This was my fourth year coming to the World Architectural Festival.
There is something quite wonderful that starts to happen after the third year,
connections start to solidify into friendships,
your network begins to become a community,
you look forward to seeing people you have grown fond of,
from your fellow architects who you met competing for an award,
to curators from the Venice Biennale,
the critics, the judges,
the ABB rep whose enthusiasm and excitement is so infectious …..
and of course the AR and AJ crew that runs and curates the whole event.
The highlights were spectacular, selected from an overwhelming cacophony of options, far, far too many temptations, to experience everything:
Louisa Hutton talking so thoughtfully about placemaking and the vitality of an Urban Fabric.
Charles Jencks and Pierre de Meuron switching it up,
with Charles recalling that Corbu declared the Paris Opera …. “the symbol of death”, of the excesses of empty ornament, the end of an era
and Pierre de Meuron waxing poetic about how we all gather around the campfire, as an ancient human ritual ….
this leading so nicely to Kim Cook’s talk the next evening,
about one the world’s grandest fire rituals … Burning Man.
For me personally, it was a pleasure of pure exhaustion, judging, speaking, presenting two projects, but the most invigorating were all sorts of deep and provocative conversations with my peers…..
which I will cherish until next year,
in Amsterdam.
–John Marx, Chief Artistic Officer at Form4 Architecture
#WAF2017 @worldarchfest @burningman
Reflections on Shared Purpose 