Temporary architecture is often misrepresented as a flimsy trend or photo-ready quick fix: easy, entertaining and often, mistakenly, cheap. This is Temporary concerns itself with a group of young, emerging, socially minded group of architects and designers who are taking the city back into their own hands and creating experimental sites for interaction and engagement. These architects, collectives, students and artists are designing transient structures, situations and events that invest and embed themselves in a community, public space or set of ideas.
Read an excerpt from the book This is Temporary after the break.
What they all have in common, apart from being relatively young in architectural terms and infectiously passionate about their craft, is a concern for engaging people and enriching local communities, and for collaborative, participatory ways of designing, making and building. These architects aren’t daydreamers: they’re making extraordinary things happen. The projects are inventive, experimental and playful, but at the same time they’re also well-considered and empowering ways to create animated, deeply rooted places in the neglected, disused and sometimes inaccessible parts of our cities. They’re not just temporary pavilions but community workshops, meeting places, public realm projects and urban strategies too.
