Newsletter October 2019

In our globalized world the accelerating speed of socio-political and cultural change collides with the longue-durée of heritage sites and territories. As social and political contexts around places with a public meaning change, controversies often arise.

Publication Re-Charting Places @ Contested Spaces – Concerted Projects: Designs for Vulnerable Memories, Lettera Ventidue Edizioni, Syracuse, Italy, April 2021

Focussing on rereading the cityscape, granting visibility and recognition to voices and histories previously silenced, the program focuses on fostering memory-making and processing through the development of innovative, participatory methods that do not physically touch the spaces involved.

Lectures & Workshop Resignify City @ Media Architecture Biennale 2021, Amsterdam, Utrecht, The Netherlands, 24 June 2021

Human activity and its far-reaching interactions have always transformed territories by moving people, plants, goods and animals. As such, territories have become richly stratified – and interactions are always mutual and two-way. Countries and cities projecting their influence elsewhere have, in turn, been transformed by external inputs.
Voiced Space is conceptualized by Hybrid Space Lab for Nieuwe Instituut the Dutch institute for Architecture, Design and Digital Culture.

Lectures, Workshops & Conference International Research Program @ Het Nieuwe Instituut, Rotterdam, 2019~2022
Lecture @ Media Architecture Biennial 2020, Amsterdam, 29 June-3 Juli 2020
Lecture & Workshop @ Media Architecture Biennial 2021, Amsterdam, 27 June-2 July 2021

By unlocking the potential laying at the intersection between arts, technology, memory studies and sciences, Deep Space has cracked open the interwoven, historically painful meanings of the controversial monument Valle de los Caídos, envisioning its possible futures, once Franco’s remains will be exhumed from the site.

Exhibition, Lecture & Discussion 5 June 2019 @ Goethe Institut, Madrid, 5 June 2019

Article “Creative Crossovers: Negotiating Past and Future” in the University of Southern California Public Diplomacy Magazine issue summer 2019.Monuments stand as a tangible testimony to what is untouchable: memory and history in their collective dimension.As vehicles of meaning, monuments are ambassadors affecting the public negotiation of narratives

Article Creative Crossovers @ Public Diplomacy Magazine, University of Southern California, USC Annenberg, USC Centre on Public Diplomacy, USC Masters of Public Diplomacy Program, USA, 7 June 2019

How can design research contribute to the collective processing of contested heritage?How to re-signify traditional physical monuments and heritage with the help of creative visions and hybrid (combined physical and digital) tools?
Voiced Space is conceptualized by Hybrid Space Lab for Nieuwe Instituut the Dutch institute for Architecture, Design and Digital Culture.

Research @ Het Nieuwe Instituut, Rotterdam, 2019

As a consequence of the more than 65 years long near absence of human activity, the Korean DMZ  land strip has become a verdant 984 square kilometers nature reserve where endangered flora and fauna species had the chance to regain space.
The Korean DMZ has become a testimony to unintentional beauty. Thriving vegetation and undisturbed wildlife now cover the painful, conflict-born void along the military demarcation.
Over the last few years, it has gathered international attention due to its symbolic value as well as to individual and bilateral bids by North and South Korea securing UNESCO Biosphere status for areas of the DMZ.

Deep Space is a long-term investigative program initiated to deal with politics of memory, controversial space and monuments, digitalization and heritage.
Deep Space: re-signifying Valle de los Caídos aims at developing creative processes, concepts, and ideas that can break through and transform the symbolic power of the place.

Workshop Deep Space: re-signifying Valle de los Caídos @ Medialab Prado & Valle de los Caídos, Madrid, 25-27 October 2018
Opening, Exhibition, Lecture & Discussion Lost Memory – Recovered Memory @ Goethe Institut & Fundación Pablo Iglesias, Madrid, 5 June 2019
Workshop & Lecture @ ISEA 2022 Symposium “Possibilities” Heritage and Futures, Centre de Cultura Contemporània, Barcelona, 12 June & 14 2022

Publication by Sílvia Marimon Molas at the leading Catalan newspaper ARA on how Spanish authorities are relocating symbols of the dictatorship.The article on Spain’s ‘uncomfortable memory’ refers to the Hybrid Space Lab’s project Deep Space.
Deep Space is a long-term investigative program initiated to deal with politics of memory, controversial space and monuments, digitalization and heritage.

Publication Uncomfortable Memory, Sílvia Marimon Molas @ ARA Catalan Newspaper, Barcelona, 16 July 2022

We need a fresh, radically innovative and solutions-oriented approach to address the various forms of contested heritage sites in a way that is fit for the 21st century. Article on Hybrid Space Lab’s work on contested monuments, is published in Italy.

Publication Re-Charting Places @ Contested Spaces – Concerted Projects: Designs for Vulnerable Memories, LetteraVentidue Edizioni, Syracuse, Italy, April 2021

Hjärnstorm, the Swedish independent journal of art, literature, philosophy published an article on Deep Space.

Publication Valle de los Caídos: the Digital Architecture Embraces a Painful Heritage, Cecilia Nyman @ Hjärnstorm Stockholm, 5 January 2021

Hybrid Space Lab analyzed “Valley of the Fallen” near Madrid – the pompous tomb for the fascist dictator Francisco Franco. They suggest leaving it unchanged but covering it with a new critical layer. Using augmented reality, they want to make hidden layers visible and write history from the victims’ perspective.

Publication Informing instead of glorifying, Jørg Himmelreich, @ archithese, Switserland, 28 November 2020

The Valle de los Caídos is highly controversial as a memorial of the fallen of the Spanish Civil War: for a long time, it mainly served the glorification of the dictator Franco. The “Deep Space” project wants to show visitors also the site’s dark side.

Interview, Eckhard Roelcke, journalist @ Deutschlandfunk Kultur, Germany, 8 August 2020

Berlin’s contribution to the debate on monuments: What to do with Franco’s mausoleum?
Do not destroy it, says the Berlin office Hybrid Space Lab as it lays out ideas for a new way of dealing with the controversial Franco memorial in the “Valley of the Fallen” near Madrid.

Publication, Bernhard Schultz, journalist @ Der Tagesspiegel, Berlin, 16 July 2020

Monuments are Vehicles of Meaning. Elizabeth Sikiaridi and Frans Vogelaar research how to negotiate monuments’ narratives and how to bring criticism.

Interview, Brigitte Werneburg, journalist @ taz, Germany, 14 July 2020

The Valley of the Fallen without Franco: the fate of the other 33,847 dead”
This is the title of the article by journalist Sílvia Marimom Molas in the Catalan Newspaper ARA on the future of the Valle de los Caídos with an interview on Deep Space.

Article The Valley of the Fallen without Franco: the fate of the other 33,847 dead, Sílvia Marimom @ Catalan Newspaper ARA, Barcelona, 23 November 2019 

In the article “Without Franco, what to do with the colossal Valle de los Caídos?” for HuffPost, Anthony Berthelier describes the project “Deep Space: re-signifying Valle de los Caídos” with its creative approach for addressing controversial history and contested heritage.

Article Without Franco, what to do with the colossal Valle de los Caídos?, Anthony Berthelier @ HuffPost , France, 24 October 2019

The Valley of the Fallen is a large memorial erected near Madrid in the mountain range of the Sierra de Guadarrama on the initiative of the dictator Francisco Franco. It is dedicated to the fallen of the Spanish Civil War. Within the scope of the project “Deep Space” it is proposed to transform the monument by digital means.

Publication From Monument to Memorial@ Magazine for Architecture and City Marlowes, Germany, 16 Juli 2019

Article “We come for the place, not for Franco “: El Valle de los Caídos, a tourist site almost like the others” by journalist Juliette Campion, France Televisions.

Publication, Juliette Campion @ France TV Info, Paris, 10 June 2019

Deep Space is an international project to re-think the burial site of former dictator Franco.Deep Space, presented at the Goethe Institut in Madrid, uses augmented reality to change the totalitarian nature of the Spanish Civil War monument the Valley of the Fallen.

Publication, Peio H. Riaño @ El País, Madrid, 6 June 2019

Working on places of conflict can be extremely challenging.Architecture practice Hybrid Space Lab takes a rather unique approach for the re-signification of the controversial site of Valle de los Caídos in Madrid, the burial ground of Spain’s dictator Francisco Franco and 33,000 victims of the country’s brutal civil war.

Article by Elena Rossoni @ Bnieuws TU Delft, The Netherlands, 5 February 2019

Frans Vogelaar wants to give the Valley of the Fallen in Spain, one of the most controversial places in the world, new meaning. How does the founder of the Berlin design lab and think tank Hybrid Space Lab think to do that with use of digital technology?

Article Deep Space @ Het Financieele Dagblad, the Netherlands, January 2019

The Valley of the Fallen, the shrine of Franco’s dictatorship, is still dividing Spain.
With the words “Die heiße Asche des Diktators”, in Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ) of November 1st 2018, journalist Paul Ingendaay captures the toxicity of the highly divisive Francoist Memorial at Valle de los Caídos, as well as the urgency of Hybrid Space Lab’s workshop Deep Space: Re-signifying Valle de los Caídos.

Article The Hot Ashes of the Dictator, Paul Ingendaay @ Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Frankfurt am Main, Germany, 1 November 2018

Catalan journalist Sílvia Marimon Molas describes in her article “The Gaze of European Experts” in the Catalan newspaper ARA on 31st October 2018 the workshop “Deep Space: Re-signifying Valle de los Caídos” participants’ visit to the site and the necessity of a change of the monument’s narrative.

Publication The Gaze of European Experts, Sílvia Marimon @ ARA Catalonia, Spain, 31 October 2018

In recent years our means of interacting with one another have changed dramatically thanks to emerging virtual realities, globalitaty and mass customization.
Historically built space has been a platform for social interaction: how can architect ensure a relevant public role in an emerging media driven society, which seems to operate separately from traditional collective spaces.
Hybrid Space Lab is contributing with a lecture and workshop to INDESEM, the International Design Seminar hosted by Delft University of Technology.

Lecture & Workshop Hybrid Space @ Losing Ground, INDESEM 2011 International Design Seminar, Faculty of Architecture and the Built Environment, University of Technology, Delft, The Netherlands, 13 May 2011