As New Households
La Biennale di Venezia – Arsenale
OPAFORM architects
Make a Space for My Body
We appreciate the question raised by the curators: “How will we live together” as it is both a simple question and at the same time hugely complex. It goes straight to the core of what architecture is and what architecture should be about. We see that the architecture that we will share tomorrow is already built. Our task as architects is to, rather than make new buildings, transform the existing ones to meet new needs; new households.
For several years we have been doing just that; softly transforming existing buildings by adding new additions that increases their potential use. After a while we have come to realize that this is much more than an idea or a strategy, it is also a new field for architects to operate within. It requires skills and training that is specific. There needs to be a symbiotic spatial relationship between what is already there and what is added for the transformation to be valid.
Both concerning the historic value of the existing buildings that we are set to manage as a society, and due to the use of resources; we cannot demolish and replace buildings the way we currently are doing. At the same time it is important that the architectural answers to solutions where one both preserve existing structures, and use minimal resources is not of lesser quality than the alternative. Preferable greater.
We build modules that provide existing buildings with new functions, new household typologies.
In making the modules we only use two materials, wood and wool. This choice of materials comes from our attitude towards architecture. In every culture architecture starts as a way of controlling the climate. From the building of a wall to protect against a certain type of wind, a roof to give shelter from the rain or to shade from the sun. The basic role of the architect is to rearrange the materials that surround us. And the more immediate this is done, the better the architecture will become.