Architecture for communication | WOWHOUSE in Berlin
Wowhaus concentrates primarily on the design of public space and planning cultural buildings. The most important aspect of their work is to create spaces where social life develops and new activities can be pursued. This intention is particularly notable because until recently most of Moscow’s public spaces were either huge and empty or entirely filled with parked cars. Ever since the world-famous Gorky Park was redesigned (Wowhaus, 2010), a general change in mind-set has taken place: Numerous public spaces were redesigned, financed by public and private commissions. The projects by Wowhaus are amongst the most important of these projects and represent the re-thinking of urban spaces.
Wowhaus: Olive Beach, 2011 (Photo: Olga_Alexeenko)
Wowhaus | Architecture for communication
Architektur Galerie Berlin
www.architekturgalerieberlin. de
PR Info _ Wowhaus concentrates primarily on the design of public space and planning cultural buildings. The most important aspect of their work is to create spaces where social life develops and new activities can be pursued. This intention is particularly notable because until recently most of Moscow’s public spaces were either huge and empty or entirely filled with parked cars. Ever since the world-famous Gorky Park was redesigned (Wowhaus, 2010), a general change in mind-set has taken place: Numerous public spaces were redesigned, financed by public and private commissions. The projects by Wowhaus are amongst the most important of these projects and represent the re-thinking of urban spaces.
The success of this sort of project depends on the extent to which active urban life develops. Regardless of specific use, there is one criteria that is equally important to all of the projects: To what extent do the new structures enable and/or initiate real communication between users and protagonists; to what degree is it really Architecture for communication.
For the exhibition, Wowhaus translated this theme into an installation, a collage of their most successful projects. Together they form a gallery-filling amphitheater, a design element that plays an important role in all of the Wowhaus buildings. By merging mock-ups of different projects, the studio simultaneously shows how an architectural element can be transformed to suit different tasks. A video and sound installation completes the amphitheater, showing examples of how the different projects are used.
Moscow-based Wowhaus was founded in 2007 by Oleg Shapiro and Dmitry Likin. Since then, several projects of various scale were constructed, including the Strelka Institute (2010), Olive Beach at Gorky Park (2010), the Documentary Film Centre (2013) and the Pioneer Summer Cinema (2014). “Architecture for Communication” is Wowhaus’s first exhibition in Germany.
To demonstrate the idea of Architecture for communication Moscow based Pioner Cinema curated a series of venues. Under the motto “From Soviet Avant-garde to New Documentary” it is going to screen outstanding movies every Wednesday and Thursday night for a duration of four weeks. Complete program is available on www.architekturgalerieberlin. de.
Inf + illus. courtesy Architekturgalerie Berlin
