In 032c Issue 20 (Winter 2010/2011), architect Bjarke Ingels said that these concerns were precisely the ones we should be trying to align with urbanism and architecture. What does this new condition – or surround – entail for architecture? Yes, we can list the changes, and coin new names for them (contemporary art has chosen “Post-Internet”), but what good would that do? Due to the logistics of construction, architecture is perhaps the slowest boat to turn, and no amount of digital processing seems to be speeding it up. But perhaps this delayed reaction makes architecture the ideal discipline through which to observe our changing world. Architecture is the lava rock that distills rainwater of its impurities. It patiently absorbs its context, and registers its change in slow but reliable increments.
Although trained as an architect, ANDREAS ANGELIDAKIS has eschewed designing physical spaces. After the economic crisis in Greece derailed his first brick-and-mortar projects, Angelidakis began creating architectural spaces that live as networked environments, navigated through web browsers and virtual worlds. As such, his work has become a meditation on the idea of ruin – both ancient and economic – and the potential of architecture as a site of of real-time social engagement. Angelidakis has been forced to adapt to the collapsing boundaries of physical space, transposing them to and from the confines of our LCD screens. 032c’s CARSON CHAN interviewed the architect.
