Weak Potentials by Jakob Sellaoui

Weak Potentials investigates the nature of construction as an open archive, uncovering both the pleasures and disappointments of the material world. In looking beyond the act of making as strictly a means to an end, the objective is to examine the process as a fragile territory, where form is constantly re-negotiated. A balancing act where notions of stability make way for uneasy relationships, conflicting intentions, ideological dilemmas and meanings stuck somewhere halfway.

The exhibition is the result of a procedure of material exercises assembled on-site. Forming “quasiarchitectures”, that like characters inhabit the space. Scattered among the different rooms, they evoke actual built situations, that seem to have been cropped and removed from their natural physical habitats. Despite emerging from the realm of everyday construction materials, their tectonic protocols have been suspended. The script re-written. Supporting structures, by-products and makeshift-tactics take over, hijacking the formalized world of building.

Crude junctions, soft links and fragile connections navigate uncertainty as the rule rather than the exception. Abandoning the belief of arriving at ideal scenarios or permanent solutions, Weak Potentials explores the possibility of a “good-enough architecture”. A world in which the noniconic, fleeting and frail persists—perhaps good-enough is as good as it gets.

Jakob Sellaoui
Jakob Sellaoui is an Austrian-american architect and educator based in Vienna. Within his practice architecture is understood as a cultural process, where built projects and theoretical investigation operate side by side, critically engaging with our contemporary reality. Up to date the studio has realized and ongoing projects in diverse scales and environments including Austria, Nicaragua, US and Japan. Its work has received several awards including the Austrian Cultural Ministry’s Margarethe Schütte-Lihotzky Grant, the Ahead Award and the Schindler Residency at the MAK Center for Art and Architecture in Los Angeles.
https://jakobsellaoui.com