PAM Public Lecture by Maarten Gielen, The Big Shuffle

Maarten Gielen is a member of the Brussels-based collective Rotor. Rotor was found in 2005 and is a group of architects, designers and other professionals interested in material flows in industry and construction, particularly in relation to resources, waste, use and reuse. Rotor disseminates creative strategies for salvage and waste reduction through workshops, publications, and exhibitions. Rotor where he currently works as designer, manager and researcher. At Rotor he collaborated on exhibition projects including OMA/ Progress (Barbican Art Gallery, London, 2011), Usus/Usures ( Belgian pavilion at the 2010 Venice Architecture Biennale), and Ex Limbo (Fondazione Prada, Milan, 2011). In 2012 he was appointed visiting professor in the HEAD in Geneva. In 2014 he curated together with Lionel Devlieger the Oslo Architecture Triennale. In 2015 he was awarded with the Rotterdam-Maaskant prize.

Maarten Gielen was invited to PAM Public Lecture to talk about the “The Big Shuffle”, he also shared some of their master piece project that Rotor has involved into the use and reuse of materials.

Case 1 | The Belgian Pavilion at the 2010 Venice Architecture Biennale

Rotor represented Belgium's French Community at the 12th International Architecture Exhibition of the Biennale di Venezia called Usus/ Usures refer to the relationship between material and user. The exhibition showcases the relationship between architecture and human occupation. The exibition is more focus on how human respond to the material and the bodies leave marks on the material. the curators of the Belgian Pavilion visited 260 homes around the country, using their findings to produce a minimal recreation of common domestic architecture within their Venice biennale exhibition.

The curators and architects were focusses on the domestic interiors of Belgian homes to tell the story of the country's vernacular of the last century. The main idea was to take the theme Absorbing Modernity and to say, perhaps if look at architecture from the inside not from the outside and we can see something new.

The team selected a few of these situations and recreated them within the interior of the Belgian Pavilion. Elements include a suspended ceiling that makes way for a skylight, changes in floor surface, a bookshelf built into a corner and wireframe storage rails.

Each intervention is accompanied by a selection of pages from the catalogue, inviting visitors to make the connections themselves.

Case 2 | Rotor Deconstruction

Deconstruction, is a term of building and architecture that means somewhat form of reverse assemble. Rotor in this project will become a separate cooperative company, dismantles and sells reusable materials from quality building undergoing transformation or demolition.

Rotor also sells generic construction elements such as doors, windows, lowered ceiling, lighting and so on. However, Rotor had more exceptional batches of materials from landmark building. Rotor have developed a wide range of connection all over the world with companies and dealerships that sells these reuseable items and materials at an affordable price. Thus, before dismantling, an inventory of the available materials is prepared and sent to their respective and potential clients in a newsletter.

The companies are professionals that collects and cleans the materials before repackaging them and sell to the client.

Case 3 | Abattoirs de Bomel

Rotor acted as matchmakers between a building and its occupants. Abattoirs means slaughterhouse in Britain. The building was a freshly renovated from slaughterhouse and now it is a arts centre. It was only marginally involved in the follow-up of the renovation project. As a result, there were gaps between the building and the needs it had to fulfill. The renovated facility was also entirely empty of any kind of furniture such as storage units, tables, chairs, kitchen equipment, toilet roll holders and so on.

Rotor was to provide equipment, but also to reflect on how the place would be used and run because of a tight budget and explicit demand of the commissioner. They resorted a lot to re-used equipment and materials, found on site, in the commissioner’s stocks, or on the regular second hand market. But in addition, and maybe for the first time, we were able to use the full array of materials Rotor was dismantling in parallel on its deconstruction sites elsewhere in Belgium.

Question: Buildings account for approximately 40% of energy consumed, therefore it should be given extra attention to architects in discourse around sustainability. Yet as you've pointed out, a lot of what is stated on the topic of sustainability is pretty shallow. Do you think architecture's role in this discourse has been irreparably compromised?

Answer: We are making a critique, or trying to take some distance from the subject in order to observe it more clearly. We're not nuking sustainability - we are sincerely interested in the architectural discourse with regard to this topic. Obviously, asking the question whether sustainability can be taken seriously as a concept is controversial in itself, and it is sufficiently controversial so that we can use quite nuanced answers. We don't want to push it to the other extreme either, because there is enough promotion already, but we are not acting as terrorists on this issue. We find all the projects we include in our research genuinely interesting in some way.