Marco Casagrande has been awarded the 2013 European Prize for Architecture.
Finnish, Italian roots, 42, Marco is an original architect and environmental artist, urban philosopher, architectural theorist, writer, and professor of architecture. Principal at Casagrande Laboratory in Helsinki, Finland, at WEAK!, together with Hsieh Ying-Chun and Roan Ching-Yueh in Taipei, Taiwan, and founder of the Ruin Academy, Helsinki, Taipei, and Artena, Italy, he cooperates actively with the International Society of Biourbanism since its foundation, with texts, teaching, and social-artistic activities.
“There is no other reality than nature”
Marco’s just-released book Biourban Acupuncture. Treasure hill of Taipei to Artena (Rome: International Society of Biourbanism) envisions the Third Generation City, to be achieved through punctual manipulation of urban energy, illegal architecture, and a participatory planning that includes citizens, nomads, and the Nature itself. Casagrande has implemented such a biourban guerrilla, jointly with 30 young scholars gathering from 10 different Countries, and with the inhabitants of the ancient village of Artena, Italy, during the last Summer School in Neuroergonomics and Urban Placemaking, organized by the International Society of Biourbanism, July 2013.
The second generation cities in which most of us is actually living, are industrial machine-like structures, unsupportive of human longing for reality. They are anti-cities, not good for children, nor for aged people – hostile to nomads and to indigenous. Architects of future – as shamans – must let their egos go, in order to listen to, and to serve life. Ruin is the alive process through which the second generation city transits to the third generation – a balanced interaction between nature and humans, reality and design.
The independent, multidisciplinary Ruin Academy in Taipei, in cooperation with the Aalto University’s SGT Sustainable Global Technologies Centre is developing the theory of the Third Generation City. The Ruin Academy has started working with the International Society of Biourbanism on this subject, and has thus opened its own place in Artena.
The event & the exhibition in Buenos Aires and Europe
The Europe’s Highest Architecture Award formal ceremony will be held in Buenos Aires, Argentina during the 14th International Biennial of Architecture, September 24th-27th, 2013.
The European Centre for Architecture Art Design and Urban Studies will set up a special exhibition about Casagrande Laboratory during the Buenos Aires Biennial (September 21st through October 13th, 2013) at Centro Cultural Recoleta, Junín 1930 in Buenos Aires.
After Buenos Aires, in 2014, the exhibition will travel to Greece, at Contemporary Space Athens in Athens, starting a tour throughout Europe.
www.marcocasagrande.fi
https://www.biourbanism.org/biourban-acupuncture-2/
www.clab.fi