Page 210 - Únete. Join us (Bienal de Venecia, 57 edición)

210 ¡ÚNETE! JOIN US! JORDI COLOMER
Early Warning Systems
Within this utopic marginal space, a series of themes were explored as the basis of a hypothetical improved society, the very themes that are seen today to be at the very center of the contemporary global reality. Indeed practically all the themes that preoccupy us today can be said to have emerged during those years. You find the first preoccupations with recycling, with energy responsibility, cardboard architecture, emergency architecture, synthetic materials, digital data flow, global mobility, the first oil crisis, the emergence of computers, machine intelligence, polymers, terrorism...
The space program acted as a catalyst for dreaming of new social and architectural problems. The mobilization of a vastly expanded sense of scale in outer space was counter posed by miniaturization, a fascination with the new existence-minimums of the sealed capsule and the space suit. The launch of satellite communications generated an enthusiasm for planetary interconnection, as well as a concern about the expansion of forms of political and intellectual power beyond traditional territorial limits. Little magazines extrapolated from the science facts of the space program to conjure up a series of science fictions about the future evolution of buildings and cities.
The cybernetic understanding of communications and feedback control processes in biological, mechanical, and electronic systems coming out of World War II likewise provoked experimental scenarios in which information itself would become the basic building material. Computation and the relationship of hardware to software were seen to liberate new urban and biological realities.
Emergent ecological concerns were closely tied to a rethinking of the condition of the house and its natural, urban, and global economies. The house was re-conceptualized in terms of “whole earth systems,” which entailed the recycling of both material and energy, and hybrid systems of natural and artificial elements. A more extreme and radical response encouraged a retreat to self- sufficient shelters in nature, autonomous from established communities. Architectural magazines found themselves in an incredibly intimate dialog with a wide range of counter publications. Self help manuals (Whole Earth Catalog, Dome Cook Book, Shelter, Farallones Scrapbook) featured architectural design and architectural magazines featured self help techniques. Figures like Buckminster Fuller acted as crucial cross-overs, constantly going back and forwards between architecture and counter-culture.
The emergence of protest movements around the globe in the 1960s was paralleled by critiques of architecture in little magazines. The architectural object was devalued in favor of questions of self organization, urban sociology, and participation. This wider expression of political protest and self-questioning was fostered in different ways by many little magazines around the globe. In some cases we find specific issues devoted to protest movements and to instances of brutality against demonstrators (Architectural Design, Arquitectos de Mexico, Architecture Mouvement Continuité, Casabella, Le Carré Bleu, Perspecta). Other magazines became the vehicles for student demands for reforms in architectural education (Melp!, Klubseminar, ARse, Arquitectura Autogobierno). In other magazines, this critical self-questioning contributed to the formulation of ideological and historical critiques of architecture’s role within culture (Angelus Novus, Carrer de la Ciutat, Contropiano, Utopie).