The Gift - e-flux

Editors Nick Axel, Nikolaus Hirsch, Damjan Kokalevski, Andres Lepik, Łukasz Stanek

Contributors GerHub, Łukasz Stanek, Kwasi Ohene-Ayeh, Jasmina Cibic, Leigh House, Bonaventure Soh Bejeng Ndikung, Andres Lepik, Ye Liu, Anya Sirota, Ana Ivanovska Deskova, and more…

Architectural gifts are ubiquitous, from libraries funded by wealthy philanthropists and shelters donated by humanitarian organizations to farms paid for with development grants, mosques financed by Islamic foundations, stadiums handed over as part of diplomatic charm offensives, and more. Embedded in religious and imperial traditions of gift giving, architectural gifts shape urbanization processes around the world. Humanitarian, developmentalist, and diplomatic building-gifts mark expanding African, Asian, and South American metropolises and their hinterlands, just as philanthrocapitalists invest in cultural, social, and educational facilities abandoned by the shrinking welfare state in North America and Europe.

The Gift is a collaboration between e-flux Architecture, Architekturmuseum der TUM in the Pinakothek der Moderne, and Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning, University of Michigan, within the context of the exhibition “The Gift: Stories of Generosity and Violence in Architecture” at the Architekturmuseum der TUM.

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9 essays

Maintaining Global Solidarity

Ana Ivanovska Deskova and Damjan Kokalevski

The Universal Hall in Skopje is one of the city’s main landmarks, and has stood as a symbol of global solidarity for over sixty years.

Contradictions of a Benevolent City

Anya Sirota

Turning down a gift of this magnitude, especially within a context of acute need, was more than just a mere departure from norms. It was a sobering declaration that illuminates the complexities of producing social impact design within communities marred by long-standing neglect, and highlighted the nuanced, occasionally fraught, nexus between philanthropy and the practice of architecture and urban design.

On Nonreciprocal Giving

Ye Liu

The confrontation between China and the Soviet Union/bloc during this time was ideologically charged by the question of how to get socialism right, and the difference between their respective aid practices illustrated this.

Dancing with Architecture

Bonaventure Soh Bejeng Ndikung, Andres Lepik, and Łukasz Stanek

Things are not necessarily limited to being either a challenge or opportunity. They are often both. There are times when the building is a great challenge, while there are other times when it is an opportunity because it forces us to think differently.

The Incubator for Disruptive Philanthropy

Leigh House

Plugged In to the Community In order to explain the influence of technology in East Palo Alto, California, it is best to start by examining the his…

The Gift

Jasmina Cibic

From parliamentary structures and other protocol architecture to World Expositions, history is replete with buildings whose interiors have served as the ultimate theatres of power.

Land Imaginaries

Łukasz Stanek and Kwasi Ohene-Ayeh

Besides the university’s own experimental farms supervised by the Faculty of Agriculture, individual farming activities were not foreseen by the Cubitt plan, nor by the plans that followed. The presence of farmers reveals an ecology defined by agricultural production that ties the campus to the towns and villages nearby.

Forty Years of Home, Three Generations of Family

GerHub

In the second half of the twentieth century, Ulaanbaatar, the capital of Mongolia, experienced a significant transformation in its infrastructure and housing.

Editorial

Łukasz Stanek, Damjan Kokalevski, Andres Lepik, and e-flux Architecture

The Gift is a collaboration between e-flux Architecture, Architekturmuseum der TUM in the Pinakothek der Moderne, and Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning, University of Michigan.

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