City of the Future

Architecture is normally intended to be as permanent as possible. Architects working on temporary projects, however, know from the outset that the fruits of their labours will eventually be dismantled, and incorporate this fact into their plans. Increasingly, young and highly ambitious architects seem particularly fascinated by this challenge. Two German firms – modulorbeat from Münster and the osa network – have already attracted international interest in their work.

"Temporary projects are a bit like an urban laboratory", says Jan Kampshoff from modulorbeat – a firm of ambitious urbanists and planners in Münster: "What is fascinating about this type of work is that we can use the projects to transform, improve, disrupt, ignore or reinterpret spaces for a short period of time. The projects may disappear, but the spaces are never the same again." Temporary buildings also have the advantage that they can often be erected more quickly and in a less complicated manner than conventional buildings, yet can still achieve a strong impact.

Urban switch

A case in point is switch+, a two-storey, 12 metre high temporary information pavilion designed by modulorbeat for the sculpture projects münster 2007 exhibition. The pavilion's gold-coloured exterior shell was made of perforated copper sheet and came to life in response to the Silberne Frequenz (i.e. Silvery Frequency) light installation created by Otto Piene on the facade of the adjacent building. Especially at night, when the pavilion was also illuminated from the inside, the interplay with the Silberne Frequenz installation created a particularly unique atmosphere. Acting as an "urban switch", a moving part of the pavilion was able to reroute pedestrian and bicycle traffic on the square, thus also transforming the use and perception of this public space.

Temporary buildings are often stripped to their bare essentials, like the minimalist version of a night club that modulorbeat designed in 2006. For a period of three months, an empty plot of land in Berlin was home to Kubik, an open air club which the architects constructed out of 144 plastic canisters. The water tanks, normally used in industry, were joined together by a simple system of metal bars and EuroPallets, each canister containing a 150 watt bulb wrapped in heat-resistant coloured film. Specially developed control software allowed the brightness to be infinitely varied. The combination of walls of light, a bar, music and above it all only the night sky was so successful that Kubik has since been on tour in other cities like Barcelona and Lisbon.

Sustainability

In times of dwindling resources and pressing environmental problems, the issue of sustainability plays an important role in future-proof architecture. "Though it may sound paradoxical at first, this is precisely where we see great potential for temporary buildings and installations", says Oliver Langbein from osa – office for subversive architecture, a network of eight architects and town planners who studied together in Darmstadt and now work in eight cities in five European countries. "Experience shows that plans for the future are often very unreliable and that some buildings become obsolete much more quickly than originally expected", explains Langbein. The key to sustainable planning, he believes, is to develop a solution which is appropriate to the particular space: "It may prove more sustainable to first use a temporary installation to identify a location's potential rather than designing a particularly eco-friendly building." An integral part of this process is in many cases a dialogue with local players. As Oliver Langbein explains: "By incorporating their background knowledge into the work process, alternative concepts can emerge and planning errors can be avoided."

Aesthetic impact

The quality of temporary architecture is also determined by the aesthetic impact of the realized concepts. The osa architects, for example, demonstrated their skill by designing the Kunsthülle LPL, a temporary venue for the Liverpool Biennial 2006. osa was asked to design a space which could be dismantled afterwards without leaving any trace. On the flat roof of a disused factory, the osa planners erected a simple steel construction around which PVC strips were stretched down to the ground. On the roof itself a second inner shell made of red PVC strips formed the venue itself. The PVC curtain of this two-layer facade allowed light and, in the inner shell, visitors to pass through, giving the space its particular charm.

Who does public space belong to?

Another example of osa's approach to work is the interdisciplinary workshop run by Oliver Langbein and his colleague Britta Eiermann during the Darmstadt Summer of Architecture 2008. Inspired by the question "Who does public space belong to (myspace)", the workshop examined the scope for young people to make active use of urban spaces. Together with university and school students, the architects devised temporary transformations. For their Landgewinnung (i.e. land reclamation) event, for instance, they used large yellow towels to occupy public spaces and bus stops in an ironic mockery of the German habit of using beach towels on holiday to reserve spaces on the beach and by the pool. They transformed lonely park benches into loungers and played urban minigolf in empty water basins and through old drainpipes and gutters. One thing that does become clear is that the experimental character of temporary works allows provocative architectural statements and a new perception of squares, public spaces and parks.

Between architecture, art and design

That the boundaries between architecture, art, design and social intervention become blurred is all part of the plan. "The open links to other disciplines are simply more diverse with temporary concepts than is the case in classical building projects", says Oliver Langbein, while Jan Kampshoff from modulorbeat stresses: "All these categories are relevant to us, and it makes little difference whether our work is then dubbed art, architecture, design or whatever."