e trabalhar com meios primitivos – um edifício sem fundações, uma estrutura interna de andaimes – e tentar mesmo assim fazer uma arquitectura que fosse experiencial, que tivesse algo de descoberta.” O resultado foi um edifício vermelho, assimétrico, como uma nave espacial que tivesse aterrado no topo do Parque Eduardo VII.

O futuro está aí, e Marcos Cruz acredita que o que hoje é sonho poderá vir mais cedo ou mais tarde, a tornar-se realidade, ainda que formalisado de uma maneira diferente do que imaginado hoje.“A visão foi o grande meio de comunicação do século XX. O tacto e a audição, que são muito importantes no espaço arquitectónico foram rejeitados”. Isto tem a ver, acredita, com uma “estética da higiene” que surge no final do século XIX, início do século XX, por razões de saúde pública, e que os arquitectos aproveitam. “Dizem ‘isto é um grande momento para demonstrar que, se tirarmos tudo das paredes e tornarmos o espaço minimal e ascético, estamos a torná-lo mais saudável’”.

Como a sociedade não estava preparada para isso, tinha que ser “educada”. O branco e o minimal foram associados à seriedade e à exigência intelectual, enquanto “o material foi desprezado”. Todo o trabalho de Marcos Cruz é uma rejeição destes “dogmas”. “É uma resposta a um sítio onde me eduquei e onde cresci e é uma grande crítica a certo tipo de dogmas que me incutiram como arquitecto e dos quais muitos arquitectos nunca vão conseguir livrar-se ao longo da vida, porque nem sequer têm tempo para os questionar. O traço claro, o gesto forte que explica tudo é um dogma absurdo que vem do século XIX”.

O futuro espera ser diferente. E com as suas experiências não está a tentar discutir o que é que é mais ou menos bonito. O que lhe interessa são outras perguntas. Por exemplo: “Será que há uma arquitectura que se pode viver mais pelo tacto do que pela visão?”. E, já agora, que se pode vestir?

2009-11-17T23:26:00.009Z

Awards and Affiliations

Academic Visiting Positions
2008 Guest-lecturer and tutor of International workshop, Tunghai University, Taiwan
2008 Guest-lecturer and tutor of digital workshop, Oslo University, Norway
2008 Guest-lecturer and tutor of International Winter School - Multipli-cities, University of Liverpool, UK
2005 Guest-lecturer and tutor of FCU & Bartlett Digital Architecture Workshop, Feng Chia University, Taiwan
2003 Co-commissioner to the Austrian Ministry of Education for the re-structuring of Viennese schools of architecture, Austria
1997 Guest Tutor (workshop), TU Kassel, Germany

Guest critic (outside the Bartlett)
2008 Ecole Spéciale d'Architecture, Paris France
2008 LTH University, Lund, Sweden
2008 Architectural Association, UK
2008 University of Liverpool School of Architecture, UK
2008 University of Westminster, London UK
2007 Institut für experimentelle Architektur, Innsbruck University, Austria
2007 University of Liverpool School of Architecture, UK
2007 Royal College of Art, London UK
2007 University of Westminster, London UK
2006 AADRL Architectural Association, London UK
2006 University of Westminster, London UK
2006 Institut für Gebäudelehre und Grundlagen des Entwerfens, RWTH AAchen, Germany
2006 University of Alicante - Master Course, Spain
2006 University of Liverpool School of Architecture, UK
2005 University of Liverpool School of Architecture, UK
2004 University of Liverpool School of Architecture, UK
2002 Kingston University School of Architecture, London UK
2002 University of Brighton School of Architecture, UK
2001 Kingston University School of Architecture, London UK

Affiliations / Fellowships
Since 2006 Member of AVATAR, UK
Since 1997 Member of the Portuguese Architecture Chamber, OASRN (RIBA equivalent)
Since 1994 Member of Associação dos Amigos do Mindelo para a Defesa do Meio Ambiente, Portugal

Awards
2008 RIBA President’s Research Award for Outstanding PhD Thesis in 2008 – first prize
2004 marcosandmarjan: Invited competition for the Xiyuan Entertainment Project - first prize
2000 Part of the design team for the Kunsthaus Graz competition with Peter Cook and Colin Fournier - first prize

Honours, Selections
2004 marcosandmarjan: Selected as one of 10 teams to exhibit at the Metaflux exhibition at the Venice Architecture Biennale.
1999 Distinction in theory and design in the Master of Architectural Design, Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL
1997 Distinction in final diploma project, ESAP Porto (20/20)

2009-11-17T23:20:00.006Z

Teaching Activity

The research developed in Diploma Unit 20, which Marcos Cruz has been running since 1999 with Prof. Salvador Perez Arroyo (1999-2003) and Marjan Colletti (2004- ), along with Diploma Studio 10 at the University of Westminster which he run with Marjan Colletti between 2006 and 2010, is focused on crossing boundaries of the traditional architectural practice. It investigates advances in a wide range of sciences, art - i.e. bio-technology, cyborg phenomenology, small-scaled intelligence, interactive environments, new materials, digital tectonics, as well as baroque and bio-art - with the aim to create innovative conditions in architecture and the city. Objects in our daily life are also under reconsideration leading to an understanding of buildings and urban environments that are created by many different strata, scientific knowledge, artefacts, and micro-worlds; of architecture that is in its conceptual, spatial, and technological dimension multifaceted, hybrid and interdisciplinary.

The work of DS10 and in particular Unit 20 has been extensively published and exhibited and many projects awarded national and international prizes. In 2002 Cruz was co-editor of the book Unit 20, published by Universidad de Valencia / ACTAR, which presented a comprehensive documentation of the unit’s research.

Student awards of unit 20 include:

Bartlett ‘Archigram Prize’ - Kevin Chu (2001); Bartlett ’Liftschutz Davidson Award for Learning for Practice’ – Gwen Lee (2002); Bartlett ’Ambrose Poynter Prize for Promising Student in Architecture’ – Natalia Traverso-Caruana (2002); Bartlett ‘Sir Banister Fletcher Award‘ and ‘RIBA Silver Medal Runner-up’ - Lisa Silver (2002); Arch+ Prize Germany, Commendation in Design - Mark Mückenheim (2003); Bartlett ‘Sir Banister Fletcher Medal’ and ‘RIBA Silver Medal Nominee’ – Hui Hui Teoh (2003); 1st prize of ‘2006 AIA London / UK Design Excellence Travel Award‘ AIA American Institute of Architects UK - Kenny Tsui and Masaki Kakizoe (2006); Bartlett ‘Sir Banister Fletcher Award‘, ‘RIBA Silver Medal nominee’, joint winner of ‘Hamilton Associates Prize’, 1st prize of ‘3D REID Award’, 1st prize of ‘TECU International Student Award’ Germany, and 2nd prize of ‘KPF/Architecture Foundation Public Space Travel Award’ - Sara Shafiei (2007).

Unit 20 Awards:

Best Unit in Show (Perez-Arroyo/Cruz) Bartlett Openers Prize, awarded by Thom Mayne (2002); Best Unit in Show (Colletti/Murray) Bartlett Openers Prize, awarded by Paul Finch (2006); Best Unit in Show (Cruz/Colletti) Bartlett Openers Prize, awarded by Lord Richard Rogers (2007).

Exhibitions of student work include:

‘Unit 20’ at University of Valencia (2002); ‘RIBA Silver Medals’ at RIBA, London (2002); ‘Actions re Form’ at CAPC, Coimbra and Architekturgalerie, München (2003); ‘Bartlett Experiments of Architecture in Movement’ at Framework Gallery, Berlin (2003); ‘Unit 20’ at Rotterdam Biennale, NAI (2003); ‘Material Intelligence’ at Entwistle Gallery, London (2003); ‘Intimacy, Spot on Schools’ at Beyond Media Festival, Florence (2003); ‘Bartlett Experiments’ at Tokyo Institute of Technology (2004); ‘London Weeks’ at Innsbruck University (2004); 'Mladá Britská Architektura' at Jaroslav Fragner, Prague; Galeria Medium, Bratislava; Löffler Museum, Kosice (2004/05); ‘Unit 20’ at Feng Chia University, Taiwan (2005); ‘AVATAR’ at the Bartlett, London (2005); Reid Gallery, London (2007); ‘Saraben’ at Deamspace Gallery, London (2007).

Publications of Unit 20 work include:

aj (UK, 2000, 2002, 2003, 2007); Unit 20 (Spain, 2002), Realms of Impossibility (UK, 2002); ICON (UK, 2002, 2007); Landscape Design (UK, 2003); Rotterdam Biennale Catalogue (Holland, 2003); Mesh (UK, 2003); Arch+ (Germany, 2003); Intimacy, Spot on Schools: Beyond Media Festival Catalogue (Italy, 2003); Portable Architecture (Spain, 2004); L’ARCA (Italy, 2004); Arq./a (Portugal, 2005); Time Architecture (PRChina, 2006); Re-imaging Architectural Design Studios (Taiwan, 2006); AD – Architectural Design (UK, 2006, 2008); Building Design Magazine (UK, 2007); Wallpaper (UK, 2006, 2007).

Cruz is also a PhD supervisor at the Bartlett UCL. Students include Pablo Gil (since January 2009), Michael Wihart (since March 2009) and Alessandro Ayuso (in preparation).

2009-11-17T18:21:00.007Z

2009 Cruz, Marcos; Pike, Steve (guest-eds). AD – Neoplasmatic Design, November/December 08, Vol. 78 No 6, John Wiley & Sons, London (136 pages) ISBN 978-0470 51958 5

2005 marcosandmarjan. marcosandmarjan Interfaces / Intrafaces (Marcos Cruz; Marjan Colletti) in Con2equence Book Series on Fresh Architecture (eds Wolfgang Fiel; Patrick Erhardt), iCP/SpringerWienNewYork, Wien (128 pages) ISBN 3-211-25232-0

2002 Cruz, Marcos; Perez-Arroyo, Salvador (eds). Unit 20 – Projects by Unit 20 of the Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL, Universidad de Valencia / ACTAR, Spain (288 pages) ISBN 84-9705-275-7

2009-11-17T18:13:00.009Z

Dr. Marcos Cruz

Lecturer in Architecture and Studio Master of Unit 20,
The Bartlett School of Architecture - University College London
22 Gordon Street, London WC1H 0QB, UK
t: + 44 (0) 20 7679 4561
f: + 44 (0) 20 7679 4831

Senior Lecturer in Architecture and Studio Master of DS10,
Room M505,
School of Architecture and the Built Environment-University of Westminster
35 Marylebone Rd, London NW1 5LS, UK
t: + 44 (0) 207 911 5000 est 3188
f: + 44 (0) 207 911 5171

Co-founder of marcosandmarjan
m: +44 (0)796 005 4391
e: m.cruz@ucl.ac.uk

2009-11-17T18:06:00.027Z

Affiliated Links

The Bartlett School of Architecture, in
http://www.bartlett.ucl.ac.uk/index.php

DS10 University of Westminster, in
http://wmin-ds10.blogspot.com

Unit 20 Architectural Design Studio, in
http://u20.org.uk

Unit 20 Blogspot, in
http://unit20.blogspot.com

Marjan Colletti Blogspot, in
http://marjan-colletti.blogspot.com

Others

2009 Lambert, Leopold. Manifesto///Marcos Cruz – Neoplasmatic Design in
http://boiteaoutils.blogspot.com/ (7.10.09)

2009 Meireles, Caio. ‘Abstração Biotécnica’, in FANTASPORTO,
http://fantasporto.rascunho.net/?p=172

2008 RIBA President's Awards for Research 2008. 'The Royal Institute of British Architects announces winners', in

http://www.architecture.com/NewsAndPress/News/AwardsNews/Press/2008/PresidentsAwardsForResearchWinners2008.aspx

2008 Ipsen, Gesche. ‘UCL architect wins RIBA President’s Award’, in University College London main website, http://www.ucl.ac.uk/news/news-articles/0811/08111901

2008 Cooper, Dennis. ‘The Flesh Architecture of Marcos Cruz’ in

http://denniscooper-theweaklings.blogspot.com/2008/09/flesh-architecture-of-marcos-cruz.html

2008 Glynn, Ruari. ‘Marcos Cruz – Flesh Architecture’ in
http://www.interactivearchitecture.org/marcos-cruz-flesh-architecture.html

2007 http://proyectosarquitectonicos.ua.es/TCPCC/curso%20ME.htm

2006 Manaugh, Geoff. ‘Architectural Sci-Fi’ (review of Unit 20 book in the Building Blog) in http://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2006/12/architectural-sci-fi.html

2006 Reisner, Yael. 'marcosandmarjan Interfaces/Intrafaces' in
http://www.architettura.it/
http://thenewchairfund.wordpress.com/category/art/

2006 'Marcos Cruz and marcosandmarjan' in
http://designklicks.spiegel.de/

2004 'marcosandmarjan' in
http://www.architecture.it/ (archivio: copertina #5)

2003 Soares Lema, Duarte. 'Marcos Cruz' in
http://arch.virose.pt/ (cluster, events)

2009-11-17T16:30:00.026Z

Dr. Marcos Cruz
Arqtº., M.Arch, PhD, OASRN, ARB

Director, Bartlett School of Architecture UCL
Reader in Architecture and City
Studio Master of Unit 20
Founder of marcosandmarjan, London

Marcos Cruz is the Director of the Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL, where he is also a Reader and Studio Master of Diploma/MArch Unit 20. His varied teaching activity as a researcher, tutor and critic has been carried out at University College London and University of Westminster in London, University of California Los Angeles, University of Liverpool, Tunghai University and Feng Chia University in Taiwan, Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts School of Architecture in Copenhagen, Oslo School of Architecture, among others.

Cruz studied at the Escola Superior Artística do Porto – ESAP from where he graduated in 1997, while frequenting courses at the ETSAB in Barcelona where he was an exchange student in 2003-04 and 2005-06. After moving to London he gained a master’s degree with distinction in Architectural Design at the Bartlett in 1999 and started a PhD by Design research sponsored by the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT), which he finished in 2007. His investigations about Neoplasmatic Architecture, which focused on a contemporary discussion about the body and the impact of bio-technology on architecture, won the RIBA President’s Research Award for Outstanding PhD Thesis in 2008.

Back in 2000 he was part of the design team for the Kunsthaus Graz competition with Peter Cook and Colin Fournier (first prize). In 2003 he was also a co-commissioner to the Austrian Ministry of Education for the re-structuring of Viennese schools of architecture.

Cruz founded with Marjan Colletti the atelier marcosandmarjan in 2000, combining the practice and teaching of architecture, along with experimental design research. The work has been extensively published and exhibited. This includes the Actions re Form exhibitions in Coimbra and Munich in 2002, the São Paulo Biennial in 2003, the participation in the Metaflux exhibition at the Venice Biennale in 2004 and the solo exhibition Interfaces/Intrafaces at the iCP Hamburg and TU Braunschweig in 2005/06. Apart from numerous exhibition installations, they built two pavilions and the general layout for the 75th Lisbon Book Fair in Portugal and worked on a large entertainment complex in Beijing, which they won as part of an invited competition in 2004. Recently, their project was a runner-up for the invited competition of a sales centre in Cairo.

Cruz is author and editor of a series of publications, including Flesh and Vision (Forum da Maia, 2000), Unit 20 (University of Valencia/ACTAR, 2002), Unpredictable Flesh (Mimesis, 2004), marcosandmarjan – Interfaces/Intrafaces (SpringerWienNewYork, 2005), AD – Neoplasmatic Design (John Wiley & Sons, 2008), and PhD Research Projects 2009 (Bartlett UCL, 2009).

Awards and Affiliations

Download Full CV

2009-11-17T14:25:00.026Z

Research Interests

The research of Marcos Cruz is structured into three different, yet complementary parts: personal theoretical and design investigations, the practice of marcosandmarjan, and the teaching activity mainly centered on the activity as a tutor of Diploma Unit 20 (since 1999) and DS10 at the University of Westminster (2006-2010).

The Body in architecture

This research is dedicated to a future vision of the body in architecture. It questions our ‘human flesh’ and its altered relationship with a new contemporary ‘architectural flesh’. Different body conceptions are analyzed in historic and aesthetic terms, helping to recognize the emergence of a present condition known as Cyborgian Body - a widely accepted new existential condition that still needs to be redefined. The underlying argument of this investigation is that today's architecture has failed the body with its long heritage of physical detachment, purity of form, and aesthetics of cleanliness. But a resurgence of interest in flesh, especially in art, has led to politics of abjection, changing completely traditional aesthetics, and is now giving light to an alternative discussion about the body in architecture. Through the comparative analysis of a variety of 20th century and also contemporary projects, along with the design of new building typologies, 'flesh' is proposed as a concept that extends the meaning of skin, one of architecture's most fundamental metaphors. Hence, in a time when a pervasive discourse about the impact of digital technologies risks turning the architectural skin ever more disembodied, the aim is to put forward a ‘thick embodied flesh’ by creating architectural interfaces that are truly inhabitable.

An important part of this investigation (done within the premise of Diploma Unit 20) focuses on spaces with an intrinsic spiritual dimension, in which the impact of new digital languages and techniques, notions of embodiment and bodily engagement, and broader cultural and religious motivations can be developed. Apart from numerous projects, there is a major exhibition at Christ Church Spitalfields in London and a publication of marcosandmarjan in progress (due in 2010).

Neoplasmatic Design

Through a variety of projects, Marcos Cruz investigates different concepts of flesh, not just concerning the human, aesthetic and architectural, but also biological aspects of flesh. More than derived from scaled-up analogies between biological systems and larger scale architectural constructs, the focus is lying on the emergence of a Neo-Biological Flesh that entails new semi-living conditions. Such phenomena are part of what Cruz defines in broad terms as Neoplasmatic Architecture. It analyses the impact of emerging progressive biological advances upon architectural and design practice. It investigates the current groundswell of experiments and creations that utilize digital design as a method to explore and manipulate actual biological material. The rapid development of innovative design approaches in the realms of environmental engineering, bio-technology and even medicine are becoming of increasing significance to architectural practice due to their inevitable cultural, aesthetic and technical implications. A notion of design is emerging in which interdisciplinary work methodologies, traded between artists, designers, engineers, biologists and physicians is already happening, giving rise to hybrid technologies, new materiality and hitherto unimaginable potentially living forms. The results of this research have been published in the edition AD – Neoplasmatic Design, guest-edited by Marcos Cruz and Steve Pike (John Wiley & Sons) in November 2008.

A crucial part of this interdisciplinary research looks at how new semi-living conditions and digital technologies can have a real impact on our future living. This research is driven by innovative products, material and bio-technological investigations, and is directed at speculative dwelling typologies. A series of 1:1 prototypes for objects and future domestic spaces, involving new fabrication techniques and digital and responsive technologies is currently being planned (2010-2012).

Inside Out Urbanism

The crucial motivation of this cross-disciplinary research is a new and holistic approach in urban design that seeks going beyond past models defined, for example, in Lynch’s The Image of the City (1960), Venturi and Scott Brown’s Learning from Las Vegas (1972), and Rowe and Koetter’s Collage City (1984), or even Deleuze and Guattari’s Rhizome theory applied to urban design (A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia, 1987). This method involves a rather new ecology-driven understanding of urbanism in which the concept of sustainability is understood as an exclusively low-tech or hi-tech preoccupation. Instead, a variety of social, cultural and political factors are taken into account. The influence of local traditions, the development of socio-economic conditions, and, above all, the decisive role of digital design in the spatial/formal re-qualification of contemporary cities is complemented by a coherent employment of innovative technologies in the field of renewable energies and materials. In this context, a range of digital techniques, such as intense 3D modeling in addition to CNC, CAD/CAM and rapid prototyping are implemented. This research focuses on new experimental design solutions that are not only based on the usual planimetric/diagrammatic and predictive thinking, but rather on a high level of formal, material and spatial three-dimensional complexity. The city and its endless interfaces are materialized from inside-out as a dynamic convolution of multiple three-dimensional cartographies, constructs and operations; as an urban manifold, or, in other words, understood as an ever-mutating Urban Flesh.

A major area of research is covered by the Middle East Research Group - MERG (with Marjan Colletti). It covers architectural, urban and environmental as well as agro-political strategies for extreme rural (desert) and urban environments in Middle Eastern countries.

Previous research
Bartlett, UCL - RAE

eprints.ucl.ac.uk/9741/1/9741.pdf - 2008-07-18

eprints.ucl.ac.uk/9769/1/9769.pdf - 2008-07-15

eprints.ucl.ac.uk/9768/1/9768.pdf - 2008-07-18

eprints.ucl.ac.uk/9759/1/9759.pdf - 2008-07-18

'Sublime Flesh' exhibition

2009-07-22T20:02:00.005+01:00

Installation - 2010 marcosandmarjan
Exhibition installation for 'Sublime Flesh' exhibition, Christ Church Spitalfields, London UK
Design team: marcosandmarjan with Unit 20 students (Luca Rizzi Brignoli, Aleksa Rizova, Leonhardt Clemens, Amanda Bate, Richard Beckett, Linda Hagberg, Wendy Teo)
Manufacturing: Emmanuelle Vancruysee, CADCAM workshop Bartlett School of Architecture UCL; Mesa Studio + Grymsdyke Farm
3D Printing of models: DMC, London
Sponsors: Christ Church Spitalfields, Bartlett School of Architecture UCL, Mesa Studio + Grymsdyke Farm, Building Design Partnership

Nurbster X

2009-05-05T21:01:00.006+01:00

Installation - 2009 marcosandmarjan
Nurbster X - Exhibition installation for Unit 20, Bartfest 09 [built], London UK
Design team: marcosandmarjan with Unit 20 students

The Inhabitable Flesh of Architecture

2009-03-24T20:59:00.066Z

Marcos Cruz (2009)

Article published in SA - Singapore Architect,
#249 March 09, Singapore, pp. 82-91

It is been widely acknowledged that contemporary architecture is undergoing profound changes, many of which are triggered by the impact of new digital media and also the growing influence of fields such as artificial intelligence, robotics, new material sciences, as well as bio-technology, suggesting quite extraordinary, yet uncertain prospects for our future built environment. However, there has little been said about the risk that architecture today is in the process of loosing its crucial cultural as well as social significance if it continues neglecting its most fundamental agent, the body.

Today’s architecture has failed the body

The present research was done in the context of the PhD by Design programme at the Bartlett School of Architecture University College London (supervised by Prof. Sir Peter Cook and Prof. Jonathan Hill). It combines theoretical and historic investigations, including the analysis of buildings and artworks, with my own design projects, which I understand as research tools to generate critical and analytical, yet also propositional thinking. One of its key arguments is that today’s architecture has failed the body; and throughout the research it is recognised that this is the outcome of a pervasive body detachment that has led to so many contemporary buildings being, in essence, bodiless and experientially rather empty. This is obviously a serious problem when considering that architecture is in its true nature a prime social art [01]. The American sociologist Richard Sennett has alerted us to this problem in his book Flesh and Stone (1994), when he saw this as being the result of a ‘sensory deprivation which seems to curse most modern buildings; [and] the dullness, the monotony, and the sterility which afflicts the urban environment’[02]. Sennett believed that it was more than ‘a professional failure’ in which ‘architects and urbanists [have] … lost an active connection to the human body in their designs’; it is a problem that ‘has larger causes and deeper historical origins’[03]. In part, I believe, this goes back to the legacy of the Bourgeois society in mid eighteenth-century and nineteenth-century Europe, and the global impact of the Modern Movement in the early and mid twentieth century. In fact, one could argue that since the invention of the printing press architecture has already lost its function as the main ‘archive of thought’[04]. And it is in our information age that it is also in the eminence of losing its prime protective role, and, even worse, the significance as a central stage for social interaction. Is the security of our personal credit card not becoming of greater importance than that of our home, and the Internet the key place of communication and social exchange?[05] I wonder then what architecture is left with when precisely in a period of financial turmoil, scarceness of energy sources, a sharp increase in world population, and consequently a rising demand for more architecture, designers are neglecting the human body. When I look at what is being built around us today, it seems clear to me that we are missing the opportunity to question in more depth the social and aesthetic dimension of architecture in our future societies will be. As the architect and theorist Anthony Vidler has pointed out in his book Warped Space (2000), a lot of these transformations are also driven by a digital argument in contemporary design through which a profound discontinuity of direction in theory and practice has been introduced. This is particularly so, when considering that ‘the generation of form from outside’ – and by this he means the contemporary focus on topological issues - got rid of ‘the humanistic subject definitely from all individual consideration’. His critique about the lack of ‘the “human” as a generative instrument’, as opposed to ‘”an abstraction based on process and movement”’[06] is clearly in line with what I argue is a necessary integrated approach, combining a typological, topological and ecological, and, why not ‘corpological’[07] understanding of architecture. Unfortunately, designers in practice seem to read very little about what has been discussed with regards to new definitions about our contemporary body, while those who wrote it are notoriously uninterested in buildings and the application of their theories to architectural design. The theorist Robin Evans, on the other hand, refers back to the bourgeoning phenomenon when he talks about the prevalence of architecture as a preventive measure,[08] while similarly the sociologist Mark Cousins alerts us to the existence of a sense of defensiveness[09] in buildings, which resulted in spaces that primarily lack, as he has calls it, ‘the vivacity of the subject’.[10] But the bodilyness in contemporary buildings can also be understood as the result of a Modern heritage that defined the body as a measurable, abstract and functional being, which was eventually taken for granted in the process of design. In response to that, I claim for a more body-conscious approach, which might sound slightly conservative, but don’t take me wrong! Much on the contrary, it is an appeal to a far more inquisitive and experimental attitude in which we should consider a new relationship between our physical surrounding and us. Many of our great buildings of the past have shown us that they were indeed body conscious, and how that has been achieved in a both experiential and experimental way. This is why we need to newly reflect on our past heritage in order to find new paths for our future.

The Body

Overall, this research is dedicated to a new vision of the body in architecture, questioning in conceptual, as opposed to just functional terms, who we are, and how we might inhabit the buildings we are designing. It puts forward for the first time a comprehensive aesthetic investigation about different body conceptions – from the Classical and Grotesque to the Bourgeois and Modern Body – leading to the conclusion that we are all driven by the conceptual precincts of what can be considered the Cyborgian Body. And I am here not so much referring to the cyborg as a sci-fi figure, but rather considering the phenomenon of contemporary body transfigurations through the means of plastic surgery for example, and also the growing dependence on VR and other sophisticated digital technologies. The Cyborgian Body, however, is a still unclear concept, which swings between that of an increasingly perfectionised and that of an ever more deformed and fragmented bod. In both interpretations nevertheless, we are facing the image of an increasingly networked body that has an unstable identity; a hybrid between machine and organism that can ultimately be fully redesigned. It is a body whose flesh is grounded on broader aesthetics of the abject. With that, notions of ugliness and the grotesque are exposed as artistic resources; [11] they are compelling criteria in the context of a new aesthetic, which can be found in a wider and ongoing postmodernist debate. But although art has dealt with the abject in the 1960s through the counter-modernist movement, architecture, in fact, has not. After the Modernism era, critical movements such as Rational Historicism, High-Tech, Deconstructivism, and, more recently, Parametric Biomorphism seem to have left the body out of their debate. This is why, I believe, it is so important to hold such a discussion now, and recognise the crucial importance of a cyborgian body aesthetic in architecture.

Flesh as an extended meaning of skin

Critical in this context, is the proposition of flesh as a way to extend the meaning of skin, one of architecture’s most contemporary and critical metaphors. It stands in opposition to a common, yet reductive understanding of skin that the English architectural theorist Adrian Forty recognised has for long been used to define walls as flat and thin membranes, denying them the virtue of being thick walls. As he cunningly observed ‘there’s no equally compelling metaphor to convey the qualities of thickness’. [12] While a lot of contemporary buildings expose an evident fetish with the outer ‘skin’, reducing the interior to a simple juxtaposition of repetitive floor plates, the use of digital technologies is also helping flattening the ‘skin’, disembodying it ever more, and thus depriving it from its human and material content. Hence, my aim of this research is to stress the urgency of a Thick Embodied Flesh that encompasses new corporeal qualities in architecture.

The problem with the term flesh is that it has a far less clear definition than skin; in fact, it can have a variety of contradictory meanings. If, on the one hand, it refers to a soft substance that includes fat and muscle, which covers the bones and lies under the skin, on the other, it can also refer to the body as a whole, or just to the skin itself. Perhaps, the controversial American art critic James Elkins is right after all when he proposes flesh as a kind of ‘fluid’; a concept ‘that refuses the distinction between skin and viscera, inside and outside, hard and soft, in favour of … viscous matter’.[13] In philosophical terms, the French phenomenologist Maurice Merleau-Ponty speaks about the underlying existence of an existential thick flesh, which ‘is not matter, is not mind, is not substance … The flesh is … an “element” of Being’.[14] This is interesting because it describes an ultimate state through which ‘the body belongs to the order of things as the world is universal Flesh’.[15] Merleau-Ponty’s definition, although profoundly inclusive, is of great significance because it places the body in the centre of a world that he defined as Ur-Flesh. But as an architectural metaphor, this term is not derived from the sciences as so many others, and therefore does not aspire to a scientific truth. Instead, its origin lies, I dare say, in an existential depth in which the body and architecture are fused through an ‘experience of reversibility’ [16] into an undividable phenomenological whole.

Inhabitable Interfaces as Inhabitable Flesh

In design terms, the implication of an Architectural Flesh is most clearly understood in what I identify as being Inhabitable Interfaces. These imply both typological and phenomenological conditions that enhance an intensified body engagement with its physical surrounding. When revisiting buildings of a wide range of twentieth-century architects one comes across a great variety of different Inhabitable Interfaces, and by that I don’t mean just Inhabitable Walls, but also Inhabitable Media Façades, Columns, Cubicles, and Voids, etc. Noteworthy examples include the thickening façades in Lluis Domènech i Montaner Casa Fuster in Barcelona, the masking of bourgeois intimate life in Adolf Loos’ Moller House in Vienna, the merger of body, building and surrounding landscape in many of Richard Neutra’s projects, as well as built-ins and three-dimensional constructs in the work of Frank Lloyd Wright, Rudolf Schindler, Richard Lautner and Charles Moore, amongst others. Moreover, there is to mention the inhabitable technology in Pierre Charreau’s Maison de Verre in Paris, the interaction with an increasingly artificial space in François Dallegret’s drawings, the sensual engagement with an ‘appliance-way-of-life’ proposed by Alison and Peter Smithson in their House of the Future in London, and the dressing of building suits in Michael Webb’s Archigram period. Other types of interfacial inhabitation can also identified in a variety of public buildings. This includes the spiritual depth of walls in Le Corbusier’s Notre-Dame du Haut in Ronchamp, the experience of exhibition cones in Jorn Utzon’s project for the Asger Jorn Museum in Copenhagen, the inhabitation of media façades in Richard Rogers and Renzo Piano’s Centre Pompidou in Paris, and Peter Cook and Colin Fournier’s Kunsthaus Graz (of which I was a design team member during the competition stage), as well as with the inhabitation of columns and tubes in Toyo Ito’s Sendai Mediatheque and Preston Scott Cohen’s proposal for the Museum of Art and Technology in New York. On the whole, the Inhabitable Interfaces that I talk about involve both a mental and physical activity, ‘inhabitable’ being a condition that is ever transient and implies the potential act of becoming inhabited.[17] It implies an embodied experience, which is the interplay between the body’s presence, its perceptual practice, and the engagement with the environment around it. In my own work and the projects of my practice marcosandmarjan (founded with Marjan Colletti in 2000) I further speculate with new ways of inhabiting wall-interfaces through a teletactile digital flesh,[18] and the physical and virtual immersion of the body in space.

Towards a biologicalisation of architecture?

Finally, it is worth mentioning the most speculative part of this research, which investigates an emergent biologicalisation of architecture that relies on a growing number of inventions and creations that make use of design as a method to explore and manipulate actual biological material. This is not just happening on a formal level – look at the conspicuous biomorphic tendencies of a lot of contemporary design - but also in technical and aesthetic terms. Especially in biological and medical sciences innovative design processes have been implemented whereby interdisciplinary work methodologies, traded between designers, artists, engineers, biologists and physicians are giving rise to hybrid techniques, new materiality and hitherto unimaginable living forms. The results of these conditions which I define as ‘neoplasmatic’, [19] are partly designed object and partly living material, or ‘neo-biological’, as the American science writer Kevin Kelly calls it.[20] His predictions are important because they give us a broader picture of how our surrounding is becoming increasingly infused with ‘principles of bio-logic’, merging ‘engineered technology and unrestrained nature until the two [will] become indistinguishable’, and how this has to be taken in to account in our visions of a more body-conscious architecture in the future. A summary of these investigations can be found in the latest AD - Neoplasmatic Design which I guest-edited with my former student and colleague Steve Pike.

In conclusion, I would like to use The Inhabitable Flesh of Architecture as an invitation to an open discussion about the future role of the body in architecture. I consider it a possible starting point to this debate, and with that launch a broader inquiry into the forthcoming aesthetic, social, as well as cultural dimension of our profession.

Notes:
[01] This is an expression taken from Leon van Schaik’s introduction to his guest-edited AD – Poetics in Architecture, Volume 72, No2, March, Wiley-Academy, London, 2002, p. 6

[02] Richard Sennett, Flesh and Stone. The Body and the City in Western Civilization, Faber and Faber, London, 1994, p. 15

[03] Ibid., p. 16

[04] See Mark Cousins’s article, ‘The Ugly’ (third article), in AA files – Annals of the Architectural Association School of Architecture, no 30, Autumn, London, 1995, pp. 65-68

[05] In this case I am specifically referring to the emergence of our information age. If, on the one hand, our sense of protection is not reduced to the defensive power of architecture and its impermeable walls anymore, on the other, social interaction seems to be escaping from the symbolic, social and political premises of architectural into a far broader virtual space. As Joshua Meyrowitz has argued, we are becoming a society with ‘no sense of place’. For more see Joshua Meyrowitz, No Sense of Place. The Impact of Electronic Media on Social Behaviour, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1985

[06] Anthony Vidler, Warped Space. Art, Architecture, and Anxiety in Modern Culture, The MIT Press, Cambridge Massachusetts, 2000, p. 229

[07] The idea of ‘corpology’ (the logos of the body) that I am suggesting here is close to what other authors consider a study of ‘people-centric’ architecture.

[08] Robin Evans, Translations from Drawing to Building and other Essays, AA Documents 2, Architectural Association, London, 1997, p. 89

[09] Cousins, ‘The Ugly’ (third article), 1995, p. 65

[10] Ibid., p. 68

[11] Ibid.

[12] Adrian Forty, ‘Inside the Whale’, in Laura Allen; Iain Borden; Peter Cook, and Rachel Stevenson (eds.), Bartlett Works. Architecture Buildings Projects, August Projects / UCL, London, 2004, p. 51

[13] James Elkins, Pictures of the Body. Pain and Metamorphosis, Stanford University Press, Stanford California, 1999, p. 116

[14] Maurice Merleau-Ponty, ‘The Intertwining – The Chiasm’, in Claude Lefort (ed.), Maurice Merleau-Ponty: The Visible and the Invisible, Northwestern University Studies in Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy, Northwestern University Press, Evanston Illinois, 1968, p. 139

[15] Ibid., p. 137

[16] See Claude Lefort, ‘Flesh and Otherness’, in Galen A. Johnson, and Michael B. Smith (ed.), Ontology and Alterity in Merleau-Ponty, Northwestern University Studies in Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy, Northwestern University Press, Evanston Illinois, 1990

[17] According to the Oxford English Dictionary the term ‘inhabitable’ refers to conditions that are ‘capable of being inhabited, occupied, or tenanted.’ The meaning of ‘inhabitable’ was, however, until the seventeenth century related to the opposite; it referred to conditions that are ‘not habitable, not adapted to human habitation, uninhabitable.’ On the other hand, ‘inhabitable’ differs from the term ‘inhabited’ in as much as it refers to conditions that are ‘dwelt in’ or ‘having inhabitants’.

[18] See chapter 12 ‘Teletactility: The Skin in New Media’ in Claudia Benthien, Skin. On the cultural border between self and the world, Columbia University Press, New York, 2002, pp. 221-234

[19] I borrow the expression from medicine where in biological terms it is referred to an abnormal tissue that arises without obvious cause from pre-existing body cells, has no purposeful function, and is characterized by a tendency to independent and unrestrained growth. But more than focusing on its biological inside structure, or it being a pathological phenomenon, I am interested in its shape and flesh, i.e. in the quality of being ‘plasmatic’. For more see my article ‘Synthetic Neoplasms’ in AD – Neoplasmatic Design (guest-eds. Marcos Cruz, Steve Pike), November/December 08, Vol. 78 No 6, John Wiley & Sons, London, pp. 36-43

[20] Kevin Kelly talks about a ‘neo-biological civilization’, or a ‘neo-biological culture’. See Kevin Kelly, Out of Control. The New Biology of Machines, Fourth Estate, London, 1994, p. 606

Imbaba Airport, Cairo Egypt

2009-01-01T15:31:00.001Z

Urban Projects - 2008-09 - DS10 - University of Westminster
Competition entry for 7th IAHH international Student Design Competition 2009

Design team: Rocky Marchant, Dean Dyson
Supervision: Marcos Cruz, Marjan Colletti

Khataba (Al Jadida) Agropolis

2009-01-01T14:57:00.002Z

Urban Project - 2009 marcosandmarjan
Competition for a Self-Sufficient City, Cairo Egypt

Design team: marcosandmarjan
Collaboration: Rocky Marchant, Sana Hassan, Nisha Patel, Heba Layas, Kapil Amarnani Chawla

Introduction

The rapid increase of population in the Nile Delta, especially around Cairo and Alexandria, is today completely unsustainable. Life quality in both cities is decreasing while the infrastructures are totally overstretched, forcing hundreds of thousands of people into peripheric satellite developments. This is either happening in the desert in enclosed condominiums for the rich, or in the Delta in shanty-town-like settlements for the poor.

Egypt is also having a fast growing demand for electricity which requires significant investiment in its generation capacity.Like many other Middle-Eastern countries, Egypt is also facing a sharp rise in food imports, which is making the country ever-more dependent on price fluctuations of the international markets. This is turning basic goods too expensive for the majority of the population.

The proposal of new towns along the Delta is therefore thought to redirect the uncontrolled urban sprawl into new agro-urban settlements that grow in accordance to local farming activity. Khataba (Al Jadida) is the first of these settlements. As a semi-urban and semi-agricultural environment - an Agropolis - it is proposed to be self sufficient in what concerns the involvement of local population, new transport infrastructures, mix-program, and, above all, a sustainable balance in food and energy production and consumption.

Concept

Left-over spaces and sustainable food production:

The main strategy is to use linear and circular agricultural morphological patterns common in Egypt as a basic structure in which the Khataba (Al Jadida) Agropolis and other new settlements can grow. By using the left-over spaces that are usually wasted land, these new town centres are proposed to develop in the interstices between irrigation circles and gridded fields, creating an a-significant matrix of interconnected and complementary urban nuclei in the midst of agricultural land. Being a very efficient system used in dry areas of the Middle East, irrigation circles are employed as a means to irrigate large surfaces with very little water, which in turn is extracted from existing aquifers. In this part of Egypt the aquifers are regularly refilled with water from the Nile Delta, turning this system into an ecologically balanced and economic practise. The proximity of food production and consumption is also seen as being cheaper, sustainable and more environmentally friendly.

Mixed Program:

A further focus of the project is lying on the juxtaposition and coexistence of different people and activities within a varied and mixed program. It contradicts mono-cultural/zooning strategies largely used in the mid and late 20th-century urbanism. By desifying the urban settlements, land is left intact for farming activity. Besides this agricultural production, it is also proposed that the ground levels of the project host facilities for agricultural manufacturing, along with housing for mid/low income people (that can sprawl between different centres), along with small and mid-scale commerce, workshops for local craftsmen, and cultural/educational/health services on a main street (souk). The upper levels host housing for mid/high income people, offices and other ancillary services.

Communication network:

Apart from an existing motorway, a new high-speed train is proposed to link Cairo and Alexandria. Travel distance is thus massively reduced, shortening commuting time between Khataba (Al Jadida) and Cairo to 30 minutes. The trajectory of this new railway line is located outside the Nile Delta, on a predominantly agricultural area west of it, avoiding spreading more construction and thus pollution in the Delta. On this line are proposed several new agro-urban settlements, being Khataba Al-jadida the first prototype to be built.

Population:

Local population, mainly farmers, craftsmen and other skilled workers are thought to be attracted to the Khataba (Al Jadida) Agropolis where products can be traded. New housing can also develop along a planned grid between several new centers. Simultaneously, a new middle/higher income group of people is also attracted that instead of sprawling in the periphery of Cairo and Alexandria chose to settle in a more healthy and sustainable environment. The density of construction of the agropolis is necessary to allow a maximum of utilisation of surrounding farm land.

Energy consumption / production:

Khataba (Al-Jadida) is designed as a 0 carbon foot print agglomeration. Different types of waste products, including sewage, household garbage, energy, etc. is proposed to be recycled. Liquid waste in particular is thought to be re-utilized and help irrigating surrounding farm land. Energy, on the other hand, is to be gained mainly from sun energy, being located on the building's roofs, facades and some of the circular fields.

2008-12-31T01:24:00.002Z

being updated