Across Boundaries
Taneli Mansikkamäki (AGO)
Installation at Concentrico 06
This modular structure by Taneli Mansikkamäki (AGO) has been constructed by minimizing the number of offcuts, screws and glues. It uses renewable and/or re-usable materials to create a flexible space which can be easily either repaired, extended, dismantled, recycled, up-cycled or redistributed, part by part – little by little. The structure sits in the Patio del COAR behind the Colegio Oficial Arquitectos de La Rioja.
This existing garden is distinctively separated from the surrounding city with a set of three different kinds of thresholds: a change in topography, metal fencing and privacy planting. They offer the petite private square, known for its four distinctive palm trees, a form of seclusion from the busy and noisy street life. With a modest roof structure and a set of nine benches, the construction manages to temporarily overcome these existing thresholds by reaching outwards and stitching together the garden to the surrounding public domain. Although the structure is made specifically for Concéntrico and this specific location, it is also designed and built as a kit of parts which can be effortlessly dismantled, neatly packaged, moved around and reassembled in a different location.
It is intended that the structure would not only become a representative of flexibility or a sustainable material use but also suggesting a different type of valuing system for the creation of architecture and space. One, where value is better retained in the use-value of the individual parts rather in an object, thus suggesting a shift, to a more nurturing relationship towards the built environment, where rebuilding, repairing and recycling makes environmentally but also economically more sense.
Taneli Mansikkamäki (AGO)
Taneli Mansikkamäki is an architect and educator, the founder of architecture and design practice AGO, a unit master at the Architectural Association and a visiting lecturer in South East University in China. He has taught across the AA from Foundation to Experimental schools where he currently runs a studio and research group focused on housing and contemporary architectural and urban forms in relation to technology, ecology and politics. Taneli has worked previously for Future Systems and Cecil Balmond amongst others and served also as a visiting critic in universities such as University of Cambridge, AHO in Norway and Akademie der Bildenden Künste Stuttgart.
In co-production with Instituto Iberoamericano de Finlandia
