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News__Concept__Tour __Teams__Press__Partners__Magazine__Contact__ Impressum |
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How did Wonderland start?
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In September 2002 eleven architecture teams, all of whom have Carinthian roots, started the Wonderland project with an exhibition at the Fundernovum in St. Veit an der Glan.. The idea, initiated by Spado architects, was to create a collective identity under the name of Wonderland. The winning team of an internal competition, SHARE, developed a flexible, modular exhibition system, based on square panels 40 x 40 cm, where each team could present their projects with images, texts, models. It was the beginning of a self-organized network, based on personal contacts and common passions.
Between 2002 and 2003 the exhibition travelled to three Austrian locations: St.Veit/Glan, Vienna and Graz. In fall 2003 Wonderland became an association.
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The success of the exhibition in Austria prompted the continuation of the project in the form of a tour through eight European countries (Slovakia, Czech Republic, Germany, Netherlands, France, Italy, Croatia, Slovenia). In each country, 11 local teams were invited to join the exhibition and perform on the Wonderland landscape. The number of pixels of each team decreased with each exhibition, while the number of teams grew. The resulting exhibition shows an increasing density of information about the young European architecture landscape.
The European Wonderland Tour has started in
Bratislava
in June 2004. The stops included Prague, Berlin, Amsterdam, Paris, Venice, Zagreb, Ljubljana and with a final exhibition and closing event taking place in Vienna in June and in St. Veit/Glan in September 2006.
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How does Wonderland work?
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The project was neither promoted nor initiated by any cultural institution. The sheer commitment of the 11 teams enabled this project to become a reality. This fact is not just a phenomenon of the second modernity, where companies take over work, which was once carried out by institutions. It indicates that architecture is a "material practice", which is inevitably connected to industry. Hence the exhibition landscape offers examples and answers regarding a changing architectural practice: what can be imagined is doable! The exhibition landscape reflects a virtual territory, a “Wonderland” which is characterized by different, individual paths showing the spectrum of contemporary architectural practices.
Selection of partner countries
The selection of the countries is not based on specific criteria, although a certain emphasis is placed on creating new neighbourhoods in a broader sense.
Selection of the teams
The selection process tries to avoid centralisation: in each country two to three local contact teams are asked to choose the other participants. The selection of new teams is at the core subjective and is based on personal contacts, recommendations, and interaction between the contact teams themselves. In this way the network expands through unexpected paths and does not depend on a centralized curator.
Additional specific selection criteria are defined by each country. However, teams are not chosen according to a specific architectural “style”. Rather, the possibility to interact with and learn from local processes is the only given condition . Wonderland is there to support young teams in the practice of architecture.
network
Wonderland is a bottom-up and open-ended project, connecting known and less known teams from 9 countries together. Wonderland is a dynamic process, whose aim is to establish a network.
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