On Saturday the 30th of June 2012 Radar Architecture & Art started the exhibition entitled 'the flexible and the furious!', showing seven projects of the group Radar Architecture in various places in the world. The central theme of the exhibition is the flexibility and adaptability of architecture to different situations imposed by a furious society in constant acceleration. The opening hours of the exhibition are Friday and Saturday from 13:00 to 18:00 and on appointment.

An ever-changing world

In the last three and a half years, Radar Group has been participating in international architecture competitions parallel to organizing art exhibitions. Radar found itself thus directly involved in issues such as 'reuse' 'sustainability' 'flexibility' or 'adaptability', which in the last years have become part of everyday vocabulary. The unstable socio-economic conditions that characterize the current decade force people more and more to an adaptability to situations of daily life and work. The same adaptability is therefore required from structures that accommodate the events of the social and private life of people. The main engine of these changes is likely to be found in the dizzying increase of the exchange of information, in which Internet has played and plays a key role. Art and Architecture have been affected by these developments, especially in recent years characterized by a global economic crisis.

A flexible architecture

After a series of projects Radar Group has decided to present the results of that work taking the opportunity to do an analysis of the main guidelines underlying the projects. This study revealed some points in common, like an invisible wire stretched between the conscious and unconscious that binds all projects. The most important aspects that unite the seven projects are in fact flexibility and adaptability. By flexibility is meant the ability of architecture to meet different requirements of users that in the present day change with a remarkable rapidity. By adaptability is meant a kind of 'external flexibility' that allows a concept or architectural strategy to be applied with minor changes to different places or urbanistic contexts. The exhibition 'the flexible and the furious!' shows projects in several places (from Warsaw to Venice, from Amsterdam to Austin, from Rome to Oslo) and of different typologies (from a SPA in a skyscraper to temporary pavilions for art exhibitions, from an adventure playground to a family house) and analyses how and to what extent the key concepts of flexibility and adaptability are present in them.

text by Marco Radar