The Things Around Us 51N4E Rural Urban Framework

"Focus made nowadays on dialogue has us thinking about the place dialogue has in the design process in architecture. In The Things Around Us, we reflect--through conversation with 51N4E (Brussels) and Rural Urban Framework (Hong Kong)--on the role conversation plays in contemporary architectural practice and on the ways in which a building relates to its environment. Today, as curator Francesco Garutti writes in his introduction to the project, the increasingly polymorphous, globalized, and complex nature of contexts means that they are constantly changing, shaped by countless economic, political, and cultural shifts. Whether in the biggest cities or most remote villages, architectural practice ends up feeling less about the creation of buildings than about the careful coordination of the many things that surround and influence places and their identities. In response, architects like those of 51N4E and Rural Urban Framework have to shift their positions to become choreographers of dialogue, mediating between communities, between politicians and villagers, and between large-scale forces and local constraints. Architects have to allow the things around them to take the lead in the conversation."--