“The Excavated Field,” commissioned by Francesca Ferguson, as curator of 'Talking Cities: the micro-politics of urban space', at the Zollverein Coking Plant, Essen, Germany as part of Entry 2006, directed by Rem Koolhaas, commencing August 2006.

http://www.slashseconds.org/issues/001/003/
articles/ffergusonplewis/index.php

Architecture prof participating in two European architectural happenings

Peter Lang, assistant professor of architecture at Texas A&M University, is participating this year in installations at two exciting European architectural happenings — the 10th International Architecture Exhibition of the Venice Biennale in Venice, Italy, Sept. 10 – Nov. 19, and the Talking Cites exhibition at ENTRY 2006, at the Zollverein World Heritage Site (a former mining facility) in Essen, Germany, Aug. 26 – Dec. 3.

ENTRY 2006, a 100 day exhibition, will focus on design as the motor of the creative sector and a competitive and innovative economic factor of the future. The main exhibition, which will be housed in a former coal washing plant redesigned by Rem Koolhaas, will showcase “perspectives and visions in design.” A total of 300 exhibits from more than 20 countries will be on display to the public.

Lang will be participating in the ENTRY 2006 “Talking Cities” installation with Stalker, a Rome-based urban group concerned with study and realization of peripheral territories and the marginal communities that have settled in them. “Talking Cities” aims to reveal new perspectives on the fragmented conditions that make up present day urban realities. The exhibition will feature innovative international design, architecture and spatial interventions in a trans-disciplinary exhibition and event platform that stretches the boundaries of architecture and urban design and shifts the perceptions of contemporary city spaces. Curated by Francesca Ferguson of Germany, the installation will be designed in the spirit of Cedric Price’s Fun Palace — employing a flexible construction that acts as social and informal architecture that can be adapted and transformed by the protagonists. A dense collage of statements and designs will make tangible the dialogue on reconfiguring, and reactivating the marginal, residual and public spaces of cities.

At the 10th International Architecture Exhibition of the Venice Biennale, “Cities, Architecture and Society,” research institutions from around the world will share their visions for urban intervention. To that end, Lang is participating with VATAR-PTL and Yona Friedman, the French radical architect, in one of 19 architectural groups who will be transforming the Italian Pavilion to produce a large-scale futuristic model of Venice. Lang said his group will install “a fully integrated market environment in a bamboo forest.”

Related links:

More on Entry 2006
http://www.entry-2006.de/Web/en/index.html

http://en.welcome-europe.de/veranstalter/
entry_2006_zeche_zollverein.php

Talking Cities, The Micropolitics of Urban Space
http://talkingcities.org/talkingcities/pages/1_en.html

http://www.glowlab.com/lab2/
issue.php?project_id=138&issue_name=9

10th International Architecture Exhibition
http://www.labiennale.org/en/architecture/

Stalker manefesto
http://digilander.libero.it/stalkerlab/tarkowsky/
manifesto/manifesting.htm

World Heritage Site: The Zollverein coal mine industrial complex in Essen, Germany consists of the complete infrastructure of a historical coal-mining site, with some 20th-century buildings of outstanding architectural merit. It constitutes remarkable material evidence of the evolution and decline of an essential industry over the past 150 years.