The magic word that gave life to hunch 5 was dream. In architecture, dreaming isn 't "in"; it's almost taboo. But we were serious. After digesting 9/11 in hunch 4, to "dream" would be a form of therapy; we would reinvigorate ourselves through fantasy instead of pragmatism, emotion instead of analysis, "what if?" instead of "what happened?" "The moment of the retroactive manifesto has come to an end ?" said Elia Zenghelis during the Berlage masterclass "Global Pressures." "The only way to be critical is through the language of architecture."

And what can architecture do? Science fiction writer Bruce Sterling says "architecture ? should give people reasons to live ? We really need to be finding some way to give forms to statements about what the 21st century wants and needs. "So we were all set to let our imaginations outpace reality, to invent a brighter, happier future. But our dreams ran off course, as dreams tend to do ?

"Last night I had a nightmare ?" begins Ana Rascovsky's daybook: "I was in Argentina, at home with friends ? Slowly, a tiny noise came creeping in from the distance ? The kitchen noise. Played in a very angry tone ?"The reality of the crisis in Argentina had become as bizarre as any dream: "?lots of huge six-wheeled trucks loaded with tons of dollars were crossing the frontier, taking all our money away."

Ana's nightmare isn't simply about her country's economic collapse, but about her personal sense of helplessness ("I feel impotent being safe in Europe ?"), homelessness ("There was no place to come back to ?"), and otherness: "We are not wanted. From now on Argentineans need a visa to enter the United States, and soon to enter Europe."

If Hrsak doesn't go far enough to shock, the e-mail brainstorm by Lieven de Cauter and Dieter Lesage will. In an associative internet "search" project, they too deal with a volatile zone of Otherness - the Strait of Gibraltar - and dare to dream the outrageous - a bridge between Europe and Africa. Here too, a physical object -architecture -is projected as a functional expression of a "just world system ? Unless this happens, we will all become citizens of a capsular civilization, prisoners of a private and guarded inner world that systematically closes off an onrushing 'outside world '."

Lada Hrsak's project Skin to Skin presents an opposite dream - not a longing for a former home, but a confirmation - and celebration - of the adopted home in the form of a monstrous double tower/slab that brutally juxtaposes a sampling of Rotterdam's "invisible layers" with the official city offices. Her design is an attempt to give shape to a fantasy in which "the other" is acknowledged - in concrete - as the rule, rather than the exception. "Her proposal is so real that it becomes unreal, liable to cause culture shock," writes Van Meggelen in "Under the Skin."

for a supsription on hunch, please contact:
Bruil & Van der Staay


links:
The Berlage Institute
 hunch 5
Jennifer Sigler [ed.]
graphic design: Mick Morssink
ISBN 978-90-xxx
language: English
paperback | 174 pp | 30 x 16.5
price
€ 15.00 [netherlands]
€ 17.50 [europe]
€ 19.50 [outside europe]