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  • Essay / Freedom from Architectural Stasis - 1156

    For one night on March 4, 2010, Frank Lloyd Wright's Guggenheim Museum in New York transformed from a sterile, static, iconic piece of architecture into a fully immersive changing environment thanks to sounds. by avant-indie band Animal Collective and visual overlays by videographer Danny Perez. 36 speakers were strategically placed throughout the museum in different locations, providing attendees with an ever-changing soundscape as they strolled down the Guggenheim's famous ramp. On the visual side, overlays of videos and animated lights were projected onto the sterile walls of the museum and onto the exhibition participants. It was not a video projection or a laser show, this exhibition completely filled the entire space, participants could walk in any direction and not escape this spatial experience. It was a very temporal space, so tied to the reality of the built environment in which it took place that it could not be replicated elsewhere. What can architecture learn from this exhibition? It was in line with the visionary illustrations given by Archigram and others in the 1960s. It contained the interactive and changing social environments that John Kaliski called for. It included the technological screens that Paul Virilio warned against while containing the personal interactions with the space that he wished to maintain. It is an examination of how architecture might break out of the stasis that it is and adapt to the ever-changing environment in which it takes place and which it dictates. We live in a constantly changing world. The urban dweller experiences a series of changes daily, but the built environment around them ceases to...... middle of paper ...... the infrastructure of an area could not cope with a “moment” yet rare event – ​​a music festival, for example. Instant City was the equipment, 60s style, for controlling a sudden flood of hedonistic humanity: “The program was seen as complementary and anticipatory. [He gathered] information on a route of communities and the available public services that exist (clubs, local radios, universities, etc.) so that the whole city [is] always complementary rather than alien. It was this transition from foreign architecture to complementary architecture. this caused Archigram's city design form to align with Kaliski's views on city design. Kaliski’s views are presented here: “Using what already exists, city design is a form of DIY. The city designer reassembles place narratives to intensify and make more visible the ordinary stories of urban life..”