assemblage: between not anymore and not yet

Personal Info

Name: Julian Fritz

Nationality: Austria

Institution / Company: University of Innsbruck

Instagram: @jubuhubu

-HONOURABLE MENTION of Non Architecture Award 2022 Competition | Category: Urban & Landscape

assemblage functions as a prototype for the future development of ruins in our cityscapes. Based on the model of the smooth and the striated space by French philosopher Gilles Deleuze and French psychoanalyst Félix Guattari it explores the emergence of a new symbiosis of brutalism as the striated space and nature as the smooth space. This prototype is situated in the southwest of Milano, Italy: The abandoned Istituto Marchiando Spagliardi which served as a boarding school. 

For 30 years it has been decaying heavily and restoration is not in sight. The brutalist complex is the epitome of function and human logic – this is described as the striated space. In the process of decay nature started to overgrow the structures and is beginning to claim the site – the unpredictable character of nature is the smooth space. 

But in order to achieve a symbiosis of the two states this project sends out technologies to this place. These technologies will analyse the decay for many years and will eventually start to gather the rubble and soil and build new structures based on the data of decay. The supplement will partly support the remaining old complex and partly create new spaces that will once again be overgrown by nature. This process will continue up to a stage of symbiosis and balance. Inside this assemblage of smooth and striated humankind, animal life and nature will find a new form of wilderness again, an entity that is dearly missed by cities today.

Project Type:

A place that denies any project program. Deleuze and Guattari describe the term “Body without Organs”. A space that cannot be occupied – Therefore it is free and wild. A needed place that is not inhabited by humans – they are only visitors. It is a space to explore and to experience. A petri dish of wilderness for our cities.

Jury Comments

– Karoline Liedtke-Sørensen

introducing decay and rewildering as a design strategy is new and really interesting. it builts an exciting contrast to the built environment, the aspect of time and process is illustrated very vividly and appealing, the Istituto Marchiando Spagliardi becomes a living space renewing itself again and again going through different phases and spatial expressions, a strong design tool and method that should be experimented much more with