© Fake Industries Architectural Agonism
As any other creative discipline, architecture is subjected to a regime of originality. Yet, operations having in common the recourse of already produced forms—well-known critical tools in a wide range of artistic production—still remain unabsorbed and even taboo. While imitation and reproduction are the obvious roots of the last twenty—if not the last six hundred-years’ excess of architectural shapes, the field has resisted to openly embrace copies and in so doing, it has hindered its potential. To intentionally copy entails a radical reformulation of architectural imagination: it allows for a radical renunciation to form-making—since form is defined a priory—to focus on architectural knowledge yet to be discovered.
OE House, Barcelona, Under Construction © Fake Industries Architectural Agonism.
After years repeating other architect’s works, Fake Industries Architectural Agonism has elaborated a classification of forms of repetition. Tested under uncontrolled conditions and with various degrees of success, the listed operations form a constellation as inconclusive as incomplete. Our only hope is that a conscious use of some of them can open paths of exploration negated by architecture’s historical obsession with originality.
To produce Architecture, please use:
appropriations,
blueprints,
camouflage,
carbon copies,
clones,
confidence-men,
cons,
copies,
counterfeits,
couples,
deceits,
deceptions,
decoys,
delusions,
détournements,
disguises,
doubles,
doppelgängers,
duplicates,
duplicities,
duets,
emulation,
facsimiles,
fakes,
falsifications,
forgeries,
frauds,
generics,
illusions,
imitations,
impersonations,
likenesses,
look-alikes,
mash-ups,
masks,
masquerades,
mirages,
mirror images,
mock
documentaries,
models,
monkeys,
montages,
mystifications,
objets-trouvés,
palimpsests,
para-fictions,
parallels,
parodies,
parrots,
pastiches,
phonies,
photocopies,
re-appropriations,
recycling,
reenactments,
remakes,
remixes,
replicas,
reproductions,
satire,
shadow plays,
Siamese twins,
similarities,
simulacra,
smokescreens,
subtitles,
transcriptions,
translations,
tricks,
twins,
and voice-overs
We have been doing it for a while, and sometimes, it works.