Onix: Awaiting Signification: Towards an Authentic Architectural Experience

When Onix, the remarkable young Dutch architecture firm, finished a large-scale residential complex in Zwolle, Holland, recently, they kept an apartment there for six months and invited dozens of visitors--from architecture critics to laypersons--to sleep over for one night each. In return, Onix asked their guests to jot down their experiences with the neighbors, businesses, public transportation, and the space itself. This sort of local ecosystem has been the firm's focus for its first short but eventful decade, and Onix believes it to be the essence of architecture. This monograph, Awaiting Signification, chronicles those ten years, offering an overview of important projects including a much-discussed ecological farm for the disabled in Haren. It also includes MaNUfest, a text presenting the bureau's mission, which follows from its iconoclastic view that contemporary architecture is dominated too much by concepts and images, at the expense of actual architectonic experience.