English – AAAA magazine

Art & Architecture: Marcin Sacha / interview

The present art world is influenced by continued image-bombing. Where we, as mere spectators, are immersed. Anytime we go through the media searching for what is new or what has been done inside art, we realise that there are more and more flanks, fields and levels where art is continually developing itself. Away from the closed circles of the art market system, the number of amateur artists that rise and take a spot in our visual culture increases every day.

Some of these artists are here just to reconsider the relationship between humanity and the world, emphasizing on the defamiliarization we daily go through with daily realities. These seem to evolve faster than our reasoning or our perception. From this point, Marcin Sacha, an amateur photographer from Tarnow, Poland, shows in his work as a strange world full of this black spots, or ‘gaps’, in the understanding process. Educated as a geophysicist, he turned to Photography in order to show us a world that can be both scarily dangerous and transcendentally beautiful. The process he goes through is to interact with defamiliarized architecture and materials – which he also uses to create graphic effects and illusions of space allow a whole picture to turn into a view of fantasy.

Marcin Sacha’s name might not ring a bell yet, but his breath-taking landscape photographs and his graphic creations are lately taking attention within the Internet web.

Personally, when in front of any picture of Marcin Sacha I feel caught by a sense of nostalgia – nostalgia for to return as the prodigal son; nostalgia for the return to this place we once called ‘ours’ and now it is nothing more than a stage in ruins.

He has taken part in both online and physical exhibitions. Here, he has been awarded several times with gold medals and honour mentions. However, his photographic style has not been consistent during the length of his career. Starting as a landscape photographer, he ended up close to graphic design, always following his theme of ‘creating the space’.

I see no better way to appraise his work than by making this short interview about his career.

19/01/2017

English

Photography / Ifac 2016, The Legend

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.

20/12/2016

English

Healing Architecture / The hospital-garden that helps healing

It would be hard to remember how many times I have wondered if there was a straight relationship between human behavior and architecture, if there is a direct relationship between the shape of the space and how we get along in the atmosphere that this space evokes.

Unfortunately, along my architecture studies, I haven’t found topics related to this, what is today called neuro-architecture, so I had to wait until I was done with school to fetch the chance to research and go deeper in this wonderful field.

Therefore, I spend my spare time looking for examples that demonstrate this invisible buttangible relationship between space and spectator. Let me explain. There are scientific evidences regarding this connection between what we do and how we do it, but few of these evidences have been taken as principles to design spaces. Moreover, we are nowadays analyzing spaces that show this connection as today’s example.

Few months ago, I ran into the Prouty Garden, part of the Children Hospital of Boston. A place that is said to help young patients heal, giving us a great example of this link between neuroscience and architecture (landscape architecture in this particular case).

07/04/2016

English

A life / Melnikov House

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.

02/03/2016

English

Housing property déjà vu / A Spanish woman in Chile

“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.

23/12/2015

English

IFAC: a romance between art and architecture.

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.

08/12/2015

English

Marrying is overrated

The marrying of an individual to their immediate environment dates back to the Neolithic times, to the days when we abandoned the mountain caves and started building instead of simply occupying. The fertile valleys watered by rivers weren’t able to accommodate the type of holes we used so much for shelter. We needed to recreate this safe environment, so the overlapping of matter in a similar way to our previous model on the base plane, seemed like the best solution.

02/12/2015

English

Popular Architecture: Trulli Pugliesi

“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.

25/11/2015

English

Competition: “Mediterranean Sea Club Ibiza” / Submission deadline 30 June 2015!

The objective of the Mediterranean Sea Club (MESC) Ibiza competition for students of architecture and young architects is to produce a new leisure model on the fragile and unique coast of this Mediterranean island.

The idea is for the MESC to become an alternative to the tourism currently offered by the island, and making it possible to rethink how to occupy the Mediterranean coast.

Its location half way between the coastal line and the ocean-surface, will provide different opportunities for relaxation and leisure activities that will little by little become another attraction for visitors to the island.

24/05/2015

English

Tickets for IFAC, available now!

After three magical years in southern Spain, the International Festival of Art and Construction (IFAC) is on the move.

This summer, between the 11th and the 20th of August, the Dutch village of Bergen will be the host for the 4th edition of IFAC, a place where people from all over the world come to enjoy sharing experiences in Architecture, Art and Music.

20/05/2015