AArchitecture 47

AARCHITECTURE 47

Up in the Air

Editors’ response

Up to 50% of indoor dust is dead skin. The other half is a strange cocktail of London’s urban matter that has filtered into our spaces on the bottoms of our shoes, through open windows and doorway cracks. The dirt and dust tracked into our homes, schools and offices contain traces of the past. We might go as far as to say that this air holds remnants of our past selves. At the microbial level, the AA must be quite a special ecosystem. Squint and you might uncover a lecture from the school’s inception, a pin-up from a past century or maybe a conversation that sparked an international debate, which for only a few moments lingered on a breath in the stairway before tumbling to the ugly green carpets underfoot. AArchitecture 46: Down To Earth sampled this ecosystem. We showcased a selection of student work, both present and former, excavating architecture’s past and present; the roots of our profession.

If the ground is the site of memory, the sky is the frontier of the future. For AArchitecture 47: Up in the Air we called for submissions that look skyward. From urban constellations to the night sky we immerse ourselves in the worlds created by Gianfrancesco, Tom, Palm and Yulin. We shift our perspective and look up at Marie-Louise’s watercolour drawing alongside Ben and Iris’s inflatable architecture. While most of these submissions are breaths of fresh air, we are all keenly aware of the existential threats posed to the air we breathe. Fossil capitalism, war, dwindling ozone and airborne illnesses are already modern realities.

To conclude this issue, we asked the student body where they see the school in 2050. Their answers ranged from optimistic to apocalyptic. If it wasn’t yet evident enough, David Byrne reminds us that ‘air can hurt you too’.

Although we empirically know what air is, how we perceive it is hardly effable. Generally, we describe air through environmental conditions such as ‘humid’, ‘cold’ or ‘toxic’. However, ‘air’ in its own right is hardly ever the thing being described. We often say ‘how is it outside today’, as if the air is not the subject being described by the environmental condition, but an unnameable totality of all the effects and affects of the environment itself. These terms are always changing, and are felt differently by different people. Sometimes we can breathe air and other times we can’t. Sometimes it feels as though we can drink it. We absorb sounds and perceive light as they pass through it, changing form and pitch until they reach us. Perhaps the mutability of air is its most defining tenet.

How then will the air at the AA taste and smell in the future? What sounds will you hear flowing down its corridors? If the past has been any indicator, there will likely be more of the same and even more of the unexpected.

Sincerely,

Jay, Tatiana, Leela AArchitecture editors

FROM THE EARTH’S POINT OF VIEW

Marie-Louise Raue

Changing our perception of architecture might mean changing the point of view from which we see it. Here a structure is represented from the perspective of the earth, thereby revealing its rootedness in terra firma. It equally suggests an interiority, and the forgotten ceiling gives a timely reminder of that which exists up in the air and makes architecture (or indeed anything) possible – the sun god!

THE ABSURDITY OF BUILDING BUILDINGS

Gianfrancesco Brivio Sforza

You’ll never see the same sky. Everything is moving and reshuffling, transient and intangible. Down in the earth, soil, trees, mountains and cities appear solid and fixed. But if you think about it, up and down are not so different – they just move at different speeds.

When we build sandcastles as children, it is disappointing to find out that, after all our efforts to shape the sand, it will inevitably dry and crumble back into its undefined state. We unconsciously perceive our built environment as a static state of materials shaped by our ideas, but buildings inevitably get older until refurbishment or demolition are necessary. Yet we try to fight time in order to preserve the illusion of a fixed reality.

Erecting a building while tacitly implying that it will last forever denies the possibility of a coherent design. Neglecting the eventual effects of time is as absurd as implanting a horizontal skyscraper into a canyon, a structure which would become debris the moment the deficient construction process concluded. If a building’s function is unable to grow, adapt, react and even metabolise, as life does, then to build it is a form of planned obsolescence. Architecture has a purpose only for a fraction of its existence; for the rest of the time it is just displaced matter.

Time needs to be considered as important, if not more, than other dimensions. We need to look far into the future and foresee changes in the use of the building, in shifting natural and social environments, in the decay of materials. We need to allow room for adaptation, deconstruction and decomposition. This way, building buildings will be a little bit less absurd.

Mountain.

Sea.

Clockwise from top left: Waterfall, Rock wall, Desert, Canyon.

Francesco Anselmo and Andrea Spanu CATCHING MOONLIGHT

WHY CATCH MOONLIGHT?

On the night of a full moon, far from the city lights, our eyes can easily adjust to the nocturnal glow. The light of the sun reflects off the moon, reaching our planet with a faint memory of the brightness of the day, but still powerful enough to give us vision. Under these lighting conditions shapes can be seen, borders distinguished, bright objects discerned. One can navigate a gravel path, or see the line of the sea playing with the sand on a beach. But under this light there is no colour. Colour is a stranger to moonlight.

Catching moonlight, taking it from a large surface and concentrating it into a small area, can bring colour to the night. The tone of the skin, the tint of a flower, the illustrations in a book, the look of a dress can all be seen by catching moonlight, without resorting to the artifice of man-made light, without burning fuel in a power plant.

RECIPE: HOW TO BUILD A SMALL HYPATIA MOONLIGHT CATCHER

This is a recipe for a moonlight catcher that concentrates moonlight into a small area like a picture book, a face, a puppet theatre or a small painting. This reflector is dedicated to Hypatia, an astronomer, mathematician and philosopher who lived in the 4th century AD.

Ingredients:

• 1 x plywood (L)1.22m (W)0.61m (T)5mm

• 1 x stripwood (L)2.4m (W)36mm (T)6mm

• 1 x timber stick (L)2.4m (W)38mm (T)19mm

• 1 x 120x60cm mirror wall sticker roll

• Approximately 2.5m of 3mm ø catenary wire

• 4 x zinc-plated screw eyes 55mm

• 4 x M4 wire rope clamps

• 2 x steel hook and eye turnbuckles 8mm

• 18 x PZ double-countersunk self-tapping screws 3mm x 12mm

• 10 x PZ double-countersunk self-tapping screws 3mm x 25mm

• 1 x double-sided super glue tape 4.5m x 19mm

Approximate cost: £50

Approximate duration: 1 hour

Tools:

• Scissors

• Hand saw

• Combi drill

• Impact driver

• Wire cutter

• Hexagonal screw bit and screwdriver

Step 1

• Cut the timber stick into two battens, each 60cm long.

• Use the double-sided adhesive tape to attach each batten to the short ends of the plywood panel.

• Screw five 3mm x 25mm timber screws into each batten from the plywood panel side.

Step 2

• Cut the stripwood into two strips that fit between the two battens.

• Use the double-sided adhesive tape to attach the two strips to the long sides of the plywood panel.

• Screw nine 3mm x 12mm timber screws into each of the stripwood lengths from the plywood panel side.

Step 3

• Unpeel the backing from the mirror sheet and attach it to the plywood panel.

• Cut off the excess from the mirror sheet and unpeel the protective film.

Step 4

• Screw the four screw eyes into the corners of the mirror panel.

Step 5

• Cut two lengths of metal wire to a length of approximately 1.25m each.

Step 6

• Pass the ends of the wires through the screw eyes at one end of the mirror panel.

• Fix the wire clamps to the wire.

Step 7

• Feed the other end of each wire through the opposite hooks so that they run along the long sides of the mirror panel.

• With a fully open turnbuckle, tension the wire and fix it to the wire clamp.

• Gradually tension both wires to reach the desired curvature.

Step 8

• You can briefly test the Hypatia reflector in sunlight, but be careful not to burn anything. Do not aim it at people’s eyes.

Catching moonlight is not easy. It takes patience, determination and a bit of luck.

To start, you need to be in a place with a dark sky. Within and around cities, light pollution from street lights, cars, homes, LED advertising screens, illuminated signs and other man-made sources of light compete too much with the light from the moon and the stars.

You also need a clear sky on the night of a full moon. The moon is full, or near full, for about 6 days each month, but clear skies are not easily predictable.

Finally, the moon needs to be in the right place in the sky. It should not be too low as it could be obstructed by nearby buildings, trees and hills, or could also be less bright, as its rays have more atmosphere to traverse. If the moon is too high, it might be difficult to direct its rays towards the area of interest. In some locations, you might have to wait until very late at night for the moon to be in the right place.

One additional challenge can be wind: because we are catching moonlight with a large surface, wind can make it move, fly away and be difficult to orient.

Once all these conditions are met, you can start catching moonlight.

You can build larger concentrating reflectors with the same method to catch more moonlight!

LOW CARBON TECTONICS

Cíaran Malik

As architects in the face of the climate emergency, we have to reassess design paradigms and place emphasis on low carbon practices. Using 1:2 wall models, we have been exploring the potential of natural and low carbon materials, promoting thicker, well-insulated architecture over thin, poorly performing alternatives.

Thicker, well-insulated architecture offers an immediate solution to some climate challenges. It addresses the inefficiencies of thin, inadequately insulated buildings that contribute to energy waste and increased carbon emissions.

The 1:2 wall model serves as an experimental platform to balance materials and environmental demands. At this scale we see the qualities of natural materials: how they connect to one another, their surface finishes, weight, structural integrity, thermal efficiency and overall environmental impact. The models enable us to ensure that selected materials align with the urgency of carbon reduction, providing a canvas to experiment with innovative construction techniques and new architectural forms.

By reusing material from the AA Material Arcade and using bolttogether stone construction, we have been able to amplify the efficiency of construction processes, reducing waste and energy consumption. This approach aligns with the imperative to create scalable, sustainable architectural solutions capable of withstanding the rigours of the climate emergency.

In essence, the 1:2 wall model emerges as a catalyst for change in architectural thinking. By prioritising exploration of natural and low carbon materials to produce thicker, wellinsulated architecture, designers can contribute meaningfully to the global imperative of mitigating climate change. This paradigm shift not only enhances the environmental performance of buildings but also establishes a blueprint for a resilient, sustainable built environment poised to confront the challenges of an uncertain climate future.

The 1:2 wall models were made by Abdullah Kahtan Al Kazaz, Lujien Raed Farouq Al-Keilani, Muhittin Can Binan, Tsz Ying Chan, Lok Him Chang, Jihyun Choi, Alexandra Golovina, Lynn-Sacha Hanna, Solveig Jappy, Laetitia Khachwajian, Rui Niu, Linden James Seddon and Qi Zhu. A big thank you to material donated by The Stone Masonry Company and the support of Alex Bertrand, James Rae-Smith, Lupus Siegert and as always Pierre Bidaud.

METAFICTION

Julia Aleksandra Pawlowska

COSMIC ORDER

The linear rationale of the ideal geometry accommodates x and y axis expansion. It allows for great spans and heights to be tested. As an urban device, it enables linear movement through its length and allows for internal organisation to be arranged in a sequential manner.

The unassuming prism contains the needs of all. A microcosm of life is encapsulated in each vertical module, each pixel housing a family unit. It frames, unites, separates the landscape with its self-sufficient shell – elevated, minimising interaction with the true ground.

An eerie fog sets over the frozen lake. The perpetual engine vibrates steam out of every inch of its steel cladding. The only lights visible on this early winter morning are the slot windows from the living quarters. Dim artificial yellow light radiates out of the cracks and the sun won’t find its way into the body of the engine. This is the beginning and the end; no one dares venture outside the Provider.

We all live alone in the heart of the Provider, yet we never feel alone. There is nothing beyond, and we have nothing left. We beat as one heart, the last heartbeat of humanity. We are protected; we are whole. ‘She referred to the high-rise as if it were some kind of huge animate presence, brooding over them and keeping a magisterial eye on the events taking place’1 – without IT there would be no us, without us there would be no IT.

The ideal prism’s envelope breathes with the programmed system. Each level accommodates functions to sustain and curate life – a model 15-minute city.

The radial rationale of the ideal geometry allows for easy expansion and for the concentration of services and movement. Several nodal centres can grow together to connect into a larger urban organism. This is a characteristic phenomenon of several medieval European cities, where urban expansion can be observed through their growing radial rings.

An anchored heart lifts its arms above the landscape – an efficient suspension which allows the ground to breathe. A programmatic void is nurtured, emphasising the worlds of private and public life. A new archetype for minimalist living emerges.

The sister rings are suspended over everywhere and nowhere. Hiding their light silhouette in the clouds, gently caressing glacier beds, combing through tropical ferns, the rings come and go; they signify the circle of life. The ones who stay and the ones who leave are all part of the same story. They are solar panelled, inflated buoys, carried by the winds. Arrival never comes: the world is now, open and ended.

‘We gained control of many things. But we had to let go of others.’2 All who stay know what is next. The lucid dream of a perfect thirty years –that is your time on The Cloud. Life is definitive; we are all born, we admire life through passing imagery and we die. We never arrive; we never uncover what all of this comes to. We get thirty years, and then we perish. We have found our ivory gates.

A ludic agora at the scale of a city with a programmatic void is nurtured, emphasising division of programme. The anchored suspension breathes with the ground below it. A new archetype of the machinic city emerges.

1 JG Ballard, High-Rise (London: Jonathan Cape, 1975).

2 Lois Lowry, The Giver (Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin, 1993).

Yulin Huang CONSTELLATION XYZ

STARS FOR CONTEMPORARY LIVING

We used to have an intimate bond with the stars as a matter of survival. Now, this bond has been lost. The sky has become a territory of pure technology, a blank plane without stars. To bring back the memory of the star-filled night sky, and to rebuild the profound connection between them and us, I have designed three artificial stars, each located in different atmospheres, forming a vertical constellation in the sky.

Star X is in the troposphere. It has a sky quality camera to monitor the brightness and quality of the night sky. An AI model connects it to the lighting system on the street, which dims to reduce light pollution when it reaches a certain level. Copies of Star X are to be found in many cities with serious light pollution. They appear every day for two hours, from 9pm to 11pm. Each star has a service area of around 0.1 km2 They operate in large clusters: in the sky above the City of London, there are around 300 stars.

Star Y is in the stratosphere. There are 16 of them, staying in one country for a day at a time. They are connected to a ground station and control centre on Earth so that they can provide free internet to the world. They also support an international file system to offer access to censored content. They each have a lighting sensor to detect the surrounding environment, and can then emit the same light to become invisible. They are hidden clouds in the sky, finding their way by following the wind patterns of the earth.

Star Z is a two-part star, inspired by the most advanced telescopes and planetariums. Its telescope has a primary mirror in deep space to detect the signals of the first stars and distant galaxies of the universe. The telescope communicates with a projector which orbits the earth every day, displaying the content from the telescope twice a year on the equinox.

Constellation XYZ wishes to influence people’s behaviour on the ground, changing their mindset and lifestyles, to protect our dark sky and to redefine our use of technology.

Images by Yulin Huang.

REMEMBERING ARGUS

Na-Pat Tengtrirat (Palm) and Bastien Lefebvre

An entry for the competition for the Last Nuclear Bomb Memorial

The memorial is ephemeral

The memorial is a line in the sky

The memorial is the negotiation of forces

The memorial is the submission to forces

The memorial is not really a memorial at all

The memorial is a block of metal

The memorial is the trace it leaves behind

The memorial is the sequence of events

The memorial is a parameter

The memorial is a threat

The memorial is formless

The memorial is scaleless

The memorial is placeless

The memorial is timeless

The memorial is anti-monumental

The memorial is anti-experiential

The memorial is anti-phenomenological

The memorial is an idea

The memorial never ends

VISIBILITY AND KNOWN UNKNOWNS

Na-Pat Tengtrirat (Palm)

Urban Mine.

THE SEARCH FOR BLACK HOLES AND THE ANXIETY OF THE WHITE SURFACE

This project reveals the multiple setbacks encountered when we try to give visibility to the relationship between the contemporary city and its discarded residue – an exposé of the contentious network of electronic waste and its vagrant nodes. It captures incomplete cues from the hidden world of electronic waste processing through broken narratives, fragmented moments, displaced sites and the schism between research and narration. In this context, the task of the architect as a contemporary cartographer is to venture into the unknown, investigate its territories, expose its limits and paradoxes, and give visibility to the indescribable. That is to say, to turn unknown unknowns into known unknowns.

Cartography of the Unknown.

THE GREATEST MUSEUM NO ONE CAN SEE

The Greatest Museum No One Can See explores visibility and stability in architecture. These two ideas are investigated by reading architecture against the movement of art, revealing spaces and processes that are disguised and concealed. Beyond visible networks of cultural movement there is a slippage – a crack that allows for important works of art to disappear into the space of the unknown, never to be seen again.

This is the emergence of the freeport, the world’s most secretive art warehouse. Tax does not have to be paid, ownership does not have to be declared, there is no time limit and sales can happen without anyone ever knowing. What would a new paradigm of a museum look like when it is read through the lens of the freeport?

Construction of a New Disciplinary Ground.

Institutional Figures and its Unstable Ground.

Institutional Figures and its Unstable Ground.

Institutional Figures and its Unstable Ground.

AA 2050

One Friday night, we asked every student we could find to imagine the AA in 2050. Here’s what they came up with.

Ben Khan BUBBLE

Bubble

Bu bb le

Buuuu bbbl leee

Bubble has 3 Bs, it’s soft and bouncy out of the mouth.

Sounds like a child might mutter it before their first word.

Why should I get into a big nylon inflated one with a bunch of people I don’t really know that well?

Increasingly, we’re being driven into individual, atomised spaces.

The technocratic feudal kings want cornered and anxious bodies to sell u a bigger Twix bar and some anti-stress pills.

We’re in a constant battle for territory of the mind state.

A push back, in favour of real, physical and tangible bodies, sharing.

Prioritising alternative states of togetherness.

The bubble is a place with no agenda, a humble space, a reflection, a simple human experience.

Nakedly revealed to each other like meeting again in a womb, taking off the many jackets of adulthood and zooming back to a kid state. What new possibilities might arise in the new life when we step outside this collective skin? Like hitting a mini tab of LSD but without the LSD, a mini re-birth happens each time.

What emerges from the bubble is a shared ideal and a shared imagination of our interior psyche.

A collective interior space.

INFLATE IT

The space around the bubble might feel familiar, until the inflated structure pushes outward to the limits of the space.

And entering the bubble, you cross the threshold into a space with no familiar objects or furnishings, no familiar thresholds or walls, no straight lines or defined edges.

No reference points but the other bodies within the space.

This portal opens and creates an intermediary, opening to the possibility of being in-between.

A passage leading from the world of waking to the world of dreams.

The Bubble is a space sewn together by Ben and inflated for deep listening and play.

Photos by Ben Khan.

Left, above and opposite bottom: photos by Arran Gregory.

Left, above and opposite: photos by Ben Khan.

THEN, NOW, AND THEN

Tatiana Watrelot

‘The moment in which you are reading this is already gone.’ This has been the fundamental idea behind pieces I have created in recent years. Whether an essay, an architectural drawing or a quick sketch, I am obsessed with the act of capturing the present for the future. Then, Now, and Then speculates upon the notion that no piece of creative work truly exists at one point in time but is rather a collaboration of all the artists we have once been – how in turn does this form the basis for the next pieces we will create?

In 1925 Paris, surrealist artists Yves Tanguy, Jacques Prévert, André Breton and Marcel Duchamp invented the game ‘Cadavre Exquis’, which translates to Exquisite Corpse. The outcome of the game is a drawing of a surreal figure born from the collaborative hands of the artists involved. Each participant begins by drawing a head, then folds the piece of paper over to conceal what they have drawn and passes it on for the next artist to draw the upper body, or bust. This continues until a fullbodied figure is created.

Little did this group of surrealist French artists know that their candid invention would provoke conversation and discussion that would stretch much further than the piece of paper on which their fantastical creations would come

to exist. Essentially, the Cadavre Exquis allows for space to speculate on the capacity of art and design to be born of several entities which are somewhat removed or disconnected from the previous contributor.

The notion of the game is therefore one that acts as a precedent for Then, Now, and Then – where the artist observes the game as a tool for a speculative collaboration of the tenses. As a metaphor. This piece situates itself in the present – in the first quarter of 2024 – yet its existence has only been made possible because of what has been and will be. The piece is not truly a singular piece of art in itself. Rather, it is a blind collaboration – a Cadavre Exquis – between who the artist is, who the artist was and who the artist will be.

We therefore circle back to this piece as speculation on the future of art, on the future of design, on the future of architecture. It proposes an alternate manner of perceiving art and the built environment. After reading this text, the viewer is challenged to add a new lens to their arsenal of perceptions.

And another moment in time.

The piece.

The piece at another moment in time.

MÜLLER AND HIS BELVÉDÈRE

Iris Hansen

An introduction to air architecture

Hans-Walter Müller has spent the last 50 years developing a unique strand of inflatable architecture. A German artist and architect who has lived in France since 1961, Müller combines life and work, endlessly reinventing inflatables: their use, construction and design. His first inflatable home was built on the grounds of the aerodrome in FertéAlais in Cerny, south of Paris. The Belvédère is a round, yellow and transparent inflatable, situated to your left as you walk into Müller’s ‘garden’ at the aerodrome. Fixed to the ends of two shipping containers and held above the ground, it can house a guest, a groundskeeper or an intern for a night or more. It can cater to all their needs, from sleeping, eating and working to listening to music, screening projections and even washing and bathing.

Müller’s inflatable architecture is founded on the use of air as a structural component. Müller uses air pressure and material tension to bypass the need for internal supports and achieve an open plan. This is similar to Frank Lloyd Wright’s architecture in which vertical separations are eliminated to create

an open plan, allowing the outside in.1 The air is not compressed: it is the same as that which we breathe. Through Müller’s architecture, it suddenly seems self-evident and even essential to use materials that are vital to our survival, such as air, to create the places we dwell in.

It troubled me as once I was — For I was once a Child — Concluding how an Atom — fell — And yet the Heavens — held —

The Heavens weighed the most — by far — Yet Blue — and solid — stood — Without a Bolt — that I could prove — Would Giants — understand?

Life set me larger — problems — Some I shall keep — to solve Till Algebra is easier — Or simpler proved — above —

Then — too — be comprehended — What sorer — puzzled me — Why Heaven did not break away — And tumble — Blue — on me —

Emily Dickinson2

To answer Emily Dickinson, the reason heaven does not ‘tumble blue’ on us is that the air in space does not weigh anything, and the air at sea level is heavier than the air at greater altitudes, made dense by the weight of all the air above it.

In a way, Emily Dickinson’s poetic

observation introduces the basic principles of fluid mechanics. This is the branch of physics Müller has favoured to determine his structures over those more commonly used in architecture: the laws of motion, gravity and thermodynamics. In fluid mechanics, as volume decreases, pressure increases. For inflatables, this is based on the proportion of material used and the surface of the ground it covers, but also the height of the inflated volume.

Müller often compares his air architecture to the human body, as an ‘organic construction’.3 In this comparison, the heart would be the ventilator, blowing air into the volume at 10 to 30 millibars, and the veins would be the plastic skin, held up by the pressure of the fluid they contain – in this case, our blood. Pressure is dispersed evenly over the surface of the plastic skin. As Müller explains, ‘The air flows inside the volume which becomes the carrier of the canvas to keep it in shape; we move inside, in and across the load-bearing air, as if we were passing through thousands of invisible poles’.4

The

death of the inflatable

Müller once said in a lecture that to inflate and deflate, allowing his constructions to lose their shape, die and reappear, was a break with tradition.5 Discussing Müller’s work, Alain Charre also argues that ‘lightness and disappearing go hand in hand’.6 This idea suggests that sustainable development is tied not only to an obvious ecological dimension but to a ‘disparitional’ one too. Disappearing can mean ceasing to exist or to be in use, to be lost or to go missing. Especially when it comes to ecology, invisibility does not equate to disappearance. What does equate to disappearance is the end of all reactions and active consequences on the environment. Sylvain Tesson wrote in Consolations of the Forest: Alone in the Middle Taiga that ‘In relation to the violence of the storms, the hut is a matchbox. Daughter of the forest destined to rot: the logs of its walls were the trunks of the clearing. It will return to the humus when its owner abandons it. In its simplicity, it offers perfect protection against the seasonal cold. It does not tarnish the woodland that shelters it. With the yurt and the igloo, it stands on the podium of the most beautiful human responses to the adversity of the environment.’7

Müller shares this view that the capacity of the inflatable to disappear is essential. As the use of the inflatable or its inhabitant disappears, the inflatable can be deflated and moved, recycled or re-cut.

Müller often says that the architecture must die with its user. Just like measuring the blood

Photo by Kyle Keese.

pressure in a human, we can measure the tension of an inflatable. When the energy flow is stopped, the volume dies.

1 Gilles A Tiberghien, Notes sur la Nature, la Cabane et Quelques Autres Choses (Paris: Le Félin, 2014).

2 Emily Dickinson, ‘It troubled me as once I was’, Poem, in Seven Good Things, sevengoodthings. com/it-troubled-me-as-once-i-was-600-emilydickinson/ (accessed 10 January 2021).

3 Hans-Walter Müller, ‘Une Architecture Portée par l’Air’, Lecture, Pavillon de l’Arsenal, Paris (Paris: 2004).

4 Ibid.

5 Alain Charre, Hans-Walter Müller et l'Architecture de la Disparition (Paris: Archibooks + Sautereau editeur, 2012).

6 Ibid.

7 Sylvain Tesson, Consolations of the Forest: Alone in a Cabin in the Middle Taiga, translated by Linda Coverdale (London: Penguin, 2013).

Photos by Kyle Keese.

WHERE DO THE SPIRITS SOAR WHEN ONE CAN NO LONGER ESCAPE TO THE SKIES?

Ferial Massoud

I wish children didn’t die. I wish they would be temporarily elevated to the skies until the war ends.

Then they would return home safe, and when their parents would ask them: ‘where were you?’ they would say: ‘we were playing in the clouds’.

— Ghassan Kanafani

Where do spirits soar when one can no longer escape to the skies?

When one can no longer look to the ground, hollowed out by armoured Caterpillars, now a minefield of corpses and rubble–

When one can no longer look to the horizon, erased by the dense apparatus of apartheid, millions starving and trapped in the world’s biggest open-air prison–

When one can no longer look to the sea, fenced off by the suffocating occupation, where fishermen are murdered for the simple crime of communing with the waves.

Where one once looked to the sky for solace, heads are now kept low: the maddening buzz of drones makes their presence known. Failing aid parachutes become bombs in

disguise. The crisp Gazan seaside air is now suffocating from genocide, smothered by heavy bombs, white phosphorus, the stench of rotting flesh. There can be no consolation. Ghassan Kanafani’s clouds, where playing children hide, can no longer bring them home from the skies. The sky is now the lid on this cage.

Running on the ground, escaping past the horizon, looking up to the skies is no longer enough. The endurance and resilience of Palestinian resistance teaches us: true liberation can only be achieved through the liberation of each of these planes.

Free Palestine.

Resources

History/Academia

Rashid Khalidi, The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine: A History of Settler Colonialism and Resistance, 1917–2017, 2020

Edward Said, The Question of Palestine, 1979

Eyal Weizman, Hollow Land, 2007

Ilan Pappé, The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, 2006

Avi Shlaim, Three Worlds: Memoirs of an Arab-Jew, 2023

Ella Shohat, ‘Sephardism in Israel: Zionism from the Standpoint of its Jewish Victims’, in Social Text, Autumn 1988

Ali Abunimah, The Battle for Justice in Palestine, 2014

Regina Sharif, Non-Jewish Zionism: Its Roots in Western History, 1983

Nadia Abu el Haj, Facts on the Ground: Archaeological Practice and Territorial SelfFashioning in Israeli Society, 2001

Nicola Perugini and Neve Gordon, The Human Right to Dominate, 2015

Sara Roy, The Gaza Strip: The Political Economy of De-development, 1995

Nahla Abdo, ‘Women, War and Peace: Reflection from the Intifada’, in Womens Studies International Forum, September 2002

Ramzy Baroud, These Chains Will Be Broken: Palestinian Stories of Struggle and Defiance in Israeli Prisons, 2020

Theodor Herzl, The Jewish State, 1896

Ilan Pappé and Noam Chomksy, On Palestine, 2015

Fiction/Memoirs

Ghassan Kanafani, Palestine’s Children: Returning to Haifa and Other Stories, 2000

Mohammed El-Kurd, Rifqa, 2021

Dareen Tatour, ‘Resist, My People, Resist Them’, 2015

Leila Khaled, My People Shall Live, 1973

Film

Elia Suleiman, It Must Be Heaven, 2019

Elia Suleiman, TheTimethatRemains , 2009

Elia Suleiman, Chronicle of a Disappearance, 1996

Hany Abu-Assad, Omar, 2013

Hany Abu-Assad, Paradise Now, 2005

Cherien Dabis, Amreeka, 2009

Jumana Manna, Foragers, 2022

Lina Soualem, Bye Bye Tiberias, 2023

Podcasts

Devyn Springer, Mohammed el-Kurd and Abu Shuwarib, ‘The Palestinian Resistance and Sheikh Jarrah’, Groundings, 17 May 2021

Actavist Groups

Palestinian Youth Movement Breaking the Silence

The Palestinian Social Fund

Tal’at

B’Tselem

Jewish Voice for Peace

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THE META(X)IS RESEARCH GROUP

Panayiotis Ioakim, Jayanaveenaa Periyasamy, Yifan Yang and Carole El Danaf

Throughout the history of 20th-century architecture – from the early days of Italian futurism to the bold visions of modernist thinkers, and even through the radical shifts of the 1960s and 1970s – there has been a fascination with the idea of connecting buildings and transcending the limitations of ground-level urban life. The desire to elevate the human experience of the city, however, has remained largely unrealised, existing more as a tantalising dream than a reality. The concept of bridging and aerial connectivity is more than just an abstract notion; it demands a rethinking of urban infrastructure and a fundamental shift in how we approach urbanism.

Aerial urbanism allows us to see the city from above, a unique perspective. We usually look up at buildings, but we rarely look down. What if architecture was thought

of like Robert Morris’s outdoor sculptures, and aerial infrastructure allowed one to experience it from all angles – circulating around it, hovering above it and immersing ourselves within it.

By realising the long-dormant dream of being ‘Up in the Air’, we will open up new possibilities for city residents to engage with existing urban infrastructure, to traverse the city and to live in it differently. For megacities to embrace this adaptive system within their urban landscapes will mark a profound paradigm shift in our discipline. As architects, we can craft not just structures but experiences, and inscribe a new possibility for infrastructure in the sky – a testament to the limitless potential of architecture.

The DRL team Meta(x)is interrogated the phenomenon of the silkworm through analogue experimentation.

Photo by Meta(x)is.

Model by Meta(x)is.

This included understanding how the line can be used extensively to create an intelligent structure using multiple materials and tensioning techniques. We have designed an agent-based system of generative line strategies, which is translated into the physical world through the printing of cables. The automated process deposits elastic material in a series of lines, thus fabricating an aerial bridging system that connects with existing

infrastructure. The prototype works at multiple scales, testing the strength and intricacy of lightweight and translucent structures. An elastic, adaptive, temporary structure can dissolve and return to its original material state. In this way, Meta(x)is offers a new way of experiencing the city and, at the same time, addresses ecological concerns through material re-use.

Photo by Meta(x)is.

PRESENT MODERNITY

Nodar Kvanchiani

‘Beauty plus pity – that is the closest we can get to a definition of art. Where there is beauty there is pity for the simple reason that beauty must die: beauty always dies, the manner dies with the matter, the world dies with the individual.’

- Vladimir Nabokov

Upon close reading of the inherent concepts of the project of modernity, we witness an internal contradiction in the historiography of it. We see that the history of modernity has often been narrated in chronological order, with initiation, development and end points – even though the very essence of modernity has associations with the recent, the transient, the momentary and the present. If we were to seriously consider and dwell in these accounts of modernity, then a chronological narrative of the modern project contradicts its very premise. Any attempt to write a history of modernity would therefore seem to result in a doomed outcome.

As Hilde Heynen describes in Architecture and Modernity: A Critique, etymologically speaking the word ‘modern’ has acquired three different meanings in the course of history from the middle ages up to present times. ‘Modern’ first meant ‘present’ or ‘current’, in opposition to ‘early’. In the 17th century it gained the significance of ‘new’, in opposition to ‘old’, whereas in the

19th century new connotations of the momentary or the transient were introduced.1 Heynen writes that ‘Modernity is what gives the present the specific quality that makes it different from the past and points the way toward the future’.2

Observing these etymologies, we would assume that modernity had the inherent potentiality to remain an ever-evolving project, as it describes the present through revolving transient moments that are always occurring and producing the new. But as history writing has shown, the intellectual developments of the 20th century went on to introduce postmodernism – a paradigm that itself provoked diverse new trends and directions. Even now, some architects – for instance, Patrik Schumacher – claim that we are witnessing ‘tectonism’3 alongside parametric and digital architecture as the present manifestation of architectural modernity. All of these claims could be described as attempts to approximate evolving practice, forms and agencies of architecture of the present time.

Consequently, in contrast to its inherent premises, modernity has found its position in historical accounts. Though post-factum, it is reasonable to examine the triggers that placed the modern project as a part of history, while observing the fact that the process of historicising modernity was performed in a chronological narrative. As a linear view of time implies, modernity went through its initiation, a period of development and then finally ended. But did it actually end?

In parallel to these observations on a chronological history of modernity, perhaps it becomes relevant to examine the grounds of kairological time as an alternative to chronology, in which modernity experienced a clinical death announced by postmodernism. The word kairos, from ancient Greek, refers to the time of opportunity; the very exact and right moment when a professional archer releases the arrow.4 It could also be interpreted as a moment when past, present and future merge. In contrast to chronos, which results in a quantitative understanding of a constructed time, kairos claims to have a qualitative, fluid nature. As Giorgio Agamben writes in Infancy and History, authentic history is liberated from the linearity of chronos and can be experienced though kairological time: ‘history is not, as the dominant ideology would have it, man’s servitude to continuous linear time, but man’s liberation from it: the time of history and the cairos in which man, by his initiative, grasps favourable opportunity and chooses his own freedom in the moment’.5

Thus, regardless of the pessimistic tensions in historical accounts of modernity, it would be relevant to ask which kind of time modernity belongs to in its very core essence? Could it be that it belongs to kairology rather than chronology? If so, this becomes a potentiality to explore and reflect on current ways of engaging with the present.

1 Hilde Heynen, Architecture and Modernity: A Critique (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2000), pp 10–11.

2 Ibid, p 11.

3 Patrik Schumacher, Tectonism: Architecture for the 21st Century (Chadstone, Australia: Images Publishing Group, 2023).

4 Richard Gault, ‘In and Out of Time’, in Environmental Values, vol 4, no 2, 1995, p 155.

5 Giorgio Agamben, Infancy and History: The Destruction of Experience (London: Verso, 1993), p 104.

GALL-E

Tom Chan

What if paintings could float in thin air? What new forms of curation would this call for, beyond an enfilade or a white cube? This drawing envisions a new National Gallery for London. On the incandescent wall, 500 classical paintings are clustered and curated by an AI algorithm designed by the author. Each painting is a digital data point, associated by their shades of colour. In the foreground, the landscape of Trafalgar Square and the physical archive are overwhelmed by the speed and spectacle of this digital gallery.

A RECIPE FOR GUERRILLA SEEDING BLOOMSBURY’S PRIVATE GARDENS

Leela Keshav

Step 1

• Pinch off a walnut-sized piece of clay

Step 2

• Roll the clay into a round flat shape, 0.6cm thick

Step 3

• Top with 2 tbsp compost and 1/2 tsp seed mix

Step 4

• Add a few drops of water and wrap the clay around the compost and seed mixture, combining it with your fingers

Ingredients:

• Seeds, eg. Wildflower seed mix

• Air-dry modelling clay, clay powder or pottery clay

• Compost or potting soil

• Large mixing bowl

• Baking sheet

• Water

• Wooden spoon

Step 5

• Keep incorporating soil into the clay until the dough begins to feel dry

Step 6

• Pinch off walnut-sized balls from the larger ball and roll in extra soil mix

Step 7

• Leave your seed balls to dry for 24 hours

Step 8

• Let the seeds fly!

AARCHITECTURE 46 LAUNCH

The 1st of March saw Student Forum collaborate with Biblioteka to gather at 1 Montague Street to launch AArchitecture issue 46, ‘Down to Earth’.

The evening was a bustling one comprised of ambient music, fruitful and inspiring discussions surrounding the theme of the AA’s roots in the present, and Cindy and Cicylia’s groundbreaking cocktails and canapés.

In case you missed it, Fleur Sungsitivong and her trusty camera captured some golden moments.

BIBLIOTEKA

Biblioteka is an independent reference library of artists’ publications and books on art, architecture, visual cultures and design. The project operates as a platform exploring the possibilities of the dual nature of a library as a collection and as a space. It runs a regular programme of events encompassing collaborative and interdisciplinary practices pushing the limits of public programming within the library space. Biblioteka seeks to inspire dialogue, foster connections and empower individuals to discover and imagine. The library was founded in 2016 by Hlib Velyhorskyi and has been based at the AA since October 2023 after moving from its previous location in Peckham, London.

Photo by Hlib Velyhorskyi.

WHAT IS STUDENT FORUM?

Student Forum isn’t sure. It is a WhatsApp group. It is drinks on the terrace. It is games in the bar. It has been inclusive and exclusive. It has been confusing and bemusing. It has been questioned, it has changed, it has stayed the same. It has planned parties, helped to throw them, attended them and danced until late. It has been responsible for travel bursaries and passed the responsibility on. It does not try to be the centre of attention, but a facilitator of any of your ideas. It has tried its best to communicate your woes, your criticisms and critiques, via student reps in committees, boards, councils and working groups, or just through casual chats. It hopes to be there for you when you

KEEP THE MUSIC PLAYING!

Take AA less seriously

COMMUNICATION BETWEEN THE YEARS -> LEARN FROM EACH OTHER

Get a large space in school that students could actually design and affect

BETTER MUSIC!

Less definition, more action

More integration

GET RID OF UNIT SYSTEM! (only for extraverted)

struggle. It is meant to be horizontal but feels the challenge of that every day. Its drive has oscillated between consensus and controversy, at times anonymously voicing awkward questions and at times holding them back when not enough of us can relate. It has occasionally been political, but mostly just wants to make things more fun. It has a major agency in our association that no one has tried to play up for a long time. It has relied on a long legacy that barely anyone remembers. It has held on to nostalgia but also wants to move on. It wants to write a manifesto but doesn’t feel like it can without your help. It put some paper on the terrace and asked for your wishes and opinions:

Bar at Montague

Open unit spaces!!!

STUDENT FORUM IS LIKE YOUR SECOND KIDNEY -> vital organ -> THIS IS A GOOD THING

More informality

Simply organise things that are cool

Theatre GROUP!!! (performance at the terrace)

TERRACE ON FRIDAYS!

I want to use the stage in AAIS

Don’t forget Montague students :(

SF is a collective collaboration

PLACE TO NAP -> some of us have fatigue!!!

Pop-up cafe BACKGAMMON

Bring back OPEN DOORS JURIES. Let ppl in to see!

Student Forum can be resource for non-academic resources: exhibitions/performance/ introduction to LOVE

Student Forum is students. Meeting sometimes, trying to make sense of it all, doing its best to make the most out of our years at this weird, special place. It hopes you will come to meetings, help to plan something, make a plan to do something, get involved! It’s ok if you don’t. Everyone is welcome.

CALL FOR EDITORS

AArchitecture 48–49

Call for Editors

We are currently seeking three students from different parts of the school to become the editors of AArchitecture for 2024–25. If you enjoy writing and editing, are interested in publishing, and are eager to craft stories that communicate the academic and cultural life of the school, we would like to hear from you.

Email us at aarchitecture@aaschool.ac.uk to tell us why you are interested in being considered for this position, what content you think should be covered in AArchitecture, and a sample of a short piece of your own writing (150–300 words).

Deadline: 30 September 2024

Francesco Anselmo

Francesco Anselmo is an ETS lecturer and tutor. He has studied architectural engineering and lighting design in Italy and Sweden, and holds a PhD in building physics.

Cíaran Malik

Cíaran Malik is an ETS tutor at the AA. He teaches on structural courses and his research is interested in regenerative design, low carbon materials, biodiversity and inclusion.

Tom Chan

Tom Chan is an architectural designer currently working at Foster + Partners. He is a recent AA Diploma graduate. His work has been exhibited at Sir John Soane’s Museum, the World Architecture Festival, Barcelona Design Week and the Toronto Design Festival.

Iris Hansen

Iris Hansen is a Diploma student at the AA and founder of Studio HIDE. Her work focuses on ruralism, convivial place-making and sustainable cultures. Iris has a particular interest in the relationship between landscapes, people and craftsmanship.

Yulin Huang

Yulin Huang is a Diploma student at the AA, interested in design and creative directions.

Ben Khan

Ben Khan is a sound artist and architectural designer studying at the AA. His practice explores ideas of body and image space, asking where the boundaries of metaphysical space and the physical space we experience in waking life are, and how we define and capture this threshold.

Leela Keshav

Leela Keshav is a Diploma student and an editor of AArchitecture. Her current work examines the coloniality of botany and imagines ‘nature’ after conservation, shaped by dreams of abolitionist and reparative futures.

Nodar Kvanchiani

Nodar Kvanchiani is an architect from Tbilisi, Georgia, and a student in the AA’s HCT programme. He is currently focused on critically understanding the agency of architecture in contemporary society and in shaping built and natural environments.

Bastien Lefebvre

Bastien Lefebvre is a Diploma student at the AA. He previously studied at ENSA Montpellier and Ljubljana’s Faculty of Architecture. He is interested in automotive design, Vjaying, Patrik Schumacher and Graham Harman.

Panayiotis Ioakim, Jayanaveenaa Periyasamy, Yifan Yang and Carole El Danaf

Panayiotis Ioakim, Jayanaveenaa Periyasamy, Yifan Yang and Carole El Danaf are the Meta(x)is group, a research collective from the AA’s DRL programme. The group is concentrated on comprehending the phenomenon and agency of lines present in nature and how this could be applied in architecture.

Ferial Massoud

Ferial Massoud is a Diploma student at the AA. She considers herself not really French, nor Egyptian, nor American, nor Algerian. She is concerned with the ground as a record of colonial imprints.

Marie-Louise Raue

Marie-Louise Raue is a member of FAR, and believes architecture is sculpture and sculpture is life. This triad currently preoccupies their thinking, teaching and action. They currently reside in Dorset next to the 180-million-year-old Jurassic coast and run Intermediate 11 at the AA.

Gianfrancesco Brivio Sforza

Gianfrancesco Brivio Sforza is based in London and practices at Carroccera Collective alongside other AA graduates, sharing a common aim of experimenting in ways of living that challenge our perception of the natural, the artificial and the growing obsolescence of architecture.

Andrea Spanu

Andrea Spanu is an architect working in London and specialising in smart buildings. He enjoys applying parametric modelling and digital fabrication to projects relating to arts and culture.

Na-Pat Tengtrirat (Palm)

Na-Pat Tengtrirat (Palm) is an architect, theorist and artist. His interest lies at the intersection of architecture as an intellectual pursuit and as the construction of spaces, between theory and practice, thinking and building.

Julia Aleksandra Pawlowska

Julia Aleksandra Pawlowska is a Diploma student at the AA. She has primarily devoted her time at the AA to the pursuit of critical urban theory projects, and is interested in the idea of subjectivity and ambiguity in architecture.

Jay Potts

Jay Potts is a Diploma student and an editor of AArchitecture. His work focuses on material reuse, maintenance and self-building to form resilient communities and ecosystem networks through care and mutual aid.

Tatiana Watrelot

Tatiana Watrelot is a Diploma student and an editor of AArchitecture, and is currently interested in exploring the organic movement of the body in space.

AArchitecture 47

Term 2–3, 2023–24 www.aaschool.ac.uk

Student Editorial Team: Leela Keshav

Jay Potts

Tatiana Watrelot

Editorial Board: Alex Lorente, Membership Ryan Dillon, AA Communications Studio Manijeh Verghese, Public Engagement

Design and Editorial Support: Caspar Bailey, Andrew Reid and Max Zarzycki, AA Communications Studio

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