PAM Public Lecture : The Big Shuffle by Maarten Gielen
- LIM ZE SHAN 1001437998
- Mar 20, 2016
- 5 min read
Maarten Gielen is a founding member of the collective Rotor, 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. Maarten 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), or 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.
Founded in 2005, Rotor is a collective of people with a common interest in the material flows in industry and construction. On a practical level, Rotor handles the conception and realization of design and architectural projects. On a theoretical level, Rotor develops critical positions on design, material resources, and waste through research, exhibitions, writings and conferences.
CASE 01 | THE BELGIAN PAVILION AT THE VENICE ARCHITECTURE BIENNALE
Rotor represented Belgium's French Community at the 12th International Architecture Exhibition of the Biennale di Venezia. The exhibition Usus/Usures occupied the Belgian pavilion at the Giardini. The project explored wear as a reaction to use in architecture.
The concept of the interior is fundamental in architectural design. Yet there are very few studies that approach it as a separate field of inquiry. Behind the permanence of buildings’ façades, all sorts of transformations, adjustments and modifications are carried out. From this perspective, a study of our interiors provides valuable information about the new challenges to which architectural practice must rise. Obliging us to counter the notion of modernity as an all-consuming phenomenon, it reveals a vernacular architecture in which modernity itself is being consumed and absorbed. Focusing on the home, “Interiors. Notes and Figures” records and analyzes the domestic landscapes that result from this process of transformation. The curatorial team spent five months taking thousands of photographs of home interiors throughout Belgium. The study attempts to devise a vocabulary and to reveal the attitudes that, beyond pure form, allow us to define a culture that is specific to these transformations. The photos, notes and figures have been collated in a catalogue, resembling a manual, that will be published at the opening of the pavilion. An interpretation of the research findings will be presented inside the Belgian Pavilion. It presents significant themes from the study in the form of architectural interventions, scale models and surface treatment. Generating both new spatial organizations and visual relationships, these play on the disparity between architecture and its different forms of appropriation, creating a tension between the real and the possible.
CASE 02 | STUDENT PROJECT AT HEAD, GEVENA
From these programme, I have know that it renews the links between spatial design, interior architecture, graphic art and signage. Enriched by inter-disciplinary exchanges, it offers a new approach to design. In correlation with urbanism, plastic arts and architecture, which influence its reflective and creative processes and positioning, the Masters associates, without amalgamating them, graphic design and spatial design to create a completely new area of convergence. It promotes the creative and rigorous progress of students and the production of concrete and significant projects.
Modifications to the perception and uses of design in the public, commercial, cultural and urban space call for decrypting capabilities and knowledge that unite individual practice and the production processes of the designer and related theory. They emphasises the interrelation between the disciplines of graphic design and spatial design and the link between the disciplines of “doing” and “knowing.” Students assert their ability to question the world around them and to engage in dialogue. They measure the impact of spatial, political and technological modifications on our everyday lives and use them as the starting point for constructive examination, either real or fictional.
CASE 03 | CULTURAL CENTRE BOMEL, NAMUR
In this project Rotor acted as matchmakers between a building and its occupants. The building was a freshly renovated 1940’s former slaughterhouse in Bomel, Namur. The building is owned by the city, the arts centre 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 3000 square meter facility was also entirely empty of any kind of furniture, such as storage units, tables, chairs, kitchen equipment, toilet roll holders. Rotor’s brief was to provide equipment, but also to reflect on how the place would be used and run. 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 because of a tight budget and also on explicit demand of the commissioner. They were also able to use the full array of materials Rotor was dismantling in parallel on its deconstruction sites elsewhere in Belgium.
The resto-bar of the Abattoirs, for instance, has been furnished with elements taken from the cafeteria of the former BNP in Brussels, a late 1970’s design of Christophe Gevers, famous for his restaurant designs. This allowed for the conservation of this unique ensemble which would otherwise have been destroyed as former headquarters are now being demolished. All the storage cabinets of the arts centre, on the other hand, with doors in a light-colored wood veneer, come from another dismantled Brussels office building. They were carefully numbered, disassembled, trucked, and re-assembled, sometimes transformed, on-site. Besides, they also designed new gear, such as the 60 ultra-light tables of beech-rimmed sandwich panels resting on aluminum trestles meant to meet with the need for flexibility of the workshop spaces and meeting rooms. It is designed to be as easily moved and stored as possible.
CASE 04 | ROTOR DECONSTRUCTION
Rotor Deconstruction sells two categories of materials. On the one hand generic construction elements such as doors, windows, lowered ceilings, lighting divises, etc. On the other hand more exceptional batches of materials from landmark buildings.
The "generics" are sold of straight from the deconstruction site. Before starting the dismanteling, an inventory of the available materials is made and send to potential clients in a newsletter. The listings allow clients to select the materials they are most interested in. Once the reserved elements are dismantled and duly packaged, clients are invited to come and pick them up or transport is arranged. This method reduces the cost of transporting and stocking materials and makes it possible for us to provide quality construction elements at very competitive prices, typically 20 to 50% of new value.
Q & A
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.
Maarten Gielen | Rotor Deconstruction
Maarten Gielen | The Big Shuffle
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