CO. exhibition
CO. exhibition
Curatorship and design of the exhibition on international architecture collectives
Communication and mediation are the main keys to architectural activity that, in just a few decades, has gone from being a consumer product to becoming a public action and device for social construction. Consequently, in this scenario, the role of the architects has more to do with interdisciplinary teamwork and association than with authorship.
Under this framework CO. Is presented, an exhibition on fifteen national and international work groups, calling themselves collectives, that have mediation as an architectural practice as a common factor. They are free professionals from different disciplines who, motivated by economic, social and / or academic crises, form collaborative teams that seek to innovate the forms of architecture production from a common identity.
This selection of sample groups, created between 2001 and 2015, apply collaborative methodologies at different scales, working, among other topics, with citizen participation, interdisciplinarity or (self) organization in horizontal hierarchies. They rely on alternative work platforms where networks – physical and digital – are key to developing their projects, real or invented, cooperating with other citizen, technical and institutional agents.
From the creation of video art to the construction of communal houses, the work of these groups ranges from the built, the ephemeral, the artistic and the technological. Without predefined commissions, the importance of his works is not so much a formal result as the richness and complexity of the process.
The fifteen invited groups represent a diversity of practices and projects that are organized and related in a space and at a time represented in the forest of props through different mediaActions that define the I International Congress on Architectural Communication (COCA’17), a project carried out within the Master in Architectural Communication (MaCA).
Credits:
Architecture Alejandro Sánchez, Andrés Román, Angelique Trachana, Begoña Torres, Carol Linares, Cristian Guano, David Jiménez, Despoina Valiadi, Georgiana Serbanoiu, Gonzalo Barahona, Gonzalo Pardo, Jaime San Simón, Jesús Pedraz, Kiara Firpi, María José Vela, Marjorie Casado , Rubén López. Master’s Degree in Architectural Communication (MaCA)
Audiovisual Dayfisa s.a / Infortel
Prints Diagonal80 s.l
Carpentry Finsa (Financiera Maderera s.a)
Props Ischebeck Ibérica s.l
Carpet PERGO
Stationery Sancer (sanz y cervel, s.l)
Catering La Paella de Papel (María Navascués)
Location Zuazo Room Arqueria de Nuevos Ministerios, Madrid
Client Ministry of Development of the Government of Spain
Built area 455m2
Year 2017
Photography Subliminal Image (Miguel de Guzmán + Rocío Romero)
Architects: gon architects
gon is a Madrid-based architecture and design office headed by Gonzalo Pardo since 2014. His practice focuses on research and development of singular architectural projects of different scales ranging from urban planning to buildings to interior construction.
The common denominator of his works is a playful, experimental, critical and optimistic view of the contemporary. In a constant dialogue based on observation and details, his interest focuses on the creative processes of architectural design and construction, as well as the role of mediation and communication of architecture as fundamental vehicles for transforming the world into a place more sustainable, worthy and free.
Gonzalo Pardo is an architect from ETSAM (School of Architecture of Madrid) since 2007, and has a PhD in Architecture since 2016. His thesis “Body and House: Towards the contemporary domestic space from the transformations of the kitchen and bathroom in the West” obtained the outstanding Cum Laude rating, and received for it the 2016-2017 Extraordinary Doctoral Thesis Award and an honorable mention in the XI call for the Arquia Foundation Thesis Contest.
Since 2007 he teaches as a visiting professor at different universities and institutions, in subjects with the common denominator of being linked to the project, as in the European Institute of Design (IED), in Madrid; the Illiois Institute of Technology (IIT), in Chicago, United States; Lund University, in Sweden, and the Master in Collective Housing (MCH), in Madrid. He has been a professor in the Master in Architectural Communication (MaCA) and in the Master in Advanced Projects (MPAA) of the Department of Architectural Projects at ETSAM.
He is currently an associate professor in the Department of Architectural Projects at ETSAM, where he teaches undergraduate projects. Member of the Hypermedia research group: Communication Workshop and Architectural Configuration, he directs doctoral theses as a teacher and researcher, as well as numerous End of Master’s Projects (TFM) and Final Degree Projects (TFG).
He has been deputy curator of the Spanish pavilion at the 16th Venice Biennale, and since 2000 he has obtained 41 national and international awards, including the first prize for the remodeling of the AZCA block in Madrid in 2007; the second prizes in the international Skyscraper contests, in New York, and Velux, in Denmark, in 2007; COAM award in 2014 for the Paréntesis curator cycle, and honorable mention in the Europan 14 competition at the Barcelona location. His projects and built work have been widely disseminated in national and international, physical and virtual media.
