Special invitees of this zeppelin edition within the Magic Blocks project will talk about how one can make architecture and urban planning without talking about construction. About interstitial and spatial residues as resources of resuscitation of the city. A cross-country over non-cities, poor places, communist districts and difficult situations. Imagine a happy end for all these situations.

Invitees: Kai Vöckler (Archis Interventions, Berlin), Michael Obrist (Feld 72, Vienna), Ivan Kucina (Belgrad); Justin Baroncea (Point 4, Bucharest)

SPECIAL INVITEES:

KAI VÖCKLER
Born in 1961. Journalist and urban planner in Berlin. Author of several publications on urban themes, curator invited by different cultural institutions from Europe, he worked inside teams made of architects and urban planners. He is co-founder of Archis Interventions, an NGO which, since 2005, has been sustaining local initiative to solve the urban development problems in post-crisis areas. Archis Interventions currently runs projects in Prishtina, Kabul and Beirut. Kai Vöckler is Program Manager for South-East Europe and works for the development of an independent network of urban initiatives. He is the curator of the exhibition “Balkanology. New architectures and phenomena in the South-East of Europe” at SAM / Swiss Architecture Museum (04.10 – 04.01.2009). He has recently published a book about post-war Prishtina: “Prishtina is Everywhere. Turbo Urbanism: the Aftermath of a Crisis”, Amsterdam, Archis Publishers, 2008.
   
MARKO SANČANIN
Born in 1975, Croaţia. He studied Political Sciences and Architecture in Zagreb. He is the Director of the Architecture Research Institute - Platforma 9,81. The Institute explores the implications at urban and spatial levels of the political, economical and cultural identity changes.
Recent project concentrate on the contemporary public and cultural space (Invisible Zagreb); on the transformations of the physical structure of the public domain and the collective housing typologies (SuperPrivate); the urban phenomena due to the development of tourism along the Adriatic coast (Tourist Transformations); the cultural interdisciplinarity and tactical networks (Zagreb Cultural Kapital of Europe 3000); participatory urban planning models for 7 towns on the Adriatic (Croatian Archipelago – New Light Houses); the ownership in the city and urban conflicts in post-socialist societies (international conference - Neoliberal Frontline).

JUSTIN BARONCEA
Born in 1974. Architect and researcher in architecture, correspondent for the Arhitectura magazine in Barcelona. He becomes a Doctor in architecture at the Polytechnic University of Catalunia / Barcelona in 2005.  Between 2004 and 2006, he teaches at the design department of the BAC-FPC Barcelona school. He graduated the University of Architecture and Urbanism “Ion Mincu”, Bucharest, in 1998, as well as the MA program in urbanism within the same school in 1999. Between 1998-2000, he attends courses of the Audio-visual Communications Department within the University of Theatre and Cinema, Bucharest. Finalist and winner of numerous international competitions of architecture, along with teams from Spain and Romania. Since 2007, he has been working with the POINT 4 Space group. Research areas; space – memory – public place/space – civil society, deconstructive reading of the place.

IVAN KUCINA
Professor at the Architecture School within the University of Belgrade and Visiting Professor at the School of Design Strategies, Parsons The New School for Design, New York. His research activity especially regards the processes and phenomena of transition, in architecture and urbanism. In this area, his studies and projects concentrate on the informal building strategies and on the un-controlled transformation processes of the social and build infrastructure from the Western Balkans. He collaborates with informal education and research groups, as School of Missing Studies, STEALTH group and CENTRALA - Foundation for Future Cities. Ivan Kucina leads an interdisciplinary office of architecture and design with architect Nenad Katic, with projects that vary from urbanism to buildings and exhibitions design. In 2006, he became one of the founders of “Belgradee International Architecture Week”, whose art director he currently is.

MICHAEL OBRIST
He is one of the directors of the Austrian office FELD72, who has won an international celebrity in the latest years, both by the works of architecture itself, as well as by the projects and urban unconventional interventions. Members of FELD72 prefer to define themselves rather as a laboratory. It is not just about projects that respond to given themes, but mainly about solutions and strategies for urban contexts. With a stated preference for difficult places and situations, the involvement of the organisation varies from research to concrete architectural objects, moving through installations, alternative projects, development strategies.
The presentation from Bucharest will concentrate on the projects related to problematic public places and to a way of finding intelligent alternatives with minimum budgets.