About – One Architecture Week

Manifesto One Architecture Week 2016

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ONE ARCHITECTURE WEEK

September 30th – October 9th

Trakiya district, Plovdiv

ACTION! Towards a neighbourhood practice

The 2016 edition of ONE ARCHITECTURE WEEK will focus on the mechanisms of citizen participation. The festival will explore and learn from the everyday experiences of living together accumulated by a socialist collective housing neighbourhood. ACTION! Towards a neighbourhood practice aims to go beyond a festival’s pattern, and will act on the ground developing tools before, during and after the festival, in an attempt to start a practice of the neighbourhood.

Trakiya, the location and the subject of the festival, is a typical Bulgarian socialist panelki dormitory-neighbourhood from the 70’s. Build upon an optimistic vision of a prefabricated future, Trakiya’s planned mechanistic solutions were radically altered by economic, social and political actions. It was the inhabitants of Trakiya that took action and further developed its laboratory vocation. With intuition as its fuel, the neighbourhood assimilated change through transformation and adaptation.

ACTION! Towards a neighbourhood practice will act in two ways. On one hand it will engage the laboratory that was Trakiya during the last 50 evenly divided years between socialist and capitalist systems. And, on the other hand, it will set in motion participative processes and construct support structures for the collective production of the neighbourhood.

Action-based research, applied education, neighbourhood celebration and sharing knowledge are the main directions of approaching Trakiya. From this starting points, ACTION! Towards a neighbourhood practice will function as a catalyst, resourcing the connections between existing places, people, dynamics and histories of Trakiya.

Alex Axinte and Cristi Borcan

studioBASAR, 2016

History

ONE ARCHITECTURE WEEK is an annual international festival about contemporary architecture and the built environment. Founded in 2008 as a two-day conference under the name Sofia Architecture Week, today the event is a ten-day platform for discussion and action on topics of importance to Bulgarian cities.

The main aims of ONE ARCHITECTURE WEEK are to raise the level of awareness about urbanity, at stimulating an active and responsible behaviour towards the city, as well as at initiating actions for a positive and visible improvement of the quality of architecture and urban planning of Bulgarian cities. The intense and diverse festival program includes presentations, exhibitions, discussions, lectures, workshops, tours, kids program, film screenings and interventions in public space. The program of ONE ARCHITECTURE WEEK is part of Plovdiv’s culture calendar and supports Plovdiv – European Capital of Culture for 2019.

Each year ONE ARCHITECTURE WEEK selects a new team of curators, with whose help engages into a new topic, which is important both locally and internationally.

Through the years the festival has welcomed, amongst others, participants such as Kutonotuk, Lola Landscape Architects, Mason White, Clement Blanchet, H+N+S, Clemens Bauder, Realities United, Space Caviar, Ethel Baraona Pohl, Jeanne van Heeswijk, Centrala, Assemble, Collectif Etc., Andres Jaque, Ivan Moudov, Gavin Kroeber, Big Banda, Derida Dance, Node Office, Noura al Sayeh, NL Architects, Mansilla Tunon, feld72, Rudy Ricciotti, JDS Architects, Atelier Kempe Thill, Anne Lacaton, Randic-Turato, OFIS arhitekti, Emre Arolat, Raumlabor, UNStudio, Bernardo Secchi and Paola Vigano, Nils Ole Brandtzaeg, ZOOM Studio, Transformatori, Atelier Oslo, Amin Taha Architects, Salto Architects,Georgiy Stanishev, GMP, Fantastic Norway Architects, studioBASAR, Fang Zhenning, I/O Architects, OBIA, Mass Studies, Chyutin Architects, Orso Fattinger Architects, Ivan Kucina and Studio 8 ½.

The festival is organised by the ONE Foundation for Culture and Arts and is supported by the Plovdiv Municipality and the America for Bulgaria Foundation. General partner is Programista, while Patishta Plovdiv are main partners of the event. The festival supports Plovdiv – European Capital of Culture 2019 and is has received an award in 2015/2016 from EFFE – Europe for festivals, festivals for Europe.