Archaeologies of today
fff.collective is a young practice exploring the intersection between architecture, design, and communication. Our aim is to bring a variety of visions of the built environment to a wide range of audiences, through multidisciplinary projects, open research frameworks and accessible publications and exhibitions. Currently, our main line of work explores the potential of fiction to reimagine the relationship between architecture and the environment in the age of climate emergency.
Founded in Madrid in 2023, the collective is built as a result of our past experiences and shared interests: from architecture to curation and exhibition design; from socially committed communication to sustainable design processes.
ARCHAEOLOGIES OF TODAY is an open research platform –and subsequent exhibition– on architecture, climate emergency and the power of fiction as a situated and socially committed practice. The project has been developed by fff.collective and has been funded by the Comunidad de Madrid Government through the curatorial open call ‘Se Busca Comisario’.
How would our monuments look like today should we be already embarked in the process of adapting to climate change? Maybe, after falling into desperation, we would now live amongst rubble, by refusing to rebuild them. Or, perhaps, we might have decided to recreate them in imperishable type of plastic. One might even envision ourselves inhabiting their remnants, now protected by layers of moss and vegetation.
It is abundantly clear that the climate change is not a future possibility, but rather a reality. As such, there is no time for building technophilic tales or catastrophist narratives for the following decades: ARCHAEOLOGIES OF TODAY aims to reimagine radically and optimistically the present, by means of our most eloquent images: our monuments.
As part of a multidisciplinary research process, a scientific advisor team, five architecture offices, and a videographer will be invited to produce five retellings of monuments all around Spain. Over the course of ten months, five radical –but currently feasible– material proposals will be investigated, and subsequently applied to five fictional reinterpretations of examples of built heritage in Spain, through drawings, texts and material samples. Finally, a coherent narrative will be explored in a video installation.
The research platform will be open to the public, in a series of seven workshops, which will be intertwined with the artistic and investigative processes of the different agents: from urban mining explorations to material testing.
All materials produced will be on display from May 2024 in the Sala de Arte Joven in Madrid, Spain.