Unleashing the superpower of the architect

Hello Wood celebrated its 10th Summer School and Festival with ‘new tribe’ of international architects and 20 projects

The Hello Wood Summer School and Festival has expanded over the years to build up a lot of recognition internationally within the architecture community, with previous years having more than 1000 participants from across 70 countries and over 50 universities take part in Hello Wood’s educational event. By looking to the future and adopting an attitude of rebirth, a large part of the tenth anniversary of the festival was about criticism of the stereotypical role of the architect – one that is constrained by expectations and deadlines – while searching for the true superpower of those that want to make a change with a free spirit. Twenty workshops led by a truly global group of professionals helped to celebrate the decennial with their unique takes on the transformation of the architect. As a result of a series of rites and ceremonies that included the building of 20 installations, the week aimed at setting participants free to follow their dreams.

“When we choose to become an architect, we choose creativity, dreams of making a change, colors, humor and a little bit of craziness. In spite of these desires, we end up in an uncomfortable black turtleneck, desperately trying to meet deadlines and expectations, full of self-doubt about our talent and abilities,” says Peter Pozsar, co-founder of Hello Wood who leads the organisation jointly with András Huszar, David Raday and Krisztian Toth. “This year, we decided to reverse this and liberate the participants through the framing of a carnival for architects to find their way back to their superpower.”

To achieve this goal, this year’s Summer School and Festival started with an initiation ceremony so participants could free themselves from the stereotypes and some of the dated concepts of an architect and architecture. To symbolise getting rid of these shackles, attendees were asked to bring a black turtleneck, a metaphor of the tight constraints and styles that are so commonplace among architects. Each attendee was asked to remove their turtleneck and attach it to a large wooden frame – located symbolically far from the main action of the week – where they were all displayed for the whole week as a deterrent of the typical attitudes and frustrations that architects must endure daily. This act was symbolic of the creation of a new ‘tribe’ of architects withdrawn from their misplaced and disguised identities, resisting anxiety and embracing the present wholeheartedly, creating an open state of mind where participants could freely create architectural structures.

After the initiation rite, the gathering of students and architects worked over the course of a week on their installations. The construction process was the means for everyone to find their way out of their masked personality as a professional. While searching for the essence of their profession, their approach was twofold: some adopted the strategy of rephrasing a sort of architectural manifesto, others decided to approach the task spiritually and turned towards the world of our ancestors. The latter typically created tribal projects, for instance building a tower of witchcraft using rituals of nature, a portable and communal thatched roof, or a plastered furnace. Others turned towards sacrality, such as a temple devoted to partying or a portable confessional booth built like a sedan chair and a neo-postmodern pantheon where anyone can be the object of worship.

Many of the installations are portable, allowing them to be used as part of a Carnival that took place on the final day. This performative aspect played a large part in the design of the installations, which were often transformative in their nature and in some cases doubled as costumes for the parade.

The festival ended with a communal performance using Hello Wood’s own installation, which had over 100 individual wooden, arched beams held upright by the whole camp. The resulting structure resembled a temple, but one that symbolises what the festival is about. Everyone received a badge depicting a nail, the simplest element of what holds a structure together. People participating also made an oath and committed to the community of free spirits that had formed during the event. “We meant to create the gift of an experience, inviting everyone from the past ten years. It’s a direct symbol of how we could build something together, how important all the people that are participating are,” say the Hello Wood leaders.

In much the same way that a period of Carnival symbolises the end of winter and the start of spring, Hello Wood also envisioned the tenth anniversary of its international summer school and festival as a sort of rebirth for its community. Alongside the development of its permanent plot of land devoted to the festival, Hello Wood is also looking towards the future with its Builder Society concept, which it hopes will grow into a foundation of like-minded individuals wanting to put their energy into doing something for society and the world. In much the same way that Hello Wood and its Summer School and Festival has grown into something far bigger and more impactful than first it began life as, Hello Wood hopes to help the Builder Society to grow into a collective of champions driven by the desire to do something great for the benefit of humankind.

Further information on the Hello Wood Summer School and Festival:
Each year, Hello Wood organises the Summer School and Festival designed to promote the concept of learning through making, the intention being to provide the education and experience that students can gain through the process of conceiving, designing and building a project from start to finish over the course of a week. Over the last few years, Hello Wood has hosted the festival at a plot of open land in the middle of the Hungarian countryside that it acquired purposefully for its international summer schools.  In addition to this hands-on approach to education, the festival also hosts daily workshop sessions covering interesting and thought-provoking topics that help to shed light on particular aspects of design and architecture.

Project Descriptions

Communal Temple by Hello Wood

Team leaders: Péter Pozsár, Márton Pintér 

Team: Nóra Fekete, Fruzsina Karig 

By encapsulating the spirit of Carnival, Hello Wood’s temple is a dedication to the community of attendees that help make the event possible. It is a symbol of what can be achieved by a sense of togetherness, and of the connectedness that comes from the festival’s ‘tribe’ of architects that come together each year to conceive and build their projects. Formed of a number of wooden, arched beams, the Communal Temple acted as the farewell performance for this year’s festival in which everyone in the camp held one of the many wooden beams upright, resembling a temple and directly inspiring the sense of community at Hello Wood Festival’s core.

The Carnival Table

Team leaders: Space Saloon (Danny Wills, Gian Maria Socci), Lemonot (Sabrina Morreale, Lorenzo Perri), Zsofia Sonia Illes

Team: Igor Nesterov, Dominika Ufnal, Alice Kim, Ian Davide Bugarin, Carla Procida

The Carnival period is widely considered to be a time for feasting, which was the straightforward inspiration behind The Carnival Table. However, in much the same way that the traditional festivities are considered to be a time of transformation so too is the table itself. Designed to be individual masks used as part of the parade at the end of the festival, these abstract pizza-shaped pieces connect to form a large communal table where people can come together to share in the culture of food. The Carnival Table is at once about the individual and the collective, its creators concerned of the modern issues surrounding migration yet hoping to express a more pleasant view of the topic through each of our own varied connections with food and culture.

The Lubolos

Team leaders: Nacho Correa, Paco Hernández, Santiago Vera, Rosina Secondi, (Agustín Dieste)

Team: Nicolás Benjamín Boscoboinik, Vanja Ivkovic, Yara Samaha, Guo Changtao, Zgólay Regina

This Uruguayan quartet have a strong heritage of Carnival within their culture, and that has inspired their project this year. Uruguay has the longest Carnival period in the world, where music and processions play prominent roles. Candombe is unique to Uruguay, an offshoot of African drum music that was cultivated by the slaves that were once a part of Uruguayan society and has since grown to become an integral part of the country’s culture. With this at its heart, the concept of a giant drum was born, built as a mechanism that will reproduce the sound of the three drums that are a part of Candombe music. Crucially, the giant pair of wheels will be operated by two ‘drummers’ on either side of the wheel; neither can see one another though, highlighting the connectedness that comes from being a part of a community due to the need to blindly cooperate for the drum wheel to function properly.

Carnival Unboxing Day

Team leaders: Kris Drieghe

Team: Karolina Lazar, Marta Bautista Useros, Anastasia Sin’kova, Alina Rapp, MR M J MITCHELL, Cezary Adamowicz

When the differences between us can cause so much divide, how can we ever live together? That’s the question posed by this installation, which envisions these differences as abstract shapes: a square, a circle, a triangle. Your religion may be a square, where you’re from may be a circle, what you eat may be a triangle, and you take that shape with you when you’re out in the world. For this project, the shapes are boxes that are worn as part of the Hello Wood Carnival procession, but the only way to access the coordinating structure is to enter through their respective gateways: a square through the square entryway, a circle through a circle, and so on. Once inside the structure, these costumes can be shed – unboxed, even – representing the idea that we can only truly live together if we overlook the differences between us.

Ludus

Team leaders: Silvia Lacatena, Fabrizio Rosanova, Alessio De Galizio, Stefano Battaglini, Giulia Beretta, Marino Amodio

Team: Jiří Valenta, Geraldine Reid, Sara Abekova, Julia Panasiuk, Anton Schwingen 

From the get-go, Ludas was conceived as a monument to play, which has gone on to filter down through into every aspect of the project. This multi-tiered structure is bright and colourful, filled with swings and seesaws that recall our younger days on the playground when we felt a sense of freedom. The seesaw, in particular, is a symbol of that freedom, since as a game it has no goal or score; nor does it need effort and produces nothing, it is play for the sake of play. There’s an intentional contrast between the lightness of this sort of game and the scale of Ludas, a towering structure that sits amid the many cabins of the area acting as a sort of town square for the Hello Wood community, decorated with all of the things that remind the team members of their own childhoods.

Manifesto Of Architectural Autonomy

Team leaders: Agnieszka Roś, Szabolcs Egyed

Team: Kristýna Mocová, Dan Innes, Matthew Dodd, SHIH MINYU, Daria Kristal

Architects often have grand visions to change the world through their creations, but at its core there are always the same elements at their disposal. Inspired by Hello Wood’s manifesto for the Builder Society and its drive to do something more for society, this structure is a tower dedicated to the different elements that every piece of architecture must have: a door, windows, a roof, stairs. Hanging on this tower – which also acts as an observation tower – are representations of each of these components, representing a sort of unavoidable autonomy that architects must deal with by the very nature of their work. These facets are the foundation of every structure, and that is an architect’s manifesto.

Ferris Wheel

Team leaders: Neal Lucas Hitch, Martin Hitch

Team: Charlotte Buannec, Jakub Drzastwa, Matteo Fontana, Jessica Lai, Tereza Šírerová

No carnival is complete without a ferris wheel, and that was the foundational idea behind this spinning sight visible from the entrance to Hello Wood’s Summer School and Festival camp. Deemed to be the ‘Eye of Hello Wood’, it references the famous attraction of London and aims to offer the same iconic ability to draw your attention from a distance, and is designed to be colourful and eye-catching like any tourist attraction should be. But there’s a deeper symbolism to this project, too, with the ferris wheel representing a Venn diagram with only one circle, the belief that everything is connected and the same. It’s a message of community and connectedness, one that suggests that no one is different from another person at all – that we are all part of the same organism.

Party Temple

Team leaders: Martial Marquet, Vojtech Nemec

Team: Nikolaj Srdić Kranjc, Jemima Brakspear, Hamid Aghashahi, Winson Yeung, Karolina Krzyżanowska

Deep in the rainforests of South America live the Yanomami, an isolated community of tribes native to the land who live in circular, communal structures. The centre of these buildings are used for rituals and events, and this project aims to replicate that. The difference, however, is that with the theme of Carnival at its heart, this set of eight triangular modules is devoted not to shamanism – as with the Yanomami – but a rather more modern religion: the cult of partying. By using these modules, a central space is enclosed as a gathering point for all fellow worshippers to party the night away. Each of the modules, which resemble an architect’s set square, are used for specific purposes, whether for the DJ, spaces to dance and shout, or others to chill and shelter from the sun. It is a modern temple, and one fit for Carnival.

WeMask

Team leaders: Natalia Vera Vigaray, Patxi Martin, Josep Garriga Tarres, Alžběta Brůhová, Tina Peirlinck

Team:  Leva Davulyte, Lucie Blanchot , Charnjeev Kang, Daniel Menšík

A combination of two teams with shared ideals, WeMask is a performative structure that relies on its participants to achieve its vision of collectiveness, who will hold up the straw roof. Only then does the cone become a structure, a representation of how a community must work together to achieve its goals since it cannot function without even one of its human ‘walls’. It is only by making decisions together as a collective that WeMask can work: where to place the structure, who must be a wall and who can be a reveller inside the shelter, or even which outsiders are allowed in. But on top of its strong message, the team behind the project is also devoted to sustainable construction, with the roof constructed solely of materials gathered on-site and without the use of any electrical tools.

Pacha K’anchai

Team leaders: Angelo Ferrara, Viviana Schimmenti, Santiago Ruiz Lavaselli,  Camille Larroque, Nelson Larroque

Team: Botond Kende Gazda, Lauren Fashokun, Nina Hofmann, Will Hayter, Abigail Hinchley

‘The light from the sun: a universal element, plenty of energy and life,’ that is Pacha K’anchai. The meaning comes from the Inca Quechua language and draws out the closeness that this pagan altar to fire has with the element. A wooden structure was clad in clay and heated with a small fire inside, drying the material to make a hardened furnace – a dedication to the power, romance and life-giving capabilities of fire. In much the same way that tribesmen might in their own rituals, the performative aspect of Pacha K’anchai had its ‘shamanic’ creator of the fire pass the flame that was used to burn the wooden interior on to its participants, representing the same significance that humankind once placed on the possession of fire.

Flag-Ship

Team leaders: Sabrah Islam, Sung Yeop Lim, Sonya Falkovskaia

Team: Michael Tsang, Petró Panni, Leyla Hepsaydir, Tomáš Čunderlík

Where many of the festival’s installations this year are bombastic, taking on both literal and metaphysical ideals of celebration, Flag-Ship is rather more serene in its attitude towards the concept. Concealed away from the main camp overlooking a field of sunflowers, the ship-shaped structure celebrates a global community. The decision for a direct connection with the landscape was intentional, allowing for a more relaxed location away from the noise of electrical circular saws and Hello Wood festivities and instead surrounded by the flapping of world flags – which coincidentally create shading for those who want to enjoy the view.

Ice Cream Truck

Team leaders: Suzana Milinović, Rufus van den Ban

Team: Shanice Abbey, Filip Cerha, Johanna Richter, Marta Irma Zabik, Casper Hylkema

This year, the repeated demands for ice cream from this part of Hello Wood veterans was going to go unheard no more. If there won’t be ice cream to survive the baking heat of Hungarian summers, then they would simply have to provide the ice cream themselves. But there’s a deeper meaning to the installation, one that leverages Carnival’s notorious time for feasting at its centre. Ice cream is not a nourishing food, but one eaten purely for its enjoyment; it is modern feasting, eating for the enjoyment of it rather than the need. In translating this concept to architecture, however, the ice cream truck is representative of the underlying theme of the project: ornament. Much like a feast of cold treats, ornamental design is not done so with purpose but instead with glorification, the human touch and form over functionality at its core. The fact that the truck can dole out ice cream to on-lookers and participants of the parade is just a fun extra for those with a sweet tooth.

Mjölk

Team leaders: Jan Vondrák, Jan Mach, Pavlína Müllerova

Team: John Cummins, Evdoxia Golobia, Valentin Warminski, Sofija Mašović, Brigita Teplanova

Across centuries, Carnival has often been about masking oneself, hiding behind an unknown identity to make all equal. This is a communal mask, a wooden scaled creature that its team can lift up from the inside and carry as part of its parade. That in itself creates a close, intimate connection, the sort that would once be necessary for smaller communities to survive. But this worm-like beast was built with greater goals in mind, eschewing the modern architectural demands of straight lines, cross sections and precise measurements. Instead, it is built with a frame of branches and sticks found on site, ignoring the technical details of construction in favour of something more tangible and physical. With no plans beyond a concept, this wooden snake was as much about the creative process of building as it was the final project.

Becoming Animal

Team leaders: Julia Wildeis, Christian Daschek

Team: Nefin Erkul, Chongyuan Duan, Dorottya Kiss, Fanni Csöbi, Jakub Sampławski

What does it mean to transform, and how can architecture and design enable that? With the transformative concepts of Carnival at its heart, Becoming Animal is a set of functional furniture that can be deconstructed and worn by the team as part of the Hello Wood Festival parade. While these pieces might not resemble any given creature, they are still able to empower its wearer with the essence of that animal; one may not look like a gorilla while wearing the legs of a stool, but it’s possible to move like one, act like one, relax like one. In this sense these costumes can become living entities, much like how Carnival is about adopting a different role.

Running Time

Team leaders: Pavol Šiška, Peter Sálus

Team: Chris Myk, Emily Cronin, Yi-Chieh Chen, Dorothy Zhang

‘Tide and time wait for no man,’ it is said, and that’s a message that this installation seeks to present. Time is one of those fickle enemies that so many of us feel we have to constantly battle against: there just isn’t enough time in the day, we might think. But Running Time presents a counter offer. It suggests that even if you’re stationary you can’t escape the wheel of time, hence the creators of this installation think it’s better to relax, to avoid rushing for things and being in a hurry for everything to change, improve or succeed. Time is running, but not for us.

Confessional

Team leaders: Lee Ivett, Susie Olczak

Team: Melissa Kosseifi, Enzo Miot, Marta Esteban, Huang Chih-Yian, Janka Dócs

In wanting to build a space that allowed for the kind of privacy capable of sharing intimacy and finding solace, the Confessional is built as a pair of sedan chairs that can be carried individually but can come together to form a single unit. In this it allows for two people to be open, to share the sort of personal details that are much more than the noise we shout into digital world of social media. But in that there is a responsibility to listen, too, and more importantly not to judge. And at a Carnival, where the potential for sin, lust and guilt is likely to be at its highest, perhaps a place to confess is a necessity.

The Architect as a Prostitute

Team leaders: Keimpke Zigterman, Veerle Rigter

Team: Paul BOURNE-MADELENAT, Miryam Yakub Aga, Aisha Nadim , Abdul Saleem

Over a set of three different installations, this performative trio represent the central idea that – much like a prostitute – an architect must sell themselves to their clients. More than that, in fact, such professionals must also sell their ideas, their personalities and even their souls. The first of the installations is a glass case not unlike the windows of a red light district, referencing the need for an architect to showcase themselves to the world in order to make a living. The second is a billboard, a place for announcements of events and workshops that were taking place during the week-long festival at Hello Wood. Lastly is the chair of judgement, inspired by the need to judge and the desire to be judged through social media platforms – a like or a retweet akin to the currency of a successful architect.

Brugga

Team leaders: Tatiana M. Melo, Maria Roy

Team: Timothy Betton, Christoph Elmecker, Xueying Wang, Frida Navratil, Gerda Antal

By envisioning a time where the Earth is no longer fertile and humankind has moved to Mars, the team behind Brugga wanted to create a structure that could survive the wastelands. This multi-tiered tower is powered by the rituals of the Brugga witches – born from the Spanish word bruja for witch – intended as a means of rejuvenating the land. Covered in plants and replete with a water tank at the top, the tower can allow for self-sufficiency within a desolate land. But it’s also symbolic of much more, too, with individual sections dividing the structure, from the darker ‘cavern’ at the base that is surrounded by natural elements and where the witches will practice their rituals up to the top floor with a craft table.

Photo Booth Pantheon

Team leaders: Lilla Árkovics, Bernadett Csendes, Attila Róbert Csóka, Dávid Smiló, Szabolcs Molnár

Team: Juan Agustin, Alžběta Hejnová, Esther Calinawan, Gerrylyn Saraza, Flynn Williams

Hello Wood’s manifesto for the Builder Society and its desire to do good for the world inspired this pantheon, whose shape is based on the famous Roman landmark. Every society needs a place to remember their heroes and their gods, but countless statues of past workshop leaders is not possible at the Hello Wood camp. This is why this particular Pantheon is also a photo booth, a place dedicated to showcasing the visitors of the past and a monument to the ten years of Hello Wood’s Summer School and Festival.

Beyond

Team leaders: Joan Lluc Piña, Quim Escoda Llorens , Carmen Bodelón

Team: Matthew Pembery, Maria Antonia Rigo Serra, Juliet Welshman, Mohammad Abbasi, Karolina Kowara

What happens after the Hello Wood festival? What is beyond the event and its creations? These are the considerations that power Beyond, a set of moveable cabins that its creators hope they can recycle for a cooperative housing project that they are working on back in the neighbourhood of Sant Muç. But they’ve got to make it back there, and that’s the intention: this set of cabins are small enough to be dedicated to each aspect of life, carnival, and beyond. There is a space dedicated to partying, one to eating, another to sleeping; everything that is necessary for life, Carnival and Beyond.