Antoine Vaxelaire, Figured Voids and No-Stop Shopping

Eastern Promises: Incubator Galleries

Maria Fedorchenko, Tatiana von Preussen

Intermediate 7 is concerned with transfers between conflicted urban systems, relying on design infrastructures to align formal and programmatic strategies. Learning from Moscow's sophisticated materialism, we will exploit clashes between culture and commerce to define new hybrid typologies.

Diverging artistic and entrepreneurial resources have severely hindered the development of Moscow as a global cultural centre. However, tensions between: public institutions and private networks; confined collections and dynamic outlets; and display spaces and creative products suggest latent possibilities. We will be opportunistic in order to convert Moscow's ruptures into generative associations. By advancing experimental formats of pragmatic research and speculative design, we will reconcile the Russian extremes of grandiose museums and makeshift markets, luxurious design salons and utilitarian dealerships, gigantic expo-cities and miniature pop-ups.

The unit interventions will activate a sequence of underperforming sites outside segregated social circuits by installing new mediators between creative hubs and shopping routes. We will amalgamate exhibition zones, retail areas, cultural institutes, studios and archives developing new types of 'incubator galleries' able to attract, nurture and proliferate a range of commercial and cultural events. As both subject and product, 'design' will affect display media and physical structures on several scales.

Relying on synthetic 'infrastructures' we will accommodate spatial and functional, static and dynamic, imposed and emergent 'components'. Diagram-ming, mapping and graphic analysis will expose active 'elements' in juxtaposed urban sites and typologies. Contrasting elements will be combined in conceptual frameworks and physical prototypes. Formal prototypes will poach diagrams of productiondisplay- consumption, while concrete programme structures shortcut to graphic shapes and intricate surfaces. We will pursue a 'plastic fit' between form and programme inspired by case-studies from leading contemporary practices.

The logic of loose control will inform how we curate at the levels of city, building and content. Diagrammatic tools will allow discrete transpositions between urban and architectural concepts and forms. Alternating between social and spatial effects, we will assemble beautiful apparatuses and imageable condensers. Our 'galleries' will emerge from the mix of diagrammatic matrices and seductive renderings, composite drawings and intricate models. Theoretical and practical products will be collated in extensive 'catalogues' of urban scenarios, design models and final artefacts.

Unit Staff

Maria Fedorchenko studied at UCLA, Princeton University and Moscow Institute of Architecture. She practised in Russia, Greece, and the US (including Michael Graves & Associates) and directs a design consultancy. Her research and design has been published and exhibitied internationally. She has taught at UC Berkeley, UCLA and CCA since 2003 and has been involved in HTS and Housing & Urbanism Programme at the AA.

Tatiana von Preussen was educated at Cambridge University and Columbia University. She has practised in both London and New York where she worked for James Corner Field Operations on The High Line park. She has taught design and advanced representation at Columbia University. Previously a partner of the research group Gleamlab, she is currently a director of vPPR Architects.