Today a simple term entered in a search engine displays a universe of possible connections to other words, documents and images. In light of this the goal of any cultural practice should involve making new meanings through the quality of these very links. But how does a practice produce novelty - that refreshed way of understanding the same problems, situations and conflicts - so that it remains connected to the world while also taking on a new kind of critical position?
This year the so-called Consortium of Fantastic Ideas dived into the sea of typological creativity, producing a family of oddities, evolutionary experiments and organisational and linguistic exceptions in the form of medium-scale buildings. Exploring the potential of the exceptional and specific in a world that is more homogeneous, monocultural and predictable than ever, the members of the Consortium worked within the field of the collective, exploring mundane and ordinary human daily activities to articulate new and weird species of environments and forms of togetherness. Behind the apparent familiarity of our surroundings are cultural, productive, social and political emerging realities of an extraordinary and hidden nature.
A flat landscape defining an elevated horizon hovering over Sheik Zayed Road for the disparate communities and religions that coexist in the UAE; eight generations of videogames which take the form of a renewed physical reincarnation of a multifocal area; a dark and hyper-traditional polygamous community that hides in a monumental piece of art-based real-estate in Marfa, Texas; and a mythical device that constantly records the shifting boundaries of a coral island and discusses the territorial fights in the South China Sea are just some of the endeavours of the projects presented. Their common ambition is to address the relevance and validity of not only spatial models and inherited languages, but also the productive, technological and social systems from which they emerge.
Miraj Ahmed
Katie Albertucci
Pier Vittorio Aureli
Paul Bailey
Fabrizio Ballabio
Shany Barath
Alessandro Bava
Daniel Bossia
Ed Bottoms
Barbara-Ann Campbell-Lange
Magnus Casselbrant
Javier Castañon
James Kwang-ho Chung
Oliver Domeisen
Shin Egashira
Maria Fedorchenko
Kostas Grigoriadis
Valle Medina
Samantha McLean
Song Jie Lim
John Ng
John Palmesino
Oscar Santillan
Adiam Sertzu
Theodore Spyropoulos
Brett Steele
Rob Stuart-Smith
Dora Sweijd
Robert Taylor
Dries van de Velde
Marco Vanucci
Carlos Villanueva
Michael Weinstock
Ivana Wingham
Andrew Yau
Diane and Mike Weinstock
Sayaka Namba
Pei-Yao Wu
Cristina Díaz Moreno and Efrén García Grinda are both architects and founders of the Madrid-based office amid.cero9. They have been visiting professors and lecturers throughout Europe, Asia and the US and have won more than 40 prizes in national and international competitions. Their projects and writings from the past 15 years are documented in Third Natures, a Micropedia (2014), which accompanied an an exhibition of the same name. They recently completed the Institución Libre de Enseñanza head- quarters in Madrid.
Benjamin Reynolds is a co-founder of Pa.LaC.E, a Zürich-based architectural design and research group that reacts to issues existing in culture, space and economy. He received a diploma with honours from the AA and is a recent recipient of the Royal Society of the Arts' Patricia Tindale Legacy Award. His work has been shown at the Centre of Contemporary Culture of Barcelona and he has contributed to publications including EP and Spéciale-Z, Paris. In 2013-14, he was named a design fellow at the Van Eyck Academie in The Netherlands.
