Teambuilding
(curatorship and production of exhibition at Artsemestr summer 2023)together with Adam Kučera, Patrik Platil, Vojtěch Beneš, Jan Vacek, Alexander Cook Storek
A2 UMPRUM 2023 under Eva Franch i Gilabert
curatorial text / graphics / opening party / bar / stage / videoprojection tower / videomapping / office chairs installation / orientation system
In a world where precarious work becomes an increasingly pressing issue, the topic of Czech Republic’s pavilion at the 2023 Venice Architectural Biennale is ‘The office for a non-precarious future’. Teambuilding foreshadows A2’s planned residency at the Czech pavilion - we confronted the problematics of architecture work and approached it as students and professionals at the very beginning of our careers.
The semestral project was initiated by research of historic and contemporary architectural offices across the Czech and international context over the last 100 years, which is compiled in the ‘Teambuilding’ book. We then assessed the knowledge gained and tackled issues of ethics, wages, hierarchy, work environment and many others in the design of four hypothetical offices, which are represented by films, booklets and physical objects. We conceived practices that deal with waste, question the need for sacrifice in employment or nocturnal work, highlighting the importance of the human edifice in design and more.
The outcomes are interwoven with post-anthropocentric perspectives, cynicism, optimism and hope. One of the distinct features of work in architecture and what likely makes it most prone to precarious conditions, is that we constantly deal with immeasurables - we are driven by a visceral love for our field, we refuse not to address a task in a wide scope, even if the remuneration does not add up with the cost.
In correlation with that, the curatorial and scenographic solution for the exhibition is an immersive workplace environment. It is composed of 1:1 fragments of the offices designed and structures built from disused equipment that we gathered from offices bound to be demolished across Prague. The unmistakable aesthetics of an office are interpreted in an airy way. Teambuilding is a demand for a more just future, a conception of new types of architectural practice and most importantly, a collective effort.
