GAC at the 2010 Venice Biennale

General Architecture Collaborative is participating in this year's Venice Biennale. The GAC project, Tirana Local examines the possibility of strategic infrastructural reuse intended to support public, commercial, and cultural development in the Albanian capital of Tirana. Utilizing an existing vacant train station situated at the terminus of a formal axis designed by Mussolini's architects, GAC re-interpreted the station as a destination within the city. The exhibit is part of the Albanian Pavilion at the Venice Biennale beginning August 29 and concluding November 21.

The Venice Biennale has for over a century been one of the most prestigious cultural institutions in the world. Since its foundation in 1895, it has been in the avant-garde, promoting new artistic trends and organizing international events in contemporary arts.

http://www.labiennale.org/en/architecture/exhibition/national-participations

Jack the Accountant + STEALTH

A few weeks ago when I went to file my taxes I met Jack the Accountant by coincidence. Jack helped set up John Dau Foundation - http://johndaufoundation.org - and he offered to work with us on getting the tax-exempt status. Just like that! Amazing, Jack the Accountant. We still have a lot to do before getting that status, but last night it became clear that we have to expedite the process.
Last night STEALTH from Belgrade and Rotterdam came to speak at Syracuse school of architecture:
http://www.stealth.ultd.net/stealth/
During the entire lecture I was writing down not what they were saying but what GAC can do right now. That's how good their work was. STEALTH is intelligent in their design economy and thinking methods. They are unafraid when they say architecture as we know it is on its way out, and they are genuine when they speak of its alternative form with much hope. Jack and STEALTH are inspiring.
This summer GAC would like to build a prototype home for the village in Rwanda. In order to use our own funds for this prototype it would be good to have the tax-exempt status. All this pro-prac stuff we never learned in school.
Yutaka

501(c)3, here we come!

We have began the process of obtaining the tax exemption status - 501(c)3. The Office of Clinical Legal Education at Syracuse University will be providing us the legal services for free. Thank you Akira and Ted for your help.

Fund Raiser Kick-Off

 

This morning, 700 high school students at CBA in Syracuse, NY, gathered in the gym to hear Yutaka introduce Dushyigikirane and our project in Masoro. They were tickled when the mechanism of bio-gas digester was explained.

Deborah J. Norden Fund

The Architectural League has a blog post about GAC. The Deborah J. Norden Fund of the Architectural League of New York grant brought Yutaka to Rwanda for the first time. Accompanied by Jamie and Amanda, the three socially-minded architects/artists traveled the country talking to people, made contact with Constance, and GAC started! More information about the grant here.

Fund Raising with Syracuse High Schoolers

Yutaka and Nora Hakizimana, a 16-year-old high school student at Christian Brothers Academy in Syracuse, NY, will be launching a fund raising campaign with 700 CBA students on Wednesday, 2/10.
Nora was born in the Congo while her parents were in exile from Rwanda. When the violence in the Congo began, she moved to Rwanda to live with her relatives. Her parents, however, immigrated to Syracuse, and 8 years ago she moved here to be reunited with them. By a freak chance Yutaka met Nora, Nora convinced her school master to do a school-wide fundraiser, and those students are going to help build a community center for the ladies in Masoro. Seriously.

We Are Making Improvements - Please excuse our ever changing website

We are updating, trying new interfaces, and learning to right html, css, php, etc.  So, our website { gacollaborative.org } is going through some growing pains .  Thanks for understanding

Did it!

The web site is up! Many thanks to Mike and Zaneta, our newly-wed work horses. It looks really great.

New Website Coming Soon!

We have been working on a new website to accompany our blog . It should be ready in a few days. Just follow the link.

Much thanks to Joel Nolan.

Sudan Project | Kapoeta, Sudan

The owner of a small inn and restaurant in the southern Sudanese town of Kapoeta approached GA|C to design a multi-purpose functional room. The owner hoped to increase their income by this additional amenity so he could build a school for his home town. Our solution – the skeleton scheme – internalized the structure in order to maximize the light and access to the garden.
 

Camera Obscura Project | Syracuse, New York

The Camera Obscura Project was a proposal to create a space where children in an underserved neighborhood could document and change the images of their own community. GA|C worked with a local photographer, Steven Mahan to develop a site adjacent to the future home of  his studio in the Near Westside neighborhood in Syracuse, NY where Steven would be teaching.

Using a small building designed to function as a Camera Obscura, the Near Westside neighborhood would be projected upside-down on a wall inside. Children can interact with the images, and they are in turn recorded by a video camera and sent to the computer in a near-by classroom. Children can then manipulate the images from the Camera Obscura as a part of the visual technology course. The transformed images would then be projected to an exterior wall of the building and become the backdrop of performing art projects.

Near Westside is the 9th poorest census tract in the United States and children in this neighborhood do not enjoy a safe environment to grow in. While writing and drawings may intimidate children, photography is an accessible and effective form of expression. The program is rooted in the community in that the students photograph their environment as subject matter to confront and understand it. Those photographs are shared, discussed and questioned --enlightening the community and building self-esteem in the creators.

Izmir Project | Izmir, Turkey

Gecekondu are informal squatter settlements that occupy the majority of urban peripheries in Turkey. In Izmir, 50% of the population lives in gecekondu. As in many conservative communities, women do not have formal public spaces in gecekondu. Men gather in cafés that dot the main street. Women gather in domestic spaces. The only visible spaces in which they gather outside are informal work spaces attached to infrastructure. It is here that women have a chance to claim their own public space so they may engage in civic discussion on how they want to build their city. The project proposed a network of small public work spaces for women along the steep stairs. The stairs led to a new soccer field located between the old informal settlement and the new government housing in order to bring these communities together. The wastewater from homes was treated by the constructed wetland in the valley, and would be used to irrigate the soccer field and the vegetable gardens.

Greenstop Rest Area | Central Valley, California

Already an anomaly within the homogeneous and linear interstate highway system, a rest area is an opportunity to reconsider the highway’s relationship to the surrounding communities it links. Possibly a self-styled community in its own right, the Greenstop rest area is a place to foster connections between the various travelers on Highway 99 – something that can be achieved by redesigning the relationships between specific requirements for each of its users: local residents, tourists, and truck drivers. Through the incorporation of natural processes into highway design, the Greenstop not only becomes a destination for Californian drivers, but it also allows technology and nature to co-inhabit a site as equals, revitalizing a key area and precedent to future sustainable development.

Homeless Shelter | Austin, Texas

For a competition in 2008 for temporary customizable art exhibition spaces for Austin TX, we decided to design a system that allowed these structures to be reused as temporary homeless shelters.  Each unit is comprised of a few manufactured metal parts and wood slats that can be cut and assembled on site.  Each person has the ability tobuild their own shelter or exhibit space, disassemble it and re-construct it on another site.

High Type | New Orleans, Louisiana

In the aftermath of Katrina it was clear that designers needed to consider how spaces could both rebuild what was lost, and provide spaces that could function in the event of future flooding.  We decided to test a few ideas for this by developing a high density building type used open spaces as a vertical boarders between office, institutional and retail spaces one the first two floors and housing on the upper floors. We also wanted to learn from how people use public space in New Orleans to help develop this new building typology.

 

Marriage & Donation

Congratulations to 2 GAC members who got married last month!  Donations to the Masoro Community Center were made on behalf of the couple's friends and family.  A big thank you to :

 Kaye & Tony, Sang & Young, Josh & Minh, Sam & Cody, John & Rita, Pamela & Erin, Liat, Pontus, Aoi, Stella, Iris, Cherrie & Josh, Takuma & Darina, Meg, Liam & Sarah, Nik & Lensi, Farshid & Katy.

We all thank you.

Masoro Community Center | Masoro, Rwanda

The Association Dushyigikirane is a cooperative founded and operated by the widows of the 1994 genocide in Rwanda. Based in the rural village of Masoro, 20 km outside of the capital Kigali, Dushyigikirane’s 800 members run more than 10 economic and social service projects – the Dushyigikirane’s orphanages, dairy farm, fishery, bakery, and basket weaving projects benefit not only its members, but the entire village of Masoro. In 1997, Dushyigikirane designed and implemented a planned village for 70 of its homeless members. Though they lacked professional knowledge and adequate funds, their design was informed by the lived experience of the widows and addressed a comprehensive set of spatial and infrastructure issues.

Currently, GA | C is working with Dushyigikirane to plan and design their new village of 100 home and an accompanying community center. The first phase of the project will include the community center complex with an auditorium, information technology office, workshops, nursery school and job training center.

Jean Claude

Jean Claude Tuyishimire is an adopted son of Constance. He was six years old when he met Constance at the central market in Kigali where he worked as a baggage boy. While Claude carried Constance’s purchases to the car, Constance asked him his story. Claude’s mother died when he was an infant, perhaps from childbirth, malnourishment or an infectious disease, all of which are wide spread causes of death in Rwanda. His father was killed in the genocide, and Claude was living in a Red Cross refugee camp as he made his own living at the market. Constance took him home that day. A week later he started school in Masoro village. Claude, now a scholarship student at the prestigious National University of Rwanda, would tell you proudly that he has never been number two in his class since he started school, always the best in his class. When given a book, he said “I have a problem. When I’m having books I cannot stop reading.” And he kept reading happily, the conversation hanging in mid-air.

Association Dushyigikrane

The Association Dushyigikrane is run by Constance Bangire and features several workshop buildings, including a bakery, a small soap-making factory, an office building, a café, a large hut for sewing and displaying goods, and a traditional round hut where meetings are held, classes are taught, and decisions are made.

Women in Rwanda

When the war was over, 70% of the Rwandan population was women. Today, over 50% of the Rwandan parliament is served by women representatives, which is the best gender balance in the world (In comparison, the United States Congress is only 17% women). Rwanda’s quick recovery from the destruction of war is in large part thanks to the women and children who worked together to rebuild their communities.

Genocidaires

Genocidaires make reparations through physical labor. They work in teams repairing roads and building houses for the families of their victims, often living close by. Their uniforms are coded blue for nonviolent crime, and pink for violent crime.

Memorial

The genocide killed 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus in a country of eight million people. Although the war that began in 1990 and the genocide that followed were understood by the international community as rooted in century-long ethnic tension - therefore an "African problem" - experts argue otherwise. Belgian colonial rule which began after World War I transformed the socioeconomic separation between Tutsi and Hutu into an ethnic one. It solidified their differences in the polemics of foreigner (Tutsi) versus native (Hutu), whereas before the boundary between the two identities was a socio-economic one: A Hutu could gain cattle through labor, receive education, own land, and become a Tutsi. Ethnicity became a scapegoat for all societal rifts; political parties were formed around ethnic loyalty; and attacks on the opposition parties were made mainly according to innate ethnic character, and not on their policies. This factor made women especially vulnerable during the genocide.

Traditional Architecture

Traditional houses were made of wood, reeds, straw, clay soil and soil from termite's nests. Intricately woven mats were used as partitions. Houses, housing properties and farmland formed overlapping circles, becoming increasingly public as one moved outward. In the case of the king's palace, the innermost core of these circles was the windowless bedroom for the queen who would never leave the room.

Traditional houses shown at National Museum.