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Ecochard’s Plan for Casablanca
2013-08-13
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Fordism
“È un bene che il popolo non comprenda il nostro sistema economico e monetario, perché se accadesse credo che scoppierebbe una rivoluzione prima di domani mattina.” Henry Ford The first use of the term Fordism to define a political paradigm is attributed to Antonio Gramsci. Undoubtedly the Fordist organization of production has been an essential source of […]
2013-07-08
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Novi Beograd
The terrain of this modern development, most dramatically beheld from the position of the ancient Belgrade fortress, served for centuries as a no-man’s-land between the borders of the two empires, the Ottoman and the Austrian/Austro- Hungarian. Devoid of any urban structure, it fulfilled the function of a cordon sanitaire, observed and controlled as no-connection- zone between the Orient, where Belgrade, as […]
2013-07-03
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From Disurbanisation to Hyperurbanisation
“Following the Marxist theory of cancelling the difference between city and countryside, de-urbanization called for the abolition of cities in favor of “field urbanism” an evenly distributed industry intermingled of agriculture and residential areas. First imagined by Soviet Constructivist avant-garde in the 1920s, de-urbanization was the red, communist version of Ebenezer’s Howard Garden City.” (Mihai […]
2013-06-21
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From center to periphery
The main focus of our project, clearly expressed by the title, is in the relation between periphery and centrality as produced by modernist principles. Adopting a wide scope, this means also investigating the relationship among political, economical, cultural forms of marginalization and the spatial organisation of society. Started as an almost random exploration of modernist […]
2013-06-18
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East-gate
Marzahn is one of the last huge settlements of DDR urbanism. The dormitory city logic is perfectly complementary with the shopping mall logic imported by capitalism. The synthesis of mass housing and mass consumption reinforced by efficient transportation infrastructure pleases the new consumerist citizenship. East-Gate is one of the more than 200 commercial centres owned by ECE, […]
2013-06-17
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Sotsgorod
Sotsgorod, Problems of Building Socialist Cities is Nikolai Milyutin‘s most well known theoretical contribution. Milyutin was a convinced supporter of the radical reform of everyday life and the refusal of bourgeois values, which in his mind still gave form to the majority of post-revolutionary architecture. He advocated the collectivisation and industrialisation of human settlement, with an eye on […]
2013-05-05
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The power of emptiness
The area around Ostbanhof in Berlin is a clear example of how in this city the typical categories of centre / periphery, downtown / suburbia are unable to describe the reality of the urban fabric. Vacant lots, huge plattenbauten settlements, retail chains, warehouses and abandoned industrial buildings: the typical landscape that we are used to associate […]
2013-05-03
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Disurbanism
At the end of the 1920s, the attention of constructivist architects, in particular those of OSA, increasingly shifted toward a radical critique of the city itself, focusing on visions designed to overcome urban concentration, and introducing concepts of diffuse urbanisation, linear and green cities, ultimately theorising the concept of disurbanism. This term was basically the result […]
2013-05-03
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On the preservation of Modernist Heritage
Since our involvement as invited artists with the Moskonstruct campaign, and later with RKM, where we took care of the communication and graphic design of the EU funded cooperation project, we have found ourselves involved in the issue of preserving the heritage of modernist architecture. Our project and blog have also become a sounding board for campaigns and petitions. This […]
2013-04-30