TA23-S O-Pages - Flipbook - Page 36
Voices
big honor for us, but it’s also tiring. The metaphor
I always give is it’s like you just 昀椀nished doing the
winter Olympics, and then you turn around and
do the summer Olympics. We spent all of last year
doing the Art Biennale, and then suddenly we’re
back again to do the Architecture Biennale.
AT: How did that idea of continuity
impact your inspiration or the di昀昀erent
components of your proposal?
DO: Going back many years, we’ve had a lot
of interest in — as you know by the name of
our firm — lowness. In the world of architecture, minimalism is usually understood as
beautiful and simple white furniture in a white
room. But those aesthetic ideas about what is
minimal don’t always take sustainability into
account. If you really want to think about
something that’s minimal, you have to think
about things like carbon footprint or your
impact on the environment. We have a lot of
interest in bamboo because it’s a carbon sink,
so it actually sucks more carbon out of the
environment than you end up using to turn
it into a building, in certain cases. Even in
regions that have historically used bamboo, the
material has not always transitioned effectively
into the vocabulary of modern architecture,
mainly because every stick of bamboo is different. They’re non-standard. With lumber
in the U.S., the trees are all different, but you
go through a lot of procedures to end up with
dimensional lumber. These same processes
are just beginning for bamboo. That’s why in
Nigeria and Ghana, we were working experimentally with bamboo and trying to solve this
fundamental problem of how to take a nonstandard bioproduct and turn it into standardized elements for construction.
RB: DK has been working on this technology
since his undergrad thesis 20 years ago and
continued to develop it in his graduate thesis.
Taking it to the next step happened in 2019,
when we were 昀椀nalists for MoMA PS1. The
modules were 昀椀rst introduced at that point, and
we started to 昀椀gure out the technology for how
to put this thing together quickly and smartly
and e昀케ciently. We worked with Drophouse
Design to develop the joints. Christian Klein
and Matt Satter helped make prototypes of
the 昀椀rst joints and 昀椀gured out how to 昀椀t them
together. We had our proposal for the 昀椀rst prototype, and there’s been several other iterations
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since then. There’s a number of di昀昀erent
systems involved, and each one has evolved over
time with each iteration.
DO: These structures, we call them fufuzela.
It’s a neologism that’s trying to underscore the
shared history that Africa has. If you watched
the World Cup when it was in South Africa, they
had what looked like plastic trumpets — they’re
called vuvuzela — and they just make one sound.
Traditionally they were understood as ecclesiastical instruments, used in religious ceremonies. So
they had a certain role that they played within
society. Africa is very much connected to sounds.
Many cultures historically, at least in West Africa,
would also use drums to communicate information between di昀昀erent areas. And in West Africa
there’s a food called fufu, which is like a dough
of pounded yam, cassava, or plantain. Di昀昀erent groups of people have their own recipe, and
you normally eat it with a kind of soup or stew.
You eat as a group in a way that brings people
together. It’s very emblematic of African culture.
It’s also representative of how close people are
to the land. We put these words together to talk
about an architecture of community.
We also understand them as embryos of a
future architecture which is alive and sentient and
mobile. Sometimes people 昀椀nd it very strange
when we talk about that. But in many African
understandings of reality, everything that is physical is considered to be spiritually active. We might
talk about the human soul, but in many African
cultures everything that is material has a soul or
spirit energy. That means that a stone is alive,
and a river is alive, and a mountain is alive. It’s
a bit meta for a lot of mainstream architecture,
but that’s why we see this as a long-term project
of discovery and experimentation. But we do talk
about the fufuzela as a living structure.
AT: I know you just now 昀椀nished the
installation process over in Venice. Were
there any challenges that came up, or anything that worked particularly well due to
your prototyping process?
DO: Our main challenge was logistical. It’s
always tricky to move a bunch of people between
di昀昀erent countries. Also, we do design-build, so
we built our pavilion. A lot of other architects
relied on local contractors or technicians, but for
the most part we built it ourselves. We had two or
three days, with a bit of help from a few technicians. We came here with bags full of power tools
and started cutting and making and building.