Florencia Rodriguez谈好奇心、批判和文化自由的重要性
Florencia Rodriguez on the importance of curiosity, criticism and cultural freedom

由专筑网Yinglin，小R编译

建筑师、作家、本届芝加哥建筑双年展艺术总监Florencia Rodriguez，评述美国现状。

Florencia Rodriguez, architect, writer and artistic director of this year’s Chicago Architecture Biennial, comments on the state of the States

▲ 摩天大楼构成了芝加哥市中心的“丛林”
Chicago's skyscraper-filled downtown
(Image credit: Brian Cassella/Chicago Tribune/Tribune News Service via Getty Images)

我是一名建筑师，当你接受这样的训练时，你在做项目时会思考未来的各种可能性。建筑是关于应对变化，理解变化，并试图提出能够改善状况的选项。在这样的背景下，你可以说建筑和设计是天生乐观的领域。但这种乐观并非天真地盲目相信现状，而主要是因为这些领域依赖于这样一个事实：想象力与知识相结合，能够提供关键的工具来改善人们的生活方式。

I am an architect, and when you are trained as one, you work on a project thinking about different possibilities for the future. Architecture is about dealing with change, understanding it and trying to come up with options that can improve a situation. In this context, you could say that architecture and design are inherently optimistic fields. But not optimistic in a naive way that blindly trusts what’s there, but mostly because these fields rely on the fact that imagination and knowledge together can provide critical tools to improve how we live.

(Image credit: Florencia Rodriguez)

我来自阿根廷，所以对美国的建筑保持着双重关系。我乐于接触并学习所有源自美国学术界的思辨，以及这里的建筑文化领域所提供的各种可能性和实验。但同时，我也带来了另一套关注点和一种理解建筑的方式，这与我的个人背景和教育紧密相关。这关系到文化肌理和建筑环境中的社会参与。我理解建筑的方式，与日常现实、语境和空间政治紧密相连。在这里，这个领域有着非常丰富的自主性，当然也有伟大的建筑师，但在这份自主性与社会参与的需求之间也存在一种张力。当话语变得过于“小圈子化”和“科层化”时，它就如同泡沫，失去与它所运作的世界的联系。这就造成了纯粹形式主义与作为连接和社会再现工具的建筑之间的两极分化。

我策划即将到来的芝加哥建筑双年展的核心，就在于模糊这种两极分化。关键在于要理解设计拥有惊人的可能性，而建筑无法独自解决问题，它需要与社会中的不同行动者互动，比如政治家、开发商和社区。建筑师理解空间如何运作，我们有责任参与到创造可能的未来中去。该领域中，有些声音目前对过度生产持非常批判的态度，另一些则将焦点转向本土，有时会过度将其可能性和意义浪漫化。

I am originally from Argentina, so I have this dual relationship to architecture in the US. I enjoy engaging with and learning from all the speculations emerging from US academia, the different kinds of possibilities and experimentations that the cultural field of architecture offers here. But I also bring another set of preoccupations and a way of understanding architecture that is very much related to my personal background and education. This has to do with cultural fabric and social engagement within the built environment. The way I understand architecture is attached to everyday reality, context and the politics of space. There is a very rich autonomy in the field here, and great architects, of course, but there is also a tension between this and the need for social engagement. When the discourse becomes too endogamic, it can turn into a bubble and lose its touch with the world in which it operates. This creates a polarisation between pure formalism and architecture as a tool for connecting and for societal representation.
How I am addressing the curation of the upcoming Chicago Architecture Biennial (CAB) centres on blurring that polarisation. It is about understanding that design has amazing possibilities and that architecture cannot work alone to solve problems, it needs to interact with different actors in society, such as politicians, developers and communities. Architects understand how space performs, and we have a responsibility in taking part in the creation of possible futures. There are voices in the field that are currently very critical about the production of excess, and others that are turning their focus to the vernacular, sometimes over-romanticising its possibilities and meaning.

▲ 2023年芝加哥建筑双年展期间，Buell中心在芝加哥文化中心展出的作品
Work by The Buell Center at the Chicago Cultural Center during the CAB in 2023
(Image credit: Tom Harris)

以下内容为Florencia Rodriguez自述：

我非常热衷于探讨关于变革需求的各种问题。这也是今年芝加哥建筑双年展主题“转变”的灵感来源。我们需要在思考建筑领域的实质和基础上进行改变和转变。空间具有政治性，我们在历史的某一特定时刻决定如何生活，总是带有政治含义。我正试图围绕所有这些元素激发一场对话。

对于本届双年展，我们没有一个单一的中心化展览，而是一个由多个“胶囊”展览组成的星群，希望能在不同层面上开启批判性的讨论。例如，其中一个名为“生态”（Ecologies）的展览，探讨的是生态系统——不仅是自然的，也包括建筑环境和肌理内部的生态系统，以及这些关系意味着什么。年轻一代与气候变化和社会共情有着更为有机的联系。挑战永远在于如何从物质层面着手，因为我们建造并将新事物带入世界。回应我们在今年威尼斯建筑双年展上所看到的，这并不意味着我们需要变得极端，而是需要理解设计的能力。形式、美以及对平凡事物价值的认知，同样是非常强大的媒介。

Florencia Rodriguez: in her own words
I am very enthusiastic about engaging with questions about the need for change. This is what inspired the theme of this year’s CAB, ‘Shift’. We need a change and a shift in how we think about the substance and the fundamentals of the field of architecture. Space is political, and how we decide to live in a certain moment in history always has a political implication. I am trying to inspire a dialogue around all these elements.
For CAB, there is not a single, central exhibition, but a constellation of capsule ones, which hopefully will open up critical discussions on different fronts. For example, one of the shows, ‘Ecologies’, talks about ecosystems – not just natural, but also within the built environment and fabric, and what these relationships mean. The younger generations are more organically related to climate change and social empathy. The challenge is always how to address things materially, because we build and bring new things into the world. Responding to what we saw at this year’s Venice Architecture Biennale, this doesn’t mean that we need to get extremely technocratic, but we need to understand the capabilities of design. Form, beauty and the recognition of value in the ordinary are also very powerful mediums.

▲ 2023年芝加哥建筑双年展期间，Buell中心在芝加哥文化中心展出的作品
Work by The Buell Center at the Chicago Cultural Center during the CAB in 2023
(Image credit: Tom Harris)

即将到来的双年展上另一个展览是“栖居，外居”，它关注集体住房，并汇集了来自世界各地30多个生活方式案例研究，探讨了具体的变革。其中一些提出了新的所有权模式、共享空间、类型学实验或更负责任的材料使用方式。还有一个名为“平凡的非凡”的独立焦点，审视了建筑领域中“新现实主义”的一些趋势。这关乎层次、注入想象力，并在日常中发现魔力。它关乎那些我们不一定称之为壮观或理想主义的时刻，但它们提供了升华的体验和新的观察方式。即便是窗户的一角也可以是神奇的。还会有其他的“胶囊”展览，比如与芝加哥这座城市、其未来和历史相关的“一切芝加哥”；灵感源自马歇尔·伯曼的著作《一切坚固的东西都烟消云散了》、关于现代性体验的“融化的固体”；或是回顾该领域其他一些激进变革时刻的“碎片化的宣言”。我们还会有一个公共项目，名为“我们需要谈谈”。

在双年展之外，我一直在思考建筑界的批判。十五年前，我在布宜诺斯艾利斯创办了一本名为《Plot》的建筑期刊。出版和写作关于建筑的文章是这个领域不可或缺的一部分，本届双年展也将有一个小型的出版计划，希望能包括小册子和一些实验性的形式。我喜欢探索今天“批判”意味着什么，它的角色以及它可能采取的形式。《Plot》曾是厚重而坚实的，也许现在这种厚重已非必要，那么我们现在需要什么呢？

Another show at the upcoming biennial is ‘Inhabit, Outhabit’, which focuses on collective housing and gathers more than 30 case studies of ways of living from around the world that explore specific transformations. Some propose new models for ownership, shared spaces, typological experimentations or a more responsible use of materials. There is also a separate spotlight called ‘The Ordinary Extra’ that looks at some tendencies of new realism in architecture. This is about layering, bringing imagination and finding magic in the everyday. It is about moments that are not necessarily what we would call spectacular or idealistic, but offer elevated experiences and new ways of looking. Even a corner of a window can be magical. There will be other capsules, like ‘Everything Chicago’, related to the city, its future and its history; ‘Melting Solids’, inspired by Marshall Bergman’s book All That is Solid Melts into Air, about the experience of modernity; or ‘Fragmented Manifestos’, revising some other moments of radical change for the field. We will also have a public programme, which we have called ‘We need to talk’.
Beyond the biennial, I am always thinking about critique in architecture. Fifteen years ago, I founded Plot, a journal on architecture based in Buenos Aires. Publishing and writing about architecture is integral to the field, and the biennial will also have a small publication programme, hopefully including pamphlets and some experimental formats. I love to explore what criticism means today, its role and what forms it might take. Plot was heavy and sturdy, and perhaps now this heaviness is not necessary, so what do we need right now?

▲ 2023年芝加哥建筑双年展期间，Barkow Leibinger在芝加哥文化中心展出的作品“纸板Merzbau”
Barkow Leibinger's 'Cardboard Merzbau' at the Chicago Cultural Center during CAB in 2023
(Image credit: Tom Harris)

许多美国的专业人士担心他们的研究经费被削减，由于政府在文化领域的支出大幅减少，可能性变得更加有限。这并未直接影响双年展的财务状况，但它影响了我们思考和进行文化生产的方式。我希望本届双年展是包容但具有批判性的，因此重要的是我们要对对话持开放态度，并且能够自由地表达不同意见。我于上世纪70年代出生在阿根廷，当时的政治局势意味着我们没有完全的言论自由，我的家人不得不流亡五年。所以我想我从小就被训练得能够在不同的环境条件下生存与思考。

我相信建筑为每个人服务，应该向所有人开放。现在，比以往任何时候都更重要的是，要促进互相尊重的对话，将艰难的对话摆上台面，并努力建立集体的理解。我们希望与专业领域对话，也希望与普通观众在同一层面上对话，驾驭这条界线是我策展工作的重要部分。我希望双年展不会成为行业的“回音室”，而是一个人们感觉可以自由进入、可以共同思考的地方。好奇心是这里的关键。我希望我们的展览能激发好奇心，让人感到具有启发性，并能与每一个人沟通。

Many professionals in the US are worried about their research grants being cut and possibilities becoming more limited due to government spending being significantly reduced within the fields of culture. This is not something that has affected the biennial finances directly, but that impacts how we think and do cultural production. I want this biennial to be inclusive and critical, so it is important that we are open to conversation and are free to express different opinions. I was born in Argentina in the 1970s, and the political situation there at the time meant that we did not have full freedom of speech, and my family had to go into exile for five years. So I guess I have been conditioned since childhood to be able to operate in different environmental conditions.
I believe architecture is for everyone and should be open to all. Now, more than ever, it is critical to foster respectful dialogue, bring to the fore difficult conversations, and try to build collective understanding. We want to talk to the field, but also to the general audience on the same level, and navigating that line is an important part of my curatorial work. I hope the biennial will not be an echo chamber for the industry, but a place that people feel they can access freely and where we can think together. Curiosity is key here. I hope our exhibitions trigger curiosity, feel provocative and communicate with everyone.

▲ 2023年芝加哥建筑双年展上，Carol Ross Barney、Ryan Gann和Dusable Park设计联盟的“平行历史”展示图片
Image from Carol Ross Barney, Ryan Gann, and the Dusable Park Design Alliance's 'Parallel Histories' presentation at CAB in 2023
(Image credit: Hall Merrick McCaugherty Photographers)

由 Ellie Stathaki 采访

Interviewed by Ellie Stathaki

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