Hey guys,

It's been a great year and we hope the next one will even top it.

I speak for the whole team when I wish you all a very merry holiday season spent with the ones you hold dearest. I hope you've been good this year so Santa would fill your stocking with terrific ideas, cheerfulness and... um... world peace. Oh wait, that's not Santa, that's Miss World.

Anyhow, put down your pencils for a while, pop the champagne open and celebrate! You've earned it!

All the best to all of you and we'll be back on January.

On second Sunday we learned pattern cutting and each of us made himself/herself a jumpsuit made out of white linen. We went to four London areas (described in one of the previous posts) wearing these jumpsuits and examined the reactions of passers-by. Their reactions were of course very different and, depending on the social structure, very characteristic for each of the four areas.

People in Bank didn’t even want to notice anything while rushing to work, so for Bank, our catastrophe was an extreme isolation of people in their workspace. In Brick Lane, passers-by thought we were exercising some sort of a religious protest, so for this area a potential catastrophe is a conflict between groups of emigrants from Bangladesh and groups of artists.

For Piccadilly Circus, the distinctive catastophe is an overaboundance of turists, who were expecting a performance from us. And for Canary Wharf, where they immediately arrested us, the artificiality and total control of the surroundings.

In conclusion: each of these situations (city overcrowded with tourists, cultural and religious conflicts, isolation and control of the living environment) can potentially lead to a catastrophe if it culminates extremely.

On third Sunday we worked on a project for final presentation in which we presented our group as an agency for raising awareness and warning people about potential local catastrophes. Our agency was named CSCC: Citizens for a Social Cooperative through Catastrophe and our slogan was »The only way to imagine a Utopia of social cooperation is to conjure a situation of absolute catastrophe.« (Slavoj Žižek) This slogan was selected by our tutor Cher, who is a big fan of Slavoj Žižek's work.

Our presentation

In our work we decided to focus on existing local social relations instead of global catastrophes. The project developed pretty much spontanely and so the discussions from one day lead to what we want to do the next day. We made a blog where we posted a part of our work and our comments. Here’s one of my early comments on the topic of relations between architecture and fashion design:

There are obviously 2 kinds of relations: architecture - fashion design as practices and other kind of relations: building - clothing as products. Relation between building and clothing which are basically relations in formal and functional aspect and relation in meanings or messages.

And as practices both architecture and fashion design are about future, about predictions, projections... Architectural design is always about seeking for solutions, answers ..which may be different from fashion design. Both architecture and fashion design are reflections of society and though they have a more or less parallel development through history with other forms of art but there is different process, or different way from context to concept, similarities and differences in approach to existing physical context, cultural context, social, political …  and then relations in dealing with identity of person and identity of place , where architecture is about creating sense of where we are and fashion deals with sense of who we are, and illusions of both where we are and who we are.

In school, hard at work

In the last week two presentations of Trimo Urban Crash were held on architecture faculties in  Bosnia, one in Banja Luka and one in Sarajevo. Both were attended by 50-70 students. I think.. no, I'm sure the interest and positive response can be attributed to the fact there are no international competitions of this sort in Bosnia so participating in such competition is of great value and importance to young architects.

Through the presentation students and professors got familiar with the competition itself as well as Trimo materials. I must say I was taken aback in Sarajevo a bit when I saw how enthusiastic some of the students already were, discussing the innovative possibilities of their projects, from general ideas to implementation of various materials. In my opinion, students from both faculties are ready to aim high this year, showing optimistic and competitive spirit and willingness to prove their creativity and knowledge to their foreign peers.

Students attending the presentation in Sarajevo - is the winner among them?

The competition is a great opportunity for these young talents to be what they are, or better yet, what they would like to become in their profession. There should really be more  competitions of this sort so the future designers of our urban environment could display their vision and ideas. After all, they dedicated their future to their work and their endeavor to make our lives better and more interesting. Let's help them do it! And have fun while doing it! :)

Sad news today as legendary Danish architect Jorn Utzon passed away on Saturday, aged 90.

Utzon is most known for his design (and construction) of the Sydney Opera House. Well, most known to the specific public of architects and designers, really, since the general public usually remembers the works only. This is also definitely one of the most interesting examples of a building being made and becoming, after initial general outrage and critisism, one of the most distinctive and well-known buildings in the world.

I got to know Utzon's work a little better when I visited his exhibition in the Biennale di Venezia. What I felt can be described in two words: surprising and profoundly inspiring. Well, three words. That's how moved I was.

The exhibition was in a way a retrospective of his work, showing his rich portfolio and explaining to the layman where he found ideas and inspirations. Nature was perhaps the most influental, as we can find in his work many motives from sea to trees and influences of landscapes from Mexico to China. His understanding of shapes and mathematics was light years away from me, thus making my personal experience that stronger.

In order to pay tribute to the great mind that was Jorn Utzon, I collected some interesting and amusing examples of works inspired by his Opera House. Rest in peace and my concolences to the Utzon family.