MADLAB will be traveling to Miami, FL this July as an invited critic for project 41: a tale of cities … that share one street. Presentations will review the nomadic design studio’s investigations into novel techniques in urban documentation and speculative mobile infrastructure. Project 41 is coordinated studio between the Department of Urban Speculation at the University of Illinois Chicago, Andrew SantaLucia, and Malik Benjamin for Florida International University’s 4th Year Accelerated Masters Architecture Studio.
From Andrew SantaLucia :
“This class proposes a speculative design-build studio, which investigates US-41 that runs through Florida, Georgia, Tennessee, Kentucky, Indiana, Illinois, and ends in Michigan in cul-de-sac. This street/road/highway is not only Calle Ocho in Miami and Lake Shore Drive in Chicago, but allows for an urban analysis of the conditions which arise along its axis and also situates contemporary urbanism in a realm of situationist possibility through the speculative proposal of engaging it through a vehicle; and with the end result being far more engaged with a culture, than the vehicular studies of the 1960s and 70s (i.e. Robert Simthson’s Monuments of Passaic, Ventrui Scott-Brown’s Learning from Las Vegas, as well as Reyner Banham Loves Los Angeles and his book, Los Angeles and its Four Ecologies). Through a careful introduction to some of the theories and traveling urbanism’s of the past 50 years, as well as an architectural production of a M.U.D. (Mobile Urban Device in the form of a trailer) and the production of script called M.A.P.(s) (Mobile Architectural Planning Scripts), this studio will engage with the emerging nature of speculative architecture, in the form of performative mobile urbanism.
This studio operates in an interesting area between the academy and the do-it-yourself. This studio works with the Department of Urban Speculation, from the University of Illinois at Chicago, almost as urban artifact and explorer. Dept.U.S. is headed by Assistant Professor Alex Lehnerer and Meghan Funk, Adjunct Faculty, at U.I.C. Through meetings, we have established the best institutional scenario to engage this studio would be an F.I.U. credited seminar or studio class, with the Dept.US structuring their trip down from Michigan to Miami based on our drawings for their trailer (MUD) and performing our script (MAPS), culminating in an exhibition and lecture at F.I.U. in August 2011.”