AFF Architekten: Creative Processes For A Social Architecture

Abstract

In progressing towards architecture that strives to make itself accessible to the people, AFF Architekten have come across testimonies of life and traces of past times. They have initiated a true collection of disparate objects, stacked on shelves, and of photographs taken, printed and classified by subject in folders.

The collections of objects and photographs have produced an archive of mnemonic images created in the perspective of activating a process of architectural design capable of producing works that are identifiable with the places. This process is different from the late twentieth-century contextualism, because those places are first of all contaminated, for the AFF, by the archaeological presence of some human civilization. The article analyses the work of the AFF, through unpublished archive documents and interviews with the members of the public, highlighting how the accumulation of objects and photographs occurred. It followed the genesis of architecture based on familiar forms that can re-establish communication with users and activate a feeling of participation and exchange in them - a “social” architecture of the 21st century.