Check-in Architecture begins here: 300 questions, 600 travellers, 20 European cities and 3 months to investigate the complex geography of the metropolis...", states
Mario Flavio Benini, manager of Metalflow Communication Agency and director of Check-in Architecture.
A unique, international project. The first one of its kind involving so many students and so many cities in a real active investigation across Europe. And it's also the first cross-media event using every kind of media, from Internet, to traditional print (a free-press magazine), from video documentaries to two exhibitions Its aim is to investigate how architecture influences and transforms modern cities and their inhabitants, from aesthetic, artistic, social, spatial, cultural, technological, sociological and economic points-of-view. Supported by the
International Union of Architects (UIA),
The Venice Biennale of Architecture and the
Turin 2008 World Design Capital the project invites art, architecture and design students from the most reknown European universities, to film places and people all over Europe. They are being offered the opportunity to travel for free, with logistical support from the Check-in Architecture office. In every city they go to, they have to accomplish a "mission", to produce a short documentary based on a script and a set of instructions. It could be an interview, a documentary or a creative intervention, on a theme chosen by a cultural committee of curators, critics and researchers.
Parsley and Duchamp - Class Tourism near Lake Garda - 15-lug-2008
Two people working together must accomplish each mission. The best videos are to be shown in an exhibition during the XXIII UIA World Congress in Turin from June 29th to July 4th 2008. The same exhibition will then move to the Venice Biennale of Architecture from September 14th through to November 4th 2008. In short, all the contestants must log on the website www.checkinarchitecture.com, find their mission, sign up and then leave with a friend and only two but essential tools in hands: a video camera and one Moleskine notebook special edition, branded Check-in Architecture. "I believe that these new urban creations give rise to the formation of new communities almost involuntarily. They attempt to satisfy our human need to melt, share experiences and get to know each other", says Luca Molinari, architect and professor from the managing staff of Check-in Architecture.
But Check-in Architecture is also a generation living low-cost and travelling low-cost. As-a-matter-of-fact, a Miniclubman (one of the special sponsors of the whole event) or flight tickets will be given to every pair of students on a mission together with vouchers for accommodation. "The possibility of taking a plane on the cheap has revolutionized the cultural geography of Europe. And it has changed those of us who happen to take the flights. Check-in Architecture pauses to reflect on the fact that in ten years we have become faced with a new hierarchy of places. Places where, at a cost of a few cents, planes land and take off", says Luca Martinazzoli, writer and researcher of the managing staff of Check-in Architecture. The cross-media nature of the event ensures the support of important media-partners on-line and off-line, like Urban Screen and Google to YouTube Google-earth and Google-Map.
About the article
For this special event Moleskine has created a special edition of the famous notebook branded Check-in Architecture, that every traveller has to take with him in order to write down or draw any kind of notes that are useful to accomplish the "mission" in hand.
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