Note: Behind every myth there is a legend. This is the germ of the photographic project: Ifac 2016 The Legend, which is also an experimental methodology based on a ludic learning and photography as a way for exploring the environment. Visit it on its original web, or keep reading.
Arbat, residential district of Moscow, 1927. The Russia of change. After the Russian Revolution in 1917, and with Bolshevik ruling the Soviets under Lenin’s command, the USSR is born. This new Soviet Union would get entangled in the web of totalitarianism when, in 1927, an all power-possessing ruler arises: the ascension of Stalin dramatically defined the transformation of Soviet society, sculpting a new face of the country, characterised by collectivisation and industrialisation.
In such a political and social context, architecture, the main channel of propaganda and subliminal messages throughout history, wasn’t left aside. The revolutionary vanguards, waving the banner of constructivism, were imbued with an aesthetic search for provocative, free forms and functionality and found themselves blinded by a new wave of architecture.
“I’ve already experienced this”
And not in a dream, of that I’m sure. I saw dismal, concrete monstrosities turning cities and the look of their dwellers grey. I saw streets changing, beaches disappearing. I saw all of this recently and it all happened too fast.
They called it the ‘Property Bubble’; it happened in Spain. Now I live in a different country, on a different continent. An amazing Chile bathed by the Pacific, embraced by the Andes, decorated with lakes, deserts and glaciers. A growing Chile, expanding day by day built around its super metropolis, Santiago.
© Ana Asensio Rodríguez #IFAC2015
Sometimes you get to meet people who fill you with energy and electricity — fleeting, intense crossroads full of shared views and beautiful ideas. Spontaneous connections, which however tiny, will remain with you for a very long time.
Sometimes, these crossroads are not between people, but between arts, crafts, talents and experiences. Among these intersections is the inevitable attraction between art and architecture: explosive collages, a romance drunk with imagination. And, on very few occasions these two types of crossroads occur at the same time. And in those moments you can only hope that it will happen again.
It’s called IFAC, the International Festival of Art and Construction. It is a 10-day long celebration that brings together more than 300 people from all over the world – creatively restless individuals, who meet somewhere in the European countryside. I felt immeasurably lucky to be one of those 300 people, and so I wanted to share how fascinating IFAC is from the inside.
“Human being… by nature, as opposed to other animals, didn’t walk inclined towards the ground, but straight and tall in order to behold the magnificence of the skies and the stars; and furthermore, finding themselves proficient with their hands and joints to easily deal with whatever they wanted, started to create their rooves from branches. Others would dig shelters along the slopes of mountains. Some of them, imitating sparrows’ nests, would take cover under clay and mud.
Halfway between Concón and Ritoque, the Open City suddenly emerges from the dunes on a beach of turbulent waters and a mountain overgrown with vegetation.
As if suspended in time and isolated from external events, the Open City protects itself, paradoxically only behind a metal fence. It is a day of celebration and the families are gathered at home with the doors wide open. We step inside.
Amereida. Amereida is a city. It also shares its name with a poem. The name comes from the union of Eneida with América. Its origin, the entwining of Architecture and Poetry. After the publication of the poem in 1965, for many people the word came to mean “a way of living, working and studying”.
What role does architecture play during a conflict?
Emergency architecture is exciting. It is the amalgamation of the most basic human necessities made architecture. The lack of resources, the need for survival of the masses.