40 architects making 40 birdnests
Migrant Garden
Migrant Garden is an experiment about Architectural manifestos. Camilo Rebelo, Rudy Ricciottì, Point Supreme, Atelier Branco, Emilio Marin, Atelier Fala, Michele De Lucchi, Go Hasegawa, Anna Barbara, Gonzalo Del Val, Francesco Librizzi, Miniatura, Juan Carlos Dall’Asta, Perry Kulper, Cini Boeri, Matilde Cassani, Buildin Building, Fosbury Architcture, Pezo Von Ellrichausen, FormaFantasma, Amunt, Filippo Orsini, UNULAUNU, Eduardo […]
Migrant Garden is an experiment about Architectural manifestos.
Camilo Rebelo, Rudy Ricciottì, Point Supreme, Atelier Branco, Emilio Marin, Atelier Fala, Michele De Lucchi, Go Hasegawa, Anna Barbara, Gonzalo Del Val, Francesco Librizzi, Miniatura, Juan Carlos Dall’Asta, Perry Kulper, Cini Boeri, Matilde Cassani, Buildin Building, Fosbury Architcture, Pezo Von Ellrichausen, FormaFantasma, Amunt, Filippo Orsini, UNULAUNU, Eduardo Castillo, MoBo Architects, Nieto Sobejano, Marcio Kogan, Fabio Alessandro Fusco, Altiplano, NETWERCH ARCHITEKTUR DESIGN GRUNDSÄTZLICHES, Mio Tsuneyama, Fuminori Nousaku,Bureau A, MVRDV, Italo Rota, A12, Beniamino Servino, Sergio Crotti, Luca Molinari, Purini Thermes.
Migrant Garden called a heterogeneous panorama of forty architects, offices and designers to investigate upon “architectural manifestos”. Each architect is requested to design and think by hand a bird house, starting from a house shaped block of Acell foam respecting a series of defined rules.
40 designs, 40 different ages, 40 different formations, 40 offices, 40 cultures, 3 different generations, 15 countries, 4 continents, organized in a temporary travelling architecture exhibition.
What happened to the Architectural manifesto? Why should manifestos exist? Are they still meaningful in a globalized panorama of cultures and influences or does a geographical, cultural, economical substantial difference between architectural languages of design still persist? Are they no longer necessary, in a job that does not refer to the ‚lone genius‘ but, on the contrary, to a set of anti-heroic gestures as Felicity Scott Stated in 2011? Is it true that the manifesto has been tamed, losing in inventiveness, in its capacity of investigation and interpretation.1 Each office, with between 1 to 100 collaborators, has its own different approach to the practice of Architecture. Sometimes that approach is based on an image and sometimes on a methodology. Sometimes the same approach is characterized by a shallow pragmatism of solving and creating problems, sometimes it reveals a strong and deep stance. This is what manifestos are dealing with. Manifesto comes from the latin Manifestus, manus the hand and fest: taken in hand. With the same hand we draw, we sketch, we express ideas and we shape the future. A Manifesto can be considered as the way in which someone aims at declaring it‘s critical perspective on the world in order to improve it. A manifesto can be found in many disciplines, from arts and design, to poetry, literature, Architecture and more. Different approaches have to be considered under three main contexts: [1] generational, [2] geographical and [3] cultural.
[1] In the last fifteen years due to Internet and the economic revolution, we have been taking part in a big change. The way of experiencing the world has drastically change. Today a flight ticket costs less then a T-shirt and this economic issue has caused totallydifferent ways of perceiving the world by younger generations of students and architects. This situation has created an environment of hybridization, with new cultures coming into contact what, in turn, influences new approaches to Architecture.
[2] Genius loci has always been a central question on the debate about Architecture and it can be considered as the whole caleidoscope of cultural and architectural characteristics, of languages, of habits that characterize a place, an environment and a city. If society is somehow moving to globalization, belonging to a territory still persist as a fundamental component for an architect’s formation. The place in which we live in is unintentionally influencing our aesthetics and, since in the contemporary it is common to travel among numerous places, this fact has determined a different perception of the world and of Architecture.
[3] “Human cultures are more numerous than human races”.2 Each culture, some more then others, has its own strenght to determine a sensitivity and human habits that directly influence Architecture. History, as Architecture, is something cumulative and today we cannot say that Japanese architecture is made only by Japanese people. There is a sort of hybridization of references and formations. Today we are living the traveling era and it is common that lots of people travel around the globe living in several nations, mixing their culture with the new one they find themselves in. These stratifications of cultures composed by differences and similarities are necessary to form new cultural identities and, in that sense, are strongly influencing architectural production.
Migrant Garden started in May 2014 thanks to a team of seven architects, with a common passion for Architecture. The project has been immediately accepted and supported by the Politecnico di Milano and by Acelltec industries. During one year, the project has been displayed in a temporary preview installation, it has been published in many national and international magazine and it collected numerous positive reviews from architects and general population.
Migrant Garden promotes culture as an horizontal value. Nowadays, older age is commonly synonym of higher knowledge but, if we consider that Michelangelo Buonarroti at the young age of 17 carved the Centauro-machia, that postulate does not make sense. Formal hierarchies have no more importance. The focus is on the quality of the ideas and not on the label.
Forty architects have enthusiastically decided to accept the challenge: designing a bird house. Every house will be an architectural manifesto. Each participant has the same rules, the same possibilities and the equal starting point: an house shaped block of Acell foam.
Each architect has been chosen according to three parameters:
− Geography
− Age
− Size of the office
The result is an heterogeneous panorama of 40 architects belonging to 15 different nations, from 3 different generations with a number of collaborators that ranges from 1 to 100.
Migrant Garden “Architecture zoo” will be inaugurated on 19.06.2015 at the Politecnico di Milano in Piacenza.
After the 1.0 inaugural exhibition Migrant Garden will move forward to other art galleries, institutions and museums in order to sprawl this 40 visions of Architecture all over the territory. At the end of the project the bird houses will be sold and the raised fund will be given to charity.
That is Migrant Garden untouchable landscapes.
migrantgarden.com