Graz the Usual City

Author: Alex Axinte
Impressum:
Herausgeber/Publisher: Verein Pépinières Österreich, Engelgasse 3-5, 8010 Graz
Location:
Graz, Austria
Year:
march-may 2006

The publication Graz the Usual City is the result of Pepinieres map XXL grant awarded residency program with Haus der Architektur, Graz, Austria. www.art4eu.net

dsc_6287Graz the Usual City is an archive of more than 20 examples of everyday units - left over, camouflaged, orphaned or just hidden away. These objects and structures are detected in the city of Graz, the place where the marriage between the moral preservation of the built up history and the forward stainless steel architectural insertions, generate an atmospheric Luna Park scenery, highlighted by constant outdoor events.

img_2798gsjpg

img_2788gs

Here is also a neglected mass of honest buildings, which can be found outside this self promoted image of the city: threatened by modernization and urban renewal, surviving of bilbao effects and beautification strategies, face lifts and make ups, these are some ordinary built objects. Either reluctant to change, or completely careless to constant daily transformations, having direct answers to basic needs and taking unexpected turns and shapes, these structures are sheltering the unexpected, otherwise excluded from the increasingly overwhelming designed urban environments of today.

Chosen during a process of mapping the city, this archive documents examples of some un sexy categories: car related, utilitarian, infrastructural, geometry-adding or only accidental. Arranged in an architectural journal format, the GUC collection can be handled as a guide book, dedicated to tourists, locals and urban planners. It draws attention to neutrality and nothingness that still exists in our cities, not just like another manifesto for the ugly and the ordinary, but also as a tool to explore the presence of the honest others - all those quiet presences of the everyday that builds up our sense of belonging to a place.

GUC.indd

GUC.indd

GUC.indd

23. The Caravan

address: Griesplatz

C:LUCRUARelatedMade_in_Grazdwgsituatie.dwg Model (1)

Born out in a busy, elongated type of square, this unit sits on a small asphalt island surrounded by a heavy traffic boulevard, bus stops and a parking area. The ensemble is composed by 2 public phone cabins, a one level wooden hut partially sloped roof, and two also pitched roofed houses, one light green and tall, and the other lower and more yellow. Made from brown painted timber striped, having few windows with wooden joints and displaying few advertising boxes and posters, the first house is a café. The second one, made from brick structure with light green and white stripes plaster finishing, is a public toilet, divided in two gender areas. The last one, having a similar structure and materials as the previous one, hosts an electrical transformation point, and has two facades covered with big advertising panels. The daily survival in the sea of cars might be a tough job, but by sticking together, these five neighbors by mistake can have their chance as a convoy of needs.

d_023

p01_fata

The complete publication:

http://www.issuu.com/alexandruaxinte/docs/graz_the_usual_city