News from the Architectural Association Issue 6
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Verso AArchitecture News from the Architectural Association Issue 6 / Summer 2008 aaschool.net ©2008 All rights reserved. Published by the Architectural Association, 36 Bedford Square, London WC1B 3ES Contact: contribute@aaschool.ac.uk Nicola Quinn +44 (0)20 7887 4000 To send news briefs: news@aaschool.ac.uk Editorial Team Brett Steele, Editorial Director Nicola Quinn, Managing Editor Zak Kyes / Zak Group, Art Director Wayne Daly, Graphic Designer Alex Lorente Fredrik Hellberg
UAE Traffic Saratoga Bldg., Al Barsha, Dubai viatraffic.org UK Architectural Association 36 Bedford Square, London WC1B 3ES Private Press Unit 12, Sunbury Workshops, London E2 7LF USA Family 436 N. Fairfax Ave., LA, CA 90036 familylosangeles.com William Stout Architectural Books 804 Montgomery Street, SF, CA 94133 stoutbooks.com Or email: aarchitecture@aaschool.ac.uk Contributors Jeroen van Ameijde <ameijde_je@aaschool.ac.uk>
Acknowledgements Shumon Basar Alya Karame Achim Menges Martin Self
Noam Andrews <andrews_no@aaschool.ac.uk>
Printed by Cassochrome, Belgium
Wayne Daly <daly_wa@aaschool.ac.uk>
AArchitecture is available from the following locations: Belgium Copyright Nationalestraat 28a, B-2000 Antwerpen copyrightbookshop.be Copyright Jakobijnenstraat 8, B-9000 Gent copyrightbookshop.be France Section 7 Books, Castillo/Corrales 65, rue Rébeval F-75019 Paris Germany Pro qm Almstadtstr. 48–50, D-10119 Berlin
Shumon Basar <shumon91@hotmail.com>
Margaret Dewhurst <margiedewhurst@hotmail.com> Oliver Domeisen <ojm@dlmarchitects.com> Henderson Downing <henderson@aaschool.ac.uk> Rojia Forouhar Abadeh <abadeh_ro@aaschool.ac.uk> David Greene <greeneda@wmin.ac.uk> Samantha Hardingham <mclean@mailbox.co.uk> Michael Hensel <michaelhensel@aaschool.ac.uk>
Amandine Kastler <amandinekastler@hotmail.com>
AARCHITECTURE
Zak Kyes <z@zak.to>
CLIENTS AND PATRONS: Julia Peyton-Jones Pg 4 GIVE VISIBILLITY TO OTHER THINGS Pg 6 MADELON VRIESENDORP: MIND GAMES Pg 12 Making an Exhibition of Ourselves Pg 14 BUILDING THE DRL 10 Pavilion Pg 18 AA Summer Pavilion Pg 20 Intensely Hanoi Pg 21 ecoLogic Design Experiments Pg 22 AA|FAB COMPETITION Pg 24 Permanent/Impermanent Pg 25 RICHARD ROGERS Pg 26 DRL TEN POINT ZERO Pg 27 BASICALLY URBAN Pg 29 MARGINAL Pg 33 Inter 9: Breaking the Rules Pg 36 THE LANGUAGE OF ROBOTS Pg 38 Netbridge Patagonia Pg 40 Home Entertainment Pg 42 AA Digital Prototyping Lab Pg 42 Diploma 15: Hanoi 2007 Pg 44 Winter School Middle East Pg 46 THE NEW SILK ROADS Pg 49 Cabinet of Curiosities Pg 52 AA AGENDAS PG 54 AARCHITECTURE 2008–09 PG 54 AA NEWS Pg 55 PUBLIC ANNOUNCEMENT: AA PUBLICATIONS PG 58 AA VISITING SCHOOL PG 59 — I wish I could understand, but I can’t, or maybe I don’t want to. Give visibility to other things. DAVID GREENE, PG 8
Alex Lorente <alex@aaschool.ac.uk> Taneli Mansikkamaki <tinttan@gmail.com> Chris Matthews <info@pastinamatthews.co.uk> Markus Miessen <miessen@studiomiessen.com> Rashiq Muhamad Ali <rashiqm@gmail.com> Joel Newman <joel@aaschool.ac.uk> Jan Nauta <jannauta@gmail.com> Yusuke Obuchi <yobuchi@aaschool.ac.uk> Kyong Park <kdpark@ucsd.edu> Claudia Pasquero <claudia@ecologicstudio.com> Christopher Pierce <pierce_ch@aaschool.ac.uk> Marco Poletto <marco@ecoLogicStudio.com> Tom Verebes <tverebes@oceand.com> Charles Walker <charles.walker@zaha-hadid.com> Cover Extracts from print material produced for Visiting School 2008 by AA Print Studio. See p.59 for further details. Architectural Association (Inc.), Registered Charity No. 311083. Company limited by guarantee. Registered in England No. 171402. Registered office as above.
Switzerland Buchhandlung Kunstgriff Limmatstrasse 270, 8005 Zürich
Hugo Hinsley <hinsley@aaschool.ac.uk>
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Issue 6 / Summer 2008
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Public Programme: Clients and Patrons AA Lecture, 19 February 2008
The idea of doing an ongoing talks series entitled ‘Clients and Patrons’ struck us last year when the AA invited Dominique Boudet to give a presentation on his home, the Villa dall’Ava, designed by OMA/Rem Koolhaas. One student came up to me afterwards and said, ‘Clients like Dominique must be even rarer than architects like Rem…’, which was an endearingly honest and provocative statement. Somehow, architecture schools have the so-called ‘liberation’ to imagine projects without the actual pleasure and pain of having real clients as such. If we are to follow Marco Frascari’s analogy, a building without a client is like a child without a father: either impossible or an immaculate conception… Edith Farnsworth’s account of the house that Mies built for her is an altogether more torrid tale than the one he has bequeathed to history. Ditto for the Frank family, who commissioned Peter Eisenman to make them a home, House VI, at a time when Eisenman was undergoing intense psychoanalysis. The family’s own therapy surfaced in a book they wrote called The Client’s Response. So, there’s a history of things, of buildings, of ideas and of cities that is yet to be written, a history from the client’s point of view. Clients are, to differing degrees, the ‘silent authors’ of significant works. Rem Koolhaas, during the 24-Hour Interview Marathon that took place in the pavilion he codesigned with Cecil Balmond, said that the Serpentine Gallery had to be ‘the most influential public art institution in the world per square metre’. And it’s this schism – between the physical size of the Serpentine Gallery and its abstract size as a venue that thinks about expansion in very different and innovative ways – that makes the Serpentine Gallery and the AA very alike.
Clients and Patrons: Julia Peyton-Jones
John Offenbach
Shumon Basar, AACP director
Serpentine Gallery Pavilion 2006, Designed by Rem Koolhaas and Cecil Balmond, with Arup; frieze designed by Thomas Demand
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This was the beginning of Zaha’s project (the tented structure that she designed for us), and like all good projects it didn’t begin fully formed. It began as a pragmatic response to a situation the Serpentine found itself in because the Princess of Wales, who was the patron of our renovation appeal, was due to come to the gallery for dinner and was killed three weeks before the event. Vanity Fair were the sponsors and, as you may know, they are extraordinarily good at giving parties. So when they stopped supporting the Serpentine Gallery we wanted to do something that was different, something resolutely about being a contemporary gallery showing contemporary art that challenged people and indeed our guests. So we invited Zaha to design this extraordinary structure for our lawn, where people had dinner. But we treated it exactly like a commission, and the idea was that it would Julia Peyton-Jones
be up for three days. The Serpentine has always done projects that can actually have an incredibly short duration, but that has never seemed to be a problem if they are specific. What happened then was that Chris Smith, the Secretary of Culture, Media and Sport, who attended the dinner, liked the structure so much that he insisted it stayed till the end of the summer. The year after we explored the idea of what would happen if we did it again, and the team quite understandably felt that perhaps it was not a good idea to repeat these endeavours. Consequently we left it very late to invite Daniel Libeskind… I think it is incredibly difficult to read architecture models and drawings, and often if you see photographs they are so astoundingly beautiful as images that that in itself is a kind of fiction, and books are great but they are another sort of veneer, so that doesn’t seem to really do. What does do, is to feel what it is like to be in the space, and what you can tell about an architect’s work by being in the space. After all, artists do all kinds of exhibitions of their work, they don’t always do the same exhibition, just as architects don’t design the same building all the time. [The pavilion] is such a simple premise, a sort of show-and-tell really, and it is also the idea of a new wing for the institution. The exhausting thing about making a new building for art is that you do it all and then you have to have the programmes and exhibitions. And all that effort to make the structure fades so quickly and it’s over, whereas this retains freshness, and feels like a contribution of a very different kind. There is also something very interesting about the way the public feel so comfortable with these structures. I mean the number of times I’ve seen people hovering outside the Serpentine, peeping in, even though we don’t charge admission, but with these things people seem to feel completely at home; the experience is so much more open and engaging and so much simpler. That seems to be an entirely good thing. Julia Peyton-Jones is Director of the Serpentine Gallery. Selection and transcription by Rojia Forouhar Abadeh, a fourth year student
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By Zak Kyes with David Greene & Samantha Hardingham
Give Visibility to Other Things Zak Kyes: The book L.A.W.U.N Project #19, a portable archive and 70s scrapbook, is folded in between an amazing collection of ephemera from newspapers, car magazines, Popular Mechanics clippings, mail-order catalogues and electronics brochures. How did these images become the raw material for the projects that follow? David Greene: Marshall McLuhan said somewhere that culture is what most of the people are doing most of the time. If one was trying to make an architecture that resonated with the culture that it served then, for me, you had to wash the car, watch TV, mow the lawn or at least read some magazines. So in a way ephemera is the wrong word because all that stuff was the raw material for architecture. It was the conceptual material out of which architecture would inevitably flow. Not an incomprehensible algorithm or computer script, but a real thing – a washing machine or a pair of trousers. It is nice of you to call it a portable archive. If the book-thing is that then it will have captured some of the spirit of Archigram that disappeared down the great plug hole of desire in wanting to be an architect. But what was the question again? Ah yes, that these images are the raw material for all my projects. And how did they become the raw material? Well, because they were so absolutely beautiful, strange yet real, technically arresting and useful, and everyone in the pictures was smiling.
Zak Kyes
ZK: The book collects together projects ranging from a fifth-year thesis project (a mosque in an imagined Baghdad) to re-workings of both old and new projects completed literally seconds before their deadline. I am interested in your perspective Sam, as an editor and collaborator, on the process of constant re-workings, collaborations and the absence of any ‘final products’ as a design methodology.
L.A.W.U.N Project #19, co-authored by David Greene and Samantha Hardingham and designed by Zak Kyes accompanies the exhibition L.A.W.U.N Project #20. Available at aaschool.ac.uk/publications
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Samantha Hardingham: The method with the book was always to work with a dummy – a kind of dummyology – forming the content and the object simultaneously. And you are right, I don’t like the idea of final products but prefer by-products; in this case a book, an exhibition, a piece of film, a poster, a group of people working together over a period of time. A collaborative way of working is the path of most resistance and Give Visibility to Other Things
therefore a vital one. This, I think, is especially important today, given the way design studios operate and the proliferation of un-expedited information. Today the boundaries between disciplines are constantly blurring and changing definition. Cedric Price’s own useful ‘note to self’ was to know at what point, as a human being and designer, you are sufficiently incomplete. I like that. Architectural history and architectural futures are a constant reworking of a few ideas that change in relation to a specific point in time under a set of specific influences; cultural, political, technical, representational etc. Mostly the ideas remain potent but the language changes. And so we have to keep learning to read – David and his work encourages you to do that. ZK: This collaboration is also evident in the book’s by-line, a by-line co-authored by the two of you. From our making the book together it is clear that this designation is more than just semantics. Could you describe the nature of your involvement which, in addition to being that of an editor, seems to simultaneously include conjurer, archivist, arbiter, writer and above all accomplice? SH: All of your descriptions of the various roles I might have played do sound much more exciting than just ‘editor’ or ‘author’. But actually ‘editor’ (like ‘architect’) is a fantastically generalist term for someone who makes or plans ‘something’, which leaves a lot of room for interpretation. With such a wide-ranging portfolio of David’s work to cover – drawings, scribblings, models, articles, film scripts – my own intentions were simply to present the work, visually, in the most true-to-form manner – that is, it had to be a great and atmospheric picture-book as well as a useful one. In this I think we succeeded, but credit should also go to the book’s contributors, Sand Helsel, Robin Middleton and Sam Jacob. Chris Pierce describes their contributions as ‘sentimental’ in his AJ review; I prefer to think they were ‘human’. ZK: The volume of books published has exploded in the twenty-first century, consuming – as David writes in his postscript to L.A.W.U.N Project #19, ‘more forest than the construction of the whole of the Spanish Armada’. This seems to show that the supposedly ‘dead’ technology of the
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book is still an incredibly vital aspect of public thinking. Having been involved in the production of several unusual books from the ‘Crits’ series to a portable version of Cedric Price’s library how you would describe your increasingly multivalent editorial position? SH: I do what I do because I like ‘book things’. I hold my architectural education at the AA in large part responsible for this – as a student of John Frazer’s I very quickly learnt to appreciate how not to be nostalgic or obsessive about the nature of the object but to be more inquisitive and demanding about the potential of a project (and its reader or user) to participate in the subject. Every situation presents new and delightful possibilities. ZK: David, you have used the words ‘seeds’ and ‘doors’ to describe some of the projects and your own delightful possibilities, suggesting that the potential of a real idea (as opposed to a realised idea) might be a more potent provocation in considering the fate of architecture and technology. How did the idea of seeds, and the various ways they have been sown (ranging from pure fantasy, to poetry and instruction-based works) come about at a time when, as a student, you were expected to design railway stations, offices and a civic square in Nottingham? DG: I don’t remember using the word seed but I like it. As with all my colleagues in Archigram I had a very practical architectural training – that is why all Archigram projects are actually quite dull in a way. I have never engaged in architectural fantasy – reality, for me, has always been fantastic enough, and poetry only describes that which is real, don’t you think? We are all trying to be poets one way or another, otherwise why bother getting up in the morning? Yes, I was expected to design offices and air terminals, but I wanted them to be beautiful, sensuous and socially inspiring, even conceptually brazen and technically hair-raising. The difference between then and now is that today the poetic is assumed to lie outside the drama of the everyday, with schools of architecture now consumed only by the manic vanity of the tutors. John Updike once suggested that the grand public narratives of life had been surrendered to the soapopera – life, death, love, jealously, betrayal and loyalty – so that literature had disappeared into the minutiae of the individual. What I am trying to do is reemphasise the late Robert Rauschenberg’s claim that if you can’t find your art on your own block then you are not an artist. For art read architecture. But I’m rambling. Back to seed. Yes, I like to think that I sow seeds, and as a tutor that AArchitecture – Issue 6
I open doors. As to your other question about the idea being more potent than its realisation, you would get a longer and more reasoned response from AC Grayling or Mark Cousins. For myself I would answer yes. ZK: As design practices like architecture and graphic design are increasingly taking place across networks and behind screens it seems tempting to think that intelligence lies within these systems. But the Invisible University’s vision of planet earth as a zoo in space (scattered with Mowbots, Rok and LogPlugs) presents a contrary vision. DG: I can only agree with you – what I am showing therefore becomes a sort of Rousseauesque vision. But I reject the idea that intelligence lies within these systems. I leave that to the DRL and other technocrats. For me, systems are tools and intelligence simply lies with the user. ZK: In a recent lecture at the AA, Ralph Rugoff spoke about his exhibition ‘A History of Invisible Art’, which collected together examples of ‘invisible art’ – an empty air-conditioned room (Art & Language), a column of pressurised air (Michael Asher) and architectures of air (Yves Klein). Like this invisible art, does your drift towards invisibility actually attempt to give visibility to other things?
Clockwise from top left: A list of the twenty alternate titles of L.A.W.U.N Project #19; Right and bottom: Working dummy used in making the book
DG: Although I wonder about many things (such as why am I so confused and stupid, or why I am not taller and thinner), I do not wonder at all about the ‘drift towards invisibility’, as you call it. My interest in invisibility was a completely logical (and in some ways doctrinaire) consequence of my adherence to the traditional modernist dogma about a relationship between form and technology. It was also a completely logical consequence of my contact with the strategies of conceptual art and my attempt to infiltrate the derelict, morbid fascination of an architecture of appearances with the values, as I saw them, of structuralist philosophy. Just look at the two most potent local architectural and planning issues of today – housing and the Olympics. Do I have to spell it out – housing should not be the site of the vanities of confectionery architecture and the Olympics should not be the playground for the obese vanities of the architectural profession. Both have been hijacked by the surface industries. I wish I could understand this, but I can’t, or maybe I don’t want to. Give visibility to other things. Zak Kyes is AA Art Director. David Greene and Samantha Hardingham are AA First Year tutors.
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This page Clockwise from right: David Greene presenting the Citycrusher project at the AA in 1993; Notes by Video Guerilla; Detail and spread of Mowbot, the world’s first truly automatic lawnmower. Borrowed from a product ordered from Popular Science, January 1996; The architecture comes to you: the liberation of the habitat from the conventions of society and the recycling of consumer products into the architecture arena. Shown as spread from L.A.W.U.N Project #19 Opposite page Clockwise from top: David Greene with dog and Samantha Hardingham meeting with Zak Kyes in his studio. According to Shin Egashira dogs are a recurrent theme in David Greene’s work; Design Your Own Lecture, an advertisement for the Invisible University; Invisible University information sheets, a system for data collection since 2003. Picture information sheet compiled by Nick Lister
IMAGINE PLANET EARTH AS A Z00 IN SPACE. AND THE UK AS A GARDEN IN THE ZOO. THINK OF LONDON AS A COUNTRY HOUSE, THE PENNINES AS A ROCKERY, THE ROADS AS WINDING PATHS. THESE GARDEN LAYOUT STUDIES INVESTIGATE SOME EXCITING PLANTING PROXIMITIES. COMPILED BY NICK LISTER GARDEN U.K. 1:100,000
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Give Visibility to Other Things
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:i`k`ZXc Glijl`k&D`e[ >Xd\& ?fd\ 8eXcpj`j B`k This ‘game’ will reveal to us our deeper consciousness, our true nature, and the characteristics we take such care to hide behind our self-styled identity. It will test our ability to expose ourselves and to react in a positive way to critical interpretation and analysis. This can be done with lovers, family and friends, or among a wider circle of acquaintances, strangers, even mortal enemies. You might find out as much about yourself as you do about them and your relationship with them, you might have more or less in common than you previously thought. It might confirm all your suspicions or hopes about the nature of your character and theirs, or give you entirely new insights and open up new vistas to a future of increased mutual understanding and appreciation – or else it might reveal the real reason why you never could get on and stayed at a safe distance. Either way, it could build, heal or destroy a relationship. Alternatively you could take no notice and keep your predilections and prejudices intact, without so much as a wink. (P.S. Take heed, this attitude could land you in hot water.)
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M a d e lo n M in d G Vri e s e n d o rp ’s a ex h ib it m e s , fr o m a n 14 Ja n io n a t th e A A, u a ry – 8 Fe 20 0 8. E x tr a c b ru a ry The W t fr o m o rl d of Vri e s e nd o rp M ad e lo n A A Pu p u b li s h e d b y b li c a ti ons aasc h o o l. p u b li c a c .u k / a ti o n s
By Henderson Downing
Making an Exhibition of Ourselves: (Georgian) Patio and Pavilion(s)
Sue Barr
P J Barnett
Sue Barr
Top: Absolutely Pre-fabricated, Intermediate 4, 2002; Bottom left: The Collapse of Time, John Hejduk, 1986; Bottom right: Reactive Timber Exhibition, by Diploma 11, 2004
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The title character of Paul Auster’s Auggie Wren’s Christmas Story runs a cigar store in Brooklyn. Every morning he positions himself at the corner of Atlantic Avenue and Clinton Street and photographs the same view at precisely the same time. Like a local agent for Giorgio Agamben’s apocalyptic ‘angel of photography’ he has accumulated thousands of images of forgotten encounters that demand to be remembered. What if Auggie Wren had undertaken a similar project in London, with the broad pavement across the road from the AA as the focal point? In recent decades, the pavement has hosted an array of important work by international architects, artists and AA students. The materialisation of exhibitions within this slice of commonly used space instantly arouses public curiosity by introducing wider access to the dialogic culture of the school. Yet once each event is over, no physical remnants remain in the space. Consequently, while Wren’s photographs might record the passage of a few pedestrians and pigeons (and the odd grey squirrel amongst seasonal drifts of tree pollen), these images would primarily illustrate the subtle atmospheric shifts of weather and light in the repetition of the same evacuated scene. On rare occasions, the photographer might register a moment when the pavement teems with life as an assembly point for fire drills or false alarms, those grudgingly plein air rehearsals for an event that transforms the space into a carnivalesque site: the annual Projects Review. But most of the time, save for the immobile curves of an elegant lamp-post, the images would seem to represent very little... almost nothing. Nevertheless, by persistently photographing the same spot day after day, the resulting archive would hold vital evidence that the Georgian equilibrium, dutifully maintained through the preservationist ethos of Bedford Estates, continues to be punctuated by sporadic constructions of a more recent vintage. Fortunately, as last year’s Photo Library exhibition Neighbours: Making an Exhibition of Ourselves demonstrated, an edited version of such an archive already exists. Since the erection of John Hejduk’s The Collapse of Time in 1986, the transitory structures and temporary installations that have populated the pavement have been consistently photographed. Hejduk’s extraordinary clock-tower, commemorating the victims of the Gestapo, accompanied his exhibition Victims in the AA Front Member’s Room overlooking the square. Twenty years later, Rob Voerman’s startling Annex #4 seemed to have crash-landed on the site. A timber cabin mutating from the shell of an upturned Peugeot, the hybrid object rapidly became the focus of various public appropriations that spawned a crude index of passing desire: Making an Exhibition of Ourselves
whether as a rendezvous for blind dates or as a phantasmagorical crack-den. Annex #4 was also visible from the AA Gallery where the show Bad Buildings, Good Spaces displayed several of Voerman’s other works. By generating a productive reciprocity between the regulated spaces outside and inside the school, both Hejduk and Voerman exemplify creative approaches to the site’s unique context. The recent exhibition celebrating the DRL’s tenth anniversary continued and expanded this process with the [C]SPACE pavilion. As a typology, pavilions have a complex architectural history that drifts from the periphery of the design of parks and gardens into a pivotal role within the development of urban modernity (particularly as schizoid icons of Expos and Biennales where they double as exhibit and exhibition space). Their open structure enables them to mediate between such well-worn oppositional relationships as interior and exterior, building and landscape, ornament and function, past and present. The annual pavilion competition organised by Intermediate Unit 2 intersects with this legacy, testing the potentialities of the pavilion as a fabricated structure. The genealogy of distinctively modern pavilions that have graced what could be tenuously characterised as a Georgian patio can be traced back to a pavilion installation designed by Mary Miss. Part cosmological clock, part navigational compass, the pavilion was inspired by astronomical devices that Miss recalled encountering at the Royal Greenwich Observatory, a recollection triggered by her sense of disorientation when confronted with the locked gardens of the square. In 1988, Andrew Holmes assembled The Garden of Possibilities on the site: rising from the pavement, a grid of bare scaffolding framed the view from the AA towards nine square plots of a Ballardian landscape encrypted with blooms of industrial wreckage. In November of that same year, Coop Himmelb(l)au exhibited part of their façade-free Open House project, an ‘open architecture’ designed for the distinctly warmer climate of Malibu rather than the wintry streets of Bloomsbury. More recently, the pavement has been dynamically utilised as a venue by diverse units and programmes across the spectrum of the school, and in 2003, a large wooden windmill constructed by students working with Shin Egashira spectacularly enriched a Moulin Rougethemed end of term party. Momentarily staying with the Paris theme (when contemplating the invisible legacy of the site, multiple connections surface), for the radical avantgarde groups associated with Guy Debord, the plaque tournante designated a psychogeographical hub where different zones of urban ambience
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Top: The Collapse of Time, John Hejduk, 1986; Middle: Installation by Mary Miss, 1987; Bottom: 2007 Intermediate 2 Pavilion, designed by Margaret Dewhurst
coalesced or became refracted. As a useful concept for analysing a range of urban sites that emerge as turbulent locations receptive to the flow of social, political, economic, cultural and emotional forces, the plaque tournante has been critically neglected in the burgeoning secondary literature on Situationist-related topics. By uncovering traces of the submerged micro-histories of this leafy corner of Bedford Square, where the ambience suddenly shifts from the brash commercial flux of Tottenham Court Road to something more sedate and seemingly more stable, the architectural importance of a space that has been periodically overlooked (in several senses) can be revealed. Such a revelation also positions the AA as an influential
Henderson Downing works in the AA Photo Library
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Sue Barr
Valerie Bennett
Valerie Bennett
Hélène Binet
Hélène Binet
P J Barnett
Opposite page Left: The windmill built for the Moulin Rouge Christmas Party, December 2003; Top right: ‘Open House Project’ by Coop Himmelb(l)au, November 1988; Bottom right: Installation by Rob Voerman, part of his AA Exhibition Bad Buildings, Good Spaces
plaque tournante, a key hub for any ambient mapping of the global architectural network. Alternatively, rather than resorting to previous models, an everyday analogue for these fleeting interruptions of the neighbourhood status quo appears in the form of the occasional office outcasts lingering on the pavement while sucking through the discrete chronologies of their cigarettes. After all, such material expressions of the unnoticed rhythms of the city are more in keeping with Auggie Wren’s principal vocation as a tobacconist.
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By Rashiq Muhamad Ali
Valerie Bennett
The Art of the Impossible and the Techniques of the Improbable: Building the DRL 10 Pavilion
The Process: AA DRL students constructing the pavilion; Top: Day 9; Bottom left: Day 25; Bottom right: Day 20; Opposite: The Pavilion’s opening night
Valerie Bennett
Sponsors: Rieder Co; Adams Kara Taylor; Zaha Hadid Architects; Innova Construction; Buro Happold; Philips; DHA Design Services ltd.
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The idea of building a pavilion to mark the 10th anniversary of the DRL programme had been floating around for some time. Choosing an individual or a team to design the pavilion would not have been justified, so a competition was launched and the winning entry by Alan Dempsey (AADRL 2002) and Alvin Huang (AADRL 2004) was selected from a pool of twenty-two or so entries. The design itself was a challenge as the requirements included an untested building material – Fibre-C panels – which had previously only been used for flooring and cladding. This time, they were to be used as structural components – a whole new system of construction was born. After intensive structural testing, thanks to AKT, we realised that the costs had increased to such an extent that we would have to use students to build the whole structure. So here we were, with a completely new construction material, an untested system of construction, a low budget, a team of DRL students as builders, and the pressure of living up to the expectations of erecting ‘the most ambitious pavilion in the history of the AA’ (thanks to Brett Steele). To make things worse, there was no reference source to help us. And the pavilion was supposed to be constructed in three weeks, in time for the DRL 10 exhibition opening. Clueless as we were, we started the construction on 4 February and almost immediately faced complications in the construction process. We took these in our Building the DRL 10 Pavilion
stride and solved them one at a time. We decided that there were on average two problems a day, so every day we were prepared for a few glitches. The trouble was that the construction was such a linear process that unless they were solved on the spot, there was no way forward. So we did what any right thinking student would do: we improvised. Work seemed to move slowly but it moved at a steady pace. However, the deadline had to be extended. Constructing anything in Bedford Square is going to be a public spectacle, so we made a show out of it. We had a constant stream of visitors to the square, and there was plenty of advice offered by various people, ranging from engineers and movie directors to the old ladies who lived across the street. There were our weekend visitors, some who had come from afar after hearing about the pavilion. Some would pity a bunch of students working in the cold, wet London weather and buy coffee for the whole crew. After six weeks of intense 8am–7pm shifts without weekends off, tons of screws, nuts, bolts, gaskets, drilling, backaches and constant complaints, hard hats and torn gloves, whining neighbours and friendly passers by, living through a confusing wave of despair and amazement, the pavilion was finally finished. The best part was that it was standing. And as of today, it still is! Rashiq Muhamad Ali has just completed the AADRL MArch
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By Charles Walker
Intensely Hanoi By Hugo Hinsley
The Intermediate Unit 2 AA Summer pavilion programme continues this year: our fifth year of designing pavilions and third year of constructing one for the AA Projects Review in Bedford Square. The Swoosh pavilion will follow last year’s Bad Hair pavilion and the Fractal pavilion of 2006. In addition, it will form part of the London Architecture Festival. Under the tutorship of Martin Self (my fellow Unit Master) and me, the students are guided through a process that moves from ideas to design, technique, analysis and finally fabrication. This year the unit was restructured so that the process of authoring and selecting the pavilion became more collective, and the pavilion itself more collaboratively designed and owned by the unit as a whole. With a rich spirit of craftsmanship infusing the unit, the students set off in the first term on a series of computer scripting exercises investigating pattern in its pure form, that would later inform the pavilion designs. By the end of the term an invited jury of external architects examined all the work produced in order to select four concepts, models or visualisations that were to move forward as design proposals in the second term. These included: the Spiky pavilion from Ville Saarikoski, the Lace pavilion from Eyal Shaviv, the idiosyncratic Heart pavilion from Morioka Mitsumasa and the abstract pattern study from Valeria Garcia. After Christmas the unit restructured as four groups of three and these proposals were developed as mature pavilion designs. In a tough jury deliberation at mid-term two proposals were selected. The dramatic rendering of the Spiky pavilion (from Ville, Dorette Panagiotopoulou and Anna Piplis) placed it a clear first choice but the jury, including Brett Steele, Amanda Baillieu (editor of BD), Yusuke Obuchi and Oliver Domeisen, became divided over the second choice of either the Lace pavilion or the pattern study of Valeria, Joy Sriyuksiri and Katerina Scoufaridou. In a hairline decision the Lace pavilion was eliminated and two schemes moved forward as final proposals. The unit now restructured as two groups of six students and each developed their proposals into full technical and construction drawings. It is always difficult to change a front-running AArchitecture – Issue 6
scheme and the Spiky pavilion moved cautiously forward while the now re-named Swoosh pavilion team knew that without substantial development they had no chance. With the added support of new team members Eyal, Naoki Kotaka and Zamri Arip the Swoosh team remodelled the pavilion and developed the practical details and new renderings and animations. In the final jury, which included Alex de Rijke (dRMM), Ian Fleetwood (HOK) and Warren Dudding (FinnForest), the Swoosh pavilion edged ahead and was selected as the 2008 AA Summer pavilion, proving once again the limitation of front-running schemes in multiple-round competitions and the opportunity of the underdog. Intermediate Unit 2 would like to thank the kind support of our sponsors: FinnForest, Arup, HOK and media sponsor Building Design. Charles Walker is a Unit Master of Intermediate Unit 2
News from the Architectural Association
Valerie Bennett
Intermediate Unit 2 AA Summer Pavilion
Top and above: Intermediate 2 Pavilion, Final Jury; Left: Render of winning Pavilion design
Hanoi is a fascinating city, poised on the edge of major change. It is full of the energy and optimism of a young and active population. How will it look in ten years’ time? What choices will it make in urban policy and architectural development? Now is a good time to stimulate debate about alternatives. We have just returned from our first intensive workshop in Hanoi, building upon our past experiences in complex and dynamic urban environments, as well as on our research about the global trend towards the development of ‘innovation districts’ at the heart of major cities. Each year the Housing & Urbanism programme runs an intensive design workshop with our MA students in a city which is experiencing rapid change. We usually do a three-year cycle in a city, collaborating with local architecture schools, and working in mixed groups of students and staff. Recent workshop cycles have been in Rio and Shanghai. In Hanoi we worked on the concept of a bio-medical innovation environment on a site just west of the existing city centre, with the aim of testing the potential to become an urbanised part of the developing city fabric rather than an isolated ‘science park’. Current proposals for this site aim to make it the largest bio-medical and bio-technology cluster in Vietnam. It is at the earliest stage of developing a concept and design – the best moment to become involved. The workshop runs for a very intense ten days – with groups discussing, drawing, researching, arguing, and then comparing and presenting their evolving work. It is a stimulating experience for us and for our hosts. Because we commit to a three-year engagement, the work can mature and develop, and it responds to the ongoing debates in the city. The three teams produced thoughtful and challenging alternative strategies and designs – it is impressive what can be done in such a short time. These were presented back to the city planners, the project architects and the university. Back in the AA we will develop this work, in collaboration with our colleagues in Hanoi, and prepare an agenda for next year’s work. One aim of our workshops, as well as providing a very rich educational experience, is to collaborate with city planners, policy makers, institutions and professionals who are working on aspects of the real situation. This is not to become ‘consultants’ to the process but rather to produce parallel research and ideas which may help in developing proposals. The experience of debate is important to the students, and can help in the actual situation in opening-up a richer discussion of the potential of both the physical design and the concept of the development. Hugo Hinsley is a lecturer in the Housing & Urbanism programme in the AA’s Graduate School
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AA Summer Pavilion
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By Claudia Pasquero & Marco Poletto
bundling developed by the populations of Lake Titicaca) to support a new concept of market stall/ swarm market infrastructure. The deployable structure shades while concentrating solar energy to offset local extreme temperature fluctuations. Local techniques and expertise were channelled through a set of diagrammatic constructions and finally realised as large-scale prototypes: the totora model, for instance, loads hundreds of years of development in local bundling techniques of totora reeds onto a parametric splines diagram; the result, a bundled structure pushed to extremes of slenderness and deployability, was tested in a local market generating strong reaction and interaction from the local people. Nobody could predict or even imagine the outcome beforehand and the final model was literally the non-linear product of a consistent transfer of information, matter and energy across traditional boundaries of language, culture, geography and technical expertise.
ecoLogic Design Experiments: Machinic Architectures, Material Prototypes and Collaborative Design
Aqva Garden: Machinic Architectures Aqva Garden (the Fuorisalone, Milan), developed by ecoLogicStudio in collaboration with AA graduate Francesco Brenta, is an artificial garden that functions as a distributed rain collector and water storage system. Unlike conventional recycling systems AG doesn’t hide its functional apparatus; rather it embodies it in its structural matrix. It operates by expanding the climatic effects latent within the management of water and its transitional states. Rainwater becomes the protagonist of perceptual games and gardening processes, opening new potentials in the conception of ecologic infrastructures for the built environment. Socio-economic and environmental cycles become automatically direct material components of the machine, and define potentials of future co-evolution.
AArchitecture – Issue 6
Fibrous Room: Material prototypes Fibrous Room, an installation by us and AA DRL graduate Nilufer Kozikoglu (Garanti Gallery, Istanbul), is an investigation into the emergent properties of complex fibre reinforced cement based structures. The project was conceived as a design research process developed through a series of AA visiting workshops and based on the continuous feedback between the digital and the material realms. The material prototype constructed in the Garanti Gallery is an assemblage defined through a 3D extrusion of a pattern grid found in Islamic art by means of a ‘weaving operator’. While information is accurately transferred from the digital to the actualised diagram, behavioural qualities and resulting tectonic effects are re-described in time by ever-changing material qualities and properties. The life and functioning of the gallery has been altered by this process, automatically incorporating these elements in the machinic construction. Transparency, density, fluidity, flexibility, hardness, accessibility have been evolving in time during the installation process, constantly redefining patterns of usage as well as atmospheric conditions within the gallery space. Concrete has escaped the trap of rigid form to come back to life, in the most real sense. Collaborative Design In the era dominated by networks and flows, typological categorisation still has a great influence in defining the frameworks we use to think about and operate within contemporary society. The flow of information and knowledge between individuals in a team and individuals belonging to separate branches of expertise is essential. In the Intermediate Unit 10 collaborative design experiments in Bolivia (in collaboration with AA LU graduate Ivan Valdez and the Università Catolica) the platform has been first embodied in a methodological matrix, organising the parallel activities of the teams and of the individuals within them. In La Paz the outcome was an ecomachinic prototype of a ‘chiwiña’, which redefined the use of a local construction technique (totora
News from the Architectural Association
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Claudia Pasquero and Marco Poletto are Unit Masters of Intermediate Unit 10 and Directors of the Fibrous Structures Workshop
Left and below: Fibrous Room, Garanti Gallery, Istanbul Sponsors: Aqva Garden: Tenax srl; Tea Rose srl Fibrous Room: La Farge
Laleper Aytek
Claudia Pasquero and Marco Poletto co-founded ecoLogicStudio in 2004; their research focuses on the development and application of a design method capable of exploiting the latest innovations in digital computational design. The work deploys digital technologies as a means of developing hyper-realities, regimes of intense exchange between the artificial and the natural, the designed and the accidental. Ecology is seen as a conceptual as well as a material paradigm; it is a generative force capable of re-describing current paradigms of inhabitation and manipulation of the environment; methodologically it thrives to develop a new design equation where technological progress equals an intensified symbiotic engagement with natural forces, processes and ecosystems. Intermediate Unit 10 (their AA unit) has used this as a brief to explore architecture as the art of managing material processes unfolding in space and time, and to seek to channel the creative forces latent in this to re-describe common design paradigms. Here they look at three recent projects.
ecoLogic Design Experiments
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Competition announcement
Permanent/Impermanent by Wayne Daly
AA|FAB Research Cluster 2007–09
The AA|FAB Research Cluster announces a two-stage competition open to all full-time AA students and staff. The competition seeks design proposals for small-scale pieces to be installed in one of three sites: Room, Building or City. The competition will select nine proposals and with the support of external sponsors award £45,000 to facilitate project development and production of working prototypes. Brief AA|FAB cluster has been established to facilitate research by members of the school community into innovative processes of design and fabrication, and to explore their potential impact on future architectural production and practice. We are interested in receiving proposals that explore the relationship between current manufacturing technology and computational or systematic design techniques as a means of producing design innovation and questioning the traditional role of the architect in design and procurement processes. All nine selected projects will explore techniques of design that take advantage of contemporary fabrication technologies and express the logic of their material-isation and assembly. The competition will be organised around three generic sites of the Room, Building and City. However, the scale of the pieces in all cases will be approximately the same (max. 1.5m3) and should be determined by the materials and manufacturing methods chosen, and development funds available. Site 1: ROOM sponsored by Established & Sons Proposals here should be for a small piece of furniture to be installed in an interior room or space. The project can either address existing domestic or office furniture typologies or propose alternative pieces with explicit installation strategies or scenarios. AArchitecture – Issue 6
Site 2: BUILDING sponsored by Adams Kara Taylor and ARUP How far are buildings and spaces defined by the design of their envelopes? This group will examine the issue of the external envelope and/or enclosure of space. Proposals may look at the boundary of its potential for superficial or surface effect; its ability to communicate information or vary in transparency; its capacity to regulate energy and or environmental exchange; its potential as a site of occupation or interaction between one side and the other. Site 3: CITY sponsored by Land Securities This site will address small-scale pieces in external urban spaces and how the insertion of small elements can often have a disproportionately large effect on the surrounding space or the ambient environment in which it is situated. Street lighting and urban furniture are some examples in this category. Awards The Stage One competition will select a total of nine proposals for further development with three proposals awarded for each site – Room, Building and City. The nine selected proposals will be awarded £1,500 each for further development over the following few months. The Stage Two competition will select three of these nine projects for further technical design and development of a full working prototype. £10,000 will be awarded to each project during this stage.* All nine projects will provide the content for a final public exhibition in autumn 2009. After the final exhibition the pieces funded by the AA|FAB cluster may be sold to help finance and publicise the AA and AA|FAB, which will include the exhibition, symposium and future publications. Should this happen, the winner will receive prize money accordingly and any sale will not affect the rights of the designer in any future agreement with a manufacturer. *The award is not a cash prize. The money will be used solely for expenses related to the development and production of the winning projects.
Opposite: Room Scale Example: Drift Bench designed by Future Systems, manufactured by Established and Sons. This version was produced in resin. This page, bottom: Small scale, component or elemental pieces focused on enclosure and surface.
For competition schedule and more information on submission details and eligibility, please visit our website aa-fab.net or send an email to aafab@aaschool.ac.uk
News from the Architectural Association
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The Rashid Karami International Fair (formerly the Lebanon Permanent International Fair) occupies a large area on the edge of the northern Lebanese city of Tripoli. At the invitation of the Lebanese government, Brazilian architect Oscar Niemeyer began work on the project in 1962 during his period of self-imposed exile, with construction commencing in 1967. Though building work was completed in 1974, the onset of civil war in Lebanon the following year put paid to any immediate use, and 34 years on it has still to be assigned a tenant or purpose. Originally intended as a public site for cultural, recreational and commercial use, the Fair is often overlooked in Niemeyer’s catalogue of work, perhaps due to its relative failure as a functioning space. Despite its current state of disrepair, the complex is still a magnificent example of Niemeyer’s unique brand of architectural expressionism, and to the uninitiated like myself, a disarmingly modern discovery in a city largely defined by two millennia of history and tradition. In recent years the grounds have been the subject of much debate among local authorities in Tripoli and the Lebanese architectural community. The Fair is generally not accessible to the public, although an initiative by the Club Velo charity programme occasionally allows individuals to rent bicycles there for an entrance fee. The vast expanse of flat concrete also provides an ideal environment for local skateboarders, and various private conventions, weddings and political meetings periodically take place in the large exhibition centre. One suggested plan for the complex included a Disneyland-style amusement park, which would have involved building over most of the existing concrete structure – an idea which thankfully never secured the necessary support. With its 101-year-old architect still thriving, and with the basic structures of the Fair still intact, hopefully this faded gem will realise its full potential some day soon. While the long-term future of the site remains unresolved, however, the disparity between its titular (and material) grandeur and its transient occupants will remain.
AA|FAB Research Cluster
Wayne Daly is AA Print Studio graphic designer Photos: Alya Karame
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Public Programme: AA Lecture, 21 January 2008 By Nicola Quinn
DRL TEN AA Exhibition, 22 February–18 March 2008
DRL TEN POINT ZERO
Valerie Bennett
RICHARD ROGERS: BUILDINGS AND CITIES
Richard Rogers spoke to a packed Lecture Hall in one of his rare appearances at the AA. The talk, entitled Buildings and Cities, featured many of his most famous projects ranging from the Pompidou Centre through to Barajas Airport Terminal 4 and the National Assembly for Wales. The lecture was part recounting experiences of his various projects, part outlining the practice’s ideology and part commentary on issues pertaining to architecture in the modern world. The house that he built for his parents in 1968 allowed a nostalgic look back at the early days of his career, as did his retelling of the competition process for the Pompidou Centre. In discussing the Lloyd’s Building and the forthcoming Leadenhall Building, Rogers was able to talk about public space and the importance of having spaces in his projects that the public can enjoy. Even buildings that are ostensibly office blocks tend to have areas within them devoted to public use. Madrid Barajas Airport and the National Assembly for Wales allowed reflection on sustainability issues. Madrid Barajas Airport was designed in such a way as to take full advantage of all available natural light through roof lights cut into the canopy. The National Assembly for Wales also utilises daylight in addition to employing natural ventilation techniques which AArchitecture – Issue 6
can be employed throughout the building – none of the offices have air conditioning. Rainwater is also collected and used to clean the windows and supply the toilets. Being a lifetime member of the Labour Party, and Labour Peer since 1996 seems to inform the practice ideology, in terms of employee structure. It was explained how its charity status means that everyone stands to benefit, and all wages are capped; the directors’ earnings based on a multiple of the lowest paid. He also talked about his role as chair of the Greater London Authority panel for architecture and urbanism and his capacity as advisor to Ken Livingstone, the then Mayor of London. This role allows some input into policy in the development of the city. His outlook as presented in the lecture, together with his well known stance on housing whereby developments should include across the board affordability, seems to encapsulate what modern architects should be looking at in the city of the 21st century. It remains to be seen in light of recent changes at the GLA how much influence he will retain in the future. Hopefully these ideas will continue to inform architectural projects in years to come. Nicola Quinn is Managing Editor of AArchitecture
News from the Architectural Association
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DRL TEN: A Design Research Compendium cover and spread. Designed by Julie Kim for AA Print Studio.
The DRL TEN Events had multiple roles and aimed to achieve three main objectives. The first was to narrate a documentary history of ten years of the DRL’s work through an archive of projects developed both by DRL design teams and by graduates and staff outside the programme. Secondly, it aimed to evaluate the status of past and ongoing design research agendas, paradigms and concepts in relation to their associated tools, methods and design outcomes. Thirdly, and perhaps most importantly, the DRL TEN Events were a device with which to explore the broader implications of this work for architectural culture. Our aim was not to mark the closure of a phase of work but rather to step back in order then to make a big leap forward to reframe the terms of engagement for the staff and students of the DRL over the coming decade. In the exhibition, spread across two floors of the AA, in the Gallery and Front Member’ Room, design work was presented from all 104 DRL design teams (of 354 graduates) since 1997, from current staff of the DRL, and also from a selection of esteemed graduates – the Young Punks – who were invited to demonstrate their worldwide influence in architectural practice, teaching and research. The exhibition was coordinated by Theodore Spyropoulos. DRL Ten Point Zero
DRL TEN Pavilion The assembly of the pavilion in front of the AA School was part of the DRL TEN exhibition. It was a live construction project coordinated by Yusuke Obuchi and Patrik Schumacher and built by current DRL students with the assistance of a team from Rieder & Co. The project was sponsored by Rieder & Co, Adams Kara Taylor, Zaha Hadid Architects, Innova Construction, Buro Happold, Philips and DHA Design Services Ltd. You can read about the experience in Rashiq Muhamad Ali’s article, which appears on pages 18 and 19. AADRL DOCUMENTS 2: DRL TEN A Design Research Compendium A 368-page hardbound book, DRL TEN: A Design Research Compendium chronicles a ten-year history of the work of the DRL’s students, graduates and staff, as well as evaluating the status of past and ongoing design research agendas in the DRL and speculating on future design research and its implications for an evolving global architectural culture. The publication coordinator was Tom Verebes. The book is a follow-up to AADRL Documents 1: Corporate Fields, New Office Environments, produced by AA Publications in 2005 as a record of the DRL’s first design research agenda. The DRL TEN Events have been conceived and implemented by Yusuke Obuchi, Theodore Spyropoulos and Tom Verebes (AA DRL Co-Directors).
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Above: Charles Jencks investigates PSP installation by Nicholas Puckett, DRL TEN Exhibition
WIN £1000!!
WHAT'S MISSING? is prublclll, I'n:v;uus rr~vious pr\lj~"CC~ arc hi.iUI!. ""coruin!!. t\:cordiul!o "amiu" nOnliul! and i~ the lhe p'obk,". proj''l:I$ W"Chi~inl!. alld p.lc~aging p;ln of rhe 1,",0 slIc ~'lCh h as ltJ; our 11)'de&See~ II)'dc&See~ pmjed project in pac~aging ofcI'C'ry o f el'cl)' ran o f 'h" IWO H)'do: Pmk. (the I\~de I'urk, (lhe p;.Irk·~ IKIr~ '~ monument:. monUfl1en~ buildii n~. n~, 0""\0 Due IQ ltif' tile immense imrneru;e m051 ,;sire..! most ,isilOO I3ndmarks. I3rwJ,,'arf<$. hIfs 's OtiC o,~ of .11f ,he: builoJ pan.: 'nlpOnance Imponanec oorl~ f lhesc n:lI nalionallreasures, i0l\31 rreasun:5. WCI\' were n:dISlriootc:d rediscribuH:d around arotlnd [I\c Chi: park mOSl impolll1nl importanl paIU parts ofOllr of our lIa!ion'~ natiQlf~ mUSI 10 visilOl"ll in 2005) to disorie:nllle: dl$ofienl~lt visitors In Jmw Ju~ 2(05) !I~ buildings buildi ngs are ~ing dismJnll~d to) being dismaotled by heritage. and nlOSl htrita,;e.:md mOSI siilnific:rnl significant pif(.t pif(:e of lh.e Wall n:1:u,,~I~ rdali'~I)' easy ~umpnrcd 10 lhe.. Ihis. ~. "i!h ClC~ pan labelled "as cas)' comp"tI.'d hand. \lith Cle') part being labelled. ou polili(ld IInd ~uhul\Il histo'). To ourr II01ilrnl QIt<J tullurullli>t<.lr} I.ogts\ic:all). in<k~ndenl Logistically. Ihi5 Ihis ;,. i!. SO'"' goinll 10 to be ap Iocaled and placro placed inlo Into indc~f\tkn\ Ilm'It oftM ",orid ,I,t tS ~ 1I1I or Iac:arro m()St of the "orld nil .'~}ml!ol ym bolof nigl\lJl1nn:. c(.nwinel"S, ~Io"e'~r. I~owe,er. the u.., buildi"S$ niiJI>tmarc." ,·ollUt.ifh.'r... buildings Britain. Brilain kepl tOj;.t1oo togelhef as much TIw hu ildlngs ut Arc going 3re be,ng kCpl !be ppockaged . ~kagcd i>uild,ngs mu.::h as are going then. Too bad it·, h', l!Oin(t 10 to become beto_ cargo e31'&O simuIt3lwousl). simuh~_I). pos$ib~. possible. Tc~ Tell) W:lln",riglll. \\'a[nllrighl. ['kliH'f} Ddil'er} l"h11nb Thanks 10 dni8JI ddi&Jl team l e~m 1lth TRANS· ....S· CQOf'IIinaror al ,in« sirKC !K';lhcrcan ~;llw;rc:Ln find Iheir llIcirn~'" ne" hOflle home Coordinalor at rRANS·1'Iouse nt.ANS-~ told hou.e.lll,ll;king/!.m huusc:, Buo;kingham f'~I;r<;~ r~l~ i, j~ lo0OI1 ~110 to Ila<ic:;l n~<kal!x llx.-Urf!;ln L1rban Ihalu:arrsporta1ion Ih3! transportali .... "ilholll ... ithour thccmin: the enlire n:lIIOYott removal orlhc: oflhe olher otilcr he ..,Iocated to Ind,a,.' Ind ia.:L<:I ~good"tll t>e n:1oca1<'d 10 a ~good"'l!I building.llt.: building. 1110: :;Itipmcnl l.h;pnu.'lIl date dale I> i~ 14 IJ on :ouch such ;l1IC'Ik:" 11 )1:111\:" ill Ill: be 11a ",,,arding ",..;udil\l!, il""lu",~ Briw;n :lnd hI.'I her S"SlurC· hel",et.'f1 e.m Br;u.illwod ellallen~~ March. \larch, "hen ...tM:n both boIh "Oi:C'ql~ "~O\Cls "mlca,e "ill le3\c fOOtlcrc:olony.ln be cNllen~' ronncrcolony.ln ",'um.lndia n:rum.lndia ",,11 ",11 to<: Iookc'Ol at se,wlIl 113)5 to 1IO go frd ~~slo"c alld IU1d MunllxU ""We've \\e've look....! """~'f'lI1 "3}S chMIO"" MUI1IbP.i rcsp..cti,el). rcsp""li~"l)', lending Uli U!I hol'r her I'\";rldl I-""~t~ ',,":l5U,,", lendin& It\\:lSu"" the CI~ Inll',,1 Il1IW] throul!h [h~>IlJltr 1111: l~ SU~7 Suez Canal tanalllnd and ;rhout about thi~ ItllS I'fOI."C5S. proci:SS. but 10 be honc5t. hoocst. Taj \lllhal. Tllj Mwud. ilh the chi.- rM.'\\ _ CDfIO in under 11p ;m;.·c" Ihis is our biggesl biggest ehall challenge .... gc }'tl YCt ... ..• it's it'S arri,'e "i,h rnrgo in The ~ bUlldin£ buildin; exchanse cJ(ch.'II1j;t' "ill st.1n Wlrt nexl ne~I this Ih.: lihcar "" !rC"]~ and distance "hich "w~. Cuali Coa linncd nncd un lIa 111\1.t Illff 1, Z. ",..,k. Ih..: \hr:ar .. I~ a.....t d,,1>If'I<:e "hieh , ... .,l;., "ilh Ihl: slow IU1d prtti"" pruise "' ...... ",i.h Ih" ~IO\O aI1<l
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Valerie Bennett
Above and right: Private view of DRL TEN Exhibition in AA Front Members’ Room and installation view
AArchitecture – Issue 6
News from the Architectural Association
28
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NEW BRITISH MUSEUM GETS A RIGHT ROYAL THUMBS UP Fmhraced hy the the public public as ''The Emhraced The Hallw3y". London's London 's latest latest collective collecthe Hallway'. space has fu fulfi lled the the high expectations lfilled ris.:n sine!: since: the the announcement announcement of uf that had risen the design dl.'Slgn by stan:hih.-CI slarchitl'C\ Samh Sar.m HamishHamish· Wills. Last Last April, April. millions millions gathered galhcrcd 1\0 0 Wills. join Her Majesty Majcsty Queen Elizabeth Elizabeth 11 "hen shc she oftkially offiCially opened opened the the monument monumenl "'hen that houses housc'i the many many different d ifferent histories of architectural architectural styles I>tyles throughout Oxford O'l: ford Street. The 11 I hi(111li cost coSt £ 10 million, mill ion, and and was fin anced by IOllery grants. public grant fi nanced lollery grants. donations. the Govcnlmcnt ancl thc donations, Govcmmcnt and the Nntionnl TillS!. The iinhabih!u N ~ t i o n a l Trust. nh~ bi tcd houses of
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The revelations on The Google Google fire coinCides coincides with revelations on last weeks fire on on the 350th floor oflhe 350th of the same lower. tower. Two firefighters of Google's intemal fire department have been charged with with trymg trying to sel set thelf their own own fire slatoo station 00 on fire - in froot front of a CCTV camera. M ichael tzzc, 30, JO, and Richard Michaellzzo, Richard Capece, 31 , were allegedly caught 00 on tape, leaning petrol 00 leaning out or of a window and and splashing pelrol on the extemal access baskeL lighl basket, which is part of the ooilding's bul1 diog·s fire·lighhog fire-fighting syslem. system, then setting light to Is employed by the oollding's 10 it. The baskel basket system system Is building's fire department for mobility reasons. The Incident Incident, which happened just after 2am lam on Saturday morning. morning, is thought to have been a Halloween left the basket charred, Halloween prank, prank. But Itit sliD stil1left despite despite the the fact that other firerlQhlers firefighters quICkly quickly spotted and extinguished extinguished the flame.
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AA Independent Radio www.aair.fm
Basically Urban No.1 of 1, Spring 2008, price: Free Established 2008 Published by AA Intermediate Unit 7 This newspaper is a quick introduction to the term one work of Intermediate Unit 7. The unit is using monuments in their quest for ‘new spatial experiences’. By placing the proposals in a different context, the newspaper attempts to play with, or even assess, monumental qualities. The tabloid proved to be a useful format as it traditionally blurs fiction and reality. By leaving the reader behind in a vague collection of truth and fiction, questions about public anticipation arise. An inventory is made of the spatial vocabulary that seems to accompany a ‘cultural analysis’, a hot topic in some corners of the school nowadays. From spatial consultancy to curatorial urbanism, humour seemed the only possible format for discussion at this stage… Margaret Dewhurst and Jan Nauta, Intermediate Unit 7
Marginal Published Spring 2008 AA Media Studies, Publish on Demand Tutor: Zak Kyes Edition of 90 Authors: Anna Andrich, Ying-Chih Deng, Tala Fustok, Friedrich Gräfling, Kyung Tae Jung, Soonil Kim, Kien Pham, Evan Saarinen, Wen Ying Teh, and Henrik Hoffgaard. Extracts from top to bottom: The Amazing Journey of the Floating Cubes by Kien Pham and Tomorrow We Die by Henrik Hoffgaard AA Media Studies Architectural Association School of Architecture Diploma Jury Room, Mondays 2pm – 5pm Zak Kyes, z@zak.to Publish on Demand What happens when the designer/architect assumes the role of editor, publisher and distributor? The first term's class will provide a brief introduction to the history, graphic design and production of architectural publications. Our focus will primarily be on the material and technical possibilities of independent, small-scale architectural publishing. The projects we will look at, specifically those initiated by AA students from the 70s until as recently as last term, are united through their use of publications as an alternative site for the dissemination (and realisation) of architectural projects. Shared by many of these publications is a link between the use of 'graphic space' (the design and layout of pages of information) and the invention of architectural form. A brief introduction to typography and grids will provide the background for the production of publications. The predominant method of publication design and production, reliant upon supplied content, external requests, and an assembly-line approach, divides the work-flow into discrete specialisations. At the same time, new modes of production have emerged made possible by the recent availability of alternative production and distribution technologies. Tools such as ‘print-on-demand’, laser printers, and digital offset enable small-scale publications to bypass the division of labour and power structures inherent to the publishing system. The benefits include small inventories and minimal technical set-up. Anywhere from a handful to a hundred copies can be published ‘on-demand.’ Brief: Collectively edit, publish, and distribute an anthology of ongoing unit projects, related research and texts. Each student is to design their own contribution (approximately 28 pp) consisting of two parts: 1) a recent architectural project from your unit work, conceptualized in a min. 400 word text 2)a selected existing text which you find relevant to your work which will form a ‘reader’ in addition to the projects. Consider: the most appropriate production method, how could your architectural project best be translated to the space of a publication? Make enough copies for classmates and extra to distribute.
AA_MST1_0708.indd 1
5/6/08 10:04:47
By Christopher Pierce & Chris Matthews
Inter 9: Breaking the Rules Among the myriad approaches to design that proliferate in ‘Units’ across the capital our method has always been one of monk-like commitment to a single task – drawing – and a single site – London. We followed this approach for eight years in three different universities. We had rules by the bucketful which we gaily presented to the 125 Intermediate students gathered in the AA Lecture Hall on 2 October: 1) Group work only, 2) Weekly drawing diary submission, 3) Read drawings not books (El Croquis is reading drawings), 4) No films, 5) No physical models, 6) No photographs, 7) High-quality printed drawings only, 8) Large drawings only – no A4s or A3s, 9) Drawing only (machine not hand), 10) No dead people (except Enric Miralles), 11) No 3D renders, 12) No individual tutorials, 13) Projects based only in London, 14) No field trips. Setting rules started in our Liverpool days, when we faced 40 fourth-year students armed with portfolios full of A4 renders, rolls of photos of their grannies’ garages and dozens of Blue Peter-style models. The A4 renders were touted in Scouse as having all the answers. Instead, the projects were finished before they had been started. We needed the students to focus and at the same time to open up the work. We developed a teaching method through the frame of rules. At Westminster rules were tightened and new ones introduced with three objectives: 1) To distance our unit from FAT’s kitchen sink, 2) To fix the unit’s starting point – we asked students to combine and edit a ‘found’ hydrographer’s drawing and a ‘found’ manufacturer’s drawing to invent a ‘base drawing’ (another once inviolable part of the process eclipsed this year) and 3) to take advantage of the school’s limitless free plotting. At the AA’s Valentine’s Day ‘Open Jury’ we looked back at what was ‘in’ and ‘out’ of this long list. It was like a body count in a Freddy Krueger film – a graveyard of our practices and principles – what one of us first called a ‘calamity’. Only it wasn’t. The students’ work was far better for it and we suddenly felt a flush of youth. So where do the rules currently stand? The first four have just about held firm – our 14 students, except two, work in groups; all of them have produced ‘drawing diaries’ not less than 20cm thick; as far as we know not a word has been read; and apart from a pirate phone film of a weekly drawings review we AArchitecture – Issue 6
have escaped the filming indulgence. Meanwhile, the students have demolished the last ten rules. Rule 5) No physical models – we are looking for a term to describe what almost all of our students, led by Hye-Ju and SY, have been doing in the new rapid digital prototyping lab with Jeroen. We claim ‘drawing with machines’ – the students’ keep calling them ‘models’. Rule 6) No photographs – this was broken in November at the same time as Rule 5, again at the instigation of Hye-Ju and SY. In fact, the students’ ‘models’ became the subject of the photos, the photos then infiltrated the drawings and these photos now independently stand as ‘final drawings’. Rule 7) High-quality printed drawings only – in October we splashed out on a unit plotter. It did not plot anything for three months. This wiped out Rule 8. In February the disparaged Canon was replaced with a feted HP. Since then, Rules 7 and 8 have been restored. However, this did not happen in time to save Rule 9. Rule 10) No Dead People (except Enric Miralles) – lasted for the first couple of months until Rama, Sofoklis or Shin Jae came across a Palladio drawing. That is when the 16th-century plan/section/elevation combination drawing craze hit the unit. It is also responsible for the 80s revival, led by Ji, Moon and Evan, in Term Two. True, those 80s dandies are not all dead, but the amount of attention that we have been giving to Morphosis, Peter Wilson, Daniel Libeskind, Peter Eisenman and OM Ungers could be the subject of a new rule next year. Rule 11) No 3D renders – held until Adel and Sanem yielded to the ‘nutrient tower’. Rule 12) No individual tutorials – is the subject of debate. We have taken to teaching on Saturdays, group-by-group, in addition to our weekly unit drawings review (breaking an unwritten rule). We call them workshops; the students call them tutorials. In either case, they have been useful – thanks Mike. Rule 13) Projects based only in London and Rule 14) No field trips – as we write this we are ensconced in a tiny cabin on an overnight train to study the unit’s site in Barcelona, with 14 students who have shown that ‘breaking the rules’ is the catalyst for invention and that as long as we set the frame invention will follow. The world of design really has no rules. Master Plan/Site Plan, Version 2.9, created by Sanem Alper, Natalie Paul, Adel Zakout
Christopher Pierce and Chris Matthews are the Unit Staff of Intermediate Unit 9
News from the Architectural Association
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Inter 9: Breaking the Rules
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Public Programme: Fabio Gramazio & Matthias Kohler AA Lecture, 26 February 2008
THE LANGUAGE OF ROBOTS
AArchitecture – Issue 6
For Gramazio Kohler, physicality is a fundamental prerequisite of architecture, and digital design tools are a given of architectural design. They regard the ability to write a computer program as being on a par with the drawing of plans and sections – a means of ensuring that the architect can exert a desirable level of control. This new type of ‘drawing’ opens up possibilities of design and allows for the creation of highly complex geometries, but most importantly it allows the architect to re-establish a relevant position in the building process. To counter the recent alienation of the architect from the building industries, which become ever more specialised and technologically advanced, Gramazio Kohler understand that they need to learn a new language to communicate with their collaborators, and to open up new creative opportunities. After an age of mass-production we are now entering an age of mass-customisation. Increasingly processes such as cnc-milling, laser cutting or rapid prototyping allow variation among previously mass-produced goods. Initially applied to the manufacturing of products, these technologies are now entering the realm of architecture, redefining construction processes and facilitating the return of architectural ornament. The challenge is not only how to design with these new tools, but also how to scale them up whilst remaining economically viable. Gramazio Kohler’s employment of the robot is an elegant solution to this problem. Their plans to create a transportable version of the robot that could operate on site allow us a glimpse of the future of construction and of affordable architecture executed with unprecedented levels of precision.
Top: Experimental panel showing the material characteristics of multilayered polyurethane foam; Left: Detail of brick façade, showing how the rotation of the single bricks creates the image of grapes; Below right: Production of foam panels on a 6-axis robot as part of a research course at the ETH in Zurich; Below: The brick façade serves as a shading device that filters and modulates the sunlight permeating the structure
By Oliver Domeisen, Unit Master of Diploma 13 This is an excerpt from a text, ‘Digital Materiality’, first published in S AM 05 ‘Re-sampling Ornament’, which was published to accompany the exhibition at the Swiss Architecture Museum in Basel curated by Oliver Domeisen and Francesca Ferguson (31 May–21 September 2008). The S AM publication can be ordered through the website sam-basel.org
News from the Architectural Association
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© Gramazio & Kohler, ETH Zurich
Fabio Gramazio and Matthias Kohler are exploring the convergence of digital data and physical materiality through the adaptation of mass-customisation technology to processes of building construction. At the ETHZ Department of Architecture they have set up a laboratory for digital fabrication using an industrial robot that makes it possible to introduce infinite variation into standardised processes of assembling modular building blocks. The ornament of the wall emerges out of its own construction. Along with their students, they have designed digital scripts that direct the robot to pick up a brick, apply individual lengths of adhesive to it and glue it perfectly in place. The resulting wall can be produced at great speed, economically, with unprecedented accuracy and within the controlled environment of the factory floor. But most of all it is the visceral beauty of the finished product – a wall that is at once solid yet strangely ethereal through its undulations and perforations – that makes the process persuasive. The Gantenbein Winery in Fläsch was the first opportunity for Gramazio Kohler to apply their academic research. The primary function of the wall was to act as a shading device for the wine-making processes. Gramazio Kohler designed an ornamental motif to adorn the wall that was derived from the grapes themselves. A series of oversized spheres were digitally rendered and dropped into the virtual ‘crate’ of the building. Once settled in their densely packed arrangement, the volumetric data was then projected onto the planar surfaces of the walls. Subsequently these image projections were translated into the language of digital scripts that would allow the robot to lay each brick within the wall at a unique angle, eventually creating the desired 3D graphic effect on the planar surface of the entire façade. From afar the spherical motifs perform as clear ornamental signifiers of the function of the building as well as creating a strong contextual relationship with the surrounding vineyards. Closer up the walls display their sculptural and tactile qualities. The resolution of the image is revealed, with the pixel exposing itself as a brick. The ever-changing modulation of light on the surface creates an oscillation between 2- and 3-dimensional readings of the surface and animates the static form. The wall becomes an ethereal screen, filtering and refracting the sunlight.
The Language of Robots
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AA EmTech Programme, Project in Chile, February 2008 By Michael Hensel
Netbridge Patagonia: Architecture as Adventure, Part Two
Above and opposite: Views of completed construction: two sets of ropes were layered and rotated to create a hyperbolic paraboloid. Right: Study model
Michael Hensel
Sponsors: Woods Bagot Architectural Association
AArchitecture â&#x20AC;&#x201C; Issue 6
News from the Architectural Association
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The Emergent Technologies and Design Programme recently completed its second project in Hazienda Quitralco in Chilean Patagonia. The project was designed between November 2007 and January 2008 in collaboration with Expedition Engineering and constructed in six days in February 2008. As with the first project, a viewing platform and shelter designed and constructed in 2007, the task was to develop a project based on the research in the EmTech Programme, to be executed in the low-tech context of the site and with as little impact on the environment as possible. The focus of this yearâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s core studio in EmTech is the elaboration of integral design strategies and form-finding methods for complex 3D net-systems and the deployment of these systems in a real-life project. After an initial phase of experimentation in the studio, three schemes were chosen for an in-house competition. The winning scheme was chosen for pragmatic reasons of achievability within the narrow eight-day timeframe. The scheme was then further developed with more specific materialand context-specific constraints in mind, also incorporating strategies of dealing with unknown factors, such as the soil-conditions of the banks of the river to be bridged. The scheme consists of two sets of ropes that are layered and rotated in such a way that a hyperbolic paraboloid results, with its arching curve along the long axis of the bridge. In order to address the unknown soil conditions, the arrangement of the four poles of the bridge is deliberately asymmetrical. Since the bridge does not depend on a symmetrical arrangement, the poles could be shifted independently in response Netbridge Patagonia
to adverse soil conditions. Once the design strategy was established, crucial solutions for low soilimpact anchor-points for the tensioned ropes and integrating the decking into the scheme needed to be developed. Detailed scheduling of the assembly procedure and key knots and lashing procedures finalised the construction document. Finally the construction team arrived in Chile. After purchasing rope and tools in Santiago, the team flew south and arrived at the site after a 12-hour boat trip. Upon arrival all 16 holes for the anchors and the poles were dug, the poles and anchors were prepared and placed, the holes closed and the soil compacted. The ropes and spacer-beams were assembled off-site. Then the crucial pre-tensioning phase began, while the decking was prepared, prior to its positioning and the post-tensioning phase. As the tension increased the knots securing the ropes began slipping and different ones needed to be deployed. Eventually the rope began to stretch more then anticipated, with its diameter dramatically decreasing. The tensioning therefore had to be stopped as the knots began to slip again. However, the tension at this stage was sufficient and the project was completed two days ahead of schedule. The remaining two days were spent on an expedition into the untouched hinterland of the Hazienda and some much needed relaxation of muscular systems and heavy consumption of local protein. Having thus completed the second project in Patagonia, the team now looks forward to a third project: the design and construction of a pier for three boats for Hazienda Quitralco. Michael Hensel is a Director of the AA EmTech MSC and MArch Programmes
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By Jeroen van Ameijde
I don’t want to be surrounded by the awful paraphernalia of IT at home. Yes I do have a broadband internet connection, a website, a printer and an old Mac, but to be honest I miss the space that all that stuff now occupies. I just want the simple luxury of my TV and DVD player/recorder in front of the settee. If I wanted to spend hours blogging, checking e-bay and reading about spam, c-listers and Halo then I’d have stayed at work! No doubt all this will change forever, as we set about reformatting the way we sit on the sofa and veg. Even now the UK spends more time online than watching telly, while funding for new programming plummets. This TV change means that I endure chats with people not worried so much about the quality of what they watch but the simple mechanics of it. People who worry that Eastenders will stop without the purchase of a 42’’ plasma screen that kills green trees in Dolby and that our kids are obese because they use 3G HD DV gameholes© (which when unlocked do porn!). Seriously though, new kinds of entertainment online do not and will not facilitate new, quality programming. Not financially or through encouraging professional skills and talents. What we stand to lose in the UK, is the very framework that supports quality production. When that’s gone, all that will be left will be You Tube, CNN, Sky Sports and American Drama. That framework in the UK is essentially the BBC. It’s what all other producers have to compete against in terms of quality, variety and depth. The license fee that funds it is deemed to be an unfair, anti-competitive tax that only benefits the BBC itself. But I can’t help feeling that if the BBC wasn’t there, in all its eccentricity, to maintain a standard, then our TV viewing experience would be even more like being online: liberating at first but after a while groundless and invariably shallow. (It’s bad enough now!) I think standards in broadcasting are worth maintaining and paying for. But, with its savvy iPlayer release, it looks as though the BBC is thinking that the TV it created is only a few National Audit Office reports away from being re-branded as just another portal with up-to-date news and a big back-catalogue of clips.
Joel Newman is Audio-Visual Manager, a Media Studies tutor and Co-curator of the New Media Research Initiative
AArchitecture – Issue 6
between design and materialisation can be increased and the complexity and precision of a project enhanced. Furthermore, as these prototyping technologies are similar to increasingly widespread production technologies in the building industry, students are stimulated to experiment with digital fabrication as a model for real life construction processes. Not only is experience of handling digital design information and the flow of projects between the different software and output technologies invaluable for future practice, but the knowledge and control of all aspects of digital design and fabrication methods could also unlock unforeseen creative opportunities.
AA Digital Prototyping Lab As part of the ongoing shift towards the use of digital tools in the design and production of architecture, the AA created its very own Digital Prototyping Lab in the heart of the school in the summer of 2007. Since its installation, the lab has seen an overwhelming number of enthusiastic users, showing that it has the potential to develop into a key facility for digital experimentation and production in the school. Operated by myself and a team of six part-time student assistants, the lab offers production facilities and various tutorials to individual students and groups. Highlights of the year so far have been a workshop for First Year students and the preparation for the final presentations of the DRL in January. The machines currently available in the lab include three laser cutters, two CNC routers and a ZCorp 3D printer. All machines are available to AA students and staff on a first-come, first-served basis, and the only cost is for the material used. The laser cutter machines can be operated by the users themselves, for which time slots can be booked online. The CNC and 3D printer models are produced by the lab staff, after inspection and preparation of the digital files submitted by the students. The lab offers help and advice on the 3D modelling, file conversion and preparation aspects necessary for the prototyping processes. In addition to individual student projects, the Digital Prototyping Lab works closely with tutors on student work within several units and specific Media Studies courses. The projects for these Media Studies classes have varied from making fruit bowls with the laser cutters (juicy structures, by Anne Save de Beaurecueil, Diploma 2) to large 1:1 scale working prototypes of plywood structures (with Valentin Bontjes van Beek, First Year). One of the long-term goals of the lab is to raise awareness of the potential of digital fabrication technologies and to enable students to integrate their ideas in the early stages of the design process. For instance, by offering quick and affordable ways to produce scale models, the lab promotes the use of the technologies for producing intermediate sketch models during the experimental phase of a project, rather than solely a finished presentation model. Through this type of use the feedback
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Jeroen van Ameijde is Head of Digital Prototyping
Above: Model produced with the Roland CNC machine for Media Studies course ‘epi-textures’, tutor Monia De Marchi; Right: Experiments with laser cutting to produce emergent effects, students Hye-Ju Park and So Yeun Jang, Intermediate Unit 9 Below: model produced with the ZCorp 3D printer, by ShuoJiong Zhang (DRL, Phase 2)
Jeroen van Ameijde
Home Entertainment By Joel Newman
AA Digital Prototyping Lab
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AA Diploma Unit 15, Conference in Vietnam, November 2007 By Noam Andrews
as a symbol of national resistance. Despite periodic bombing by the US Air Force during the Vietnam War (or the ‘American War’ as they call it Vietnam), Long Bien resisted its destruction through a combination of over-structured wrought iron trusses (that would only buckle but not shatter on blast impact) and the resilience of the Vietnamese who would repair overnight any damage it sustained. Paul Schuttenbelt, the regional coordinator for Saigon at Urban Rural Solutions, a Dutch NGO working in Vietnam, concluded the conference with his presentation on current issues in the planning and development of Hanoi. He discussed the lack of coordination between the various planning ministries as well as the broader process of local governance.
Diploma 15: Hanoi 2007
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that advances in technology and international cooperation have made expansion across this temperamental river an unprecedented possibility, as evidenced by new plans for Hanoi which show a mirror image of the existing city on the northside of the river. Le Thanh Vinh, director at the Institute for the Conservation of Monuments, discussed the political role that archaeology plays in the current development of Hanoi. In particular, he cited the example of a new congress building sitting directly on top of an ancient temple complex. While estimates have the temple containing triple the amount of rare archaeological objects that Hanoi currently possesses in its museums, it is nevertheless a closed site that only allows selective access by the archaeological community. He ended with a plea that the current regime seek to preserve all histories without selectively demolishing their architectural heritage, a heritage that has in itself become increasingly important in an era of blandly replicated urbanism. Dr Nguyen Quang, habitat programme manager at UN-Habitat, presented a mandate to promote urban sustainability, explaining that Hanoi is still operating at a pre-doi moi level of urbanism (doi moi is the name given to the current turn towards a free market economy, a prerequisite to Vietnam’s recent entry into the WTO). In the aftermath of forty years of central planning, the city’s gradual move into the free market economy has produced fierce competition between income groups, a diversification of investor sources and the introduction of the stock market for land property speculation. This creates the fundamental problem of an increasingly rapid urbanisation out of sync with the developmental pace of infrastructure servicing the existing urban fabric. He proposed a change in the attitudes towards planning regulations to encourage the urgent development of a culture of local consultation. Douglas Jardine, from the Faculty of International Studies at Hanoi University, gave a lecture on the current social meanings of the Long Bien Bridge in the context of Vietnamese history. According to Jardine the bridge, which was designed by Gustave Eiffel in 1903, was built to represent the cultural and technological superiority of the French. As the end of French colonialism drew near, it was appropriated by the Vietnamese
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Noam Andrews is Unit Tutor for Diploma Unit 15
Clockwise from top: Field trip to the Army Museum; informal street occupation; construction site in the Old Quarter
Damian Figueras
In November 2007, Diploma Unit 15 arrived in Vietnam for ten intensive days of site-specific research. The explicit aim: to investigate the extreme economic and cultural manifestations of Hanoi’s current spectacular leap into the global economy. The unit was also acting as joint sponsor of a conference held in collaboration with the Faculty of International Studies at Hanoi University (HANU) to identify key urban and architectural issues in Hanoi. In the past, Diploma 15 has always worked with government bodies, cultural institutions and local architects involved in the physical and cultural development of the city. However, it is here in Vietnam that the unit trip has generated a public forum for a multidisciplinary debate on the status of this capital city, both as subject to the pressures of rapid growth and as sovereign through its deeply imbedded deterministic cultural structure. Within this context, the AA/HANU conference provides the unit with an opportunity to present its methodological approach to understanding the urban environment, and affords several of the students a chance to present their projects to an illustrious panel of professionals currently working within Hanoi. After an introduction by Dr Bui Phuong Lan, director of FIS-HANU, the conference began in earnest with Unit Master Francesca Hughes outlining the unit’s agenda and its relationship to current problems (notably in the field of evolutionary theory). Where do environment/ context influences stop and organism/object motives start? How might such thinking reconfigure the status of already unravelled postdigital contexts? Presentations followed by fifth year students – Harry Westbrook (American Civil War re-enactments as sites of miscommunication) and Damian Figueras (latent recursive structures in the culture of desire for new form as manifest in the formal language of the Chevrolet), as well as fourth year students Sea Eun Cho (the Long Bien Bridge as national tropic device) and Evonne Tam (alternative propositions to UNESCO’s programme for the preservation of intangible cultural heritage). Dr Pham Dinh Viet, associate professor at the University of Civil Engineering in Hanoi, presented the fluid dynamics and geological makeup of the Red River as the major historical obstacle to Hanoi’s urban expansion. He concluded
The conference was a widely attended event with students and faculty drawn from Hanoi University and its neighbouring institutions. It provided a vivid portrait of the exigencies driving Hanoi’s growth and both the promise and pitfalls of future development. As the city grapples with the pains of growth, the urban discourse is brought into direct communication with environmental concerns, social policy and cultural practice. Emergent architectural forms populate this complex context in response to the new pressures which script their genesis. As a site of research and a necessarily collaborative intellectual environment it is a fascinating time to be working on Vietnam.
Diploma 15: Hanoi 2007
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By Markus Miessen
AA Print Studio
The Grey Zone between Criticism and Celebration: Winter School Middle East
Poster for the AA Visiting Programme Learning from Dubai, designed by AA Print Studio
Imagine a city without people. If Dubai’s immigrant population left, this is the scenario we would be facing. Over the past three years, the critics’ favourite theme has been the phenomenon of Dubai’s migrant workers, in particular those in the construction industry; in short, the men who enable the emirate to develop at such a rapid pace. In order to counterbalance the widespread media rhetoric of negativity and/or negation, a new, transient but pro-active institution (Winter School Middle East) was introduced in early 2008, in collaboration with the Architectural Association. As a first-ever serious engagement with the spatial conditions of Dubai’s labour camps, and – more generally – immigrant realities throughout the entire social spectrum, this intense 10-day workshop was set up with the local support of the American University of Sharjah, Traffic and The Third Line (Dubai’s most prominent gallery for contemporary Middle Eastern art). The Winter School is the direct result of the realisation that the most relevant form of participation in the politics of local educational frameworks is a small-scale satellite institution. Its holistic scale of engagement allows for the production of an alternative dimension to the large-scale educational export models of mainly Ivy League universities from the United States, which are currently establishing academic outposts in the Middle East as a result of post-9/11 loss of students on their home turf. In this academic outsourcing model, universities often import professors and staff from the home campuses, who teach on three- to four-year rolling contracts and neither bring with them a coherent knowledge about the region, nor leave knowledge behind as they generally depart after a short period. Instead of fuelling these large-scale gestures, the Winter School is interested in setting up and fostering a pool of local knowledge driven by experts from the wider region: an alternative that presents the polar opposite to what most educational institutions are attempting. The Winter School was set up as an academic and spatial structure that allowed 50 participants to work in seminars as well as propositional ‘units’. Winter School Middle East
These students originated, in the case of the 2008 school, from such diverse backgrounds as Lebanon, Iran, Palestine, Egypt, Korea, Bahrain, Brazil, Mexico, Iraq, Latvia, Jordan, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, to name a few. The AA established and will continue to present an uncompromised learning environment – an international laboratory for challenging thoughts and practices in the region. At the outset of the 21st century, which is characterised by rapid processes of urbanisation, it is our responsibility to foster an architectural culture that goes beyond the practice of developing physical matter, architectural and urban plans, to further a discourse that allows unforeseen and surprising processes to take place, to allow for uncertainty in practices that are often described through certainty and control and to generate conflicts where most practitioners would consider the solution of ‘problems’. Instead of reading Dubai purely through the black goggles of pessimism, this year’s Winter School’s approach was to investigate the existing situation thoroughly, and critically propose alternatives through direct involvement with the structures at play. Combining our own regional and global networks and critical approach to spatial practices with local intelligence, our intensive, workshopbased programme operates on the basis of the AA unit system. Individual, tutor-led units investigate different aspects of the emerging spatial realities of the Gulf region, with – in 2008 – a local focus on Dubai. Work focused on the imagery of Google Earth as a strategic tool for the city’s representation across the globe, on the spatialisation and location of camps within Dubai’s urban fabric, and on an oral history archive of immigrants ranging from Bangladeshi construction workers, through Russian sex workers, Korean informal mobile phone dealers and Eastern European architects, to the German cultural consultant and the Sheikh. Although this large group of people embodies very few social ties, the one thing they share and have in common, almost without exception, is that they
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are likely to leave the city after a couple of years. It is this transient nature of the city with which the Winter School attempted to get to grips. The microcosm of the Winter School Middle East presents a starting point for alternative modes of production. The environment of the workshop, where information and knowledge are being shared, where a space for criticality is planned out, where the production of space is driven not by political or cultural hierarchies but by a genuine belief in experiment through investigation, suggests a different way of working – one where teaching staff often learn as much from their students as the other way round. It is in this fashion that the Winter School Middle East will continue its efforts. Without falling into the trap of consensus-driven politics, it instead attempts to create and inhabit a new middle ground – one that produces a discursive space for a new, productive discussion to emerge, a space that inhabits the grey area between criticism and celebration.
The New Silk Roads by Kyong Park
Markus Miessen
Images from The New Silk Roads, a research project by Kyong Park, presented at the AA Visiting Programme in Dubai. The project takes the form of a photographic survey of the physical and immaterial movements of products/information, labour/captial, and resources/services over the real and virtual landscapes of Asia. Kyong Park, an architect, artist and urban theorist is the founder of the Storefront for Art and Architecture in New York and is currently professor at UCSD.
Markus Miessen is a Unit Master of Intermediate Unit 7 and Director of the Winter School
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All photos © Kyong Park
Zak Kyes
Top: Work in progress research and presentations at Learning from Dubai final jury at The Third Line gallery in Al Quoz, Dubai; Bottom: Sands waiting to be built upon. A labourer at Jumeirah Beach construction site.
The New Silk Roads
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AArchitecture â&#x20AC;&#x201C; Issue 6
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The New Silk Roads
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RIBA President’s Medals 2007: Cabinet of Curiosities Visualisation of Amandine Kastler’s project, Cabinet of Curiosites, which won the RIBA President’s bronze medal in 2007
As reported in issue 5 of AArchiteture, Amandine Kastler won the bronze medal in the RIBA President’s Medals 2007, for her project Cabinet of Curiosities. The project was undertaken when Amandine was in Oliver Domeisen’s Intermediate Unit. Here, she and Oliver tell us a bit more about the project: Amandine: Designed to store figurative marble sculptures and small sacred silver objects, the newly constructed architectural body shares the exuberance and sculptural qualities of the figurative pieces it contains. The ornamental language is developed from a material investigation originating from the traditional craft methods employed to create the stored objects which are adapted into contemporary building processes, giving expression and new meaning to the Cabinet of Curiosities. The anthropomorphic container refers to John Ruskin’s theory in The Lamp of Beauty (1849) that, out of all natural forms, imitating human form is the noblest. The visitor is invited to view the objects in a visceral and experiential atmosphere rethinking the legitimacy of the neutral white cube and the museum as a site of timeless preservation. AArchitecture – Issue 6
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Cabinet of Curiosities
Oliver: This year’s brief was to investigate the potential return of Architectural Ornament in the age of mass-customisation. Initial interventions with historical precedent (from Rococo to Modernism) led to the main design project: a Cabinet of Curiosities situated in the quadrangle of the V&A Museum. The cabinet was to be an on-site storage facility containing objects not currently on display, making them accessible to the public. The submitted project intelligently translates the traditional craft methods of the ornamental objects contained within into architectural-scale construction processes for the ornate container. The performance of the anthropomorphic ornamental language is successful functionally (hiding joints, facilitating drainage and patination etc.), aesthetically (material expression) and critically (non-neutral museum space, contemporary iconography). Amandine Kastler is an AA year out student; Oliver Domeisen is Unit Master of Diploma Unit 13
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Call for contributions
AA News Briefs
AA Agendas Submissions Proposal AA Agendas is a new series of publications highlighting outstanding work from within the AA. The range of material covered in each book could include a retrospective of a specific unit’s work over a number of years, the edited transcripts of a conference or symposium, the annals of a cluster event or competition, an especially good individual design project or an appropriate AA faculty or student initiative. Each book is approximately between 64 to 150 pages long and should feature, in addition to the main body of work being presented, 3–5 commissioned texts analysing this work within a broader context. The series is published, edited and designed through the AA Print Studio. Agendas follows a specific template which will remain intact through the duration of the series. AA Agendas currently includes: Morpho-Ecologies, Typological Formations and the forthcoming Environmental Tectonics.
Two deadlines will be made available for proposals for the Agendas series. The summer deadline for the next cycle of titles is 18 July 2008. Those interested should be able to submit a one-page written summary of the proposed book, a table of contents including articles to be comissioned, and for visual sources, between 3–5 sample project pages. Proposals should be sent to Thomas Weaver (weaver_to@aaschool.ac.uk) and Zak Kyes (artdirector@aaschool.ac.uk) in the AA Print Studio.
Part one of a conversation between Russell Bestley and Wayne Daly (AA Print Studio graphic designer) appears in issue four of New Zealand-based graphic design journal The National Grid. ‘We’re So Bored With London’ is framed around Bestley’s ‘Hitsville UK’ project, an exhaustive mapping and taxonomical survey of seven-inch UK punk sleeves which argues for a wider spread, more regionally inclusive history of punk and its myriad sub-genres, through analysis of graphic design styles and methods. Part two will appear in issue five.
AARCHITECTURE 2008–09 CALL FOR EDITORS AArchitecture is looking for two student editors for 2008–09 who will be responsible for helping to shape and commission the content of each of the year’s three issues. This editorship will be in collaboration with an editorial team, who can help manage the day-to-day production, and an editorial board, who will strategically guide the publication. AArchitecture is designed to provide a site for capturing the most relevant discussions related to the academic and intellectual life of the AA. In the spirit of something between a newsletter and a ‘zine, the contents may vary radically from edited transcripts of a conference or symposium, to student projects, a satirical commentary on aspects of the school, or extracts from new and historical publications. Printed in an edition of 8,000, AArchitecture is widely read by AA members, students and staff, as AArchitecture – Issue 6
well as being distributed internationally at select bookshops. Each issue is approximately 56 pages, staple bound, printed in two colours and includes occasional inserts. AArchitecture follows a specific template which will remain intact through its duration. The publication is published, copy-edited and designed through the AA Print Studio but the shape and feel of each journal will be largely determined by the student-led editors. The deadline for sumbiting proposals for the next production cycle is 18 July 2008. Interested students should prepare a one-page written proposal for AArchitecture including an editorial statement, articles to be commissioned, and a sample of previous writing. Please contact Zak Kyes (artdirector@aaschool.ac.uk) and Thomas Weaver (weaver_to@aaschool.ac.uk) in the AA Print Studio to schedule a presentation to the editorial team and editorial board.
News from the Architectural Association
News Briefs Vandana Baweja (AA H&T MA 1999) presented a conference paper titled ‘Otto Koenigsberger in Princely Mysore: Battles over Architectural Taste’ in October 2007 at the 36th Annual Conference on South Asia at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
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Journal, along with a review of the monograph by AA member and former General Studies lecturer Diana Periton.
international exhibition, Manufacturing Material Effects, which is on show from 28 March to 9 June.
David Hills (GradDiplCons (AA) Dist 2006) has won first prize in the 2007 IHBC Gus Astley student awards. The award was for his thesis written while at the AA, Barbican: Modern Conservation?
Lighthive, the AA exhibition designed by Alex Haw (former Diploma Unit Master) was highly commended in the Special Projects category of the 2008 Lighting Design Awards (6 March). In addition, his recent project Work/ Space/Ply/Time was awarded British Council funding and exhibited at the Hong Kong Shenzhen Biennial. It is scheduled to return to London for the London Festival of Architecture, before touring to the CUBE in Manchester and the Liverpool Biennial. Atmos, the practice which Alex runs, was profiled in a recent edition of Surface magazine and has been short-listed to design a 320m landscape of art lighting around Canary Wharf.
Turf City by NEKTON Design was a finalist in the Vatnsmyri competition run by the Reykjavik City Planning Committee. The project directors are Jeffrey Turko and Gudjón Erlandsson (both AADipl 1999), and their vision for Vatnsmyri sets out to develop a clear local/global identity for a site that stands in strong relation with the existing region and future city of Reykjavik.
The practice of Simon Allford (Former Vice President of the AA and Paul Monaghan (GradDiplCons(AA) 1989) was featured in the 24 January 2008 issue of the Architects’ Journal, which ran an article on the Southwark Child Development Centre in Camberwell, designed by Allford Hall Monaghan Morris.
Anne Save de Beaurecueil and Franklin Lee (Unit Masters, Diploma 2) and Theodore Spyropoulos (AADRL Co-director) showed their work in Synathroisis, an exhibition organised by the Technical Chamber of Greece, Section of Central Macedonia in collaboration with HELEXPO, and held in Thessaloniki from 21 to 24 February 2008. synathroisis.net
RIBA President Sunand Prasad (AADipl 1975 and former AA Council member) has had a monograph about his practice, Transformations: The Architecture of Penoyre & Prasad, published by Black Dog. The publication includes eight essays written by Sunand. The practice’s Gracefields Gardens Customer Centre in Streatham was also featured in the 24 January 2008 issue of the Architects’
Michael Hensel and Achim Menges (AA EmTech Co-Director and Studio Master) are guest-editors of an issue of AD on Versatility and Vicissitude – Performance in Morpho-Ecological Design, which was launched at the AA on 14 March. In addition, Achim Menges’ Morphogenetic Design Experiment is being shown at the Indianapolis Museum of Art as part of an
AA News Briefs
Anderson Inge (AA Technical Studies course master) and Bruce Gernand had an exhibition entitled Pillow at the m2 gallery in Peckham (14 March–5 May). The pillow form was generated by Bruce using a digital process, where virtual space was conceived as a dream space. It was inflected with Anderson’s supporting structure in wood, which provided a particular context integrating contrasting idioms. They also recently participated in the Combined Residency programme at the European Ceramics Work Centre in Holland, where they collaborated on two large-scale ceramic sculptures that were shown at the RBS Gallery. Giannis Douridas (AA EmTech MA 2006) gave a lecture on 20 March at the Aristotelian University of Thessaloniki. Entitled Sustainable Architects – 5 Survival Tips, it dealt with issues such
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AA News Briefs
as technology, collaborations, concept and clientele, as seen through the prism of the word ‘sustainable’. The lecture showcased recent projects by his practice RCTECH-Athens. Peter Blundell Jones (AA Dipl 1972) has written in the 7 February issue of the Architects’ Journal about Cotes Farm, by Evans Vettori. There is also a review of his recent publication, University of Sheffield School of Architecture 1908–2008: A Centenary History in the 14 February issue of AJ. Paris Philippou (AA Dipl 1998) and Pavlos Philippou (AA Dipl 1998, AA H+U MA Dist 2002 and AA PhD candidate) curated an exhibition on the early work of J+A Philippou Architects – Engineers at the Nicosia Municipal Arts Centre, Cyprus. The exhibition, on show through February, was accompanied by a symposium with contributions from Larry Barth (AA H&U and LU lecturer), Pierre d’Avoine (former AA Unit Master), Dimitra Katsota (AA Dipl 1996) and Stephan Buerger (AA Dipl 1998) and Pavlos Philippou presented papers. Ana Cocho Bermejo, Andrea Balducci Caste and Dao De Li (all AA DRL MArch 2006) discuss the need for flexible and adaptable systems to address the uncertainties of disaster relief in their new book Emergency Deployable, published by Netbiblo. The book includes an introduction by Brett Steele (AA Director) and Theodore Spyropoulos (AA DRL Co-director). Angeliki Koliomichou (AA LU MA 2007) was invited to present her MA project entitled Augmented Waterways
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AA News Briefs Guess The Building
at the 3rd Seminario de Paisagismo Sul-Americano conference at the National Museum of Fine Arts in Rio De Janeiro, Brazil on 28 May. The project was also selected for the Hong Kong Shenzhen Biennale 2008. acd.ufrj.br/historiadopaisagismo/ seminario/inicial.htm The 21 February issue of AJ contained an article celebrating ten years of the AA DRL programme and a feature on the DRL pavilion in Bedford Square. The DRL TEN exhibition ran at the AA from 25 February to 18 March and was accompanied by a publication. The issue also featured a review of the book On Altering Architecture by Fred Scott (Former President of the AA), which was launched at the AA on 12 December 2007. The work of Jorge Martinez Ayala (AA LU MA student) was exhibited at the 7th BIA São Paulo International Biennial of Architecture from 11 November to 16 December 2007. His project, Parque Urbano Buenavista, redefines the Buenavista neighbourhood’s New Library, providing wide open spaces in a high-quality environment to increase the use of the library facilities. Teresa Stoppani (AA H&T lecturer and PhD programme tutor) was a speaker at the interdisciplinary symposium Mobility of the Line at the University of Brighton, 10–12 January, where she presented the paper Material Lines: Apocalypse, Capricci, War and other Disasters, a study of the use of the line in etchings and drawings by Dürer, Piranesi, Goya and the Chapmans. Teresa was also a visiting lecturer at the School of Architecture and Design
News from the Architectural Association
of RMIT University in Melbourne (Autumn 2007. Her lecture course, Paradigm Islands, was based on her current research on contemporary architectural discourses on Manhattan and Venice. The 6 March 2008 issue of AJ features a photograph spread of the recently completed Living Bridge over the River Shannon in the Republic of Ireland by Wilkinson Eyre. Wilkinson Eyre is the practice of Chris Wilkinson (AA Member) and Jim Eyre (President of the AA). Tyler Martiné (AA DRL MArch 2005) recently won first prize in the 10th annual Arquine International Design Competition. His partner on the project was Mike Miller, and they were sponsored by Steinberg Architects. The competition required the design of two 100-storey skyscrapers to celebrate the bicentennial of Mexico’s independence in 2010. Their proposal, developed around the city’s pollution epidemic and specific remediation technologies, looks at developing educational programmes and performative tectonics that can fight this epidemic. GroundLab have won the design competition for Longgang Centre and Longcheng Square with their Deep Ground concept. Collaborators during the competition stage include Arup ILG and InGame. GroundLab comprises Eva Castro (Unit Master Diploma Unit 12 and AA LU Course Director), Sarah Majid (AA LU MA 2005), Alfredo Ramirez (AA LU MA 2005 and AA LU tutor), Eduardo Rico (AA LU tutor), Eva Tsuoni (AA LU MA 2005) and Holger Kehne (Unit Master Diploma Unit 12).
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Michael Shamiyeh (AA H&T MA programme) had an article entitled Design New Futures published in Volume magazine, December 2007. The article explores the relevance of the creative-analytical approach at work in architectural design in solving (complex) problems for strategic business thinking and innovation. He was subsequently invited to present his findings at McKinsey Germany in March, and gave a talk on 8 April in Amsterdam for the Masters of Intervention Series with Andrew Bullen. Joyce Chan’s (MSc SED 2006) poster presentation of her Masters Dissertation Project Outdoor Comfort in a Hot and Humid Climate won the Best Poster Award at the PLEA 2007 International Conference Sun, Wind & Architecture in Singapore, November 2007. A six-page article by Joana Goncalves (AA SED MA 1997) in issue no. 21 of Pos, the journal of the Faculty of Architecure & Urbanism of the University of São Paulo, reports on the lectures and seminars given there last year by Simos Yannas (AA SED Course Director). An article by Simos Yannas on the pedagogic approach and recent projects of the AA’s Masters programme in Sustainable Environmental Design appeared in issue 9 of Axis, the Journal of the Caribbean School of Architecture. The third edition of Em Busca de uma Arquitetura Sustentavel para os Tropicos by Oscar Corbella and Simos Yannas, to be published in Rio de Janeiro later this year, now features
AA News Briefs
English and Spanish summaries in addition to the original Portuguese text. The Winter 2008 issue of 2A Architecture & Art, published in Dubai, is devoted to the Gulf Research Project undertaken by the AA E&E SED programme in collaboration with Harvard University’s Center for Middle Eastern Studies and the American University of Sharjah, and features a detailed presentation of SED group’s research results and design proposals. Vesna Petresin Robert (AA Member) curated, with Kjeld Kjeldsen, the exhibition Frontiers of Architecture 1 – Cecil Balmond, which attracted over half a million visitors to the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art in Denmark. In addition, she co-wrote an essay with Cecil Balmond for the first in the series of publications Frontiers of Architecture, entitled Inform. Vesna also gave a talk, with Brian Eno and Tom Philips, about Architecture and Music at the Royal Academy on 21 April and co-wrote a monograph, Solutions for a Sustainable City: Arup in Beijing, which will be published by Black Dog in June 2008. amazon.com/Cecil-BalmondFrontiers-Architecture-I/ dp/8791607167 royalacademy.org.uk/events/ focusdays/architecture-and-music2,424,EV.html Laurent-Paul Robert (AA Member) has created visual effects for the feature film Stardust, 2007 and was a technical director on The Bourne Ultimatum, 2007 and Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, 2007.
AADVD 2007, designed by Vasilis Stroumpakos (AADP, Ex-DRL Tutor), received first prize at the European Design Awards. EDA is an annual pan-European graphic design competition. AADVD 2007 was designed by Vasilis (www.00110.org) and implemented by the AADP team. ed-awards.com Timothy Brittain-Catlin’s (former History & Theory Studies tutor) latest book, The English Parsonage in the Early Nineteenth Century, will be published in May by Spire Books in association with English Heritage. Designed by Allon Kaye, and with photographs by Martin Charles, it will be his third book this year. David Adjaye (AA Councillor and former Diploma Unit Master) has recently been awarded an OBE. The 10 April 2008 issue of AJ features an interview with Adjaye. Guess the Building Win a Drink at the AA Bar Last Issue: Canterbury Cathedral In tribute to Peter Barefoot who died last year, this issue’s Guess the Building features one of his images (top of page). Peter was an alumnus of the AA and one of our former Honorary Secretaries, as well as an extensive contributor to the Slide Library’s collection of over 150,000 images of historical and contemporary architecture, from which this image is taken. If you guess correctly you win a drink on us at the AA Bar. E-mail your guess to contribute@aaschool.ac.uk
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Public Announcement
Visiting School 2008
AA Publications AASCHOOL.AC.UK/PUBLICATIONS
A new streamlined website for online purchases of AA Publications has recently been launched, featuring an updated and secure ordering system. Users will now be able to register and have their details stored for future use. The site provides a full listing of AA titles available for purchase and news about recently published and forthcoming titles.
We intend to add a preview feature in the near future, which will further enhance the site, in particular for AA Files and out-of-print books. Feedback from AA Members would be most welcome. The site can be found at: aaschool.ac.uk/publications email: publications@aaschool.ac.uk
AA BOOKSHOP After thirty years’ of continuous operation, The Triangle Bookshop has now closed. The AA will re-open the shop on Monday 16 June, providing a temporary venue for the sale of AA Publications and other core stock previously held by Triangle.
The new AA Bookshop, specialising in titles related to contemporary architectural culture, will open in the Autumn 2008. More information about our plans can be found online at aabookshop.net
Image: Detail of workflow diagram extracted from frontispiece in Cedric Price Works II, published by AA Publications, 1984
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News from the Architectural Association
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The AA Visiting School is a worldwide network of design workshops and other events organised by the Architectural Association School of Architecture. The AA is the world’s most international school of architecture, with nearly 80 per cent of its 530 full-time students coming to London each year from 50 or more countries. By taking the AA’s acclaimed unit-based forms of teaching and public programme of lectures to cities around the world, the AA Visiting School allows a global audience of participants to confront the leading issues shaping architecture, design and urban culture at the outset of the 21st century. If your school or organisation is interested in hosting a future AA Visiting School programme, please contact Brett Steele, AA School Director, for further information: director@aaschool.ac.uk Additional information about the AA School can be found online at aa.school.net 1. Dubai, UAE: 4–13 January Learning from Dubai aaschool.net/visitingschool/dubai AA visiting programme in cooperation with the Third Line Gallery, Dubai. A 10-day design and research workshop focusing on workers’ housing conditions and the surrounding urban networks that make possible the massive construction programmes in Dubai, a city being built almost overnight. 2. Turin, Italy: 13–29 July Prototyping the City aaschool.net/visitingschool/turin AA visiting programme in cooperation with the Torino 2008 World Design Capital. A 12-day design workshop exploring the potential of prototyping as a creative instrument in the production of the contemporary city. Apply directly to summerschool@ torinoworlddesigncapital.it by 15 June.
Visiting School 2008
3. London, UK: 14 July–1 August AA Summer Architecture School: London Ever After aaschool.ac.uk/summerschool A three-week introduction to architecture for current undergraduate students or others considering a change in school or profession. The programme provides a broad overview of contemporary architectural design, culture and ideas, taught at Bedford Square and based on the AA’s acclaimed unit system.
7. Shanghai, China: 20–28 August Computational Urbanism: The Shanghai Experiment aaschool.net/visitingschool/shanghai AA visiting programme hosted by Bridge 8 in the heart of Shanghai’s new cultural hub. For the second successive year, a summer urbanism workshop will explore the potential for alternative architectural, design and development strategies to engage with and confront the explosive urban development of Shanghai.
4. Singapore: 17–27 July Breeding Design aaschool.net/visitingschool/ singapore AA visiting programme hosted by the Experience Design Centre at the Singapore Polytechnic University. This third annual design workshop in Singapore will examine new kinds of vertical, high-density urban lifestyles. Design studios will propose alternative, adaptive designs for dense urban conditions in one of Asia’s most rapidly developing settings.
8. Delhi, India: 30 October–7 November Reinventing Public Space aaschool.net/visitingschool/delhi AA visiting programme in cooperation with Sarai Centre for the Study of Developing Societies CSDS. A nine-day design workshop that looks beyond traditional building typologies at the invention, design and documentation of new kinds of emerging institutional models for public organisations in the context of one of the world’s mega-cities.
5. London, UK: 4–15 August Summer dLab aa-dlab.net The AA’s new digital prototyping lab is the venue for an intensive two-week course offering a rapid immersion in advanced contemporary computational design techniques, software and output technologies, including CNC, lasercutting and 3D printing.
Contacts Please go online for more information: aaschool.net/visitingschool Co-ordinator: Sandra Sanna E visitingschool@aaschool.ac.uk T + 44 (0)20 7887 4014 F + 44 (0)20 7414 0782
6. Seoul, Korea: 8–17 August DMZ: A New Border Nation aaschool.net/visitingschool/seoul AA visiting programme held jointly with the SAUA Summer Workshop. A nine-day workshop led by AA teaching staff and leading Korean practitioners, held in Pagu Book City 30km north of Seoul. The workshop will conceive, design, document and brand a new nation located across the demilitarised zone separating South and North Korea. The workshop plans to include a rare excursion into North Korea.
AA Members can access a black and white and/or larger print version of AArchitecture by going to the AA website at aaschool.net. Alternatively, contact the AA Membership Office at: membership@aaschool.ac.uk or on +44 (0)20 7887 4076
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