19/10/2017 Hesselbrand

Lectures

For us, being openly propositional in architectural production calls for an understanding of architecture and the city through use and ultimately requires different modes of realisation. Particularly when we open up urban potentialities, the chosen modes of representation must be able to capture performativity in its indeterminacy. How can this be achieved?


We first learned about London architecture firm Hesselbrand reading their article in contemporary culture magazine Real Review about Swiss architect Peter Märkli’s particular approach to a ‘plan economy’. Two pages of text and two pages of artwork, a floor plan, a section, two interior and two exterior views of one of Märkli’s apartment buildings in Trübbach, Switzerland are the material Hesselbrand employs to point out that ‘architecture is not merely a functional response to basic needs; it is the essential activity of proposing, organising and representing how people might live together.’


Hesselbrand was founded by Martin Brandsdal, Magnus Casselbrant and Jesper Henriksson. The practice assembles projects in architecture, academia and publishing. Recent projects include Decades, a room in 2016’s exhibition at the British Pavilion for the Venice Architecture Biennale, Prime, intergenerational housing for London and Three Found Models at the Revue Gallery in Soho.