François Roche / R&Sie(n)

François Roche (1961) is the co-founder and most prominent representative of the architects’ collective R&Sie(n) – which reads as “hérésie” (“heresy”) in French. In deliberately utopian fashion, Roche and his partners look for methods of innovation that depart from the conventional paths of safety and logic. Their guerrilla tactics, which undermine usual procedural practices, aim at rhetorical inversion, while trying to integrate subconscious, psychotic and random structures, as well as using unexpected and surprising shifts to gain new insights and render them useable.

I’ve Heard About is one of the central projects in their research. As an urbanist project, it is a purely utopian dream – an interactive, self-organised growth project of individually designed tower blocks, created using an apparatus controlled by a generative algorithm that shapes fibre- reinforced gunned concrete into stable habitats of organic appearance. A main focus here is on the democratic reconciliation of collective and individual interests. In a permanent process of exchange on the basis of an open-source building programme, this leads to an adaptable society and an architecture that is constantly changing.

The models in Mudam’s collection give a vivid impression of the ideas of R&Sie(n) on various scales. From the forms overgrowing the rigid structure of American high-rise centres to detailed studies of residential honeycombs grown like lichen, the maquettes, made using sophisticated laser-sintering procedures, convey an idea of future worlds.