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photo source: courtesy of FALA
 Is the Ideal City still a Fashion?  

FALA (Filipe Magalhães)

apolitical nostalgia

 

we operate in a context where each building, street and stone are planned and decided as islands. there is little or no relation between the isolated pieces and the urban fabric, no public interest in that matter, and no idea of what archipelago we might getting into. the political motivations that sustained the ideal city are not applicable: instead, other values such as façadism and nostalgic mercantilism became the main forces defining the spaces we got to know. tourists are today’s currency.

 

if fashions replace fashions, and if cryopreserved nostalgia is the new fashion, we could probably assume the ideal city is, therefore, dead.


as a result, we find ourselves ignoring the context, operating on our own agenda. we don’t care anymore about the idealism and, consequently, the city doesn’t care about us. it is only fare.

Founded in 2013, and led by Filipe Magalhães, ana Luisa Soares and Ahmed Belkhodja, fala has lectured at different universities and institutions, including the Architectural Association in London, the GSAPP in New York, theGraham Foundation in Chicago, the Centre for Fine Arts in Brussels, the Versailles’ Faculty of Architecture in Paris and the Casa Della Architettura in Rome; among others, fala has taught at the faculties of architecture in Venice, Munich, Munster, Liège and Bratislava. The atelier’s work has been exhibited at the architecture biennials in Venice and Chicago, the Serralves Foundation and the Pavillon de l’Arsenal in Paris, and in single exhibitions in Panama, Italy, Macedonia, France and Portugal. fala’s work has been widely published in international media platforms, including Domus, Engawa, Arq.a, Baumeister, Mark, Plot and the Architectural Review. fala has published ’01’, a collection of early projects by the atelier.

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