Yona Friedman. For a mobile architecture

From 25 June, MUSAC’s Showcase Project shall be dedicated to Hungarian architect and theoretician Yona Friedman, on occasion of the publication of Volume 2 of the Collection Art and Architecture AA MUSAC. This project is at once a tribute to one of the most influential, dynamic and visionary theoreticians of our time and a prolongation of our reflections on architecture and its role in structuring the contemporary city.

MUSAC’s showcases shall feature a specific project designed by Friedman focusing on the concept of Mobile Architecture, which embraces the idea of building structures capable of being dismantled, transported and transformed by their occupants. Friedman’s work prioritises the voice and needs of the individual and the power contained in the freedom to decide, positioning the person in a pivotal place in society.

Yona Friedman Pompidou Center, Paris, 1970 © Yona Friedman

Exhibition title: Yona Friedman: For a Mobile Architecture
Artist: Yona Friedman
Curator: María Inés Rodríguez
Coordination: Cynthia González García
Dates: 25 June - 11 September 2011
Venue:Showcase Project>
Publication title: Architecture with the people, by the people, for the people. Yona Friedman
Collection AA MUSAC

About the exhibition Yona Friedman: For a Mobile Architecture

MUSAC’s showcases shall feature a specific project designed by Friedman focusing on the concept of Mobile Architecture, which embraces the idea of building structures capable of being dismantled, transported and transformed by their occupants. Friedman’s work prioritises the voice and needs of the individual and the power contained in the freedom to decide, positioning the person in a pivotal place in society.

Just as Yona Friedman himself asserts, his work consists in “see[ing] the world not only as an entity describable in statistical terms and by statistical methods but as a world made up of individual entities which I have called (in my theory) ‘space granuals’. These entities behave in a totally unpredictable way.” Thus, mobile architecture becomes infused with life.

About the publication Architecture with the people, by the people, for the people. Yona Friedman

Edited by María Inés Rodríguez, designed by the Michel Mallard Studio and published by MUSAC / ActarBirkhäuser, the publication includes previously unpublished texts by Yona Friedman and special contributions by Kenneth Frampton, architecture critic and historian, Professor at Columbia University; Hans Ulrich Obrist, curator, Director of International Projects and Co-Director of Exhibitions and Programmes at the Serpentine Gallery, London and Manuel Orazi, Doctor of the History of Architecture with a thesis on Friedman and Director of Quodlibet. Additionally, the publication sports a copious collection of images by Yona Friedman.

The Collection Art and Architecture AA MUSAC propounds a transversal reading of the works of artists and architects who advance a critical vision of the contemporary world through their production. In this order of ideas, Yona Friedman’s monograph analyses, in various texts, the fundamental aspects of his work as well as the context from which it emerges.

Frampton visits Friedman’s theoretical contributions and the close working relationship they had in the 1960’s; Orazi on his part makes a profound analysis of Friedman’s reflections on Mobile Architecture, the Spatial City and the user’s role in its construction. Hans Ulrich Obrist contributes with two interviews featuring Yona Friedman’s impressions of his latest projects, his idea of the expanded museum and the future of his archives. The unpublished texts Friedman wished to share with us for this publication address his concerns about the role of the contemporary museum and the projects he himself has undertaken in this regard. He also analyses Europe viewed as great metropolis with its possibilities for mobility, interaction and social development.

Publication specifications: Architecture with the people, by the people, for the people. Yona Friedman
Collection Art and Architecture AA MUSAC
Edited by: MUSAC / ActarBirkhäuser
Published by: ActarBirkhäuser
Editor: María Inés Rodríguez
Design: Michel Mallard Studio, París
Texts: Kenneth Frampton, Yona Friedman, Hans Ulrich Obrist, Manuel Orazi, María Inés Rodríguez

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Yona Friedman Ville spatiale, 1958-1962 © Yona Friedman

Yona Friedman Portrait with his dog Balkis © Photo Marianne Homiridisiedman con su perro Balkis © Photo Marianne Homiridis

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Yona Friedman

Yona Friedman was born in Budapest, Hungary in 1923, and pass away Paris, France, February 21, 2020. He studied at the Technical University in Budapest (Budapesti Műszaki és Gazdaságtudományi Egyetem) and in Haifa. His work has spanned areas ranging from architecture, art and animated film to education and writing. He has participated in numerous art biennials including Shanghai, Venice and Documenta 11. His highly visionary ideas have nurtured various generations of architects and urbanists, influencing groups such as Archigram and even Kenzo Tange, who declared as such in 1970 in Osaka.

In 1956 he published L'architecture mobile, his manifesto which conceived of an urban structure on piles, appropriate for spaces where building is not possible or permitted. This also became the foundational document of the GEAM, Groupe d'étude d'architecture mobile. He created urban concepts such as the Spatial City, based on the free organisation of a city by citizens using low-cost mobile and reusable modules. In 1965 he founded, together with Ionel Schein, Walter Jonas and others, the GIAP, Groupe International d'Architecture Prospective.

From the 1960’s he also became interested in animated film making which would lead him to propose a series of do-it-yourself construction manuals with simple pictograms addressing basic questions, which we could summarise under the title L´habitat c’est mon affaire. Comment habiter la terre (Habitat is my business: how to inhabit the earth). These were edited by the United Nations and given broad distribution in India, South America and Africa.