Lecture
Wednesday 19 September 2012, 18:00
Auditorium SG, EPFL
As part of the exhibition Yona Friedman, Genesis of a Vision
The Erratic Universe of Yona Friedman
The French-Hungarian architect Yona Friedman is well known among architects for his theory of a Mobile Architecture. He was also one of the protagonists of the “Age of Megastructure” during the 50’s and 60’s. After having been classified as an utopian architect he disappeared from the disciplinary publications for almost thirty years. Recently Friedman’s work is having a revival of general interest but forgetting much part of it. Since his education as an architect at first in Hungary and then in Palestine-Israel, Friedman progressively has investigated problems beyond architecture. His theoretical production, developed after moving to France in 1957, is extremely heterogeneous and rich. In fact Friedman’s publications matter with city planning, sociology, anthropology and physics. For these reasons is now urgent to give a unique critical view of his multiple activity rebuilding some of the contexts in which he operated. For too much Friedman has been judged separately from the environments where he was part of.
Manuel Orazi
Graduated in 2001 at IUAV University with a thesis in History of the city, tutor Donatella Calabi. In 2007 he got a PhD in History of Architecture and of Cities at the Foundation for Advanced Studies in Venice (SSAV) with the dissertation: “The Erratic Universe of Yona Friedman,” tutor Marco De Michelis. He has studied in Tel Aviv, in Israel in 2004 and in Paris, several times between 2004 and 2006. Since 2002 he works for the publishing house Quodlibet based in Macerata, where he edits the architecture books. Since 2004 he collaborates with the Observatory on Architecture of the Targetti Foundation in Florence and since 2011 with Festarch, International Festival of Architecture in Perugia. He teaches Theories of contemporary architecture at the School of Architecture and Design in Ascoli Piceno (UNICAM) and at “Aldo Rossi” Faculty of Architecture in Cesena. Between February and March 2010 he studied the Yona Friedman Archives at the Getty Research Institute of Los Angeles, California. He regularly writes for the magazines “Log” and “Abitare”. Among his recent essays there are those published in the Italian edition of R. Venturi, D. Scott Brown, S. Izenour, Learning from Las Vegas (Macerata, Quodlibet 2010), in AAVV, Ugo La Pietra. Habiter la ville, Orléans, Editions HYX 2009, and in Yona Friedman, Architecture with the people, by the people, for the people, edited by María Inés Rodriguez, Barcelona, Actar Birkhauser 2011.