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 19th 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.
shrapnel contemporary 