AR Reading List 056: In Practice

This weeks reading list looks into the AR’s more recent history, via the In Practice series. This collection of essays invites architects and designers to write about their own work, topics of investigation, and modes of practice. Closely linked to the issue theme, the ideas and practices explored in the series help unpack the most opaque of architectural subject matters and let the themes unravel off of the page and into the site.

Material Cultures on decarbonising construction, AR June 2021, Paloma Gormley
‘We are at risk of losing sight of architecture as a crucial mode of cultural production and further consolidating the massive monopoly of white, male, technocratic authors’

Studio Ossidiana on play as experiment, AR May 2021, Alessandra Covini and Giovanni Bellotti
‘Play, we believe, doesn’t just follow, imitate or heighten everyday life, rather it informs it, subverting the normal with the peculiar: every act of play is an experiment into what the world could be, what life could become’

Rotor on the practice of deconstruction, AR February 2019, Lionel Devlieger
‘The dismantling of old buildings to the benefit of new ones is nothing new. The history of architecture is full of examples of recycling and reuse. The Romans recycled their rubble in situ to make concrete’

BC Architects & Materials & Studies on earth building, AR February 2020, Ken de Cooman
‘BC want growth, albeit not in GDP; they want modernity and progress in the construction culture, albeit one where they might give back buildings to nature at the end of their life cycle, where local capacities and economies are strengthened’

Fala Atelier on the holiday rental phenomenon, AR May 2020, Filipe Magalhães and Lera Samovich
‘First in Lisbon and later in Porto, private foreign investors (and later local ones) started an insane investment circle. Buying, renovating, re-selling, buying again, ringing friends, selling with no renovation, buying bigger, investing more, getting a visa, buying even more, selling higher, speculating, profiting’

Taller de Arquitectura Mauricio Rocha + Gabriela Carrillo on building for the blind, AR April 2020, Gabriela Carrillo
‘There are thousands more examples that have not been designed by architects but through the sense of their inhabitants. Designing these buildings made us realise how blind we are to our other senses, how limited from the possible extents of our perception’

Cave Bureau on a museum for the Anthropocene, AR April 2021, Kabage Karanja and Stella Mutegi
‘The Anthropocene Museum brings to the fore the concerns of its communities: it is not shackled within the proverbial four-walled building, and is instead malleable enough to openly challenge the prevailing powers and status quo from the underground up’