Towards a New Avant-Garde


Towards a New Avant-Garde. Photo by Alicja Dobrucka

I’m proud to announce Towards a New Avant-Garde, a three-part event series that will take place on the first weekend of the 2014 Venice Architecture Biennale! Within the Monditalia exhibition at the Arsenale, the events will trace parallels between distinct generations, seeking to understand what lessons can still be learned from the Italian architectural impulses of the 60s and 70s, and how they can be best  applied by the newest generation of architects in Italy and abroad. Lead by Superscript, the event is a collaborative effort with author and scholar Catharine Rossi and researcher and scholar Rossella Ferorelli, and the design team includes architects DEVspace and interaction designer Thibault Brevet. More info over at the Superscript blog— see you in Venice, and #stayradical!


Concrete Mushrooms


Concrete Mushrooms. Photo by dpr.barcelona

During June and July 2012, I copy-edited and helped Elian Stefa finish the book Concrete Mushrooms: Reusing Albania’s 750,000 Abandoned Bunkers, which was then published by dpr.barcelona in August 2012. The book, in Albanian and English, traces the history and fascinating “bunkerization” of Albania during the last years of Enver Hoxha’s dictatorship, and proposes a series of uses for these now discarded military structures. The project was originally started as a research project at the Politecnico di Milano. In August 2012, Concrete Mushrooms was also one of the initiators of Concrete in Common, an exhibition at  the Kunst Raum Riehen, in Basel, Switzerland — which I reviewed for Domusweb —, and was presented as one of the projects in the Albanian Pavilion at the 13th International Architecture Exhibition — Venice Biennale 2012.