Saturday, 19 July marked the launch of the architecture camp Hello Wood in Csórompuszta with the participation of a hundred students. The spectacular wood installations created during this year’s event are aimed to represent the concept of balance translated into the language of architecture, and later will be put on display at Budapest Design Week, the Valley of Arts and Sziget Festival. This year Hello Wood adds a new partner, leading architecture portal ArchDaily.
The Hello Wood creative camp was started five years ago, and has by now grown into one of the most exciting architecture-related initiatives in Europe. The program was established at a time when most traditional design projects were put on hold due to the crisis. Since its inception, Hello Wood has put such concepts in the focus of its operation as social responsibility in architecture, social architecture or finding alternative ways of attaining information. Their motto is that action and completion are some of the most important tools of gaining knowledge and experience. The workshop has a new theme every year: this time it is the concept of balance.
Architects from twenty countries, together with a hundred pre-selected participating students will build for a week. At the upcoming camp 14 teams comprising 6-8 members from a wide range of countries and different universities will cooperate.
At Hello Wood installation building teams will be led by internationally acclaimed architects, so newcomers will get the chance to learn about more than the practical aspects of architecture. The aim of the camp is to compliment the theoretical knowledge students pick up at university with teamwork and other methods of gaining knowledge. The task of the architects is to come up with a concept based on the theme of the camp and carry out the project with the help of the students by the end of the program. The name is far from being accidental: the concept has to be in compliance with the basic idea, and as much of the structures must be made of wood as possible.
The roll call of team leaders is positively impressive: Salvador Gilbart Sanz, a member of MIRALLES-TAGLIABUE EMBT, was, among other titles, chief architect of the Spanish Pavilion at the Shanghai World Expo, which in 2011 was picked as the best international building by RIBA (Royal Institute of British Architects). Two young leaders by the names of Elias Lindhoff and Sebastian Mardi hail from the University of Copenhagen and Stockholm respectively. Artist, designer and architect Frank Havermans is a representative of the modern Benelux direction, while Professor Suzana Milinovic of UDK in Delft and Rufus van den Ban of the Rotterdam-based architecture firm OPVIS explore the meeting points of art and architecture.
Enrique Soriáno and Pep Tornabell come from CODA, an architecture firm in Barcelona; Jakub Majewski and Lukasz Pastuszka will represent Polish MOOMOO, chosen by Wallpaper Magazine as one of the best 30 up-and-coming design firms. The Czechs will bring a young and innovative point of view to Hello Wood: the employees of the Prague-based firm MJÖLK say they intend to colonize the world with the weapons of design. The architects of Architecture Uncomfortable Workshop are on a quest to find out why design and architecture have lost their element of humanity.
The camp will include Hungarian architects along with the team leaders based elsewhere: artist Csaba Hatvany, one of the hosts of Hello Wood 2014, will also have a team of his own. The Blokk team will organize a joint workshop with sporaarchitects, whose most recent project, line 4 of the Budapest metro, has won a prize at architizer.com.
This year Hello Wood workshop leaders will include lecturers from prominent universities all over the world. Founder of Studio Something Biayna Boghosian teaches design theory and parametric design at Columbia and USC School of Architecture in Los Angeles. She’s not the only one coming from an American university: Harvard graduate Jelene Pejkovic will join András Cseh, a young teacher of architecture at the University of Győr, to lead one of the teams.
At 4 pm on 26 July Hello Wood will open its gates to the general public as well. A jury of professionals will judge the structures created at Hello Wood 2014, which will be followed by the opening of an exhibition showcasing the installations in Csórompuszta in the framework of the Valley of Arts. From 6:30 pm the Kapolcs venue of Design Terminal will host a round table discussion, and an end-of-camp party will round off the event. Hello Wood installations will be on show on the premises until 3 August, and will later be exhibited at Sziget Festival.
