architecture uncomfortable workshop: Planning and Building Methods

The exhibition is aimed to show the past nine years’ practice of architecture uncomfortable workshop (AUW) through objects made in the workshop and texts written by its members. The installation consists of three main themes currently of interest – the duality of architectural planning, the joy of work, and the architect and the builder. The ideas are manifested by three texts, interspersed with objects, furniture, drawings, photographs and sculptures to create an atmosphere that is able to show the characteristic of AUW’s thinking.

The objects in the space are remnants of works by AUW. In their daily lives, the objects are used all around the office and workshop space. By bringing these objects to VI PER, the aim was to create a sense of AUW’s everyday architectural environment. The sketches and the plans are placed in the two corners of the main room. Wax models of small houses occupy the middle of the space on a golden table. A bookshelf has been made for the occasion, which will remain empty until the end of the exhibition, when it will be filled with books about AUW’s work published by VI PER Gallery. There are also three video essays by Anna Zsoldos about three people (the carpenter, the bricklayer, the tiler) who work in different fields of the building industry in Hungary. Created as filmed conversations with the three builders in their own homes, the video essays are sketches of their own thoughts on architecture and motivations in their jobs.

‘Beside planning, we always try to make experiments in small projects. One of the biggest motivators for us is the process of understanding contemporary vernacular architecture. Also, we are continuously looking for situations where comfort meets real human needs. Through taking part in the production of objects and furniture, our idea of designs changed a lot over the years. Our main interest lies in visual simplicity, specifically in simple methods of building which manifest themselves in built objects. The process of constructing will have an impact on the final object. Through design, we search for the situation of optimal comfort: for us, the main aspect of architectural design is not form or function but the state of balance between a person and their environment. This balance is our definition of architecture. Everything else is just a consequence of it.’

architecture uncomfortable workshop is a Budapest-based architecture collective founded in 2012 by a group of young architects.