Associate Professor, Phd
info at francescomarullo dot com genericarchitecture.org
@genericarchitecture
+1 312 972 5610
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University of Illinois at Chicago
3100 Architecture & Design Studios
845 W Harrison Street (MC 030)
Chicago IL 60607
I am an architect and associate professor at the School of Architecture of the University of Illinois at Chicago. Here is an incomplete list of things worthy of note that happened in the past years. More about my writings and projects at genericarchitecture.org
Arquitectura Genérica y Trabajo Vivo
Vol. I — Delirante Equivalencia
Francesco Marullo
Edition, translation, and prologue by Carlos Aguilar Salazar
Operaciones, 2023
Delirante Equivalencia is the first volume of a trilogy investigating crucial moments in the relationship between labor struggle, architecture, and abstraction from the acceleration of capitalist exchange, financial speculation, and military expansion in 15th-16th century Florence vis-à-vis the rise of new architectural typologies for bureaucracy and management; to the Soviet experiments of collective forms and social condensers in the 1920s; to Rem Koolhaas’ translation of Ivan Leonidov’s visionary modernism into the notion of ‘typical plan’ within the neoliberal context of the 1980s.
Delirante equivalencia inaugura la trilogía Arquitectura genérica y trabajo vivo de Francesco Marullo, en la que se describen los tres momentos decisivos del arquetipo de la oficina y la tecnología espacial de la planta tipo: el primero, el de su transformación en la esencia del espacio clerical renacentista, que ordenó la disposición del espacio de oficinas durante unos quinientos años; segundo, el de su descubrimiento –por parte de Koolhaas– como tecnología que transformó radicalmente la disposición del paisaje de oficinas contemporáneo, proponiendo la provocativa tesis de que la obsesión de Koolhaas con ésta no se derivó principalmente de su encuentro con Manhattan ni con el Muro de Berlín, sino con la lacónica obra del arquitecto soviético Ivan Ilyich Leonidov; y tercero, el de un intento fallido de Koolhaas por instalar la planta tipo en el paisaje de oficinas europeo.
More info at Taller Operaciones
(Photo: Francesco Marullo, Arquitectura Genérica y Trabajo Vivo, Taller Operaciones, 2023, cover)
Deserts
Journal of Architectural Education, 77:2
Ersela Kripa, Francesco Marullo, Stephen Mueller (Eds.)
Fall 2023
A thematic issue on global deserts exploring their geopolitical, infrastructural, and aesthetic dimensions, co-edited together with Ersela Kripa and Stephen Mueller. The volume includes contributions by Ivan L. Munuera, Dalal Musaed Alsayer, Faysal Tabbarah, Yousef Awaad Hussein, Asaiel Al Saeed, Saphiya Abu Al-Maati, Aseel Al Yaquoub, Ezgi İşbilen, Tamar Zinguer, Andy Lee, Gabrielle Printz, Brahim El Guabli, Montserrat Bonvehi Rosich, Seth Denizen, Dante Furioso, Patty Heyda, Menna Agha, Julien Lafontaine Carboni, Piper Bernbaum, Zach Colbert, Danika Cooper, Gonzal Pimentel, Álvaro Velasco Perez, Brendan O’Neill, Samantha L. Martin, Margaret Freeman, and Salima Naj.
(Photo: Georg Scholz, Cacti and semaphore, 1923 courtesy of LWL-Museum für Kunst und Kultur, Westfälisches Landesmuseum, Münster)
Generic Architecture, Living Labor, Real Abstraction
An advanced graduate theory class on generic architecture, primitive accumulation, and real abstraction at the UIC School of Architecture.
Using texts from Karl Marx, Alfred Sohn-Rethel, Silvia Federici, Cedric J. Robinson, Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing, Mario Liverani, David Graeber, Hannah Arendt, Dolores Hayden, Elizabeth Povinelli, Paolo Virno, Paul B. Preciado, Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, Fred Moten, and Stefano Harney, among many others, the course looks at the history and theory of architecture, from 5000 BCE to the present through the notion of accumulation, exchange, and production.
Beginning with hunter-gatherers and early urban aggregations to the rise of linguistic abstraction, the parallel diffusion of measuring and exchange systems, and the unending land grabbing and dispossession, the course delves into the progressive development of a generic architecture that puts at work the "common ability to produce" of the human species: from the intimacy of domestic spaces to factories and office buildings, from storage and warehouses to knowledge institutions, data centers and sites of extraction, discussing the role of the architect as producer, from the challenges of representation to unionization, from the architecture of labor to the labor of architecture.
(Photo: Francesco Marullo, from the series Tó Dínéeshzhee, Naabeehó Bináhásdzo, 2022)
Erase the Traces! History and Destruction in Brecht, Benjamin, and Tafuri, a new essay for Elie Haddad's recently published volume The Contested Territory of Architectural Theory. The book features contributions by Andrew Leach, Joseph Bedford, Nathaniel Coleman, Claudio Sgarbi, Penelope Dean, Macarena de la Vega de Léon, Lidia Klein, Stefano Corbo, Giacomo Pala, Kasper Lægring, Véronique Patteeu and Léa-Catherine Szacka, Esra Ackan, Charles Davis II, Jane Rendell, Neil Leich, and the introduction by David Leatherbarrow. The essay explores how Bertolt Brecht and Walter Benjamin examined the notion of destruction to redefine the role of history and the mission of the new intellectual within the modern relations of production: a strategy that would later affect Manfredo Tafuri’s manifesto Theories and Histories of Architecture against the uses and abuses of the past, whose consequences are still relevant among the current architectural debate.
America Deserta? is a conference debating the notion of desert in its geopolitical, spatial, and aesthetic dimensions, exploring how it has permeated the architectural imagination and collective intelligence in the context of North America. More info here. Thursday, October 6, 9am–6pm (UIC School of Architecture, 1100 Architecture + Design Studios, 845 West Harrison Street, Chicago)
Notes on the Desert, I guest-edited a section in the last issue of Log (#55, Summer 2022), including essays by architect Nathan Friedman on the US-Mexico border, artist Kim Stringfellow on jackrabbit homesteads, feminist scholar Traci Brynne Voyles on the 49ers, architect Ludovico Centis' observations on desert experiments, and architect Lydia Xynogala speaking for a desert toad; photo essays by the Center for Land Use Interpretation on nuclear tombs and by photographer Susan Lipper on desert utopia; as well as an interview with photographer Richard Misrach on his Desert Cantos series.
Deserts, a themed issue for the Journal of Architectural Education dedicated to global deserts as the ultimate testing ground for future technologies, most contested reservoirs of profitable resources, and vanguard laboratories of colonization, co-edited with Ersela Kripa and Stephen Mueller. More info and the call for paper here
Destroy All Monsters!, an essay about history and destruction for the Grand Dessein du Rationalisme: a hybrid publication that gathers 18 architecture projects from the student collectives of Roberto Gargiani’s Superstudio at the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, 2020–2021, and a series of 13 theoretical, practical and historical reflections on (antagonistic) rationalism in architecture by Marco Assennato, Jean-Louis Cohen, Massimo De Angelis, Natalie Donat-Cattin, Roberto Gargiani, Silvia Groaz, Boris Hamzeian, Marson Korbi, André Kempe & Oliver Thill, Éric Lapierre, Francesco Marullo, Point Supreme, Ten Studio, Christophe Van Gerrewey, and Adrien Verschuere. Published by Accattone, edited by Roberto Gargiani and Marson Korbi. More info here
Vardzia. Together Alone. A contribution to the Tbilisi Architecture Biennial 2020 What do we have in common?. Read it here. More info about the TAB at biennial.ge
Alone, Together A typological investigation on monastic living and collective forms, taught with Abigail Chang and Clare Lyster at UIC School of Architecture.
Figures of War. A short text about Machiavelli's Ordinanze and Archizoom's Non-Figurative Diagrams awarded the Drawing Matter Writing Prize 2020. Read it here.
Re-illustrating Albers' Journey. Redrawing Josef Albers' photographs of Monte Albán for the Noma Project at the MPAA | ETSAM, an exhibition curated by Raul Montesinos and Sebastian Amtmann including Multerer Architekten, La Macchina Studio, OMMX & Forms of Living, Schneider Türtscher, Veldwerk Architecten, Norell/Rodhe, Motoproprio, Jean-Benoit Vetillard, CENTRAL ofaau. With Barbara Materia, Chicago - Madrid 2020.
Groundwork. A series of drawings exploring the archetype of architectural foundations. With Barbara Materia, Chicago 2020.
Drawing Estrangement. An essay about axonometric reversibility for the issue #105 Practices of Drawing of the peer-reviewed journal OASE, edited by Bart Decroos, Véronique Patteeuw, Aslı Çiçek, Jantje Engels (Eds.).
It is not about you. An interview with Walter Benn Michaels and Bob Somol published on nonsite.org about our project A Certain Kind of Life featured at the Lisbon Architecture Triennale 2019.
Deserts: Cells for Certain Individuals. Our essay for the art journal nonsite.org opened the whole issue #31 about Architecture edited by Todd Cronan, accompanied by Walter Benn Michaels' introduction The Recluse.
The Baths. A first-year core graduate studio at the UIC School of Architecture (Spring 2020), exploring the typology of the Municipal Chicago Bathhouse and the notion of space in architecture through Alois Riegl and Luigi Moretti's works. Participants: Michelle Auyeung, Miriam Bermeo, Chris Fehlman, Andrew Hunt, Andrew Huss, Alice Lee, Sohui Lee, Raha Mahmoudi, Morgan Peterson, Mallory Rabeneck, Olga Vargas Ramirez, Ronald Ristow, Cody Schueller, Anthony Theodorelos
Laconic Architecture. A typological investigation and a design exercise developed within the first-year graduate studio The Baths. The seminar explored the history of the notion of space rereading Alois Riegl's Late-Roman Art Industry (1901) through Luigi Moretti's Structures and Sequences of Spaces (1952); analyzing Mimar Sinan's hammams in Istanbul and the Municipal Bathhouses in New York and Chicago; and, finally, conjecturing the project of three rooms with precise spatial intentions. More here: laconicarchitecture.com
UIC Center for the Arts. A review of the competition for the new Center for the Arts at the University of Illinois Chicago in an issue of AREA entirely dedicated to Chicago, edited by Vittorio Pizzigoni and Davide Servente.
A Certain Kind of Life An Associated Project to the 5th Lisbon Architecture Triennale The Poetic of Reason , supported by the Office of the Vice-Chancellor of Research at the University of Illinois at Chicago, and the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts. With Jimmy Carter, Abigail Chang, and Agata Siemionow, with photographs by Ibai Rigby. The project, realized with the help of our students Nash Kennedy, Alexandra Madsen, Jacob Patnode, William Stauffer, Julia Turner, Andreina Yepez, has been generously supported by the University of Illinois at Chicago and awarded an organization grant by The Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts. More info at: acertainkindoflife.com
Deserts. An exhibition about architecture, rationalism and asceticism through 12 prototypes of radical forms of living in the abandoned Cartuxa de Laveiras in Lisbon. More info at: acertainkindoflife.com. Lisbon Architecture Triennale, Lisbon, 2019 — CAMPO, Rome, 2020 (cancelled)
Commune. A third-year core undergraduate studio at the UIC School of Architecture (Fall 2019) exploring how we do live together in isolation. Using the paradigm of the Carthusian monastery, where the individual and the collective juxtapose without merging into an idiorrhythmic whole, the studio imagines assemblage of rooms oscillating between intimacy and confrontation, laziness and production, isolation and exposure, leisure and boredom.
Climatic Universal System. Architecture and Living Knowledge . An essay for the issue #73: 2 of the peer-reviewed Journal of Architectural Education dedicated to Work and edited by Peggy Deamer and Tsz Yan Ng.
Oswald Mathias Ungers’ Grossform. A short lecture as part of the Wednesday Episode Lecture Series Collective Form, moderated by Clare Lyster (UIC), with Kelly Bair (UIC), Alison Fisher (Chicago Art Institute), Neeraj Bathia (California College of the Arts).
Measure and Excess An introduction to the History and Theory of Western Architecture at the UIC School of Architecture (Fall 2019). The course focuses on a selection of architectural paradigms able to epitomize and make intelligible the conceptual ruptures, power relations and artistic volitions of crucial moments of Western architectural production. Despite their chronological organization, the ambition of such a series is to provide a broad framework for the comprehension of architecture at different levels, creating a mental constellation of references, analogies and differences.
A Project of Distance. Paper presented at the Distance Looks Back Symposium, hosted by the European Architectural History Network and The Society of Architectural Historians, Australia and New Zealand and organized by Andrew Leach and Lee Stickells.
Rooms for Thought Workshop and Symposium at the A. Alfred Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning at the University of Michigan, within the UN-WORKING lecture series organized by Brittany Utting and Daniel Jacobs. (Ann Arbor, Fall 2019)
One Rusty Iron Heart First-year core graduate studio at UIC School of Architecture. Moving from Diego Rivera’s Detroit Industry mural, the studio investigates the evolution of industrial architecture in Chicago, often considered as the monotonous yet indispensable counterpart to the glamorous skyscrapers of the Loop. Moving from the national efforts to reinvigorate the "industrial commons," the studio devised strategies for strengthening the historical and vital manufacturing sector of the city, critically tackling the current reconversion of its industrial corridors (PMD) into innovative and creative districts.
A Double-Headed Monster. OMU’s project for the Rotterdam AIR Competition, 1982. A chapter in the volume Aesthetic and Politics of Logistics, edited by Taneha Bacchin, Hamed Khosravi, and Filippo Lafleur, and published by Humboldt Books.
Attractive Opposites. Interview with Christophe Van Gerrewey about architecture and education, published in the issue #102 of the OASE Journal for Architecture Schools & Teachers The Education of an Architect in Europe, edited by Christophe Van Gerrewey, David Peleman, Bart Decroos.
The Architecture of Logistics Together with Negar Sanaan Bensi, I edited the issue no. 23 of Footprint, the Delft Architecture Theory peer-reviewed journal, to provide a critical survey of the architecture of logistics, unfolding the multivalences of its apparatus, dissecting its buildings and spaces, its technologies and labor relations, its historical evolution as well as its future projections. Contributions by George Papam Papamattheakis, Clare Lyster, Francesco Sebregondi, Stephen Ramos, Giulia Scotto, Carola Hein, Nancy Couling, Jesse LeCavalier, Neeraj Bhatia, Alex Retegan, Renzo Sgolacchia, Marcello Tavone, Kathy Velikov, David Salomon, Cathryn Dwyre, and Chris Perry. You can read it here.
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I am an architect and Associate Professor at the School of Architecture of the University of Illinois at Chicago. While teaching design studios and theory seminars at The Berlage Institute, TU Delft, the Rotterdam Academy of Architecture, and the RomaTre University, I earned a PhD in History and Theory of Architecture from the Delft University of Technology. I am part of the research collective The City as a Project, I cofounded Matteo Mannini Architects, the think-tank platform Behemoth Press, and I worked with the Office for Metropolitan Architecture and DOGMA. Some of my projects have been exhibited in international venues such as the Venice Biennale (2006, 2014, 2016), the Oslo Triennale (2016), and the Lisbon Triennale (2019). I regularly write for architectural magazines and academic journals (Log, Volume, OASE, San Rocco, Domus, Flat-Out, Counter-Signals), and I am part of the editorial board of the Journal of Architecture Education. I recently coedited The Architecture of Logistics (2018), coauthored Tehran: Life within Walls (2018), and contributed to the volumes Work, Body, Leisure (2018), and Aesthetics and Poetics of Logistics (2019).
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