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WORKSHOP AT COPENHAGEN ARCH. SCHOOL by David A. Garcia Introduction: From the thousand year old umbrella and all the way to un-foldable space stations, the built environment has accumulated a catalog of folding and unfolding capabilities. Spatially, the two extreme stages of the deployment/collapse are less important than all the stages in between. This middle range is malleable, it can take various routes, and its elements change their interrelation from one second to the other. Students of The Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, School of Architecture

WORKSHOP AT COPENHAGEN ARCH. SCHOOL by David A. Garcia Introduction: Continuously avoided by the architectural discipline, the energy systems, services and general “arteries” of any built environment, have been hidden, masked or even ignored. Different movements in the architectural tradition have embraced the spacial potential hidden/ignored in these systems. A vital example is Center Pompidou, where ventilation systems become external elements of the facade. What if this attitude was extended to all the elements of a built environment? What if electric systems, solar panels, ventilation, sewage etc... become the architecture, the spaces we inhabit, with out hiding or masking them? Students of The Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, School of Architecture

The competition guidelines called for "An environmental zoo where consideration should be given to a symbiotic environment that includes the activities of humans with animals." The proposal aimed to enrich both humans and animals by closer contact, while using the same environment. If the contemporary aim of zoos is to understand how animals and humans can be enriched by each other, then the proximity between animals and people is essential. This can be done by sharing simple rituals, like eating, resting or training. If these activities are done in the same architectural space, the spatial environment becomes important to both, animals and humans. Architecture is the perfect language to solve the physical challenges of such a proposal. This has to be understood as a serious undertaking and a way to enrich each other’s social necessities while creating new spaces. Imagine your self, reading in a cloud of butterflies in the central library, swimming with dolphins in the publi...

WORKSHOP AT LUND ARCHITECTURE SCHOOL, LTH By Peter Cook and David A. Garcia Introduction: “If you do not expect the unexpected you will not discover it.” Heraclitus The project aims to encourage your awareness of architectural language or ‘representative form’ and to take a stab at manipulating it in a highly conscious way. Thus the building programme is kept simple and offered as a series of ‘A’ or ‘B’ constituents. Students of Lund University School of Architecture

WORKSHOP AT COPENHAGEN ARCH. SCHOOL by David A. Garcia Introduction: Traditionally, human desires and needs for the subversive and the hidden, have always found a way of expression in architecture. From secret libraries in monasteries, to mafia offices in the back of restaurants, the possibility to create space also allows the possibility to hide space. This typology with in the realm of the built environment is often determined by great inventiveness. The constraints are of such unusual and extreme character, that the results tent to be equally unorthodox. Students of The Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, School of Architecture

Frederiksberg Main Library in the city of Copenhagen, commissioned a "reading lounge" in the main library room. In collaboration with industrial designer Martin Larsen, the solution created a new space, while integrating the existing structure. Due to the increased use of the internet, the library has become more a book pick up spot and less an archive where the user physically searches for and discovers books. The premise of the project is to create a reading space where user and books meet. Taking advantage of the rigid character of the library as archive, the proposal maintained the frame and format of the book shelves, replacing the books of the niche in question, with a sinuous seating arrangement. This created a frame where the reader becomes the main character, instead of the bookshelves.

The Archive Series are investigations on space and books, aiming to blur the borders between art and design. Clearly non functional, they aim to appeal to the senses, creating a narrative which more often than not, reaches the absurd. Departing from ideas of density and micro spaces, they aim to explore the traditional relationships that humans have to books. Private collections have existed for centuries, but when this is added to nomadic behaviour, curious contradictions arise; this is the area studied by Archive II. How can an individual travel with it’s own library, given that books are so heavy? Is this an absurdity? Archive II is a nomadic library, an impossible transport system and an intimate space. Inspired by ancient travelling libraries from the Far East, which visited courts and cities, Archive II transforms this into a "micro room", where walking and reading coexist as refuge and transport in the imagination. The Archive Series has been exhibited at the Royal Dan...