Extracts from the MADRID_ABIERTO Urban Buddy Scheme sessions

6th OF FEBRUARY OF 2009
Luis Úrculo (moderator)
Studio Kawamura-Ganjavian
C.A.S.I.T.A.
Uriel Fogué
Exprimentolimon
Cecilia Andersson
Kyong Park (moderator)
Alexander Gerdel
Apolonija Šušteršič + Meike Schalk
Teddy Cruz
Kyong Park (questions)
Discussion with the audience

Friday 06th/first session/presentation. Luis Úrculo (Key Portilla and Eli Ganjavian)
(…after nominating the different teams)…we are talking about the city, not as an autistic project, but as that which exists, that functions…its citizens. They activate the city and due to that, a series of responses and projects are generated, to use this area as a means and place for reflection…

STUDIO KAWAMURA-GANJAVIAN

KEY… we met in London, in the University Office of London, later in the Royal College Art and later in the Architecture Association…after working in several countries and cities we decided to work in Madrid, the time was ripe, the city had a vibrant energy that had much to offer, as well as we had things to give in return…
After some debate we have decided to show ‘our house’, our studio, the place where we work.
When we arrived in Madrid three years ago we decided to create a place, a platform in which not only both of us would work but also other creative people, to develop synergies, to share and contaminate each other.
Looking around we found Plátano street, in the north part of the Madrid centre, near plaza de Castilla, towards where the city centre gravitates. Urban development, skyscrapers, office buildings…but also, this area of Valdeacederas (within the neighbourhood of Tetuán) is an almost rural structure, which with the explosive growth of the 50/60/70’s has been gobbled up by the city.
Here there is a light industry, garages, light metallurgy, printer’s…in fact, when we saw an old printer’s we had no doubt about it; that was the place for our platform.
We are literally under the shade of Castellana’s four towers. ..

ALI...the main goal of this project was on how to put people from multiple disciplines together in one platform. How to manifest our ideology and things learnt in our teaching experience and to use it in one space. With the intent of putting our philosophy into practice, as architects, we started out from the smallest objects to the largest scales and understood that this only works by using systems…
…more than 38 people share our studio, contaminating each other and working in common projects…
…they are two main spaces, a ‘space for communication’, where we explore and communicate what we do to the outside world, and a ‘contamination space’ (we think of it positively) essential in order to work, to know what the other does and learn from each other.
This is the context, but space is not relevant without the people involved.
We didn’t choose the neighbourhood in an arbitrary way; we chose it for its possibilities and we are interested in our potential interaction with it.

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Transcriber’s comments.
(1) A video is played to show how neighbours ignore the studio’s activities…a street survey, ignorance of its existence, vague ideas, the acknowledgement of its presence…images of people that look through the window…and slowly change their opinion, friendly accepting these ‘youngsters’…
(2) Then another video is played showing the ‘perplexity’ of studio members.
“A great canvas where we can all participate…” says Ali.
“…set designers, fashion, communication, architects; we also have the Banana Association, for ‘non-institutional’ cultural activities. On Thursdays there are activities, every two weeks there are conferences, debates, performances…”
(3) Ali continues…”and as third part there is the ‘Banana TV Studio’, an audiovisual platform; we want to promote multidisciplinary audiovisual culture. The platform is made up of a series of editors, specialists on different fields that edit an audiovisual magazine selecting videos from Internet following the own editorial guidelines. We also have our own audiovisual production agency to publish interviews, articles, documentaries on the world of art, design, culture, architecture…We show a concrete project, an assignment by MATADERO. They asked for a reflection on different utopian cities of the XXI century. Upon the possibility of expressing only one answer, we are 38 people with different backgrounds…we decide to play four different short movies to show the plurality, its multiplicity. They are presented in a summarized form, a superposition of statements on the city’s inconveniences, the noise, the skyscrapers, the machines…the need for a utopian city, plausible… You can watch the videos in www.studiobanana.org in studio banana TV…thanks”

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