Commonly associated with self-indulgence or, worse, only accepted as an antidote to work or productivity, the long history of “fun” has codified it as something distinct from labour, and often in total opposition to it. As the year went by, we repeatedly found ourselves conceptualizing the definition of “fun” in opposition to something else: fun as opposed to work, as opposed to boredom, to misery. Perhaps it’s time to resituate fun as a main priority. 

What started as an “open call for fun” early in 2024 has shifted in tone as we slide into the end of the year. It might seem odd to now publish an issue focusing on fun against a backdrop of a world consistently devastated by appalling events. This 2024 issue stems from wanting to find ways to deal with the absurdity of the things we cannot change, by looking at the ways architecture might create space for joy. Shifting from the perspective of infrastructures for fun, such as Cedric Price and Joan Littlewood’s iconic Fun Palace, we keep coming back to the question: what, rather, is an architecture of fun? Can we borrow from existing architectures of fun, by playing them like a script or score that people can relate to and build community from? In this evolving definition, having fun can be an act of resistance. 

Sincere Fun, the title of this cycle, differs from “just fun” as, in order to be sincere, it has to be aware of both the context in which it takes place, and of the consequences of it happening: Sincere Fun is never frivolous or naive, it is always holistic and humanizing. Sincere Fun is Camp: in the words of Susan Sontag– to “dethrone the serious,” oscillating between seriousness and fun, balancing the line between being fun and making fun of, calling for the consolidation of seemingly opposing concepts in a perverse but generative way. The ability to have fun is both reliant on a social condition that permits the act, and space to house the act. Centered on two events, this cycle explored the possibilities of integrating play into work and life through performance and conversation, with posters and recipes, to call for a kind of fun freed from its defensive position, into one of connectivity and growth. 

Bookcity, Milan, Italy

During the 2023 edition of Bookcity in Milan, Cartha was invited by Park Associati to host the event “New Perspectives Between Publishing and Architecture.” For the occasion, Cartha invited local architects Ganko, Parasite 2.0, (ab)normal, and Matilde Cassani—all previous contributors to the magazine—to reflect on the theme through posters and texts, which were showcased and discussed during the event.

Parasite 2.0 examined the evolution of entertainment spaces and media, tracing a trajectory from cinema to television and digital platforms, highlighting how these shifts have redefined the boundaries between public and private spaces. Matilde Cassani, inspired by the seminal architectural thesis Learning from Las Vegas, reflected on the city’s vibrant lights and billboards as tools of architectural communication and delving into the interplay of irony and reality in capturing the city. In a similar context, Parasite 2.0  investigated the symbolic and architectural significance of deserts, examining their historical role in spiritual introspection and radical creativity, connecting ancient religious contexts to contemporary experiments like Burning Man and Neom. Finally, Ganko drew inspiration from John Belushi’s tortuous career to explore the relationship between craft and fun, arguing that architecture, being deliberate and precise, contrasts with the spontaneous and irregular nature of fun. 

Architecture 2 Gallery, Winnipeg, Canada

On March 18, 2024, “Brown Bags” brought together artists and designers in the Architecture 2 Gallery in Winnipeg, Canada. Designed by Radu Remus Macovei and Edward Wang, the event approached Sincere Fun by expanding on their series of food activations that open up new avenues to discuss queer space and aesthetics. It began with a play on the format of a Brown Bag Lunch: bringing lunch to work, school, or a “lunch and learn,” the brown paper bag is an iconic vessel for midday consumables. Six guests from Zurich, Toronto, Chicago and Winnipeg were invited to respond to a “Call for Recipes” that fit within a brown paper bag, providing an image and a recipe that materializes their idea of queer architecture. 

Miles Gertler’s “Clickbait Protein Shake” tracked the industrialization of protein powder into the design of the self, pairing a protein shake made from 100% whey-based protein from a “canister of heroic proportions” with an audience-led YouTube slot machine lottery. Mercedes, Akum and Ekene Maduka queered a traditional West African Jollof rice recipe with a sweet and savory blend that turns the longstanding debate of Who does it best? into What can we learn from each other?, transforming the geography of a dinner table into an open and inclusive space. Lindsey Krug disassembled “Lunchables” from an American cafeteria status symbol into a bricolage kit of offcuts inspired by Jack Halberstam’s “low theory” from The Queer Art of Failure. In a similar subversion, Remus Macovei’s “Jiggly Jelly Family Fruit Salad” queers a 20th-century domestic staple–molded Jell-O salad—by combining super-saturated contrasting flavours of lime, cherry and lemon Jell-O with fresh ingredients like cucumber, strawberries and cured ham.

Within the limited scope of this issue, fun emerges from right under our noses. Concealed as the “other,” fun is rather a blissful feeling you enjoy when, after acknowledging the constraints of our common realities, you succeed in finding it in a bowl of Jell-O, or on a Stardust billboard. Straying from our usual online essay structure, what the event format has highlighted is the significance of shared conversation to celebrate these moments of fun as acts of collective resistance, like contagious laughter in a crowd. Looking forward, can fun untie itself from the dichotomy of work and leisure by showing up sincerely, a humble critic in a culture seeking heroes.

The research on Las Vegas by Denise Scott Brown and Robert Venturi started in 1968, with students signed in Las Vegas Studio, at Yale University. The aim of the survey was to investigate the phenomenon of Las Vegas sprawl after the postwar period. As innovative analytic techniques to study the cities, Scott Brown and Venturi, related directly to Kepes and Lynch’s previous studies, promoted through their students the use of photographs and videos, unusual methods related to architecture at that time.

Even the photographical approach was an experimental trial, the researchers broke taboos and founded their documentation by treating architecture as a phenomenon captured in images. They comprehended the strength of photography to witness the reality in a specific time, as Barthes and Sontag stated in their texts:

“The Photograph does not necessarily say what is no longer, but only and for certain what has been.”

“The Photograph’s essence is to ratify what it represents.”

“Finally, the most grandiose result of the photographic enterprise is to give us the sense that we can hold the whole world in our heads as an anthology of images”.

From the beginning of Learning from Las Vegas research, it was evident the intentional provocative and ironical coexistence of the meaning of Learning, as scientific photographical documentation, with Las Vegas, the unique protagonist captured in all the pictures, known as the iconoclastic city of fun where serious was dethroned. On one hand, Scott Brown and Venturi through photographs focused on architectural thought of action, on the here and now, capturing real images in a real time, producing a legacy of Las Vegas. On the other, Las Vegas was shaped in its real frivolous essence: the city of the escapism from the reality with its huge funny advertising billboards and nocturnal views overwhelmed by colourful lights. In fact, Scott Brown and Venturi suggested an unprejudiced view of Las Vegas, made of proliferation of billboards and nocturnal illuminations, and where the mechanisms of monetization and fun structures were promoted.  As shown in most of the pictures, during night time Las Vegas expressed its playful nature, decorated by a massive number of lights, as Banham described in The Architecture of the Well-Tempered Environment: “What defines the symbolic places and spaces of Las Vegas—the super hotels of the Strip, the Casino-belt of Fremon Street—is pure environmental power, manifested as coloured lights.” Similarly, Archigram referred to Las Vegas as a pure electric architecture of light that was not attached to architectural form.

The nocturnal picture of Stardust was the perfect emblematic manifesto of the ludic spirit of Las Vegas. As most of the typical casinos-motels on the Strip built in the middle of 50’s, the Stardust casino architecture was neutral and its position was next to the highway. Paradoxically what appeared visible by driving cars from roads to Las Vegas was the casino’s billboard instead of the building itself. Once again, the Desert city expressed its humorous soul: Stardust sign inflected toward highway, it became the architecture of communication over the space and made the building itself hidden in the urban environment during daytime to totally disappear during the night.

Ironically, The Stardust 48 years old casino-hotel building became suddenly visible in the moment of its demolition in 2007, that became a paradoxical ritual of celebration: at 2 a.m. a gorgeous pyrotechnic spectacle of fireworks marked the 10-second countdown in front of the building before the explosives were touched off and the Stardust hotel concluded its existence in a dust cloud. The commercial persuasion of this big bright billboard reminded to the image of a carousel, a dreamy place far from the real world, a sort “Toyland” where to escape. Unfortunately, each dream has its waking up to reality and the Stardust was a photographed subject which captured a part of reality that can be observed and has its end, as Sontag stated in On Photography: “Photographed images do not seem to be statements about the world so much as pieces of it, miniatures of reality that anyone can make or acquire.” One more time the coexistence of Learning from Las Vegas reveals its controversies turning in the constant ironical contrast of Learning versus Las Vegas.

Matilde Cassani Studio moves on the border between architecture, installation and event design. The practice deals with the spatial implications of cultural pluralism in the contemporary Western city. Her works have been exhibited in many institutions such as Storefront for Art and Architecture, New York (2011); Biennale Architettura di Venezia (2012, 2014, 2018); Victoria and Albert Museum (2015); Oslo Triennale (2016); Chicago Architecture Biennale (2017); Manifesta 12, Palermo (2018); Triennale di Milano (2019); Cassani currently teaches at Naba in Milano and at the Architectural Association in London. Her works are present in several museum collections including Victoria and Albert Museum, MAXXI e Franz Hals Museum di Harleem. She has taught at the AA, currently teaches at Naba and Libera Università di Bolzano.

The first screen that the public experienced was undoubtedly the cinema screen. Film projection made it possible to reproduce and transport content by flattening the stage, making it two-dimensional and confined to the screen’s surface. In the early 20th century, a new type of architecture emerged, that of the cinema, which was somewhat distant from the original model of the Odeon. It’s no coincidence that many movie theaters adopted the same name. The invention of cinema, therefore, represents a significant evolution in entertainment technology. Nevertheless, the invention of cinema technology didn’t bring about a paradigm shift in the design of entertainment space. Many theaters were adapted to accommodate screens and projections, effectively becoming proper cinemas.

The consumption of content essentially remained unchanged; the passive spectator who sporadically and collectively witnesses the performance or, in the case of cinema, the playback of entertainment content. Cinema, in other words, traditionally involves a passive audience with no interactive capability. The wall between the audience and the actors remains solid. The urban planning emergency of large indoor spaces, where communities collectively consume works written and directed by a group of intellectuals who educate and guide the cultural life of communities, is still in place.

Television completely disrupted this balance. Starting from 1928, cathode ray tube television sets, built following the design of inventor Philo Farnsworth, began to populate homes in the United States and Europe. In a few years, NBC in the United States and the BBC in the United Kingdom structured the first weekly television schedules. Living rooms, once inviolate spaces dedicated to family intimacy, became portals through which propaganda messages, advertisements, news, and in-depth programs were broadcast. Above all, living rooms became small dispersed audiences all over the Earth’s surface. The space that was once concentrated within large urban boxes was segmented into countless domestic “tribunes.” The cathode ray tube technology initiated a process of public life penetration into the private dimension of the home, which today occurs within digital devices. Television is the first device capable of altering the geography of domestic space, a process that, thanks to smartphones, renders domestic zoning completely anachronistic.

Entertainment architecture, therefore, changes, divided between television sets and domestic living rooms.

However, the spectator’s posture remains passive. Television still constitutes an extremely hierarchical medium, rigidly maintaining the distinction between the audience and the performance. Television sets become attractive representations of the cultural model that television is required to convey, appearing on the screens of every home are stereotypical living rooms within which actors perform edifying scenes of daily life, intended to stimulate the viewer’s mirror neurons to adopt similar behaviors. Television, the ultimate democratic technology, takes on the features of a brainwashing machine.

After the end of World War II, television truly entered every home. In European homes, still scarred by the war’s mortar shells, the glowing box became synonymous with democracy and progress, the two key words through which the new Western geopolitical system based its success. The televisions in Italian, German, or French living rooms, through the architecture of the television set, reproduced foreign life models, specifically stereotypical of the dominant North American thinking. Just as European television sets conformed to the American model, the shapes of homes began to change as well. TV represented the perfect control tool that magically captured the passive spectator, clouding their critical ability. The architecture of entertainment, once a theater and then a home, allowed for a constant and widespread cultural influence on the masses. A demiurgic power never experienced before, made possible by strict control of the airwaves. The ethereal space gained political significance, and national television broadcasting networks began to emerge, state-controlled.

In 1987, an apparently  irrelevant event occurred, which, when analyzed retrospectively, marked the beginning of a drastic change. A group of still anonymous individuals managed to replace the television schedule of the WGN-TV broadcaster, a company controlled by the state of Illinois, invading the homes of millions of Americans. They transmitted a brief message with cryptic and self-referential content. They ridiculed some local celebrities while wearing a grotesque mask, a caricature of the fictional TV host/robot Max Headroom. A few moments of pure madness infiltrated the screens of many viewers. The Max Headroom Signal Intrusion is an event that is remembered for its farcical content and the unidentified perpetrators. Signal pirates remained in the shadows. Although part of American popular culture, it is considered a low-value hacking act. Yet, it gave rise to a process of disintegration of the once solid distinction between the audience and the performance. The incident (the term used to describe the event) made it clear that, with some knowledge of physics, control over frequencies could be bypassed, making some form of interaction between the audience and the performance possible for the first time. The low-value mask, the crackling audio, the modified voice, and the DIY set simulating a loss of frequency (probably staged using clumsily manipulated metal sheet) are all elements that tell of a context that was probably domestic, certainly not professional. In other words, this event is a precursor of Gonzo content, a specific category of media products created, performed, and consumed by the same author, content that gives value to the banality of daily life. What we now call Reality, to describe globally successful programs such as Big Brother, derives precisely from this voyeuristic approach to content creation.

Suddenly, the living room expands, and, in addition to the viewer’s armchair, it encompasses the stage, or rather the television set. The domestic space, now completely desecrated, becomes the backdrop of reality and, therefore, simultaneously content and container.

The  Max  Headroom incident start a sequence of mutations through which the architecture of entertainment has been absorbed into the great black hole of domestic space, a category that has been depleted of meaning as a result of the disappearance of the distinction between public and private. The home and the theater merge with the invention of television and reconfigure as a third space, a hybrid place where content can be both produced and consumed. The acceleration in the  development of mass media technologies has had extremely relevant consequences in the form and use of spaces related to entertainment. On one hand, the architecture of entertainment no longer exists, whether we are talking about consumption or the production of entertainment; we cannot say that the production of entertainment has declined. Nowadays, it’s almost redundant to point out that mobile devices for content consumption, such as tablets and smartphones, have replaced architecture, allowing continuous and voracious consumption of entertainment content. The production of entertainment is also accessible to anyone with a smartphone and a profile on any media-sharing platform. Just take a look at the demographics of television and platform viewers to understand that the era of television is coming to an end, and the primary media used for the dissemination of entertainment content will be streaming platforms. Those who produce content for platforms like Twitch or YouTube do so independently, directly from their own bedrooms. Therefore, even the domestic environment changes shape and becomes a “Television Studio,” equipped with cameras and microphones.

For the streamer, the home is both public and private, and except for the bed and the bathroom, it becomes the stage for the tedious and endless spectacle of daily life. As with the theater scene, flattened onto the two-dimensionality of the cinema screen, today, even the home loses its three-dimensionality, reduced to a replaceable background. Nonetheless, the home remains solid in the collective memory as a privileged place for human relationships. The domestic space is often used as a scenographic expedient in which to perform pseudo-artistic routines to share on platforms like TikTok and Instagram. There are even houses designed specifically as sequences of colorful backgrounds, in which celebrities from the platform are contractually required to live to create content industrially. Collab Houses are anti-domestic houses that seem like spatial catalogs of wallpapers and trashy lights and only come alive through the vertical screen of the smartphone. Groups of 6-8 teenagers gather to share intimate spaces forcibly, driven by the possibility of increasing followers and, consequently, income. In these places, neither the touch of the designer nor the emotional stratification due to domestic space consumption is perceived.

Proceeding with hyperboles (a highly efficient exercise if you want to speculate on the future), architecture as a coherent thought about space seems to no longer exist, because the perceptual three-dimensionality of space no longer exists. Thanks to webcams, we can comfortably experience an infinite number of spaces. What we see inside the screen, however, is only a very small portion of these spaces. Screen architecture allows us to observe only fragments, many fragments, but it rarely conveys the complexity of the form in its entirety. Screen architecture, and therefore entertainment, is an accessible and unpretentious place, a space activated and used by anyone. Its fragmentary nature also corresponds to an enormous potential for recombination. It’s not a predetermined space because it lives by accident. The entertainment on the platforms always remains open, ready to be colonized rather than to colonize.

(ab)Normal is a creative agency engaged in the multidisciplinary exploration of areas such as design, architecture, scenography and graphic design. The project began as a Graphic Novel without chronology, in which outdated 3d objects and unrealized formal obsessions are rearranged into spatial narratives. (ab)Normal has been published in magazines such as Domus, Volume e Abitare and has contributed with his works to various cultural events related to design and architecture, such as the Oslo Triennale (OAT2019), the Ljubljana Biennale (BIO26), The Swiss Architecture Museum (S AM), Triennale of Milan, Haus der Architektur in Graz (HDA). (ab)Normal was founded in 2018 by Marcello Carpino, Mattia Inselvini, Davide Masserini and Luigi Savio.

In 1972 Ettore Sottsass published “The Planet as a Festival” on Casabella n. 365. Dreaming of a humanity free from the chain of labour, Sottsass imagined a city sitting at the margins of our society and shaped like a music festival. Living in a constant hallucinatory reality, the inhabitant of the Planet as a Festival mixes hedonism and new spiritualism, in the bleached California counterculture sauce. It’s interesting to see how today both the extremes of hedonism and spirituality are embodied by the new generations. From one side there’s the Burningman-esque psilocybin-infused pagan tribe, and from the others a constantly growing mass of radicalized conservative-religious-mass, retreating into traditional religions, spending time on Reddit’s chatgroups more than churches or mosques. What holds together these two tendencies? Religious spirituality and Burning Man Festival? The desert.

The desert has always been a place full of fascination for man. The Oxford Dictionary defines it as “a waterless, desolate area of land with little or no vegetation, typically one covered with sand”. An example of this, or rather the archetype of a ”desolate area” would be the Sinai desert, where we can observe two of its most important features.

The first being that due to an absence of water and vegetation, life becomes impossible; and a place where life cannot exist is the antithesis of an anthropised landscape, the opposite therefore of the artefact, of architecture or its settlement agglomerations.

The second feature concerns specifically the archetype of the western (or more precisely Mediterranean) desert: the Sahara, and the Sinai.

Here we find the meaning given to this place from an ascetic or metaphysical point of view, with extreme reference to the history of the Hebrew people— it is on Mount Sinai that they receive the Tablets of Stone. Therefore the desert takes on huge significance as the birthplace of the three great monotheistic religions of Mediterranean origin. It becomes the space in which man can reinvent himself through a state of isolation.

It is therefore apparent that the desert belongs more to an mystical inner world rather than the scientific domain of the rational mind. From the biblical theology of the desert of Moses, or the hermit of “Simòn del desierto” by Luis Buñuel, to the “villain” El topo by Alejandro Jodorowsky, the desert is considered the land of the mystic, of the inwards-looking, of the search for oneself, of the rebirth in new forms, whichever they may be. It is precisely on how this aspect is closely linked to symbolic architecture that we will focus our attention.

The first architecture we will visit on our journey through the desert is the Tabernacle. According to the Hebrew religion it is the primordial architecture; a basic element of their forty year search for the Promised Land. To wander in the desert is then fundamental in discovering the land of Canaan.

The Tabernacle was a mobile sanctuary thoroughly described in the book of Exodus. Our regular interpretation of a temple is that it can be settled. Even though for Hebrews and Christians the Tabernacle is God’s house, in Latin it simply means “abode”. Its etymology then bring us back to the archetype of the shelter. Observing its Latin root, both tabernaculum or taberna derive from the word tabula, wooden board, matrix of possible architectures. The Latin meaning of Tabernaculum was hut, meant as a military encampment. A sort of foundational military outpost, a settlement from which a possible conurbation could flourish.

If we consider the Tabernacle from an architectural point of view, it is extremely simple, but it already embodies the features and structure of the urban matrix. It is a fenced area, a corral with an architecture in the middle. This architecture presents a clear distinction in terms of the spaces and the powers that live within it. It is divided in fact, in two parts: the Holy Space and behind it the Holy of Holies, the inner sanctuary of the Tabernacle, respectively accessible to priests and Levites. According to their tradition, it symbolised the structure of the Cosmos and the future history of the 12 Tribes of Israel until the Messianic age. It was a cosmology, it represents the entire universe, thus it was a narration and a vision of the life that surrounded them.

If we travel forward in time, we can find some analogies between the Mediterranean desert nomadic architectures and the fixation with desert communes of the American counterculture. Drop City, for example, was established in southern Colorado around 1965. It’s considered the first rural hippie commune. Mainly composed of Buckminster Fuller’s geodesic domes, at the base there was the desire to “drop out” mainstream lifestyles, infused with consumerism and individualism. If we go back to the Tabernacle resembling the Cosmos, the geodesic dome doesn’t hide its origins, it literally translates the shape of the globe into architecture. Under the sky of your geodesic dome, everything can happen. You can experiment with your body and sexuality, with psycho-active substances while imagining new human frontiers. Unfortunately, Drop City experiment shut down in 1973.

A few years ago another planet-shaped structure made its appearance in the desert of Black Rock Nevada, where the Burning Man Festival takes place. It was designed by the yes-man par excellence, a just-for-fun Danish architect called Bjarke Ingles, who runs a studio called BIG where everyone seems to have a lot of fun. A number of images of the Great Orb sphere were released straight after the festival started. The mirrored sphere is shining with a grey desert as a background, so perfectly clean and glossy you can literally mirror yourself in deep introspection. But a few seconds after Mother Nature did her job. The desert sand started rendering it opaque, as we can see from the endless pictures posted by Instagram influencers and tech dudes. As with Drop City, is the failure inevitable when we try to conquer desert frontiers with our architecture? It might not be a case that the last edition of Burning Man was flooded by a messianic rain, of great Deluge proportions. And where are our Noa’s arks?

In the middle of another desert quite far from Black Rock in Nevada, the king of Saudi Arabia is launching a new courageous project called Neom. Launched with hyper-real renders of shiny skyscrapers and a big event at Venice Architecture Biennale 2023, Neom is a special economic zone, “a new model, a living laboratory for entrepreneurship, a home for an international community of dreamers and doers – set in breathtaking natural landscapes and driven by advanced disruptive technology.” Once again, the desert is the frontier we have to explore and where to venture to dream a new world, as it was for the colourful hippies of Drop City back in 1965. But where’s the difference between these two experiments? In the exclusivity. Both projects are recruiting archistars—Zaha Hadid in Neom and Buckminster Fuller Drop City. But the geodesic dome is freely released as a common project, with manuals like Dome Cook Book, a counterculture best seller with the instructions for your desert architecture.

What’s the point of imagining new realities in the deserts if we don’t share this dream collectively? How did we move from the desert as a hostile environment related to survival and spirituality to an isolated playground for privileged hyper-rich and Burning Man goers? If we go back to where we started, the desert is the opposite of life, it’s impossible to inhabit. But today seems that we gotta reclaim our deserts, a place of constant experimentation.

Parasite 2.0 is a design and research agency based in Milan and London. Founded in 2010 by Stefano Colombo, Eugenio Cosentino and Luca Marullo, they investigate the status of human habitats, acting within a hybrid of architecture, design, and scenography. Parasite 2.0 has worked and collaborated with Triennale Milano, Copenhagen International Fashion Fair, Ikea, Missoni, Terraforma Festival, Sunnei and Venice Architecture Biennale, among others. They taught at The Gerrit Rietveld Academy in Amsterdam, NABA Nuova Accademia Belle Arti Milano, MADE Program and since 2022 they have been regularly teaching at Design Academy Eindhoven. Parasite 2.0 were awarded the YAP Young Architects Program MAXXI in 2016.

There is no “Project of Fun.” There are no kick-off meetings, schedules, deliverables, milestones or deadlines for fun. This is to say that the state of “sincere fun” is completely irregular, inconsistent, involuntary, spontaneous and that we lose it, as we find it, by accident.

Architecture­­—accept it—is deliberate, intentional, precise. Architecture is a project. There is no such thing as spontaneous architecture. Architecture is by design. Which means that practicing architecture is not, and never will be fun; which doesn’t mean the practice of architecture cannot be enjoyable. But in order to enjoy architecture, you need to want it.

Architecture is a lot of work and is a nasty affair. It has little to do with pleasure. But it can contribute to create the conditions for its experience. By others. Indeed, the architect is to architecture as the poet is to poetry. According to French poet Paul Valéry, “a poet function is not to experience the poetic state: that is a private affair. His role is to create it in others. The poet is recognised —or at least everyone recognises his own poet—by the simple fact that he causes the reader to become inspired. Positively speaking, inspiration is a graceful attribute with which the reader endows the poet. By the simple fact that he causes the reader to become inspired.”¹

Poetry is made of words, not of ideas.

1. Paul Valéry, Poetry and Abstract Thought, in The Art of Poetry (trans. Denise Folliot), Princeton University Press, New Jersey 1958.

Together with Nicolà Munaretto, Guido Tesio is one of the founding partners of Milan-based architectural practice ganko. The work of the office spans different realms and scales – from urban planning to architecture up to interior design and scenography for exhibitions and events – and has been awarded in numerous competitions for both private and public projects. Among them the new auditorium of Tivoli (2nd prize), the expansion of the Museum of the Twentieth Century in Milan (2nd prize) the new workshops and laboratories of Teatro alla Scala in Milan (5th prize) and a new public square and civic centre in Bergamo (1st prize). Parallel to the professional activity, ganko is also actively involved in research, publication and education. Both partners have taught and lectured at various institutions, among them the Polytechnic University of Milan (POLIMI) , the Federal Polytechnic of Lausanne (EPFL) and the Mendrisio Academy of Architecture (USI-AAM).

Exploring queerness in design as a process rather than an identity, we delve into a more expansive definition encompassing a fluid and open approach to life. This perspective advocates for embracing diversity and differences, particularly in the context of art and design spaces. As we become more aware of the challenges, stereotypes and notions of ‘otherness’ faced by

black/African immigrants in the West, it becomes increasingly important to foster inclusive and welcoming environments. In this setting, a variation of West African cuisine, known as Jollof rice, is used as a cultural unifier to demonstrate the power of openness and the potential for different cultures and communities to unite.

Jollof rice is a dish that has gained popularity for its rich and delicious nature and sparked a friendly debate among West African countries about who prepares it best. This debate, while sometimes causing division, also serves as a reminder of our shared cultural heritage and the power of food to unite us. By taking the traditional Nigerian method and infusing it with the sweetness of candied fruits and nuts, a new dynamic has been introduced to the dish. This innovative twist, a blend of savoury and sweet, invites us to reconsider our notions of tradition and innovation, sparking the question: “Why can’t ‘traditional’ art/design spaces be as open and inclusive as this variation of Jollof rice?”

As academics, creators and designers, we are responsible for pushing the boundaries of what is possible and challenging the status quo. By embracing queerness as openness and using food as a tool for discussion, we can create a more open and inclusive society that celebrates diversity and values the unique experiences of every individual.

Jollof Rice

Type: Entrée
Servings: 6
Cooking Time: 2hours 20mins
A Variation of West African “Smokey Party-Style Jollof Rice” with a Sweet Twist
A popular rice dish cooked in a tomato sauce, typically served with plantain, vegetables and a meat option (chicken, lamb, beef, goat or fish).
Versatile, Smokey, Spiced Sweetness, Fun, typically “hot” and likely to cause disagreement.

Ingredients:
¼-cup olive oil
3 ½ -cups of parboiled long grain/ converted rice
1 large red bell pepper
1 scotch bonnet (deseeded to reduce heat)
1 medium red onion
4 cloves garlic
Pinky finger length ginger + half this length
1 large tomato 
4 tbs. Tomato paste
1 tsp. Curry Powder
½ tsp. Coriander
½ tsp. Cinnamon
½ tsp. Cumin
¼ tsp. Cameroonian Pepper
2 ½ tsp. Thyme (dry or fresh) Chicken bouillon powder 
2 bay leaves
1 ½ tsp thyme

Method Chicken Broth:
Boil 6 chicken drumsticks in a small saucepan filled with about 1/3 cup of water, along with spices:  half a pinky finger length of ginger (grated), 1 tsp salt, 1 tsp. Thyme, 1 tsp. Curry Powder, ½ tsp. Coriander, ½ tsp. Cinnamon, ½ tsp. Cumin, ¼ tsp. Cameroonian pepper, ½ tsp garlic powder or 2 cloves of garlic (grated), 2 tsp. Chicken bouillon powder.
Cook for about 20- 30 minutes until chicken is cooked through but not dry, and separate chicken from broth.

Jollof Sauce:
Preheat oven to 400 F (fan oven) or 430 F (non-fan)
To begin, make the jollof sauce – this will later be used to cook the rice. Roast tomato, bell pepper, scotch bonnet, garlic, and half an onion in the oven at 400 or 450 F for about 15-20mins until lightly charred and blistered (do not let the garlic burn as it will become bitter). 
Set aside to cool for a few minutes and blend roasted ingredients with a pinky-finger length of ginger into a sauce/paste. 
Roughly chop up the remaining half-red onion. Add a generous amount of olive oil (¼ cup should be fine) to a hot pot and fry chopped onions with 1 ½ tsp thyme in hot oil for about 1-2 minutes. Add tomato paste (4 tbs.) and fry for about 5 minutes. 
Add blended sauce and leave the tomato paste and blended sauce to sizzle in the oil for several minutes (10- 15 minutes), allowing them to slightly burn and smoke on the bottom. Turn over after 5 minutes and continue to cook on a medium heat until reduced and broken down. Add ¼ cup of water to reduced sauce and spices: 1 ½ tsp. Salt, 2 tsps. Chicken bouillon powder. Cook for 2-5 minutes.
Wash the rice well, then drain. Place in large pan/ pot with jollof sauce, chicken broth and a bit of water (about 1/3 cup or less – ensure water/ broth are just slightly above rice level). You may add a ½ tsp of salt.
Bring to a boil—after about 3-5 minutes, reduce heat to low/medium and simmer until cooked through.
OR skip these steps and order on Uber Eats or Doordash from these spots: Chef on Demand or Jollof Life Restaurant.

Caramelized Peach Topping:
3 peaches 
2 tsbs. Of unsalted butter
¼ cup brown sugar (light or dark) Pinch of cinnamon 
Pinch of cardamom 
1 tsp lemon zest and 1 tbs. Lemon juice

Method:
Cut peaches into slices and discard pits
Mix peaches with brown sugar, lemon zest, lemon juice, cinnamon and cardamom. 
Melt butter in a pan and add peach mixture. 
Cook, stirring occasionally, until caramelized, about 5-6 minutes.

Garnish:
Put a slice or two of caramelized peach on top of Jollof rice and decorate with pistachios. You may also grate pistachios into a powder and sprinkle over.

*DISCLAIMER— traditionally, it is never eaten or served like this*

Mercedes Emeka-Maduka is a Nigerian-born multidisciplinary artist passionate about exploring themes of migration and displacement through her work. With a personal history of migration, Maduka draws on her own experiences to create powerful and thought-provoking pieces that challenge and inspire viewers. Maduka’s work often incorporates recognizable travel plastic bags, Known in West Africa as “Ghana must-go bags,” as a symbol of her journey and the journeys of others who have left their homes and communities. Through art, Maduka seeks to bridge cultural divides, promote understanding and empathy, and compel viewers to delve into the intricate complexities of migration.Maduka holds a BFA from the University of Manitoba and has exhibited her artwork nationally and internationally, receiving numerous grants and awards from organizations such as The Canada Council of Arts, the Manitoba Arts Council, and the Winnipeg Arts Council. Her artwork, “Immigrant,” 2019, was shown at the 1-54 African Art Fair in collaboration with Christie’s Auction House in Paris and was selected as one of the ten in-demand works on Artsy in 2021.

Akum Maduka is a Nigerian artist based in Winnipeg (Treaty 1). She holds a bachelor’s degree in Environmental Design and is currently pursuing a master’s degree in Landscape Architecture from the University of Manitoba. Her current research focuses on the intricacies of art production, particularly site-specific and conditional works of art. She aims to understand how such artistic expressions can serve as a lens for perceptual and experiential exploration within landscape architecture and address interrelated issues of nostalgia, material scarcity, land use, history, and spirituality. She has showcased work locally at Window and Gallery 1c03 and previously participated in The Drawing Centre’s Viewing Program in New York.

Ekene Emeka-Maduka is a Nigerian artist based in Winnipeg for nearly a decade. Her evolving interdisciplinary practice includes paintings, sculpture, film, and community-based work. All these instantiations of her practice are generated from emotional and psychological states related to splintered identity indicative of migrant experiences like hers. Although Maduka’s work stems from a conflation of her own fragmentary memories, personal events, or experiences such as grief, these are always interlinked to the larger historical, cultural and social contexts they emerge from. She received her BFA Hons. from the University of Manitoba. Her work has been exhibited and screened locally and globally. She is represented by the Fabienne Levy Gallery in Lausanne, Switzerland. In 2023, Maduka was one of five artists selected from North America to fabricate a public art piece at the STAGES Biennial by Plug-In ICA. She also participated in Self-Addressed, a landmark exhibition at Jeffrey Deitch Los Angeles, curated by artist Kehinde Wiley. One of her works is housed in the permanent collection of the MACAAL Museum. Maduka’s first solo debut was at 1-54 London, where Christie’s Auction House selected her work for an extension of the art fair.

Recipe

Course: the Fruit in the Brown Bag, sort of
Servings: 6
Time: 15 minutes (+ cooling time)

Ingredients
1 large strawberry* (red) full fruit
1 small peach* (pink) juicy fruit
1 small cucumber** (green) imposter fruit?
1 small bunch of grapes** (red-ish) bunch fruit
1 curly lettuce leaf, rolled** (green) fizzy, crunchy leaf
1 cured ham, rolled** (pink) complement?
3 3 oz JELL-O boxes (1 cherry red, 1 lime green, 1 lemon yellow)
6 2.2 x 2.2 x 2.2” (rough dims) transparent cube cups (ideally with bulbous lids)
cooking spray
water

*needs to fit comfortably within a 2.2 x 2.2 x 2.2” cube.
**needs to fit partially in a 2.2 x 2.2 x 2.2” cube, having pieces sticking out of the cube

Instructions
Select the strawberry, peach, cucumber,*** grapes, lettuce and ham carefully for dimensions. Pick ripe super-saturated ingredients.
Go to a store’s baking section, ideally one that provides many options, and search for 6 identical transparent cups which take the closest shape to a cube of min. 2.2 x 2.2 x 2.2.” Ideally, they will also have bulbous lids.
Spray the transparent cube cups with cooking spray.
Place each of the first 6 ingredients (strawberry, peach, cucumber, grapes, lettuce and ham) in its own transparent cup. Some should stick out partially (bunch of grapes, cucumber, rolled lettuce, rolled ham), some will fit in snug (strawberry, peach) – both are alright.
Follow instructions from the JELL-O box – generally you need to add boiling water to gelatin mixes in medium bowl; do not mix the 3 JELL-O boxes together – you have to repeat this process for each flavor and color.
Stir 3 min. until completely dissolved. Pour into transparent cups over the ingredients according to a complementary color arrangement between JELL-O and ingredient:
The cherry red JELL-O mix is poured into the cubes with the cucumber and lettuce leaf.
The lime green JELL-O mix is poured into the cubes with the strawberry and grapes.
The lemon yellow JELL-O mix is poured into the cubes with peach and ham.
The strawberry and peach may want to float, so push with fingers to immerse fruit completely in jelly. The others may float, but are also allowed to stick out, so push gently to firmly anchor them into the jelly, but do not allow them to completely immerse.
Refrigerate 3 hours or until firm.
Remove from refrigerator just before serving and place one at random in each brown bag.
After the guests remove the jelly cup from the bag, they are asked to place them at the middle of the table to reveal the deconstructed fruit salad.
Consume your own in its entirety or share with others.
*** cucumber is a fake veggie as it is botanically a fruit.

 

Radu Remus Macovei (he/his) is a Registered Architect and researcher. He is the founder of StuffStudio.eu and is currently pursuing his PhD on the role of vernacular architecture in constructing modernity at ETH – Zürich. Remus was the 2022-2023 Architectural Activism Fellow at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and previously worked with Diller Scofidio + Renfro, Herzog & de Meuron, Dogma Studio, among others. He pursued undergraduate studies at the AA in London (RIBA Part I) and completed a Master in Architecture with Distinction and a Master in Urban Planning with Distinction from Harvard University Graduate School of Design where he was awarded the Julia A. Appleton Fellowship in Architecture.

Lunchables—the iconic American lunchtime treat—were once a sort of cafeteria status symbol. Showing  up with a brown paper bag only to uncover the bright yellow box inside was the ultimate lunchtime trick.  With compartments full of raw materials ready to be arranged before consumption, the process of  assembling crackers and cheeses and meats and cookies served as a cafeteria Rorshach, revealing the  creative intuitions of the consumer. For BROWN BAGS, the history, materiality, and construction  techniques of the Lunchable are revisited through the lens of bricolage and Jack Halberstam’s “low  theory,” coined in the 2011 book  The Queer Art of Failure. Six lunch kits are assembled, each containing  a unique variety of meats, cheeses, crackers, and accoutrements. Diners are encouraged to trade and  barter, nibble and re-shape, and ultimately assemble an ephemeral charcuterie sculpture to eat for lunch.

Equipment:
Cutting board
Cookie cutters OR, sharp knife with miscellaneous shape stencils (4-6 shapes total)
6x – Re-usable compartmentalized lunch boxes (minimum 4 compartments)

*Ingredients:
Crackers (3-4 varieties)
For example, Ritz crackers, Triscuits, saltines, water crackers, etc.
Sliced lunchmeat (3-4 varieties)
For example, turkey, ham, salami, mortadella, etc.
Sliced cheese (3-4 varieties)
For example, cheddar, pepper jack, swiss, muenster, etc.
Accoutrements, Tools & Cleavages (6-8 varieties)
For example, individual mayo/mustard/hot sauce packets; pretzel sticks; sliced pickles/bite-sized pickled vegetables; carrot sticks; grapes; sliced apples; Oreos/sandwich cookies; leftover cleavages from the meats and cheeses (see step 2 for clarification)

*NB: From the outset, this recipe is intended to be a collaboration between the recipe author, the chef and  preparation team, the Lunchable consumer, and fellow lunchmates. The recipe author makes ingredient suggestions,  the chef and preparation team make ingredient selections based on local availability, the Lunchable consumer makes  decisions about how to combine ingredients and is encouraged to make trades and swaps with their fellow  lunchmates.

Instructions:
1. Gather all ingredients and open all packages. Take meats and cheeses out and separate the slices on a  cutting board so they can be cut.
2. Using an assortment of cookie cutters or a sharp knife and stencil, cut each variety of meat and cheese into  a shape (for example, swiss can be a square, ham a triangle, salami a circle, mortadella a star, and so on).  Some meats and cheeses can have the same shape. Aim for about 4-6 unique shapes total. Do NOT discard  the squiggly bits and scraps created between the cookie-cutter cutouts. Those are the cleavages and they  will be consumed too.
3. As needed, pat dry, trim down, and prepare the accoutrement ingredients so they fit well into the lunch  container.
4. Assemble the six lunchables – one for each lunchtime guest.
a. In the first compartment of the lunchbox, place a variety of crackers. Ideally somewhere around 8  crackers, or as many as will fit.
b. In the second compartment, place a variety of cut meats. You may decide to give each diner all of  one variety of meat, or you may decide to give each diner a couple of varieties.
c. In the third compartment, place a variety of cut cheeses. You may decide to give each diner all of  one variety of cheese, or you may decide to give each diner a couple of varieties.
d. In the fourth compartment, place a variety of accoutrements, tools, and leftover cleavages. Every  diner should receive at least one condiment packet, something salty (like a pickle), and something sweet (like a sandwich cookie). Every diner should receive a few leftover scraps of meat or  cheese. Every diner should also get a couple of construction tools, like pretzel sticks, grapes, or  carrot sticks.
e. Ingredients can be differently distributed into the 4 compartments however they fit best.
5. Seal the lunchboxes and place them inside individual brown bags.
6. Barter, build, and enjoy!

Lindsey Krug (she/hers) is a designer and researcher based between Chicago and Milwaukee, where she is an Assistant Professor of Architecture at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee School of Architecture and Urban Planning (SARUP). She holds a Bachelor of Arts from the University of Pennsylvania and a Master of Architecture from the Harvard University Graduate School of Design. Through the lens of the architectural user as a body in space, Krug studies how design solidifies and reinforces taboos, hierarchies, and inequities into built form, and positions architecture as a biopsying tool for unveiling tensions between spatial foibles and cultural conventions of identity, politics, and sociality. Krug’s research interests are organized around relationships between people and contemporary institutions born of American democracy and capitalism and their corresponding architectural manifestations and myths. Krug’s design research project titled “Corpus Comunis: Precedent, Privacy, and the United States Supreme Court, in Seven Architectural Case Studies” was awarded the 2023 Best Peer-Reviewed Research Project by the ACSA College of Distinguished Professors. Krug’s teaching has been recognized with a 2024 New Faculty Teaching Award from the ACSA and AIAS. Along with Sarah Aziz, Krug received the 2022 Course Development Prize in Architecture, Climate Change, and Society from the ACSA and the Columbia University Temple Hoyne Buell Center for the Study of American Architecture. Most recently, the pair was awarded the 2023 Architectural League Prize for Young Architects + Designers by the Architectural League of New York.

Protein powder: A nutrition technology—with manifold applications—to actualize one’s own desires. Self-design aspires to an image: an idea to materialize. It requires a means, too, and for many, protein has become a principal agent toward the realization of the self. Studies indicate that 60 percent of North Americans actively seek to consume more protein today. The consumption of whey protein powder is increasingly driven by an awareness of the online and the dissemination of one’s own image in both virtual and IRL fora as projections of selfhood. Invoking notions of health and nutrition, the whey protein industry has stepped in largely to streamline our metabolic absorption of the nutrient environment for these and other ends. Protein deficiencies in the west, where growth in consumption has been steep, are extremely rare. Industry expansion has been made possible through the deliberate cultivation of appetite not for protein powder itself, but for its perceived physiological benefits. Muscle has become a site of intensification for the proteins that landscapes, factories, and desires yield, and in turn, they become synthetic as well. The agricultural landscapes that the  dairy industry structures to yield herd feed, raise cows, and extract milk exhibit symmetries with the human bodies that they transform. Each site—the territorial and the anatomical—has its constitutive regimens and diets, their built-up stores of nutrient rations, their furrowed channels, and sculptural topographies, and demonstrates an intensification driven by the notion of becoming and self-fulfilment. Soil, stomachs, farms, and fitness studios are stations for the bio-amplification of proteins in an atomized, multi-domain supply chain driven by self-design.

To be consumed
i) a protein shake, ii) protein YouTube content

Instruments required
A blender, athletic-coded sealable vessels, metal straws if the vessel does not have an incorporated spout or mouthpiece, and a television or laptop with WIFI connection and browser loaded to YouTube.

Recipe for protein shake
Go to a store that sells protein powder and identify a 100% whey-based powder in a canister of heroic proportions. The brand name should convey a sense of imminence, like Surge, or Drive, or Swell. The typeface must transmit ENERGY. The flavour should be vanilla or vanilla adjacent (like birthday cake, or vanilla-ice-cream coffee). Without prior experience with a particular powder, it is impossible to correlate flavour quality to the canister’s external presentation. A number of other ingredients in the shake will hedge against unfortunate tasting powders.

For each shake: In a blender, add one scoop (approx. 1/3 cup) of protein powder to 150mL of water and 100mL of unsweetened oat, pea, or coconut milk. Add ½ cup of frozen blueberries, and a small handful of raspberries. Add 1/3 cup of frozen pineapple for its anti-inflammatory properties. Add half a banana and a tablespoon of WOW Butter peanut butter substitute. Blend until the shake’s constituents have homogenized in colour and appearance. Decant into a re-sealable vessel and keep cool until consumed.

Recipe for protein YouTube content
In the search bar on the YouTube homepage, enter text as  follows: “Protein Powder” + “[An adjective or expression denoting deliciousness]” + “[An everyday location or space]”

For instance, “Protein Powder Yummy Bedroom” or “Protein Powder Tasty Gym.” Ignore the sponsored results at the top and scroll down to select a video that catches your eye. Your selection may be a ranking of sports nutrition brands, an informational video on natural proteins, or a recipe for protein-rich foods. Play one with the volume muted and consume your shake within viewing range of the video. Allow the video to transition automatically to the next, and the next, until your shake is consumed, at which point you may pause the video and close the browser window.

Miles Gertler is an artist and co-director of Common Accounts, an office for architectural inquiry that currently operates between Toronto and Madrid. His work in architecture, academia, and visual art examines self-design in virtual and material realms, and documents design intelligence that often passes under the radar of the discipline in areas like fitness, death, military logistics, and ritual. Gertler’s work and writing has been featured in Perspecta, e-flux, 032c, PIN-UP, Arquitectura Viva, Canadian Architect, Frame, Neo2, El Pais, The Cornell Journal of Architecture, The Globe and Mail, The Architectural Review, and the Avery Review. He has exhibited at the Venice Architecture Biennale, the MMCA Seoul, the Seoul Museum of Art, Matadero Madrid, Art Jameel, Azkuna Zentroa, the Cube Design Museum, the Bienal de Arquitectura Española, the Istanbul Design Biennial, the Seoul Biennial of Architecture and Urbanism, the Canadian Centre for Architecture, MOCA (Toronto), a83 gallery, and Corkin Gallery. Gertler was a 2023 resident at Palazzo Monti in Brescia, Italy, and has served on the Board of Directors at Mercer Union, A Centre for Contemporary Art, since 2019. He is Assistant Professor, Teaching Stream at the University of Toronto’s Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design, and studied architecture at Princeton and the University of Waterloo. Gertler was a recipient of the 2023 Architectural League Prize for Young Architects + Designers from the Architectural League of New York.