I had the pleasure of sitting down with Carson and Fotini to talk about PROGRAM, their other interests and their thoughts on current trends in architecture and design.
How long has PROGRAM been established?
Fotini: Almost three years now.
Carson: Yeah, we have had about 18 shows, 19 shows.
What is your background and where did the idea for Program come from?
Fotini: I'm from Greece. I have a professional degree in architecture from there and then I moved to Boston to go to grad school - we did a masters program together at Harvard - the Masters in Design Studies in the History and Theory of Architecture. I stayed in the states for another year or two - first working in an architecture office and then I worked on a documentary film project. Since then we have both been wanting to engage in architecture but in a different way [from traditional practice]. We worked in architectural firms after graduating, but soon realized we were wanting to do other things; to think about questions of space and experience of space - things we were thinking about in grad school but we couldn't do working in architecture offices.
Fotini: I was in Boston at a big firm doing construction documents. It was really interesting and I learned a lot but it was not that exciting. Then we decided very quickly to open a space and try to pursue this interest through exhibitions, workshops, lectures and different kinds of activities. Carson was in Berlin already, and I moved to Berlin as well. We were very lucky to find this really great space.
Carson: I'm from Toronto. Well I grew up in Toronto and then went to school, grad and undergrad, in the states. I then moved [to Berlin] and worked in an architecture firm - Barkow Leibinger. From there I started working at the Neue National Gallery, they have an architecture curating department and I helped work on three shows. I then did some freelance curating. Fotini came to visit while I was doing a show at the gallery 0047, and we came up with this idea to start our own thing.
Fotini: That's also another thing that influenced what we wanted to do here - the fact we were looking at other exhibitions of architecture. Usually it's a presentation of a building, a drawing or a model, that most people can not really engage with if they don't have an education in architecture. In fact, it is not even always that interesting. So we decided what we wanted to do is try to find another way to share architecture, mainly through the experience one can have visiting an installation, and what you can learn through that in a more embodied way.
Carson: Architects have a hard time expressing themselves, because it takes so many years and so much money to build a building - if you chose to build buildings, as an architect. I think city planners have a doubly hard time expressing their ideas urbanistically, because you come up with a plan and by the time its implemented it is completely different than what you initially wanted. There are so many contingent factors.
Fotini: Because we started this soon after graduating, its been a learning process. And this experimental aspect of many of the things that we do is just because we want to try things out - or have other people try out things and then see what we get and learn from all of this.
So you have always been more interested in the curating art and architecture rather than practicing design?
Carson: Well, not before I started doing it. Well, I made them in college, like art exhibitions and things like that. But exhibition making as a discipline or as a way to ask architectural questions, not so much until we actually started.
Are most of the people who show their work here architects or people who are interested in the built environment?
Fotini: Actually its not. There have been architects, but its mainly artists and very often we try to do collaborations between architects and artists, or artists and different disciplines. The previous show was a collaboration between an artist/architect and a choreographer. We are interested in working with different disciplines and seeing what are the different methods and ways of seeing and being, what we can share, what we can learn from eachother.
Do you help bring those people together or do you let people approach you?
Fotini: It varries, sometimes it was an idea comming from us - what would happen if we bring together an artist and a fashion designer and give them the space for a month and see happens - and sometimes, its people that come already with a proposal. We are very open to different ways of working. Every month and a half [there is a new exhibition]. You can see the website for a list of past events.
Who funds the overall organization or individual exhibits?
Fotini: The whole space is run with this idea of having the workspace here, where we rent out desks to different creative people - architects, artists, graphic designers, journalists - but anyone who can work off a desk. That helps cover the running costs of the space - when we are full. Actually we need more people, so if you know anyone that needs work space in Berlin... The idea is that it is a workspace on a temporary basis - some people have been here for two years already - but most stay in the space [for a shorter time]. Like this guy now, he is an artist and is showing this piece in an exhibition that opens next week. He wanted a desk space for a month. What's nice is that it is this practical way of running the space but it also creates this community of creative people. They come and go but there is a lot of sharing and collaborations that come up just because we share the space. That is how the space is funded, and then for each exhibition we try to find funding - its usually through embassies and sometimes through private sponsors. We don't have continuous funding so its always like every month we have to knock on doors.
What about Berlin made this possible? You both went to Harvard so did you consider Boston or other locations?
Fotini: It actually happened, yeah, just fell in our lap. However, I think it wouldn't easily happen in other places. It happened here because Carson was already here and because I can speak German and was always thinking of Germany as an option. I had to leave the states because my visa was running out, so Berlin happened.
I think its something about the city - you know all this about Berlin and the cheap rent. We were also really lucky to find this space - it was empty for 10 years before we moved in. Finally, the movement of people through the city helps make a space like this possible. For example, renting the work spaces and also the people that we work with for the exhibitions are very often international artists. So it is something that can happen in Berlin, because the city attracts all of these creative individuals.
How do you advertise? How do artists find PROGRAM?
Fotini: Well now, I think its mostly through the website. We advertise each show with post cards and through emails. I think because of what we do, because we have this special focus, many people in the city started to know about the space. Now most of the openings are really crowded, a lot of people come out. So it's now just word of mouth combined with the internet. For the exhibitions we get many proposals, many of them being collaborative. Because we are not a gallery we don't have to worry about any commercial constraints, that means we are open to just the things that we really like and support. There are a lot of people in Berlin who are also interested in working in the space [which allows us to pick and chose].
How do you see it growing in the next 2 to 10 years?
Fotini: 10 years is too long a time...I think now the fact that we've established ourselves somehow, and there are people that know about it already, gives us more opportunities to work with more people and focus more on the things we want to do.
PROGRAM also has a residency program - an artist, architect, or theorist, comes to Berlin and works on a project for up to three months. We provide the space while they have to cover their own living expenses. That is another element of our program, so there is always someone living at the back of this space and contributing to life in PROGRAM. They often present their work in an artist talk, a screening in relation to their work, or sometimes its an exhibition. We have also been organizing lectures and events and we've been wanting to focus more on that [going forward]. Hopefully to bring in different people and different audiences and engage with them in different ways.
Carson: At least three more years we are here [in this location].
Fotini: One main thing is that we have always seen this as a platform and there are many things that this thing can encompass - different activities, exhibitons but also research projects and I think the more we grow the more we would like to include these.
Carson: Yeah, its not just a gallery. We see the residency, the office, whatever kinds of activities and lectures we do, as an integral part of the exhibition program. They are all, as Fotini has said already, to question architecture and its boundaries and how other media, other disciplines can inform architects about architecture. Also to question architecture exhibitions in general.
Fotini: Like not showing architecture through its representations...
Carson: ...Through its standard representations
If you go to an art exhibition you see the actual art. Often when you see architecture exhibitions you see representations of architecture, so a picture of a building or a plan or a section. Things like plans and sections are almost meaningless to anyone that is not an architect. Even for architects, they only show you the dimensions of a space, which is interesting to a degree.
Fotini: (interjecting) not what [the space] sounds like.
Carson: Yeah, so now [in our current installation] you get to hear what MOMA sounds like. Even if that is a snide or a disengenuous way of talking about spacial representation, it starts to open up ways of thinking that goes beyond the dimensions of a space. Which is something that, I think, most people that exhibit architecture never actually think about. Architecture exhibitions have become somehow like a PR engine. You make a new building and you exhibit it in a gallery, pictures of it. This shows you what it looks like but not all that much more.
I think its really interesting talking about collaborations between artists and architects. I mean getting the guy who is studying Neuroscience together with an architect - I don't know what they are proposing - but I think it is an interesting concept - the question of what could happen out of these juxtapositions of different expertise.
Carson: We have worked with Choreographers and musicians, fashion designers. And the idea is to experiment. We have worked with students, we are going to work with students more. Just to experiment and see and make mistakes almost...in that way to test the boundaries
So you run the space, but is this your full time job or do you also design, and make art, and pursue other interests?
Fotini: Yeah, we do different things. This is full time in terms of time but its not the job. I'm also working on research, and I do design but more on the scale of website design and graphic design. I work on video art also.
Carson: I write about art and architecture and curate other exhibitions. Not necessarily about architecture.
So you use this as an office space for the things you do on the side?
Carson: I don't think anything is actually on the side. Everything is all at the same time.
Have you noticed the impact of the current economic crisis on the city of Berlin and it's art and design scene? Has it effected PROGRAM at all?
Fotini: In a way, Berlin has been a place has been able to be what it is because of all these different crisis.
Carson: [Berlin] was never rich to begin with.
Fotini: So, that is what brings many people here and what allows them to live and create here. In that sense, I think it is kind of resistant to those changes. Of course the crisis is still here, there were people working in architectural offices, people who have lost their jobs or projects.
Carson: There is kind of like a critical mass of creative people in Berlin that didn't come here necessarily to make money but rather to spend very little money. And they are still here and were here to begin with. I don't know, in terms of design in general and how it affects us...it is kind of an abstract question... whenever we think about what to do here its always in a very myopic way of seeing our own interests and what we want to do as opposed to larger design questions in general - or larger exhibition questions in general. Many of which aren't even addressed in other places.
Do you ever focus on the city at large as part of your interests?
Fotini: Yeah, we have actually been trying to do more of that. We have a project we launched more than a year ago, a web based project, urban project, where we have invited the people living in Berlin to contribute their daily routes through the city. Through the website they can upload a map of their route along with a short description of the things that they see along the way, and what they experience. For us it came from this idea of trying to focus on this very banal and every day ritual, which is actually much more real for people who live in Berlin than the route between Alexanderplatz and Brandenburger Tor, through all these landmarks, which is what tourists usually see when they visit [Berlin]. The idea is to create this online archive of the maps and then be able to offer them, as alternative routes, to tourists wanting to experience the city through the everyday routine of its inhabitants - instead of going from one landmark to another. So it is this connection of maps and text. For us it is interesting to see where these routes cross, where they go. You should give us your map too....It doesn't need to be daily. It is usually something that people repeat but it doesn't have to be too regular.
Carson: It can be the once a year visit to the dentist, if it is a route that is somehow memorable for your experience of Berlin. This would be, for travelers experiencing these routes, a much more interesting way to see how people live in Berlin, to experience Berlin rather than just seeing the monuments of Berlin which people don't necessarily have relationships with.
Fotini: Last year we did an installation piece in collaboration with an artist - Elaine Ho - where we also tried to look at the issue of individual and community through a series of experiments. Small exercises, some of them took place here, some were in public space throughout the city - and had discussions too. So we've been wanting to do more stuff focused on the city, and to actually go out there and explore the city more as part of our interest in the built environment.
Have you used this as a forum to instigate change or is just purely research based? Does it have any social agenda?
Fotini: I think a lot of what we do is hopefully creating some change in small ways. In the way people think about space, the way they experience space. Hopefully to open up some question in people's minds. That has mainly been what we've been doing but nothing in a direct way.
We also had a reading group that was running for a few months but now its on hold. Hopefully we can start a new one.
What do you see as a current trend in architecture? Is there a defined movement like modernism, post-modernism, deconstruction, perhaps sustainability has become the movement of the day?
Carson: Architecture trends in general... I think, right now there isn't really one general movement that everyone is really into. I mean, people talk about sustainability and green architecture but I don't think its looked at with the same sustained academic rigor that deconstruction was, or postmodern architecture was or modernism is. It's like this thing now, its almost like more of a responsibility than an actual desire, an actual interest.
Do you feel during modernism people were analyzing it theoretically more than people are analyzing sustainable design?
Carson: I don't know about more, but there were definitely... for example, Sigfried Giedion was a huge mouthpiece for modernism during modernism.
So you don't think there are those people for sustainability? What about people like Glenn Murcutt, who designs and talks about keeping a small footprint on the land and building in harmony with nature?
Carson: Yeah, but by and large it is seen by architects in general more as a responsibility than as a genuine interest. The way that people throw around LEED qualifications - it is kind of like, ok that's done, so don't worry about that rather than really questioning building practices. This is sort of what sustainability sounds like right now. So I think in terms of design, I don't know if there is any specific trend or language or anything in the atmosphere that is guiding everyone.
For me it's not simply about making something look [a certain way], its about the sensitivity towards....I think Glenn Murcutt is a good example, you are conscious of the environment, of the temperture, of how the sun is moving, and whether or not you need windows. In Le Corbusier's Villa Shodan, in India, there are no windows in the whole thing, there's no glass enclosure, because it never gets cold enough where you need it. Then he has a breise solei and the way the walls work, the rain never actually gets inside. Even then, there seems to be this consciousness about how the location and the weather and specificity of the place changes the architectural design. The way that architecture is going now, is like...the curtain wall for tall buildings is kind of the de facto thing. Or everything has to be climatized, and just the way that people are thinking about it is - OK so how do we acclimatize that thing in an environmentally friendly way, maybe we cool it with lake water - but its never brought back to the very basics of the tectonics of the building, with exceptions like Murcutt.
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