This event was organized, together with Gaia Caramellino, in conjunction with the June 2014 Buell Center exhibition, “House Housing: An Untimely History of Architecture and Real Estate in Nineteen Episodes,” in order to open up a critical conversation regarding the role(s) played by finance, real estate, and their imaginaries in architecture, with special attention given to housing. The importance of these factors is undeniable in an era characterized, in many locales, by the accumulation of disproportionate private wealth, alongside the privatization of formerly public assets, like housing, and their recirculation as real estate. The ultimate aim is to address the ubiquity of real estate and its imaginaries in the contemporary city and to sketch their histories, recognizing that these logics shape vast areas of architectural production, including otherwise experimental work.
The panel’s title, “Fundamental #13,” refers to the overall curatorial theme proposed by Curator of the 14th International Architecture Exhibition, Rem Koolhaas: “Fundamentals,” and to the sub-theme, “Elements of Architecture,” of which there were originally twelve. Whether numerologically lucky or unlucky, “Fundamental #13″—land, as real estate—performs a magic trick, by converting substance into money and back again. Like the House Housing exhibition, the panel therefore supplements the Biennale’s main themes with another fundamental architectural element and its histories.
For more information, see http://house-housing.com & http://buellcenter.org
source
