#sniper's log

[urbanlabglobalcities]

What am I reading? The Sniper's Log | Alejandro Zaera Polo (part1)

I'm reading Alejandro Zaera-Polo's (AZP) The Sniper's Log. I will post in this tumblr quotes, abstract from the books, passages I find very interesting, informative, critical or polemical.

We start with:

To synthesize new architectural fabric for contemporary contexts operating simultaneously on many levels: technical, material and cultural. (p.324)

This short passage is from On Context, a short reflection on the concept of context, very important in AZP's architectural practice and thought. This concept (with others such as On Production, On the Prototype, On Fabrics, On Materials, and so on) is part of the long text Remix 2000 a text originally published in Foreign Office Architects, 2G n.16 (Barcelona), 2001.

from The Sniper's Log | Alejandro Zaera-Polo || Actar Editorial

[urbanlabglobalcities]

The excuse uses the techniques of the critical while enabling agency; it articulates a particular form of relationship between desire and constraint, hopefully aimed to break with both the tautological discourse of visionary architecture (the architect as the master/dominatrix), with the infinite suppleness of the pragmatist approach (the architect as submissive slave, subject to the client’s desires) and with the celibacy of the project of autonomy its abstinence-driven techniques (the architect declines the engagement with power under the fear of being used.)

The Sniper's Log | Alejandro Zaera-Polo || published by Actar Editorial, 2012, p.272