YEAR 2012-2013 1rst QUARTER

BUNKER ARCHEOLOGY 2.0

(C) Paul Virilio

Halfway between a compact mineral formation and a voluptuous organic one, the bunker has always strongly resonated in the collective imagination. Despite the fact that it embodies certain values usually reviled by the critics that more and more promote industrialized, lightweight, recyclable and technological guided construction, its study and manipulation can be a very interesting as an academic exercise, not only because it shall reveal relevant laws of its own but also because some of them will help to understand contemporary architecture.

In 1975, at the Museum of Decorative Arts in Paris, Paul Virilio curated  the exhibition "Bunker Archeology", a result of a ten years research based on the military architecture of the Atlantic Wall. Thanks to his phenomenological approach and his ability to contextualize, the French urbanist and essayist relocates the bunker in the spotlight, in a Europe still troubled by the past. Other studies hereafter developed, such as those from Rudi Rolf or Gennaro Postiglione, have shown that bunkers can be considered as a true typology able to establish strong relations with the site where it rests, built with systematic construction techniques and with a rigorous design and execution, which nonetheless is able to undergo significant variations.

In the first quarter we will work with this typology from three different scales of approach: XS, L and XL. Investigate this architecture from a current perspective must rely upon careful analysis of its flexibility and recyclability, since the purpose for which it was intended is not longer binding. By inoculating different programs in these structures, we will be able to cover three areas of research. First: manipulation and experimentation of basic and inmanent questions of our discipline. Second: the connections and links that contemporary architecture has picked up or continued. And third, recyclying and consequently studying its ability to retrieve and/or regenerate deteriorated urban spaces.