This document discusses the concept of "action architecture" and presents examples of projects that promote interaction and movement over static forms. It advocates for an architecture that is anticipatory of technological and cultural changes through adaptive, projective designs. Examples shown include temporary installations, parks, and structures that blur boundaries between architecture and landscape in novel ways. The document argues for an active, interventionist approach to ecology through designs that stimulate and qualify the environment through synergistic relationships with nature and technology.

2. AA >> Advanced Architecture
>> Action
>> Antytipe

3. AA >> Advanced Architecture
An action (an architecture) that is advanced is an
action (an architecture) which is necessarily
projective: propositive and anticipatory/anticipating.
An action (an architecture) with the capacity to
connect with technological change (industry and
technique), with cultural progress (thought and
creation) and with scientific logic (research and
development).

4. Action and activity in public space, Temporary
installations for ludic uses, Abalos & Herreros, Vincente
Guallart, MVRDV, Riegler & Riewe, Barcellona 1998

5. Action
What we are interested in today is an ‘action
architecture’ defined by a desire to act, to (inter)act.
That is to activate, to generate, to produce, to
express, to move, to exchange and to relate.
To promote interaction between things, rather than
interventions on them. Movements, rather than
positions. Actions rather than figurations. Process,
rather than occurrences.

6. nArchitects, Party Wall, 2005

9. ma0, Elastic Space, Berna, 2006

11. West 8, Schouwburgplein, Rotterdam, 1991-96

13. ma0, Playsacpe, Drancy, 2003

24. Alejandro Aravena, Elemental, Cile, 2003-2004

31. “In France an important public
program is being mounted to
deconstruct the high-rise
housing estates from the 1960s
and 70s
(demolition/reconstruction on a
one-to-one basis), thus
expressing a strong will to
transform the image of the city.
At the same time an important
deficit is observed of public
housing, one which would, on
the contrary, call for an increase
and an acceleration in building
terms.
In this context, we consider that
demolition is aberrant and that
transformation would permit
one to respond to needs in a
more economic, more effective
and more qualitative way.”
PLUS -Les grands ensembles
de logements
Ministère de la culture et de la
communication, 2004

46. Antitypes
A surprising image shows a car coupled to an
aeroplane…
This is not an univocal object… it is not a typological
design, but rather an a-typological mechanism; an
antitype.

47. Lotek, Skateboard Park, New York

48. MVRDV, Pig City, 2001

51. MVRDV, Frosilos, Copenaghen 2005

55. IAN+, Sportcity,
HiperCatalunya,
consultazione internazionale
per la regione Catalana,
Barcellona 2003

60. >> Form (and no-form) >> ambiguity
>> Interfaces
>> Devices
>> Dispositions
>> Situation >>“Excited place” >> form >> ambiguity

61. Nox, Fresh H2O eXPO, 1994-97

66. Form (and no-form)
The interest lies in an architecture that has neither
image nor form. That does not express explicitly the
scale in which it is produced.
Today shape is disposition.

67. AQ architettura quotidiana, Mar dei piccoli, Taranto, 2004

70. Ambiguity
Univocal space now yields to a space decidedly
ambivalent…
In a multifaceted, polyphase, definitively non-
essential reality, architecture can create spaces that
are more plural, by virtue, precisely, of being
indeterminate. Implicitly changing and (in)formal.
Multiple. Multiplied and multiplicative.
A building can be a garden. A garden, a building.

71. Francois & Lewis, Stazione di trattamento dell'acqua, Nantes, Francia 1995

72. Francois & Lewis, Case Rurali, Jupilles, Francia 1996

76. Francois, Tower Flower,
Parigi 1999

80. Patrick Blanc e Jean
Nouvel, Branly Museum,
Parigi 2006

87. Herzog & De Meuron,
Caixa Forum
Contemporary Art
Museum, Madrid 2008

91. MVRDV, 3D-Garden, 2001 Hangelo, Netherlands.

92. NL, Basketbar, Utrecht, 2003

98. FOA, International Port Terminal,
Yokohama, Giappone, 2002

108. Francois Roche, Silverelif, B-mu, Contemporary art Museum, Bangkok,
Thaïlande 2002
<<Collecting the dust of the city ("Breeding the dust" of Duchamp...) by
an aluminium envelop and electrostatics system. >>

117. 2a+p, Round Blur, Torino, 2002-05

122. Devices
Our challenge as architects is to produce new
devices of action… Dispositifs (devices) (open and
evolutionary) rather than design (closed and exact).

123. PPAG, Blocchi di polistirene
aggregabili, Vienna, 2002

126. Topotek 1, Temporary Playground, Garden Show, Wolfsburg, Germany 2004

128. ma0, Piazza Risorgimento, Bari, 2002-2006

129. >> Diversity
>> Housys
>> Inhabiting
>> Livrid (live+hybrid)
>> Lightness
>> Precarious(ly)
>> Reversible

130. Diversity
Ours is a time of diversity, calling for constant
simultaneity of individual events in global
structures… evidencing the impact –the emergence-
of the singular upon the collective, not as “part of the
whole”, but rather as specificity “interconnected with
the whole”.
In our time there exists the conditions for assuming
creatively this fragmentation, and thereby attaining
an anthropological universality which also integrates
plurality, difference and discontinuity.

131. MVRDV, Hageneiland , Netherlands, 2001

135. Inhabiting
Today, we are witnessing the generalised collapse of
the mythical residential “stereotype”: the “sitting
room-dining room-kitchen-laundry- room-bathroom-
plus three bedrooms, all in ninety square metres”
scheme as the commonly accepted formula.
There is also new awareness of a wandering type of
domestic life, increasingly disseminated throughout
the metropolis: replacement of private space with
service space scattered at the urban level (bar,
restaurants, laundries, sports clubs, leisure centres,
etc) in a city converted into a large dispersed home
for nomadic user.

136. Lotek, Container House

141. IAN+, Teletubi, Mostra
Lavorare in Casa,
Tokio, 2003

143. Stalker/Osservatorio Nomade, Immaginare Corviale, 2003-2005

154. Edouard Francois, Eden Bio, Paris, 2008

155. Eden Bio is a 100-unit social housing development in Paris.
The project features terraced houses along pedestrian alleyways.
Staircases to reach upstairs units will be mounted externally and
covered in plants. The lush, green atmosphere of the development
will be enhanced by the organic gardens all along the pedestrian
alleys, as well as the greenery covering the buildings’ facades.
Francois planned a vertical garden ...not forgetting to furnish each
flat with some flowerpots, so that everybody got the chance to grow
his/her own plant on the window board!

161. Lightness
Lightness is a term, along
with levity, that can amply
claim to be characteristic
of current architecture.
Insulating layers have lost
weight, becoming
habitable spaces, and the
concepts of interior and
exterior have lost their
definition, having become
mixed one another,
thereby suggesting other
interventions.

162. "catalogue house"
Lacaton e Vassal, Casa Ferret, 1988

165. Junia Ishigamil, KAIT Studio for the Kanagawa Institute of Technology, Kanagawa
Prefecture, Japan, 2008

172. Precarious(ly)
An approach made up of
reversible relationship, unstable
links, impermanent
constructions, lightweight
structures and fragile
presences.
Certain forms of architecture
can… accept their
inconsistency, their physical and
conceptual precariousness, as
a new value rather than as a
negative quality.

173. Lacaton e Vassal, Maison Latapie, 1993

175. Reversible
Reversible is action which is capable of changing the
direction of its own movement. There is something of
an elastic braid about it. It has an unstable presence.
Such strategies could possibly even throw into crisis
the old idea of permanent colonization of and on the
territory… dynamics which would suggest the capacity
to act with the place and with the user with a less
formal, and more informal –unstable and mutable-
attitude.

176. A12, LAB, Kröller Müller Museum, Temporary pavillion, Otterlo, Netherlands, 2004

180. Hybrid
Land-arch
Land(s) in lands
Ecology >> Ambiguity

181. Land-arch
…as an instrument. This
shift has been favoured by
the passage from a
generation obsessed with
the relationship between
architecture and city to
another, the latter more
aware of a new contract
with nature (a nature
evidently epic, mongrel,
manipulated, rather than
domestic and bucolic).

182. MVRDV, Dutch pavilion
Expo 2000, Hanover

190. New dynamics conform to an incipient vocabulary of a
hybrid contract… Construction that would artificially
integrate movements –or moments- of nature, in some
cases “architecturalising” the landscape (modelling,
cutting, folding…), proposing new topological shapes
(reliefs, waves, folds)…

191. …in others, landscaping (lining, enveloping, covering)
an architecture in ambiguous synergy with the strange
nature that surrounds it.

192. Imaginative formulas capable of favouring this new
natural contract… would reside precisely in its capacity
to incorporate the technical, plastic and perhaps
unheard-of solutions neither paralysed nor diminished
by the presence of the nature, but rather stimulated
precisely by the possibility to incorporating it, of
spurring it, of reformulating it –of enriching it rather
than conserving it.

193. Tod’s Shop, Tokyo, 2004

194. Toyo Ito, Mediateca, Sendai, 2001

195. Land(s) in lands
“Operative landscapes” rather than “host landscape”.
As with the city, which has blurred the boundaries separating it
from former extramural territories, today the architectural project
too can blur its profiles –and its edges- in new
geographies of transition. The application of new structural
and technical concepts… now permit the positing of a
deformation of the old Euclidean structures, transforming
them into multilayered spaces… towards almost geological
processes… spaces of folding rather than prismatic
volumes…
Topographies rather than volumes.
“Lands over other lands”.
Constructed geographies rather than architectures.
No longer lovely volumes under the light, but rather
ambiguous landscapes under the sky.
Fields within other fields. Lands in lands.

196. Sejima, Multimedia Studio, 1996

197. SANAA, Rolex Learning Center, EPFL Losanna, 2004-2010

201. NL, Het Funee, 10 individual houses, Amsterdam 1999 - 2009

204. Plot, Maritime Youth Centre, Copenhagen 2004

211. Francois, Urban Development, Marne la Valee 2003

213. ma0, giardini del Pincetto, Perugia, 1998/2004

217. Lugar Especifico, Calaf, Spagna, 2A+P architettura, 2007
Vincente Guallart, Dénia Mountain Project, 2002

223. Ecology
nstead of old nostalgic or pseudobucolic ecology
(which freezes landscapes, territories and
environments), we suggest a bold ecology. Based no
onger upon a timid, merely defensive –resistant-
non-intervention, but rather upon a non-impositive,
projecting and qualifying –restimulating- intervention
n synergy with the environment and, also, with
echnology.
An ecology in which sustainability is interaction.
n which nature is also artificial.
n which energy is information and technology is
vehiclisation.
n which to conserve implies always to intervene.

224. Diller + Scofidio, Blur

231. Sustainability
Ecology >> Active>>nature

232. Ecoboulevard, Ecosistema Urbano, Madrid
2007

239. Bosco verticale, Studio Boeri, Milano, in costruzionee

246. IaN+, Re-living the historic center, Biennale di Venezia 2008