Extraordinary art installation by Studio Random International closes this week at the Barbican Museum in London. This spatial experience has been the talk of the town.

Famous for their characteristic approach to art, using experiments and a close collaboration with science,  Studio Random International creates art installations that come to life in interaction with the audience.

Based on the primordial tendency of men to control nature, situated in the London context where rain doesn’t create positive reactions – the installation managed to change the point of view of the visitors regarding rain, from trivial – a weather occurrence to a complex phenomena followed by artistic, psychological and social analysis.

This is the largest and most ambitious art installation Random International has done so far. Rain Room takes up a 100m2 field where a simulation of a rainstorm is performed, through which the visitors can walk and feel the experience of being able to control the rain.

The space that houses the installation is in shape of a curved tunnel, so the visitors at the very entrance here the sound of the rain and feel the humidity in the air, before they walk into a downpour that reacts to their presence and movement.

The first impression goes beyond all expectations and, like any superior work of art, immediately captures the visitor completely. The perfect rain with a strong background lighting shows and makes visible each and every drop of water while the people’s silhouettes and the boundaries of the space remain in the dark. The contrast between the light water drops and the dark space makes the whole experience more intense and spectacular.

After the visitor steps on the platform, an invisible magnetic field is formed around him and in this area the rain stops. Each silhouettes creates a perfect void around which the rain continues its downpour.

It took two years to develop a system with technical capabilities to simulate a real rainstorm in an interior space. The authors wanted the rain to seem absolutely authentic, so research was done about what a rain drop looks like, how it acts, at what speed does it fall and in which way can you create these exact drops inside an interior space only 4m high.

Once the rain is created, a system of 3D cameras and sensors was developed to capture the shape of bodies and three dimensional objects from the moment that walk into the installation, and follow their movement, stopping the water jets above the visitor and allowing him to remain dry while walking through very heavy rain.

The installation authors consider most interesting to watch people’s behavior inside the art installation field, that is the way in which they approach and enter the artificial rainstorm and move through it. In this way the installation investigates the behavior of the exhibition visitors – which are at the same time observers and objects of observation, pushing them out of their comfort zone and suggesting them to try something opposite to their instinctive reactions and intuition.

Each person experiences Rain room in their own way and leaves it with different impressions. After the initial shock, and depending of each visitor’s character, the sentiments of ecstasy, nostalgia, admiration, fear and freedom are mixed. However, the common impression of all visitors remains – that it was an astonishing unreal experience, beyond all expectations.

The Centre for architecture Belgrade submitted two entries for this years Ranko Radović Awards – in cathegory of realized architecture works the project for Juvenile Detention Facility at Kruševac, and in cathegory of TV, exhibitions and multimedia the CAB integrated information system.

The exhibition of works was held at Kolarac Foundation in Belgrade, and the exibition at the Department for architecture of the Faculty of Technical Sciences of the University of Novi Sad will follow.

The Polish pavilion at the Architecture Biennale in Venice received an honorable mention from the jury in the category of national pavilions. Curator Michał Libera, pavilion’s author Katarzyne Krakowiak,  sound designer Ralf Meinz and acoustic engineer Andrzej Kłosak created an architeture of sound. The seemingly empty space of the pavilion is actually filled with sounds, which also affected the architecture of the pavilion itself.

Michał Libera explains: “Architecture is built of sound. It is what makes the diffusion of sound possible—absorbing, filtering, and transferring it, amplifying some of its components at the expense of others. Enclosed spaces are room tones, while niches are specific echoes. The ventilation and heating systems are a quiet yet constant noise, whereas windows and walls are the filtered sounds of street bustle, the buzzing of cicadas, or neighbor’s living rooms. We live, work and play in gigantic complexes of sounds—their distribution is what we call architecture.”

Katarzyna Krakowiak’s sound sculpture Making the walls quake as if they were dilating with the secret knowledge of great powers is the amplification of the Polish Pavilion as a listening-system. Rather than creating a new space, the artist’s proposal for the Architecture Biennale takes an empirical turn, taking the existing interior as its point of departure, with all its deficiencies and imperfections guiding the work. The art is in the “naked building”—presented through sculpture as a complex sonic process that generates, transforms, and transmits sound.

Studies in the natural acoustics of the Polish Pavilion offer several ways to perform the amplification process. Architectural micro-deformations of the building’s walls and floor, the renovation of the ventilation system, and reinforcement of the resonant frequencies serve to bring this latent acoustic experience to the fore.

None of the sounds in the Pavilion are alien to the building. They are all always already there. Yet, once amplified, the familiar ambient sounds become alien themselves. Beyond the visual and the material, they compel us to hear what was always there—the others just outside the walls. Hence, the real subject of the work is essentially the entire architectural complex that is home to four other pavilions: Egypt, Romania, Serbia, and Venice.

Photo: Miloš Mirosavić, Diana Pereira, © Zacheta

Drawing: © Katarzyna Krakowiak

October Art Salon, owing to its tradition of more than four decades, has become a point of reference of Serbian culture.  It is a representative event featuring creators in the broad sphere of visual arts and a great exhibition of authors whose selectors are prominent experts in this area. In the course of its history, the Salon has changed its concept and organizational forms, but it has remained a strong challenge to creative consciousness.

The Salon represents an important segment in the study of the modern Serbian art of the second half of the 20th century. Few years ago Salon became an international event which enabled the start  of a dialogue with the international art scene.

This year’s October Salon, named GOOD LIFE / ГУД ЛАЈФ, under support from City of Belgrade, takes place in one of the most beautiful but also one of the most neglected monumental edifices in Belgrade – building of Belgrade Shareholders’ Association (former building of the Geodetic Institute). The history of this building, in a way, presents the history of 20th century Serbia.

This inspiring location will be used as a space of ad hoc transformation where the works will be “implanted” in its present condition and in its existing historical narrative and architectural design. Every exhibition, in terms of both its physical and discursive realities, is first and foremost a specific form of exchange within a specific framework and under specific social conditions.

Curators of this year’s October Salon, Branislav Dimitrijević and Mika Hannula, assembled forty participants from Finland, Germany, Sweden, Slovakia, Turkey, Bulgaria, Croatia, Estonia, Netherland, Great Britan and Serbia.

Central interest of curators and artists collaborating in this exhibition, is the relationship between spatial and social imagination, the possibility of transforming a space into a place, and a reflective narration into an active physical presence. The architectural setting of the Geodetic Institute building, and the narratives making up its history, are the starting points for reflections on social visions, promises and delusions, typical primarily of the local “version” of the attempt at, gradual progress in and eventual standstill on the path of the social modernization.

The age of modernity was characterized by the capability of forging a vision of the future, which nowadays tends to be dismissed from the relativistic position of skepticism and irony. However, the basic promise of modernity, which essentially boils down to “a good life for everyone”, has remained an irreducible place of bringing together individual desires and social imagination in the process of continual circulation.

Exhibition Opening: Saturday, September 22, 1pm – former building of the Geodetic Institute Karađorđeva 48, Belgrade. The Salon will be open until November 4, 2012.

The exhibition Three pillars: Zoran Bojović opened on Tuesday, September 18th, 2012, in the Gallery-legacy of Milica Zorić and Rodoljub Čolaković, organized by the Museum of Contemporary Art in Belgrade.  Through the work of architect Zoran Bojović who worked with the Belgrade-based company Energoprojekt on projects in Africa and Asia, curators of the exhibition, Andrej Dolinka, Katarina Krstić and Dubravka Sekulić, examine the influence Yugoslav architecture and construction industry had in the countries of the Non-Alignment Movement, and  how this environment affected Yugoslav architects. The exhibition will be open until October 22nd, 2012.

How these projects related to the local population and culture? What is the significance of building water dams, factories and hotels in countries that had recently gained their independence? What is the relation between these buildings and the Non-alignment movement? A passage of time was needed for contextualization of the projects that were designed and realized for what is today referred to as the Global South, and to understand the position of architecture and architects in that process. Most of these question remained unanswered.

One of the construction companies that was particularly active in the development of the Global South – Africa, Asia and the Middle East, was the Belgrade-based Energoprojekt. Among many of Energoprojekt’s architects a special place belongs to Zoran Bojović. Additional to the quality and complexity of the projects he managed, his approach to architecture was of great importance in establishing architecture as a vital and integral part of the work process.

To quote Bojović: “You can not separate architecture from other disciplines. Everything is Architecture. It’s about shaping space. Large engineering projects, especially dams and hydroelectric power plants, effect the change of environment and climate. All this is shaping space, and shaping space is Architecture.” (taken from the interview “All is Architecture”, made for the exhibition).

The goal of the exhibition Three pillars is to position the practice of Zoran Bojović in a larger context of post-colonial development in Africa and the rest of the Global South. The main idea is to showcase the internal and external dynamics of the Non-Alignment Movement, established as a third pillar in the bipolar world of the Cold War era. Further more, the exhibition intends to present the competitive world of the global construction industry, where Energoprojekt played a vital role until the end of the 80-ies, as well as to examine the influence of the global powers on its architectural practice and architects coming from the non-aligned Yugoslavia.

Behind these extensive discourses is the story of Zoran Bojović, the architect who found, in what he calls “my Africa”, the qualities and logic that showed him the way through the design process.

Photo: © Collection of Zoran Bojović

The Society of Urban Planners of Serbia organizes the traditional International Salon of Urban Planning. It is to take place in Leskovac, from 8th to 15th of November 2012.

For all info adress the organizer – UUS, Kneza Miloša 9/1, phone +381 11 3347418 or +381 63 8105864, email urbanist@EUnet.rs.

Centre for Architecture visited the opening of the exhibition Unfinished Modernisations that took place May 19th in the Museum of Yugoslav History. The exhibition was opened with speeches from authors and directors of the project Vladimir Kulić and Maroje Mrduljaš, the president of the Belgrade Society of Architects Ivan Rašković and the Minister of Culture of the Republic of Serbia Predrag Marković.

Photos from this event can be seen on our Facebook album.

Izložba Nedovršene modernizacije: između utopije i pragmatizma se nakon postavke u Mariboru, ovogodišnjoj Evropskoj prestonici kulture, seli u Beograd, u Muzej istorije Jugoslavije u Botićevoj ulici br. 6. Otvaranje je 19. maja u 16h, a izložba će biti otvorena do 1. jula 2012.

Izložba je veliko finale dvogodišnjeg istoimenog istraživačkog projekta, koji se se kroz niz istraživanja, konferencija i izložbi bavio prostorima koje je stvorio socijalistički napredak u bivšoj Jugoslaviji i koji pokušava da utvrdi šta se sa tim prostorima dogodilo nakon sloma zajedničke države i nestanka socijalizma. Izložba na kojoj će biti predstavljeni arhitektonski projekti i veliki urbanistički planovi koji su obeležili jugoslovensko socijalističko razdoblje, usredsređuje se na prekretnice i vizije (nedovršene) modernizacije gradova za vreme socijalizma i teži da odgovori na pitanja u vezi s njihovom ulogom i zaostavštinom u zemljama naslednicama. Izložba je usredsređena na fizički prostor, odnosno na planiranje i izgradnju gradova kao jedno od sredstava socijalističke modernizacije i na ulogu arhitekture u toj proizvodnji. Izložba se takođe bavi simboličkim prostorima u kojima su se ovi procesi odvijali, kao što su geopolitički, kulturni, ekonomski i ideološki prostor. Više o projektu možete saznatiovde.

Organizator izložbe je Društvo arhitekata Beograda, u saradnji sa Muzejom istorije Jugoslavije, Udruženjem hrvatskih arhitekata, Oris-kućom arhitekture (Zagreb), Muzejom za arhitekturu i dizajn (Ljubljana), Umetničkom galerijom Maribor (Maribor) i Koalicijom za održivi razvoj (Skoplje).

Pored izložbe Nedovršene modrenizacija, u Muzeju istorije Jugoslavije je postavljena i izložba Tehnika narodu koja je dostupna posetiocima.

Foto: Beogradski sajam, Hala 1, Beograd
(Milorad Pantović, Milan Krstić, Branko Žeželj) 1954-57.
© Kolekcija Miloša Jurišića

Ne zaboravite da je vreme za prijave za ovogodišnji Salon arhitekture! Rok za prijavu je 3. februar, a za dostavu izložbenih panoa 19. mart.

Kompletan raspis konkursa, uputstva i formulari za prijavu nalaze se na ovom dobro sakrivenom linku.