GAM - Graz Architecture Magazine

Bilingual edition (English/German) / Zweisprachige Ausgabe (deutsch/englisch)

New and cutting-edge forms of pedagogy such as distance learning, design-build, collaborative learning, and peer-to-peer practices are increasingly calling conventional teaching and learning environments, in architecture and other design disciplines, into question. Academic institutions in Western Europe, in particular, are faced with the challenge of rethinking standardized spatial structures and institutional hierarchies and adapting them to unconventional and radical teaching and learning concepts. GAM.18 explores anew the area of conflict between architecture teaching in universities and the teaching environment. It calls for spatial structures and working environments that enable the contemplation and design of architecture, and investigates teaching and learning methods that include critical consideration of the spaces and institutions in which the teaching takes place.

With contributions from Hélène Frichot, Charlotte Malterre-Barthes, Lucia Pennati, Jean-Louis Violeau, and others

As an organic building material, wood is held in particularly high esteem in this age of climate crisis. A component of environmentally friendly resource cycles, wood demonstrates its innovative potential when used in new technological developments and hybrid applications that are suited to complex, modern architectural tasks. We have only just started reimagining wood as a cutting-edge, versatile building material of the future.
GAM. 17 takes a new look at wood—at its multi-faceted nature and architectural possibilities— and proposes building and design concepts that fully utilize the material’s potential for a more climate-friendly construction industry. This is further complemented by a look back at the history of building with wood and the ideological entanglements that have long stood in the way of the further development of wood as a building material.

With contributions by Reyner Banham, Urs Hirschberg, Anne Isopp, Jens Ludloff, Laila Seewang, Stephan Trüby, Anselm Wagner, and others

Contemporary and future forms of living together urgently need new concepts in order to respond to growing social inequality, the dissolution of traditional structures for work and the family, and the emergence of diverse patterns of social relationships. GAM.16 conceives of spatial formation as a permeable framework for sociospatial structures in various architectural, sociological, and cultural contexts, aiming to increase awareness of common resources and again make them one focus of sociopolitical discourse. Themed "gewohnt: un/common," GAM.16 advocates for communal living and introduces collaborative and coproductive concepts of organization as a spatial practice.

With contributions by Massimo Bricocoli, Heike Delitz, Marson Korbi, Nikolai Roskamm, Sabine Storp, Fritz Strempel, and others

Bilingual edition (English/German) / Zweisprachige Ausgabe (deutsch/englisch)

Compelled by the global environmental crisis, the building industry is moving toward a paradigm shift that significantly impacts the way we build, design, and interact with the natural environments around us. The built spaces of the future need to disrupt the conventional design practices that have "elevated" the building sector to the largest contributor of manmade CO₂ emissions globally. Achieving net-zero embodied and operational emissions in future construction will require the active participation of design, construction, and building professionals, as well as the prompt implementation of decarbonization solutions. These solutions, which restructure the way humans interact with their ecosystems, entail a reevaluation and reinterpretation of architecture and its role as a transformative agent. GAM 21 collects perspectives and proposals on how to make a radical shift towards environmental transformation successful.

With contributions by Nicolas Alaux, Romullo Baratto, Carlos Enrique Caballero-Güereca, Olga Beatrice Carcassi, Stefano Corbo, Ana María Durán Calisto, Greg Foliente, Antonio Garciá Martínez, Vanessa Gomes, Verena Göswein, Guillaume Habert, Sabine Hansmann, Ida Karlsson, Ailton Krenak, Monica Lavagna, Klaus K. Loenhart, Alice Moncaster, Elisabetta Palumbo, Francesco Pittau, Bas Princen, Philippe Rahm, Matt Roberts, and Bernardette Soust-Verdaguer

• Explores contemporary approaches to decarbonizing the construction industry, one of the world’s largest emitters of CO₂
• Includes contributions from international authors and experts

Bilingual edition (English/German) / Zweisprachige Ausgabe (deutsch/englisch)

GAM 20 is dedicated to the search for the everyday in architecture. Its title, “The Infraordinary,” refers to a concept first used by Paul Virilio and Georges Perec: In the 1970s, they introduced the term l’infra-ordinaire to describe the habitual and ordinary—the opposite of the extraordinary. With this in mind, GAM 20 delves more deeply into the non-extraordinary in architecture. Seeking to go beyond glorifying or emphasizing the banal, it highlights stories of the reconceptualization and revaluation of existing architecture, as well as its day-to-day use. In daily life, after all, architecture tends not to look the way it does in glossy magazines, on the websites of renowned architecture firms, or on Instagram.

Bilingual edition (English/German) / Zweisprachige Ausgabe (deutsch/englisch)

Whoever builds is inevitably confronted with a jungle of different positions, all with one thing in common: they are all the views of professionals. As a discipline, architecture occupies a special role. It is a profession itself, and one which relates to numerous other professions and integrates them into its practice of planning and building. GAM 19 interrogates the complex constellations and various semantic meanings of professionalism in architecture. How have the professional foundations of the discipline shifted over time due to economic, ecological, or societal changes, and how do today’s architects engage with them? What is there to be learned from all the hybrid forms in which professional procedures are circumvented by unprofessional processes in order to produce hitherto unknown results? GAM 19 takes on the task of analyzing and re-evaluating architecture’s occupational profile, providing a platform for a diverse range of players to reflect on the concept of professionalism in the context of their architectural practice and to identify its contemporary manifestations.

With contributions by Grayson Bailey, Alexander Bartscher, Klara Bindl, Ivica Brnić, Peggy Deamer, Anne Femmer, Andri Gerber, Andreas Lechner, Alex Lehnerer, Yeoryia Manolopoulou, Jan Meier, Julian Müller, Victoria Steiner, Florian Summa, Juergen Teller, and Lena Unger

In the face of growing territorial inequalities in the distribution of and access to resources, justice has—once again—become a topical issue and challenge in the fields of land-use planning and urbanism. GAM.15 is devoted to the geographical dimension of social justice. It considers the transformations currently taking place in rural areas and describes their potentials, problems, and prospects for development.
The contributions collected in this publication examine the dynamics through which the rural landscape is changing, how the transformations taking place may create new territorial inequalities, and how Territorial Justice-oriented alternatives to the dominant planning system may be established.

With contributions by Pierre Veltz, Michael Woods, Paola Viganò, Yuri Kazepov and Michael Friesenecker, Emanuele Sommariva, Nicolas Escach, Don Mitchell, and others

The fields of art and architecture are currently witnessing an expansion of the exhibitionary complex: permanent and temporary exhibition spaces proliferate, blending with sites of consumption. Responding to this development, GAM.14 focusses on the act of exhibiting, which reconfigures the spatial limitations of the exhibition, thus creating dynamic sites of contestation and political confrontation. GAM.14 is a collection of current positions from the disciplines of art and architecture assembled around the conceptual effort to distinguish the act of exhibiting from exhibition, opening the potential of exhibiting as an exploratory space to address urgent social and political challenges of our time.

With contributions by Bart De Baere, Ivana Bago, Ana Bezić, Nicolas Bourriaud, Maria Bremer, Ekaterina Degot, Ana Dević, Anselm Franke, Andrew Herscher, Christian Inderbitzin, Branislav Jakovljević, Sami Khatib, Wilfried Kuehn, Nicole Lai Yi-Hsin, Bruno Latour, Ana María León, Armin Linke, Antonia Majača, Doreen Mende, Ana Miljački, Museum of American Art in Berlin, Vincent Normand, Christoph Walter Pirker, Dubravka Sekuli, Antje Senarclens de Grancy, Katharina Sommer, Anna-Sophie Springer, Barbara Steiner, Kate Strain, Žiga Testen, Milica Tomić, Etienne Turpin, What, How & for Whom/WHW

Space is experienced not only visually, but with all the senses. Despite this, the design and reception of architecture often barely take haptic, acoustic, and osmic perceptions into account. Consequently, in the architecture discipline there is no continuous discourse on the topic of spatial perception. GAM.13 Spatial Expeditions seeks to fill this gap. The method of the expedition enables an experimental approach and provides the opportunity to gain new insights and perspectives with regard to built space. It explores perceptual techniques from the fields of architecture, the visual arts, music, dance and other related disciplines. GAM.13 therefore represents an expedition into experimental architecture and the unexplored aspects of built space. The volume contains contributions by Sam Auinger, Irmgard Frank, Malcolm McCullough, Philippe Rahm, and Karen Van den Berg, among others.