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VERSION:2.0
PRODID:-//Memento EPFL//
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SUMMARY:Tackle the type: Filling Station / EAST
DTSTART:20230327T080000
DTEND:20230328T200000
DTSTAMP:20260930T185409Z
UID:e11ba6a15085743e43a61a8fca7cb868c622b3ca42bc50f7828f8fd8
CATEGORIES:Exhibitions
DESCRIPTION:OPEN EXHEBITION OF THE FIRST RESEARCH PHASE\n\n       
  Tackle the type: FILLING STATION\n        Next Station\n\nThe fi
 lling station\, classified as a station [1]\, serves as a transitory point
  rather than a destination for lingering. It functions as a way station th
 at may unify multiple spaces within a single location\, comparable to Mich
 el Foucault's notion of "Heterotopia" [2]. For regular commuters\, it prov
 ides a second home with recurring patterns and operators\, thereby transfo
 rming every foreign stop into a familiar space. For others the filling sta
 tion is just an anonymous place to satisfy the pressing need of the moment
 \, often perceived as nameless and uncommon. Similar to international chai
 ns such as McDonald's and Starbucks\, filling stations are a reflection of
  an industrialised identity through branding. Alternatively\, smaller prov
 iders may showcase their unique identities by selling local products and s
 ervices\, establishing a loyal clientele.\n"Movement shapes the image of r
 eality of modern man. Whether in technology\, science\, or art: modern rea
 lity resists the rigid gaze [traditional kind of observation]\, it require
 s perception in motion."\, writes Sokratis Georgiadis in his essay "The At
 tacked Body - Siegfried Giedion and Mechanization\, in 1998. Considering t
 he development of architecture as a discipline of a more static and perman
 ent reality\, the question arises as to how the reality of buildings shoul
 d appear in a modern society?\nThe creation of the Filling Station buildin
 g type is inseparably linked to the idea of the internal combustion engine
  and its application to movement. In contrast to Giedion's "Mechanization 
 Takes Command"\, the Filling Station is not influenced by increasing mecha
 nization. It does not emerge from a sequence of spaces that are changed by
  automation\, such as the "evolution" of stairs that become escalators or 
 kitchens that turn into an optimized apparatus of programmed workflows wit
 h the aim of producing food easier and faster in the sense of Margarete Sc
 hütte-Lihotzky “Frankfurter Küche”. The Filling Station is one of 
 the building types that mechanization itself brought forth.\nAs the automo
 bile industry grew and the demand for gasoline increased\, larger and more
  specialized retail companies emerged. The mere technical object of the ga
 s pump began its path towards an independent building typology. Companies 
 established gas station networks that offered customers a convenient and s
 tandardized source of gasoline and other automotive products. Over time\, 
 Filling Stations advanced into service centers\, offering a wide range of 
 products and services\, from fuel and vehicle maintenance to food\, bevera
 ges\, and other daily necessities.\nLooking at the development of the Fill
 ing Station\, we can observe a variety of connections to society\, the env
 ironment as well as architectural and industrial building history.\nIf we 
 highlight only two of these connections\, one is the potential of the Fill
 ing station to be adaptive for hybrid combinations with varying programs a
 nd building forms. Either in a symbiotic manner or as a parasitic appendix
 . Remarkable is the moment when the Filling station unifies all services u
 nder one big roof as an umbrella. The over-proportional building element q
 uickly becomes a recognizable trademark\, even in arrangements where the F
 illing Station itself occupies a subordinate role.\nThe second development
  is the filling station's dependence on industrial mass production and its
  interlinked economic chains. It emerged from it and will likely disappear
  with a new mode of transportation that does not require stops on independ
 ent depots of energy. However\, we ask ourselves what have we learned from
  it? What remains of it? What should we keep and want to keep from it? Wha
 t can persist in new types?\nUndoubtedly\, the Filling Station is still st
 rongly intertwined in the trading network of fossil biomass. As an extende
 d arm of an industrial extraction and supply chain\, it sells a product th
 at culturally comes from a harvest that knows no sowing. Above all\, the p
 etrol station as a trading and storage place promised a seemingly endless 
 supply of energy that we accepted without questioning our freedom and grow
 th. Thinking about the consequences came late. Therefore\, many of its man
 ifestations and designs are to be reevaluated also from its role as an int
 erface. How much information did it ever give us about the number of liter
 s in stock or where they were stored? How much information about where it 
 was extracted? However\, formative for this typology remains the digital d
 isplay of the real-time price\, which still today gives the impression of 
 being directly linked to the global data of the stock exchange.\nEvery tec
 hnical development of the automobile has had an impact on its territorial 
 presence\, its ease of use\, and its design. Regine Schricker calls them "
 monuments of motorisation". If we consider modernity as an effort to apply
  a model into the world with each design until a better model stands in ou
 r way\, then we are now facing the question of the model of the 22nd-centu
 ry Filling Station.\nWithout wanting to predict the exact technological de
 velopment of transportation\, the question arises: Will the Filling Statio
 n survive this next modifying phase?\nWe want to comprehend the history of
  the petrol station and analyze their design elements and forms in the con
 text of their respective eras and conventions. This will enable us to dete
 rmine which elements and forms are worth preserving for future tasks.\n\n[
 1]Webster dictionary \n: a stopping place: such as\na regular stopping pl
 ace in a transportation route\nthe building connected with such a stopping
  place\none of the stations of the cross\n \nGerman Grimms Dictionary\nST
 ATION\, f. (pron. statsjṓn) haltestelle\, aufenthalt. \n1) a loanword f
 rom the Latin “statio” of the same meaning\,\n2) station means\, first
  and most usually\, a short stop on a road and the place where this happen
 s. This meaning belongs initially to ecclesiastical usage and is based on 
 mediaeval Latin. Statio\,\n3) in the same sense\, 'place where a stop is m
 ade'\, station is generally used in modern language\, beyond this specific
  case\, and especially as an expression of traffic very widespread. Someti
 mes a station refers not only to the stop\, but also to the distance betwe
 en two stops\, the section of the road designated by it. \na) in the 18th
 -19th century for post stop\, post station\, station\,... also the place w
 here the postmen get fresh horses. Sperander 679\; die station.'1. in the 
 postal system\, a place where the horses are usually changed\; der postwec
 hsel'.\n \n[2] In his article "Other Spaces"\, Foucault distinguishes bet
 ween two types of ideally charged spaces: in addition to utopias\, which a
 re unreal and only virtual counter-designs or perfections of real social c
 onditions\, there are heterotopias\, which he sees as "realised utopias"\,
  as counter-worlds to the heterogeneous power structures of social reality
 . Heterotopias are institutionally often closed and often spatially delimi
 ted places in a society that are a scaled-down image or counter-image of s
 ociety as a whole. They are subject to a clear order\, set against the dis
 order of the surrounding world (or against its different\, mutually obstru
 ctive or even mutually exclusive orders). Foucault's examples of heterotop
 ias are rest homes\, psychiatric clinics\, prisons\, old people's homes\, 
 cemeteries\, museums\, libraries\, colonies\, etc. Heterotopias often have
  their own everyday time\, which does not correspond to the social everyda
 y time.\nThe discourse-analytical concept of heterotopias creates a set of
  instruments for not only modelling institutional intrinsic realities as p
 articular spaces of action in themselves\, but also for examining the orde
 ring criteria and values that make up the internal reality of heterotopian
  spaces in relation to external reality\, so that the institutionality of 
 the depicted world can be understood as an allegorical-semiotic reflection
  on the power and ordering structures of the diegesis.\nLiteratur: Foucaul
 t\, Michel: Andere Räume [1967].In: Aisthesis. Wahrnehmung heute oder Per
 spektiven einer anderen Ästhetik. Hrsg. v. Karlheinz Barck [...]. Leipzig
 : Reclam 1990\, S. 34-46.
LOCATION:SG 294.22 https://plan.epfl.ch//?room==SG%20294.22
STATUS:CONFIRMED
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