Salon Talks _ On Improvisation and Collaboration

The S AM’s winter exhibition, «Make Do With Now: New Directions in Japanese Architecture» (12 November 2022 – 12 March 2023) shines a light on a younger, lesser-known generation of Japanese architects and urban practitioners who are developing a range of critical, ecological, and social practices that creatively «make do» – with limited resources, with found materials, with existing spaces – while seeking appropriate responses to the urgent problems of the present. To coincide with the exhibition, the S AM is collaborating with LINA, the European architecture platform, to organize a series of informal talk events bringing protagonists from this burgeoning scene into dialogue with practitioners from the European context.

Each event, which will take place in the workspace of a young practice based in Basel, brings together three practitioners working on similar themes in different locations: one from Japan, one the EU, and one from Switzerland. Short presentations of their work will be followed by an open-format discussion in which members of the audience are actively encouraged to take part.

Ideally, this event will lead to longer lasting contacts and new alliances among a transnational and -regional generation of practitioners working with the built environment today. At the same time, the LINA Fellows will gain new knowledge about the specific conditions and concerns driving building culture and practice in other contexts, hopefully leading to a more nuanced and multifaceted approach in their own work.

Salon Talk 2: «On Improvisation and Collaboration», 26 January 2023

The second talk in the series, focusing on the topic of improvisation and collaboration in architecture, took place on 26 January 2023. To improvise is to work with what is there. To let the circumstances guide the design and the process, rather than a predetermined vision. Like in a jazz ensemble, ideas are developed spontaneously in response to other actors, picked up, riffed upon, translated and developed further. To improvise is to engage in dialogue: with others, with materials, with places. What potentials and challenges does this approach hold? In a discipline that privileges meticulous planning, what does it mean to relinquish control and give oneself over to spontaneity?

Once again, the event brought together an international group of three young architecture offices all working on the theme, in their own way. An intensive series of exchanges over Zoom in the weeks before the event allowed for a natural camaraderie and a deeper mutual understanding of each of their perspectives to develop among the participants. The event was rounded out by a communal cooking experience, as the architects cooked and served bowls of Japanese curry to the visiting audience, creating a relaxed setting in which conversations could be continued informally.

Participants:

• Daisuke Ishimura and Taku Neichi, architects, Ishimura + Neichi, Tokyo

• Leon Faust and Basil Witt, architects, Faust Witt, Basel

• Till Hoffmann and Maria Gottweiss, architect and graphic designer, Haus Bräutigam, Schwarzburg (LINA Fellow)