Two new books. Two architectural couples. And over fifteen years of commitment to the research of, intervening in and experimenting with permanent temporality in cities. At this double book-presentation, DAAR-architects Sandi Hilal & Alessandro Petti meet ZUS-designers Elma van Boxel & Kristian Koreman in a conversation on their passion for the experiment, urban planning, and the city.
Despite the similarity in titles, these two books describe very different worlds. City of Permanent Temporality is a handbook for bottom-up urbanisation in Rotterdam, written by ZUS-designers Elma van Boxel and Kristian Koreman: their temporary interventions in Luchtsingel and Schieblock are linked to long-term thinking in urban development. In Permanent Temporariness, Sandi Hilal and Alessandro Petti go back to architectural interventions in refugee camps in Palestine, where temporality has a completely different cultural and political context. How do these two worlds find each other in terms of temporality, architecture, and urbanisation?
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Permanent Temporariness
Since their first work Stateless Nation was shown at the Venice Biennial in 2003, the artistic practice of Sandi Hilal and Alessandro Petti has explored the condition of permanent temporariness. Permanent Temporariness is a way to describe contemporary life in all its uncertainty. From their architectural interventions in refugee camps to their work on history, education and the possibility of new political and social imagination, Hilal and Petti have consistently challenged the stories in the mainstream media with their own ideas about architecture, how words shape actions and how civic space shapes thinking. These ideas are now gathered for the first time in this publication. The book is organised around fourteen concepts activating seventeen different projects. Each project is the result of a larger process of collaboration and is accompanied by individual and collective texts and interviews.
City of Permanent Temporality
From a period of severe crisis and extreme megalomania, a unique piece of the city has emerged in Rotterdam. Using unconventional strategies and radical forms of city making, Elma van Boxel and Kristian Koreman (ZUS) have forged new connections between architecture, economy, politics, and public space. City of Permanent Temporality is a journal, project exhibit and a theory for a city in continuous transformation, where bricks & mortar and people continue to adapt, without ever being complete. The withdrawal of governments and turbulent market forces call for new methods of planning and design. City of Permanent Temporality sees ZUS, known for their award-winning Luchtsingel and the Schieblock, open the book on 18 years of urban activism.
Photo Credit Coverimage (left): Inga Powilleit.
Photo Credit Coverimage (right): Adam Ferguson for The New York Times.
