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Steal from anywhere that resonates with inspiration or fuels your imagination.

Devour old films, music, books, paintings, photographs,poems, dreams,

random conversations, people, architecture, bridges, street signs, trees, clouds

bodies of water, light and shadows. Select only things that speak directly to your soul.

If you do this your work (and theft), will be authentic.

Authenticity is invaluable; originlality is non-existent.

And don’t bother concealing your thievery-celebrate it if you feel like it.

In any case, always remember what Jean- Luc Godard said:

“It’s not where you take things from- it’s you take them to.”

text: Jim Jarmush

drawing:  Axonometric of structural study/ Stanley_Tigerman_1975

diagram: Swarm behavior diagram/ Vague_Topotheque_2011

quote:  Jean- Luc Godard

IST ENDLOS…

“From lava hypnotized

into new stone, and soon, oh so very soon,

from stone to dust to death

Repeat, repeat, little man

your noble try approximate Prometheus. Repeat endlessly.

Defy the fate of failure.

Dust, fibres, crystals,

heated, molded, condensed

into steel, glass,beton; and

atom-smashed again by the grinding of the wind,

the mellow spring rain,

the sensuous nagging of time,so

undisturbed,so totally disturbed,

by the strivings of man to manifest himself

into eternity

architecture will be cracking tenderly,soon brutally,

and finally open up all her thighs.

to the devastating love-making of the elements 

to transform her again to dust, and

become nature once more.”

“life is short,Art is long, Architecture is endless.”/ F. Kiesler / Juli 1958/

“One might say that immensity is a philosophical category of daydream. Daydream undoubtedly feeds on all kinds of sights, but through a sort of natural inclination, it contemplates grandeur. And this contemplation produces an attitude that is so special, an inner state that is so unlike any other, that the daydream transports the dreamer outside the immediate world to a world that bears the mark of infinity.”

In his thought-provoking book “Poetics of Space”, G. Bachelard discusses the significance of the house and its basic elements while raising a number of interesting perspectives on the perception of space. Daydreaming, a state that more often than not we find ourselves  into, is among those perspectives and the basic reason for this proposal for an urban intervention at the Tram/bus station located in Buchegplatz, Zurich. The proposal consists mainly of the insertion of a new colonnade and lighting in the existing station and is an application of some recent experiments with Processing.

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Alexandros Helidonopoulos recently joined forces with Topotheque and as it seems he’ll be around for some time!

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A photo from ETH’s D_Fab research on making re-usable custom molds out of sand.

Different tools are attached on the robot, depending on the desired final effect/texture.

The robot is applying pressure on the sand up until it solidifies and then concrete is poured in.

After that the sand can be re-formed to create another pattern.

Following our previous collaboration for his début album (”hanging on a dream”), Spyros Pan invited topotheque again to design the graphics for his second musical journey, “Ω” (omega).
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