In the summer of 2017, we were invited to lead a workshop at Porto Academy, at Álvaro Siza’s FAUP. Rather than responding directly to Porto, we brought a site with us: De Wasserij van Vlaanderen, a former laundry previously documented in the Primary Structure studio.
An incomplete archive of photographs, videos and measured drawings became the only access to the site. Over time, different structures had accumulated within the urban block, each following its own pragmatic logic, touching, overlapping and seeking support from its neighbours. Together they formed a difficult whole — a cadavre exquis of structures. The site was cut into fragments and distributed among the participants. Each pair received a piece and developed it autonomously, without programme, by decomposing the existing and recomposing its discovered principles into a new architecture. The boundaries of each project were shared with its neighbours. Every autonomous intervention therefore had to negotiate with another, developed according to a different logic. At the end, the fragments were brought together again: an archipelago of independently conceived structures, reassembled into a new whole.
