Other Architectural F(r)ictions

Following previous posts, and as I am about to embark on a panel on fiction in the Beyond Media festival, here is the work of another photographer, who, following architectural studies and a collaboration with Herzog & de Meuron, decided to turn exclusively into constructions made virtual.

After an appearance in Mark magazine, Philipp Schaerer was recently pointed out by Metropolis as one of “three European photographers” to follow up.

I remember an Autocad tutor I had years ago, who wanted only to build 3D virtual spaces and nothing else. She vehemently stated that she had no interest in the physical world, at least when it came to bricks and mortar… (Also she kind of hated architecture.)

Those were the pioneer times of exploring textures and non-gravity and the apparent freedom of the proto-SecondLifes of today. Which turned to be also quite boring and uninspiring – as you can see through the architectural quality of most virtual worlds and gaming visuals available today.

Indeed, now it is again super-realism that interests us, and Schaerer’s buildings end up being quite interesting, not because they are escapist or unrealistic, but merely because they are… possible.

Like film once called for a notion of “suspension of disbelief”, also these images call for a knowing belief in their own narrative fiction – and that fiction somehow betrays a subtext of transparent architectural aspirations.

If not mediated by some sort of photographic aura, these images could easily be mistaken for the next piece of puzzling architecture hitting any of our given Arch Dailies… And that only tells us of Schaerer’s quality… as an architect.

On resistance: a confession…

Like anybody who enjoyed the eighties through the lens of a teenage pop world made of punk and indie, I appreciate a kind of resistance that is neither strictly political, nor purely ideological.

If something, I go for a notion of resistance that is somewhat anarchic, and declaredly anti-mainstream: a feeling that relies on the need to retain inspiration and a certain food for thought for a small minority that refuses to go along with the uncritical credo of the (now twittering) mob.

It was typical of this teenage mentality to reject any pop band that, after its first unknown albums, attained popularity and therefore became condemnable in the eyes of the elected few who knew better. In a word, after a promising start, they had sell out.

I’ve grown to joyfully embrace all forms of pop – from late Billie Jean to reborn Kylie Minogue – and, with a progressive degree of realism and a little bit of Adorno, I’ve also come to accept that everything will eventually be recuperated. And everybody seems to sell out at some point, even if only allegedly to be able to pay for the office bills or for their children’s whims.

Paradoxically, my idea of resistance now stems from the clarification that everything will, at some point, be re-integrated into some sort of system of mass consumption – like punk itself ended up demonstrating (even if in endless second comings).

The only form of resistance lies, under that circumstance, in the ability to undermine from within. There, I said it. I’ve stated my program.                     (And the revolution will not be televised.)

This being said, it is also true that I tend to get terribly suspicious of gurus – so please keep me out of that club to which Groucho Marx did not like to belong. Incidentally, in my view of resistance, Groucho’s Marxism would be the only ideology I would gladly embrace.

So, naturally I agree with much of what Thomas de Monchaux says when he points to the problems of “overvaluing the guru” in a text on the latest Pritzker Prize, published in the excellent Design Observer. In such a case, it is not that I don’t recognize any of the wellknown masters’ flaming qualities, but I don’t think that licking the master’s ass does much good to either the licker or the licked.

In the same vein, I was quite glad to find out that also Lebbeus Wood recently posted on architecture and resistance, showing his usual concise depth in dealing with the notion. In his serious, yet delicious, “resistance checklist”, Lebbeus also warns of resisting the “people who seem invincible.”

Portuguese architecture, for example, was once renowned for its embodiment of resistance. Such a reputation owed much to Kenenth Frampton’s need to find good examples to support his neo-modernist theories, thus finding in Alvaro Siza and others good motives to oppose the then prevailing post-modernists. Critical regionalism, as earlier defined by Alexander Tzonis and Liane Lefaivre, implied an important political dimension.

Today, Portuguese architecture is totally beyond that early notion of (political-economical) resistance. As I’ve written at more length in another text, the master architects are also the most prized by the market. And only if they are true masters do they continue to (ocasionally) subvert from within…

On Humour

“My house is repulsive. If you saw it, you wouldn’t believe that any well-minded human being could inhabit a place so vile. The floors are lined with rotting garbage. Most of the windows are either smashed or covered in grafitti. There’s no heating or hot water. The whole place smells like a combination of wet cigarettes and dries blood. There’s a mushroom growing out of the fucking toilet. It’s wildly depressing.”

Karley Sciortino, from “Slaves”, in Apartamento

A few weeks ago a famous writer started a book presentation stating that, like everybody else, he hated architects. I perfectly see his point in this little quote.     I want my squalor and no one, but no one, is going to tell me how to live.

That is also why eye-catching everyday-life-interiors-magazine Apartamento is such a wonderful anti-wallpaper statement – although it will tend to be as “trendy” with young people as the other one was during its heyday.

It’s another point of view. And, at least, humorous enough to start its 3^rd issue with a piece like Enrique Giner de Los Rios’ “The Joke”. Forget marxism, forget minimalist chic, welcome the everyday life stories of the new fucked-up-and enjoying-it generation.

Coming from two cities overspammed by design, long after the yet-stylish Nest has disappeared, and even if it features one interview with three design gurus, Apartamento is what you can call the last resort manifesto for the personal design-free zone.

Blog Travelling

Today I went nettouring and this is the best darn thing I’ve brought back from my travels…

By Terri Timely, via Core 77

Archive of Re-Incidence #02

Some people say there are no co-incidences, pero que las hay, las hay. As I was gathering incidences for this specific post series, little did I know that electronic intercourse with Volume was so underway… As Volume blog was publishing about all the beyonds, I was going through Volume’s last issue, on “Architecture of Hope” – as this certainly relates to Beyond’s forthcoming book.

Reading René Boomken’s The New Disorder of Creolization connected to ideas I’m currently working on – and I do think creolization is an essential term for the 21st century’s emergent megalopolis - but it also rang a bell (talking about revival, just leave this on the background…) on an exhibition I’ve designed for the 2008 Torino World Capital of Design.

My exercise on Flexibility consisted in transforming a 19^th century prison space into an amenable exhibition space. But what I want to address here is: why should we see flexibility only from its economical, neo-liberal point of view? Flexibility is adaptation. And adaptation is imagination at work in the face of failure.

Another article in the same issue of Volume, “EasyEurope: The Young Continent,” brought me back to another trail of production…

The text by Tommi Laitio reminded me of how the curatorial argument of Metaflux, the Portuguese representation to the 2004 Venice Architecture Biennale, was all built around the idea of sudden generational difference and thus greatly based in references coming from youth culture studies.

Also architecture has its youth cultures, of course. At the time of Metaflux, generations X and Y were  suggested as clearly opposed archiosociological phenomena – even if, against international standards, they presented an age difference of only a decade or so…

But after that, it is no wonder that, while Metaflux’s distinction generated a long-term effect in the Portuguese architecture arena, also within that same arena a generation Z has quickly emerged to media attention.

With Douglas Coupland being the trendsetter of all these notions, it is also no wonder that he is now getting ahead of himself and launching a new novel called… “Generation A.”

And with me being an “unabashed fan” of the Canadian writer, it is also no wonder that an excerpt of the upcoming novel is promised for Beyond’s take on Values & Symptoms.

Beyond and Beyond

Now that Beyond is showing up in reviews in Volume and Abitare it’s a good time to announce that, following the buzz on all the beyonds, I’ll be presenting the bookazine at the Beyond Media Festival, in Florence, on the 10th of July.

I’m proud to be talking alongside Piero Frassinelli, from Superstudio – whose 1971 essay on “Twelve Ideal Cities” was featured as a reprint in the Scenarios & Speculations issue of Beyond.

The talk is on “Writing and Vision – Between Reality and Fiction” and is one in a programme of many, including international speakers such as Derrick de Kherkove, Marcos Novak, Beatriz Colomina, Peter Lang and Frédéric Migayrou.

Archives of Re-Incidence #01

Things come together eventually, but it sometimes takes years for them to gather some sense. Like Youssef Chahine said in “Chacun son cinema:” be patient, it is worthwhile waiting.

I’m undergoing this absurd experience where everything I read these days remind me of something I did or write in some previous life…  So, I keep adding stuff to this blog’s archives, as re-incidences get me back on a trail I left hanging somewhere along the way.

I discovered, for instance, that the Post.Rotterdam exhibition catalogue somehow found its way back from 2001 into Criticat’s listing of important publications on the field of post-war habitat – much owing to Crimson’s contribution to it, undoubtedly.

That’s what I call a late but welcome reward on that very first curatorial effort on the theme of “architecture and city after tabula rasa.” (Not to be confused with Ben van Berkel’s retail experience…) The catalogue is now out of print, and so this reminded me to republish the curatorial text produced on that occasion.

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Re-reading the critical texts by Bart Lootsma and Roemer van Toorn included in the book, it is interesting again to confront that early assessment of the Dutch architecture hype with what went van berkel over these last years. Like a famous Portuguese retro-pop song goes: whatever happened to Dutch architecture?

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Little magazines

This image was floating on my desktop without any clear destination and I’ve thought it should land right here.

I can’t exactly remember where the image came from, but it was there on my desktop as a reminder of a media category that, specially in the field of architecture – but also maybe of music, the arts and the literary – captures extraordinary attention and dedication. It must be some tendency to cling to the glorious feel of those student days…

Cynthia Davidson and her endorsement for (a) small (portuguese) magazine back in 2004 immediately comes to my mind. But also, of course, Colomina’s Princeton research on the same subject, originating the “Radical Architecture of Little Magazines 196x-197x” exhibition in places like the Storefront for Art and Architecture, at the CCA and later at the AA, always around the nostalgia of the “legacy and influence of 1960s and 70s print culture.“

Now, I do think little mazines are still alive and kicking and there’s no reason to be mostalgic about some sort of primeval loss of a revolutionary printing spirit. Even in the midst of much web publishing the gloss and originality of small magazines lingers on – inside or outside the architecture field.

It is true that “little magazines” like Casabella (yes, Casabella was on the exhibition) are now shrinking into oblivion – just like other referential publications met their end at the hands of a merciless publishing market. L’Architecture d’Aujourd’hui finished in 2007 – after 77 year of publication! – with a last issue on the ultimate surviving modernist, Oscar Niemeyer… Ironically, another last issue was announced on luxury in architecture, but I don’t think this has come out…

But every other day, everywhere, new small magazines appear to carry the flame of independent radical thought – or simply the new trends that will soon go mainstream – even if only for the small print reading minority. Digital print-on-demand will also take care that this can always be the case.

I wouldn’t know where to start to pick up the interesting examples. So I left my first choices to pure randomness. And I ended up with this two little magazines…

Last wednesday, I lazily streched my hand from bed on to my bedside library and out came the premiere issue of SCRUB to enlighten my holyday lie in.      I didn’t even know what this was about. Any premiere issue that looks vaguely interesting deserves an immediate place in my magazine collection. It didn’t take much time to realise, though, that this was a gay magazine that, while being published in Berlin back in 2006, was totally focussed on New York.           (How’s that for a 70s revival?)

The very best piece there was undoubtedly a 32-page interview (how’s that for radical?!) with a 70s NY club-goer and fashionista that immediately makes you dive into the wild nightlife of an almost fictional pre-AIDS New York. I say, how’s that for youth nostalgics? My only disappointment came from the fact that a quick google revealed this one issue of SCRUB to be totally exposé online… Good news for those who feel like reading the Ruben Espinosa interview, though!

Another good (and more serious) read arrived through the snail-mail, and it was sent by Beyond’s contributor-to-be Valéry Didelon: another small magazine with important intentions, Paris-based CRITICAT.

Currently displaying its third issue, Criticat appears because, as its editors say, there is still a need for magazines that, while offering a space for critical reflection, are actually not tied to institutions – such as, I would say, universities, museums and big media groups… – and are therefore open to the “other actors of intellectual and artistic life.”

As such, this issue of Criticat again offers good food for thought on the return of modernism’s “others” (see my previous post). Somehow aligning with the very commendable sociologists that claim that late modernity never really left the scene – despite being under strong fire by post-modernist discourse – the magazine presents several interesting articles on the ideological recuperation of post-war modernism.

New heroes and narratives are discovered of course (as in the very interesting Marilena Kourniati revision of revisions), ideology itself is seen as a potential part of the problem, if not it’s Achilles heel (as in brilliant as usual Wouter Vanstiphout,  whose article I discovered also here…) and, last but not least, the political implications of the architect’s action is brought back to actuality by Didelon’s own editorial note on how today we’re already dealing with the “au-delà du spectacle.”

Little magazines are still there to offer us the most radical visions of architecture and its cultural (dis)contents. The problem is to discover and identify them in the midst of all the pseudo-theoretical mumbo jumbo that, like some digital wallpaper, now surround us from all sides.

Pancho Guedes: Story of an Exhibition

A truly massive Pancho Guedes retrospective, organized and put up by the architect’s own son Pedro Guedes, just opened in Lisbon.

The occasion presents a good motive to release my curatorial text on Pancho, written on the occasion of the exhibition I myself curated for the Swiss Architecture Museum, in 2007. This the show the architect himself has recently called a pudding – which can only make the Museu Berardo retro a true mixórdia (a word even the English speaking world will understand…).

Now that everybody is talking about the altermodern after Bourriand, it is funny to remember that the show was aptly called “Pancho Guedes, An Alternative Modernist,” and that its curatorial text even proposed that same notion of altermodernity two years ago… I think the catalogue-cum-magazine is still available for internet orders.

Like so many projects in the growing arena of free-lance architecture curating (Philip, salve in memoriam!), the venture was kinda crazy and took an incredibly long time to accomplish. And now I kinda feel like telling the whole story.

Bear with me, if you want – but be warned that this is like an excerpt of a future autobiography! If you’re not onto this sort of thing, pass on to the next post…

The exhibition was first proposed as early as 2003, after Nino Saggio asked me nonchalantly if I wanted to do a book on the anti-Siza over a nice lunch back at Archilab… (Nino, thanks for that initial challenge!).

Incidentally, the project was at that time presented to CCB, an institution not to be confounded with Museu Berardo, who actually “substituted” the earlier venue and is now paying good money for the new blockbuster retrospective.

At the time I presented the wild idea of doing a show on this forgotten but important Portuguese architect and Team 10 member – who was particularly hyperactive in Mozambique between 1951 and 1975 – the concept was welcome, but not quite yet.

After one chief curator gone, and another apologizing for not “being able” to realize the show, the idea was dropped on the basis of dramatic administrative changes… The interesting aspect here is that such a decision can take as long as 3 years to reach the final “no.”

This is the result of the well-known “nim,” a fabulous and ironic Portuguese concept – specially adequate to the institutional arena – a word that merges a “não” (no) and a “sim”(yes) in one single word.*

Which is like saying, “yes we want it, but we don’t really have the intention or ability to do it.” After the final “no,” institutions are thereafter obviously legitimated to realize the project with someone else. Not that this happens only in Portugal. But let’s say it is strangely more frequent in this small European country. It must be some residue of a long fascist tradition. Or whatever.

After I had totally given up on the idea, the director of yet another famous museum in Oporto heard about the story and pushed me again into thinking about the possibility of realizing the show in Serralves. (João, my thanks for that passing stimuli!).

By that time, with cancer and everything, I was already thinking some kind of African spell had been cast on the project (Ah! little did I know…) and I remember asking João: “Look, are you sure you want to do this?” He actually said a straightforward “yes!” (which is the most hardcore form of “nim”) and, still amazed, I traveled to Berlin for a much needed break.

Now, the real story starts. I met Francesca Ferguson when she was launching the “Talking Cities” magazine-cum-catalogue, back at the fabulous Urban Drift headquarters. Our introduction was coldish, but we manage to arrange a date for a coffee. And then we really hit it off.

At the time, Francesca was  discussing her position and preparing her program for Basel and it was magical to tell her “Look, I have this idea about this guy who was truly alternative in terms of modernism, and so on…” and to see her pick up her little note book and tell me “God, Pedro, that is an incredible coincidence” and indicate a small underlined sentence saying “alternative modernisms.” A true meeting of minds. This was 2005.

Some people know the rest of the story. Serralves Museum eventually dropped off the institutional collaboration being set with the Swiss Architecture Museum, but, with much dedication and some painful hardships, the show was accomplished in September 2007. (Francesca, you deserve the deepest acknowledgment.)

With the support of some – the team at SAM, Manuel Costa Cabral from Fundação Gulbenkian, the Instituto das Artes in Lisbon, etc. – and the unexpected contribution of others – like Simon Adler, who did an excellent contextual research in almost no time – the show was small and essential, but it got Pancho again in the international arena. Which he fully deserves, if only for being a radical eclectic before his time.

What gratification and lessons do I take from this story?

First, the enormous pleasure of having had the opportunity and the privilege to dive into the crazy oeuvre of the truly first international Portuguese architect. This I owe to Pancho, which was a gentleman in letting me do my work in Basel the way I wanted, providing me full access to his archive and agreeing with every option I submitted to his approval. Alas, he didn’t like my version of the story, but, as we all know, in a curatorial world that is bound to happen sometimes.

Second, and as a result of the first, I was able to leave behind a document that makes me truly proud. This was a very concise 30’ video documentary that was just presented on Portuguese TV with a very good reception and an audience of 60.000. Its international premiere is currently being discussed with the Architectural Foundation, in London.

Thirdly, I got myself a true-life lesson. Don’t take a “no” for a definitive answer. Sometimes, the lingering of a “no” in the form of a “nim” – despite all the pain it main cause – is only a way to mature a project until it finds its right partners. If things have to happen, they will happen.

Finally, throughout six years of dedication you inevitably cross paths with some bastards along the way – something that I carefully try to avoid as a rule. But, most importantly, you also meet wonderful and unforgettable people.

And that is funktastic.

Chapter closed.

(*Beware of the Portuguese language and its delicate subtleties: Portuguese is the 5^th language of the world in terms of the numbers of speakers, after Mandarin, English, Hindi, and Spanish. I must say I have already considered the perversity of buildig up an audience for this blog and then, in about two years… switch to Portuguese language : )

Blob Poll

I’ve always been interested in how audiences/users react to architecture. Any architect should. Someone who, on the other hand, sees himself as a curator on the subject must, per force, pay extra attention to the phenomenon.

As we all know, blogs have the quality of producing instantaneous response. And this is especially important in face of people’s traditional laziness and resistance in participating in anything vaguely democratic. But, when we’re talking about scrutinising architecture, this may become more important than we think…

Erdos Museum, by MAD, Via ArchDaily

When I first saw this post in ArchDaily, my first reaction was to recall a discussion with a friend about how today the difference between architecture visualization and its actual accomplishment is a line thinner than ever.

Unlike in the old times of “paper architecture,” you may now trust that any virtual projection of a building will soon be followed by a faithful and accomplished piece of architecture. Everything is possible.

As such, before anything else, architectural ideas are today being branded first of all as images that are necessarily performing the imperative to “communicate” a prospective built fact – even if this fact has yet to be proven through actual building. It is also in this sense that architecture is becoming a fiction. Who needs hard facts, when you can enjoy fantastic fictions?

My second reaction, though, came from the instant commentaries on the post that announced MAD’s building already under construction. Between the mere yawns and the more resolute aesthetical repudiations, here is an instant poll on how blobtecture is faring in the fast-changing world of architectural taste…

Now consider this: if the architects don’t do it themselves, clients will soon be advised to blog away the responses to their commissions well before any serious building process is undertaken. This way, they will avoid the tremendous risk at investing millions in a building that, as innovative as it appears, it is already considered by today’s influential taste-makers so terribly last week…

Curatorial Practice as Open-Source

While preparing my earlier post on Emergent Megalopolis the other day, I was driven to think about how, nowadays, one can push free-lance curatorial projects into the public realm, specially when the economic strain on cultural production is now so evident everywhere around the globe.

After the credit crunch, it is obvious that we have to change the way independent projects manage to thrive. With museums and institutions struggling to support their own staff, and with their directors and curators just striving to accomplish their own projects, it is obvious that autonomous creativity has to find another way to emerge. As it is already the case in hacker-culture and bottom-up initiatives of every kind… (Diogo, thanx!)

By now – and although they say that secretism is the soul of the business – it is obvious that secrecy around ideas, while trying to push them into potential partners, serves to practically nothing. As such, from here on, I hope to release my ongoing projects through this blog, in an attempt to enhance the potential to generate shared knowledge, partnerships and potential collaborations.

I’ve written about open-source in architecture. Now, as I was briefly discussing with Scott Burnham the other day, it’s about time to adopt open-source in curating and its research and modus operandi.

That is why, following my presentation of Emergent Megalopolis, I am now launching an international call for contributions regarding film projects that propose original portraits of emergent creativity in growing megacities.

After “Luanda Rise” was announced, I’ve already discussed city projects with several Portuguese artists and filmmakers – including Daniel Blaufuks (Mumbai), André Príncipe (Shangai), Nuno Cera (Cairo) and Marco Martins (Seoul) – but I’m now welcoming new projects for cities like Rio de Janeiro, Dhaka, Jakarta, Manila, Buenos Aires, Moscow and Istambul.

I’m looking for filmakers, artists, photographers, or other visual entrepeneurs whose film projects may fit the spirit of the series, specially if they have a local perspective and an interest on notions of informal creativity vs. formal creativity and crosscultural knowledge exchange.

Some years ago, I’ve done an exhibition on how the metropolitan atmosphere of London suggested new approaches to architectural practice, in Space Invaders. Now, I want to bring up radical views on creativity as influenced by emergent megacities, not unlike this journalist’s approach to China’s fastest growing city…

Of course, if someone wants to copycat the idea, they are welcome to do so. Use it and abuse it. Try and develop it. Forget about the Commons license: just join in in the construction of the ongoing series of films. Specially if you have a local perspective on the cities about to be portrayed. I will assume my own role in helping to find extra financing for any project that makes sense within the series.

For some people ideas are relatively easy to come by. The real issue is, as always, to have them accomplished. Naturally it is not very nice that someone with the money and the means just steals your idea and develops it without even mentioning your contribution. But then these people are only poor bastards and would only probably produce a pale version of what you’ve intended. And even if this may happen, it is still worthwhile taking the risk.

Maybe also in this realm paradigms are shifting – and this is why the subject for the next edition of Beyond (and the theme for another European call for contributions) is also… Values & Symptoms.

Guess what I am working on… #03

The public announcement by ExperimentaDesign that its program for 2009 includes the presentation of “Luanda Rise,” marks the official launch of my Emergent Megalopolis film series.

The idea arose back in 2004, when I was travelling around Vietnam, and after many failed attempts to kickstart it – from proposing it as a subversive TV travelogue to having it in Didier Fiuza Faustino’s Evento – it now starts to see the light at the end of the tunnel.

So, it is about time to have the curatorial project out of the closet.

For the first time in history, populations living in cities have become the majority of the planet’s inhabitants. Much attention has been given to large urban structures through books, exhibitions and academic research. Century City, held in 2001 at the Tate Modern in London, or the 2006 Architecture Venice Biennale under the direction of Richard Burdett, presented overwhelming analyses of urban form, demographics and cultural production. Others, like Rem Koolhaas, pursued prolific researches on the phenomena of exploding urban areas in Asia or Africa. Emergent Megalopolis is intended as a next step, bringing these topics to a wider audience by way of subjective portraits and palpable interactions with the cities under scrutiny.

How does a state of urban emergency lead to emergent patterns of behaviour and thinking? How do new forms of creativity emerge in the fastest growing cities in the world? How do informality and unplanned growth become a source of knowledge? Emergent Megalopolis is an ongoing series of films that will research how emerging urban megastructures reveal modes of creativity and forms of resourcefulness born out of economic stress and social conflict. As such, its films will be about human responses to extreme urban growth, about the spontaneous cultures of hard-edge cities, about informal creativity vs. formal creativity, and about learning from the stimuli of urban diversity.

The curatorial project will develop over time so as to acknowledge problems and situations emerging in varied geographical locations.The first films will connect to the Portuguese-speaking world and will focus on Luanda and Rio de Janeiro, but upcoming films are intended to portrait other megacities in Africa, South America, Asia and the borders of Europe. Projects currently under discussion involve Cairo, Shangai and Mumbai and soon cities like Dhaka, Seoul, Jakarta, Manila, Buenos Aires, Los Angeles, Istanbul, and Moscow may also be involved.

Throughout Emergent Megalopolis, documentarists, artists, photographers, film directors are invited to engage with the processes through which the silent majorities of these urban conglomerations are lead to creatively appropriate urban interstices, spatial leftovers, and everyday objects in order to transform them in the grounds for their play, distraction, communication, and survival within the city. They are also asked to interview and portrait the creative communities that are dealing with these issues in situ.

The project addresses a bottom-up approach to design and architecture within the most demanding urban contexts, and aims to create a platform for an exchange between advanced design thought and the resourcefulness of street creativity. As such, Emergent Megalopolis echoes the reflections of the late French anthropologist Michel de Certeau in The Practice of Everyday Life, where he contrasted the “rationalised, expansionist and at the same time centralised, clamorous and spectacular production” usually praised in proper urban space, with “another production” that emerges as a truly informal creativity expressed in terms of quite unexpected objects, inventions, and uses of public space.

See also my related text and post on the issue of emergence/emergency.