19/3/2008
Yona Friedman
Portikus, Frankfurt
Friedman is one of the most interesting and important theorists and utopians of architecture of our time. Her oeuvre comprises urban-planning models, theoretical writings, and animated films. Over the past decades, his creative work has resulted in innumerable drawings, models, and structural investigations of his visionary ideas. For the Portikus, Friedman, in collaboration with students and alumni/ae of the Stadelschule, is developing a multi-part spatial installation that draws upon earlier structural models from his oeuvre.
Yona Friedman is one of the most interesting and important theorists
and utopians of architecture of our time. Born in Budapest in 1923,
he has lived in Paris for many years. Friedman’s oeuvre comprises
urban-planning models, theoretical writings, and animated films. His
work has been prominently on view at a number of art biennials
(Shanghai, Venice, and others) and at documenta 11, Kassel.
In 1958, Friedman published a manifesto, L’Architecture Mobile, that
must simultaneously be considered the founding document of Groupe
d’étude d’architecture mobile (GEAM). During the same years, he
developed important conceptions of city-spaces such as La Ville
Spatiale. To this day, these visionary mega-structures, overarching
existing cities, whose inhabitants were to be enabled to flexibly
shape their spatial and social worlds, have been much-discussed
classics of avant-garde urban planning, inspiring generations of
architects and urban planners.
The ideas behind these manifestos were
visionary and far ahead of their time; the point of departure for
Yona Friedman’s Ville Spatiale was his conviction that
architecture’s task was merely to offer inhabitants a framework, a
structure that they would be called upon to implement according to
their own ideas. Not unlike Constant, who during the same years, the
mid-50s, developed the defining traits of his New Babylon, Friedman
regarded the progressive automation of industrial labor and the
concomitant rise of recreation as a decisive social change that would
render traditional urban structures obsolete. An immobile and
elaborate conventional architecture was to be replaced by flexible
and mobile structures.
Over the past decades, his creative work has resulted in innumerable
drawings, models, and structural investigations of his visionary
ideas. Friedman has worked using very simple means; paper, wire,
packaging materials are the primary materials that give structure to
his collages and models. The guiding principle is that his ideas be
easy to handle and enable creative application. For the Portikus,
Friedman, in collaboration with students and alumni/ae of the
Städelschule, is developing a multi-part spatial installation that
draws upon earlier structural models from his oeuvre. There is
Lamellar Technology, a so-called “irregular structure,” wave-like
bands molded out of paper or other pliable materials that can serve
as a sort of diaphanous roof. Also on view will be a wall work that
can be related back to Friedman’s contribution to the 2003 Venice
biennial, Rubbish is Beautiful, where styrofoam packaging elements
were composed to form a large-scale wall relief. The erratic variety
of their surfaces creates the impression that the visitor is facing a
model elevation of a utopian city. In conjunction with the
exhibition, we will screen a series of 13 animated films from 1960
based on African fairy-tales; they have recently been restored.
A catalogue accompanying the exhibition will be published in the
summer of 2008.
In cooperation with the Culture Board of the City of Frankfurt, the
Portikus is showing an additional installation by Yona Friedman on
the city’s new studio boat. Docked on the river Main at the
Ruderdorf (near Oberrad), it is a charming new site for art. Over the
course of this summer, the Städelschule, the Frankfurt Kunstverein
and the Museum für Moderne Kunst (MMK) will alternate in using this
new venue to show art. From 2009 on, the Culture Board will invite
international artists to live and work on the boat.
We would like to invite visitors to our exhibition “Yona Friedman”
to celebrate the opening of our show and the inauguration of the
studio boat by joining us for a party on board. A shuttle across the
river Main will connect the Portikus and the studio boat.
This exhibition and the catalogue have been made possible by generous
support from Hessische Kulturstiftung and Deutsche Bank Stiftung.
Opening: 20 March 2008, 8 pm at Portikus
Boat shuttle at 9 pm and 10 pm from Portikus / Mainkai to the Studio
Boat of the City of Frankfurt for the presentation of the outdoor
installation and an opening party by Portikus and Freitagsküche. DJs
Dennis Loesch, Michael Riedel and Guy the Guy. Free entrance.
Portikus
Alte Brucke 2 (Maininsel) - Frankfurt