a+u 2023:10 Feature: fala
Content
a+u’s October issue features fala, an architectural practice based in Porto, Portugal, led by 4 partners, Filipe Magalhães, Ana Luisa Soares, Ahmed Belkhodja, and Lera Samovich. Founded in 2013, fala is celebrating their 10th anniversary this year. Most of their built work, primarily residential, is located in and around Porto. Porto has been their testing ground, where they have responded sensitively to the specific culture and situation of the city (and its real estate), and sublimated the particular solutions they developed into their own architectural language. All of fala’s actualized works are included here. fala asserts, “We see architecture less as the assembly of buildings than the building of an assembly.” Therefore, for them, these 54 buildings, together with the remaining 150 or so unrealized projects, form an archipelago – a collective system. This issue arranges their projects into 7 themes, each with text from fala and their generation of architects. This introduction to fala’s practice and its trajectory – and their use of brick, mortar, paper, and screen – confronts head-on the current era of the architect’s profession. (a+u)
An archipelago
Essay: A Floating Feather in the City
CENTRAL
[067] house and atelier / [023] house for 3 generations / [088] house along
a wall / [075] 6 houses and a garden / [069] housing within lines and dots /
[033] house for a bird / [004] anticlimax / [119] masks / [000] exhibitions
within regularity
Essay: The World as Form
Point Supreme
[102] housing with pink chimneys / [077] house around a chimney /
[056] something modern / [030] completed houses / [072] house under a big
roof / [172] public housing in setubal (48 apartments) / [184] public housing
in lisbon (50 apartments) / [173] public housing in almada (150 apartments)
from and for joy,
Essay: On Joy in Architecture
Lütjens Padmanabhan
[114] house within a few lines / [082] house of many faces / [059] house
with 4 columns / [050] very tiny palazzo / [009] temporary bar /
[136] office with asperities / [031] flagship store / [042] real estate agency /
[113] museum adjustments
of fragile systems,
Essay: In the Manner of fala
Kwong Von Glinow
[094] house of countless windows / [118] house within 3 gestures /
[057] house in fontaínhas / [043] apartment with 5 blue doors / [040] garage
house / [070] broken house / [189] pêndulo / [085] variations in a box /
[156] cookie-cutter retreat
ornaments of life,
Essay: Art of Love
aoa architects
[087] house without idea / [101] houses of cards / [086] apartment on a
mint floor / [081] small house with a monumental shower / [098] fireworks
in white / [048] house in paraíso / [143] house around a column
another honesty,
Essay: Can Incomprehensibility be Structured?
Shingo Masuda
[079] suspended house / [125] house with an inverted roof /
[052] reasonable housing / [090] uneven house / [107] folly for sun and
sound / [144] house of 3 structures
and choreographed fictions.
Essay: An Architecture That Was Not Asked For
KOSMOS
[097] waves of glass and clouds of metal / [058] house with a curved wall /
[025] apartment in chiado / [051] house with glass walls / [068] folly for an
art piece / [150] oasis under a building
Essay: Wild Juxtapositions by Way of a Confusing Vocabulary
Giovanna Borasi
Essay: The Disorienting Column
Roberto Gargiani and Anna Rosellini