SITE VISIT I: Le Plaza

FESCH.TV INFORMIERT:

– LIVE STREAM – SITE VISIT I
Le Plaza, Geneva
10 May 2021

Current tendencies like digitization and the consequences of the pandemic challenge what it means to live together. The death of retail, the “Retail Apocalypse”, has eliminated the central marketplace as the site of public and social life. How can we find a new approach to the leftovers of urban life? We start by taking a look at a potential venue for the future NEXPO: Le Plaza, an abandoned movie theatre in Geneva, a modernist ruin of fiction and fantasy. We debate its resurrection as a beacon for new visions in urban space. What can we learn from this supposedly obsolete location that was once and perhaps still is a model of a meeting place? And we ask ourselves how architecture and the city respond to ever-invasive virtual tendencies that are undermining the existence of our built reality?

Our guests:

Arno Brandlhuber and Olaf Grawert (architect, La Biennale di Venezia Archi­tettura, German Pavilion)
Samia Henni (archi­tecture historian, Cornell University)
Corine Mauch (mayor of Zurich)
Ottolinger – Christa Bösch and Cosima Gadient (fashion designers)
Adam Szymczyk (curator / Documenta 14)

Words of greeting by Sami Kanaan (mayor of Geneva) and Grégoire Junod (mayor of Lausanne), moderated by Fredi Fischli, Niels Olsen and Philip Ursprung (art and archi­tecture historian, ETH Zurich)