Trivia

Is it necessary for every emptying space to be instantly refilled? Should every abandoned site be reconquered? Can architecture operate outside the idea of construction as a colonisating tool, and shift its focus to the delicate manipulation of void?

Periphery is filled with emptiness, awaiting to be mastered. Plans are stacking up and territories are “under development”. Too often, the current is overlooked and the future praised. Why not pause and appreciate this state of impermanence?

Raising these questions can help to overcome architects obsession of total dominance, and search for alternative modes of modest and perhaps imperfect interventions, seeking a relevant scale to the everyday reality. To that effect, we propose to focus our attention on micro-scale – dealing with trivial matters. It’s about petty items and differences, marks, shelters, joints and borders – small elements, whose details and dimensions introduce a scale of engagement and mediate the human body with its larger environment. Praising un-volumetric, invisible, timid, ephemeral – is how we seek to embrace the poetics of the everyday.

The goal of this workshop is to give participants a toolkit (technique) to achieve maximal impact by small gesture. More of a collection than curation, it will result in an inventory of “trivia” ideas and projects, made individually or in small teams, of different nature, scale, lifetime and anticipated effects.