Ana Filipović is an architect, spatial designer, and independent researcher. Her work focuses on spatial, and sometimes audible manifestations of dominant structures in society, as well as the collective imaginaries that emerge out of them.


Dipl.–Ing./ M.A. Ana Filipović
Markgrafenstraße 85
D-10969 Berlin
Germany

+49 1787156485
hello(at)ana-filipovic.com

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Her work, which spans art and architecture, theory and practice, uses various media to critically assess the built environment and the forces that shape it. The recurring issue of interest in her work is our relationship to the notions of private, public, and common property amid the contemporary condition of the commodification of everything, especially in the domain of collective housing.

As a freelance architect, Ana was involved in a wide range of projects with a focus on museums, galleries and exhibition designs, such as MMK Frankfurt, Luma Westbau Zurich, Castello di Rivoli, Kunstmuseum Stuttgart and Deutsches Architekturmuseum in Frankfurt. Her practice is often collaborative and she has been working with Philipp Mecke since 2014 on a range of architectural projects and spatial interventions. Since 2019 she has been a part of Soft Agency, a diasporic group of female architects, artists, curators, scholars, and writers working with spatial practices.

Ana holds a diploma degree in architecture from Belgrade University and a master’s degree in Architecture and Critical Spatial Practice from Städelschule in Frankfurt. She was a recipient of a two-year DAAD scholarship, a fellow in Architecture at the Akademie Schloss Solitude in 2018-’19, and a recipient of a 2021and 2022 Initial grant from Akademie der Künste, Berlin. Since 2019 she is a registered freelance architect in Berlin.

Façade for a mine dewatering pump

Type: Façade competition, 1st Prize
Location: Bergkamen, Germany
Team: Philipp Mecke, Ana Filipović, Simon Palme
Engineering: Bollinger + Grohmann Consulting GmbH, Frankfurt/M.
Images: Veit Eckelt
Year: 2022

The proposed envelope for the future pump station in the city of Bergkamen consists of four graduated curtains of stainless steel rings. The curtains are only suspended from above and are thus gently moved by the wind. The gradations and the properties of the material evoke an ascending and flowing movement, which suggests the movement of water within the pump station itself. The metal mesh façade not only shapes the external appearance but also offers an essential function by providing an effective, external, low-maintenance sunshade for the building's occupants without obstructing the view to the outside.

The dancing light on the metal mesh and the overlapping of the translucent layers create a richness of visual impressions and give the tower a mysterious aura. Depending on the lighting conditions and the time of day or night, the appearance changes. Sometimes you can see the tower clearly silhouetted against the sky, as if enveloped by a curtain of water, sometimes you can see light reflections on a silvery fluid surface. When the weather is right, the more superimposed parts of the façade in the upper area will reflect the sky and allow the building to merge with the background. In its dynamism, this façade speaks of a new era of energy generation and of a different understanding of living in harmony with nature and its elements.

A Place of One's Own

Type: Audio installation in public park
Location: Kranich Museum, Hessenburg, Germany
Team: Philipp Mecke, Ana Filipović
Curator: Zsuzsanna Stanitz
Production Support: Ralf P. Müller, Constantin von Canal
Video: Tom Rosenberg
Year: 2022

“A place of one’s own” is a sound installation developed for the manor park of a Kranich Museum in Hessenburg. The piece, almost invisible, is secluded among the hundred-year-old trees of the park, The buzzing sound, coming out of the analog "sound machines” equipped with motion sensors, draws and constructs an intimate and personal space that comes to exist only when populated and activated by one’s movement. This newly constructed space remains invisible, yet when discovered, it can take its visitor on a meditative walk, made for losing oneself in own thoughts. The installation was developed during the residency at the Kranich Museum in 2020.

The noises of progress

Type: Multichannel audio installation
Location: Circa 106 Gallery, Bremen, Germany
Team: Ana Filipović
Curator: Irena Kukrić
Photos: Sue Wendlandt
Year: 2022

The act of building, constructive yet violent, usually speaks of progress. Where there is progress, new builds will replace the old ones, and spread out to the un(der)developed land. Nowadays, the progress signified by construction will often remain deaf to the needs of all the others not directly involved in the process, whose voices are not being raised, heard, or sometimes even silenced.



This multichannel audio installation presents a collection of sonic impressions from sites of construction in Bremen and documents the moment before they descend into permanence. The recordings of these abrupt temporalities chronicle the dynamics of the city in becoming: the sounds of machines, materials applied, manual labor and voices of laborers involved. During the exhibition, sound recordings will be superimposed with the visual recordings of transforming landscapes by Luiz Zanotello, thus painting a picture of the force behind what we understand as progress.

This work was developed during the Version Room (The Dynamic Archive 2) residency in Circa 106 Gallery in Bremen, together with Luiz Zanotello.

We Still Wrap Our Buildings with Hazardous Waste

Type: Installation and audio piece
Location: Kunstmuseum Stuttgart, Germany
Team: Philipp Mecke, Ana Filipović
Curators: Elke aus dem Moore, Sebastian Schneider, Sarie Nijboer
Production Support: Oberfläche Unterstützung
Text: Mikael Brkic
Sound Design: Michael Winter
Photo: Frank Kleinbach and Martin Mannweiler
Year: 2020

“We Still Wrap Our Buildings with Hazardous Waste” (as per the testimony of a prominent Berlin developer) situates itself both as a piece of architecture and contemplative art installation. As architecture, like a wall, the open cross-sections on each side literally expose the core of new housing as hazardous waste material in the form of Styropor. In a straightforward way, the display speaks of the free-market logic and its need for cost-, time- and space-effective solutions. Stripped of its societal function, the material speaks for itself, like the ornamentation devoid of pretense, save for excusing its own existence as a driver of pricing.

As an art installation, the architecture is accompanied by the sound of knocking, filling the space with an eerie sense of human absence. In the context of this emptiness, it becomes possible to ask why is it that we do all we can to accommodate the market, even when the task at hand is to accommodate people; why does housing have to be a commodity?



The ever-lasting crises of the neo-liberal market logic will keep on justifying its destructive resources to the detriment of human dignity, draining our every faculty, environment, and even the planet to the point of exhaustion. Here it is also possible in layman’s terms to see the contours of the larger issue, namely equality. The issue of equality is one the market never has been equipped to resolve. Still, we continue to invite in the market to solve our problems, but if we listen: “knock, knock,” there is someone else who wants to come in.

Counter-mapping Pforzheim

Type: Workshop
Location: Pforzheim, Germany
School of Design, Pforzheim University in collaboration with Leerstand als Freiraum e.V. Pforzheim
Year: 2019

In 2011 Google Street View was suspended in Germany due to privacy concerns, which included the „accidental“ harvesting of private data from unencrypted Wi-Fi connections. The Street View from the twenty largest cities remained online, but no new imagery was taken ever since. A three-dimensional representation of smaller towns, such as Pforzheim is reduced to mostly interiors of commercial businesses, which is one of the services provided by Google.

The counter-mapping workshop, as part of the block course offered at the School of Design at Pforzheim University in collaboration with Leerstand als Freiraum e.V. Pforzheim, used this technology to render visible some less-known public spaces in Pforzheim and imagine their alternative, non-consumerist usages. Images produced at the workshop can be found on Google Street View, and QR codes on the images will lead to the recordings of their respective acoustic environments.

İnşaat (Construction): Sediment, Exertion, Embodiment

Type: Installation
Location: 7th Sinop Biennial, Turkey
Team: Philipp Mecke, Ana Filipović
Curators: Asli Serbest and Mona Mahall
Photo: Laura Baumann
Thank you: Mert Karaçikay, Yiğit Kaya, Cagatay Simsek, Ezgi Ülkü, Erkan Akliman, Hülya Civlez, Doğa Burak Hayırcı.
Year: 2019

Construction sites, temporary yet lengthy occurrences in the urban landscape, are sites of both production and performance. While resting on a complex set of regulations, planning, and finance, construction embodies the collective consciousness in its most solid form. Each building material - the economies of its production, flows, or labor required to put it up - can be scrutinized through the lens of its political agency. At the same time, the repetitive sounds and actions inherent in construction can be seen as urban choreographies directed by the economic forces at work.

İnşaat (Construction) is a venture into building sites across Sinop and a collection of artifacts and narratives embedded in them. On the one hand, it aims to open a discussion about the conception of the material world, i.e the material culture of the region, and on the other to offer a feminist perspective on this labor-intensive, exclusively male industry.



Balenciaga SS20 Show

Type: Set design
Location: Paris Fashion Week
With Sub: Niklas Bildstein and Andrea Faraguna
Production: La Mode en Images
Photo: Ana Filipović
Video: →
Year: 2019

Design, Finance, Speculation: Housing New Builds in Berlin

Type: Research
Location: Akademie Schloss Solitude, Stuttgart
Photo: Shirin Sabahi
Graphic Design: Hristina Papadopulos
Photo: Ana Filipović
Year: 2018

Impermanence

Type: Spatial Design for "I'm permanence" Performative Lecture Series
Location: Satiriko Theatro, Nicosia, Cyprus
Team: Philipp Mecke, Ana Filipović, ABR
Photo: ABR, Google Patents
Year: 2017

The spatial design for the performative lecture series I'm permanence, held in Satiriko Theater in Nicosia, responded to the topic of permanence by looking at the temporary, yet the permanent structure of the Green Line, the demilitarized zone between the Greek Republic of Cyprus and the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus. A cease-fire line was materialized a wall of sandbags and gun emplacements appear rather soft and invisible in the city fabric. An amphitheater for the audience is thus created out of white sandbags, reinterpreting a traditional method for constructing defensive walls.

Parliamentary Chambers

Type: Research
Architecture and Critical Spatial Practice Staedelschule, Frankfurt am Main
Year: 2012

The word parliament derives from the French “Parlement”—the act of speaking, the discussion. The chamber in which parliamentary assemblies meet is therefore a spatial setting for that very discussion. The comprehension of the nature of this discussion should hence inform the architectural design.

The spatial organization of formal assemblies has not substantially changed much from the Athenian assembly to the modern concept of prime ministerial government that goes back to the Kingdom of Great Britain (1707–1800) and The Parliamentary System in Sweden (1721–1772) that coincided with each other. Classical democracy not only influenced the formation of later constitutions but also created an architectural legacy, which has dominated both the form and style of parliament buildings to the present day.*

The most appropriate form remained to be a hemicycle—semicircular, or horseshoe-shaped, debating chamber (plenary chamber), where members sit to discuss and pass legislation. The circular shape is one, which was primarily designed to encourage the politics of consensus among political parties rather than confrontation. The design is used in most European countries (and hence was adopted by the European Parliament) and the United States. The equality in its shape—the equal distance from the speaker, for example—is being used whenever democratic dialogue is anticipated. In contrast, the Westminster system, in which the government and opposition parties face each other on opposing sets of benches, points at an interesting potential: the exploration and exacerbation of spatial confrontation and conflict as a form of agonistic ground condition. This research questions the seemingly causal relationship between the spaces of parliamentary chambers and the system they represent.

*Sudjic, Deyan, “Architecture And Democracy”, Laurence King Publishing, 1992.

Winter Rose

Type: Exhibition design
Location: Iž, Croatia
Curator: Mikael Brkić
Team: Veljko Marković, Iva Baljkas Pick, Ana Filipović
Photo: Marco Carraro

Year: 2012

Exhibition design for the group show “Winter Rose” held in Dom Kulture on the island of Iž in the summer of 2021. Exhibition artists: Nadja Abt, Mercedes Ardelius, Zoe Barcza,Viktor Fordell, Kristoffer Frick + Eric Bell, Timothy Furey, Kristijan Hranić, Tobias Kaspar, Erik Lavesson, Ida Lennartsson, Eva Milošič, Ksenia Pedan, Seth Pick, George Rippon, Camilla Steinum, Edgars Gluhovs, Agatha Warra, Sam Lubicz, Albrecht Pischel + Nina Hollensteiner & Joanna Pope.

Sex-for-rent: Internet-enabled housing discrimination

Performative lecture
In the frame of the exhibition “LABOUR / ARBEIT / IŞ”
Arbeitsgericht, Stuttgart
2022

On the intersectional knowledge of space

Panel discussion
In the frame of “HIT THE CITY” talk series
with Soft Agency
Deutsche Architektur Zentrum, Berlin
2022

Squeezed out - cities, tourism, and gentrification

Panel discussion
Unsound Festival, Krakow
2021

Spatial Feminist Genealogy

Lecture
with Soft Agency
Copenhagen Festival of Architecture
Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Denmark
2021

Beyond Stucco: The Architectures of Commodified Housing

Online lecture and conversation
with Anh-Linh Ngo
Kunstmuseum Stuttgart
In cooperation with Akademie Schloss Solitude
2021

Craigslust: “We’ll Have Sex and You Don’t Need to Pay Much for the Flat”

Article
Failed Architecture
2019

Surplus Home

Projekt Zollhafen
Hochschule Mainz: University of Applied Sciences
2018

John Hejduk, Builder of Worlds

Conversation
"Places" series of talks by Shirin Sabahi
"Books, People, Places" Berlin
2017