Hold it! The Art & Architecture of Public Space

topics

Publishers

Architecture

ISBN: 9783868590296
English/German edition
Jovis Verlag
Softcover, 240 pages
17 x 21 cm
colour
September 2009
€28,11 (excl. VAT)

Hold it! The Art & Architecture of Public Space

Bricolage Resistance Resources Aesthetics

Martin Kaltwasser, Folke Köbberling

The public space is under siege—the compulsion to consume, increased monitoring, and continuously expanding traffic threaten to fundamentally change the appearance of our cities. Since 1998, the two artists Folke Köbberling and Martin Kaltwasser have been implementing their concept of an artistic and architectural aesthetic of resistance to this appropriation. Their work presents alternatives to this consumer ideology—through structural interventions, artistic statements, actions, and theories. The artists use streets, squares, bridges, parks and interior spaces as their areas of operation. The materials applied by them always consist of "urban resources"—such as litter, trash, and donations. As a result, each work is based on communicative and social moments. Their strategies encourage emulation, distribution, and multiplication, as they can be implemented with very simple materials.