Architectural toys

New article in Engramma - La tradizione classica nella memoria occidentale

It was a pleasure and a privilege to receive the invitation to participate in a special issue of Engramma magazine on Toy Architecture.

I took the opportunity to finally tidy up the many ideas, concepts and content that I had developed over the last 12 years that I taught the Architectural Toys course at the Faculty of Architecture of the University of Porto.

Number 213 of June 2024, on top of that, has a group of authors of the highest quality, all around a theme that has gained space and robustness over the last few years until reaching a worthy epistemological status.

The article is written in Italian, but being online it is easily translatable into several languages.

Enjoy the reading!

https://www.engramma.it/eOS/index.php?id_articolo=5556

Architectural toys - first semester 2023-2024

This year I condensed even more the theoretical part of the course. It's true, over time and with so many repetitions, the result is to be increasingly synthetic and focus the course on the most important and pertinent things.

Sometimes fewer things in more time is more effective than a barrage of information that is of little use to students.

The result was more careful, more complex and more interesting work. The students themselves felt the difference and, once again, enjoyed the course.

Arte en Juego - Diálogos de apolo Y Dionisio | Siglo XIX-XXI

On the 24th, 25th and 26th of January I was in Barcelona at the invitation of my dear friend Oriol Vaz from the University of Barcelona. The challenge was irrefutable: to talk about the relationship between art and play at the Picasso Museum in the company of people like Juan Bordes, Michel Manson or even Alfons Torelló and Lurdes Crirlot.

And it was what I expected it to be: wonderful. Everyone spoked different languages (Catalan, Spanish, English, French, Italian, Portuguese) but they all talked about the same thing. Like friends who meet after a long time and always resume the conversation at the same point, with the same enthusiasm. All in a magical place where we feel like guests of the great Picasso.

The seeds were planted for many future projects, including a book, an exhibition, and much more... stay tuned!

Architectural toys at FAUP 2022/2023

One of the things I like about teaching is that even if I repeat the course every year, the results always change. Because students are always different, with different profiles, backgrounds and interests.

Despite that, this year I decided to change some things in the course, starting with the name. Now it is called "The ludic construction of architecture", paraphrasing the well-known book by Giorgio Grassi "The logical construction of architecture".

In addition, I reorganized the classes, synthesizing the subject and leaving more time to follow the work.

The result was many more candidates and works with a very high quality level.

Here some examples:

Pietro Alfano and Gábor Houchard work is inspired by the game Cadavre exquis (exquisite corpse), a collaborative drawing approach first used by surrealist artists to create bizarre and intuitive drawings. With a careful selection of images, the user can create several configurations that combine basements, facades and roofs.

Progressive Architecture - April 1966

Progressive Architecture was the later name of an American magazine on architecture, design, and drafting that began in 1920 as Pencil Points and, in 1945, changed for the final name until 1995.

You can find all the digitalized issues here: https://usmodernist.org/index-pa.htm

But the article I want to share with you is this, a real summary of 1966 about architectural toys. Enjoy!

PA-1966-04 by Marco Ginoulhiac on Scribd

Architectural toys at FAUP - 2020/2021

Another edition of my course at FAUP is over. This year I decided to change the course name for Architectural toys - A construção lúdica da Arquitectura (the ludic construction of architecture). The new name can cover more manifestations of what I call "educational project in architecture". I also reinforced and extended the field of contents because I found a deeper connection with arts, especially with the vanguards in the beginning of XX century. The new syllabus caused a little change in the student's works, now more abstract, that you can see below. Because the pandemic condition I canceled the cube exercise and we focused on the main practical or theoretical works.

Ana Luis Fernandes Alago