The Why Factory at Strelka Institute for Media, Architecture and Design
The Why Factory was part of the Summer Program at Strelka Institute for Media, Architecture and Design with a second Copy/Paste workshop. A week long event was first opened with a lecture by Winy Maas on the 24th of August. The workshop led by Prof.Winy Maas, Felix Madrazo and Alexander Sverdlov addressed questions of originality and the way copying increasingly affects the architectural profession.
Today, when internet enables an immense speed of ideas dissemination and conceptual design allows for a lack of specificity (formerly indispensable in a foregone handcraft profession) copying becomes easy, cheap and fast. Meanwhile clients demand a faster design process, which doesn’t require blueprints anymore. A selling render is sufficient as long as it can be delivered on a short notice. Architectural competitions are investments with very low probability of success. So, who can still invest in originality? –Especially in the time of crisis.
During the workshop participants were asked to reconsider the fashion of reckless and quick Copy/Pasting. They explored how, through copying, one could be inventive, translate borrowed ideas to another scale, or change their meaning. All teams prepared short videos showing the process of copying by the use of Photoshop to create a render collage of the new copy.
Copy/Paste workshops took place At Delft University of Technology in spring 2011 (23.03.2011 – 31.03.2011) and at Strelka Institute for Media, Architecture and Design (24.08.2011 – 30.08.2011) in summer 2011. Selected works from both workshops will soon be available on our YouTube channel.