James Taylor-Foster
Selected writing 2012 – 2018
  • About
  • Category
  • Title
  • Publication
  • Year
  • Curatorial
  • Alternate Presents Welcome
  • 2017
James Taylor-Foster
editor & writer of essays & reviews,
architectural designer,
maker of exhibitions
Selected writing 2012 – 2018
  • Alternate Presents Welcome

Alternate Presents Welcome will invite architects to reclaim fiction and narrative as sources of creative liberty and powerful antidotes to the fragmentation and dissociation that has characterised this decade.

Fig 1. Palladio’s Teatro Olimpico, Vicenza (1585)

Participants—exhibitors, visitors, and members of the public—will be encouraged to embrace the narratives inherent in all projective architecture. In the field of architecture, telling a story is not just a sales tactic – it is, and should be, a political tool; a means of cutting the gordian knot of dejection and frustration with the achingly slow pace of progressive politics and the process of building.

We believe that in order to restore faith in such common projects, citizens and those who work in the sphere of architecture must look to tools that are at once radical and rooted in history. Scenographic environments—the diorama, the stage set, and performative space—designed to be either didactic or distractive create full-scale jump cuts to another place and time. They connect the present to the past and to fantastical alternate realities. These devices, which render fiction with the conviction of spatiality, are among the most important tools at the architect’s disposal. It is about telling stories for stories’ sake.

Fig 2. Scenography for Pink Floyd’s concert, Venice (1979)

“Curtain Up”

Lisbon has cultivated and maintained a long, intimate relationship between urban space, festival, and public gathering. In the 18th Century, under King João V, this character became firmly established in the tradition of scenography – a method of projecting the authority of the crown but, more importantly, of integrating different social groups under a common idea. Against the backdrop of the city, these events—concentrated on large squares built around architectural symbols of power, such as Terreiro do Paço—became an instituted facet of public life. Seen as part of this narrative, the central exhibition will recall a Hollywood backlot – a collection of dramatic interior and exterior scenographies forming a square, or piazza. Each scenography will be accompanied by a “narrative” presented in written form, recorded as audio and filmed.

Fig 3. Scene from Cleopatra, dir. Joseph L. Mankiewicz (1963)

Curatorial Addendum

Participants will be denied plaques, captions or explanatory text. Authorship will be eschewed in favour of unity of approach, while focusing efforts on creating a highly immersive sequence of experiences. On all fronts we will actively discourage overwrought expression of thought that so often risks alienating audiences, advocating instead for careful consideration. We will encourage meaningful integration of theory into architecture, refusing to let it inertly tag along as vinyl on a wall.

A fundamental power of narrative is its power to inclusively dissolve and disperse theory to minds that otherwise be unwilling to receive it. It encourages us to welcome new scenarios and ideas; the sugar and the medicine bound inextricably. We should be threatened by rapidly developing isolationist attitudes; in light of this, Alternate Presents Welcome will be fundamentally inclusive.

An abbreviated proposal for the 5th Lisbon Architecture Triennale.

Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and Are.na

James Taylor-Foster
editor & writer of essays & reviews,
architectural designer,
maker of exhibitions
  • CuratorialI.
  • ProjectsII.
  • PublicationsIII.
  • SpeakingIV.
  • WritingV.
I.Curatorial
  • Alternate Presents Welcome2017
  • You Are Not Alone2017
  • In Therapy — 15th Nordic Pavilion2016
  • Keeping Up Appearances2015
II.Projects
  • Architecture on Display2018
  • Planetary Protocols2018
  • The Stones of Venice: A Kimono2017
  • Misunderstandings (A Reliquary)2016
  • Conversational Skeleton2015
  • Domestic Flux2014
III.Publications
  • Living on Water2017
  • Faith2016
  • Elemental Living2016
  • Abundance2016
  • Clairvoyance2015
  • People, Place, Purpose2015
  • Defiance2015
  • Monet: Colour in Impressionism2012
IV.Speaking
  • Attention, Accelerated2017
  • Baltoscandia: A Complex Utopia2017
  • Exhibition Models2017
  • Profil on RTV 42017
  • Radio Broadcasts2016
V.Writing
  • Concrete Mountain2017
  • On Liquid Modernity2017
  • #003399, #FFCC00; The Meaning of a Flag2017
  • Pillars of Society: “Jantelagen”2017
  • Exhibiting the Postmodern2017
  • Future Architecture and the Idea of Europe2017
  • Domains of Influence2017
  • Ingress: Black Rock City2017
  • In Dialogue With Gravity2017
  • Rem, Redacted2016
  • Media States, Or The State of Media2016
  • A Piece of England to Call One’s Own2016
  • Upon This Rock (I Will Build My Church)2016
  • The Design of the Species2016
  • Venice Isn’t Sinking, It’s Flooding2016
  • The Woodland Cemetery2015
James Taylor-Foster
editor & writer of essays & reviews,
architectural designer,
maker of exhibitions
Selected writing 2012 – 2018
Curatorial
  • Alternate Presents Welcome 2017
  • for the 5th Lisbon Architecture Triennale with Brendan Bashin-Sullivan
Back

Alternate Presents Welcome will invite architects to reclaim fiction and narrative as sources of creative liberty and powerful antidotes to the fragmentation and dissociation that has characterised this decade.

Fig 1. Palladio’s Teatro Olimpico, Vicenza (1585)

Participants—exhibitors, visitors, and members of the public—will be encouraged to embrace the narratives inherent in all projective architecture. In the field of architecture, telling a story is not just a sales tactic – it is, and should be, a political tool; a means of cutting the gordian knot of dejection and frustration with the achingly slow pace of progressive politics and the process of building.

We believe that in order to restore faith in such common projects, citizens and those who work in the sphere of architecture must look to tools that are at once radical and rooted in history. Scenographic environments—the diorama, the stage set, and performative space—designed to be either didactic or distractive create full-scale jump cuts to another place and time. They connect the present to the past and to fantastical alternate realities. These devices, which render fiction with the conviction of spatiality, are among the most important tools at the architect’s disposal. It is about telling stories for stories’ sake.

Fig 2. Scenography for Pink Floyd’s concert, Venice (1979)

“Curtain Up”

Lisbon has cultivated and maintained a long, intimate relationship between urban space, festival, and public gathering. In the 18th Century, under King João V, this character became firmly established in the tradition of scenography – a method of projecting the authority of the crown but, more importantly, of integrating different social groups under a common idea. Against the backdrop of the city, these events—concentrated on large squares built around architectural symbols of power, such as Terreiro do Paço—became an instituted facet of public life. Seen as part of this narrative, the central exhibition will recall a Hollywood backlot – a collection of dramatic interior and exterior scenographies forming a square, or piazza. Each scenography will be accompanied by a “narrative” presented in written form, recorded as audio and filmed.

Fig 3. Scene from Cleopatra, dir. Joseph L. Mankiewicz (1963)

Curatorial Addendum

Participants will be denied plaques, captions or explanatory text. Authorship will be eschewed in favour of unity of approach, while focusing efforts on creating a highly immersive sequence of experiences. On all fronts we will actively discourage overwrought expression of thought that so often risks alienating audiences, advocating instead for careful consideration. We will encourage meaningful integration of theory into architecture, refusing to let it inertly tag along as vinyl on a wall.

A fundamental power of narrative is its power to inclusively dissolve and disperse theory to minds that otherwise be unwilling to receive it. It encourages us to welcome new scenarios and ideas; the sugar and the medicine bound inextricably. We should be threatened by rapidly developing isolationist attitudes; in light of this, Alternate Presents Welcome will be fundamentally inclusive.

An abbreviated proposal for the 5th Lisbon Architecture Triennale.
Back to Index

Login

Forgotten Password?

Lost your password?
Back to Login