a+u 2021:08 Feature:Nenia Project – Smiljan Radić
Content
This August issue of a+u features the work of Chilean architect Smiljan Radić. The monograph opens with Nenia Project – a memoir by Radić – divulging to us the amazing imaginaries, visions of the past and future, that drive his architectural desires. Nenia Project is a collection of metaphorical manifestos and Radical Architecture artifacts that have equipped Radić with “subversive artistic strategies” and “scores for object-based works.” On these pages we discover the mysteries behind Radić’s “conceptual approach in his own buildings,” as described in an essay by Fredi Fischli and Niels Olsen. Perhaps, as Ryue Nishizawa conjectures in his essay, Radić’s “designs are poetic because they exist in, or aim for, a state of freedom from meaning.” Twenty-five key projects ranging from sculptures to buildings, all produced between 2010 and 2021, are presented here along with Radić’s own conceptual drawings and paintings. In their collectiveness, as Nishizawa observes, we find a “sense of temporal progression” in the accumulation of visions and desires. (a+u)
Nenia Project
House for the Poem of the Right Angle / Garden of Leaves
Santiago Telecommunications Tower
Fragile, A Tower of Wine Glasses
Artefacts
The Boy Hidden in a Fish, The Boy Hidden in an Egg,
The Giant Selfish Castle, Gryphon, Kewpie My First Tower,
Death at Home, Inflatable Bodies
Folly, Serpentine Gallery Pavilion
Crucifixion Chapel
Giant Sofa Room
Ma(rra)queta Shelter
Celine Pavilion
Prism House + Room / Terrace
Chilean Pavilion
Chanchera
Nave
Regional Theater Bío Bio
House of Alexander McQueen
New Museum of Santiago (NUMU)
Solo Hotel
Hidden House in Peru
Drops
Essay:
Architecture Against Architecture?
Fredi Fischli and Niels Olsen
Essay:
The Architecture of Smiljan Radi´c
Ryue Nishizawa