CLOUD 69
exhibition
project detail
Studio A69 – Architekti is celebrating its 25th anniversary this year - an occasion to reflect on past works and a time to contemplate. Their realized projects and designs incorporate contemporary trends, but their design methods have significantly distinguished themselves. None of the cofounders of studio A69 have mastered any particular computer software used to design architecture, but rather they bring ideas into existence first on paper, and then with physical models. Computers are used, but to record and verify their ideas.
Their creations are realized through imagining, searching, and variating, much faster and freer without the limitations of computers.
“This time, we decided to present our architecture in the initial phases. We delved into our archives and rolled out thousands of old sketches, alternative drawings, details and technical solutions. We were stunned not just by the quantity, but also by the omnipresent playfulness, poeticism, zest for searching, mistakes and epiphanies. Sketch paper rustling under our hands, the smell of pencils and crayons, we realized that computers could not do this. Moreover, this manual approach has started to disappear. So, we decided to present our hands on method. We consistently try to avoid deception and delusion of virtuality and modern media. We present physical, hand-made work“, say A69 – architekti about the exhibition concept.
It is not just a matter of the visual appearance, but also of the circumstances relating to it. Sketches are displayed on strips of authentic “tracing paper” whispering in the draught, the aroma of freshly sharpened pencils. In the back ground, the sounds of a pencil sketching on a sheet of paper. “We materialized huge volumes of work by a thousand three hundred and fifty-six strips of tracing paper with four hundred and eighty-six sketches into the form of a cloud. And we named it, a bit sarcastically, CLOUD.
While a “cloud” of sketches dominates the main exhibition space, the installation in the entrance area goes even further in assisting the creative process: it is a coffee shop, a studio, a bookshop, a design shop, and a stationery store. If the exhibition makes visitors wish to do some sketching, one can get everything one needs right there.