November 17

Manual of Architectural Possibilities 001 – Antarctica

Filed Under books, design 

(This post is published courtesy of DPR-Barcelona)

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“In a new publication it may be hard -but it should be fundamental- that the objective is to provoke the well behaved, the lazy, the arrogant, the meek, the uncertain… all of them into stepping outside the bars, coffe-houses, duvets, libraries… and get stuck into the business of creativity”
Peter Cook MAP 01 Intro

David Garcia Studio has just shared with us his fantastic publication Manual of Architectural Possibilities (MAP 01) that is neither a book nor a magazine. It is a compendium of ideas printed on both sides of a single A1 sheet on 80g COLORIT 72 paper, and folded to 297mm x 105mm.

This first issue deals with one of the few unexploited areas left in the world (or maybe the only one): The Antarctica. An hostile but fascinating place “owned by no state but claimed by many, desolate in winter, inhabited by thousands in summer and with no resident architects” …yet.

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According to the  National Geophysical Data Center, Antarctica, on average, is the coldest, driest, and windiest continent, and has the highest average elevation of all the continents and there are no permanent human residents but anywhere from 1,000 to 5,000 people reside throughout the year at the research stations scattered across the continent.

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So, what you will find in this publication is a provocative sort of projects proposed in this remote area. In one side we can find objective ideas about developing projects in this region and by the other side it is stimulant to find some speculative projects ranging from the use of unuseful Boeings to set scientific stations and the use of hexagonal-shaped units that can be placed in the site and then recovered some years after buried while studying the low site conditions.

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As Peter Cooks quotes in his inspiring Introduction “If I look back to Archigram or look sideways to the work and publications of Atelier Bow Wow in Tokyo I am reminded of the power of ideas.”

We think that this is the most amazing thing of this publication: that is based on IDEAS. By the way, in the basic idea that architects are curious by nature. Maybe you’re not thinking in designing a project in the coldest area of the world, but we’re sure that you will enjoy reading and “surfing” all over this A1 sheet and discover all about snow crystals typologies, iceflow directions or extremophiles.

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The surprising format allows to carry the publication in almost every place you go, and the ideas are so stimulating that the only thing you can do is to read the next one and then just realized that the whole volume has gone… but then you can wrap in your studio (the design is awesome) and read after again while tell your colleagues about the new site of your next project.

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The infographics are really well done. You can find a space-time calendar that starts in the 1st Century, telling us that that Ptolemy suggested the idea of a vast continent on the far south of the globe, and then  followed with some interesting data, as it was only in the 16th Century when Terra Australis (Unknown Southern Land) appears on maps and in 1840 Charles Wilkes was the first person to realize he has discovered a whole continent. And so on until in 1978 when the first baby was born in the continent.

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This brief description will allow you to notice the contents of this provocative MAP:

PROJECTS PAGE:
* Ready Made Antarctic Base Station: Reusing discarded aircrafts (Boeing 747-Boeing 767-Airbus 340)to build scientific camps
* Sustainable Iceberg Living Station: Constructing camps without building and transporting materials…just the capacities of caterpillar excavators to hold out an iceberg
* South Pole Universal Seed Archive:Planting a seed archive at South Pole taking advantage of its climatic conditions. A kind of flag garden, a map a GPS landscape.
* Ice Flow and Sea Current Research Unit: Using the flowing nature of the terrain to place, bury, float and hang research units.

ANTARCTICA DATA PAGE: Geography, Topography, Topological Sections, Iceflow Directions, Icebergs, Climate, Ice and Snow, Flora an Fauna, Extremophiles, Political Claims, Antarctic Treaty, First Settlements, Building in the Antarctic, Base stations.

COLLABORATORS: Troels Faber / NR2154, Papa Productions, Heidi Cathrine Østergaard, Alanna Baudinet, Stine Avlund, Marion Spillmann, Ylva Hazell and Kaja Sofie Skytte.

We are searching the path of the next provocation for imaginative spirits (MAP#2)… to discover locations and to pose new questions to the answers that we think we already have.

“Brainstorms precipitate, MAP is the result.”

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