Axel Wieder, Florian Zeyfang
ARCH+ Features 42: Open Form
The concept of the “Open Form” was initially formulated by the Polish architect Oskar Hansen (1922–2005) at the XI. CIAM congress in Otterlo, NL, and became hugely influential as an early example of participatory and indeterminate thinking in the following years. Through Hansen’s teaching activities as a professor at the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw, the concept transgressed the limits of architecture and has been further developed by young artists and experimental filmmakers in the 1970s in Poland. On the occasion of the recently published book Open Form – Space, Interaction, and the Tradition of Oskar Hansen (Sternberg Press, 2014), editors Axel Wieder and Florian Zeyfang will introduce the history of the Open Form and show a selection of films from Hansen’s former students that focus on spatial pedagogies.