Issue 14 News from the Architectural Association
AARCHITECTURE
The Increasing Visibility of the Curator PG 2
Staff Christmas Party PG 14
Nothing dates like images of the future Thrilling Wonder Stories II PG 5
AA Unit Trips PG 24
AA ABK: Threads and Connections PG 28
VERSO
AARCHITECTURE
CONTRIBUTORS
News from the Architectural Association Issue 14 / Winter 2011 www.aaschool.ac.uk
John Adams mandjadams@btopenworld.com
Š2011 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 4033 Please send your news items for the next issue to news@aaschool.ac.uk
Marina Adams mandjadams@btopenworld.com Peter Ahrends p.ahrends@tiscali.co.uk Olaf Bartels olafbartels@gmx.de Richard Burton Paolo Cascone paolo@co-design-lab.net Mark Cousins markcousins@aaschool.ac.uk
EDITORIAL BOARD
Alex Lorente, Membership Brett Steele, AA School Director Zak Kyes, AA Art Director
Eleanor Dodman eleanordodman@gmail.com
EDITORIAL TEAM
Aram Mooradian archendworld@gmail.com
Nicola Quinn, Managing Editor Claire McManus, Graphic Designer Scrap Marshall and Manijeh Verghese, Student Editors
Danielle Rago daniellerago@ archiveofspatialaesthetics.com
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Valerie Bennett Ed Bottoms Tim Brittain-Catlin Kathleen Formosa Roz Jackson Joanne McCluskey Esther McLaughlin Marianne Mueller Charlotte Newman
Printed by Cassochrome, Belgium
Alex Warnock Smith alex@urbanprojectsbureau.com Claire Wright
Architectural Association (Inc.) Registered Charity No. 311083 Company limited by guarantee Registered in England No. 171402 Registered office as above
AARCHITECTURE
Issue 14
2 The Increasing Visibility of the Curator 4 Social and Aesthetic Processes: Concrete Geometries at the AA 5 Thrilling Wonder Stories II: Stranger than Truth 6 Plain Space, John Pawson 8 AA Archives: Projects, Personalities, Publics 10 Daniel Libeskind, The Space of Encounter 12 Anthony Vidler, the Crisis of Modernism: James Stirling Out of the Archive 14 Staff Christmas Party 16 New from AA Publications and Bedford Press 18 The AA Masterplan 20 Recent Print Projects 24 AA Unit Trips 27 A Reunion 28 AA ABK: Threads and Connections 30 A Tribute to Leonard Manasseh 32 Post-vernacular design and the case study of the SĂŠvarĂŠ Cultural Centre 34 Nangang 2050: Designed in Taiwan? 35 News 1
Projects
The Increasing Visibility of the Curator By Danielle Rago Traditionally relegated to the white walls of the gallery, today the term ‘curator’ is applicable to everyone from a shopkeeper to a museum practitioner, and practically all those who lie in between. When applied as diversely and as widespread as its recent usage, the term has gained an increased significance within the social milieu and more importantly, within the discourse of architecture. The visibility of the curator within today’s society seems to be all the more prevalent with US News listing curation as ‘one of the 50 best careers of 2010’. Cynthia Davidson’s latest issue of the architectural publication Log focuses entirely on the topic of curating architecture as a new form of architectural practice. Even universities have established graduate programmes in curating architecture. This growing ‘trend’ is slowly becoming part of the discourse on architecture and its display, as discussed between New York-based architecture editor and critic Cynthia Davidson and architecture writer, editor, and curator Shumon Basar, on October 18, 2010, at The AA. The conversation between Cynthia and Shumon further proliferates the discussion on the topic of curating, while expounding it by comparing it to editing architecture, as well as the role of the author/architect in the process of being edited and/or curated. While primarily focusing on the differences between editing and curating architecture, Shumon and Cynthia underlined one major factor in the development of both the editor and curator as producers of architectural culture. Editors, dealing with raw material (text), and curators, working primarily with complete works of art (images), contextualise what has been produced through material organisation. Through the process of admitting or excluding certain works, the curator’s work parallels to the editor in terms of the selection process, and the curious role of critic comes into play here as well. Working within different spaces – the editor within the context of the written word on the page, and the curator with the art object and the surrounding environment – both professions demonstrate an overall influence on architecture and the prevalence of an architectural voice, created or exposed. Both editor and curator use their position as a platform for promoting the relevance of architecture to present-day needs and the overall society. Whilst
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often the editor has a more exclusive audience than that of the curator, both work to improve, highlight, and make understood the work of the architect. Straddling the boundary between private and public, individual and collective, the curator and/or editor tread in critical territory in which what they say (write) or what they do (display) affects the piece of work being publicised. However, through this process of curating – by editor and curator, respectively – the editor often take a backseat to the more public persona of the curator. The current rise in visibility of the curator has not been mirrored by the editor who continues to maintain a less-visible role, yet equally sustains a productive discourse. Historically, though, the role of the editor (within the profession of architecture) has been established long prior to that of the curator. This position of the architectural curator did not exist until Phillip Johnson established the Department of Architecture and Design at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City in 1932 and led it as its Director. From this highly visible role within a prestigious institution, the profession has expanded beyond the white walls of the gallery and into non-institutional spaces as well. Curators work as intermediaries between architects and the public – finding a way to display, explain and most importantly understand their work. This new inclusion of architecture within the practice further expands the profession of curator from the process of selection and organisation of the art object to questions of how to display architecture within contemporary society. Danielle Rago is a Graduate Student in the History & Critical Thinking Program. Editing vs Curating: Shumon Basar & Cynthia Davidson in conversation 18 October 2010, AA Lecture Hall
Shumon Basar and Cynthia Davidson. Image courtesy AA Film Library
Cover Log 20. Courtesy Anyone Corporation
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Events
Social and Aesthetic Processes: Concrete Geometries at the AA By Olaf Bartels
Photo Valerie Bennett
In which way does spatial form choreograph social processes? It is questions like these with which Concrete Geometries; Spatial Form in Social and Aesthetic Processes, directed by Marianne Mueller and Olaf Kneer, is concerned. In October, a symposium took place as part of this enquiry. Perception and Cognition: In his introduction Toni Kotnik, mathematician and architect, pointed out the relevance of spatial geometries in cultural history: they serve to orientate us within unknown terrain, to separate and finally to appropriate space. Geometry is not for nothing THE tool of the architect. That Euclidean rules are no longer the only rules valid, and the fact that other professionals of spatial production have long since joined the architects, demonstrated the artistic positions presented: through specific stimulation of our perceptions, artists have provoked an engagement with space. Sensory Engagement: This was defined by architects who make the understanding of the sensory experience of space and its atmospheric properties the focus of their work. For Susanne Hofmann of Die Baupiloten, TU, Berlin, it was not enough to offer an atmosphere-centered architecture. In contrast to other panelists, she wants to employ atmospheric impressions of space as a communications tool between architects and future users. Relational Space: Kathrin Böhm of the art/ architecture collective ‘public works’ shared her
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experiences with a particular type of British regeneration project, where building projects are indeed being discussed, without anticipating a building form. The concrete nature of these geometries lies in social relations. The work of British artist Fran Cottell takes on a similar direction. She transformed her house into an exhibition of her domestic life, allowing strangers to walk through her house on a type of cat-walk. Social Contracts: This examined the impact of built geometries on how we live. The Dutch Designer Vincent Wittenberg reported how by swapping a hoarding with a typical oversized garden fence, he managed to change a demolition site in Eindhoven into a meeting place for the neighborhood. Conclusion: The spatial form and its organisation remain of great relevance if they are embedded into the respective network of social relations and accepted there. Olaf Bartels is an architectural critic and historian, living and working in Berlin and Hamburg. (Translation by Marianne Mueller) The original article appeared in German in the magazine Bauwelt 48. www.bauwelt.de Concrete Geometries Research Cluster: Marianne Mueller and Olaf Kneer with Concrete Geometries participants. Symposium, 15 October 2010, AA Lecture Hall
Events
Thrilling Wonder Stories II: Stranger than Truth By Aram Mooradian
Ant Farm, Chip Lord, Doug Michels, Curtis Schreier, Media Burn, 4 July 1975
The second annual installation of Thrilling Wonder Stories, a futurist seminar held at the AA in November, ‘simultaneously reflects the current condition as much as it suggests possibilities of the next’, says Liam Young, Diploma 6 Unit Master and director of the futurist think-tank, Tomorrow’s Thoughts Today. The event was organised by Liam and Geoff Manaugh, of BLDG BLOG fame, as a speculative timeline ranging from Counterfeit Archaeologies, Apocalyptic Visions, Cautionary Tales, Near Futures and Alternative Presents. Manaugh opened the day’s events, alongside his partner Nicola Twilley, with suitably fantastical tales of bees excreting concrete honey, cow tunnels underneath the city of New York and speculations on the fossilisation of plastic cups. In his introduction, Brett Steele remarked ‘the history of modern architecture is a catalogue of futurist failures’. Indeed, with a range of scientists, artists and architects each sharing their fantasies about the future, it was clear to see that the differences in the presentations expressed a range of anxieties and hopes that perhaps can be seen as amplified interpretations of present-day design thinking. Speakers ranged from interactive computer games engineers to apocalyptic comic artists, from authors to comedians. The AA’s appetite for celebrity was wetted with the appearance of just such an author and comedian, Will Self. ‘I don’t want to waste your time’ he grumpily murmured, ‘because we’re all dying’. The cynical lecture hall audience erupted with laughter. From writer, the presentations moved deftly
across professions to scientist. Dr. Rachel Armstrong, a biochemical engineer, gripped the audience with research into protocells, metabolic chemical compounds that attain surprisingly similar characteristics to living organisms. Armstrong speculated that protocells could be let loose into the Venice canals, programmed to excrete limestone, generating structural reefs to hold up the city. As the exhausted (and let’s face it, slightly drunk) audience pushed on to the last presentations, Joep van Lieshout, the artist noted for his large sculptures of cartoon-like genitalia, emerged from the shadows with a glass of red wine in his hand. In Slave City, a dystopian world where life is a recyclable commodity, humour is used to unveil our most grotesque capabilities. While the awkward AA audience laughed at the references to penises, the titters were matched by an awareness of something viscerally disturbing. Van Lieshout’s presentation was a dystopian one - a designer’s warning, if anything. ‘Nothing dates like images of the future’, concluded Liam, a reminder that Thrilling Wonder Stories II spoke more about how we think today than about how we will think in the future. Aram Mooradian is a Fifth Year AA student Stranger Than Truth, Liam Young and Geoff Manaugh with Thrilling Wonder Stories participants. Symposium, 26 November 2010, AA Lecture Hall
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Events
Plain Space, John Pawson By Manijeh Verghese John Pawson’s lecture at the AA closed out the lecture series for the Autumn Term. Pawson, who attended the AA briefly until 1981, had not been back to the AA since his lecture to mark the release of his selfaffirmed manifesto – Minimum – in the 1990s. Plain Space, taken from a quote by William Shenstone, captures the essence of Pawson’s work over the past 30 years and therefore, is an apt title for both this lecture and the eponymous retrospective of Pawson’s career to date at the Design Museum. The lecture allowed the audience to follow Pawson’s trajectory from his childhood on the Yorkshire Moors and his family’s textile business to his unconventional architectural education while working with Shiro Kuramata in Japan and his brief stint at the AA to his first projects that led to him establishing his own brand of Minimalism. Pawson defines the minimum ‘as the perfection that an artefact achieves when it is not possible to improve it by subtraction. This is the quality that an object has when every component, every detail and every junction has been reduced or condensed to the essentials.’ This quest for perfection is epitomised in the projects shown throughout the lecture ranging from the Cistercian monastery in the Czech Republic to the Calvin Klein flagship store in New York to Pawson’s own house. It is interesting that Pawson presents three such disparate projects for such varied clientele as interconnected. He showed Calvin Klein his own home as an example of his work on a tight budget, which led to the subsequent commission of the store and in turn, the monks saw images of the Calvin Klein store published in a book and contacted Pawson to build their new monastery. Pawson explains, ‘This has been a pattern really, one thing has led to another. I never really had a real plan – I just tried to build a body of work’. Plain Space allows you to experience the essence of the space but also the importance of its constituents. In Pawson’s work, light becomes a material, controlled as thoughtfully as any physical surface. He uses light to highlight shadow gap details, to create bold geometric shapes in lieu of windows and to animate white walls through a play between light and shadow. The defining characteristics of Pawson’s work are his attention to detail, his unique sense of materiality and the injection of dry humour, wit and personality that brings each project to life. In each of his projects, every junction, every object and every room is meticulously planned out since ‘there is no
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room for compromise in spaces like this’. A perfect example of Pawson’s work is his own house – ‘I always think the houses you make for yourself are a real opportunity to push the ideas – to get to the essence of the approach’. By gutting the interior of the Victorian row house, Pawson created a home for his family that maximised the inhabitable space of such a modest footprint. The house would never be called stark or clinical – for it is filled with life and rich materials. Minimalism, here, is the restricted palette ‘that helps make things visually simple where every texture becomes significant’. Having worked for John for two summers, I have fond memories of his home including the time when we had to be evacuated from the office after a gas leak at the adjacent construction site. We relocated to his house and worked from the kitchen, enjoying nice sunny lunches out on the patio ending the day when a colleague, much to his humiliation, walked into the minimal glass wall that separated the outdoor patio from the kitchen within. In every aspect of his life whether it be his office, his projects or his home, John is intensely personal. Even in the lecture, the images of his projects are peppered with anecdotes about his two sons Caius and Ben and his wife, Catherine. In this way, he allows us in, to understand how minimalism is not a prescriptive style that inhabitants must adapt to but rather, it is tailored to the people within and their own patterns of use. As the lecture came to a close, Pawson spoke of his future commission for the Design Museum’s new home at the Commonwealth Institute and the continuation of his quest for the minimum. The evening ended, most uniquely, with the final question from the audience being voiced by an elderly gentleman who asked, ‘Are you a Christian? Do you believe in Redemption? Do you believe in Life After Death?’ Such a curious query caused quite a commotion in the Lecture Hall as the audience wondered what Pawson’s answer would be. He replied by saying he doesn’t disbelieve but the projects he had shown us that evening answered instead with the truism, ‘God is in the details’. Manijeh Verghese is a fourth year AA student and a Student Editor of AArchitecture John Pawson: Plain Space Lecture, 10 December 2010, AA Lecture Hall
John Pawson giving his lecture at the AA
Plain Space, Design Museum, London 2011. Photo Gilbert McCarragher
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Events
AA Archives: Projects, Personalities, Publics By Manijeh Verghese
Motorolorama, Diana Jowsey and Piers Gough, 1971. Photo AA Archive
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AA Archives: Projects, Personalities, Publics is a rare opportunity to appreciate material from the AA Archive, showcasing the evolution of the Diploma School, the characters that have inhabited it and providing glimpses of AA life over the last one hundred years. Opening on 17th February, the exhibition in the AA Gallery features many celebrated and influential AA projects, with schemes including the legendary Tomorrow Town (a pioneering modernist town planning scheme from 1937-8), together with a 16mm stop motion film shot by Sir Nicholas Grimshaw in 1965 for his diploma project, and many other student projects by alumni including Sir David Chipperfield, Tony Fretton, Piers Gough and Sir Jeremy Dixon. Alongside are exhibited models, posters and ephemera which encompass student life and membership activities at the AA since the 1920s including the annual AA pantomime and Carnival. In addition, two sound booths also allow visitors access to an oral history of the school and which include firsthand accounts of famous figures such as Frank Lloyd Wright, Mies van der Rohe and Berthold Lubetkin visiting the AA. These insightful accounts shed light on what it must have been like to be at the AA during that period. The interviews, taken from the series Architect’s Lives, are reproduced with the permission of the British Library and are extracts from nearly 100 life story interviews recorded for National Life Stories (www.bl.uk/nls). Two entertaining excerpts from this collection are featured below. Robert Maguire on Frank Lloyd Wright’s 1950 visit to the AA On the final day, he [Frank Lloyd Wright] gave prizes to the AA students. I had a travelling studentship in my final year so I had to go up and shake hands with the great man in this big marquee in Bedford Square. He gave a talk to us all which was based on something he had written, which is, I think, in his autobiography. He was against people who won competitions. He never went in for competitions because the people who judged competitions shouldn’t be judging competitions; they should be building things themselves, so they were average architects. And people who went in for competitions, ought to be winning commissions so they were only average architects and so on. He ended up saying that the winner of a competition is an average of an average of an average. He applied this to his speech to the prize-winners about how people who taught architecture ought to be doing it instead of teaching it so they were average and students who won prizes and so on... I’ve forgotten exactly how he put it together. When each of us went up to shake hands with the great man and receive our
piece of paper, he said, ‘an average of an average of an average’ – looking us each in the eye, it really took us down a peg... Robert Maguire, interviewed by Linda Sandino, 2004, Architect’s Lives, British Library Sound Archive reference: C467/79/01-10 Tape 10 Side B Denis Clarke-Hall on Mies van der Rohe at the AA I was President of the AA. Mies was coming over to England for the Gold Medal. So I said to Alexander, who was Secretary of the AA at that time, ‘Write to his secretary and see if we can get him to come along to talk to the students’. It was a wonderful opportunity and he was only over here for a short time. She wrote back and said, ‘Terribly sorry, but he is fully booked up and won’t be able to manage it’. So I said, ‘to hell with this’ and I got a bit of AA notepaper and I wrote in my own handwriting: ‘Dear Mies, We would simply love you to come and meet our students who are longing to meet you. We have an informal dinner every Thursday and if you could possibly fit it into your itinerary, I will introduce you to the students’. A letter came back from him, not his secretary, saying ‘Delighted’. I knew he liked his drink so I got Alex to ring up his secretary and say, ‘What is Mies’s favourite drink?’ So we got his cocktails and his favourite German wine. When he came to this dinner, he came into the AA and I received him and took him up into the Front Members’ Room, which was a very comfortable room with armchairs, in those days. I sat him down and introduced him to the chairman of the student’s committee and a few other students and left him to it. I saw that he got a drink and I saw his reaction because a girl came along with a tray full of all sorts of drinks like that and said ‘What would you have?’ And he said, ‘What are these?’ And she said, ‘Well that is so and so which I believe you like’ and he said, ‘Ah!’ And he grabbed it and knocked it back, grabbed about three more and knocked them back... Denis Clarke Hall, interviewed by Louise Brodie, 1997, Architects’ Lives, British Library Sound Archive reference: C467/23 tape 2 side A (available on Archival Sound Recordings as part 3 of the interview) Manijeh Verghese is a Fourth Year AA Student and Student Editor of AArchitecture AA Archives Exhibition, 17 February–26 March 2011, AA Gallery
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Events
Daniel Libeskind, The Space of Encounter By Eleanor Dodman The commotion preceding Libeskind’s lecture entitled The Space of Encounter was quickly superseded when he entered the room. Silence fell as he approached the lectern; the mark of an eminent architect. Libeskind posed some interesting questions. Architecture is a mode of expression, a language if you will. For him, his drawings are architecture - whether or not you see the space within them is irrelevant - they are personal. His language is that of his drawings and consequently his buildings. More importantly he seems to converse with these drawings. For him, they serve the purpose of the traditional architectural drawing. They do however seem to be drawings of the past. Like many, he lost his language to what he calls the ‘market place’. His current works show none of the vitality that his early drawings possessed. The Connecticut house was a glimmering light amongst his other projects, which now mostly take the form of master planning. I do not mean to say that every building needs to emanate his inimitable jagged composition, it is more the vitality and/or the language that is missing. The following transcript is an excerpt from the beginning of the lecture: Thank you so much for inviting me to give this lecture. I am so happy to be at the AA because this was the first teaching job that I had, many, many years ago. I have met many interesting people here. The AA in my mind has always been a fantastic place for discourse and ideas. It is part of my background. Part of what I do has something to do with the AA. Architecture has many languages, certainly it communicates. Every building communicates. But what does it say beyond the market place? What does it say about life? What does it say about ideas? What does it say about things that are unable to be phrased within spoken or written language? But we have the language of architecture... which is the language of proportion, space, the language in many ways of abstraction. The language of longing. The language of dreams. It’s not really a language reducible to a simple set of formula but a language that like all languages remains enigmatic, which explains a message far beyond the obvious.
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I start here because these are the things that matter to me. After I graduated from school for three years I tried to work in architectural practices, and I worked for some notable architects. Then I realised I did not like the way architecture was practiced so I decided never to work for anyone. I never got another job. I never looked for another job, developing myself through my love of drawings became important. I love to draw; I sat for many years, in a kind of demented condition, drawing things which seemed to others as having no architectural relevance. They seemed to others to be very abstract having nothing architecturally instrumental about them; they were like architecture without a commission, architecture without the market place, architecture without the other side, so to speak. Truly, I developed an approach or a path and I had no idea where it would lead. Many business gurus will tell you that you have to have a goal and you should strive to reach it. In my experience, it is the opposite. Never have a goal, start on your path and just see where it will take you. It is a risky endeavour and an often troubling one. Often you are alone and by yourself. I believe that this is the destiny of both the works of architecture and of art that I like. The Chamber Works is another set of drawings that I did when I was the head of the Architecture Department. Many of these works have been exhibited at the AA. The first one was at an exhibition in 1990, I believe. I also exhibited my work in 1983, this was maybe more demented in a sense. People would question what it represented. However, for me, it represents architectural structure and thinking, the structure of space and buildings. Whatever you may think of these drawings I continue to be implicated in these drawings and my work refers to these drawings. I was an admirer of Palladio. He developed his drawings and he did not build many buildings. However, he did develop a way to build through his drawings. I do believe that the origins of architecture will always be in drawing. Whether it be drawing with a computer or a pen, drawing is essential. Eleanor Dodman is a Third Year AA student Daniel Libeskind: The Space of Encounter Lecture, 9 November 2010, AA Lecture Hall
Denver Art Museum’s enormous cantilever hovers over the Street Š BitterBredt
Daniel Libeskind discusses the language of architecture. Photo Scrap Marshall
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Events
Anthony Vidler The Crisis of Modernism: James Stirling Out of the Archive By Mark Cousins In November Tony Vidler, Dean of Cooper Union School of Architecture, gave a lecture on the exhibition he has curated, James Frazer Stirling: Notes from the Archive. This exhibition opened at the Canadian Centre for Architecture (CCA), then moved to the Yale Centre for British Art, and will be opening at the Tate Gallery on 5 April 2011. The handsome and substantial catalogue is already available. It is an indispensable volume for anyone interested in Stirling’s work. However, as Tony Vidler explained, neither the exhibition nor the catalogue pretends to be a definitive retrospective. It stems from the fact that the Stirling archives which are held by the CCA have now been completely catalogued. The exhibition is really a record of Tony Vidler’s encounter with the archive. The result is one which is personal and fascinating in its disclosure of the working process of Stirling. We can follow projects through their evolution in drawings. Indeed the whole exhibition is testimony to the central role of drawing for Stirling. Drawing was the medium through which he thought. Some commentators on Stirling have noted that he was not really a theorist. If by that it is meant that he didn’t choose to publish articles of abstract argumentation, perhaps this is true, but to Stirling drawing was thinking. To many who know the work of the professional Stirling one particular interest in the exhibition which Tony highlighted was material from Stirling’s earlier life including work he did as a student at Liverpool. He stressed Stirling’s absorbtion in the natural world, especially his interest in birds. He suggested that architects of that generation could be divided into two categories: young birdwatchers or young trainspotters. James Stirling fell into the category of being a birdwatcher all his life; perhaps by contrast Lord Foster might exemplify the train-spotter. The experience of the archive obviously changes our view of Stirling; to some extent writings on Stirling tend to divide his architectural career into phases – a red brick period, a high-tech period, a contextual period of the Stuttgart Museum and a post-modern period after that. These artificial divisions are clearly displaced in Tony Vidler’s
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account. By contrast, he finds a Stirling who is ceaseless in his attempt to find the right balance between the ‘context’ and the associational values of the projects. It is clear that the exhibition is in many ways a major innovation in the curation of architecture. It is no longer governed by the traditional norms of comprehensiveness and formal documentation. It chooses instead a point of view which is devoted to making Stirling’s work intelligible. This means that there is a shift in the focus of the exhibition towards showing how projects emerged rather than concentrating upon the documentation of finished work. In this sense the exhibition is itself an important curatorial event. Mark Cousins is the Director of the AA’s Histories and Theories Programme James Frazer Stirling: Notes from the Archive by Anthony Vidler is available in the AA Bookshop aabookshop.net Anthony Vidler: The Crisis of Modernism Lecture, 19 November 2010, AA Lecture Hall
Cambridge University by James Stirling. Photo Dennis Wheatley, 1968
Stirling’s Staatsgalerie, Stuttgart. Photo Philip Keirle, 1984
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Events
Staff Christmas Party
This year the AA teamed up with jelly-makers Bompas and Parr for the Staff Christmas Party. Bompas and Parr design jellys and other food on an architectural scale. For the AA’s party they came up with the theme of The Cook, The Thief, His Wife and Her Lover and designed the centrepieces and bars and all the food accordingly. The AA team provided flowers and additional furnishings. Photos Valerie Bennett
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Documents
New from AA Publications
Architecture Words 7 Modernity Unbound: Other Histories of Architectural Modernity Detlef Mertins 200 pp 180 x 110 mm, paperback February 2011 978-1-902902-89-0 £12 For almost 20 years, Detlef Mertins has been a critical voice in renewing our understanding of architectural modernity. Architect, historian, professor, his essays have often taken up familiar themes in order to redress inaccuracies and release energies that we were unaware of. These essays elaborate on such key modernist tropes as transparency, glass architecture, organicism, life and event, sameness and difference. Previously published in a variety of different venues, from journals to anthologies – including such noted books as Lars Spuybroek’s NOX: Machining Architecture and FOA’s Phylogenesis – they are now assembled for the first time in this volume.
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20/20: Editorial Takes on Architectural Discourse Edited by Kirk Wooller With a preface by Brett Steele 276 pp 135 x 216 mm, paperback February 2011 978-1-907896-00-2 £10 20/20: Editorial Takes on Architectural Discourse brings together editors from 20 leading contemporary architectural magazines to discuss collectively the role editors play in shaping architectural discourse. Each of the contributors has responded to a set of 20 questions on the multiple conditions under which particular ideas and words enter architectural discourse through publication. The resulting critical positions and observations are as diverse as the magazines from which they originate, and range from the oldest studentedited journal (Perspecta) to a research collective that at the time of writing was on the cusp of being launched ([bracket]). Also included are contributions from the editors of 306090, AA Files, Actar, An Architektur, Footprint, Grey Room, Harvard Design Magazine, Hunch, Interstices, Log, Manifold, Mark, New Geographies, OASE, Praxis, Scapes, UME and Volume. 20/20 is a timely publication that provides today’s architectural reader with concise viewpoints from the editors behind the magazines behind architectural culture.
Documents
New from Bedford Press
Translated By Charles Arsène-Henry and Shumon Basar (Eds.) Douglas Coupland, Rana Dasgupta, Hu Fang, Julien Gracq, Jonathan Letham, Tom McCarthy, Guy Mannes Abbott, Sophia Al Maria, Hisham Matar, Adania Shibli, Neal Stephenson 144 pp, b/w. 105 x 175 mm, softcover February 2011 978-1-907414-17-6 £10 Translated By accompanies the exhibition at the AA, which gathers eleven literary writers and eleven literary-places and subjects these to an act of immaterial translation: via the voice. The stories run through Ramallah, recollect turn of the century Sofia, remember the space-ship looking-Sheraton Hotel in Doha, wander through the ‘Metaverse’ and end at the end of the world in West Vancouver. Each of the authors invent or interpret place. Mundane, marginal, infamous, impossible. Together, the texts create a strange and beautiful territory that traverses distance and time. Includes essays by Charles Arsène-Henry and Shumon Basar.
Civic City Cahier 3 Distributed Agency, Design’s Potentiality Tom Holert 72 pp, 2 col. 115 x 190 mm, paperback with dust jacket March 2011 978-1-907414-12-1 £8 Tom Holert intends to reframe and re-imagine design in post-capitalist terms. By tracing the appearance of the term ‘design’ in contemporary critical theory he develops an optimistic micro-political approach, which tries to go beyond well-rehearsed figures of critique, namely, those accusing design of being complicit with capitalist commodification and, ultimately, exploitation. Bedford Press was initiated by the Architectural Association (AA), London in 2008 as a publishing imprint of AA Publications Ltd that seeks to develop contemporary models of publication practice. It aims to establish a more responsive model of small-scale publishing, nimble enough to encompass the entire chain of production in a single fluid activity, from initial commission to the final printing. Its output includes publications, pamphlets, posters and limited edition prints. www.bedfordpress.org
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Documents
The AA Masterplan By Clare Wright
Proposed section, 35 Bedford Square
1917
1919–21
1927
2009
AA occupation on Bedford Square
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Central Bloomsbury has been home to the AA since 1917. A burgeoning programme of activities meant there wasn’t enough space at 34–36 so when leases on adjoining properties became available, the opportunity to expand was taken. The AA doubled the size of its Bedford Square Estate and is now rationalising those facilities. We were appointed to develop a Masterplan, which was completed in January and works to improve the workshops and provide access are planned for 2011. What will the newly refashioned AA look like? During the consultation process we asked, ‘What is the AA?’ The answers are varied but have greatly influenced our approach. The AA is a uniquely creative School of architecture, with loyal lifelong members, whose work across a range of fields is of outstanding international importance. There are several reasons for this density of talent which no doubt includes the School’s radical origins. Founded by its own students and independent, it has always been able to act quickly and without the bureaucracy that hinders others. Returning soldiers, many of them, disabled, were welcomed at the end of the First World War, as were their international comrades, thereby cementing the School’s cosmopolitan outlook. Women, too, were admitted: a feat remarkable for its time, when women were still denied the vote. Once there, this eclectic group worked in the Bauhaus tradition of learning through making and together helped instil the spirited creativity for which the AA is still celebrated. Yet the AA is also informed by the wonderful central London buildings in which this all took place. Almost the whole of its Bedford Square estate is Grade I listed, though the School has the unusual distinction of contributing to, as well as benefiting from, this standing, having been cited by English Heritage as seminal in the Square’s listing description. Bedford Square has always been an exceptionally good example of Georgian town planning but it was the AA’s presence there, which drew the attention of the world’s architectural cognoscenti to its splendour, and put Georgian London on the architectural map. Of course the space is not all Georgian refinement, sitting alongside are the rough and ready spaces at the back, with their West Side Story aesthetic, which creates a contrast and an energy that is just as much a part of the school’s architectural dynamic. The most indelible mark of all, however, is that left by a legacy of change. Arrangements were in constant flux in the period 1917–1979. Walls were knocked down to create almost totally open-plan spaces, and then re-erected to form warrens of tiny rooms, while functions shifted throughout. The buildings as a whole display a richness that is common where one building type turns into another, and the
School’s original domestic form is still visible, refracted, by the patina that has developed in the years. Current arrangements date back to 1979 and, in many ways, work well. During the consultation process, to which many members contributed, the domestic scale of the spaces and the opportunity to bump into people came through time and again. This is facilitated by the tightness of the circulation route to key spaces, with the Bar, en route on the primary thoroughfare, a focus point for gatherings – planned and spontaneous - and having great intensity. Yet it is often impossible to find a seat; other spaces, such as the dining room, work less well; and more could be made of related outside spaces. The plan is to take what has worked and adapt it for a larger footprint. Circulation is key and needs to be appropriate to the ethos of the AA. With this in mind, the location of principal fixed activities has been assigned. Others have been deliberately left open, to be dictated by the changing needs and nature of the AA. Spaces dedicated to making have been located in the basement, since the workshops require heavy machinery and ventilation. More space and greater environmental controls will enhance these areas for everyone’s use. Important spaces, like the exhibition gallery, library and bar, will be housed in Nos. 34–36, at the heart of the School. The bar will be expanded to include dining and an outside terrace. The only physical alterations there will be the creation of openings between rooms. The properties to either side will retain their original domestic form, as a series of beautiful rooms that can be used in a variety of ways; for teaching, juries and administration, thereby preserving the ‘mixed’ feel of the AA. Access will also be provided with lifts added and lateral connections made. Ching’s Yard will be cleared and a lightlytouching roof added to form a multi-purpose hall. Finally a dedicated lecture theatre (larger than at present but still very much multi-functional) might be located to the rear of Nos. 32–33 . Each project is capable of being independently executed and the series, as a whole, can be divided into three categories: essential works, works affecting infrastructure, and design competitions open to members of the AA community. The essential works are scheduled to go ahead as soon as possible, to provide improved access and far better workshop facilities. Clare Wright is a Founder of Wright & Wright, the Masterplanners for the AA AA Masterplan Consultation and Exhibition, 10–30 November 2010, First Floor 32 Bedford Square
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Documents
Recent Print Projects
Peter Eisenman lecture poster
Mark Wigley & Brett Steele lecture poster
Exhibition guide for Educating Architects, Reinventing
Exhibition guide for Beyond Entropy:
Architecture, A4 gallery Tokyo, August 2010
When Energy Becomes Form, Fondazione Giorgio Cini, August 2010
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Poster for Beyond Entropy: When Energy Becomes Form
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Documents
Bedford Press & AA Bookshop at the New York Art Book Fair, PS1 MoMA, 5–7 November 2010 Top: The Information Economy by Joseph Grigely, curated by Zak Kyes. Above: Visitors at the AA Bookshop stall.
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AA Public Programme Winter 2011 poster
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Courses
AA Unit Trips
Diploma 18, Barcelona, October 2010
Foundation, Paris, November 2010
Workshop with Pep Bou in Cloud 9 office
Print making workshop at studio of Lori Solondz
Photo Danecia Sibingo
Photo Takako Hasegawa
Intermediate 7, Moscow, November 2010. View of Moscow State Univesity from Sparrow Hills Photo Tatiana von Preussen
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Diploma 5, Rome, November 2010.
Diploma 17, India, December 2010
Express tutorial on construction of Roman
In front of Matrimandir, Auroville,
masonry wall. Photo Ruohong Wu
Photo Theo Lalis
Diploma 3, France, December 2010
Intermediate 5, Italy, December 2010
Students in Mont Michel.
Piece by Anselm Kiefer at the Hangar
Photo Doyoun Cho
Bicocca, Milan. Photo Selim Halulu
Intermediate 8, Florida, December 2010
Diploma 13, Switzerland, November 2010
Visit to 111 Lincoln Road, Miami Beach,
Drawing workshop with Alex Kaiser, Werner Oechslin
Herzog De Meuron. Photo Eliska Pilna
Library Foundation. Photo Oliver Domeisen
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Diploma 4, Iceland, November 2010. Eyjafjallajoekull,
Intermediate 2, Tokyo, December 2010
swimming in the ash that caused European airspace
Lecture given by architect Souhei Imamura
to shut down. Photo Snorri Þór Tryggvason
Photo Ana Araujo
Intermediate 6, Hong Kong, December 2010
Diploma 9, Russia, December 2010
Visit to Redland Precast Concrete factory in
Outside the Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg
Dongguan. Photo Jeroen Van Ameijde
Photo Natasha Sandmeier
Intermediate 10, UAE, January 2011
Intermediate 13, Madrid, December 2010. Site visit,
Drifting in the empty quarter, Rub Al Khali desert
Readers House, Centre for Contemporary Creation,
Photo Dimitar Dobrev
Ensemble Studio. Photo Sophie Ramsbotham
Legacy
A Reunion By John and Marina Adams
On 14 October 2010 eighty-or-so somewhat seasoned people were re-united at the AA to celebrate fifty years since meeting as students in the Autumn of 1959. In the event this was stretched to include the years on either side of ‘59, reflecting a degree of interchange following ‘years out’. Given that so many people have lost contact, the AA membership and events office did an amazing job in reaching so many. We HAD to get some architecture in first, so some of us met in the afternoon for a visit to the Olympic Park and the nearby Westfield Centre, organised by Frank Duffy through the ODA. Frank and Edward Jones, both having been involved in the design review process, were valuable guides. The Hopkins’ velodrome is stunning. In the evening the size of the gang swelled considerably for drinks and a viewing of the recent expansions at Bedford Square, and dinner in what used to be the Members’ Dining Room, surrounded by nostalgic photographs and slides. It was a happy and noisy occasion, quite emotional at times. Name badges with BIG WRITING had been a good idea – ‘Lots of familiar names to unfamiliar faces’. The evening ended to an accompaniment from Tim Drewett’s jazz group. Some had travelled a very long way and many
wrote after to express their appreciation: ‘It was daunting to see so many faces I should have known but couldn’t quite place.’ ‘My own motive for coming to the occasion relates to the affection I still feel for the time I spent at the AA... I loved the AA and it was natural to come to the reunion and in a funny way an opportunity to say a small thank you.’ ‘It was good to make contact with so many old friends and to see how many of us had survived! It had all the theatricality of a good Pinter, with memories also of movies like Last Orders - some nearly unrecognisable with the passing of time whilst others were conspicuous by their absence.’ ‘I felt totally out of my depth surrounded by this distinguished gathering of old men and women whose names I knew but most of whom I had never seen in my life before but whose acquaintance nevertheless I was pleased to have made. A day I shall treasure for a long, long time.’
John and Marina Adams are alumni of the AA AA Alumni Reunion Dinner, 14 October 2010, AA Lecture Hall
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Legacy
A Tribute to Leonard Manasseh By Peter Ahrends On Monday 29 November 2010, the AA Membership department organised a book launch for the newly published Leonard Manasseh and Partners (20th Century Architects) by former AA tutor Timothy Brittain Catlin. The event was attended by Leonard Manasseh and his family, friends, colleagues and admirers, and was accompanied by many tributes and a slide-show of the work of Leonard Manasseh and Partners It was Tim Brittain-Catlin, the author of the newly published book on the work of Leonard Manasseh and Partners, launched at the AA on Monday 29 November 2010, who asked me to contribute to a lively evening of tributes to Leonard and his partners. I was delighted to do so for it was Leonard who first initiated my lifelong and growing passion for the art of architecture. About 60 years ago! My notes for that brief talk are, I now find, sketchy and disorganised but, to the extent that I had one or two things to say, I’ll try to reconstruct the intended meaning, if not the words: ‘Leonard, we students of old are seldom given the opportunity to comment on the performance of our university tutors in public; what a gift this is. In September 1951 (strangely, the 9th rings a bell) I found myself amongst about thirty-odd first year students in the privileged position of occupying a long second floor AA studio (just above the library) overlooking the beauty of Bedford Square. What a place to have been and what a time to have arrived. The summer-long Festival of Britain was soon to draw to a close. And what a ground-breaking surge that proved to be: chiming with the post-war mood of that time. Modern Architecture had at last drawn a line in England’s sand. We soon found ourselves confronted by your first project to design a primitive hut; to do the design and model building of whatever we chose to make. Frightening! My efforts were far too well-mannered (tame?) to rank favourably as Primitive stuff - where was the raw energy? Too ordinary, I guess. At the end of that year of young discovery you must have felt, Leonard, that our primitive energies had been sufficiently harnessed (civilised?) to enable us to design a small house; which we went on to do. What a moment! Weeks later, at the crit, I stood in serious/ nervous anticipation saying what I could about my
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long, low, flat-roofed space divided by a heroic fireplace wall. Not surprisingly living, dining and kitchen on one side - bedrooms and entrance on the other. And yes, you found positive and generous things to say. Then, in conclusion, you gently drew my attention to the ‘unresolved duality’ of the plan. Now, that had to be a sophisticated comment for this colonial lad to absorb at that moment. But absorb he did - for about 60 years so far; and still counting. In time, recognising the significance of such formal dualities (resolved, unresolved?), I came to consider the importance of related meanings: ambiguity, contradiction and the power of the dialectical process. In its inception this was of your doing. And, I thank you, Leonard. Some years later, (in perhaps 1955?) Charles Eames lectured at the AA, discussing at least in part, the forthcoming power-to-be of the binary structure of computing. Connecting with your point about duality, I was led in passing to pairings such as: Yes/ No, Me/Us, Left/Right, Inside/Outside, Theoretical/ Practical and even Horizontal/Vertical. The stuff of our lives and therefore the stuff of our architecture. Leonard, all those years ago you brought your fertile architectural mind to teaching at the AA. You did so with a quiet commitment to our art of architecture enabling young people to appreciate the richness of the meanings that lay behind the Englishness of your ways - always with a twinkle in your eyes and a special timbre to your voice. Those outstanding characteristic lives on: in you personally and in the work that Tim’s book covers.’ Peter Ahrends is an alumnus of the AA and a former AA Council Member. He is a founding member of ABK. Twentieth Century Architects: Leonard Manasseh and Partners by Timothy Brittain Catlin is available in the AA Bookshop www.aabookshop.net Leonard Manasseh and Partners book launch, 29 November 2010, Ground Floor 32 Bedford Square
Leonard Manasseh’s dedication to Tim. Photo Nick Wayne
Leonard Manasseh signs the book for Tim
Tim Brittain Catlin signing the book for Susan Woolf
Photo Keith Diplock
Photo Keith Diplock
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Legacy
AA ABK: Threads and Connections By Richard Burton
Masjed-e Jomeh, Isfahan, Iran
The Friday Mosque, Ardistan, Iran Photos John Donat / RIBA Library Photographs Collection
Brett Steele with ABK during the lecture at the AA. Photo Scrap Marshall
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It was a great honour to be asked to lecture at the AA by Brett Steele. We had lectured as a threesome a few times before, not least in Dublin last year to a 19th century offshoot of the AA, the Architectural Association of Ireland. A – Peter Ahrends, B – me, Richard Burton and K- Paul Koralek met in our first year at the AA in 1951. Peter had arrived from South Africa, son of architect Steffen Ahrends. I came from a family of Russian railway engineers, and my stepfather Sir Gerald Barry was Director General of the Festival of Britain and advised me to become an architect; Paul’s parents were also émigrés to Britain, and Paul clearly wanted to be an architect from an early age. At the AA, A, B and K formed a continuous core group in the years 1951-56. We mainly worked together, then with others, and on advice in our final year, separately. We were influenced by Frank Lloyd Wright, Le Corbusier, Kahn and the writings of Louis Sullivan. We were known as the ‘Country Boys’! We were taught by Leonard Mannesah, Ian Baker, Felix Samuely, partners in the Architects’ Co-partnership with the magnificent Arthur Korn, Enrico de Piero, John Killick, at the time designing the LCC Roehampton scheme, Richard Eve and Peter Smithson. There were great crits by Denys Lasdun, Philip Powell and Arthur Korn. The AA was small enough at the time for most of the School to know when a breakthrough scheme was being evaluated, so exciting times. When we graduated we went our various ways, but only after a historical trip to the Middle East to study Islamic Architecture and Decoration. John Donat, an outstanding photographer and fellow AA student joined us. We lectured at the AA in 1957 on our trip and the AA Journal published a picture resumé with text entitled Images of Persia. An extract follows this article. We had agreed that when the time was right we would work together; Peter returned from South Africa and worked with Denys Lasdun and taught at the AA. I returned from France and worked with Powell and Moya and Paul in 1960 was still with Marcel Breuer in New York. Peter and I got things going and in October 1961 Paul won the TCD Library Competition and asked us to join him to do it. For a unique time in our practice we worked in the same way we had at the AA. We discussed every idea, thought and detail and drew them ourselves. Chichester Theological College followed and the practice was truly launched. It continues today in Ireland and the UK with new directors, and we three have retired. During the 50 years we were friends running what became a large practice at times and certainly very productive. One of us headed up each project,
usually with one of the others close by. We were so busy that the luxury of working together, as we did on the TCD Library, eluded us. However our lines of communication were good since we all usually worked in the same space. Our practice was seriously damaged in 1984 by the remarks of the heir to the throne about our scheme for the National Gallery. Fortunately we had two major schemes on the go; John Lewis store in Kingston-on-Thames and the Low Energy Hospital St Mary’s on the Isle of Wight. We were also designing 11 DLR stations and Hooke Park with Frei Otto. In 1987 we won a competitive interview for designing and supervising the New British Embassy in Moscow, which was finished 13 years later after three schemes. The practice lived on! Our lecture at the AA in October 2010 was about the architectural journey that we three have made from Dublin to Moscow and some of the buildings on the way. Richard Burton is an alumnus of the AA and a Life Member and architect with Frei Otto of two buildings at Hooke Park, and a founding member of ABK Images of Persia, AA Journal, November 1957 By ABK (extract) Islamic architecture in Persia is essentially a religious architecture and cannot be directly compared to our everyday problems as architects, but because it explores the intimate connection between space, structure and decoration, and is a living part of town and community, it is relevant all the same. Certain aspects of Persian life help to form a picture of an environment and conditions in which the architecture was created. A limited vocabulary of structural form is developed using the available building material, mud brick. An architecture is created of domes, vaults and arcaded courts which is essentially concerned with interior space and volume. Although the sculptural forms of the enclosing structure are forceful and dignified on the exterior, the elevations merge into the surrounding buildings, the bazaar and mud-roofed court houses. As the components of structure and plan have remained basically unchanged for seven centuries, it |is largely the decoration that distinguishes one period from another, especially by the use of more and more brilliant colour in glazed brick and a faience mosaic. Peter Ahrends, Richard Burton and Paul Koralek / ABK: Threads and Connections Lecture, 26 October 2010, AA Lecture Hall
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Global
Post-vernacular design and the case study of the Sévaré Cultural Centre By Paolo Cascone
Beyond the rhetoric of the ‘green’ notion of sustainable architecture, a fusion of modern and traditional vernacular techniques in contemporary design is needed, in order to respond to the environmental crisis and the effects of globalisation in emerging economies. The need for this new approach, to a sustainable and post-vernacular architecture, could be determined through a systematic cause and effect analysis of spontaneous architecture and its climatic and cultural outcomes. This is aimed at reconciling humanity with its cultural, social and environmental settings, in order to optimise materials and resources while improving architectural practices. After vernacular traditions had been architecturally classified by Bernard Rudofsky (Architecture without Architects) and more recently Paul Oliver (Dwellings), anthropologists and scientists such as Ron Eglash started to observe the patterns and material organisation emerging in rural settlements. Both these patterns and vernacular designs were then explored using recursive construction processes, producing differentiated and self-organised systems that responded to microclimatic and social constraints.
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In his book, African Fractals, Ron Eglash mentioned that if Cartesian coordinate systems characterised Euro-American cultures as a ‘state society’ with a top-down organisation, then fractals and complex geometry could be characterised by pre-colonial cultures as decentralised social groups with a bottom-up organisation; in which case the geometry becomes a cultural, social and generative medium for nonlinear, very complex shapes and architectural configurations. The post-vernacular design agenda investigates the potential for considering implicit, and sometimes intuitive, generative processes as explicit trans-scalar models of evolutionary approaches for sustainable architecture. This is aimed at developing a morphogenetic approach integrating high-tech design processes and low-tech local construction techniques. I have been working on this technique with Fabrizio Caròla, an 80 year old architect who has worked with traditional construction techniques in Africa for almost 50 years.
Prototype for Sévaré Cultural Centre project.
Sévaré Cultural Centre guesthouse under
Digital model by Paolo Cascone/COdesignLab
construction. Photo Paolo Cascone
The Sévaré Cultural Centre: Extract from Domus It was a lukewarm April day when I met Fabrizio (Caròla) in Brussels. We spent four hours together in a Japanese restaurant behind the Stock Exchange, talking and drawing as if we had always known one another. I was almost too afraid to show him my work, and scared stiff of not being able to explain it to him. But with his boyish enthusiasm Fabrizio thoroughly understood everything. He made it possible to reach that turning point which, to paraphrase Guattari, I call the ‘fourth ecology’: a sort of generationalcultural pact of knowledge and production processes shared through an evolutionary approach. This is where new technologies integrate processes that have been passed down for centuries, to make them still more sustainable, and reproducible on different scales. The urge to put our enthusiasm to the test helped to create the immediate conditions for collaboration on the project for the cultural centre at Sévaré, in Mali. Fabrizio had already begun working on this task in 2007. When he spoke to me about it he pulled out a plan and said, ‘This is what I have begun: use this as a starting point to develop it according to your own techniques’. Hence the ideas of considering this opportunity as a case study in a wider survey. I am developing this in Paris with my study on ‘high-tech design processes and low-tech construction’ in which I have involved of my French architecture students (half of whom are of African origin). The project for Sevaré Cultural Centre, in its ecological being, is intended to become a construction site/school involving, in addition to my students, young people from other international universities, the local population, and other partners whom we are finding along the way. It is a participatory construction experience aimed at uniting people of different backgrounds and experimenting with new
points of contact between traditional construction techniques and advanced design processes for a post-vernacular architecture. The design process we developed starts from the initial genotype of Fabrizio’s 2007 project. From it we abstracted what Deleuze calls the ‘material system’ (a series of principles governing morphological, tectonic and bioclimatic aspects) and then developed it according to a recursive, evolutionary process of its morphology. The restraints set by Fabrizio’s initial idea on the development of a series of cupolas, linked together around a central space, guided the creative process. The result is the development of a series of successive generations (phenotypes) of design solutions through what I call ‘contextual algorithms’. The help of parametric instruments and environmental simulations (thermal comfort, passive ventilation, natural light etc.) enabled us to generate and test families of different solutions in a correlated way. The morphology on the scale of the centre was differentiated according to the programme’s spatial and ergonomic necessities: library, reading rooms, IT room, creative workshops, cafeteria and open-air theatre. The objective of this strategy is therefore to alternate a sequence of semi-covered patio/impluviums in clusters of terracotta brick cupolas, differentiated in their dimensions and forms on the basis of the various activities’ spatial requirements. Reproduced from Domus Copyright Editoriale Domus S.p.A. (Rozzano), Italy Paolo Cascone is an alumnus of the AA Environment and Energy MA programme Fabrizio Caròla and Paolo Cascone, Sévaré Cultural Centre, Mali
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Global
Nangang 2050: Designed in Taiwan? by Alex Warnock-Smith
The catchphrase ‘Made in Taiwan’ no longer rings quite so true. In the past two decades, Taiwan, once a world centre for the production of cheap electronic equipment, has transformed its economy from a manufacturing base to a high-tech centre. Now the island is capitalising upon its creative talent and venturing into a knowledge-based economy, opening up many questions for architecture and urban design. ‘Designed in Taiwan’ would be a more fitting catchphrase for the current government’s direction, which aims to turn Taipei into a world centre for the creative industries by 2050. Recognising the connection between space and creative talent, Taipei City Government has realised that one of its greatest assets for this transformation is its cities, and has initiated Nangang 2050 - a 3-year series of workshops where teams of international academics and designers have been invited to imagine the future of Taipei as a creative industries hub. Nangang 2050 is a new model for urban design – a collaborative venture between public, private and academic interests. The AA Housing & Urbanism programme was partnered with the National Chiao Tung University Graduate Institute of Architecture – one of a number of partnerships including Tokyo University, Taipei University of Technology, UC Berkley and TU Delft. The workshop teams collaborated with business-leaders, industries, software companies, politicians and mayors, to develop urban
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ecologies for the creative industries, restructuring the city and forming new economic and cultural veins. We visited Taiwan in April 2010 for the first intense 10 day workshop. On two subsequent trips, in August and October, Larry Barth, Dominic Papa and I speculated further on Taipei’s creative future, through a series of invited lectures and conferences with the universities and authorities involved. In Taiwan, urbanism as a discipline performs well as an instrument of political discourse, and there is much to-ing and fro-ing of leading figures between politics and academia. Maybe this exchange between urbanism and politics is not such a bad thing. Discussing the city in political circles, and politics in academia, puts the design disciplines in a powerful strategic position. Whether or not anything concrete will come from the visions produced is hard to tell. At the very least, Nangang 2050 opened borders between different sectors around shared discussions of the city, offering a new model in which academic experimentation and expertise are applied to real-life situations. Alex Warnock-Smith is a Course Tutor on the AA H&U programme, Co-Curator of the Informal Cities Research Cluster and an alumnus of the AA. Alex Warnock Smith, Larry Barth and Dominic Papa with AA H&U students Workshops, Taiwan, April–October 2010
NEWS
AA BOOKSHOP
Members now receive a 20% discount on the AA Bookshops monthly selection of featured titles which can be ordered online www.aabookshop.net. A website featuring our complete stock range will be launched later in the year. In the meantime, please contact us directly for information about books currently not listed on the website. Tel +44 (0)20 7887 4041 www.aabookshop.net
ARTICLES OF ASSOCIATION
Continuing the ongoing programme of governance review instituted last year, the AA Council has resolved to make further updates to its Articles of Association. The amendments to the Articles approved this year received detailed discussion in draft form at the Council’s General Purposes Committee. The General Purposes Committee brought its final proposal to the Council for approval by special resolution at the 17 January 2011 meeting of Council where it received unanimous approval. The Articles of Association set out the corporate structure of the Architectural Association, Inc., its statutory requirements as a charity and as a company, and the objects of the Association, which are the stated purpose of the organisation. The By-Laws of the Architectural Association, which set out the detailed procedures by which members of the organisation have agreed to conduct their affairs, remain unchanged. Together, the Articles and By-Laws comprise the AA Constitution. The overall aim of the alterations to the Articles is to ensure that there is consistent drafting style throughout so that they are easier to read and understand. In particular: Articles are rearranged in a more logical order and superfluous headings removed; The definitions in Article 1 and as used
throughout the Articles are made consistent; Article 4(a) is rearranged so that the list of objects of the Company becomes one ‘object’ with several sub-clauses; The minimum notice period for a general meeting is changed from seven to the statutory minimum of 14 days; and Various expressions are updated (e.g. ‘employees’ is used instead of ‘servants’). A copy of the newly revised AA Constitution is available for download from the Architectural Association website, www.aaschool.ac.uk, or by request from the Office of the Company Secretary
NOMINATIONS PERIOD AND ELECTIONS OF OFFICERS AND COUNCIL
The Office of the Company Secretary is pleased to announce a preliminary timetable for the nominations period and elections of officers and Council for the 2011/2012 session. These are planned as follows: Agreement of the ‘house list’ by Council; Assuming the ‘house list’ is approved, circulation of an open call for ballot nominations from approximately 8-25 March 2011; Electronic voting is expected to be enabled, and paper ballots despatched on or around 4 April 2011, with the voting period to close on or around 6 May 2011 (5 weeks in total); Council election results are expected to be announced shortly after the close of the voting period in May. All dates are approximate at time of going to press. As in previous years, Mi-Voice (www.mi-voice.com/) have been retained to handle the balloting for the election and to act as scrutineers. In continuing efforts to reduce costs, AA Members will be encouraged to vote electronically; and paper ballots will be sent only to those members who do not have a working e-mail address on file in the Membership Office, or who make a special request for a paper ballot.
As some long-standing members of the AA will certainly have noted, the timing of the nominations and elections periods has shifted incrementally earlier on the calendar each year for the past four years. These small shifts in timing have been made in order to ensure that the new Council is elected in advance of 1 June, which is the date specified in the AA’s governing documents as the start of the governance year. The current timetable will allow members of the newly elected Council to attend the final meeting of the current Council session (16 May 2011) if they wish, and enable an induction session and handover to the new Council in advance of the official assumption of their roles on 1 June 2011. Questions and comments with regard to the recent changes to the Articles of Association, further details on the nomination and election of officers and Council, including rules for nomination, and other matters related to the governance of the Architectural Association may be directed to the Office of the Company Secretary at secretary@aaschool.ac.uk, or +44 (0)20 7887 4018.
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NEWS BRIEFS
Der Berliner Wasserplatz, the Fifth Year Diploma project of Akis Pattihis (AADipl 2010) won the Graduate Architecture Award 2010 in a competition organised by Architectonisch.nl and sponsored by DETAIL magazine. The winner was chosen through a public online vote and a jury panel of the competition organisers. http://architectonisch.nl/english/ winners.html
Thought and Planning at the University of London.
Asif Khan (AADipl 2007) launched some new products with Idee at Tokyo Design Week at Idee Tokyo Midtown on 27 October 2010. Asif also gave a talk on 31 October at Midtown as part of the Design Touch series. In addition he is a finalist in the competition to design the summer pavilion at MAXXI art museum in Rome mentioned in the New York Times. He has also been featured in the New York Times in an article entitled London Underground: Designers to Watch. http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes. com/2010/12/22/rome-museum-joinsyoung-architectsprogram/?partner=rss&emc=rss http://tmagazine.blogs.nytimes. com/2010/12/30/london-undergrounddesigners-to-watch/#more-130515
Serie Architects, of which Chris Lee (AA Dipl(Hons)1998) and AA Projective Cities Co-Director) and Kapil Gupta (AA DRL MA 1998) are the founding directors, won the prestigious BD Young Architect of the Year Award 2010. http://www.bdonline.co.uk/events/ young-architect-of-the-year-seriearchitects/5008603.article
Gonçalo Furtado (AA Member) was awarded the 2010 Outstanding Scholarly Contribution Award, by the IIAS (International Institute for Advanced Studies). The award was given in recognition of ‘his outstanding scholarly work and his contribution to the advancement of knowledge’. Matthew Wilson (AA LU MA(Dist) 2007) has recently published two manuscripts on the political regionalism of Landscape Urbanism: Vertical Landscraping, a Big Regionalism for Dubai (IJURR, 2010), and Condenser Typology (CTBUH-J, 2009). Matthew is now studying the History of Political
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Emanuel de Sousa (AA PhD Candidate and AA HTS teaching assistant) was one of the speakers at the 7th Annual AHRA Research Student Symposium, held at the University of Sheffield on Friday, 22 October 2010, presenting a paper entitled Heterotopology: Other Histories, 1960-present. www.ahra-architecture.org
Eugenia Fratzeskou (AA Member) has recently published two new monographs; New Types of Drawing in Fine Art: the Role of Fluidity in the Creation Process and Operative Intersections: between Site-Specific Drawing and Spatial Digital Diagramming. Both works were published in March 2010 by Lambert Academic Publishing. www.sarcha.gr/ViewAssociate. aspx?associateID=134 Allford Hall Monaghan Morris, the practice of Simon Allford (Former Vice President of the AA) and Paul Monaghan (GradDiplCons AA 1989), were joint winners of the Building Project Award in the 2010 British Construction Industry Awards for their Kentish Town Health Centre. The Health Centre is of interest to the NHS as a model for the future. The Teenage Cancer Trust Ward at Birmingham Children’s Hospital by Lifschutz Davidson Sandiland, the practice of Alex Lifschutz (AADipl 1981
and President of the AA), was featured in the 14 October 2010 issue of the AJ. The project includes an extension to the existing oncology unit, two single wards, one four bed ward, social and activity facilities and a dining area. Shaju Nanukuttan (AADRL March 2010) presented one of his papers, Differentiated Scales - Generic Design Methodology with Cellular Automata and Tensile Fibres, at the Scale Convention at Kent University on 20 November 2010, at which Brett Steele (AA Director) was also one of the Keynote speakers. Shaju has also had papers selected for the ASCAAD 2010 conference and the Soft Borders conference. www.kent.ac.uk/architecture/scale/ programme.html Eva Castro (AALU Director) and Alfredo Ramirez (AA LU MA 2005, AALU Studio Master and Director of the Mexico Visiting School) lectured at the Royal Academy of Arts on 15 November 2010 on the subject of Landscape Urbanism. The event looked at this emerging movement and how it promises to connect nature and culture more deeply than ever before. www.royalacademy.org.uk/events/ lectures/ Crackology, the DRL thesis project by Rafael Contreras, Matei Denes, Julian Jones and Diego Ricalde (all AA DRL MArch 2009), won the Second Prize of the Plasticity Fantasticity International Design Ideas Competition, and was exhibited in Melbourne at the 1000 Bend Gallery. The project was also published in the Kerb 18 Journal of the RMIT University in Australia. The Canapé House in the Flemish countryside by MDMA, the practice of Martine De Maeseneer (Former Diploma Unit Master), has won the Belgian Steel Prize 2010 in the
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Residential Buildings category. The Steel Prize is an initiative of www.infosteel.be (see news briefs, AArchitecture 13). In addition the Bronks Youth Theatre in Brussels and the Canopy House in the Pajottenland by the practice have both been nominated for the Mies van der Rohe Prize 2011. Spiros I. Papadimitriou (AA DRL MArch 2003) Dimitris Kontaxakis and Maria-Eleni Kosmidou also had their project ‘Paramana’ Central Square of Thermi Municipality, nominated for the Mies Van Der Rohe Prize. The results of the self-construction workshop in Burkina-Faso, by the unit of Paolo Cascone (AA E&E MA 2003) at the Ecole Speciale D’Architecture (ESA), were published in the Mark review No 29, December 2010/January 2011. The Sourgoubila pavilion is one of the case studies of the post-vernacular architecture research project, directed by Paolo Cascone, using a high-tech design process with a low-tech construction. (See Paolo’s article in this issue of AArchiteture.) www.co-design-lab.net http://mark-magazine.com http://esa-ateliercascone.blogspot.com Robin Monotti Graziadei (AA H+T MA(Dist) 2000) with his practice, Robin Monotti Architects, has won an international competition to design the new Royal Parks Drinking Fountains. The entry, entitled Watering Holes, was a joint winner, and was chosen from over 150 entries from 26 countries. The winning design was judged on aesthetics, robustness for life in a public park, ease of maintenance and installation, sustainability and environmental impact and affordability. The first prototype is due to be constructed in Hyde Park by May 2011, followed by replicas in all eight Royal Parks. www.robinmonotti.com/2010/11/07/ tiffany-royal-parks-drinking-fountain/
Ludovico Lombardi (AA DRL MArch 2008) gave a lecture presenting Performative Aesthetic at the University of Bologna, Facolta’ di Ingegneria in Italy, 9 December 2010. In addition he lectured at the University of Florence, and led a Maya_Mel workshop in Florence from 7-12 December 2010. He also lectured at the Instituto Marangoni in London in January 2011. www.ldvc.net
Universities, and in Münster, Germany and Linz and Vienna, Austria. www.philipperahm.com
Sauerbruch Hutton, the practice of Matthias Sauerbruch and Louisa Hutton (both former Academic staff ) has been awarded the International Honour Award of the Castilla y Leon Sustainable Construction Awards, by the government of the Spanish region of Castilla y Leon. The award honours professionals and institutions that have stood out in the promotion of sustainable construction, with a recognised career both at a national and international level. www.premioconstruccionsostenible.es/ english/indexen.php
Plasmastudio, the practice of Eva Castro (GradDiplDes(AA) and AA LU Director) and Holger Kehne (former AA Diploma Unit Master) and Groundlab – Eva Castro, Holger Kehne, Alfredo Ramirez (AALU MA2005 and AALU Studio Master), Eduardo Rico (AA LU MA 2003 and AA LU Course Tutor), Sarah Majid and Dongyun Liu (both AA LU MA 2005) – won the Best Building Sites Award in the Wallpaper Design Awards 2011 for their project Flowing Gardens, Xian Horticultural Expo 2011, China due to open in April 2011. www.wallpaper.com/ designawards/2011/awardwinners
Siamak G. Shahneshin (AA E&E MA 2000) has been appointed as a Chair of the judging-panel at the Emilio Ambasz Prize for Green Architecture organised by Israeli Authorities, and jointly given by AIQ and the European Union, to be judged later this year. He also co-edited the book Landscape Modelling published by Springer Publishers in 2010, and is working on a new book about trans-disciplinary design. www.aiq.co.il/ Phillipe Rahm (Former Diploma Unit Master), whose firm, Phillipe Rahm Architects, has an exhibition entitled Meteorological Typologies from 1 February 2011 until 4 March 2011, also gave lectures at the Lisbon Triennale, in Geneva and in Karlsruhe, Germany in the early months of 2011. More lectures are due to take place in Parsons, New York, at Princeton and Penn State
The new building in Amersfoort by FAT, the practice of which Sam Jacob (AA Intermediate Unit 12 Master) is a founding director, was featured in the December 2010 issue of BD. The building houses a two floor restaurant and a third floor of office space.
Christopher Hight (AA H&T MA 1997 and former AA DRL tutor) has recently been made an Associate Professor and Director of Undergraduate Studies at the Rice School of Architecture David Mutal (AADipl 1997) recently won two prizes in the last Peruvian Architecture Biennale - Second National Prize in the houses category for his project, CASA VA and First Prize in Lima in the adaptive reuse category for the transformation of the Desamparados Railway Station into the Museum of Peruvian Literature. This project also contains a library and a tribute to Peruvian Nobel prize winner Mario Vargas Llosa. www.davidmutal.com
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Prayrika Mathur (AAIS GradDip 2010) was part of the team that won the Judge’s Prize at the TeamBuild UK Design Competition in 2010 and is exhibiting her art work this year at the Clothes Peg Volume 3 Exhibition at the Institute of Contemporary Arts in Singapore, 11-17 February 2011. Fabrizio Furiassi (AA Member and former Visiting School student) was selected from Sapienza University of Rome to participate in the Archiprix International, a competition for the best graduate project worldwide. He was officially invited to the related workshop on the theme ‘Future New York’ at MIT. His thesis was entitled Development of a reversible mediaarchitecture. A pollution control unit, near the central station of Rome, has been exhibited in Cambridge (USA), and soon will be shown during the Florence World Festival, as one of the winners of the prize named Degree & Profession, Virtual Expo and International Award, sponsored by the Romualdo Del Bianco Foundation. www.archiprix.org www.florence-expo.com The second year work of Katerina Scoufaridou (AA Fifth Year Student) from Intermediate Unit 3, taught by Natasha Sandmeier and Monia de Marchi in 2006/2007, has been included in the book Architectural Model Making by Nick Dunn published in December 2010. Colerne Bike Shelter, a self build project done by Piers Taylor (AA Unit Master Diploma 19 and Studio Master, Design and Make) and Charley Brentnall (Make Tutor, AA Design and Make) with a group of primary school pupils, was highly commended at the Woods Awards. Also Starfall Farm, a house for Alexander Sturgis, the curator of the Holburne Museum of Art, recently completed by Piers with his practice
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Mitchell Taylor Workshop was short listed in this year’s AJ Small Projects Awards. V&A Bridge by Wilkinson Eyre, the practice of Chris Wilkinson (AA Member) and Jim Eyre (AADipl 1983 and Past President of the AA) was also short listed. Mirna Colpo (AA Member and former AA Garden Conservation student) recently completed a flat restoration in Turin. The flat was very close to the boundary wall of the roman town, in an area laid out by the architect Filippo Juvarra at the beginning of the 18th century. The restoration aimed at reusing every existing feature. Laurent Mignonneau, Christa Sommerer and Michael Shamiyeh (AA H&T MA 2007) investigated the potential of modern media facades as membranes and developed a patented system called Solar Display. This innovation, a self-sustaining media facade based on individual turnable photovoltaic cells, was awarded the gold medal at Korea’s International Women`s Invention Exposition 2010 as well as with the gold medal for the Best Woman Inventor Seoul 2010 by the World Intellectual Property Organization. In 2009 Solar Display was awarded with the Innovation Prize by the Austrian Ministry of Science and Research. Michael also will give a talk on design thinking in organisations at the x-treat conference in Berlin (March 1-2, 2011) in addition to starting teaching knowledge creation and creative process leadership at the Austrian Business School. www.domresearchlab.com/content/ solar-display-self-powered-mediafaçade-linz www.limak.at/index_ html?sc=20100&lastlang=en) Karola Dierichs (AADipl 1999, AA LU MA 2005 and AA EmTech MArch(Dist) 2009), Achim Menges (AA Dipl(Hons)
2002, former Diploma Unit Master and former AA Emtech Unit Master) and Florian Fleissner will present their research on Aggregate Architectures conducted at the Institute for Computational Design (ICD) and the Institute of Engineering and Computational Mechanics (ITM) in Stuttgart at the Algode Conference in Tokyo from 14-16 March 2011. The paper investigates the interrelation between experiment and simulation in the research on granular substances which are designed to perform as architectural systems. Sarah Huelin (AA Fifth Year student), Camille Steyaert (AA Year Out student), Ioana Iliesiu (AA Third Year student), Raha Farazmand (AA Third Year student), Georges Massoud (AA Third Year student), John Ng (AA Fifth Year student), Xia Hui Da (AA Third Year student), Octave Perrault (AA Year Out student), Selim Halulu (AA Third Year Student) and Miraj Ahmed (AA Unit Master, Intermediate Unit 13) all had work in Footprints Across Fresh Snow: Drawing and Mark Making Across Disciplines – an exhibition focusing on process, ideas, and cross-disciplinary dialogues that centre on communicating ideas to an audience, client or user from 28 January – 4 March 2011. Adrian Aguirre (AA DRL Phase 1 student) will have his essay, Accidental Architecture published on the website, Speciale’Z. www.specialez.fr Faceted House 1, a project by PMA, the practice of Paul McAneary (AADipl 2000 and former Honorary Secretary of the AA) has been selected by New London Architecture, for inclusion in the Don’t Move, Improve! exhibition. The exhibition was on display at NLA, from 17 December 2010 to 26 February 2011. The project has also been awarded the Living Space Design of the Year at
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the 2010 Design Awards. Paul McAneary Architects were also the winners of the BD Dyson Airblade Washroom Competition 2010 where Dyson teamed up with BD to run a competition for the design of a state-of-the-art sustainable washroom featuring the Dyson AirbladeTM hand dryer. www.paulmcaneary.com/faceted_ house_1.html#0 Eugenia Fratzeskou (AA Member) published two new monographs in March 2010: New Types of Drawing in Fine Art: the Role of Fluidity in the Creation Process & Operative Intersections: between Site-Specific Drawing and Spatial Digital Diagramming by LAP - Lambert Academic Publishing. The monographs focus on new types of site-specific drawing as investigated in relation to art, architecture, philosophy, critical theory, AI and psychology. Eugenia exhibited her drawing project Drawing the unplanned city in the highly successful launch of the first international architectural project Urban Transcripts 2010: Athens, urban (r)evolution through individual spontaneity in the absence of planning by kollektiva.net www.digicult.it www.sarcha.gr In November 2010 Berger Barnett Architects, the practice of Jo Barnett (AA Dipl 1991) Hans Berger (AA Dipl 1994), presented their research project 1+1=3 Multifunctional School Buildings, funded by the Stimuleringsfonds voor Architectuur (Netherlands Architecture Fund), before an invited audience of professionals in the field of Primary Education building procurement. A follow up presentation to the Netwerkbureau Kinderopvang (Dutch Childcare Network) discussing the design guideline conclusions of their research into multifunctional school
accommodation in England and Holland will take place in January. www.bergerbarnett.nl Mollie Claypool (AA H&T MA(Dist) and AA DRL/HTS Tutor) has been invited to present her paper The Later Act: Semiotics Computational Craft at the Architectural Research Center’s Consortium Spring Research Conference in Detroit, Michigan in April 2011. The theme of the conference is Considering Research: Reflecting upon current themes in Architecture Research. Mollie’s paper focuses on interrogating the role and use of philosophy, specifically linguistic models, in computational design. http://arcc2011.ltu.edu/ Scenario Architecture, led by Maya Carni (AADipl 2007) and Ran Ankory (former AA student) was one of 30 practices featured in Wallpaper* magazine’s architects directory 2010, showcasing emerging architectural talents from around the world. Scenario Architecture was given a brief to design a conceptual city dwelling which embodies the studio’s architectural approach. Their response to the brief resulted in the City Road House for Two, a house inspired by the practice’s ongoing research into patterns of use and inhabitation. www.wallpaper.com/directory/ architects/2010/scenario-architecture/7 Svetlana Kasalovic (AA Member) participated in the New Contexts/New Practices: Six Views of the AIGA Design Educators Conference, October 8–10, 2010, at North Carolina State University in Raleigh. In her brief, Mediating Objects, she provided a theoretical framework for the model as a ‘mediating object’ using Lev Vygotsky’s activity theory, underpinned by Vygotsky’s notion that the relationship between humans and the world is mediated by artifacts.
In December 2010, Sakthivel Ramaswamy (AA Emtech MArch 2010), Maria Mingallon (AA Msc (Dist) 2009) and Konstantinos Karatzas (AA Msc (Dist) 2009 and AA EmTech and TS tutor) published their first book, Fiber Composite Adaptive Systems: A Manifesto into Self-Actuating Potentials of Fiber Composite Structures Embedded with Shape Memory Alloy Actuators. The book is based on their thesis at the AA as part of the EmTech programme. It explores current research in this field and develops a dynamic smart system which is capable of adapting into efficient configurations corresponding to multiple factors such as the user, functional requirements and the environment. www.amazon.ca/Composite-AdaptiveSystems-Sakthivel-Ramaswamy/ dp/3843367256/ref=sr_1_fkmr0_1?ie=U TF8&qid=1294245691&sr=8-1-fkmr0 Revastudio Interior, the studio of Revano Satria (AA Emtech MArch 2010) won an award and was published as one of Indonesia’s Top 50 Designers. He also conducted a conference in Diponegoro University Indonesia entitled Emergent in Architecture. A design by Wunderkammer Studio, co-directed by Noam Andrews (AADipl 2005, former AA Diploma Unit Master, former AA Summer School Tutor and AA Black Mountain Visiting School Director) and René Barownick (former AA Summer School Tutor), was selected as a finalist in the Atlantic City Boardwalk Holocaust Memorial competition, with thanks to Sang Hoon Han (AA Dipl 2010), Nazanin Shahnavaz (former AA Summer School student) and Sayaka Namba (AA Fifth year student). Noam exhibited a video installation, Strings in Intersection, at Harvard’s Collection of Historical Scientific Instruments (October 2010). He will also be presenting a paper Experiencing Knowledge: The Artisanal
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Utopia of Bernard Palissy at the Princeton conference, Science and Magic: Ways of Knowing in the Renaissance in April 2011. Maria Fedorchenko (AA Unit Master, Intermediate Unit 7) and Vppr, the practice of Tatiana von Preussen (AA Tutor, Intermediate Unit 7), Catherine Pease (AA Dipl 2007) and Jessica Reynolds have exhibited Canyon City, a collaborative project, at the Shusev Museum of Architecture in Moscow, 9 -16 December, 2010. Their entry to the international competition developed a new prototype for the Moscow urban block, re-organising its artificial landscapes and social topographies. The 3D print of the block prototype was also included in the large-scale Block City model installation and will be featured in the forthcoming catalogue. Cesare Griffa (AA Dipl 2007) together with Ted Ngai taught a workshop in from 6 September to 5 October 2010 at the Politecnico di Torino, in collaboration with RPI School of Architecture (Troy, New York). The workshop, focusing on the evolution of digital technologies and the growth of ecological awareness was entitled, Smart Skin for Sustainable Dwelling and had its results showcased in an exhibition at Torino Politecnico last November. http://griffa.wordpress.com/2010/11/26/ smart-skin-exhibition/ www.smartskinforsustainabledwelling. blogspot.com/ Lionel Eid (AA Third year student) received an Honourable Mention in AIA UK Student Design Charette 2010. This annual event hosted by the AA challenged students to explore how design & architecture can increase the public’s awareness of sustainable principles, and how such methods might be incorporated into their lives. Lionel, Jerome Tsui (AA Fifth year student and AA Council Member), Yusra Al-Nakeeb
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(former AA studnet) and Andrew Bardzik (AA Second year student) were among 20 chosen from the UK to participate in Critical Subjects: Architecture & Design Winter School organised by ManTownHuman on the 17-18 November at London’s Kowalsky Gallery. Teresa Stoppani (former AA HTS lecturer) has been appointed Professor of Architectural Theory at the University of Technology, Sydney. This semester Teresa will run a Master of Architecture design studio in Disciplinary Transformations entitled Space After Representation, based on a reinterpretation of Piranesi’s Carceri in the urban context. Patricia Meehan (GradDipl AA, 1987) obtained her Doctorate in Architecture at the University of Paris 8 in February 2010. Her thesis, completed under the direction of Jean-Louis Cohen, studied how the reforms of both the General Council and the Service of Civil Buildings in France, pursued between 1930 and 1946, led to the creation of the Direction of Architecture within the Beaux-Arts Administration. Sarah Melsens (AA H&U MA 2010) has been announced laureate of the competition Meesterproef 2010, organised by the Flemish government architect, Peter Swinnen (AA DRL MA). Her project, set in the docklands of the Flemish city of Ghent, involves the re-conversion of a set of industrial concrete sand containers into an outdoor event space. Within a minimal budget, Sarah and collaborating artist Roberta Gigante, propose to paint the whole structure in reflective road paint and make critical openings, access ramps and stairs. The project will kick-start the re-conversion of the harbour area to a live-work area in accordance with OMA’s competition winning masterplan from 2004.
Yosuke Komiyama (AA Member), Kensuke Hotta (AA PhD candidate) and Guo Kangjian (AA EmTech MArch student) were awarded the first prize in the international open design competition for the future LRT station and public plaza in Okayama Japan, 2010, with Takayuki Ishii, Qibing Jiang (AA EmTech MArch student), Akito Hotta, Susanna Wong (AA EmTech MSc 2010) and Christopher Chen (AA EmTech MArch 2010). Their entry demonstrated an intelligent kinetic roof with a component based structure over the future station, changing its geometry and surrounding environment in response to various activities in the station and public plaza. The competition result was featured in Shinkenchiku, issue 2010:12, introduced by the lead-juror Makoto Sei Watanabe. Ahmad Sukkar (AADRL 2006 and London Consortium PhD candidate) published the Arabic version of his fictional story about walls entitled Walls Are Bored With Me: To the Walls of Fairuz, Zaha, my Mother, and Scheherazade (Ḍijrit minnī al-Ḥīṭān: Ilā Judrān Fairūz wa Zaha wa Ummī wa Scheherazade) in al-Adab, one of the Arab World’s most prestigious literary journals. See AArchitecture 13. www.scribd.com/doc/39383734 www.ahmadsukkar.com Pedro Barran (AA Member and former AA Visiting School student) has published his Public Elementary School nº 330 of Montevideo in the CELE Compendium of Exemplary Educational Facilities by OECD. The School is part of the One Laptop per Child initiative. Pedro and Salvador Schelotto have also won a Mention in the Plaza Independencia de Montevideo international competition. www.oecd.org/ataoecd/19/43/ 46322158.pdf ideasarquitectonicas.blogspot.com
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Bolles+Wilson, the practice of Julia Bolles-Wilson and Peter Wilson (both former AA students), has recently completed the City Library in Helmond. Additionally, their RS+Yellow Distribution Centre, a warehouse extension, has won the German Facade Award by Brillux. Julia also received the Artist Award of North-Rhine Westphalia in the category Architecture, Urban Planning and Landscape Architecture. An exhibition will run from 16 February- 4 March 2011 in Düsseldorf. www.bolles-wilson.de/helmond Lucy Bullivant (AA Member) has been elected an Honorary Member of RIBA. In October she gave a paper, Responsive Environments and the Sentient City at The Ephemeral City, a conference staged by Design + Computational Arts, Faculty of Fine Arts, Concordia University, at CCA, Montreal. Her Talking Architecture series of conversations with architects at the V&A Museum began last year with Renzo Piano and Ken Yeang (AA Dipl 1972 and former AA Council Member) and continues with Alejandro Zaera-Polo (former Diploma Unit Master) 24 May and David Adjaye (former Diploma Unit Master and former AA Council Member), 8 July. www.vam.ac.uk. Magnus Larsson (AADipl 2009) had his project Dune - Arenaceous Anti-Desertification Architecture featured on the cover of the Journal of the Royal Society, January 6, 2011. It will also be covered in a chapter he wrote for the book Macro-Engineering Seawater in Unique Environments; Arid Lowlands and Water Bodies Rehabilitation, published by Springer Verlag. http://rsif.royalsocietypublishing.org/ content/8/54.toc www.amazon.com/Macro-engineeringSeawater-Unique-Environments Rehabilitation/dp/364214778X)
Nick Puckett (AA DRL MArch 2004 and former First Year Master) will present his current research on Animation-Driven Fabrication devices at TechNarte in Bilbao, Spain. This research includes Field Condition, a computer controlled system for the 3D cutting of large scale patterns into grass. Renata Bertol (AA H&U MA 2006) Gabriel Duarte (Visiting Teacher 2006) and Ricardo Kwamoto, partners in CAMPO, a Rio de Janeiro-based architecture and urban design studio, will show their proposal for Rio’s New Central Station in two international exhibitions held simultaneously in Rio and Mexico City. The exhibition in Rio will be on show in the Correios Cultural Centre from 2 February to 13 March 2011. Gabriel will also be a Host Critic for the 2011 Spring term in the Harvard Graduate School of Design and the Yale School of Architecture. www.campoaud.com.br Manijeh Verghese (AA Fourth Year Student and student editor, AArchitecture) had two articles published in the October issue of Icon magazine on BCXSY’s Origin: Part I Join Screens and the Fifth Design Parade at Villa Noailles. www.iconeye.com/ Alex Rodriguez (AA DRL MArch 2008) is teaching at Technologico de Monterrey, an architecture school in his hometown of Monterrey, Mexico. He has been in charge of a couple of design studios where Parametric Architecture and Parametric Urbanism have been part of his agenda making him the first professor to teach a Parametric understanding at the school. Manuel Navarro (AA L&U MA student) has won a competition to build a vertical architectural promenade in Datong City, China. The competition, Intervention for Access to Facilities in
Hengshan Temple, was a restricted competition organised by the mayor of the city of Datong. The AA Membership Office is sorry to announce that the following Members and AA Alumni have recently passed away. John Nicholson (joined in 1946), John Alan Nightingale, (AADipl 1949), Arthur Lewis (AA Dipl 1949), John Southgate Sayers (AADipl 1953), Michael Booth (AADipl 1954) and William Watson (AADipl 1961). John Wallace, who studied at the AA between 1962 and 1965 passed away suddenly in January. John Bartlett (AADipl(Hons) 1959) and Oliver Jasper Cox CBE (AADipl(Hons)1948) had both served on the AA Council.
Alexis Zavialoff with Wayne Daly: Distribution & Attitudes
Mark Wigley & Brett Steele: The Architecture of Failure
9 December 2010
13 January 2011
Sean Edwards & Sam Jacob: No Dust Adheres
Peter Eisenman , Luis Fernández-Galiano & Brett Steele:
10 November 2010
The State of Architecture, 18 October 2010
Chris Lee: Working in Series
Metahaven: On Uncorporate Identity
23 November 2010
25 November 2010
The AA Lecture Series is now available on the AA website. AA Lectures in the Public Programme are now video streamed, with a live stream available to AA members. Lecture videos are then made available on the What’s On section of the website within around 48 hours where they can be viewed by members and the wider public. In addition to the current year’s programme selected lectures from the archive are made available.