Archis RSVP-Events

In 2004 I was embedded architect for the Archis RSVP Events. An embedded journalist is a news reporter who is attached to a military unit involved in an armed conflict. While the term could be applied to many historical interactions between journalists and military personnel, it first came to be used in the media coverage of the 2003 invasion of Iraq. In some ways the Archis-team have been invading spaces of conflict, being an embedded architect in 2004 meant that my job was to report the architectural and urban conflicts that hitherto are happening in today’s world, interacting between architects and cities.

Context

Archis RSVP Events are tactical interventions done all over the world. RSVP events address public space by means of pro-active critical experimentation and improvisation. A series of actions that will be organized all over the world this year by Archis in collaboration with AMO.
The form of each event is determined by the size of the response. Respond to the content and your response helps us determine the actual form of the event – anything from mass demonstration to free-running, from cruise to performance or from mega event to flash mob.
The Archis RSVP Events organization is a small flexible body that tries to create new spirit in debate and new networks connecting people who question the world’s war on space and time.

RSVP Events 2004

RSVP #03: European Identities (Brussels, BE – March)
RSVP #04: Shrink (New York, US – May)
RSVP #05: Perversion (Athens, GR | Istanbul, TR – July)
RSVP #06: Paranoia (Amman, JO | Ramallah, PA – October)
RSVP #07: Going East (From Vilnius, EE | To Moscow, RU – November)

Moscow | Russia, 2004
Moscow | Russia, 2004

Publications by BdM in Archis magazine:

’03 #01 Intrigues in Brussels – The future history of the European Quarter
’03 #04 Brussels Fascinations – Rem Koolhaas and the European Conviviality Revolution
’04 #05 The end of the skyscraper as we know it: from CCG to CCTV

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spatial agency:
Established in 2007 by Bert de Muynck and Mónica Carriço, movingcities is a think tank based in Beijing Shanghai whose work focuses on how the practices of architecture and urbanism affect the city.

Their name is a reaction to the influential 'Shrinking Cities' project, which they critiqued for an over emphasis on just one part of a larger phenomenon. In contrast they see contemporary urbanity as being in constant flux and speak of city-regions that incorporate shrinking and expanding, rural and urban.

Their work takes the form of projects, writings and collaborations as well as interviews. (...)

Their projects take the form of embedded research on the city, usually carried out in collaboration with other architects."

creative cities:
Mov­ing­Cit­ies is an inde­pend­ent research organ­iz­a­tion based in China

archiblog:
MovingCities is a blog investigating the role that architecture and urbanism play in shaping the contemporary city. MovingCities features urban research, critical architectural investigations and publications. MovingCities operates from Beijing Shanghai, China.

snowball architecture:
Bert de Muynck is the other half of MovingCities, a Shanghai based duo of “shrinks in the urban debate” as him and his partner Mónica Carriço like to describe their practice. MovingCities are also the curators of Snowball Shanghai – Event on Finnish Architecture to be organised in Shanghai this March.