Architecture Archives

APPROPRIATE BARRAGÁN

Photograph exhibition from the workshop
“Appropriate Barragán,” led by Bas Princen

Communication: Vitra Design Museum

Luis Barragán’s architecture has gained wide renown due in no small part to the circulation of a limited number of carefully selected photographs. These photographs, realized by Armando Salas Portugal in close collaboration with the architect, have created a particular perception of Barragán’s work. They attach a distinctive aura to Barragán’s spaces and contributed to their iconic status by emphasizing characteristics such as light, colour and form. One could even postulate that Barragán designed spaces with the eyes of his photographer in mind.

The workshop “Appropriate Barragán” led by photographer Bas Princen in summer 2022 brought together design students from HEAD – Genève and CENTRO Mexico City in a joint project to experience, analyse and interpret major architectural works by Luis Barragán through the medium of photography. They captured some unexpected views of two well-known buildings, the Barragán House and the Prieto López House (also known as Casa Pedregal), producing distinctive visual impressions of intimacy, space, lighting, architectural details, and traces of habitation

Vitra Design Museum:
Martin Josephy, Curator Barragán Archive
Susanne Graner, Head of Collection & Archive
Stefani Fricker, Team Leader Exhibition Design & Development
Thorsten Romanus, Exhibition Design

HEAD – Genève:
Dr Javier F. Contreras, Head of the Department of Interior Architecture
Bas Princen, Workshop Leader
Damien Greder, Teaching Assistant
Special thanks to Jean-Pierre Greff, Director HEAD – Genève 2007–2022
Students: Elsa Audouin, Ankita Das, Robin Delerce, Sonya Isupova, Thibault Krauer, Vilma Hubalek, Marileni Vourtsi

CENTRO Mexico City:
Dr Miquel Adrià, Director of the School of Architecture
Veronica Garcia Santamarina Vite, Coordinator
Students: Ana Suárez, Emiliano Reynoso, Pedro Felix, Yamilet Parra, Ma. Fernanda Chávez, Álvaro Morillo, Camila Segura, Vania Olivares, Ximena Castro, Ximena Urbina

GRAND TOUR 2023

HEAD Campus

Building H – Avenue de Chatelaine, 7
Building A – Route des Franchises, 2
Building D – Boulevard James Fazy, 15
1203 Geneva

The Grand Tour 2023 is coming soon to campus!

Bachelor’s and Master’s students in Visual Arts, Interior Architecture, Visual Communication, Space Design, Product Design/Fashion, Jewellery and Accessories will be exhibiting their diploma projects on June 23 and 24.

Friday, June 23, 2023 is a day for professionals, with curators, critics, gallery owners and institutions taking part in the various studios.

On Saturday June 24, 2023, the general public is invited to discover the works and performances created by the students.

INTERIOR ECOLOGIES DIPLOMA SHOW

MAIA, Master of Arts of Interior Architecture

INTERIOR ECOLOGIES

Diploma Show

The MAIA Diploma Show 2023 invites visitors to delve into the intricate interplay between the natural, artificial, and digital realms within the contemporary built environment. Titled “INTERIOR ECOLOGIES,” the exhibition explores how ecology is shaping the discipline of Interior Architecture in the 21st century. The interpretation of this theme was intentionally left open for students, resulting in projects that address environmentally responsible construction, ecology, reuse, energy efficiency, social and political urgencies, as well as novel materials and technologies.

Visitors will have the opportunity to witness a diverse range of projects in terms of scale, typology, location, and complexity. These include a refugee shelter crafted from mushrooms, a communal neighborhood kitchen in Geneva, the transformation of a water tank into housing in India, the creation of a new social center facilitating the exchange of reused materials, a furniture collection derived from repurposed office carpets, and numerous other projects that express the pressing need for a transformative paradigm in architectural production.

MAIA, Master of Arts of Interior Architecture

Department of Space Design / Interior Architecture, HEAD – Genève

MAIA Students 2023:

Sarah Bentivegna, Emma Birbaud, Kevin Chellakudam, Azadeh Djavanrouh, Thomas Dreux, Marine Evrard, Samia Hilal, Emma Launay, Lisa Maahsen, Nourbonou Missidenti, Camilla Perna, Louise Plassard.

MAIA Faculty:

Dr Javier Fernández Contreras, Head of Department
Valentina de Luigi, Deputy Head
Leonid Slonimskiy (Kosmos Architects), Studio Professor
Paule Perron (minor architects), Studio Assistant
Scenography: Paule Perron and Leonid Slonimskiy with the support of MAIA students and HEAD alumni

Life After Life – Strategies of Reuse

Facing the consequences of environmental exploitation and destruction makes a paradigm shift in resource consumption imperative. New ways of building must shift towards a “re-materialized”, climate-friendly and circular construction. The existing environment needs to be reconsidered as a source of ideas, knowledge and resources: to reuse, repair and sustain. It must be rediscovered as its architectural potential. Built from a catalog of reused building components, the first Basel Pavilion opened on the Dreispitz as a program of the first Architekturwoche Basel on 10 May 2022: “Loggia Baseliana” by isla contributes to the urban transformation as a temporary open venue whose architecture demonstrates a future-, environmentally and socially sustainable construction. All the main components of the “Loggia Baseliana” are sourced from regional deconstructions, which were compiled in a component catalog for the competition by the specialist planning office Zirkular via www.baselpavillon.store

The aim of this course is to learn and develop circular building strategies and practice. From the Basel Pavillon as a building laboratory, specific site and practice, we will identify strategies and agents of reuse from deconstruction for a better reconstruction and building to sustain. Regional and local ecosystems, urban transformation, material hunting and urban mining, deconstruction, infrastructures and logistics, labor, building codes, maintenance and care, and design processes will be part of the knowledge and skills to enable for a circular architectural practice. The goal is to develop diverse reuse strategies for the Basel Pavillon from 2023 as part of the Plan Guide of the Dreispitz development. Alongside this, the course will emphasize on the agency of architecture as a strategy and multidisciplinary practice.

Tutors:

Vera Sacchetti (HEAD MAIA) and Chrissie Muhr (Architekturwoche Basel)

Javier F. Contreras, Valentina de Luigi (HEAD MAIA)

Lecturers:

Martin Weis, Nico Scholer (Christoph Merian Stiftung)

Jan Nemeth (Studio Gleisbogen, denkstatt sarl)

Kerstin Müller, Blanca Garcia Gardelegui (Zirkular)

Juan Palencia (isla)

Some like it dark: A research about architecture and night by MAIA

Join us during four days to discover and celebrate the new MAIA graduates and their diploma projects!

Wednesday 29 June (by invitation – for professionals only)
Professional day
12pm Press conference and drinks
1pm – 6pm Exhibition visits – GRAND TOUR

Thursday 30th June
Official opening of the Campus and public opening of the exhibitions
6pm Official ceremony in the presence of the authorities, Le Cube, Bât H
6.30-9pm Exhibition opening – Bât. H, E, A, D

Friday 1 July
Opening of the historical exhibitions and diploma exhibitions
2-5pm Exhibitions, screenings, performances, guided tours
5-8pm Bachelor and Master graduation ceremony
8.30 pm DJ set & fiesta

Saturday 2nd July
Opening of the historical and diploma exhibitions
Historical and graduation exhibitions
10am-6pm Exhibitions, screenings, performances and guided tours
6-8pm Bar and DJ sets
8pm Concert by Léonie Pernet / Free concert open to the public

Sunday 3rd July
Opening of the historical exhibitions and diploma exhibitions
10am-5pm Exhibitions, Projections, Performances and guided tours

Inauguration du Campus HEAD

Join us for four exceptional days of exhibitions, performances, DJ sets and concerts to celebrate the Inauguration of the HEAD Campus and the new graduates!

Wednesday 29 June (by invitation – for professionals only)
Professional day
12pm Press conference and drinks
1pm – 6pm Exhibition visits – GRAND TOUR

Sunday 3rd July
Opening of the historical exhibitions and diploma exhibitions
10am-5pm Exhibitions, Projections, Performances and guided tours

Bas Princen

As probably most of you, I have never been in a house or a public space designed by the late architect Luis Barragan. That does not mean that I have no idea about the architect’s work. I actually believe I have quite a clear vision of his work since the images of his buildings that have been published embody his ideas in a powerful and iconic way that can hardly be challenged. It is clear that the images we know of Barragan’s architecture are ‘his’ images – carefully crafted representations of the idea of his own work. In this workshop, we will enter and visually inhabit two houses, Casa Barragan and Casa Pedregal, with the idea of representing the spaces, rather than the aura of images that we already know.

An important question we will try to address is how it feels to ‘appropriate’ through simple photography, the spaces, work and legacy of someone else for the benefit of one’s own visions, and what one can or cannot do. To begin to answer this question, we hope to start in the archives (near Basel, Switzerland) to look at and analyse the images, books and drawings that were produced during his lifetime. Following this, we will seek to focus on where we can insert and develop our own interpretation, without simply appropriating his legacy or iconography. These new interpretations, these new ‘images’, will then be presented at exhibitions in both Mexico and Switzerland.

Bas Princen, February 2021

This Summer School will be led by Bas Princen and assisted by Damien Greder.

Les Rencontres de la photographie d’Arles

Opening Week 1 – 7 July 2019
Exhibitions 1 July – 22 September 2019

Terrasse Croisière, Espace 99
2 Avenue Victor Hugo
3200 Arles, France

Presented as part of the festival of photography 2019 in Arles, “Periscopes” is a project by third year students Bachelor Interior Architecture, from studio “Public Landscapes” lead by Leonid Slonimskiy and Bertrand Van Dorp. The projet offers visitor an image of the city in real time, replacing photography. Wood structures (coated with aluminum tiles and equipped with mirrors) seek height, in order to reveal a view on the roofs of the city of Arles.

The project has been developed in partnership with the City and Canton of Geneva as well as Presence Suisse and will be presented on the Croisière terrace.

Scène de nuit

Scènes de Nuit presents five nocturnal encounters around the role of night in the construction of contemporary societies and their urban spaces. Around the themes of consumption, city, enclosed spaces, party and food Scènes de Nuit recreate spaces generating practices and night rituals. The five events SHOP, FILM, CITY, CLUB AND FOOD become experimental laboratories to facilitate and question the relationship between architecture and night.

As part of their spring exhibition, the f’ar invite architects Javier Fernandez-Contreras and Youri Kravtchenko to present exhibition Scènes de Nuit. Conducted with the first year students of architecture of the HEAD, Scènes de Nuit attempts to understand the phenomena of space, conferences, discussions, walks, meals and projections.

f’ar – forum d’architectures lausanne
Avenue Villamont 4
1005 Lausanne

MONTBLANC – shop windows

Exposition – Window shops

Boutique Montblanc Genève
Place du Port 1, 1204 Genève

During a semester, 9 students in interior design have created a set of shop windows for the brand Montblanc, around the new 1858 watch collection. Inspired by the design of pre-war tourist posters, shop windows unveil, with a succession of colored layers, the return to the sources of the collection. Shops window will be unveiled to the public from 1 April 2019, for a month, in the flagship store of Montblanc in Geneva.

Studio lead: Simon Husslein
Assisted by: Lara Grandchamp
Students: Arthur Cattaneo, Audrey Dasilva, Laetitia Delisle, Lolita Gomez, Brian Grenier, Kanya-On Khurewathanakul, Hyeryeon Nam, Rosalie Lila Orval, Rébecca Sanmartin