Special Projects
Featured Trailer
Publication
For The People By The People
Embodied Restoration Lab
HNI
Rotterdam _ The Netherlands
2024
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Embodied Restoration Lab: Spring 2024
The Embodied Restoration Lab is a design initiative by architect Afaina de Jong that works with ethically sourced data to resignify value to undervalued knowledge, and redefine underlying values and standards for application in/for the regenerative design in the field of architecture.
In the age of planetary crisis designers have to reframe how we relate to the planet and move beyond the limitations of extractive paradigms. But are we even capable of imagining new worlds, planetary or restorative architecture in a time of overwhelming planetary anxiety? Or are we adapting and building upon the limits of what we know already?
Difficulties of reproduction and embedded ways of thinking and doing, block the social and ecological restoration in architecture and the building of algorithms, institutions, values systems, laws, and material movements that do the necessary altering.
Not only the contemporary entanglement of human imagination with the technological is striking, but mostly that the AI generative outcomes are never far from what already exist, because the data and values inherent are dictated by what has been dominant in the online human archive. How and what we can imagine as humans, as designers and also as architects and designers is unmistakably tied to the technologies that we use and its inherent values and standardizations. With AI entering the architectural design field, design options are generated in terms of form, layout, materials, manufacturing methods, cost, etc. But the entered parameters, are still embedded on the standardisation and values embedded in modernity, modern architecture, colonialism, and business as usual.
The Embodied Restoration Lab collaborates with an architectural community of thinkers and designers in order to expand the thinking around the value and classification of architectures of planetary wellbeing. Its goal is to explore methods, practices and imaginaries at the intersection of architectural and ecological restoration through the practice of regenerative design.
Afaina de Jong (1977) is a Dutch architect based in Amsterdam. Her studio AFARAI (2005) has worked for renowned institutions as the Rijksmuseum, the Venice Biennale, the Gogh Museum and the United Nations. De Jong works on the boundary of architecture and art. Her work is deeply connected to represent people and cultural movements that are not traditionally represented in spatial form. De Jong situates her work in the public realm as part of the collective imaginary. Her discourse is international and intersectional, connecting art and counterculture with space. De Jong is the head of the Contextual Design MA department at Design Academy Eindhoven.
Funded by:
Partners:
HNI: Spring 2024
Matri-Archi(tecture)
Architekturmuseum der TUM, Pinakothek der Moderne
Munich _ Germany
2024
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Matri-Archi(tecture): Architekturmuseum der TUM, Pinakothek der Moderne
Munich
2024‘Homeplace. A Love Letter’ re-imagines and re-configures the Rotunda as a site for critical reflections on the spatiality of dwelling, sharing with-and-inviting visitors to contemplate on possible forms and commonalities a home might invoke and hold. Through an assemblage of beaded curtains, sound, and storytelling deftly navigating the waters of history, memory, and identity, the installation centers Afrodiasporic experiences to carve out imaginations of home otherwise by weaving together personal and interpersonal intricacies of belonging.
As diasporic women mediating, bridging, and blurring the boundaries between northern and southern hemispheres through daily orchestrations, in coming together, Matri-Archi(tecture) interrogates the plurality of a homeplace as a transitional place, not fixed in scale, duration or state, while honoring, celebrating and referencing African and diasporic rituals and spatial histories.
Credits:
Artist // Matri-Archi(tecture) - Abdé Batchati, Afaina de Jong, Aisha Mugo, Khensani Jurczok-de Klerk, Margarida Waco
Curator // Andres Lepik
Curatorial assistant // Anja Albrecht
Commissioner // Architekturmuseum der TUM
Host // Pinakothek der Moderne
Support // PIN. Freunde der Pinakothek der Moderne e.V.
Catalogue Graphic Designer // Sherida Kuffour
Poster and illustrations // Jehane Yazami
Catalogue Translation // Gertrud Wittich
3D Manufacturing // Trindo Digital Manufaktur
Assemblage // ART for ART Theaterservice
Sound Sample Composition & Production // Kalemela (Jessica Loko Mule)
Audio Mix & Mastering // Contemporarysound.com
Soundscape Contributors // Ayodeji Ojo, Danielle Harris, Jonelle Twum, Kabura Ng’ang’a, Lesego Bantsheng, Lesley-Ann Brown, Raphäelle Red, Tapiwa Mmanase, Sarah Maâfi, and Afrodiaspora 2.0 (Anita Akpadjor, Halima Engler, Jennifer Nantalya, Joana Mayr, Judith Among-Okello, Melissa Mahmoud-Ahmed, Selamauit Berhane, Sisilia Akello-Okello, Vanessa Okello, Zaina Seitz).
Editorial Contributors // Ókóli Stephen Nonso, Shahram Khosravi, Sinthujan Varatharajah, Katherine McKittrick, Lesley-Ann Brown, Warsan Shire, Huda Tayob, Raphaélle Red, Sibel Schick, Dalia Taha, bell hooks.
Munich_ Germany
For The People by The People
Auteur : Afaina de Jong
Amsterdam _ The Netherlands
2012
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For The People by The People: Publication 2012
For the People by the People is a visual story about how people influence change in the city. The collapse of faith in top-down planning has been followed by a renewed interest in the self-generating wisdom of bottom-up urban initiatives. What does it mean when people act as the urban change agents that direct the life and death of the world’s cities? Fusing her photography with a manifesto-like text, Afaina de Jong marks the people in the streets as the starting point of all urban trends and cultural innovation. And calls upon us all to become architects of our environment.