AArchitecture 1

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AArchitecture Architectural Association School of Architecture

Issue 1

Summer

2006

Contributors

AArchitecture Issue 1 / Summer 2006 ©2006 All rights reserved.

Published by Architectural Association, 36 Bedford Square, London WC1B 3ES. <contribute@aaschool.ac.uk>

Brett Steele <director@aaschool.ac.uk> Hugo Hinsley <hinsley@aaschool.ac.uk> Larry Barth <barth@aaschool.ac.uk>

Editorial Team Brett Steele, Editorial Director Nicola Quinn, Managing Editor Zak Kyes / Zak Group, Art Direction Alex Lorente Alex Catterall Acknowledgements Valerie Bennett Rojia Forouhar Sandra Sanna Chris Fenn Peter Thomas Cathi Du Toit Marilyn Sparrow Simone Sagi

Andreas Lang Susana Gonzalez <alternativepractices@aaschool.ac.uk>

FRONT COVER Guess The Building: Taken from the AA Photo Library’s collection of over 150,000 slides of historical and contemporary architecture, each issue will show a detail of a famous building.

All you have to do is guess from which building the detail is taken. Feel smug with your knowledge, or curse us for keeping you awake at night.

Photograph by Peter Jeffree.

Answer next issue. * * * *

Erlend Blakstad Haffner <ebh@fantasticnorway.no> Hana Loftus <hana@hanaloftus.co.uk> Markus Miessen <studiomiessen@gmx.net> Chaifang Wu <mail@roewu.com>

aarchitecture

issue 1 summer/2006

The purple patch to sexymachinery The fall of bilbao working together fantastic norway Rural studio first year studio cinematic architecture Boudoir Boys From object to atmospherere aa reviews aa news briefs recent aa publications – “empty studios and crowded bars where promising students consort with brilliant tutors in a mutual exorcism of the professional reality the first have not yet faced and the second never enjoyed…”

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Headlines in this issue are set in AutoScape, designed by Cornel Windlin.

Body text is set in Wedding Sans, designed by Andrea Tinnes / Typecuts.

Architectural Association (Inc.), Registered Charity No. 311083. Company limited by guarantee. Registered in England No. 171402.

Registered office as above.

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Stephen Roe <mail@roewu.com>

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Eugene Han <eugenehan@aaschool.ac.uk> Fredrik Hellberg <fredrik.hellberg@aaschool.ac.uk> Sarah Akigbogun Bonnie Chu Jenny Kagan <aasocialcinema@aaschool.ac.uk> Henderson Downing <henderson@aaschool.ac.uk> Edward Bottoms <edward@aaschool.ac.uk> John Bell <johnbell@aaschool.ac.uk>

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Nicky Wynne <development1@aaschool.ac.uk>

the aa according to ghost dance times 1974 Paula Nascimento <contact@mediationnews.co.uk>

AArchitecture – Issue 1

Colophon

AArchitecture – Issue 1

Contents List

The purple patch to sexymachinery: 100 years of aa student journals by edward bottoms

Photos: AA Library

The AA library is in the process of rebinding and restoring its collection of student journals. The earliest such publication is The Purple Patch, or Tufton Street Tatler (1905-9) which billed itself as ‘the only intentionally humorous paper’ of the architectural press and parodied the internal AA politics of the day. The less colourful Harlequinade (1923-6) followed, succeeded in turn by the rather earnest Number 35 (1928-30) which incorporated a number of striking woodcuts into each issue. The last issue, published in the depth of the Great Depression, contained the cry ‘gone is the clean boyish fun – the vigorous ragging, the hectic dances, the hard drinking and high thinking… the new system making little pretence at teaching ‘architecture’ and having passed through the mill we shall be fitted only for Empire building…’ Of all the inter-war AA student journals it was Focus (1938-9) that was by far the most significant. The opening lines of the initial editorial stated ‘We were born in the war… We were born in a civilization whose leaders, whose ideals, whose culture had failed. They are still in power to-day… They lead us always deeper into reaction that we are convinced can only end in disaster.’ This sense of impending conflict is present throughout the four issues of this journal, the last of which appeared in the summer of 1939. What makes this journal outstanding, however, is the sheer quality of writing and the calibre of contributors. Issue one featured Le Corbusier’s article ‘If I had to teach you architecture’ and issue two contained MoholyNagy’s ‘Education and the Bauhaus’. Further contributors included such luminaries as Siegfried Gideon, Arthur Korn and Naum Gabo. Quite who was the driving force behind Focus is unclear, but the last issue pays tribute to one of the editors, Howard Cleminson, who tragically committed suicide at the age of 21.

The late 1940s and 1950s saw a drought of student publications but with the growth of student activism in the 1960s an increasing number emerged. One of the most important, Clip-kit (1965-6), ran in sixmonthly phases with the subscriber receiving a distinctive yellow clip binder into which all subsequent issues could be filed. Its aim was to examine ‘aspects of design and manufacture normally considered as outside the scope of architectural education.’ Writers included Cedric Price, Reyner Banham and Gustav Metzger, whilst subjects ranged from the mass production of cars to space capsule design and the possibilities of ‘plug-in’ prefabricated living units. A series of inventive but short-lived journals followed in the 1970s, including White Rabbit (1970-1) and Street Farmer (19712). Of more longevity was the AA Newsheet (1971-74), published through the AA Arts & History Department, and whose content was restricted to brief essays, letters and topical listings. Contrasting in style was the

AArchitecture – Issue 1

The Purple Patch to Sexymachinery: 100 years of AA Student Journals

Ghost Dance Times (opposite) broadsheet, 1974, 25 October

Focus No. 1 cover, 1938

Clip-kit 1965-6 -Yellow binder containing Clip-kit magazine.

Photo: AA Library Photo: Sexymachinery

sparkling irreverence of the Ghost Dance Times (19745) which aimed to chronicle the world of ‘empty studios and crowded bars where promising students consort with brilliant tutors in a mutual exorcism of the professional reality the first have not yet faced and the second never enjoyed…’ Funding was finally withdrawn in June of 1975 with Martin Pawley’s editorial claiming that Chairman, Alvin Boyarsky, facing the rising costs of ‘TV studios, champagne breakfasts and foreign exhibitions’, decided a more ‘responsible and altogether less intelligible’ organ was needed.

Outstanding amongst the student publications of the 1980s are those associated with the NATO group (Narrative Architecture Today). Grouped around Diploma 10 tutor Nigel Coates, NATO is said to have had its origins in a 1983 furore over the RIBA board of examiners’ decision whether or not to pass Diploma 10 on the basis of a ‘bunch of sketches with a few cartoons’.

The magazine contained a groundbreaking collage of prose, images from contemporary fashion, photographs, sketches and diagrams, all mapping NATO’s ‘pursuance of current lifestyle as the sustaining parallel to the design of cities’. 1984 saw the first issue of Across Architecture, edited by Dimitri Vannas and Roland Cowan. Across Architecture claimed a sense of staleness and predictability had taken over the AA’s juries and positioned itself as a forum for ‘the work that lies hidden in sketchbooks … the work that is loved by each student, the work that inspires them to keep working’.

The statement in issue one that ‘We believe that architecture is too uncertain to be left to chance, and too difficult to be left to tutors’ meant that Across Architecture initially only featured work by current students such as Jean Michel Crettaz, Ben Van Berkel and Makoto Saito, although later issues were not ashamed to parade projects by such alumni and teachers as Zaha Hadid and Peter Sabara.

The post-Thatcher years witnessed a decline in student journals with, in more recent years, the online blog perhaps replacing the printed page as an outlet for student concerns. However, the success of Sexymachinery, a poetic collection of essays, letters, articles and graphic work initiated in 2000 by Intermediate 9 tutor Shumon Basar and edited by Dominik Kremerskothen, Damar Radmacher and Åbäke challenges this trend.

Indeed, each issue of Sexymachinery, being housed in its own innovative, often folded and intricately bound format, perhaps points to the future of such publications, emphasising the possibilities of the printed page in the age of the internet.

Photo: AA Library

Edward Bottoms is the AA Library Web Administrator. aaschool.ac.uk/library

AArchitecture – Issue 1

The Purple Patch to Sexymachinery: 100 years of AA Student Journals

NATO (opposite) cover, 1985 Gamma City Issue, designed by Christina Norton and Johnny Rosza. This issue doubled as the catalogue for the Gamma City Exhibition held at the A.I.R. Gallery, London, 20 November – 15 December, 1985.

Street Farmer No. 1 cover, 1971

Sexymachinery No. 9, Winter 2003 Inspired by the idea that freedom and its opposite – alienation – are intimately related, Save me From What I Want looked at the desire for rules and the rules that govern desire.

→ The AA Library would be very interested to hear from members and alumni who have copies of AA student journals which might fill gaps in its collection. Founded in 1862, the AA Library currently holds in excess of 30,000 volumes and subscribes to over 100 journals and periodicals.

The fall of bilbao: Contemporary architectural practice and its re-positioning within the socio-political landscape by markus miessen

Arguably, the most dilettante reading of Stoicism is that of figuring out where the world is going and, as a result, to follow willingly. This, of course, raises a fundamental question: how does one lead a life of moral agency if everything was right from the start? Looking inwards while building resistance against the outside world also lays bare the tendency to suppress issues of crucial impact in favour of habit, one that consciously avoids reality.

Within architecture, one can trace a similarly therapeutic relationship, where practice cocoons itself in reason that, within the bigger picture, seems meaningless. For centuries, formal debate has dominated a practice that creates physical envelopes and a discourse that concentrates on the nurturing of the ego-cult as opposed to participating in the socio-political environment.

Stoicism suggests an absence of interference. In contrast, one could argue that conflict, suspension of rational logic and amateurish triggers by external influences often generate the most creative ideas. Adopting preconceived models of ethics based on absolute heritage, architects often refuse to question what an ethical practice actually is. Meanwhile, small-minded warriors of limited vision have cried out that the world is lost.

And in desperation, like shipwrecked sailors grasping at wreckage, they clung to the past. As a modus vitae, twentieth century architects have often followed the grand narratives of history, obeying the objects of their predecessors while worshipping the architectural object as a generator for change. Strangely, this happened at a time when it was already evident that the city is being conditioned by forces that supersede the formal and aesthetic prerogatives of the architect.

It is often implied that modern materials and methods are dictating contemporary architecture’s expression of form (resulting from the state of mind typical of an epoch) and that architecture exists and takes when a general evolution of mind is accomplished. But rather than simply articulating a re-reading of material processes, one can trace an emerging practice that illuminates the existence beyond a single truth in a radicality that challenges space rather than controls it: an emerging architectural sub-culture with a spatial understanding that suspends the traditional reading of architecture as simply the spatial manifestation of built matter. It challenges the obeying of conventions and institutions that defy the very creation of architecture and its creators with their illusion of control. In contrast to the self-referential object, which has been churned out for centuries, recent protagonists attempt to understand processes of uncertainty, conflict, borders and geopolitics. This major change presents us with a reading of the world that is based on re-evaluated judge-

AArchitecture – Issue 1

The Fall of Bilbao

Photo: Kunstverein Munich

School of Missing Studies Challenging the conservative brain, workshop at Kunstverein Munich with participants from Belgrade, Munich, Rotterdam and Zagreb.

AArchitecture – Issue 1

The Fall of Bilbao

ment according to specific situations, a world in need of an optimistic and critical rendering of situational truths as opposed to moral truism.

Where the Stoic understands the environment as a world beyond control that can only be dealt with by leading an introverted practice driven by virtue, these actors equally appreciate the world as a place beyond control, but one that refuses the modernist instrument of the grand account. Here, the fundamental difference is that a ‘world beyond control’ is understood as a quality. Today, these spaces of uncertainty are often understood as places where subtle interaction creates informal, self-organisational forces that generate spatial constructs on a local scale. Instead of creating spaces of controlled physical representation and spectacle, they expose an emerging understanding of architecture based on the absent object.

Today’s spatial practice utilises architectural research and applies (non-)physical components in order to alter relevant situations. It presents both the developed notion of experimental techniques and the application of analytical thought, which transform everyday ephemera and physical conditions. However, taking such understanding into consideration, one has to rethink the way in which discourse is being led in the academies. Within the field of purely formal investigation, even most of the phenomenologically, sociologically or politically motivated academic studios are still trading on the past: their internalised discourse is rarely more than incestuous formal polemics.

The image of the architect has often been related to the male heroic protagonist who introduces to the outside an established lifestyle. It is precisely here that one can locate the turning point in practice: the neglect of egocentric narrative and self-referential ambition in favour of catering for an individually identified, sitespecific audience. Such appreciation of what architecture can possibly be opposes individualism and raises the fundamental question of whether or not architecture should be taken forward as an art practised by and for the sake of a broader cultural landscape or a commercial enterprise geared to the needs of the market. The highly romanticised ideal of the architect – ‘general progress in architecture according to a personal conception, usually of style, embodied in buildings and developed from architect to architect over the course of history’ (Saint, The Image of the Architect, 1983), which essentially derived from Aristotelian idealism – seems no longer valid. Today, one has to appreciate the difference between the ‘architecture of image’ and what one might call ‘post-Bilbao’ practice.

The starting point for this shift could arguably be identified as the moment when Frank Gehry’s Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao opened in 1997. As one of the

Camp for Oppositional Architecture (Anarchitektur) International open congress searching for possibilities of resistance within the field of architecture and planning, featuring particular political and social aspects of architecture and the city under current capitalist conditions.

→ Markus Miessen’s new book Did Someone Say Participate? An Atlas of Spatial Practice (MIT Press / Revolver, co-edited by Shumon Basar) will be published in June. As part of his PhD at Goldsmiths Centre for Architecture Research, the publication investigates the front lines of cultural activism and looks at spatial practitioners who actively trespass into neighbouring or alien fields of knowledge. It will be essential reading not only for those involved in the future of architectural research and practice, but for anyone interested in navigating through current forms of cultural debate.

The recent AA exhibition, Every Little Helps (29 April 26 May 2006), investigated, through a series of loose associations, the architectural and urban significance of the Tesco and NHS estates by marking seemingly unmeaningful connections between the two that reveal their urban presence and effect on everyday life. Exhibition by Markus Miessen and Matthew Murphy.

AArchitecture – Issue 1

The Fall of Bilbao

Markus Miessen is unit master of Intermediate Unit 7.

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Working together:tendencies, clusters and other exchanges by hugo hinsley aa research clusters launch, school meeting, 30 November 2005 cluster week, 15-19 may 2006

Photo: anarchitektur.com

last twentieth century architectural superstars, Gehry became the epitome of a generation that set out to be part of an avant-garde and ended up as a conservative, copy-paste establishment. One could argue that the moment when Bilbao was born, an emerging generation of architects started to critically engage with the lack of twentieth century Western Modernism, and what the course of Modernism and Postmodernism had avoided dealing with: the manipulation of archetypical situations. In contrast to the process of pure image production, these new practitioners no longer operate on the ism level. Although it is true that such anti-image is yet another ideological position that creates an image, the difference here is the way in which the protagonists act, network and shift interests. Unburdened by the weight of the twentieth century, they have rediscovered a localism based on the belief that certain problems need tailor-made solutions rather than philosophically outsourced meta-agendas. This specific kind of problem solving has abandoned an understanding of architecture for the sake of the stylised object propelled by virtuous vision. In contrast to the late twentieth-century project of ‘the diagram’ – which was purely modern in the sense that it attempted to deliver a personal, scientific solution to a problem that was being put forward by cancelling out everything else – ‘post-Bilbao’ has started to acknowledge political implications of space as something which needs to be dealt with urgently. As so many other theories and practices in history, ’the diagram’ was a stoic cocoon. It dwelt on the image of the architect as the master of virtue. As a container of the heroic tradition supported by self-image, ‘the diagram’ – in its purely modern sense that it was playing with the ageold, prevailing image of the architect as impeccable master – was an intellectual claim only. But today, we work under a different ideological system; one that is contingent, informal, ephemeral and resists the notion of pure object-lust. There is no longer any sympathy with the stoic, self-referential and masturbatory notion of ‘the diagram’ when, post internet and 9/11, everyone has realised that the rest of the world is burning.

Since we are arguably at a turning point in the history of spatial practice, one should actively engage with the current optimism. Rather than mourning the passing of the old codes, it is time to venture out into the snowstorm. This is the tragic moment of realisation, in which the Stoic faces the deadlock of stable harmony as the epitome of nihilism.

Last academic year the School had rich and detailed debates about its structure and governance, and about the AA model of education that has evolved over the past thirty years. The most visible forum of debates was the intensive two weeks of the Architectural Education Symposium in November 2004. This generated many ideas and questions, and one result was that two open working groups were formed, one on Governance and Constitution and the other on Educational Structures. An important issue that came up in all discussions was the need to find better ways to cross-fertilise the work of the different parts of the School. It was clear that the autonomy of the undergraduate unit structure produces both intensity and a diversity of teaching and research that is greatly valued – but also that units can become rather hermetic. It was also clear that the full potential of exchanges about work done in all parts of the School – the service units and the graduate programmes, as well as the undergraduate units – was not being achieved.

There were many ideas for generating better collaborations and exchanges inside the AA, and for connecting with debates outside. One of these was to develop the Open Jury to become an event for all parts of the School. Another proposal was to support ‘tendencies’ of research explicitly to stimulate collaboration. Each of these might have a ‘distinguished visiting scholar’ to give them direction; could evolve to meet the interests of members of the School Community; and could develop external collaborations. At any one time there might be a range of ‘tendencies’ at different stages of development, and with several visiting scholars stimulating particular themes of research.

With Brett as the new Director, the School has started to explore these ideas. The Open Jury included all parts of the School, and it was a stimulating experience. In Term 1 Brett invited members of the School to curate Research Clusters to help connect the work of units, programmes and courses across the School, and also to engage with the wider range of expertise outside. On 30 November there was an open meet-

AArchitecture – Issue 1

ing for the curators to explain their topics and to invite participation. Since then each Cluster has arranged meetings and events, and the cluster topics were also used to help organise thematic debates in the Open Jury. This culminated in a week-long series of debates during cluster week 15-19 May 2006.

Hugo Hinsley is a lecturer on the Housing and Urbanism Programme in the AA’s Graduate School.

Working together: tendencies, clusters and other exchanges.

research at the aa The AA has a long tradition of linking teaching and research in the unit structure of the School, and in the Graduate School; individual faculties have often obtained research funding for occasional projects from disparate sources. However, the School has not enjoyed the status of other Higher Education Institutions in relation to the large government research-funding agencies, and so was not in a position to undertake multi-year research projects with any regularity. Now this is changing.

The School’s Research Programme has become an Affiliated Research Centre of the Open University and is embarking on the development of the School’s research infrastructure. This will enhance the School’s teaching resources, add to our ability to purchase equipment, and most importantly, allow us to develop the research community associated with the AA. In recent years, government emphasis upon the establishment of research networks has made the AA a sought-after partner in a broad range of initiatives led by other institutions. In the coming years, the AA will increasingly be in the position of initiating research projects which more closely match the School’s intellectual directions and ambitions.

By Larry Barth who lectures on urbanism in the AA’s Graduate School.

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AA research cluster: alternative practices & Research initiatives by andreas lang & Susana gonzalez

Fantastic Norway Architects ‘In the company of coffee and waffles, no idea is too small and no ambition is too big.’ Erlend Blakstad meets local residents outside the Fantastic Norway caravan.

Alternative Practices & Research Initiatives

fantastic norway

rural studio

Alternative Practices & Research Initiatives touches upon modes of studying, teaching and working in architecture.

Currently, the Professional Studies Part III seminars are the only courses at the AA dealing with the step from learning to practising architecture, and represent a somewhat limited range of what shape an architecture practice could take. We believe that there are many models of what might follow on from a 5-year architectural education at the AA, and different alternatives to entering an established architectural office.

These might include setting up practices in the form of multi-disciplinary collectives, becoming part of international networks, or embarking on practice-based or academic research, to name just a few. At the same time, we believe that there are possibilities of looking at alternative models linking education to practice over the course of the 5-year period.

This research cluster will provide an opportunity to expose such alternative routes for an architectural education and practice and synergies between them.

We have outlined lines of work and investigation, which we are taking forward through several events: Residencies, Live projects / school-based project and consultancy work, Multi-disciplinary networks and collectives, Research: academic and practice-based, Year-out alternatives and web-based “showcase” to share experiences of alternative practices and research initiatives by members of the AA community.

Our aim is to provide a platform to engage staff, students, recent graduates and external colleagues in a dialogue to examine possibilities and identify alternatives. We propose looking outwards at existing models being explored in other institutions, practices, or in other areas, and building on internal interests and potentials. The purpose of these events is to provide the groundwork to develop a set of initiatives, which will be put back to the school.

The spirit of engagement with society is integral to Erlend Blakstad Haffner and Hakon Matre Aasarod’s work. Anxious to draw attention to architects’ social responsibilities, they took to the road in a camper van three years ago. They christened their project ‘Fantastic Norway’ and set off with one conviction: that the architect must work at the local level, in close conversation with people, and plan work around the identity and the context of a place.

‘We live in a bright red camper van’ Erlend tells us.

‘The van functions as a combined office and workspace in the towns we visit. It allows us to become temporary residents while offering an immediate interface to the town’s inhabitants.’ When they drive into a new city they get in touch with schools, politicians, organisations and the business sector, as well as with individuals. After completing an intensive study of the city, they approach the local media to start a public dialogue and debate.

A weekly column in the local newspaper then sets the agenda for discussions held in the camper van: ‘In the company of coffee and waffles, no idea is too small and no ambition is too big. The threshold to enter an open camper van is low and the van proves an ideal forum for discussion. We collect ideas and suggestions to build a resource bank for further work’. In addition to the open van and the published articles, they arrange workshops and public meetings, as well as walks around the city. Each visit ends with a public presentation of the work, and conclusions, proposals and suggestions are published in a small brochure, which is handed out in the local cafes and libraries.

It is easy to categorise the experience of building a live project according to the requirements of conventional architectural education. It ticks every accreditation box; students get out of the studio, learn how to design buildable details, understand cost plans, communicate with clients and manage the whole process from concept to completion. Another assumption is often that the Rural Studio is about ‘doing good’. But, as Andrew Freear said to me over a crackly phone line before I arrived, ‘We’re architects not social workers, and the purpose of the Studio is to create good architects. In doing so, the student is forced to question every part of the architectural process and find a new critical positioning order to sustain themselves.

The Rural Studio functions in real time and space, at 1:1 scale. It doesn’t have many books in the library, but it has a library of buildings, both the local vernacular and the Rural Studio’s own, which students can dissect, observe and analyse over time. There is no speeding up how many seconds it takes to hammer a nail, or scaling down how heavy a steel beam is. Students learn; they do not study, and teachers barely teach in any conventional didactic sense – they steer and advise, letting students make mistakes and then helping to (often literally) pull them back to safety. The experience is unmediated by the complex processes that are familiar to design students in conventional schools – the elaborate constructions of hypothesis, digital iterations of obscure formulae, games or the use of tangential means of representation in order to bring some unexpected result – and the result is a leap of faith into the unknown.

Returning to London, I am often asked what impact this experience has had on my practice in this very different context. In my opinion, the most important legacy from a year at the Rural Studio is to value the immediate personal experience of sites, clients, materi-

The Purple Patch to Sexymachinery: 100 years of AA Student Journals

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Photo: Fantastic Norway

AArchitecture – Issue 1

Erlend Blakstad Haffner is a member of the Architectural Association and contributed his experience at the Alternative Practices and Research Cluster event on architectural residencies March 2006. fantasticnorway.no

AArchitecture – Issue 1

The Purple Patch to Sexymachinery: 100 years of AA Student Journals

als, hammers and nails. Architecture is not hypothetical and cannot be created at a remove from the personal experience, no matter how large the scale of project.

The Rural Studio not only teaches very practical skills that create good architects, but reinforces a humanist ethic towards our environment, that stands at odds to orthodoxies of rationalist, systems-driven planning.

This makes it democratic and humble, as well as valuing boldness, beauty and skill.

Andrew Freear, Associate Professor and Co-Director of Rural Studio (ruralstudio.com), lectured at the AA on 17 February 2006.

By Hana Loftus, deputy director of General Public Agency, a creative consultancy working in regeneration and planning. Hana spent 2004-5 working with the Rural Studio and is currently studying architecture at London Metropolitan University.

Andreas Lang is unit master of Intermediate Unit 10 and a Cluster curator for the Future Practices and Research Initiatives Cluster.

Susana Gonzalez is an alumna of the AA Graduate School and a Cluster Curator for Future Practices & Research Initiatives Cluster.

→ This summer Fantastic Norway have two exhibitions, in Oslo and Berlin. They will tour some of the architecture schools in Sweden, Denmark and Germany, baking waffles and giving lectures on their way down to Berlin.

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AArchitecture â&#x20AC;&#x201C; Issue 1

First Year Studio

be ignorant. Our tutors are very competent and give us interesting and well designed briefs as well as outside lectures exclusively for our studio. I am only saying that there is a risk of all that valuable competence not getting through to us due to communication problems, as in many other cases in the School, I must add.

As a final and concluding word from me as a student in the new First Year Studio, I can say that we are doing just fine, and you will see that in time we will do way more than fine. We all have the energy within ourselves.

We just need some more time to get to know each other so that we can share it.

Fredrik Hellberg is a first year AA student.

AA Then and Now First Year Studio in 2005 (Top).

Laptops have replaced drawingboards as the rear second floor reverts to an open-plan studio design this year. Compare its previous open-plan incarnation in the 1950s (Bottom). The space had for several years been divided into the Soft Room and individual First Year units.

New School Spaces Two major changes in spacial organisation accompanied the start of this Academic Year at the AA. First Year has changed from a unit-based system into a single studio at the heart of the main Bedford Square building.

The aquisition of a long-term lease for 4 Morwell Street, immediately behind the main AA building, has provided additional studio and teaching space, including a dedicated presentation gallery on the ground floor.

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Photos: AA Photo Library

I have been a student here for four terms and one of many things I have learned during this time is that this school is not afraid to make changes; in fact it is even famous for it.

I have as a student recently been affected by one of these changes. One year ago I was a student in the one-year Foundation course, hoping I would pass on to the First Year. I felt early that this was the perfect school for me and although working hard in Foundation I always kept an eye on the four first-year units. By the time my portfolio was up for review I had already made up my mind about which one I wanted. Everything went well; I got in and got the financial help I desperately needed.

When I came back in September something had changed. No more units, one big class, one big room. I was really exited because I always imagined being in a unit would be a bit like having strict parents who want you to carry on the family tradition. In the First Year Studio I would be able to work with everyone, get more opinions on my projects and perhaps get influenced in a healthier way. I was very happy about the rather radical change and thought it was a really good idea, and I still do after these four months. However one always has to be prepared for unpredicted side effects.

What I felt in Foundation was that the connection between us and the tutors was close and personal. I took that for granted and benefited immensely from it both as a student and as a person.

In the First Year Studio there are 36 students and 6 tutors. We have a huge room and we all have our own desk which is really a luxury. However there is one thing that I have a hard time getting used to; the fact that it is difficult as one of so many students to have a good relationship with the tutors, which I feel is very important. I think that we as rookies in our architectural education need care and attention, perhaps more then students in the later part of the School. We need guides upon whom we can depend to take us through these first confusing steps, and that is hard to get in a big group like ours. Blaming the tutors for this would

Photos: Chris Fenn

first impressions: foundation to first year

by Fredrik Hellberg

AArchitecture â&#x20AC;&#x201C; Issue 1

First Year Studio

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The Great Escape Cinematic Architecture Exhibition by Pascal Schöning by peter kelly aa exhibition, 14 january – 17 february 2006

Cinematic Installation Installation photographs of Pascal Schöning’s exhibition at the AA School.

AArchitecture – Issue 1

Cinematic Architecture

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Photos: Valerie Bennett

Manifesto for a Cinematic Architecture (opposite)

by Pascal Schöning, AA Publications 2006. £7.50 – ISBN 1 902902 483 aaschool.info/publications

The need and desire to escape has been a central theme of Pascal Schöning’s life and work. It is impossible to understand the architect’s recent Cinematic Architecture installation at the AA – a large glass box that is bathed in continually changing projections – without knowing about his extraordinary upbringing.

By the time Schöning was born, his parents had moved from Berlin to the north German island of Rügen to escape the Nazis. Four years later, the German Army declared the island a military zone and his father was sentenced to death for his opposition to the Nazis. He escaped, but was perpetually on the run.

At the height of the Second World War Schöning and his mother moved to his grandparents’ house in Berlin, but this new home was soon bombed, with a young Schöning witnessing the destruction. The family then moved to the house of Schöning’s other grandparents in Hanover, which was also destroyed soon after – once again he saw the bombing. Eventually the Schönings ended up being housed by local farmers in cowsheds.

‘My life was defined by moving around with rare moments of rest. But besides having experienced that nothing lasts, I learned that matter changes into energy if it is hit by an external agent. This resulted in a spectacle of fire and light during the bombings. As a child I did not perceive the tragic dimension, and excitedly enjoyed the show,’ he explains.

After the war Schöning moved back to Berlin without his parents: ‘I became obsessed with the idea of housing and its relation to stability and temporality.’

The memory of the Nazis’ architecture as imposing and inhumane made him suspicious of the ideas of permanence in the design of buildings – a suspicion that has prevented him from keeping any images or materials from his built houses and public projects in France, Germany and Austria.

Alongside this ambitious attitude towards the past is Schöning’s intense love of cinema from the Forties and Fifties – a period of escapism in films which had an intense impact on contemporary audiences.

Cinematic Architecture is the result of these two powerful influences, a structure that shows architecture can be shifting, intense and immediate as cinema.

Schöning also believes it can be humble, elusive and deferential to the natural environment. Changes are caused not by the movements of visitors, but by projections that make the glass box appear to change shape or disappear entirely. This is a forward-looking project deeply rooted in the past.

Manifesto for a Cinematic Architecture, Pascal Schöning Schöning’s manifesto has a certain rhetorical verve that makes it both an enjoyable and thought-provoking read. Clearly indebted to the French philosopher Gilles Deleuze’s influential books on cinema from the 1980s, the text outlines a rather vague, but seductive proposal for new forms of architectural praxis that would draw inspiration from cinematic form. This is less about built form in any conventional sense than about a vision of an architecture whose existence would as AA chair Brett Steele puts it, lie ‘purely at the plane of image, effect and memory’.

The most obvious aspect of cinema as a cultural form is that it is composed of moving images, a complex production of ‘time spatiality’. For Deleuze, after the Second World War, cinema came to grapple with a profoundly new structure and experience of time and space, reflecting the uprooting of traditional forms of life under consumer capitalism. This also defines the context for Schöning’s account of cinematic architecture, given substance by his own childhood experiences of urban destruction.

The inspiration he finds in it is one of a solid matter transformed into constantly open processes of energy. In many ways this entails a now standard arrangement for the priority of process and change over finished object, common to a wide variety of contemporary art and architectural theorists.

Yet it is given a new spin by Schöning’s analogy to the cinema, and by his passionate denunciation of any form of architecture that would limit the possibilities for ‘sensual, mental and psychological movement’. In the end his central plea is a fairly old one, and none the worse for that – a plea for the rediscovery of architectural imagination itself.

Peter Kelly is a Senior staff writer at Blueprint magazine.

Appeared in Blueprint March 2006. Reproduced courtesy of Blueprint.

By David Cunningham, extract from Building Design, 3 February 2006. Reproduced courtesy of Building Design.

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A Brief History Of The Boudoir Boys: Aa And Art Net On Film by henderson downing

Photos: AA Video Library

aa photo library exhibition ‘still’, 30 january – 24 march 2006

Images from Still exhibition Screen-grabs from mid 1970s architectural lectures.

From top: Rem Koolhaas, Richard Meier, Ivan Illich, Colin Rowe.

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The AA Photo Library exhibition still: images from the aa film archive consisted of screen-grabs captured from mid-1970s architectural lectures. Each image was coupled to a short citation from the relevant recording.

Many of the images were taken from a series of events organised by Peter Cook at Art Net. Located on West Central Street in Bloomsbury, and funded by Alistair McAlpine, during the few years of its effervescent existence Art Net was part art gallery, part project exhibition space and part tribal gathering for architectural ‘scenes’. Alongside the publication of the magazine Net, major events included several conferences, plus exhibitions of work by numerous Bedford Square alumni and other ‘groups or non-groups’ such as Superstudio and the New York Five.

Peter Cook described Art Net as ‘a kind of ad hoc institution where we hope that the people who are talking will knock up against one another’. This hope was repeatedly fulfilled in the lively and lengthy Question and Answer sessions that were archived on video by Dennis Crompton. For twenty-first-century eyes, the mise-enscène retains certain antiquated, but colourful psychedelic traces in spite of the black-and-white footage.

When a fully amplified ten-piece jazz-funk combo called Gonzales, squashed together on the mezzanine high above the circulating crowds of students and architects, attempt to conclude the New York Five event, they are upstaged by a fully-loaded chip van driving through the double doors to dispense free fish suppers to everyone. As a mischievous surprise orchestrated by Peter Cook to both satisfy and sabotage the appetites of Peter Eisenman et al, it was in some weird way a fitting finale, emblematic of Art Net’s approach to encouraging serious architectural debate without eliminating any welcome eruptions of local humour.

Inevitably, the viewer is struck by the fashions that parade across the screen. As a prog-rock band noodle their way towards a climax at the opening of The Rally, a ten-day marathon attended by architects from across the globe, that coincided with the record-breaking heat wave of the summer of 1976, Reyner Banham arrives at the lectern in a Superman t-shirt and an ex-army jacket studded with badges, to deliver the opening talk. A few days later Arata Isozaki appears in a white safari suit and announces that he’s going to show the same slides as he did a few months earlier ‘but in a different order’.

Meanwhile, curlicues of smoke rise like question-marks in the air above long-haired audiences adjusting their kaftans or fine-tuning their beards while they lounge in a grid of deck-chairs. To limit these already suspect stereotypes, let’s just note that in between lectures, the space sometimes becomes a sartorial wind tunnel of flares and lapels where Cedric Price, possessing a voice capable of the kind of projection that even the most

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barrel-chested of actors would envy, is almost always in the eye of the hurricane, perpetually ready to demolish any discussion betraying signs of excessive self-importance.

An off-the-striped-cheesecloth-cuff remark by Robert Maxwell during a lecture he gave on Manfredo Tafuri entitled ‘Cries and Struggles in the Boudoir’ reveals something of the milieu: ‘I don’t think it’s a secret that Art Net is supported by friends from a certain capitalist coffer and that it dispenses cheap wine with the bravura of the chief steward on the Titanic. Not much of what happens here would escape Tafuri’s bleak judgment on architecture as art. Are we all then boudoir boys?’

‘Boudoir Boys’ was considered but quickly rejected as a potential exhibition title (partly because a quick search online exposed an adult magazine of that name that showcased scantily-clad male models and claimed to be aimed at ‘sophisticated women’). Instead, we chose still. From Alvin Boyarsky explaining his chairmanship of the AA as the development of a ‘place in England where the general culture of architecture could be opened up to allow each area of investigation to be as close to the frontiers of knowledge of that particular discipline or area of study’, to Tom Heneghan’s witty critique of the rise of the celebrity and ‘architectural superstars’, the speakers and topics included in the exhibition provide a sectional view of what others sometimes referred to as the avant-garde of that period. Although frozen in their pixilated frames, the stills powerfully illustrate both the continuities and the discontinuities between then and now.

Henderson Downing works in the AA Photo Library. aaschool.ac.uk/photolib

→ The AA film archive is an important collection of 1,000 recordings of lectures, conferences, symposia and other events presented at the AA from 1973 to the present. The film archive is for the use of AA Students, Staff and Members only. Opening hours 10.00 am to 6.00 pm Monday to Friday (latest time for viewing films 4.30 pm).

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Ambient: From Object to Atmosphere symposium ‘ambient & augmented architectures’, 24-25 november 2005

Photos: Valerie Bennett

ROEWU Network Structure for the Athens Olympics

Heaven Symposium Speaker Christian Moeller’s light installation at the Fredrieke Taylor Gallery, 2005.

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Photo: Christian Moeller

Smartslab Tom Barker’s installation in the AA Lecture Hall.

Participants: BRett steele jason bruges chiafang wu + stephen roe marie o’ mahony tom barker teresa hoskyns stefano mirti christian moeller crispin jones sophie le bourva stuart ceech marta male-Alemany stefan doepner chuck hoberman

Photos: Chifang Wu & Stephen Roe

by Chiafang Wu & Stephen Roe

Ambient: From object to atmosphere The Ambient + Augmented Architectures symposium at the AA was a welcome opportunity for us to reassess a series of projects we had done over the preceding few years, exploring what we called Ambient Computing – computers which surround you, infiltrating the surfaces and tectonics of a newly intelligent architecture. It was also a valuable opportunity to compare notes with others in this field who had assembled at the AA to discuss their work. We wanted to take this opportunity to discuss what may seem like conventional architectural issues, such as scale, tectonics and use, which are radically being reconsidered through the increasing inclusion of information technology within the very fabric of buildings, as we transition from seeing them as Objects to conceiving them as Atmospheres.

We introduced these issues through an early project that explored the integration of information technology; a speculative project which incorporated TCP/ IP-based Building Management Systems, smart façade technologies and pneumatics in an integrated spatial system. This ‘blue-sky’ research project was important in framing the research work of the office over the next few years. When the building becomes mutable it in fact loses its objective quality – users, material and network occupy a continuum. It becomes interactive.

The task of the architect becomes to define specific relationships, rather than permanently to fix conditions. For instance: interaction can be visual and tactile (varying from a purely visual relationship, to a tactile control over primarily visual qualities, to direct physical manipulation); one-way or two-way; confined to one set of options or open-ended. The house we designed for two engineers in Dublin explores this issue of interactivity, its impact on the programme and spatial qualities of a single family house. Using interactive façade technology based on programmable glass interlayers, we developed a solution which allows occupants to vary spatial conditions with the fluidity of a weather system.

Another form of purely visual interaction was explored in our Solar Grass Field project – a massive field of flexible photo-voltaic blades designed for the Department of Energy in Washington DC, which interacted directly with the microclimate of the site, sensitively responding to small differentials in wind-pressure and making them visible.

In each of these projects the whole is made up of parts: many parts which in themselves may be quite simple but which, in combination, produce complex effects. In this context the design of individual parts is often less important for us than how to assemble them.

This depends on a precise determination of the degree of complexity actually required and the scale at which it operates. Scale may in fact be the critical issue; scale

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defined by the size of the individual components relative to the overall size of the project and to the scale of the user. In this sense, architecture, like the computer, can be said to have its own issues of resolution. Architecture, through its sheer size, quantity of components and variations in their arrangements can produce fluid effects through low-resolution means. Relatively simple – or even crude – parts, if combined effectively can make up complex wholes just as pixels combine into complex images. This understanding of scale was used in the last project we showed: an ‘Events Platform’ for the Athens Olympics – an interactive surface which can adjust its morphology to accommodate different programmes using a new structural tectonic – what we call the Network Structure. Consisting of rigid members and semi-rigid members which push and pull according to the information they receive.

With the diffusion of information throughout the 3dimensional field of material, the individual object is reduced in importance. The accumulation of components generates atmospheres rather than identifiable objects. Clouds of matter interact in fields of changing intensities. Objects are superseded by the pure effect of space, ambience, atmosphere.

SURFACE INTELLIGENCE Surface Intelligence: Ambient & Augmented Architectures was a Two-Day International Design Symposium held at the Architectural Association on 24 and 25 November last year. The symposium brought together a wide variety of architects, artists, theorists and engineers who have been exploring the impact of the integration of newly intelligent materials and components into our built environment.

Presentations could be divided along the lines of visual vs. physical interaction. The work of Jason Bruges, Tom Barker’s Smartslab and many of Christian Moeller’s projects explore the impact of the visual, as defined by light, on our experience of space. Smartslab indeed represents a new and highly innovative possibility, where building materials themselves contain visual information. Others, particularly the stunningly ingenious Chuck Hoberman, explored the potentials of a practice based on physical adjustments of the built fabric, while Stuart Veech explores the integration of image and material. A similar division can be made between high-tech and low-tech solutions. Crispin Jones, Stefan Doepner and others play on this distinction by deliberately combining high-tech softwares with low-tech material solutions that are just adequate to their tasks, and in the process, question our reliance on high-tech solutions.

The way in which this work is produced is a development that is having an impact on both practice and

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aa reviews: Diploma 9 at Threshold ’06 architects in residence

Photos: Valerie Bennett

Photos: Chifang Wu & Stephen Roe

pedagogies. Brett Steele, director of the AA presented the work of his students at the DRL exploring Open Source Research; a fascinating experiment in the use of networking technologies to share ideas that has led to an explosion of creativity in a very short period of time.

These new means of interaction are important; speakers repeatedly emphasised the importance of collaboration to their practice. The work of Stefano Mirti’s students at the Interactive institute of Ivrea and Marta Male Alemany’s students at the University of Pennsylvania explored different design pedagogies which incorporate the newest technologies in playful and creative ways.

Brett Steele also addressed the more problematic ramifications of a networked built environment. Taking the example of a quaint English village inundated with surveillance cameras, he asked how prepared we are to have every surface of our cities or homes become a potential recording device. Issues of ethics, the body and the politics of exclusion were covered more explicitly by both Marie O’Mahony and Teresa Hoskyns.

Overall the conference laid the groundwork for a fascinating series of discussions that will surely continue over the next few years, as we begin to understand and grapple with the issues brought up by an augmented and newly interactive architecture.

Chaifang Wu and Stephen Roe are unit masters of Diploma Unit 8 and practise as ROEWU. roewu.com

ROEWU Solar Grass Field, Washington DC Transformability Symposium Speaker Chuck Hoberman, keynote lecture.

SmartSlab Watching Tom Barker’s Smartslab presentation.

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Diploma 9 at Threshold ‘06 John Bell, Adam Covell and students from Diploma Unit 9 will be working with selected media artists to produce collaborative installations as a part of the Node London season of Media Arts.

The collaborations are part of Threshold, a series of thematically linked events, performances and discussions which provide a platform for the exploration of contemporary sound art, and examine areas of practice that intersect with architecture. The programme is looking specifically at the relationship between sound and space (physical, structural, virtual, animated, performative and technological.) A conceptual thread will be set around ideas of threshold, topology, landscape and borders.

These themes, developed throughout March by means of a series of informal artist showcases, exhibitions and performances at E:vent Gallery will be further expanded through broadcast discussions on Resonance fm 104.4.

The first of these, on Thursday 2 March at 8.00pm had John Bell in discussion with Usman Haque, Janek Schaefer and Flow Motion. During April Threshold focused on the experimental residency in which a group of sound artists worked with Diploma 9, to create a site-specific sound/architecture installation in E: vent Gallery. The Threshold season will come to a reverberating finale with a presentation of the work produced in the residency, and a coinciding evening of live performances by renowned sound artists and musicians.

By John Bell, unit master of Diploma Unit 9. More information at nodel.org

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Architects in residence Diploma Unit 14 started this year with an active network installation in the Back Members’ Room, which ran from 7-11 November 2005. Working in and around the proposed Thames Gateway bridge, four student groups produced four interdependent installations revealing networks and accessing reciprocities between major themes: politics and planning, environment, local communities and bridge design.

Hosting the first day, the politics and planning group designed a physical assembly of the political bodies involved in the process. These were represented physically, within the forum, and virtually, through an online interface.

Visitors interacted with this assembly by responding to a questionnaire concerning their opinions of the bridge project, and in accordance with the responses, the opposing viewpoint was then given.

The intention of this design was to allow a more informed opinion, through the presentation of the arguments, on a level playing field for and against the bridge.

Transforming Links, the bridge design group’s installation negotiated component based construction, and was made using materials sourced from Thames Gateway manufacturers.

The installation of cardboard tubes was complemented by an exploded drawing of the logistical network that was implemented during the design and fabrication of the installation.

Re-active-Lab, the environment installation, consisted of three microclimates which could be affected directly by human interaction and indirectly by the surrounding environment. Turf, water and metal were the materials used to test the reactions of living systems to different climate conditions and unpredictable human interferences. Four

spray nozzles allowed the visitors to squirt different solutions into the microclimates, and automatically directed them to read a postcard or think about a topic, as a form of immediate feedback.

The last day was hosted by the local communities group, whowhatwhere. org.uk, who designed a local media centre. The installation consisted of a series of screens – installed in the Back Members’ Room, and at two sites in the Thames Gateway area: John Roan School and Plumstead High Street.

These displayed films about the Thames Gateway bridge proposal, and a series of interviews and events held before and during the forum. Working as a link between the AA (Diploma 14) and the Thames Gateway local communities, whowhatwhere.org design, were also involved in a series of workshops and talks done in collaboration with the other groups at two high schools, as a means to engage specific groups in a debate about the Thames Gateway bridge.

The week-long Forum allowed the students to work continuously in the room, interacting with visitors and logging daily changes in the installations. This was complemented by seminars given by experts and invited guests. The result of a four-week group project, Forum 1, also acted as a catalyst for the development of each student’s personal agenda for the rest of the year.

By Paula Nascimento, a 5th year AA student. This project was followed up by an exhibition in the AA gallery from 29 April untill 26 May 2006. More details on individual installations can be found at whowhatwhere.org.uk

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social cinema design vanguard award 2005 riba president’s medals

Social Cinema The second London Architecture Biennale will take place this summer, on the 16-25 June. Following the success of the previous Biennale, the route now extends beyond Clerkenwell – from Southwark to Kings Cross. This year also sees the introduction of the Student Festival, inviting students from schools of architecture throughout the UK, to take part and design interventions along the Biennale Route. The theme of the Biennale is Change.

The Social Cinema project is a collaboration between architects (and AA alumni) Peter Thomas and Catherine du Toit, and artists Neil Cummings and Marysia Lewandowska. It consists of a series of temporary cinemas installed amongst the existing urban fabric of the Biennale route, projecting films about, set in or commenting on London.

A group of AA students and recent graduates are working with Peter, Catherine, Neil and Marysia to design and curate The AA Social, which will be a node of the Social Cinema project itself and their (student) intervention at the Biennale. Our event takes place on Tuesday 20 June in the Scoop.

The Scoop is an open-air sunken amphitheatre, located within the large riverside public spaces adjacent to the GLA building. The AA event takes as a starting point, the history, location and architectural context of the site, and its integration into the City. At the very heart of the site is the river, and so it is our relationship with the river that has become the central theme: River as source, River as flow, River as change.

The aspects of change which relate to a river are multifarious; there is its own daily tide, which creates a rhythm, and there are the relatively slow changes which occur as a result of urban

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reorganisation and resulting architectural intervention. Within the environment created by these dual forces there exist several layers of human activity, we propose to explore these layers within a series of short films.

The Thames has an iconic presence within the City of London. To many, it is a focal point and acts as a draw for the transient tourist population, but of what significance is it to Londoners?

Often cast in a supporting role within the cinema, and occasionally as the main subject, the river’s picturesque image appears repeatedly in films, from Waterloo Bridge in the 1940s through to Hitchcock’s Frenzy in the 1970s, on to more recent manifestations. We are familiar with images of the massive body of tidal water with its statuesque bridges such as Tower Bridge, but what exists beneath the celluloid surface? What does the film director’s camera miss?

We propose to engage in conversation with current users of the river and surrounding sites, the transient and the more permanent, in order to build a speculation about how the site will continue to evolve.

We will introduce a purpose-built, billowing, horizontal screen to make the audience lie and look up from within the Scoop, as if floating in an imaginary river.

On this horizontal screen we will project a selection of films drawn from feature films and documentaries, exploring fiction and fact, incorporate archive footage and introduce our own new filmic material in order to represent the changing face of London, which can be seen from above or below, from inside or outside. We will invent a new cinematic experience which will invite audiences to go beyond their traditional passive state of watching, to continue their journey along the riverbank, themselves becom-

bd public space winner ees competition open workshop hooke park st john’s mews house development update

ing part of the cinema as they move.

We welcome interest from technical specialists and other forms of sponsorship. More details about this one-night event will be available closer to the time.

For more information please contact us at aasocialcinema@aaschool.ac.uk.

By Sarah Akigbogun, AA alumna.

Bonnie Chu, third year AA student and Jenny Kagan, second year AA student.

Design vanguArd award 2005 Chris Lee, Diploma 6 Unit Master is one of the recipients, with Kapil Gupta of the Urban Design Research Institute in Mumbai, of the Architectural Record Design Vanguard Award for 2005, proving that distance is no barrier to successful collaboration. ‘We like to think we operate between these two extremes; neither taking the position of the catch-all brand, nor being the paralysed, sensitive local architect.

After all, architecture operates in messy conditions’ The two met at the AA, where Lee was a Diploma Honours student in 1998 and Gupta studied in the Graduate School. Current projects include the C House in Bangalore (2007) and Fort School, Mumbai. (2007).

For more information see chris-lee.net and aaschool.ac.uk/dip6 RIBA President’s Medals Benjamin Koren (Intermediate 2) and Adam Furman (Intermediate 5) have been awarded Commendations in the RIBA President’s Medals 2005. Koren was also awarded the Iguzzini Travel Award and the SOM Foundation’s Travelling Fellowship for his project Harmonic Proportion in Amorphic Form: A Music Pavilion.

The software he wrote to generate the pavilion is based on a mechanical device that visualises musical harmony

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through apparently spatial graphs.

Adam Furman’s project, The B’s, uses narrative to create a time-based relationship between structure and occupant, whose imaginations create space so that their habits and routines become inextricable from the physical fabric.

BD Public Space Winner Minseok Kim (Diploma Unit 6, Fifth Year) has won the second annual KPF/Architecture Foundation ‘Public Space’ student travel award with his designs for converting Olympic stadiums into a spaghetti-junction-style road system once the games have finished.

His winning project, Adaptive Typology, was completed as part of his Fourth Year work in Diploma 6 last year, with tutors Chris Lee and Sam Jacoby. The jury, including BD critic Ellis Woodman, David Leventhal of KPF and Rowan Moore of the Architecture Foundation, selected Minseok’s design because it ‘combined building types that usually have destructive urban qualities to create a positive hybrid’. Minseok wins £1000 to spend on travel.

Ees Competition The Architectural Association and the Environments, Ecology and Sustainability Cluster are partnering in an open international competition in search of pioneering ideas, design projects, research initiatives, inventive practice and completed works that highlight insights into the contemporary direction of architecture research and design relative to environments, ecology and sustainability.

The goal is to promote and reveal the potency of new conceptual and experimental work within architecture in relation to environments, ecology and sustainability today. The competition

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is open to all architects, designers, students, engineers, scientists and other related professions that express interest in the relationship between the natural and built environments.

Submissions will be grouped by related themes at the discretion of the technical jury prior to final judging.

The competition winner will be publicly announced in the Autumn of 2006 during the opening of the competition exhibition that will be hosted at the Architecture Association. The exhibition will host a forum discussion between the members of the multidisciplinary jury.

Registration Deadline: August 2006 Submission Deadline: September 2006 For more information or to register, contact: EES Cluster Coordinator ees_curator@aaschool.ac.uk www.aaschool.ac.uk/clusters/ees.shtm Open Workshop Hooke Park The AA’s 2006 Custerson Award Open Workshop, ‘Crossings’ has been set up to offer an opportunity for students from across the School to temporarily step outside their course of study and explore their interests in developing applicable designs for timber construction with tutors Valentin Bontjes van Beek and Nathalie Rozencwajg.

The eventual outcome of the Workshop is to design and construct two new compelling bridge-like structures for Hooke Park, complementing and improving the existing public pathway.

With designs that challenge architectural expectations of ‘crossings’, the structures will push the boundaries of wood construction. The workshop will comprise a group of 14 students with a range of different interests and skills.

The Crossings Workshop will be the subject of an AA exhibition in the Autumn Term 2006/07.

Gianni Botsford St John’s Mews House Alumnus and former staff member Gianni Botsford has been getting a lot of media coverage for his first major commission, St John’s Mews House.

An article by Jonathan Glancey in the Guardian in November has been followed up by a spread in Building Design by Graham Bizley in February. Glancey is very impressed by the project, admiring the ‘intelligent planning, generous rooms, ingenious internal views’ and the use of light and air, as well as the discreet exterior, which got it past the planning authorities. Building Design’s Graham Bizley, however, is less enthusiastic.

Whilst he admires the craftsmanship he is not convinced that he would enjoy living in such an environment, likening it to a public art gallery or genetic research laboratory, although he does concede that the family for whom it was built are very happy with it.

Glancey’s article can be viewed at: http://www.guardian.co.uk/arts/critic/ feature/0,1169,1636257,00.html and Bizley’s piece appeared in the February 17 issue of Building Design.

DEVELOPMENT UPDATE The AA receives no statutory funding for either the development of the School or for its public programme of events, lectures and exhibitions. Consequently, it relies upon the generous support of its members, alumni and friends to help maintain its status as one of the most influential schools of architecture today.

We are therefore very grateful for the vision and belief of all of our supporters and for their invaluable contribution to School activities.

In the academic year 2005/06 to date we would like to give special thanks to the following organisations:

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aa exhibitions update New aa publications nicholas boas travel award aa news briefs

KPF for their continued investment in the AA’s lecture programme.

HOK who continue to generously support both our academic and cultural life.

Davis Langdon with whom we enjoy a support relationship, and through whom our students are enabled to have involvement in the Young Architect of the Year Award.

AKT for their continued support of the AA’s Scholarship and Bursary programme, and their contribution to the cultural life of the school.

Finn Forest & Arup both of whom will be instrumental in assisting Intermediate Unit 2 with their Summer Pavilion project.

We would also like to give thanks to the Legacy Executors of the late Mr Anthony Custerson, who have agreed, in line with his interests, to fund the AV Custerson Award for Hooke Park, providing substantial funding for the future development of our Dorset campus site.

Meaningful and mutually beneficial relationships continue to be forged for various areas of School activities including our Scholarships & Bursary Programme, research work being carried out, exhibitions, student projects and the development of School facilities.

Forthcoming fundraising activities include The Cedric Price Bursary Campaign and our annual giving campaign for Projects Review 2005/06.

If you are interested in learning more about supporting the Architectural Association please contact Nicky Wynne, Development Director, on 020 7887 4090 or email development1@aaschool.ac.uk aa exhibitions update Our lives as Exhibitions Organisers would be far simpler if the architects we worked with said ‘here’s a picture of my building for the wall; nothing fancy, a

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drawing pin should do it’. In reality, they come armed with elaborate sketches of raised floors, false ceilings and the gallery transformed into Japanese bathhouses and German Science Centres. High hopes and low budgets necessitate seeking support from the outside world to realise intentions. The generous support of our sponsors make the ambitious nature of the Exhibitions programme possible. Can Buildings Curate received £10,000 from The Arts Council, The Elephant Trust, The Swiss Embassy and Pro Helvetia, and went on to tour internationally. Other AA Exhibitions’ benefactors have included the Gulbenkian Foundation, Silken Hotels, Virgin Airlines and The Concrete Centre.

Blueprint and Icon magazines, the best of the contemporary design press, have added invaluable support with Media sponsorship, insuring that our shows are seen by a wide and appreciative audience.

Nicholas Boas Travel Award The winners of the Nicholas Boas Travel Award 2006 are Stefania Batoeva (Diploma 3), Hiromichi Hata (Intermediate 10) and Jonathan Smith (Diploma 16). The award allows AA students to spend three weeks in Rome during July, working on projects that they have proposed, and is funded by the Nicholas Boas Trust. It was established in memory of former AA student Nicholas Boas who died in 1998, and has been awarded every year since 1999. Students are based at the British School at Rome where Italian history, archaeology, art and architecture have been researched for over 100 years.

Recent AA Publications: structure as space + bodyline

AA news briefs Sonja Stummerer (AA DRL 2001), practising architect and designer in Vienna, has co-authored Food Design, Springer Books 2005. The book investigates the design, colour, odour, taste and consistency of provisions as well as their history and development over time. www.honeyandbunny.com

co-established the Shahneshin Foundation, a not-for-profit independent organisation for the promotion of design, education, research and theory, based in Zurich. The Foundation has recently announced the Shrinkage Worldwide Competition. Entries must be submitted by 15 September 2006. For more info: www.shahneshinfoundation.org

Nili Portugali (AADipl 1973), lecturer at the Bezalel Academy of Art and Design and practising architect in Jerusalem, is about to publish a book entitled The Act of Creation and the Spirit of a Place.

A Holistic-Phenomenological Approach to Architecture Edition Axel Menges, Stuttgart, April 2006.

Jonathan Moorhouse (AADipl 1962) has recently published a book entitled Drawings by Jonathan Moorhouse, SKS (Finnish Literature Society) 2006. An illustrated book, presenting drawings of the SKS interiors and surrounds, the publication celebrates the 175th anniversary of the Society.

Dr Gordana Korolija Fontana-Giusti, (GradDipl(AA) in History and Theory 1987) former AA tutor, was selected to show her project in the programme of the 2005 UIA Congress in Istanbul. The project, which has been funded through the EU Urban Design and Research Scheme, related to the agora, and is based on the connections between public and the theatre.

Eyal Weizman (AADipl 1998) has been appointed the director of the new Centre for Research Architecture at Goldsmiths College: goldsmiths.ac.uk/architecture

Structure As Space: Engineering and Architecture in the Works of Jürg Conzett and his Partners A companion to the AA’s highly successful volume on Peter Märkli (2002), this publication focuses on the work of the Swiss engineer Jürg Conzett, who has contributed more than most to redefining the role of structural engineering and its relation to architecture.

Since setting up his own practice, Conzett has worked with many of Switzerland’s leading architects. Structure as Space includes many notable collaborative works, from the Hanover Expo pavilion with Peter Zumthor to the Zurich Stadium with Meili & Peter. It also presents Conzett’s beautiful bridge designs, such as the granite stressribbon Pùnt da Suransuns and the timber Traversina footbridge.

Texts by Mohsen Mostafavi and Bruno Reichlin explore in depth the relation of engineering and architecture and the impact of engineering infrastructures on our natural environment.

Current Practices 3 £40.00 – ISBN 1 902902 01 7

Bodyline: The End of our Meta-Mechanical Body Bodyline, a visual essay on the human body, approaches its subject in a spirit both playful and seriously experimental.

Organised by themes in turn figurative and abstract, organic and mechanical, immaterial and ultra-material, Bodyline contains not one predictable image of the body. Instead it uses diffracted views to conjure seven alternative visions of the flesh in the age of meta-mechanical reproduction, reconstructing the human physique by means of synthetic images, clothing patterns and technical blueprints. As such, Bodyline is as much about perception and delineation as it is about the body.

The book is drawn from work of the AA’s Diploma Unit 5 under the guidance of George L-Legendre and Lluís Viu Rebés.

Edited by George L-Legendre £10.00 – ISBN 1 902902 46 7 Recent AA Publications are currently available at aaschool.info/publications

Daniele Geltrudi, architect in Italy and AA Member since 2004, has been awarded the Premio di architettura MAESTRI COMACINI for his Casa Rossa, a community building in the outskirts of Como.

The independent architecture magazine UME is celebrating 10 years of publication! Published and edited by former AA tutors Jackie Cooper and Haig Beck (AADipl 1973), the magazine has featured numerous AA notables through the years. www.umemagazine.com Siamak Shahneshin (AA E&E 2000), architect urbanist and author, has

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AArchitecture Architectural Association School of Architecture

Issue 1

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