This “visual essay” was just published on Condition Architecture Magazine #8. There was an open call for submission about “preparing for the unknown“. I am thinking hard about how to make the complexity of a thought clear and simple. This is the result of my experiment, a diagrammatic index. This would be my keynote for a two hours talk. It feels like making sense.

[A special thanks to Liz Economou of Nuance Words, for chatting, commenting, suggesting and editing my text for proper English speakers. Thank you Liz, really. And by the way she is responsible only for the text in this image. All the rest is mine very crap written English]

Our contribution for the “The Future of Competion: Thell’em What they Need” promoted by Conditions Magazine got a special mention and will be published on issue N. 7.

The  issue is dedicated to the future potential of architectural competitions and explores both the failure and the potential of competitions to promote quality and evolution in architecture. This builds further on the agenda of the previous double issue, which focused on the notion of quality in architecture politics, and how to achieve it. To investigate the many aspects and challenges of the topic, CONDITIONS launched an architectural idea competition entitled “The Future of Competitions”. The results of the competition are forming the backbone of the current issue, along with articles and interviews exploring from different angles the historic and contemporary role of architectural competitions.

Yökalenteri is a calendar that displays the night’s duration along the year at Helsinki latitudes. Yökalenteri means, in Finnish, “night calendar”, a collaboration with Poetess Cia Rinne presented for the first time ISCP, Brooklyn, NY, for the exhibition Terra Infirma, curated by Chiara Sartori. Yökalenteri is now published on the Swedish poetry magazine Kontur #3 (pag. 6).

Revista EINA is a mini magazine about Ecological Culture published in Valencia, Spain. On the issue #14 they published the baby carrier form the Just Undo it collection (pp. 14-15). What I really like of this magazine is the concept: very small size (A5) all in ecological paper, with ecological contents. A good way to get messages across.

#00: Under Construction is the first issue of our Instant Zines collection: DIY zines about what it is going on in our office. The issue #00 is about projects we have under construction at the moment. You can download it and print it in A3 format (recommended). Instant Zines uses an instant book fold-to-bind system and a TOI layout and it is designed to be printed on the back of a ready used page.
Download Instant Zine #00 Under Construction here.

A hoodie is not just a hoodie. In a world full of stuff, smart items should be transformable, editable. They should engage the possibility to be transformed into something else. We do not need a new object, a new thing. Rather we need to get rid of some of them, to reduce the complex network of things around us.

Just undo it is a collection of reversible objects that could be made from a hoodie at no cost, no particular knowledge nor tools.
The instructions about how to make a computer sleeve was just published in this month issue of WIRED Italia. Check it out.

Stefano Mirti published on Abitare’s blog this interview I have made with Andrea Branzi in November 2004. The original version was released in 2005: ‘Andrea Branzi: la ville continue [Interview with Andrea Branzi]’ in Moniteur Architecture AMC no.150 March 2005 / p.88-94. It was never published in Italian before, so thank you Stefano.

How to: destroy the first issue of of Wired Uk and make something with it. They say printed magazine are dead. Wired Unplugged is a proposal to give them a second chance. This project was published on the second issue of Wired UK and the second issue of Wired Italia. If you feel frustrated about the instructions you can watch the how to videos here and here.

They say printed magazines are dead. Wired Unplugged is an “how to” proposal I have made to give them a second chance. The idea is that they can be designed to be transformed into something else. In the second issue of WIRED UK there are five different example of simple things you could do with it. You can see some how to videos in the magazine’s website here and here.

In my opinion this would: a) bring the message of the magazine (and its advertising) in places that would never be reached otherwise [example: make a "fish and chips holder" or a "paper wallet" and go to parties with it]; b) Add symbolic a value on the transformable page [more real estate value for the advertising on a D-I-Y piece of art or design to go]; c) Make mag fetishists buy more copies [one to collect, one to destroy]; d) Allow people to re-use the magazine in a different way than tun on a fire after they’ve read it.

Wired unplugged was taken seriously by wired magazine. One page appeared on the second issue of WIRED ITALIA where I have made instructions about how to make bio-vases and now two pages on the second issue of WIRED UK. If you are willing to do it your self with Wired or with other magazine please post it here!

The story I have wrote for the first issue of Beyond magazine is now published on the online edition of the Italian magazine Abitare. You can read the full story here. Hope you enjoy it.

Last November I was invited to discuss about “urban narrative” in Göteborg, Sweden, an event organized by Squid. I have then wrote some notes in form of manifesto in order to clear what I had to say about it in relation to my practice. My “manifesto” was basically conceived as a platform to start a debate. We went through one or two statement, then the conversation took off in a more spontaneous and fun way. The Squid friends (Katja Aglert, Martijn van Berkum, Janna Holmstedt) decided to publish on their site the transcription of our talk as well as my preliminary manifesto which you find in this post and that you can download here as pdf. Enjoy!

URBAN NARRATIVE: A MANIFESTO

00_ FIAT LUX. Narrative in-forms realities. It gives them a form. So that these can be recognised, narrated, historicized, represented. Narrative stands for any form of representation. The urban condition is a tangible reality that takes form with narrative, here understood as any kind of representation, visual or not.

01_ HOW TO: URBANITY. Narrative is a form of symbolic order. It could take any form in which information is organised: Atlas (as collections of maps, diagrams, cartograms), a guide (manuals, recipes, a game, instructions), archives (database, indexes), but also many other forms of narratives, any form that organize information.

02_ EXFORMATION. Narrative is a form-giving process that discards information: the process of transforming “the world into a map”.

03_ 2BR02B. This is the question. Narrative has an ontological power. It has the power to define what “exists” and what does not. Therefore narrative is a weapon for the affirmation of reality: the urban realm.

04_ CONCRETE. So narrative is not a naïve practice. Narrative is not the “copy”, the transcription, of the urban as a form of reality. On the contrary, the urban is the transcription of a narrative. The physical reality, the urban condition, is the fragmented construction of narratives.

05_ REFLECTIVE DESIGN. Narrative is not just a representation of the urban, but rather an idea of it. An idea about what urban is and how it functions/operates.

06_ SYMBOLIC VIOLENCE. Narrative is a subversive practice. It has the power to imagine and to actually represent, therefore construct, the urban reality according to different kinds of symbolic orders. It is a tool of signification of reality. It could be progressive or reactionary. The urban condition is a storytelling battlefield.

07_ PALIMPSEST. The never ending editing. The only rule in narrative is the inner, self-referential, coherency. There is no truth, but only ideas about “truth”. Narrative is about what we believe is truth, or what we want others to believe as such. The urban condition as narrative battlefield could be therefore contradictory, or tell different “stories” at the same time.

08_ MAPPING AROUND. Narrative shifts symbolic values and shapes information. It gives information a form that could follow poetic or symbolic principles and therefore create a new form of objectivity, new forms of “urbanities”.

09_ PROGRAM. If the urban is the “copy” of a narrative then, if we change the narrative, we are willing to change the latter, exploring and representing new forms of urbanities.

I have contributed to the first issue of “Beyond” with a short urban science fiction story called “the last market”.

Series
‘Beyond no.1 – Scenarios and Speculations’ is the first volume of a book series dedicated to new, experimental forms of architectural and urban writing, a bookazine in which, amidst other goodies, an extended network of young and upcoming writers are given the freedom to survey the outline of themes and things to come.

Fresh take on destinations
Arriving at a time in which architects and urbanists tackle fascinating issues while their reports fail to attract a wider audience, the first issue of Beyond offers a fresh take on destinations and urban scenarios of the near future.

Scenarios and Speculations
Beyond the academic circle and the spectacle of images, Scenarios and Speculations proposes stories that near fiction’s ability to prompt a deep, appealing reflection about our current concerns: urban conflict, social interaction, ecological resources, mobility and tourism, the evolution of cities.

Contributing authors:
Gilles Delalex, Michelle Provoost, Knut Birkholz, Srdjan Jovanovic Weiss, Boris Jensen, Silvia Banchini, Luis Falcón, Antonio Scarponi, Bruce Sterling, Lara Schrijver, Kobas Laksa, Shumon Basar, Wes Jones, Superstudio, Aaron Betsky
Editor-in-Chief: Pedro Gadanho

Memorial to the victims of modernity. [collaboration with Andrea Zausa]

157 is a project for a permanent urban installation conceived as memorial to the victims of modernity. 157 is the number of the workers who died of cancer due to the long exposure of PVC and CVM in the petrochemical factory in Marghera, Venice. 157 aims to represent all the victims of Modernity and recognize the social cost of modernization as historical process. 157 photovoltaic lamps will be installed into the pavement of the city’s square. As a cloud of bright spots, the lights will actually reflect the sky above the city. Such installation can replace most of the traditional lights. They consume only solar energy and do not need to be cabled to the local electricity network since they swich on automatically thanks to an embedded timer.

157 has been nominated as finalist for “Italian Oxigen”, a new design prize lauched by Abitare to promote innovative design in Italy. If you are a keen supporter of the project, please vote for it in this popular jury competition: http://abitare.it/speciale-45-1/antonio-scarponi/ or see Abitare special issue Dec-Gen 2008 (pp. 85-87).

Abitare promoted and covered Torino Geodesign: 48 communities 48 projects. RIKEA was one of them and so we’ve got two pages in Abitare n. 483 (pp.56-57).