© 2020, Gailės Pranckūnaitės and Mislav Žugaj, Bulding Narratives

Architektūros fondas‘ programme Building Narratives is focusing on investigating the relationship between architecture and stories surrounding it. Within the programme of 2020 and the series of events taking place from August 27th till September 5th Architektūros fondas is looking for untold stories, projects making new connections, objects changing their meanings and other cases demonstrating the power of narration.

Buildings aren’t shaped by mortar and concrete anymore – crucial and sometimes the most important ingredient is narrative. Whether it is purely a PR product or an organic construct it creates perceptions and shapes the way we see and understand our environment. Hearing, reading or assembling a narrative from smaller pieces helps us to determine if something is good, useful and even beautiful. At the same time, changing narrative has the power to change perceptions of our environment. Bad can become good, ugly-beautiful, all without any changes in physical structure.

As a new narrative has the power to transform architecture on its own, it becomes extremely important to understand how different ways of talking about architecture can shape its future. Therefore Architektūros fondas is seeking to discover personal narratives and encourage the creatives to get involved in this affair.

In 2020, Architektūros fondas will collaborate with 6 Future Architecture creatives and collectives researching the topic, exploring curatorial methods and tools, experimenting with and creating new approaches for the future of narration. Invited creatives will elaborate their projects in three stages:

_site-specific researches, helping to contextualise and adopt their primary or brand new ideas within the Lithuanian context;

_event series dedicated to present the results of research and experiments

_contributions to the (online) publication with the texts, visual stories or films at the end of the year.

The publication issued at the end of the year will not only contain explorations of the creatives but also will include texts of invited authors, contributing the sub-topics of Building Narratives.

The creative teams will refract Building Narratives theme through diverse lenses:

27th August
Building Narratives. Eiguliai
The Future architecture fellows – Sonja Lakic, Goda Verikaitė, Povilas Jankūnas  – will invite to re-think and re-see the post soviet mass housing areas in general through their contextualized artistic research in Eiguliai. That will be a triple event combining imagination board game „Fantastiškas rajonas“ developed by Povilas Jankūnas, maps and narratives created while playing it; an audio tour „Ką kalba Eiguliai“ by Goda Verikaitė merging speculative stories about/around Eiguliai and session of photo-writing „P.S. I love you: love letters to/from Eiguliai“ as a research by Sonja Lakič.

2nd September
Mapping Heritage
A workshop expanding narratives of the built environment led by Future Architecture fellow Tatiana Letier Pinto in collaboration with Benas Gerdžiūnas.  Mapping Herritage will present a research methodology used in the feasibility study of a new project on Tomteboda the old post terminal in Stockholm. Produced in parallel with architectural feasibility study this work unraveled historical, political, and ownership background of Tomteboda building and led to unexpected results. It has brought a different narrative to the building and showed the hidden connections and story that interfered with the way we perceive space. The same investigative methodology will be applied to expand the narratives around the Palace of Sports and Concerts in Vilnius. During the workshop participants will try to discover what new narratives can Palace of Sports and Concerts reveal – a building with a complicated history and constantly surrounded by heated debates

4th September
Baltic logs
It will be cross-media research processes, looking at de-forestation of the woodlands for military purposes that started in 1930 and it continues today. During the virtual journey of ten days, the creative team Un-war space lab Armina Pilav, Damir Ugljen, Karla Crnčević, Jonas Langbein in collaboration with Ilona Jurkonytė will inhabit in the form of mediatic space and document the past and present of destroyed woodlands in different locations in Lithuania. The aim is to trace the creation of new ecosystems for construction of the military landscapes or bomb’s testing in the Soviet time as was the case of Rūdininkų wood (Rūdininkų giria) where sand dunes have been formed as a consequence of military pilots bombing training and constant fires in the area.

5th September
Fluid Perspectives
Fluid Perspectives will be a site-specific panel discussion happening on a dynamic platform freely floating down the river through the center of Vilnius. During the discussion local artists, architects and critics will share their personal stories and inspirations, that will be triggered and structured by the dynamic background of the city passing by. Constantly changing urban perspectives will provide the context and inspiration for the panel feeding participants’ senses with changing uncommon views of recognizable places of the city. Simultaniously, Future Architecture fellow Will Jennings will be following the discussion while walking along Thames in London. While not being able to be at the same physical space, the participants of this performative act will be connected by the same yet different elements – river and cityscape, Unexpectedly emerging narratives will be reflected in the form of text by Will Jennings contributing the Building Narratives publication. Discussion is curated and moderated by Justinas Dūdėnas and Tautvydas Urbelis.

Building Narratives programme is a strong creative impulse for merging the ongoing projects of Architektūros fondas and their methods, while looking for common ground among experiments of architecture curating, podcasts and publications, Architecture talk series and others. While running this programme Architektūros fondas is acting as a moderator and as a creative link between the Future Architecture creatives and members, incorporating its expertise in being an open and voluntary platform, and holding experience and knowledge to host bottom-up initiatives and networking.