Exhibition about mobile housing Art / Architecture / Design
Session IV:
Experiment the habitat
Genthod/Geneva
June 11 – Aug 28, 2022
OPEN HOUSE is a multidisciplinary exhibition which presents innovative and original forms of housing through projects from the world of art, architecture and design.
Happening in 4 sessions from 2021 to 2022 and in several locations in Geneva
Session # 1 of OPEN HOUSE took place from May to August 2021 in the Parc Lullin.
Session# 2 was in September at the Maison de l’Architecture / Pavillon Siclithe and is now extended at the Bains des Paquis (a public beach in the center of the city Geneva) until April 14h . It focuses on mobile and flexible housing.
Session #3 is at ARGENEVE March 3-6 with 2 large installations dealing with utopian housing
OPEN HOUSE is an event initiated by Simon Lamunière, a curator who has always been interested in expanding the dimensions and space usually devoted to art. Curator of Art Unlimited in Basel from 2000 to 2011, he was also one of the curators of documenta X. He curated Utopics, the 11th edition of the Swiss Sculpture Exhibition in Biel, as well as Neon Parallax, the light installation project on the Plaine de Plainpalais in Geneva.
Address
Parc Lullin, 1294 Genthod, from June 11 to August 28
Opening hours and price
Free access 06:00-23.00 (exterior only)
Exhibition Wednesday-Sunday, 12.00-19.00
Guided group tours on request
Events
Jun
2022
Thu 09
11:00
15:00
GENTHOD
Official opening
35 Pavilions and original constructions
Villa du Saugy
Fri 10
18:30
22:00
GENTHOD
Vernissage
Parc Lullin
Session I
Process
Building the habitat
9 May — 30 August 2021
Session I has brought together 1:1 scale research projects from academic and humanitarian institutions such as EPFL, ETHZ Zurich, HEAD – Geneva, HEPIA, IOM or UNHCR.
Genthod, Genève
Annik Wetter
BECOMING LÉMAN: GARDENS
EPFL / ALICE (SPATIAL DESIGN WORKSHOP)
The EPFL ALICE research laboratory develops projects with first-year architecture students. They study the “construction” stage through a temporary full-scale collective construction in the public space. Since 2018, ALICE has embarked on a new project: BECOMING LEMAN. It aims to make the Leman a laboratory to rethink collectively and globally the relationship between the human being and his environment. After crossing the lake to settle in Evian in 2019 near the Buvette de Jean Prouvé, ALICE will leave the Léman this year to invest the space of the Rhône all the way to the heart of the Geneva canton. The project will start at OPEN HOUSE with an installation on the Plage des Bains du Saugy.
ALICE team
D. Dietz, D. Zamarbide, T. Cheung, C. Fauvel, A. Clément, M. Pretolani, T. Abenia, M. Bondu, C. Labro, R. Legros, V. Maréchal, M. Treiber, U. Wegman, R. Karrer, M. Onifadé, M. Potterat, L. Aznavourian, E. Butty, L. Champaud, A. Collet, A. Gonzalez Rodriguez, M. Hölzl, C. Isoz, A. Lambert, A. Lekaj, E. Mazerand, D. Michoud, M. Reol, J. Thévoz, S. Carroz, J. Desalbres, J. Garcia-Bellido Ruiz, K. Karara, O. Kundert, Y. Landon, A. Lassus, F. Maes, V. Maillard, G. Martini, Z. Mustapha, M. Sommer, N. Wanner, J. Adu Darko, J. Asoanya, L. Baldy-Moulinier, J. Bron, A. Compagnon, F. Ducotterd, J. Favre, N. Goehry, N. Guillouzic, Y. Hajoubi, M. Käser, J. Lemmens, E. Lemoisson, E. Lorenzo, G. Lucas, A. Marin, M. Rakoczy, N. Reis, J. Rigby, J. Steyaert, A. Thierry-Nánási, C. Vaudaux, M. Alhadeff, M. Cazenave Cloutier, F. Chatelain, V. Crettex, L. Decalf, H. El Graoui, J. Elben, A. Farine, E. Fontanella, N. Gilot, B. Haefeli, M. Jacome Alban, M. Jelk, N. Lesoille, N. Mikael, L. Moeschler, A. Potapushin, G. Rivier, M. Sistek, A. Von Der Weid, S. Wegmüller, A. Bai, B. Cattaneo, A. Choné, L. Duyck, A. Essaoudi, P. Grandjean, C. Hugues, A. Kölbl, L. Mundinger, R. Pellin, L. Ramiqi, C. Rossillon, H. Znaidi, T. Antonelli, Z. Aymon, L. Blanc, T. Brütsch, D. Dam Wan, Q. Davel, V. Egger, S. Gal, F. Hammoud, S. Kaidi, L. Kempf, S. Kir, E. Kpuzi, A. Lihatchi, E. Ludwig, J. Nicod, C. Perron, C. Ponsar, J. Raugel, E. Rieder, N. Antonietti, B. Béboux, L. Boulnoix, F. Debrom Gebremedhin, J. Druey, S. Gaumet, N. Jeanfavre, T. Kublová, E. Renaudineau, V. Siragusa, C. Vinet, M. Barth, P. Castellón Arévalo, A. De Montgolfier, A. Ducos, N. Favre, A. Galantay, M. Gisiger, N. Guigues, R. Hansra Sartorius, V. Kleyr, H. Le Hir, Q. Leresche, A. Maerean, M. Mazotti, N. Milanovic, K. Mokssit, N. Mouine, K. Saunders-Nazareth, P. Schaffner, G. Treyer, T. Walther, M. Blanc, L. Castella, N. Clavien, R. Cleusix, A. Gigon, V. Hasler, A. Hoti, V. Huehn, M. Ito, S. Khashan, A. Lüthy, L. Orakwe, Y. Sebastian, A. Ujupi, D. Weber, A. Williams Roffe, L. Burion, S. Ciompi, P. Crisinel, E. Friedli, L. Genecand, D. Go, E. Ilieva, C. Kalmus, A. Magnaguémabé Ongbakelak, M. Mocaër, D. Pereira Correia
BECOMING LÉMAN: GARDENS
Annik Wetter
ARCHITECTURAL DEGROWTH OR THE RENUNCIATION OF ARCHITECTURAL WASTE
RESEARCH PROJECT MAS ETH DFAB DESIGN & FABRICATION
For the Gramazio Kohler Research Group at ETH Zürich, the processes involved in digital architecture influence both the conception of the design and its practical implementation.
Recycling concrete, recycling building modules that have no place in another building, rather than constructing a temporary pavilion, is their proposal for an “open house,” built in different phases from concrete scraps. With their particular structure and texture due to the method of creation by 3D printing, these objects will be the visual clues of an imaginary but still present and evolving space that the public will discover throughout the summer.
Team
Gramazio Kohler Research, ETH Zürich. Dr. Fabio Gramazio, Dr. Matthias Kohler, Sarah Schneider, Alessandra Gabaglio
ARCHITECTURAL DEGROWTH OR THE RENUNCIATION OF ARCHITECTURAL WASTE
Annik Wetter
The green door project – 24/7 space
HEAD STUDENTS – GENEVA
The 16 students in Visual Arts, Construction option, of the HEAD – Geneva have imagined an artistic installation in the southern part of the Parc Lullin. The space 24/7 is located at the frontier, between the traffic of Route Suisse and the calm of the lake. The project plays with this duality by proposing a “room” accessible from the outside of the OPEN HOUSE exhibition, in which different installations and activities will occur. The students will manage the program of this “artist-run space.”
Professors : Katharina Hohmann and Vincent Kohler
Students : Melina Oria Alhadeff, Emma Berger-Pierre, Antoine Bürcher, Rafael Cunha Da Silva, Ana Durán, Claire Guignet, Louis Karim Kagny, Gian Losinger, Marie Lucas, Laura Matsuzaki, Lou Revel, Sara Rottenwöhrer, Jessie Schaer, Alex Sobral, Sibylle Volken, Elsa Wagnières, Lorenz Wernli, Mel Wieland and Elisa Wyss.
Special thanks to Isabelle Schnederle (CERCCO, HEAD-Genève) and Roland Freymond (Les Deux Rivières)
The green door project – 24/7 space
Annik Wetter
REFUGE TONNEAU 21. A TRIBUTE
HEAD-GENEVA
When Charlotte Perriand designed the REFUGE TONNEAU in 1938 with Pierre Jeanneret, they imagined a mobile shelter that would accommodate up to eight people for short periods in a comfortable but small environment. Eighty-two years later, twelve students from the Department of Interior Architecture at HEAD – Geneva imagined variations for its interior. The projects ranged from a spaceship cabin to a family shelter to hosting a chamber orchestra. Pierre Jeanneret, who worked with Charlotte Perriand and Le Corbusier for many years, was a former student of the HEAD – Geneva. The School of Fine Arts, where he trained between 1913 and 1921, became the HEAD.
Team
Project leader : Simon Husslein
Assistant : Damien Greder, Sven Högger
Head of Department: Javier Fernandez Contreras
Assistant: Valentina de Luigi
CAO Assistance : Abeyi Endrias
Students in Interior Architecture : Annika Resin, Aurélie Chêne, Camille Némethy, Caroline Savary, Élise Chauvigné, Gaïane Legendre, Julie Reeb, Juliette Colomb, Karen Vidal, Krenare Krasniqi, Maria Clara Castioni, Melissa Ferrara
REFUGE TONNEAU 21. A TRIBUTE
Annik Wetter
h A (R) B (R) i t E r
HEPIA, LANDSCAPE DEPARTMENT
An erected skittle, as a totem in the forest. It also serves as a foundation. At the top, a “precious object,” like a relic, sacralizes the intermediate and specific regeneration phase. A new life for a new inhabitant. This trunk, left in place by the forest wardens, links the earth and the sky. It is the leading network that receives, feeds, and redistributes the possibilities of life, the possibilities of living. The ground, the roots, the trunk, and finally, the branches are all places to live. A succession of networks. Living in a landscape: occupying a space for a defined period of time. Here, inhabiting becomes a life cycle: birth (construction), growth and development (evolution), disappearance, and regeneration—a realization of the students of the Bachelor’s degree in Landscape.
Team
Teacher: Christophe Ponceau
Assistant: Molly Fiero
The students:
Design: Estelle Aguado, Irina Benozene Ahmed, Amaury Carlier, Luna Florey, Valentine Fourchon, Nina Giorgi, Marie-Amélie Janin, Aloïs Jolliet, Adnan Kanj, Benoit Lagarde, Simon Loiseleur, Loïs Morel, Sindy Pisteur, Sébastien Rivas, Aurélien Sapin, Luna Valls-Haenni, Léa Tièche, Klara Zaugg
Montage: Marlène Argaud, Estelle Coulet, Valentine Fourchon, Audrey Houver, Marie Amélie Janin, Aloïs Jolliet, Valentin Lièvre, Chloé Perez, Nicolas Pineau-Triguel, Sindy Pisteur, Sébastien Rivas, Luna Valls-Haenni
Ceramics: CFP Arts Geneva, supervised by Charlotte Nordin/ Students: Maiwenn Cambi, Maria Ecaterina Cebotar, Esteban Chanez, Alexander Cipriano, Bahia Frily, Vatsala Haering, Adiela Kiwirra, Anja Ripoll.
h A (R) B (R) i t E r
Annik Wetter
GROUND WORK
ANNEXE (CHIAVI, FUGLISTER, PERKINS & UZOR)
The pavilion of the architect Berta Rahm, built for the 1958 SAFFA exhibition, was rediscovered in spring 2020 after a long period of “oblivion”. A rescue campaign has been launched, as it is one of the few remaining pieces from the SAFFA 58 exhibition and from the body of work of one of Switzerland’s first female architects. An association was founded under the name of ProSaffa58-Pavilion with the aim of saving and rebuilding the structure permanently in Zurich. The ANNEX project, which is part of OPEN HOUSE, is conceived as a ” coulisse ” in parallel to the overall Pro-Saffa58-Pavillon project. Its construction in two stages will allow for numerous social and cultural exchanges. Once the floor is built, it will receive further additions in September 2021 and will remain until the end of summer 2022
ANNEX is curated by Elena Chiavi, Kathrin Fülgister, Amy Perkins and Myriam Uzor in collaboration with the association ProSAFFA58-Pavillon.
Workshop participants: Josephine Eigner, Lea Götschi, Jasper Blind, Nora Zeller, Nicolas Wittig, Julia Tanner, Alexander Schmid, Martin Riewer, Nikola Nikolic, Claire Logoz, Axelle Stiefel, Sara . Stefan Breit, Corinne Spielmann, Jens Knöpfel, Ella Eßlinger, Leslie Majer, Crisost Koch, Jeremy Waterfield, Sofia Gloor, Juliette Martin, Shen He, Blanka Major, Friederike Merkel, Simona Mele, Martina Hügli, Sophia Garner, Linda Sjøqvist, Olga Cobuscean, Emanuel Pulfer, Luisa Overath, Severin Jann and Maarten van de Laar
GROUND WORK
Annik Wetter
Shelter Projects / Humanitarian shelters: supporting self-help with limited resources
Sheltreprojects.org
After a conflict or disaster, people want to create their own shelter and recover. This is only possible when they have access to land. The area outlined in this exhibition is more than most families displaced by conflict or natural disaster can afford to live on.
In 2019, the equivalent of about 20 times the population of Switzerland was affected by conflict and disaster. Of these, 40 million people needed shelter. Although humanitarian agencies and governments are helping many people, the first step is to define a space for them to build a shelter and start rebuilding their lives.
Shelter Projects / Humanitarian shelters: supporting self-help with limited resources
Annik Wetter
Refugee Housing Unit (RHU)
UNHCR
The Refugee Housing Unit (RHU) is an innovative housing solution developed through a collaboration between Better Shelter and UNHCR, with the support of the IKEA Foundation. The partnership was created to create a safe and dignified shelter for refugee and displaced populations. The RHU was developed after various tests in the laboratory and on the ground, in different climatic conditions, and after consultations with universities and refugee communities. Since then, more than 60,000 units have been deployed in more than 50 UNHCR centers worldwide. Feedback from the people affected has been highly positive, highlighting the role of the RHU in improving their lives.
Installed by Anja Pirjevec and Ammar Al Mahdawi, with their team
Refugee Housing Unit (RHU)
Session II
FLEXIBILITY
MOVING
THE HABITAT
23 September — 3 October 2021
With Angela Luna, Ecocapsule, N55, Z-Triton and Mika Taanila
Lectures by Michel Agier, Fiona Meadows, Saskia Cousin, Carla Juaçaba, Aigars Lauzis, Les Garages
THE ECOCAPSULE LOCATED AT THE BAINS DES PAQUIS STAYS VISIBLE UNTIL APRIL 24, 2022
Maison de l’Architecture, Geneva
Soňa Pohlová et Tomáš Žáček (Nice & Wise Studio)
The Ecocapsule is a creation of Nice & Wise, an architectural and design studio based in Bratislava. Its eggshell design and the various integrated functionalities make it a self-sufficient tiny house. It offers the comfort of a hotel room for two people without the constraints of construction, and its relatively lightweight of 2 tonnes allows it to be transported anywhere.
Book your night in the Ecocapsule
Book your unique experience, 1 night in the Ecocapsule alone on the Bains des Paquis jetty, facing the Jet d’Eau, Geneva’s famous water fountain. The capsule is heated, has a bed for 2, a shower, toilet, small kitchen and working table
Original Swiss service can be ordered extra: fondue in the evening, breakfast with birchermüessli, sauna and massage
For 1-2 persons
Available for booking from September 20, 2021 to April 24, 2022
Online booking service will operate only from September 20th onwards
arthabitatcontemporain@gmail.com
Z-Triton
Aigars LAUZIS (Studio ZELTINI)
Zeltini is a design studio based in Smiltene in northern Latvia. Aigars LAUZIS founded it in 2018.
The Z-triton is conceived as a multi-purpose means of transport that combines a spare shelter, adapts to land travel, and has an amphibious option to navigate inland waters.
One of Zeltini’s objectives is to provide a practical, fun tool, and above all, one that minimises the environmental impact it may cause.
Their designs are ethical, innovative, and creative.
The Z-Triton is an amphibious vehicle combining a boat equipped with a motorised propeller and an electric bicycle. The interior space is designed for two people and, thanks to its modular equipment, allows for sleeping, eating, or sheltering in case of bad weather. The roof is equipped with solar panels to power the electrical system and a compartment for growing plants.
Z-Triton
The trench
Angela Luna
This jacket was created in 2016 by Angela Luna after she became aware of the extent of the social and humanitarian crisis.
She realised that donated clothing does not always correspond to local needs.
She proposes a thoughtful design for a humanitarian application to clothing with her creations, whose form follows function. The trench coats are one size fits all, contain pockets for storage, are waterproof and insulating, and can be converted into a tent for mobile living.
Through this hacking of the fashion industry, ADIFF is redistributing a trench coat/tent to a homeless person for every purchase on their website in a one-buy-one-give system. This initiative has already resulted in over a thousand tents and nearly $80,000 to its employees.
The trench
N55
Snail Shell System
N55 (Ion Sørvin)
The N55 group, co-founded in 1996 by Ion Sørvin and Ingvil Aarbakke, comprises several artists and designers.
The Snail Shell System, a temporary and modular mobile habitat, is developed with a focus on adaptation; it can be used as an emergency shelter, as a raft, or even as a stock of commodities.
The idea behind the Snail Shell System is based on the hypothetical, on the possibilities that this habitat can offer both in its function and mobility.
Indeed, the capsule can be moved on land as well as on sea; a paddle is provided for navigation.
The unit is modular to adapt to various situations.
Snail Shell System
Mika Taanila
Futuro – A New Stance for Tomorrow, 1998
Mika Taanila & Marko Home
The idea of making a documentary about the Futuro was born in 1995 when Marko Home was doing photographic research to illustrate the cover of The Cybermen’s album Needle’s eye. He came across a collection of documents related to this strange habitat and produced a video clip for one of the songs. Following this production, he turns to Mika Taanila. Together they embarked on a two-year exploration to document the creation, life, and death of the Futuro.
This futuristic-looking dwelling was created in the late 1960s by the Finnish architect Matti Suuronen. It is originally a mountain shelter, a refuge for skiers. It is a symbol of the heyday of the Trente Glorieuses, a capitalist idyll where well-being rhymes with production and consumption.
The documentary brings together a unique set of archives provided by Matti Suuronen and the Finnish Architecture Museum.
Futuro – A New Stance for Tomorrow, 1998
Session III
EXPANSION
Dreaming
the habitat
March 3 – 6, 2022
With Maurizio Cattelan & Philiipe Parreno, Ken Isaacs
Session IV
Experience
Living
the habitat
11 June — 28 August 2022
With (to be confirmed) Alex Shirley-Smith, Andreas Kressig, Anupama Kundoo, Andrea Zittel, Angela Luna, Atelier Van Lieshout, Bettershelter, Carla Juaçaba, Maurizio Cattelan & Philippe Parreno, Didier Fuiza Faustino, Ecocapsule, Eduardo Böhtlingk, EPFL Alice, Fabrice Gygi, Fiona Meadows, Freeform, Frida Escobedo, Gramazio/Kohler, Head, Hepia, Jean Prouvé, Joelle Allet, John Armleder, Ken Isaacs, Kengo Kuma, Kerim Seiler, Lang/Baumann, Marcel Lachat, Matti Suuronen, Monica Ursina Jäger, N55, Annex, Rahbaran Hürzeler Architects, RELAX (chiarenza & hauser & co), Shelterprojects, Una Szeemann, Van Bo Le Mentzel, the ICRC…
Envelop
Andreas Kressig
More than once Andreas Kressig has blended the fields of mobility and shelter by putting out works that are more likely to bear up our imaginations than transport our bodies, even if, from making to viewing the piece, the connection with the body remains essential.
It’s a new “human-scale environmental sculpture” that the artist has put together for Open House. A rectangular shape overall, it sports on its sides four vertical wings. The flexible solar panels employed here come from the inventory of a bankrupt business, victim of the laws of the market. Even if the artist is very interested in light, and the energy used to produce it, the flexible panels allow him in particular to structure Envelop and infuse it with its futurist look.
Envelop
Boîte à lettres
Fiona Meadows / Saskia Cousin
Email boxes have become indispensable, and those who don’t have one or have trouble accessing them find themselves cut off from many exchanges, but also from a whole administrative life. The paradox is that it is still the physical mailbox, which in the West states and attests an address, a place of residence.
Most Humans have no address and no mailbox. Yet these people dwell somewhere, live, love, share. The settled family, the name of the ancestor on the gate, the neighbors, the district chiefs are there to attest all that. Inexorably replaced by the email box and transitioning towards the status of a modest inheritance, the compartment of the mailbox summarizes a moment, that of the modern Western condition: pleasant for many, for the others, a machine designed to exclude.
Boîte à lettres
Système_01
Frida Escobedo
Frida Escobedo has endlessly crossed back and forth over the bridges between architecture, design, and art, changed scales and mediums, and dominated the simplicity of materials as much as the potential of the motif – all accomplished while remaining true to Mexican modernism.
The architect is especially interested in creating public cultural spaces that teach us how to live together and better manage the friction that arises from a life in common.
In the early stages of the circular constructions built in Lullin Park, she mentioned the archeological sites of Stonehenge, the tepees of the Great Plains Indians and the huts of lake-dwellers.
Coproduction Open House Geneva and 90_20
Système_01
Architecture for degrowth
Gramazio / Kohler Reseach
The research group Gramazio Kohler of ETHZ questions about the temporary and the sustainable in building, as well as the waste that construction may lead to.
Why construct a new pavilion when we have an abundance of obsolete prototypes? Deciding not to produce a specific pavilion, the designers used rather prototypes left over from another project, one that is permanent, to create an independent composition. Their Open House is literally an open house, made up of recycled concrete structures, designed using calculation processes and produced through 3D printing.
Architecture for degrowth
24/7 Reloaded
HEAD-Genève, arts visuels, option Construction
19 students took inspiration from the particular configuration of a cultural and natural space of the park that has been “tamed” and shaped by its limits (roadway, wall, stair door), reappropriating a 16 m2 zone that is marked off on one side by the wall and the door, and on the other by three upright wood surfaces. This space is simultaneously an open-air “room”, a shelter, and an art space. Accessible from the road or the park, it is both integrated and independent. It questions the notion of housing and dwelling.
The construction of this shelter amounts to a concrete grappling with the question of materials and their provenance. For the sake of ecology, the students first turned their attention to the earth, specifically the clay with which to make the bricks.
24/7 Reloaded
HA(R)B(R)ITER
HEPIA, filière Paysage
The Landscape track of HEPIA (Haute école du paysage, d’ingénierie et d’architecture of Geneva/the Geneva School of Engineering, Architecture and Landscape) offers here an installation designed and executed by students in the Bachelor of Arts program; the piece was produced over the course of several workshops by a number of teams. After studying Lullin Park, the students focused on one cut tree still standing over 6 m high.
Working with the available materials and within the defined perimeter, the team designed a space for moving about on foot. Among these rearranged and interpreted elements, the students put in the ground several plants and a range of painted and molded elements, lending the whole a hybrid look. In mid-June of 2021, the snag became a ceramic piece produced by Geneva CFC ceramics students. The installation will evolve throughout the year.
HA(R)B(R)ITER
Sans titre
John Armleder
From the 1980s onwards, with the Furniture-Sculpture series, he focused on the reuse and juxtaposition of everyday objects, mixing readymades and paintings by integrating them into the exhibition space, which it self ultimately becomes the work, to be seen as a whole. The chair, itself a recurring theme in 20th-century art, is presented in this exhibition perched a top a tree. Like an outgrowth of the tree, the saddle is detached from its function and ironically shown to the visitor in a quintessence of anti-utilitarianism.
In 1985, John Armleder featured in the exhibition Promenades, curated by Adelina von Fürstenberg in the same park as today. With their agreement, Open House directly alludes to that exhibition, which is when the artist first showed his chairs placed high up in the trees.
Sans titre
Fun House
Ken Isaacs
Ken Isaacs grew up during the Great Depression and was stamped by the stark differences in the living conditions of his fellow citizens. While teaching at the famous Cranbrook Academy of Art, an institution specialized in experimental architecture that had seen the Saarinens and the Eameses pass through its halls as well, he was to become a forerunner in the field of the design of space, proposing total life environments in an integrated unity based on a modular conception, his Matrix. That is, a spatial structure of right angles that can accommodate volumes whose arrangement corresponds to the functional needs of the user.
His “living structures” then were matrix-units that are easy to assembly, mobile, modifiable, and adaptable to the needs of the users at a very low production cost. He went on to publish, moreover, in 1974 How to Build Your Own Living Structures, a manual in which he laid out floorplans and production methods for these spaces according to a model that would be called open source nowadays. While elaborating the design of the Fun House, Isaacs began a reflection on ‘mobilism’ with the idea to take the concept of the house and decouple it from all that is superfluous to arrive at the essence of housing.
Fun House
Tender is the night
Kerim Seiler
After completing artistic studies in Zurich, Geneva and Hamburg, Kerim Seiler got a Master’s degree in Architecture at ETH Zurich in 2011. As a young man, he worked at the Béjart Ballet Lausanne as a lighting operator. From this period he has kept certain sense of monumentality on the one hand and an unabashed form of visual prestige on the other.
Staging is an essential element of his work, which engages his compositions in a structured and geometric spatial abstraction. He invests space, or even invades it as he likes to say, in a form of contamination; a parasitization by art on an architectural scale.
For Open House, Kerim Seiler presents a large transparent glass recipients that contain colored neon lights placed diagonally. This structure, to be walked through and seen from the outside, places the visitor in an unresolved reflection between an open-air ice palace and a marvelous labyrinth.
Tender is the night
UP #5
L/B, Lang/Baumann
The structure set up in the grass of the park seems to take the title Open House literally. It has the size and the minimalist lines of a house, or part of a building, on two levels. And it is wide open to the four winds. But it is uninhabitable because it leans lopsidedly due to the absence of one its supporting walls.
The pure form of this object seems to be in keeping with the L/B that has been the common signature of Sabina Lang and Daniel Baumann. Space and its aesthetic experience have always been part of their work. Their basic training in architecture and design allows both artists to conceive objects that are completely credible and ultimately impractical, or rather, without purpose.
UP #5
Oeuf pirate
Marcel Lachat
In 1970, Marcel Lachat, architect from Geneva, found a solution to add a room in his apartment. With friends, he hung a polyester cell on the façade in front of his flat. The object cause a sensation over the media. It had to be removed from the façade a month and a half later.
Marcel Lachat worked for several years with Pascal Haüsermann, notably on the flying saucer-shaped building for the Geneva medical centre at Cornavin. Since then, he has continued to develop a handful models for light housing on his land in the countryside. The original bubble is now attached to his house and has two little sisters built using the same process. One of them was chosen for Open House.
Oeuf pirate
FUTURO
Matti Suuronen
It all started when a ski resort commissioned a house that was easy to build on a slope and quick to heat. Finnish architect Matti Suuronen (1933-2013), who was fascinated by new materials, designed a construction that had nothing to do with a traditional chalet: an ellipsoid 8 meters in diameter, made up of sheets of fiberglass-reinforced polyester sandwiching polyurethane foam. The object could be dismantled and reassembled in two days, or transported in its entirety by helicopter. It perched on four legs placed on a steel ring and you entered it the way you would a plane – or a flying saucer…
Twenty Futuros were built in Finland and production was launched under license in ten countries, but only 60 or 70 were built. With the oil crisis of 1973, which made plastic materials more expensive, plus the rise of environmentalist ideas, the object soon fell out of favor. Yet this UFO attracted crowds wherever it was displayed.
FUTURO
Dolce Utopia
Maurizio Cattelan & Philippe Parreno
Maurizio Cattelan and Philippe Parreno were two emerging visual artists in the 1990s. Dolce Utopia is originally the title of a project that sprang from a collaboration for the show Traffic, which was mounted in 1996 at Capc Bordeaux by the art critic Nicolas Bourriaud.
Through this poetic installation we are offered a space that is indeed favorable to our dreams and mental wandering, a space that is marked off by the range of the light thrown by the chandelier. Dear to Parreno, this work on and with light takes shape here as a kind of modernization of the campfire fostering discussion and dialogue. The two men also play on paradoxes, notably in the reference to Fellini’s Dolce Vita, which in its day depicted a changing society.
Dolce Utopia
Homeland Fiction (a constellation)
Monica Ursina Jäger
A lone copper beech tree in the park serves as the support for the piece. Monica Ursina Jäger has rounded the base of the tree with three large rings.
Homeland Fiction (a Constellation) is as much inspired by molecular structures as it is by the universe and its stars. Everything forming the universe, from the great to the small, the living to the inert, is made of particles. Here the tiny atom envelopes the majestic tree and underscores its energy. From the infinitely small to the infinitely large, Jäger also points up the links with the different timeframes that are inscribed in the elements. This reminder of our place between past and future, and the fact that we belong to its different times, is a theme, a thread running throughout her work.
Sound by Michael Bucher
Homeland Fiction (a constellation)
Snail Shell System
N55
N 55 was founded in 1996 when Ion Sørvin (architect) and his wife Ingvil Aarbakke (artist) moved into a flat in central Copenhagen with other artists and designers. Their work focuses on the exchange between functional architecture and contemporary artistic creation, driven by the idea of “rebuilding the city from the inside”. The name N55 comes from the latitude of Copenhagen.
With the Snail Shell System, the group is reinventing the wheel, and even turning it into a temporary mobile home. This project was elaborated in order to allow maximum adaptability to whatever situation it might be used in. Thus, sometimes playing with the borders of the absurd or the circus, N55 determined that it would be possible for a single person to push or pull the capsule in order to make it roll, which one could also do by walking on or even in it, like a rodent in its wheel. However, it is necessary to return to the essential issues of this original amphibious system. Assembled, such elements make it possible to create an island of survival, a protection for people and their goods. The unit is modular so as to adapt to local situations. Inside, it comes with a set of vital necessities and a foam mattress. A water pump can be installed and tracks can be fitted to suit the terrain. A paddle is provided for navigation.
Snail Shell System
The Modulora Prototype
Rahbaran Hürzeler Architekten
In the Modulora Prototype, the central cylinder connects four rectangular spaces of different proportions and functions and leaves the rest to the landscape. Two rings surmount this circle, one fixed, the other rotating, to allow doors to slide and open or close the spaces. The interior is either closed to the outside and the difference between its four complex spaces is revealed, or it is open and one can only pass through it without seeing outside.
It is up to the visitor to experiment with the possibilities that develop around this « center », each room being devoted to a different relationship between body and space. One thinks standing up, communicates sitting down, relaxes when leaning back, dreams lying down. In response to the measurements established by Le Corbusier, the spaces correspond to the average female measurements adapted to these positions, hence the name given to the prototype, Modulora.
The Modulora Prototype
Members only
Relax (Chiarenza & Hauser & Co)
To one side of the mansion on the Saugy estate there is a kiosk housing boxes and garden furniture. This is where RELAX has put its incongruous members only sign in neon letters. Who is closing the door to whom here? True, the house has patrician origins. But for decades, the large park below it is open to the public.
Should we therefore be ask- ing ourselves more wide-reaching questions here? Should we be talk- ing about geopolitics? The difficult relations between Switzerland and Europe? Or perhaps think about Europe’s – and Switzerland’s – borders with the rest of the world. RELAX has more than once questioned the opaque workings of art.
Members only
A place to call home
Shelter Projects
Shelter Projects is a humanitarian consortium aiming to support self-help shelter for populations affected by disasters and conflicts. While bearing in mind the limits on resources, the aim is to identify the types of aid that are useful rather than to define the needs and accommodation of refugees in an authoritarian manner. Durable solutions are to be found less in architectural conceptions than in the empowerment of the populations concerned.
In the event of a humanitarian crisis, Shelter Projects aims to provide a minimum of 3.5 m2 of living space per person. Unfortunately, this minimum space is not always available. For Open House, they are proposing a radical and symbolic gesture by exposing the bare earth on a plot measuring 17.5 m2, the surface area for a group of five people.
A place to call home
Tentsile
Alex Shirley-Smith
Founder of Tentsile, Alex Shirley-Smith is a London-based architect who has been fascinated by tree houses and forest worlds for a long time.
The reasons for this tour de force are both simple and innovative: a futuristic design capable of arousing admiration and reverie in campers; a nostalgic, even childlike attachment to the notion of a suspended habitat; and, most of all, total freedom from environmental constraints, for these tents require neither leveling, nor drainage, nor dehumidification of the ground since they do not rest on anything. All that is required are three hanging points and a bag to transport them to the desired location.
Tentsile
A ruin for fossils
Una Szeemann
When Una Szeemann discovered Parc Lullin, she was intrigued by a flight of steps in the garden of the patrimonial residence that overlooks it. Seven useless steps, pointing to some vanished structure. On the edge of the woods, on a modest natural platform over- looking the forest, these steps are like immediate ruins, or “ruins in reverse”, to use the idea of Robert Smithson’s referred to by Szeemann.
In these crumbling steps you can see the imprint of plants, like fossils, we see the imprint of neophyte plants, invasive species from other climates, often ornamental plants from our gardens that have crossed the barriers and conquered our landscapes at the expense of native species, dangerously impoverishing the diversity of the flora. It is impossible to walk around Lullin Park without spotting some of them.
A ruin for fossils
1m2 House
Van Bo Le-Mentel
Van Bo Le-Mentzel is a German architect, film producer and author of Laotian origin. He grew up and studied architecture in Berlin, where he arrived with his parents at the age of two. In addition to his studies, he also became a rapper and graffiti artist under the name Prime. In 2010, finding himself un- employed, he enrolled in a carpentry course. This experience was the essential inspiration for his Appartement Hartz IV project, carried out in the same year, which consists of a set of furniture that can be fitted into a 21 square-meter flat. The furniture is intended to be built by the user himself, using the plans provided free of charge by Van Bo.
The idea for the One Square Meter House came from Van Bo’s
desire to offer temporary shelter to asylum seekers queuing to register in Berlin. These are easily and cheaply made convertible houses that provide disadvantaged people with a roof and a bed, while remaining mobile. During the day, the house is raised vertically and can be used as a small office; at night it is laid down horizontally and becomes a place to sleep. Following up on this project, Van Bo founded the Tiny-House University, whose objective is to bring together experts to think about new housing possibilities that really take into account contemporary issues such as accessibility for the poorest, the environment and sustainability.