AArchitecture - Curating Architecture by AA School

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THE ARCHITECTURAL ASSOCIATION HAS ALWAYS EMBRACED CURATION AS AN IMPORTANT ASPECT WITHIN THE SCHOOL, FROM ITS ACADEMIC ORGANISATION AND STUDENT PORTFOLIOS TO THE EVER-EVOLVING EXHIBITIONS THAT TAKE PLACE EACH YEAR, WHAT BETTER SUBJECT TO FOCUS ON FOR AARCHITECTURE 17? THE NEW THEMATIC FORMAT OF THE NEWSLETTER, LAUNCHED WITH THE REDESIGN OF ISSUE 16, LENDS ITSELF TO FOCUSING ON RELEVANT SUBJECTS FOR EACH ISSUE. CURATION SEEMED A NATURAL FIT FOR THIS TIME OF YEAR, WITH ARCHITECTURE EXHIBITIONS BEING HELD AT A VARIETY OF GLOBAL LOCATIONS. FROM OUR VERY OWN EXHIBITION OF STUDENT WORK AT PROJECTS REVIEW, THE ROYAL ACADEMY SUMMER EXHIBITION TO THE 13TH INTERNATIONAL ARCHITECTURE BIENNALE IN VENICE, EACH PRESENT DIFFERENT WAYS OF CURATING ARCHITECTURE. IN ADDITION TO THE TRADITIONAL EXHIBITION, EVENTS ORGANISED BY THE MEMBERSHIP OFFICE THIS SUMMER INCLUDED A PANEL DISCUSSION AT THE SOUTHBANK AND A TALK BY EMERGING ARCHITECTS AT A POP-UP SPACE IN EAST LONDON, EACH ANALYSING THE TOPIC OF THE OLYMPICS AS A CURATION OF PEOPLE, EVENTS AND ICONIC PLACES, AT AN URBAN SCALE. AT A SMALLER SCALE, WE LOOK AT STUDENT PORTFOLIOS AS AN

NEWS FROM THE ARCHITECTURAL ASSOCIATION

AARCHITECTURE

AArchitecture 17 / Spring 2012 www.aaschool.ac.uk ÂŠ2012 All rights reserved Published by the Architectural Association 36 Bedford Square, London WC1B 3ES Please send your news items for the next issue to aarchitecture@aaschool.ac.uk Editorial Board Alex Lorente, Membership Brett Steele, AA School Director Zak Kyes, AA Art Director Editorial Team Eleanor Dodman Manijeh Verghese Patricia Mato Mora Radu Macovei Graphic Design Claire McManus AA Photography Valerie Bennett and Sue Barr Printed by Blackmore, England Architectural Association (Inc) Registered Charity No 311083 Company limited by guarantee Registered in England No 171402 Registered office as above

NEWS FROM THE ARCHITECTURAL ASSOCIATION

AARCHITECTURE

EXAMPLE OF CURATING A BODY OF WORK AND THE NOTION OF CURATING PERSONALITIES FROM THE PERSPECTIVE OF ASAP’S DANIELLE RAGO AS WELL AS EDUCATIONAL CURATION, AS SEEN THROUGH THE FIRST YEAR STUDIO. COVERING THE SCOPE OF LECTURES AND EXHIBITIONS THAT COMPRISE THE AA’S PUBLIC PROGRAMME, THIS ISSUE ALSO FOCUSES ON THE CURATION OF THE PAST, WITH A CATALOGUE OF THE AA ARCHIVE NOW AVAILABLE TO THE PUBLIC. ARCHIVIST ED BOTTOMS TRACES THE HISTORY OF THE TRADITION OF CURATING ARCHITECTURE AT THE AA FROM ITS EARLIER PREMISES ON TUFTON STREET. THIS ISSUE’S CENTREFOLD FEATURES A ‘CHANGING SPACE’ WITHIN THE SCHOOL, THE AA BOOKSHOP, NOW FOUND IN 32 BEDFORD SQUARE, THE IDEAL CHOICE AS A SPACE FOR THE CURATION AND CONSUMPTION OF KNOWLEDGE. HOST TO THE REDESIGN LAUNCH OF AARCHITECTURE, ITS NEW AND IMPROVED SPACE HOUSES A WEALTH OF BOOKS AND MAGAZINES RELATING TO THE TOPICS DISCUSSED WITHIN THIS ISSUE AND BEYOND!

EDITORS ELEANOR DODMAN MANIJEH VERGHESE

PATRICIA MATO MORA RADU MACOVEI

CONTENTS 2 5 8 11 14 16 18 19 20 22

‘PERSONAL NARRATIVES OF COUNTER CULTURE’ A COMPLEX EQUATION OF PARTS FIRST YEAR AT THE AA COLLECTING AND CUSTODIANSHIP WITHIN THE AA PROJECTS REVIEW: AN EXHIBITION THAT CURATES ITSELF STRANGE BLACK CUBES IN THE DESERT A FACILITATOR OF DESIGN DEFYING CATEGORISATION COLLUSION OR EXPERIMENTATION? POETRY? NOBODY UNDERSTOOD WE ACTUALLY MEANT IT

25 26 28 30 32 34 36 39 40 43 44

AA BOOKSHOP RECOMMENDED READING WRITING AS A FORM OF ARCHITECTURE CHOREOGRAPHING THE INVISIBLE A BOOK, A SYMPOSIUM, AN EXHIBITION ‘CAPTURING A MOMENT IN TIME’ MADRID GENEALOGIES AA TALKS LONDON 2012 THE PARADIGM OF AN URBAN TRANSFORMATION VENICE TAKEAWAY NEW FROM AA PUBLICATIONS AND BEDFORD PRESS COUNCIL NOTES

45 NEWS NEXT ISSUE’S THEME SCHOOL ANNOUNCEMENT STUDENT ANNOUNCEMENT

â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;PERSONAL NARRATIVES OF COUNTER CULTUREâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; Ja Kyung Kim (AA 4th Year) unravels her year-long exploration into the social customs and sensory experiences of the San Francisco hippies, that generated a narrative architecture to perpetuate their legacy.

Diploma 5 builds collective research as a public and cultural manifestation of social groups, using them to create context. In my view, modern hippies (Slab City, California; Rainbow Gathering, USA & Christiania, Denmark) are the most intense and genuine counterculture. They emerged as a critique of our society and made real attempts to build alternative life styles with their unique customs their histories have been recorded solely through oral transmission so have been gradually disappearing. The self-constructed space of the project is generated by slowly accumulating cultural materials and personal narratives of counterculture in San Francisco, which is squatted by an alternative community. The collection of objects and imprint of stories are organised through a skeptical use of technology. Using social groups to generate context is an essential part of the process and a crucial moment during the design development. Each 4th year student is required to generate their own methods and thoughts within the Diploma unit in order to formulate their project. Through this process, using the contexts of social groups with deeper ideas produced an interesting story. However, this project needed a more considered structure, dealing with objects and how their history or knowledge could be imprinted on the structure through the social groups. During this project, the main challenge was the develop my own logic to deal with the social groups and thereby control my design strategies through the social groups.

The rule set for how social groups can be analysed and appropriated to form the design project. Overleaf: Examples of counterculture â&#x20AC;&#x201C; Rainbow Gathering, Slab City and Christiania

4 In the first term, we researched social groups and chose a few to develop further. At first, we did not know how these collections were going to be used as an architectural inspiration. The next step was to understand how to create a design concept around these people. Furthermore, we had to design a building, so we needed to think about programme, scale, use and detail. These steps provided us with a new way of thinking about social groups architecturally. The narration of a story to accompany the project was extremely important to allow the audience to engage with the objects and their embedded qualities. The storytelling process was a strange and slow step in terms of quantity and quality. Hesitating to make decisions was the main difficulty in applying material to create the context of a building. Ideally the design needed to connect all the different constituent elements together to form a seamless story and in turn, a solid project. Finally, as a unit, we believe that space can be for social groups or personified as a human itself. It was eye-opening to experience these different ways of thinking about architecture. The cultural hippieâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s public space and living archive are now not only a building but additionally became a historical and physical description of social groups. It is the story of hippies themselves.

A COMPLEX EQUATION OF PARTS Curating a year-long body of work into an intermediate portfolio, Cliff Tan (AA Third Year) delineates an architecture that determines how it should be read.

To see the full extent of Ja and Cliff’s final projects please visit the Project’s Review website: http://pr2012.aaschool.ac.uk

The view of the project from Arbat Square in a 180-degree perspectival drawing.

Intermediate 7 acknowledge the rich theories in existence, with the aim of exploiting them as a means to architectural formulation. The processes themselves, of extracting and distilling information to become applied devices are hence vital to the eventual delivery of the project. In Moscow, a city where appearance matters more than substance, where image truly grants architecture a purpose, the project decided to adopt the ominously present, yet evidently ignored discourse of architecture’s legibility; the very curation and presentation of architecture as an artefact for visual

appreciation. It is hence about how architecture can be read. The objective is to address and respond to this issue architecturally – the most susceptible victim of this phenomenon. In order to respond with the greatest level of rationality and discipline, the project can be seen as both a study of its addressing issue and as a study in progress of that adopted systematic methodology. This chosen process was a derivative from the typical nature of architectural design, of rationalising through two dimensions. By adopting the logic behind the formulation

6 of such drawings and subverting their compositions and rules through such devices, hybrid and rationalised diagrams, meticulous enough to catalyse this project physically, are created. Inevitably, the drawings are central to the project in its development and outcome, and every line and extension that exists within them had to be meticulously plotted and rationalised.

With the site of the project sandwiched between two very different localities, it becomes a threshold which can be purposed for architectural formulation.

This alone presents a challenge as drawings are seldom endowed with such responsibilities. Hence, the topic was distilled into its main contributing factors, such as facades and infrastructures, which would undergo the rationalising process separately in the form of theoretical junctures. By charting this with an almost scientific approach, the objective was to optimise the outcome of the study.

7 Being all about image and reading, all exposed surfaces of the building are unravelled to create a continuous plane of surfaces on which the design is carried out.

The earliest diagrams studied the facades of Moscow and their legibility related to the effects they create. Layered planes representing each of the faces that make up the familiar image of Moscow were juxtaposed with each other, itemising the biased responses towards inner and outer sides, to express the vanity that this city enjoys. Using the context and devices generated from site studies, programmatic functions are attached, adhering to a similar systematic approach, resulting in a rational composition of parts, which concludes in later diagrams where the project begins to take its final form. Every step was determined by its adopted method and compositional parameters, therefore the outcome of this project could take form in many permutations, depending on interpretation and delivery. The current final image is therefore simply one of many possibilities

that the process could have generated out of the very specific theme. Despite being such a connected process, there was surprisingly little flexibility in sculpting the project during the later stages. It was impossible to alter the elevation drawing, which was essentially all the faces of the pre-determined building unfolded into a flat plane, and in turn, this drawing would naturally restrict the final form in that way. It is this rigidity that gives the project the potential to be stable as an intellectual entity and a tectonic edifice. Consequently, the final form of the project presents itself not as an arbitrary design, but as a rationalised deduction of this complex equation of parts.

FIRST YEAR AT THE AA IS NOT A LIGHT VERSION OF ARCHITECTURE Monia De Marchi (Head of First Year) discusses the experience of taking a first step into architecture with Radu Macovei

On the evening of Friday, 22 June, the AA opened its doors for a viewing of Projects Review 2012. On the second floor, a sequence of five very different rooms invited visitors to explore the work of the First Year Studio, led, since September 2011, by former Intermediate and Diploma tutor Monia De Marchi. The openness of the investigated themes, the varying media used, as well as the diversity of the projects arose questions with regards to how a student starts his/her education in architecture. With the goal of opening a debate about how one curates the education of architecture in First Year, we conducted an interview with Monia.

Radu Macovei: Monia, how was the entire work of the First Year Studio curated? Monia De Marchi: The work of the First Year Studio was organised thematically into rooms that reflect the fundamental topics investigated by both tutors and students over the course of the year. In the room called Re-…, we question the context of our investigations by reinterpreting different conditions that frame our architecture. The second room called Core looks, in a more abstract manner, at some of the elemental principles of architecture. Worlds and Real are two rooms that collect different speculations and visions: Worlds curates alternative scenarios, while Real presents projects that act directly within the conditions of London. The last room is enclosed by Stuff, a wall of postcards that expresses the way we worked during the year: even if the focus of the year was to act within the realm of architecture, we constantly manifested the necessity to look outside architecture. What is the focus in the teaching and learning of architecture in First Year at the AA? The initial effort was not to see First Year as a light version of what architecture is, or an introduction to architecture. Instead the aim was to really understand that it is an initial exposure to architecture, and that it requires a balance between the understanding of some fundamental subjects of the discipline and their translation into far-reaching and speculative projects. A key point for First Year is really to see the portfolio as an investigation that takes the forms of designing, writing, and arguing. Designing is the core, while writing and arguing are supportive, yet essential skills.

The AA First Year Studio has its own website where you can see how the year progressed in 2011â&#x20AC;&#x201C;12 and find samples of student work: www.aafirstyear.com

Worlds of First Year Exhibition, at the opening of AA Projects Review 2012. Photo Valerie Bennett

How does teaching in First Year differ from teaching in Intermediate and Diploma School? As opposed to the experience of teaching in other parts of the school, a first year tutor needs to be constantly aware of the fact that for the student this is a first exposure to the learning of architecture. In that sense, a first year tutor has the responsibility to teach how to question, look and search. Therefore, it is really important for a first year student to be exposed throughout the year to both individual and collective discussions, which question different approaches and positions. In the First Year Studio, the student is exposed to different investigations which develop within a series of conversations. We teach the students that there is not a linear series of guidelines to be followed, nor should there be a complete open canvas for self-isolated investigations without any audience and discussion. We try not to see architecture as a predictable discipline or as an isolated hobby. How do teaching and learning within an open studio differ from teaching and learning within the autonomy of a unit? The First Year Studio is composed by tutors who have individual positions but still value and see the potential to question and work with other tutors. At times in the year, tutors develop and teach together, while at other times, they work directly with the students one on one. In a similar way, students sometimes work in groups and sometimes individually. Nevertheless, the series of briefs and explorations are framed by precise and common focuses.

10 Students sum up the year’s working methodology in an image: from drawings to manifestos to protests. Photo Sue Barr

What does a student know when finishing First Year at the AA? It is very important for a First Year student to understand and start learning how to translate an idea, a position or an intuition into a project. This translation requires a series of skills that range from forms of designing to writing and arguing. In the First Year Studio, a student is intensively exposed to architecture, such that when entering Intermediate School, he/ she should have a developed sense of curiosity and the knowledge and skills to master intuitions with more confidence. Students should not be too concerned with the making of a good project; instead they should constantly be open towards attempts that could be boring, ugly, messy, silly or questionable. What is next? In the next academic year, we want to avoid the illustration of positions; instead we want to focus even more on ways of translating intuitions, positions and ideas into a project of architecture. Also we want to avoid an obsession for making a ‘coherent project’; instead we want to encourage more vulnerable explorations which are probably more frustrating, less polished and boring, yet unpredictable. We also want to focus more on the exploration of a brief rather than on final presentations, final portfolios and comprehensive projects.

With this summarizing answer we conclude the interview, but further encourage discourse on how the initial step into the education of architecture could be curated. ‘How do we start, how do we end education in architecture?’ and ‘Is architectural knowledge quantifiable?’ are reaction triggers.

COLLECTING AND CUSTODIANSHIP WITHIN THE AA Edward Bottoms, the AA archivist, offers us a glimpse into the AA cabinet of curiosities – the archive.

Visit the archive in its new and improved space in the basement of 32 Bedford Square and see the new online catalogue at: http://archiveshub.ac.uk

Einar Forseth, Interior Scheme for Cinema ‘Arcadia’, Stockholm, 1927.

Earlier this year the AA Archives launched its online catalogue, allowing access to collections which until recently have been almost entirely inaccessible to historians of architectural education. Representing just the beginning of a long-term cataloguing programme, this resource currently details a small percentage of the AA’s holdings – primarily the core administrative and association records from 1847 to the

present, together with an initial sample of the Archives’ extensive collections of student drawings. Whilst student projects will necessarily form the cataloguing priority for the next few years, it is worth noting that the Archives also hold a considerable quantity of paintings, drawings and art objects acquired by the AA over the last 160 years, primarily through donations from members and friends. The extent of this

12 Richard Phené Spiers, Design for a Triumphal Arch, c 1860.

vein of collecting cannot yet be fully traced, with only scraps of information regarding provenance and formation filtering through via a handful of inventories, minute books and other documentary sources. Nonetheless, even the imperfect, fragmentary picture currently available gives a fascinating insight into changing attitudes to collecting and custodianship within the AA. As early as the 1860s exemplary architectural drawings and prints were being acquired by the AA for use in mutual instruction and as reference tools for the more formal evening classes. This pattern of modest collecting was, however, rudely disturbed in 1902 when the AA suddenly found itself as the surprised owner of an entire museum of architectural ornament, consisting of over 6000 gothic casts, medieval carvings, models, architectural

drawings and various eccentricities including an original Egyptian sarcophagus. Fulfilling no role within the curriculum and referred to by students as the ‘Chamber of Horrors’, the collections were largely neglected and left to gather dust. By 1919, with a Beaux Arts programme in full flow at the AA and a need to once more move premises, the museum collections were, in the words of AA President Seth-Smith, ‘massacred and the corpses… interred in the South Kensington Museum.’ In all, the AA disposed of c 4000 casts and original works to the Victoria and Albert Museum, with 2000 being held in AA storage only to be destroyed several years later. Amongst this latter quantity is thought to have been a superbly crafted, priceless collection of early 18thC models of Commissioners’ churches.

13 Nevertheless, whilst the AA was rejecting its role as custodian of gothic casts, it continued to collect drawings, retaining the Museum’s examples, and acquiring material, including a stunning perspective of the new Palace of Westminster, from the office of Sir Charles Barry, and the winning entry for the Law Courts competition (1866–67) by G.E. Street. The 1920s saw a more formal approach to collecting, with Hope Bagenal, the acoustics engineer and Honorary Librarian, compiling a report on the AA’s Collection of Architectural Renderings and apparently overseeing the Library’s acquisition policy. Consequently, the AA was considered by the Government Office of Works, as a suitable repository for entries for several major 19thC competitions, including those for a new National Gallery and for the Admiralty and War Office – the architects involved including G.E. Street, Charles Barry Junior, F.C. Penrose and W.A. Nesfield. Collecting was not restricted to historical examples and contemporary works were also purchased, often indicative of AA tastes of the time, one curious example being the acquisition in 1929 of the original cartoons for the mosaic work in the Gyllene Salon of Ragnar Ostburg’s Stockholm City Hall. Material was also lent out by the AA in the 1920s and 30s, the RIBA requesting drawings by Ruskin and Pugin and the Royal Fine Art Commission borrowing works by Richard Norman Shaw for exhibition in Rome. The bulk of the drawings collections appears to have been housed in the library, where they were available for study, however many of the larger pieces were distributed around the AA’s buildings, the Palace of Westminster and Law Courts perspectives decorating the members’ private entrance in No. 36. Others were relegated to storage – a 17thC Italian ‘Madonna and Child’, on panel, being recorded in a summary inventory of 1939 as located in a cupboard in the AA ‘Changing Room’! This inventory was subsequently utilised to record drawings sent out of London, for safekeeping, thus avoiding the war-time bomb blasts which were to blow out the library windows. With the post-war period came something of a sea change in attitudes

towards collecting. The Library Committee, under the chairmanship of modernist and Tecton member Godfrey Samuel, arranged for a selection of drawings to be transferred on permanent loan to the RIBA Drawings Collection. This was followed in 1963 by a further batch of permanent loans, key items being, remarkably enough, sketches by the Pre-Raphaelites, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, and Edward Burne-Jones, and two beautiful watercolours by John Ruskin. There have been other losses. In 1969, an auction was held at Sotheby’s to raise money for new AA premises required for the proposed merger with Imperial College. Amongst the lots were a small number of items from the AA’s own collections, including more sketches by Ruskin, two watercolours of St Paul’s Cathedral by Thomas Malton (1798) and, bizarrely, a 17thC Spanish carved alms chest. Over the past two years, the Archives have seen the re-housing of the AA’s surviving art collection into appropriate storage in the new Archives room, prior to cataloguing. Conservation work has also been carried out on two Ruskin drawings and Barry’s Palace of Westminster perspective. The latter, now hanging, in its original frame, alongside the massed racks of AA student portfolios, and the 500 cubic feet of association records, posters and ephemera which constitute what must be the largest, as yet untapped, archive of architectural education in this country.

The AA Archives have recently received the important archives of the architect and planner, Professor Otto Köenigsberger. The collection, as yet to be catalogued, includes material which ranges across Köenigsberger’s hugely influential career, including work from his period as the Chief Architect and Planner of Mysore State, via his development of the AA’s pioneering Department of Tropical Architecture, 1954–1972, and subsequently the Development Planning Unit at University College London. The Archive was kindly donated to the AA by, Renate Köenigsberger, who sadly passed away in May of this year. A brief obituary notice appears on p48.

PROJECTS REVIEW: AN EXHIBITION THAT CURATES ITSELF The Director of the AA, Brett Steele, explains how curating architectural projects is in itself a larger design project but one that can be set up to naturally evolve simply by creating adjacencies in how units are allocated to the different spaces of the school.

Projects Review tests the thesis that an exhibition can curate itself. It tests it to breaking point. This is the extreme form of what David Chipperfield has brought to this year’s Venice Architecture Biennale: to define a few things and leave everybody else to figure out the rest. The AA does that every year to the extreme form whereby every unit master or programme director working with his or her students develops a curatorial idea for that unit and tests it with a public audience as they come to view Projects Review. What’s interesting is that it puts back to the very groups who are running the year on their own terms, the question of how to display that work to a larger audience who has no clue as to the work generated by the school all year. It is an iteration of the same impulse that runs the school. It is not an alien way to try and deal with the show in some form other than how we deal with the school. To a certain degree that works and does not – very much like the school – you have successes, you have failures. The most interesting thing discovered over the years is that the best Projects Review exhibitions are the ones where that task is consciously pursued and not just forgotten in the a rush to put some stuff up on the walls. Units can actually discuss why they would organize the show in one way if they have been working in another way all year. If you walk around and look at the range of work on offer: 26 undergraduate units, first

Three units (Diploma 9, Intermediate 9 and Intermediate 13) come together in the Front Member’s Room to form a single cohesive exhibition space.

year, foundation, 10 graduate programmes plus the visiting school and other part-time courses – it is around 40 mini exhibitions. It becomes a mini-Biennale. Allowing the exhibition to curate itself makes it hard to make suggestions that can be adopted in the exhibition. The answer lies in how the different groups are placed in relation to one another. Rather than creating little ghettoes, where the structure of the exhibition mirrors the organisation

The Projects Review exhibition ran from 22 June – 13 July. For images of the exhibition please refer to AA Life (aalog.net) or view the student work at http://pr2012.aaschool.ac.uk

The AA Gallery brought into close proximity the different graduate programmes. The AA DRL showcases their research through a landscape of models.

of the prospectus: for example, all of Diploma School is in one place while all of Intermediate School is in another, in the last few years, we have tried to take coincidences or convergences in the agendas and themes that the units are pursuing and create adjacencies accordingly. They can then choose to talk to one another or ignore one another in how the exhibition is designed; nonetheless by being near one another, juxtaposition plays a role. Through framing and curating projects, units were presenting work in some other way than commonly used for a jury or table presentation. It is a missed opportunity when people see the exhibition as simply an extension of the already existing ways to present or talk about the work. It is different – presenting to an audience that actually has no introduction or has no clue about what has been going on all year. Students are presenting a very abbreviated or edited version of their larger portfolios, so brutal curatorial decisions need to be made about what gets included and what gets cut out. To treat it as the form of difference that it is, is the right response. Another interesting facet of Projects Review is the relationship between the book and the exhibition: the book is designed in relation to the prospectus at

15 the beginning of the year. It is always nice to go back and look at the prospectus to see how the end of year AA Book Projects Review 2012 begins to answer the questions set out at the beginning of the year or how it appropriates and challenges those briefs. When putting together an exhibition like Projects Review, the recognition that you are dealing with different kinds of audiences would make it a more interesting experience for students and staff. The work could be mute and indecipherable if there was an argument for why that was the ideal way to present the work. Right now, that is just an accidental consequence of not paying attention, and the show should really be about introducing and communicating ideas. With this in mind, it would be crazy not to try and display information as clearly as possible. Every year, the guide tries to provide that, but the guide usually becomes just excerpts from the prospectus when it needs to describe the actual installations themselves. Without descriptions or captions, the exhibition runs the risk of becoming about displaying quantity and finding results rather than about ideas and larger arguments. The transformation of the rooms in Bedford Square into this annual exhibition begs the question – what does it mean when the spaces of a school actually become live spaces? In an architecture school this question becomes interesting because what they are really doing is reprogramming space. Like an old Dip 10 project from Bernard Tschumi’s years, in this instance, instead of putting a polevaulter in a church, you are converting a studio into an installation – a kind of cross-programming. The ideal way to design the project of curating this exhibition would be to have everyone first make a curatorial statement as to what the space is for and why and to then allocate spaces based on these pitches – a good idea for how the exhibition will continue to evolve in the upcoming year!

AA Book: Projects Review 2012 (London, 2012), 375pp, paperback. £25 is availble to buy from the AA Bookshop and online from AA Publications at www.aaschool.ac.uk/publications.

FANTASTICAL SCENARIOS OF STRANGE BLACK CUBES IN THE DESERT, POURS OF CONCRETE DOWN MOUNTAIN SIDES

Bas Princen’s exhibition and lecture in April was the latest in a series of contemporary architectural photographers who have shown their work at the AA. Princen studied at the Design Academy Eindhoven, before completing his postgraduate studies in Architecture at the Berlage Institute in Rotterdam. It was then that Princen began to formulate a style that captures the uncanny realities hidden within our cities. Princen’s work focuses on the anonymous post-industrial landscape that surrounds our cities. Continuing on from the Bechers, Princen’s images objectify the often pre-infrastructural fragments that lie seemingly abandoned, cast out from the city. The surreal flotsam and jetsam of cities in flux are beautifully captured as potential future realities. The intention behind his work was perfectly summed up by his tutor at the Berlage, Bart Lootsma. Having been asked to comment on an image from his latest series, Lootsma returned with the Tarot card The Tower, meaning that one’s understanding of reality will be altered or enter another dimension. It is precisely that alternative reading of the landscape that Princen attempts to achieve through photography, a reality only visible within the space of the camera.

Princen chose to photograph his Five Cities project (Istanbul, Beirut, Amman, Cairo and Dubai) as one fabricated reality, each existing for a fraction of a second in the fast-changing peripheries of contemporary cities. These images could in fact be worlds of their own, each drawn from a chapter of Calvino’s Invisible Cities. They are so alien from the reality of our cities, that they implore you to imagine beyond the confounds of the frame. For Princen, the story behind the image carries very little weight, but rather the image’s ability to tease you, from which you conjure up fantastical scenarios of strange black cubes in the desert or pours of concrete down mountain sides. During the lecture, it was refreshing to hear Princen talk so openly about his process. Before arriving on an assignment he curates a small book of found and collected reference images, drawn from the internet. Arranged side by side, they begin to talk amongst themselves, dictating future images and hinting at the power within them. On arrival, Princen’s first day of work is spent with local architects and planners, looking for areas of expansion, natural borders or divisions of wealth. The fervent construction and destruction that takes place along the periphery of cities

Watch Bas Princen’s lecture at the Architectural Association by visiting: www.aaschool.ac.uk/video/basprincen

Alexander Laing (AADipl ‘12), about the work of photographer Bas Princen, who lectured and exhibited his work at the AA earlier in April

17 Bas Princen’s exhibition in the AA Gallery in April 2012. Photo Sue Barr

often provides Princen with the necessary ambiguity for his work, ‘both [...] acts of a certain forward thinking; you destruct things because you want to build’. Princen’s exhibition of carefully constructed portals conveyed our idiosyncratic relationship to both cities and nature. Leading your eye on a journey through the image, he conjures the absurdity of our civilised world where architecture takes on the scale of landscapes and vast terrains are reduced to the scale of a room. It is through his lens that these quiet corners of our cities take on a magical, often surreal quality that says much about our future inhabitation of the built environment.

Bas Princen, Reservoir (Ostfildern, 2011), 64pp, hardback, £25.99 and Refuge (Amsterdam, 2009), 48pp, paperback, £16.50 are both available from the AA Bookshop.

‘A FACILITATOR OF DESIGN WITHIN THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY’

A personality is defined as the embodiment of a collection of qualities. These qualities relate to the overall characteristics of an individual. When collecting works of art, as ASAP does, we must consider the ‘personality’ of the individual artists and architects, as well as the works they represent. More so, the works themselves take on the characteristic of personality and ASAP’s collection itself – the artwork – must be broken down and analysed in order to better understand the processes of artistic production and how it relates to the overall mission of the archive, which is to advocate ‘the value of architecture as part of a broader, social, political, technological and aesthetic discourse.’ ASAP is a collection of contemporary art and architecture dating from 2004 to the present day. Practitioners range from architects, artists, designers, performers, filmmakers, writers, engineers, scientists, and choreographers whose works address the spatial environment in a myriad of ways. As curators, we work with protagonists to collect varied types of work, across their practice comprised of spatial and artistic objects, virtual media, texts and ephemera. Unlike traditional ways of collecting, in which the seminal work is of utmost value, ASAP’s interest is in the process or modalities of working such as pieces that are informative to the overall trajectory of a particular artist’s career or practice.

The works themselves are relational – both in reference to an individual artist oeuvre as well as to each other. The archive is conceived of as a concentration of work in which architecture is produced through the accumulation and relation of things in space whether they be physical, virtual or textual. ASAP’s collection, hybrid in form and existing somewhere between the typical museological categories of ‘art’ and ‘architecture’ is comprised of over 30 artists, including: Andrea Zittel, Andreas Angelidakis, An Te Liu, Bjarke Ingels, Caitlin Berrigan, Didier Faustino, Diller Scofidio + Renfro, Emanuel Licha, Greg Lynn, Jerszy Seymour, Karen Mirza and Brad Butler, Luca Pozzi, Markus Miessen, Nicholas Jaar, Patricia Reed, Philippe Rahm, Post-Works, Raumlabor, Salottobuono, Sissel Tolaas, Teddy Cruz and Zak Kyes, among others, and upwards of 100 works of art to date. Like the website (www.a--s--a--p.com) where you can rearrange art via shuffle – the work in the collection, as well as the individual artists, produce new relationships, a new dialogue, and inherently a new meaning. It is here that ASAP functions as more than a mere warehouse for artobjects, but rather as a progenitor of works and a facilitator of design within the twenty-first century.

See the full list of personalities and work curated by ASAP on their website www.a--s--a--p.com

Co-director and Curator of ASAP, Danielle Rago (AA HCT 2011) explains how the archive becomes a space for curating personalities.

DEFYING CATEGORISATION George A Fergusson, AA 1st Year student, draws out what it was like to attend Brian Eno’s lecture entitled ‘What is art actually for?’ in February 2012.

To watch Brian Eno’s lecture entitled ‘What is art actually for?’ go to www.aaschool.ac.uk/video/brianeno

Photo Valerie Bennett

Brian Eno recently spoke as part of the first-year lecture series. He is a person who defies categorisation. His music career began with Roxy Music after a chance meeting with the saxophonist, and since then it has spread over many decades, genres and art mediums. His career defies the word-limit of this article, none-the-less even if a picture can say a thousand words, I hope I will be forgiven for not including the image which has been described as most apt for the body of his work. It being a lunch-time lecture did nothing to assuage my anticipation of this presentation. It is very difficult not to admire his experimental ethos, which has produced such a unique variety of work. It may come as a surprise to hear that by his own description he is a ‘non-musician’, despite such success in the music industry. This is because he intends to be the complement of a musician, rather than simply not be a musician. His work is more to do with the manipulation of music rather than its

creation from scratch. A relevant example would be that of the genre of ‘ambient’ music, which he pioneered with the intent of morphing the music into something that may alter one’s perception of their surroundings. As Eno has continued to produce new innovations, his relevance to architecture and art will last and grow. The lecture began with a statement of how the art world is today and how its development has not evolved to the relativistic state of most other value systems, and that we value dogs over Frenchmen in art. He also spoke of what his interpretation of art is and why we create it. Evolutionary theory played strongly throughout his explanations, as did other concerns to do with art’s relationship to time and context. I particularly enjoyed his 6-dimensional diagram of antonymous hairstyles, which showed their context within space and time. An ingenious method of representing meaning and how it can be entirely dependent on the contextualisation of a style or piece of art. It is particularly interesting to note that, throughout the lecture and during the Q&A afterward, he contended that right now, a justification for art was necessary when creative industries are being neglected by the government, despite the very tangible, yet poorly understood economic and societal benefits of creative enterprise. He argued how an artist’s purpose is to suggest new worlds that can upset our ‘complacencies’, as half of a surrendercontrol dialectic with science. This can be thought of like that of the ‘non-musician’ role, where the artist is complementary and yet entirely distinct to the more controlled scientific role.

COLLUSION OR EXPERIMENTATION? Scrap Marshall (AADipl ‘12) reviews the exhibition held at the AA in April 2012, Zak Kyes – Working With...

Exhibition view, Architectural Association, 2012. Photo Brotherton Lock

‘Collaboration’ is a word that is as troubling as it is ubiquitous. As popular, overused and misused as other words in architecture’s linguistic canon: Public, Ecological, Sustainable, Multi-disciplinary, and ‘to collaborate’ seemingly makes work more necessary, even vital. Yet while ‘to collaborate’ suggests a pooling of ideas and resources, the joining of minds and skills to find new ways to solve certain

problems, the reality of the situation is that, more often than not, collaboration merely suggests individuals or groups engaging in a shared work rather than using their own skills to tackle their own interests, where each vested interest clashes head long into each other, further into the ‘creative process’. Here collaboration means little more than cooperating, at best.

Learn more about Zak Kyes’ work by visiting his website: www.zakgroup.co.uk or following him on Twitter: @zakkyes

21 In this context, an exhibition at the AA in April suggested otherwise. Happily, the exhibition is not of an architect or two willing to ‘cooperate’, but a look at the work of graphic designer Zak Kyes and a reevaluation of the many working relationships he has formed with various clients, academics, friends, students, publishers and institutions. The exhibition ‘Zak Kyes – Working With...’ was first staged at the Museum of Contemporary Art Leipzig in early 2012 before arriving at the AA in April. It continues at the Graham Foundation in Chicago until September. Having won the INFORM Award in 2010, an award that is given to a graphic designer working in the arena of contemporary art, Zak Kyes in both the exhibition and book that accompanies and is embedded in the exhibition itself, takes the premise of this award and aims to test the idea of an individual working in his own practice while engaging with other disciplines. The exhibition itself takes the form of a series of fragmented commissions, or more precisely, a series of tests in a multitude of media, across various scales, each instigated by Zak and his individual collaborators. Working with architects Nikolaus Hirsch and Michel Muller an archive, however uncomfortable, becomes inhabitable, the audio guide by Shumon Basar and Charles Arsène-Henry becomes distorted and forms a strange new narrative and overview of both the exhibition and the notion of collaborating itself. Beautiful posters by the artist Joseph Grigely publicise and at the same time document the room of work while designer Wayne Daly’s publishing dummies temptingly suggest and give a physical, purchasable form to the book ‘Zak Kyes Working With...’ that will be published shortly. Zak’s continued and valued relationship to the AA (Zak has been Art Director at the AA since 2006 and was instrumental in AArchitecture’s formation) is both documented and pushed forward. A lecture by Edward Bottoms, the AA’s archivist, shows the trajectory of student-initiated publishing at the AA from a distant past to a more recent revival intrinsically linked to Zak and Wayne Daly’s formation of the Bedford Press. A physical press and

publishing house, the Bedford Press is vitally independent and yet intrinsically joined to the AA, and it has also been enthusiastically exploited by students from within the AA. These new, often accidental, collaborations wind their way through the slides of Bottoms’ historical retrospective. Further working relationships with other institutions are exposed with extracts of past work, printed by and on the Bedford Press while seconded at the ICA in London, displayed alongside copies of publications, published by the press, and authored by contributors from a variety of academic and non-academic institutions from across the world. While the exhibition and the book, which adds a further section of reflective texts, speak volumes not just of the processes and techniques of collaborating, but also the success and seeming enjoyment of working with others, it is the physical exhibition structure, designed by Jesko Fezer, that both intrigues and unwittingly suggests a certain tolerance to an idea of collaborating. Fezer’s wooden and steel structure, whose purpose is to give a functional framework for the various pieces of printed material, projections et al to be displayed upon, obeys a set of strict rules that includes: ‘No pragmatic serviced-oriented display design’, ‘No shelves, tables or chairs’ and ‘unfortunately no books either’. Here the very output of one’s individual practice, in the form of beautifully crafted books becoming unreadable and unusable behind the protective boxes designed by another, is seemingly the perfect form of collaboration. But is it in the form of an ironic act of betrayal, of collusion and opposition? Or is it two practices with a similar goal, open to experimentation?

Zak Kyes Working With... (New York, 2012), 266pp, paperback, £21, is available from the AA Bookshop.

POETRY? NOBODY UNDERSTOOD WE ACTUALLY MEANT IT Architects and curators Ana Araujo and Catalina Mejia in conversation with Patricia Mato-Mora, Student Editor

Ana Araujo and Catalina Mejia were co-curators of the exhibition Lina & Gio: The Last Humanists, which was shown at the Architectural Association from February – March 2012. Ana is a tutor in AA Intermediate Unit 2 alongside Takero Shimazaki, and holds a PhD in Architectural Design at the Bartlett. She is also founder of the Travesía Institute. Catalina is a Colombian architect who holds an MA in Architectural History at the Bartlett and is currently a PhD candidate at the University of Newcastle.

Patricia Mato-Mora: One finds a series of characteristics in architectural exhibitions, also present in Lina & Gio, which perhaps makes them distinct to other disciplines’ exhibitions. Is an architectural exhibition one where documentation of work is exhibited? And also, what was the link between the architectural exhibition in the AA Gallery and the photographic exhibition in the Front Members’ Room [photographs by Íñigo Bujedo Aguirre]? Ana Araujo: In painting or sculpture exhibitions, yes, one is expecting to see ‘the real thing’. Not in architectural exhibitions, where the building is never exhibited. In fact, one is possibly inside another building. So yes, architectural exhibitions operate very much in the realm of documentation. Curating architecture might have to do with compensating for an absence. What are all the possible ways in which this missing element can be addressed? Catalina Mejia: Íñigo’s photographs were aimed at that. Needless to say, they were filtered by his eye and the lens of his camera. Ana Araujo: However, the exhibition was not about Lina and Gio’s architecture, but about them. As a matter of fact, they are not around. Perhaps this is the most problematic issue. We were trying to compensate for the absence of the character, rather than of the building. We wanted to bring back their spirit, their attitude and their commitment. Their openness to emotion and poetry. What do you think the exhibition’s curatorial task brings to the perception of their personalities that had not been considered before? AA: It was the first time that they were exhibited together. CM: When bringing them together, one of our purposes was to think about their work in relation to each other, which they might not have done when they were alive.

23 How much did you feel your interests were permeating in the exhibition, and what do you think that brought to Lina and Gio’s work that would not have been shown otherwise? CM: The exhibition was what you might describe as ‘gendered’. This was one of the criticisms that we received: it was displayed and perceived as a feminist manifesto. So yes, we were almost exhibiting ourselves, as well. AA: We were exercising our critical judgement, that’s how I would put it. I’m not going to deny that there was a sense of self-indulgence in the way we addressed it. How much is this acceptable, desirable, useful, productive? I don’t have an answer for this. One of the things that speaks in our favour is that this idea of an intimate approach to artifacts was what both Lina Bo Bardi and Gio Ponti advocated. It was less acceptable at their time to do so, as the feminist movement’s influence on architecture was very incipient. When talking to Lina Bo Bardi’s collaborators, they told us that, at the time, they effectively meant ‘all that talk about architectural poetry’, but they felt they weren’t being taken seriously. They were not the first to be concerned about poetry in architecture, but there was a sense that the language could not keep up with the ideas. We took advantage of the fact that, nowadays, this has been overcome.

The Lina and PM Bardi Institute is dedicated to diffusion of Brazilian Culture, more information in both English and Portuguese can be accessed at: www.institutobardi.com.br

Lina & Gio, exhibited in the AA Gallery during February and March 2012. Photo Sue Barr

24 In fact, something recurrent in Lina’s work is a sensibility for something that, in my opinion, does not know about curating, does not care about being curated, organised, catalogued, compiled, distilled. Here I am talking of course about the Brazilian vernacular arts and crafts that so fascinated her. AA: It is an argument about ‘high’ and ‘low’ culture. For Lina, there was not much difference between exhibiting the Brazilian vernacular and going to a museum in Rome and seeing classical objects on display: this time, what the visitor saw was something which was playful, ironic, ugly. But who said the classical artifacts were not playful, ironic and ugly? Originally they had also had qualities of the vernacular. Perhaps the innocence of these classical objects can be released by looking at them through Lina Bo Bardi’s eyes. For that matter, why should the vernacular objects care about being exhibited? You started saying: ‘Hang on, these pieces... they don’t care!’ And why should they? However, it is important to acknowledge that the gesture has a value. It is a deed for an artisan working in a very remote area in Brazil to have his or her craftwork displayed in the main museum in São Paulo. CM: It is also true the other way around: as audience, seeing such objects in a museum confers them a respectability that they would not have had otherwise. So, do you think that Lina’s work itself can, in the twenty-first century, be thought of as untamed, as work which does not care about the notion of being curated? AA: I think that most of her work answers your question affirmatively: in particular, the Chame Chame House [in Salvador da Bahia], the Valeria Cirelli House [in São Paulo] and the Casa do Benin [in Salvador da Bahia]. Perhaps the fact that two of them are in Salvador is significant... AA: Yes and no. Bear in mind Salvador da Bahia carries a colonial burden. The most important building in that respect is the church in Uberlândia [Igreja do Spirito Santo do Cerrado – Spirito Santo do Cerrado Church]. It is where Lina worked most closely with the community. That aligns it more with the nature of vernacular artifacts. Having said this, I’m still quite convinced that Lina’s main intention was that all her buildings were, primarily themselves, just as the vernacular objects we were discussing before. So how would you say the work had to be curated in Lina & Gio for it to convey a message in the twenty-first century? AA: The exhibition was, primarily, of Lina, not to undervalue the importance of Gio Ponti’s contribution. The argument it tried to bring forward was that the present-day perception of Lina Bo Bardi as an ‘exotic’ architect who worked in the developing world, as an architect who had an approach which might have been fantastic and inspiring but not applicable to the Western world or the present times, had to be challenged and done away with.

2G Book Lina Bo Bardi – Built Work (Barcelona, 2012), 255pp, paperback, £53 and Architecture Words 12: Stones against Diamonds (London, 2012), 160pp, paperback, £15 are both available from the AA Bookshop.

AA BOOKSHOP

Having occupied four different spaces between July 2011 and April 2012, the last year has seen the AA Bookshop seemingly following the trend of the pop-up shop. This has been quite a mission with a basic stock of 7,800 books. The challenge was to keep the bookshop running and its stock clearly organised, while designing and realising a series of shop fit-outs of varying scales within a budget requiring the maximum re-use of temporary furniture. The design and installation of furniture, lighting, flooring and removal of a wall were carried out around the running of the shop with the ultimate aim of uniting two ground floor rooms at number 32 into one bookshop space. Working closely with Buro 4 and Nex, who were employed by the school to assist with the first phase of implementing the AA masterplan, and also with the tireless AA maintenance team, the new AA bookshop opened on schedule in the spring term. The founding of the AA Bookshop began in the basement of 36 Bedford Square in October 2008. Surrounded by the dusty, empty shelves of the legendary and privately owned Triangle bookshop which had closed down half a year earlier, Bookshop Manager Charlotte Newman began the work of building up a new bookshop from scratch. It was a tight schedule to have everything up and running for the start of term in January 2009 but worth every effort as the need for the specialist shop became quickly clear from the reactions and enthusiasm of the customers. The expansion into the new room at number 32 has allowed us to develop and build on the stock range which was offered in the smaller shop. The dense display of books in bespoke refrained shelving and on long tables which draw you into the space, references the intimacy of the basement beginnings, while also respecting the features and details of the grand Georgian room and magnificent ceiling where we are now housed. The shop design is adaptable so events can now neatly be held within the space of which the shop has already hosted five successful book launches since opening in April (as well as the launch of AArchitecture 16). Vitrine tables showing rare and out of print books can also be used for exhibiting small, focused displays of publications. The AA Bookshop opened in April 2012 for everyone to use and enjoy, with a dedicated, team of staff and a comprehensive selection of internationally sourced titles.

The AA Bookshop can be found on the Ground Floor of 32 Bedford Square. The opening hours are: Monday to Friday 10.00–18.30 and Saturday 11.00–17.00

Photo Valerie Bennett

RECOMMENDED READING

Order these titles online at aabookshop.net where a selection of new books, special offers and some backlist titles is available.

Books available from the AA Bookshop on curating architecture

Curating Architecture and the City Edited by Sara Chaplin, Alexandra Stara London 2009, 17.4 x 24.6cm, b&w illustrations, 272pp. Paperback. Addressing the collection, representation and the exhibition of architecture and the built environment, this book explores current practices, historical precedents, theoretical issues and future possibilities arising from the meeting of a curatorial ‘subject’ and an architectural ‘object’. Striking a balance between theoretical investigations and case studies, the chapters cover a broad methodological as well as thematic range. Examining the influential role of architectural exhibitions, the contributors also look at curatorship as an emerging attitude towards the investigation and interpretation of the city. International in scope, this collection investigates curation, architecture and the city across the world, opening up new possibilities for exploring the urban fabric.

Log 20 – Fall 2010. Curating Architecture New York 2010, 16 x 23cm, b&w illustrations, 168pp. Paperback. Log 20, published on the occasion of the 12th Venice Architecture Biennale 2010, considers curating architecture both within its contemporary guises and historical lineage. Practitioners from New York to Paris, Moscow to Tokyo propose curating as advocacy, as atmosphere, and as architecture itself, assembling in this special thematic issue what is arguably the first compendium of contemporary practices on this emerging discourse. Issue 20 includes: Barry Bergdoll, Eve Blau, Jean-Louis Cohen, Cynthia Davidson, Marco De Michelis, Tina Di Carlo, Manfredo di Robilant, Ole W. Fischer, Kurt W. Forster, Jeffrey Kipnis, Sylvia Lavin, Paula Lee, Hans Ulrich Obrist, Kayoko Ota, Andrea Phillips, Alex Schweder, Felicity D. Scott, Robert A.M. Stern, Léa-Catherine Szacka, Henry Urbach, Philip Ursprung, Eyal Weizman & Tina Di Carlo, Mirko Zardini

WRITING AS A FORM OF ARCHITECTURE The article gives an overview of the prize-winning History and Theory essays which can be found on the AA’s website.

Next to the yearly Dennis Sharp Award for Excellence in Architectural Writing, the History and Theory Department at the AA has decided this year to award essays by students from each undergraduate year. In May the juries convened to listen to the presentations of the nominated writers and to engage in conversation about the selected essay topics and focuses of the History and Theory teaching. Both the Dennis Sharp Award and the Writing Prizes aim to encourage writing in the field of architecture and to promote writing as a form of architecture in itself. First Year Writing Prize Radu Macovei From Alberti to Koolhaas: Tracing an Urban Conception Alois Riegl’s conception of art as a means of expressing how man wants to see the world shaped explains Alberti’s map of Rome: the surveyor expects and perceives Rome to be a pure collection of monuments on a void surface, the projection of a ‘city of negatives and positives’. Another depiction of such a city is Rem Koolhaas’ twentyfirst-century collage of the world’s skyscrapers aggregated in the United Arab Emirates’ desert. Koolhaas’ image functions through the insertion of an absolute urban in the context of an absolute desert. The city depicted by Koolhaas is thus purely composed of monuments alone with voids in-between. If Alberti’s map is the perception of a city as a collection of landmarks on a void surface and if Koolhaas’ collage is a critique of contemporary cities of icons built in the desert, then has the human urban perception of a city been transformed into the city itself?

Second Year Writing Prize Frederique Paraskevas Tahrir Square and Haussmann’s Paris: Physical Manifestations of Political Doctrines We are at a stage in history where modern revolution has resurfaced in an outbreak at a scale that was hard to predict. Starting in Tunisia, and sweeping across the Middle East like wildfire, the effect of such events has yet to be digested let alone understood. The spaces that allow for such revolutions to be realized is what this essay shall address. Just as the ideas of modern revolution date back to Aristotle, the architecture that was occupied, changed and indeed helped form uprisings shall be analysed in relation to Cairo, and Tahrir Square, otherwise known as ‘Liberation Square’. The parallel shall be drawn between the French revolution in 1848, and Haussmann’s vision for Paris, and the architecture that framed the Egyptian Revolution. This essay shall also analyse the urban planning and organisation of Cairo and Paris in relation to governmental structure and techniques of security that are projected into the city. Third Year Writing Prize Ling Xiu Chong Here lies architecture, as the extension of the self into a world. It begins as a desire, an innocent design to pursue and realise – it is an instrument, servant to man and sufferer of nature. Hence, through architecture, man may be reconciled to reality – man rarely confronts the world independent of his devices, because he would be otherwise lost, or left to face dangerous truths out there that could destroy the self

The prize-winning essays are accessible by the public and available online at www.aaschool.ac.uk/awards2012

AA Writing Awards and the Dennis Sharp Award for Excellence in Architectural Writing Photo Valerie Bennett

as it is known unto itself, just as the body will perish in the desert. The history of man is much more a history of cultivation and construction that has found its end in urbanity, architecture proliferated to the point of behaving as a fabric as large as a terrain. If architecture is to retain its primary purpose as the expression of man’s needs, it must preserve him from the threats of the world without – it must stay closer to his skin and thoughts. Here, between worlds, one realises that architecture should not attempt to isolate him from his surroundings but rather unite him with it. Dennis Sharp Award Philip Turner At War with Nostalgia, Truth is the First Casualty Nostalgia, however, is related more closely to time. Returning to the past is a physical impossibility, it is something that can only be achieved through memory – so whilst Odysseus longs for home it is Proust who is In Search of Lost Time and is the true

nostalgic. However, when we recognise that a place one considers to be their home is not a constant constraint, but an indefinite condition that can be reshaped over time, we can begin to see how nostalgia starts to contaminate, becoming a prerequisite. The birth of the nostalgic ailment was linked to war. In the twentieth century, with its world wars and catastrophes, outbursts of nostalgia often occurred following such disasters.5 In this essay I will be moving closer in time still, to examine how modern age nostalgia manifests itself on the twenty-first century frontline. In particular, how aspects of home are remade on enemy soil and the implications that this phenomenon leads to. Honourable Mention Henry Thorold Space Odysseys: From the Leibniz Clarke Correspondence to 2001 Between the years of 1715–1716, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz and Samuel Clarke conducted a famous and influential exchange of letters known as the Leibniz Clarke correspondence. The principle issue of debate was the fundamental nature of space: Leibniz asserting it to be purely relative whilst Clarke adhered to an absolute, Newtonian picture. Although the correspondence was between Leibniz and Clarke, for the purposes of this essay I will regard Clarke as Newton’s mouthpiece and a mediator between the two great men. In what follows ‘the debate’ will therefore refer to the underlying clash of ideals between Leibniz and Newton rather than Leibniz and Clarke. This essay will take Leibniz and Newton through Stanley Kubrick’s 1968 masterpiece, 2001: A Space Odyssey, transporting them into Kubrick’s space to imagine how a trip on one of the film’s spacecraft might have influenced the debate.

CHOREOGRAPHING THE INVISIBLE Oliviu Lugojan-Ghenciu (AADipl 2011) answers our questions about his award-winning drawing.

GravityONE: A Choreography for Militarised Airspace

29 Radu Macovei: Oliviu, how did the drawing come to exist in the first place? Oliviu Lugojan-Ghenciu: I was working on an animation in order to represent the performative nature of my project. The drawing was a way of concluding the animation, mainly as an editorial necessity regarding the AA’s end of the year publication and my final tables. It is important to mention that the drawing was part of a series of eight drawings, all meant to illustrate a chapter from the animation. I made the drawings with the aim of concluding the animation through a sequence of still images. Like a short, graphically enriched storyboard. Why was this drawing in particular selected? It is very interesting how the drawing ended up getting all the credits for the Pozner Prize. The Pozner Award was referring to the animation, but due to the impossible character of publishing an animation, especially when needing to deal with paper, the drawing became the promoted element. It is as if the animation generated the drawing which then in turn promoted the animation. I find this a very interesting example of how two mediums of representation could ‘work in collaboration’ to support one another.

If you wish to have a look into the visual and conceptual processes that led Oliviu to the award-winning animation and drawing please follow the link: www.blurb.co.uk/bookstore/detail/2984602

What makes a drawing ‘good’ in your opinion? A ‘good drawing’ is an illustrative element which is not just a drawing, but something that takes you beyond its graphical representation. When making a drawing, one uses a graphic language to express a narrative. The more the drawing catches and leads one’s eye into a graphic journey and one’s mind into a deep imaginative thought process, the better the drawing serves its purpose. How and where was the drawing exhibited? The drawing spread over a very wide editorial landscape. One cannot really keep track of how a drawing travels, especially through virtual online platforms. But most certainly, the greatest satisfaction comes when seeing the drawing printed on paper. When a drawing is printed, it fulfils the reason why it has been produced in the first place. What mediums did you use to produce the piece? When developing a project I tend to work through analog processes in a digital environment. This might be so because of my initial fine art training, which inspired me to use Illustrator, Cinema4D, Maya, Photoshop, Vue, AfterEffects, RealFlow (you name it) as a pencil, a screwdriver, a sponge, a scalpel, clay, paint, a cable, etc. For me it’s all about grabbing all I can from whatever software I can take it from. Even as a screen-shot. One just needs to follow the image in one’s head instead of thinking about what tools one needs to get to the image. This visualisation and production process is an instinctual method of expression, much like speaking. If you want to find out more information about how the drawing came into being follow the link below to a publication I conceived for the Pozner Prize ceremony and which is dedicated to the Nicholas Pozner Foundation and to the AA. The publication visually explains the process of production and bridges the drawing and the animation.

A BOOK, A SYMPOSIUM, AN EXHIBITION – DIFFERENT FORMS OF CURATING ARCHITECTURE Yael Reisner discusses the different forms curation can take within architecture, be it a symposium, a book or an exhibition.

Since diversity in the architectural world of practice and thought is increasing, architects find themselves ever more divided into camps of affinity, both locally and globally. In turn, the role of the curator – to sum up a position and draw attention to both new and past activity – is growing. Exhibitions are often supported by an augmenting text, often resulting in catalogues that become highly significant to the exhibition itself – not only as a report on the exhibits, but as a study by researchers who have expertise in the work. This becomes even more paramount with exhibitions in museums of a certain size, such as the Pompidou Centre, MoMA and the V&A. Nowadays, due to visual activity becoming increasingly intellectualised, it is quite common for a curatorial work to be realised not only as an exhibition, but also as a book, or even more frequently as a debate, orchestrated in the form of a symposium, where each exhibit might only be projected on the wall for a brief moment. Personally, curating architecture becomes the tempting task of making a comment in public about architecture. As an architect who takes delight in design, the appearance of the curated work – in whichever form it takes – is also driven by an ambition to create visual pleasure, with the aim of both intriguing and revealing information to the visitor, the beholder, or the reader.

The title of my book written with Fleur Watson, Architecture and Beauty: Conversations With Architects About A Troubled Relationship, reflects a decision to critique the state of the profession via a curatorial theme. In addition to this, there was the selection of 16 highly influential architects1 to be interviewed, who represented a wide range of opinions as a result of their differences in both age and personal character. The book triggered six symposiums, each with a different selection from the sixteen interviewees, enhancing the focus of the debate. Naturally, a different set of arguments arose for each different combination of architects. A symposium can then perhaps be seen as curatorial space that is larger and far more complex than the traditional exhibition, but lacking the tangible presence of the object or its visual description. Lately, I curated an exhibition for the TESTBED1 gallery, Battersea, called Turning the Tables2, which showed fourteen new tables designed by architects – all original prototypes. As with the book, the exhibition became a cultural rain-check, and I was intrigued to check, among architects, what kind of tables might be produced and what kind of preoccupation their design might expose, as design often not only reflects on time and place, but also on the collective memory of the community

31 we live in; the real and the virtual, the local and the global. The open brief for the exhibition consisted of just one question: ‘Will you have a table to show for an exhibition in seven weeks time?’ All the tables, but one, were designed by architects who focus on architecture, and who are involved with the long process of production, from generating the design to the end product. Thanks to rapid prototyping machines, architects have once again become makers. Even though the manufacturing is often dependent on the machine, the artistic quality remains and is controlled through drawing skills. A revolutionary shift turning architects from the visionaries who often lead design processes through the craft of others into artistic makers themselves.

To see more of Yael Reisner’s work please visit www.yaelreisner.com

Partial view of Turning the Tables in the gallery TESTBED1. Tables designed by the architects: in the right front – by Helen and Hard, right back – by Jason Bruges Studio, middle – by sixteen makers, left – by Yael Reisner and Peter Cook.Posters at the back by Nat Chard.

Curation itself could be seen as going through its own, similar transformation. As curating the arts becomes more and more of a profession, studied as Master’s courses and PhDs, there is a growing demand for creativity in a field, which is no longer limited to a reflective report of the artists’ work. Curating architecture is a new territory that is both in demand and open to interpretation.

1 Frank Gehry, Zvi Hecker, Peter Cook, Johani Pallasmaa, Lebbeus Woods, Gaetano Pesce, Wolf Prix, Thom Mayne, Eric Moss, Will Alsop, Zaha Hadid, Odile Decq, Mark Goulthorpe, Sulan Kolatan & Bill McDonald, Greg Lynn and Hernan Diaz Alonso. 2 The selected exhibitors were Will Alsop, Jason Bruges Studio, Nat Chard, Cinimod, Peter Cook and Yael Reisnr, Bernd Felsinger, Pablo Gill and Jaime Bartolome, Barnaby Gunning, Helen and Hard, Sandra Knoebl and Rudolf Knoebl, marcosandmarjan, Naja-deOstos, sixteen* (makers) and Heng Zhi.

‘CAPTURING A MOMENT IN TIME’ Chris Wilkinson discusses with Eleanor Dodman, student editor, the 244th annual Royal Academy Summer Show, and his involvement in curating the architecture room.

Chris Wilkinson’s installation from landscape to portrait positioned in the centre of the RA’s Annenberg Courtyard at Burlington House

Eleanor Dodman: This year the architecture room has started to bleed its way into the galleries adjacent to it, a conscious decision you and Eva Jiricna RA made when curating the exhibition. What made you blur the boundaries of what has always been such a self contained space? Chris Wilkinson: There are two reasons really, one is that I am very interested in fine art and I paint, but more, so that you have a run of galleries, two painting galleries followed by the architecture gallery and then two sculpture galleries. It seemed to me that there was a beautiful symmetry about that. But it worked much better if the architecture spread out to the adjoining galleries and in return we could take some of the art works into the architecture room. Tess Jaray, who is in charge of the hanging, and I talked very early on about this and she was interested in how we would integrate the architecture, how that would work.

For more information please visit wilkinsoneyre.com and http://www.royalacademy.org.uk/

We brought in this Rana Begum folded-metal sculpture, entitled NO.283, which Tess identified as being a good piece. It really does work well on the wall because it sits right on the axis with the octagon room, as you come in. There is quite a nice relationship, but more a post-rationalisation, with my piece in the courtyard, which is on the same axis. You have a piece of architecture where you expect to see a sculpture and a sculpture where you expect to see a piece of architecture.

So when it came to selecting the pieces it seems you did some trading. With such a vast amount of work submitted it must be quite difficult to begin the process. There is a committee and the rooms are delegated to the different people, but obviously the architecture room is slightly different and quite onerous, as there is a lot to hang in a small space. We had a discussion at the beginning and generally agreed on the approach. Eva Jiricna RA, whom I curated the room with, was keen on getting on with it in the site. We moved things around to get things right. It did take a while. As part of blurring the boundaries I wanted the architecture room to feel the same as the other rooms, with the models in the middle and the wall hung with artworks. So we put all the models on this plinth arrangement, which gave us the walls free. We decided we could go quite high with the stronger pieces at the top, and the finer pieces at the bottom. We could have just put a cut off, but we wanted to get as much work in as we could. We could have been very selective, you can have very few pieces and hang them beautifully, but Eva and I both felt that the Summer Show is not about that, it is about capturing a moment in time. It’s about exhibiting works by students and young architects next to the big names. We felt the more we could show the better, in a way. We put Peter Cook on the top, because of the historic reference, he has probably taught us all. You definitely have to balance the personalities of the work. I was also very aware of the almost Beaux-Art classicism of the room, it’s not like an art gallery. It’s more like a salon. It’s a very different space but you can make it work, more like a junk shop than an art gallery really. Much like an end of year show, there is a lot of stuff. I think it is valid, but I would not expect all exhibitions to be like that. This year, you were also commissioned to produce a piece for the main courtyard. The installation is very site-specific and a very interesting use of the courtyard, the piece really integrates itself well. It is very site-specific and that is unusual because normally they ask a sculptor to put a piece that they have worked on before, but I made this piece especially for the Royal Academy. Given that we started from scratch, I was given the opportunity to work with the context, the proportions of the frames are golden section, which matches the windows within the courtyard. I was very keen to find a narrative that related to the Royal Academy, which is where I got the idea of the frames that twist from landscape to portrait. It does not mean much to architects, but to painters there has always been a relationship between landscape and portrait.

MADRID GENEALOGIES AND ARCHIVES IN ARCHITECTURE’S EXPANDED ACTS Jacobo García-Germán is an architect who completed his MA Master in Histories & Theories at the AA. He discusses Madrid’s genealogies and curation within the city.

While curating architecture used to be a secondary activity for architects, it has gradually become something which is increasingly gaining momentum in the agendas of many young practices. These practices understand their work as one with cultural projection, pointing towards increasingly varied aims, with building just one amongst other facets. We are witnessing a drive against specialisation, with architects devoting their efforts to simultaneous activities, in which curating architecture – promoting the discovery, experience and acknowledgement of our built environment as an educational activity for users or citizens – is gaining notoriety. In Madrid, due to the huge changes the city has undergone during the last six years, a whole new awareness of context has emerged before the eyes of architects and architecture students. Similar to Barcelona in the early 90s or recurrently in London (fuelling the briefs and programmes of the AA units), the city proudly offers itself as a case study and as a new, complex and exciting organism to be rediscovered and newly experienced. The role young architects, in Madrid, are playing in this rediscovery is crucial, and can be summed up in three complementary awareness mechanisms: archives, genealogies and expanded acts.

First of all, paradoxically, Madrid’s new lease of life is promoting an awareness of its past: many of its forgotten and neglected structures have been reclaimed for social uses. To name some, Madrid’s new Government Headquarters, CaixaForum Museum, by Herzog & De Meuron, or the Matadero complex, the restoration of an old slaughter house, by a group of young local offices, into a dynamic cultural centre. Small crowds of architecture students discover the renovated city in visits led by young architects, usually teachers in the city’s architectural schools. Some of them have teamed up in different platforms and think-tanks like Madrid Centro, Piensa Madrid and Planeta Beta, with the aim of channelling this curiosity into the production of an intellectual stream of thought focused on contemporary Madrid. The Madrid Architecture Guide 1975–2015, written by my office as a more extensive guide to the one published in 2007, belongs to this sphere. It includes contributions by a total of 25 practising architects and teachers from three different generations, turning the book into a kaleidoscope of visions and critical insights, modifying the traditional catalogue format into a provisional subjective and creative re-description of the city. Turning its character from the sacred (or forgotten) to the object of critical revision, the dormant

Jacobo García Germán runs GARCIAGERMAN ARQUITECTOS. To find out more please visit www.garciagerman.com

Garciagerman arquitectos, housing for EMVS social housing programme, 2007. Photo Carlos Roca

archive of the city’s past is revisited. Further studies into this subject can be seen in the current exhibition in Móstoles’s Centro de Arte 2 de Mayo by artist Lara Almarcegui based on her studies of Madrid’s underground world, secret passages, sewage lines, metro infrastructures, holes, wells and dens, and its avatars throughout the centuries. Secondly, the idea of genealogical tuning as something that defines a certain trans-generational balance is something to take into account. In Madrid, architecture is often produced with interweaving connections between different generations and opposing sensibilities. This has produced a certain solidarity or collective move, aimed towards the strengthening of a profession, now more threatened than ever, and one in which established names

permanently contribute to the educational and cultural activities, promoted by young architects. Madrid is unlike any other city, one can trace the genealogies and threads of filiation between architects in a nonoppositional manner. The consolidation of open initiatives, like Freshmadrid, Hasta la Cocina or Symmetries Architecture Workshops+Congresses stage a roleplaying in which hierarchies, ages and abilities are blurred, these popular initiatives, educational, informational and event-like structures blend with the pedigree of the old and the freshness of the young. Building visits, lectures, working sessions, open-office days and other events try to narrow the gap between architects and the rest of society. Finally, architects have literally taken to the streets to coincide with the Movimiento 15-M, a counter-culture demonstration, where a whole generation of young professionals have adapted the city as their testing-ground for alternative occupations of public space and experimental reprogramming. Usually teamed up in small independent collectives, they have staged interesting events such as the re-use of the empty Plaza de la Cebada Market site, vacant lots in the Lavapies quarter, or animated important demonstrations against the Santiago Calatrava monolith in Plaza de Castilla or the closing up of the old Tabacalera Factory. This last example, a movement in which an architect-led protest in favour of the self-managed use of the factory, by alternative collectives – and against its planned transformation into yet another institutional-run museum – managed to succeed in obtaining permission from the local authorities. Having become one of Madrid’s hot cultural hubs, it sums up the different ways in which Madrid’s young architects are reinventing themselves. Furthermore, it proves how curating, in the broader sense of the word, appears as an opportunity for professional redefinition.

AA TALKS LONDON 2012 Meneesha Kellay and Bobby Jewell compare notes on the first two events of the AA Talks London 2012 series organised by the AA Membership Office, 2012: A Story To Tell and Emerging Architects and the Park

2012: A Story to Tell was conceived out of a desire to address the Olympic games and its impact on London, paramount being the need to critique the notion that the Olympic development would have a regenerative effect. The panel of speakers were asked to recount what East London’s legacy is now and what it will be in years to come, following the insertion of the Olympics furthermore, the effect of these megaevents on cities. The eminent panel comprised of; Anna Minton, a writer and journalist, author of Ground Control. Stephen Gill, a photographer who lives and works in Hackney. Through his publishing imprint, Nobody, Stephen has produced books, including Hackney Wick, Hackney Flowers and Architecture in Reverse (with Iain Sinclair). Saskia Sassen, one of the foremost thinkers on the contemporary city, who coined the term global city, author of many books including Territory, Authority, Rights: From Medieval to Global Assemblages; A Sociology of Globalisation. Will Self is a writer, broadcaster and critic, who has authored many books, including Psychogeography. With AA tutor Sam Jacob as chair, the talk began robustly with his poetic introduction, “In a strange twist of ironic fates, the site in which the visionary architect Cedric Price once imagined a Fun Palace is now the site of the Olympic Park. The Fun Palace: that legendary, un-built and highly influential project; with its ideas of flexibility, adaptability, an idea of architecture as a social event, infrastructure; has met in the Olympics perhaps both its apogee and its apotheosis.” This left lingering questions, which Minton began to address with her insight into the publicly funded, but privately

owned Olympic Park, ‘we have been told, by the organisers, that they are creating this public spirited legacy in line with the Great Exhibition and the Festival of Britain. But, in fact, the Olympic Park which you would be forgiven for thinking it is public, but it isn’t. It is exactly on the same Docklands model of privately owned developments which are sold off to the highest bidder.’ While attempting to end on a hopeful note, Minton stated that, ‘affordable housing is one thing that was really promised, and indeed, half of the homes in the Olympic Village will be affordable. But actually, the definition of affordable housing has changed, always slippery: it now actually means 80% of market rent.’ Speakers: Anna Minton, Stephen Gill, Sam Jacob, Will Self and Saskia Sassen at the Southbank’s Purcell Room.

For more information on members events please visit www.aaschool.ac.uk/membership/events

Perspective of the unrealised Fun Palace (1960–61) by Cedric Price, now the site of the Olympic Aquatics Centre by Zaha Hadid, both AA graduates and former tutors.

Stephen Gill followed with his stunning photography, which treads the line between documentary and conceptual art beautifully. His photography not only allowed us to visualize the abstract space we were hearing about, but also question our perception of both the Hackney and Olympic landscape. Saskia Sassen took us out of Hackney and cast our thoughts to the global forces at work, that shape our cities through ‘mega-events’. She sees cities as complex assemblages and ‘the fact that they are complex but incomplete enables sort of anarchy of the quotidian’. Sassen called upon inhabitants of areas of the Olympic Park to act as makers, to not feel powerless to these large global forces but to strengthen the urban tissue by re-possessing it. Finally Will Self began his tirade subtly by stating, ‘anybody here in the audience who has been involved in working for the Olympic Development Authority. You are lickspittle, you are crucially involved in the derogation of London.’ He criticised Renzo Piano’s Shard (which happened to be opening the same night) stating that it has been built with a 65-year-life span which he

compared unfavourably to a 300-year-old School of Hawksmoor Church, which will be there when the Shard is gone. Self deemed this utterly irresponsible and urged architect in the audience to consider retraining as dentists, where ‘you might be able to more profitably exercise your creativity in a métier that did not involve such colossal ruination.’ Accurately Will Self observed, ‘If you want to look at the real, exciting memorial to what is going on in the East, you can look to the West, to Battersea Power Station, which eats developers for breakfast and spits out their bones.’ Feedback after the talk, particularly Will Self’s contribution, revealed both anger and admiration from architects in the audience. I find this hopeful, as there was certainly a lot of truth behind Self’s words. Pondering on the theme of this edition of AArchitecture, ‘Curating Architecture’, what I discovered at the end of the talk is what actually curates the architecture of the Olympic development is money, not the architects, as Self starkly recounted, ‘form follows finance’. Following the collective beating the Olympics took at the first AA Talks London 2012 event, it was refreshing to see five emerging London based practices give an inspiring talk to an audience of peers, showing that, despite restrictions and even having to masquerade as artists, the Olympics could be used as a positive platform for their architectural talent. Tucked secretively, right behind the Bow Flyover, Sugarhouse Studios served as a fitting venue for the evening. Home to and run by Assemble Studio, of Folly for A Flyover fame, the event space was created through a self-initiated project with the aid of the London Legacy Development Corporation and includes a workshop and bar/kitchen. Tomas Klassnik, set the tone for the discussion, with a wry knowing sense of humour, and a body of work rooted in social and local regeneration whilst displaying a colourful innovation and creativity that was prescient in all the other practises. Much like Studio Weave’s ‘Floating Cinema’ created as part of the Cultural Olympiad, and Assemble Studio’s work with the local community.

The ‘Coca-Cola Beatbox’ Pavillion designed by Asif Khan & Pernilla Ohrstedt was the most experimental and high profile construction presented on the night, a 1000m2 structure that utilises interactive technology to allow audiences to trigger music through touch, and tastefully shunned overt branding. An energy to impress and challenge was evident throughout, with practices unafraid to focus on details and specifics, whether they be historical, such as Studio Weaves Chaucer inspired ‘Paleys upon Pilers’ installation in Aldgate or the local, We Made That and their High Street 2012 focused free newspaper entitled ‘The Unlimited Edition’. There were strong

stories and central narratives to the talks that belied confident research and self promotion. This came in stark contrast to what Oliver Wainwright recently appointed Architecture and Design Critic for The Guardian, who chaired the event, had witnessed in the thought processes the more established practices involved. He concluded: ‘After so many stories in the press about young architects being excluded from Olympic work, it was great to see these energetic practices using a tactical approach and seizing opportunities – whether through self-initiated projects or making proposals for holes in the masterplan.’

For more information on members events please visit www.aaschool.ac.uk/membership/events

‘Coca-Cola’ Beatbox Pavilion by Asif Khan and Pernilla Ohrstedt

THE PARADIGM OF AN URBAN TRANSFORMATION Stefano Rabolli Pansera, founder of Beyond Entropy, describes how the first Angolan Pavilion at the Venice Architecture Biennale came in to existence.

Follow the link below to find out more about Beyond Entropy’s projects around the world: www.beyondentropy.aaschool.ac.uk

The plantation of Arundo Donax in the interstitial space between the existing buildings produces a new urban condition which is both a garden and an infrastructure.

Beyond Entropy started in 2010 as an AA cluster and after several exhibitions, it evolved into a limited company with projects in Europe and Africa. In particular, in the fast demographic growth of Luanda is the paradigm of an urban transformation that happens with recurrent problems and similar contradictions through-out the entire continent: large conurbations without urbanity; congestion without infrastructure; high-density without high-rise. Despite the apparent lack of planning, the peri-urban areas of Luanda reveal a spatial intelligence that is often neglected: every space simultaneously performs a diversity of programmes and activities, and in the process the city turns into a morphing conurbation that resists any zoning or conventional planning.

Beyond Entropy Angola formulates a controversial hypothesis in view of stimulating the debate on future planning policies: the morphing city may produce new models for sustainable urban development. By avoiding any radical destruction of the urban fabric, the plantation of Arundo Donax, in the interstitial space between the existing buildings, produces a new urban condition which is both a garden and an infrastructure for filtering waters and producing biomass for electricity. This energetic ‘common ground’ addresses the urgent need of services and develops an alternative method to imagine the form of the African city. In fact it addresses the issue of energy as urban form, not simply as a technological or engineering issue. It is a generic territorial model that is simultaneously public space and infrastructure (enhancing the morphing nature of the African city) and that can be repeated in several parts of the city and in the entire region. The Angolan pavilion, at the Venice Architecture Biennale 2012, is a real-scale prototype: visitors have the chance to walk through a morphing space which is both garden and infrastructure and to experience the intensity of a primordial space which is not configured, mastered or categorised yet.

VENICE TAKEAWAY: AN INTERNATIONAL APPROACH TO SHARED PROBLEMS Vanessa Norwood, Head of AA Exhibitions, sheds light on her most recent project beyond the AA – curating the British Pavilion at the Venice Biennale – in conversation with student editor, Manijeh Verghese

Venice Takeaway: Ideas to change British Architecture is the title of the British Pavilion at the 13th International Architecture Biennale in Venice. Rather than showcasing current British architecture, the pavilion looks outside of the UK, sending explorers out to countries ranging from Brazil to China, Germany to Nigeria to shed light on alternative modes of practice. The curators, the Director of Architecture, Design and Fashion at the British Council and Commissioner Vicky Richardson and the Head of AA Exhibitions, Vanessa Norwood chose ten architectural teams who will exhibit ideas discovered on their travels in the pavilion. Venice Takeaway is an experiment in the creative potential of sharing ideas across borders. Talking to Vanessa in the weeks leading up to the Biennale, she explains the gamble taken by the curators since, until the explorers returned, they had no idea what material they would be exhibiting within the pavilion. They took solace in the words of Albert Einstein who once said, ‘If we knew what it was we were doing, it would not be called research, would it?’ In the interview below, she describes the biggest challenges and inspirations along the way:

Manijeh Verghese: How did you arrive at the idea of Venice Takeaway? Vanessa Norwood: The premise for Venice Takeaway came from Vicky Richardson. She wanted to approach the exhibition for the Biennale in a different way by looking at the relationships, policies and structures needed to make good architecture rather than showcasing the work of British architects, something that has been done many times in the past. Vicky invited me to work with her on this exciting, challenging project. We had worked together previously when she was Editor at Blueprint ; we share similar aims on creating thought-provoking and beautiful shows about architecture and she is an admirer of our exhibitions at the AA. At the end of last year we wrote a brief for potential contributors outlining the type of projects we were looking for and then launched Venice Takeaway in January at the AA, travelling onwards to Edinburgh, Cardiff and Belfast.

41 dRMM. Swan swimming amongst waterhouses, IJburg Waterbuurt West, Amsterdam

What were the criteria in selecting explorers? The explorers were selected by the British Pavilion Advisory Panel which was looking for proposals with ambitious ideas about how to change architecture but that were little known within the UK. We thought this would be a challenge as so much is published in print and online about work happening globally, but the successful projects managed to find interesting and new subjects to investigate. The call for submissions was open to anyone who had knowledge of the UK context as the project had to reflect a ‘gap’ in British practice. We encouraged submissions from a wide range of people from practising architects to students, curators to writers and researchers. How do you feel the pavilion will respond to the Biennale’s theme: Common Ground? Chipperfield writes that Common Ground began with ‘a desire to emphasise shared ideas over individual authorship’, and hoped ‘to initiate dialogues rather than simply make a selection of individuals’. Both Common Ground and Venice Takeaway aim to discover imaginative and ambitious ways to negotiate the challenges of making architecture, looking at the wider context of how architecture is made. Venice Takeaway highlights the importance of mobility across borders, openness to new ideas and an international approach to shared problems.

42 What was the biggest challenge in organising such a far-reaching project? Perhaps the enormity of our project struck me most when I met in April with Bekim Ramku, the Commissioner to Kosovo’s entry in the Biennale and an AA alumnus. He showed me detailed drawings of their pavilion exhibition design. At that stage our explorers were away on their travels and we had no idea of what material they would collect and how the resulting exhibition might look. For all of us, curators, designers and explorers, it was an act of faith.

What inspiration can British architecture take from the pavilion? The show celebrates the role that research and travel play in the life of the architect. We hope that there will be tangible changes in the UK as a result of these explorations. For example dRMM will follow their journey to IJburg, Holland where they are researching floating housing by meeting with planners and politicians to discuss increasingly pertinent questions about pressing housing shortages in the UK. If anything, we hope that Venice Takeaway will act as a call to arms; a chance to reexamine and reassert the role of the architect. In the central ‘research emporium’ a series of lightboxes will illuminate the text of a set of imperatives. My favourite says simply ‘Be Bold’.

Venice Takeaway: Ideas to Change British Architecture (London, 2012) 208 pp, paperback, £18, is available to buy from the AA Bookshop and online from AA Publications at www.aaschool.ac.uk/publications.

To learn more about the British Pavilion at the Venice Biennale please visit: www.venicetakeaway.com

Has there been any reciprocal exchange about British architecture in the countries visited by explorers? All the explorers have made connections that will last into the future. They met up with local architects, town planners, politicians and the people that live in the cities, towns and villages they explored. Many of the explorations will continue both in the places they started and here in the UK. The Venice Takeaway show will return to the RIBA, London in February and we hope by then there will be another chapter to the story. In the accompanying catalogue to the show we ask very specific questions of the explorers: How do you plan to take this forward? and how has the project expanded your international connections? Their answers show that participation has had an effect not only on their own work but is the start of many ongoing projects that could make a tangible difference to the way we live in the UK, even challenging the way we perceive the remit of the architect. The forming of reciprocal relationships is key. We stated in our brief that openness, internationalism, and mobility were the principles at the heart of Venice Takeaway and our project will show that an exhibition can be a starting point rather than a frozen moment in time.

For further information on AA Publications or to order, visit www.aaschool.ac.uk/publications Bedford Press is an imprint of AA Publications www.bedfordpress.org

NEW FROM AA PUBLICATIONS AND BEDFORD PRESS

In Search of the Forgotten Architect Lilly Dubowitz With essays by Éva Forgács and Richard Anderson 212 pp, 260 x 200 mm, paperback August 2012 978-1-907896-21-7 £30 Stefan Sebök was a Hungarian-born architect who worked with Walter Gropius in Dessau and Berlin in the late 1920s, and then with fellow Hungarian emigré László Moholy-Nagy on his famous Light Prop, and later still moved to the Soviet Union to work with the constructivist architects Ginzburg, the Vesnin brothers and El Lissitzky. Details of his life are revealed through this book written by Sebök’s niece, Lilly Dubowitz, who meticulously pieces together clues and details of her uncle’s life and work as if like an architectural detective. This text is accompanied not only by numerous illustrations of Sebök’s design work but by essays by historians Éva Forgács and Richard Anderson.

POA 1–22 Edited by Scrap Marshall and Jan Nauta 130 pp, ills 220 x 135 mm, paperback September 2012 978-1-907414-21-3 c £15 POA 1–22 is an edited collection of the first 22 events by the Public Occasion Agency. Previews, reviews and ephemera catalogue the series of lectures, events and exhibitions organised by the agency over the last two years. It includes ‘Cedric Price – Wish We Were Here’, ‘OMA As An Educational Model’, as well as events by Iain Sinclair, Patrick Wright and Metahaven.

Bedford Press will launch POA 1–22 at the 2012 New York Art Book Fair, which takes place at MoMa PS1 from 27–30 September. www.nyartbookfair.com

COUNCIL NOTES Having just completed the 2011–12 session, Council wishes to thank the members concluding their service and welcome those newly elected. We would like to thank the leaving members for their hard work and the time they have spent on Council. These members include Daniel Aram, Mike Davies, Merlin Eayrs, Julia King, Sophie Le Bourva, Kenneth Powell and Jane Wernick. The new Council session, 2012–13, will include eight new members, elected in March after an uncontested vote. These new members are Joanna Chambers, Eleanor Dodman, Lionel Eid, Summer Islam, Alexander Laing, Hugh Pearman, Yasmin Shariff and Paul Warner. Additionally, Diana Periton, who has served on Council as an ordinary member since 2008, was elected Honorary Vice President for the 2012–13 session. A complete list of Council officers and ordinary members is available on the members’ area of the AA website. Other notable events over the last year include a visit from the Quality Assurance Agency (QAA). In July 2011 the Home Office confirmed details of new arrangements for ‘educational oversight’ of private colleges which sponsor international students. These arrangements were part of a drive to improve standards of educational quality and immigration compliance which were the basis of the reforms to the points-based System for immigration. The AA made an application to the QAA for a Review for Education Oversight in order to be assessed for compliance in three main areas: academic standards, quality of learning opportunities and public information. The QAA’s scrutiny of the School included a lengthy application process and a two-day visit on site, which included meetings with students, tutors and administrative staff. The School has recently received a letter of confidence from the QAA, which supports the AA’s continuing status as a highly trusted sponsor permitted by the UK Border Agency to recruit and enrol non-EU students.

Council would like to thank everyone involved in the process – from those tasked with compiling the documentation to organising and taking part in the on-site visit – for their success and hard work during an incredibly busy year for all. The QAA’s final report on the School will be publicly available via the QAA website in around six weeks’ time. Questions regarding the QAA visit or requests for additional information may be sent via email to Chris Pierce, who co-ordinated the assessment, at pierce_ch@aaschool.ac.uk. Lastly, a member of Council has pledged a generous donation to the School in support of completing the lateral connections along the diploma corridor. Construction will begin this summer and it is anticipated it will continue throughout the autumn term. The AA, in collaboration with Wright & Wright architects, has taken steps to ensure as best it can that noise and disruption to teaching and other School activities are kept to a minimum.

NEWS PUBLISHED & EXHIBITED Founder of ParaMateriel, Sevil Yazici (AA DRL MArch 2006) published ‘Computing Through Holistic Systems Design Method: Material Formations Workshop’ in DEARQ

landscape architecture projects in the world. The project is also featured in Landscape Architecture Now! published by Taschen. http://elviajero.elpais.com/fotogaleria/ jardines/fabulosos/elpgal/ 20120524elpepuvia_1/Zes/2

Vasiliki Geropanta (AA H&U MArch student), participated with her Diploma Thesis from the University of Patras (Greece) ‘Architecture and the City in SE Europe’ at the Macedonian Museum of Modern Art and as part of the exhibition ‘GROUNDWORKS’ at the old Municipal Hospital of Patras.

Arjan Scheer’s (AADipl 1999) review of the International Architecture Biennale Rotterdam was featured in a Dutch newspaper. The review focused on how a community can take responsibility for their environment, gradually transforming a deprived part of the city into a new community.

Seamus Ward (AADipl 1980) has published a book with the support of the Arts Council on a student project he completed in 1974. Titled 1974 – Belfast Lost , the book collects photographs taken of abandoned Belfast pubs.

Federico Martelli (AA EmTech MSc student) has self-published a small book, a designed new edition of Jorge Luis Borges’ El Aleph featuring his own photographs and renderings to illustrate the short story.

Kevin Lim (AADipl 2003), principal of Studio SKLIM, has recently been chosen to exhibit at the Design Exchange in Toronto, September to October 2012. www.sklim.com

Kostas Grigoriadis (Diploma 2 Unit Master), Irene Shamma, Alex Robles Palacio and Pavlos Fereos (all AA DRL MArch 2009), had their Masters design thesis project included in the d3 Natural Systems exhibition at Gallery MC in Manhattan, New York.

Of the many AA Members and Alumni represented at this year’s Venice Biennale, we were pleased to hear from Patrick Lynch (former AA Tutor), Daryl Chen (AA H&U MA(Dist) 2004), Cesare Griffa (AA DRL MArch 2002) and Sujit Nair (AADRL March 2004), all of whom have been invited to participate. Mazen Orfali (AADipl 2012) has had his project from Diploma 6 entitled ‘Singing Landscapes: The Lost Language Repository’ selected from over 200 projects to be featured in Bracket magazine’s annual publication At Extremes. http://brkt.org Jamileh Manoochehri (AADipl 1983), who currently lectures at the Leicester School of Architecture (De Montfort University) has published a book through Peter Lang AG titled The Politics of Social Housing in Britain. The ‘Xi’an Flowing Gardens’ project, by Eduardo Rico (AA LU MA 2003 and current LU Tutor) of GroundLab, with Eva Castro (AA DRL GradDiplDes 1995 and director of the AA LU programme) and Holger Kehne (former AA tutor) of PlasmaStudio, was featured in El Pais as one of the most exciting contemporary

Jörg Heiler (AADipl 1995) has recently completed his doctorate at the TU Munich with a dissertation titled ‘Tactics to Act for the Lived Space: Perceptions and Actions in the Urban Landscape’, to be published by Transcript Verlag in 2013. Ludovico Lombardi (AA DRL MArch 2008) was interviewed by Luminous International lighting magazine in June 2012. www.ldvc.net www.lighting.philips.com Eugene Soler (AAIS GradDip 2010) had an experimental teahouse installation at a gallery in Spitalfields as part of the London Architecture Festival 2012. Superfusionlab, the practice founded by Nate Kolbe (former AA Unit Master) and Lida Charsouli (AA DRL MArch 2000), is participating in the interactive Gaming Exhibition Joue-le-Jeu at Gaite Lyrique Gallery in Paris. The installation is part of a series of interactive games where the building senses its visitors by four senses. www.gaite-lyrique.net www.superfusionlab.com

Ruth Lie (former AA Admissions Coordinator) curated the architecturebased Friday Late at the V&A on 29 June 2012. It featured work by Tobias Klein (AA Unit Master) and Zoe Yee Chan (AADipl 2010) amongst others. AArchitecture’s designer Claire McManus designed the leaflet for the event. www.vam.ac.uk/content/articles/f/ friday-late-unbuilt-deconstructingarchitecture Matthias Sauerbruch (AADipl 1983) and Louisa Hutton (AADipl 1985), both former AA tutors, were recently interviewed by the Neue Zürcher Zeitung’s art critic Ursula SeiboldBultmann (AA member since 2000). www.nzz.ch/nachrichten/kultur/ literatur_und_kunst/ architektur_ist_eine_angewandte_ kunst-1.15825681#tab-kommentiert Peter Ferretto (former AA tutor) exhibited at CU SPACE Gallery Beijing in March 2012 An exhibition by Liam Young (Diploma 6 Unit Master) titled ‘Singing Sentinels: When Birds Sing a Toxic Sky’ was at the Mediamatic Gallery, Amsterdam from April to July 2012. www.mediamatic.net/252792/en/ singing-sentinels

LECTURES & SYMPOSIA Rogers Stirk Harbour + Partners will be sponsoring the next two years of the Architecture Foundation’s education programme, Urban Pioneers, which engages teams of 16–19 year olds in areas undergoing significant change, empowering them to critically explore the transformations happening around them, develop new skills, and engage with mentors. Eduardo Rico (AA LU MA 2003 and current LU Tutor) lectured on interfacebased design for urban environments with Enriqueta Llabres (AA Member) at Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne on 17 April 2012. http://memento.epfl.ch/event/ relational-urbanism

Mariana Ibanez, Nick Puckett (both AADRL MArch 2004), and Simon Kim (AADRL MArch 2003) conducted the ‘Beyond Mechanics’ workshop at Smart Geometry 2012. The workshop developed responsive clothing/cladding prototypes using shape-memory polymer created as part of the design process. http://vimeo.com/39123539 Vincenzo Reale (AA EmTech MArch student) organised a workshop of digital fabrication within the EmTech programme, which has also been published on the online magazine EVOLO. www.evolo.us/architecture/ super-surface-fabrication-architecturalassociation-emergent-technologies http://empython.blogspot.co.uk Karola Dierichs (EmTech MArch(Dist) 2009, LU MA 2005, AA Dipl 1999) and Achim Menges (AA Dipl(Hons) 2002 and former AA Unit Master) presented their paper ‘Aggregate Architectures: Observing and Designing with Changeable Material Systems in Architecture’ at the ACSA International Conference CHANGE, Architecture, Education, Practices, in Barcelona. Francesco Emanuele Contaldo (AA SED MSc 2011) was invited to present his work at the last edition of the Energy Forum (Bressanone, December 2011). He showed a project of a photovoltaic greenhouse park. He also presented research on the environmental performance of traditional windows in the Mediterranean context at Retrofit 2012 (Manchester, January 2012). Emanuel de Sousa (AA PhD candidate) presented a paper entitled ‘Other Places Redux, c 1960–present’ discussing the disruption of ‘orthotopographic’ thought and the reverberation of ‘heterotopology’ within city formations at the Designing Place International Urban Design Conference at The University of Nottingham. Yosuke Nagumo (AA DRL MArch 2001) presented a research paper entitled ‘Potential of Sustainable Architecture as a Style’ at the 24th World Congress of Architecture at the Tokyo International Forum in September 2011. He was also selected by the Architectural Institute of Japan in Selected Architectural Design 2012 (published March 2012) for his work on the Hackney Service Centre with Hopkins Architects. Sushant Verma’s (AA EmTech MArch student) design research paper entitled ‘Exploring Principles of Plectic Architecture to activate Urban Voids’ was selected to be presented for the

9th AHRA Conference held on 19–20 May 2012 in Aberdeen, Scotland. The paper is currently under a cross-review stage for further publication. www.rgu.ac.uk/news-and-events/ conferences/ architectural-humanities-researchassociation-student-conference Alfredo Ramirez (AA LU MA 2005 and LU Tutor) lectured at KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin, 30 March 2012. Francisco González de Canales (AA Unit Master and AACP) presented to New York University in April 2012 following an invitation from Professor Juan Jose Lahuerta. Tomas Klassnik (AA Unit Master) spoke at the Copy/Culture symposium in Istanbul in April, organised by Premsela, on Architectural Reenactments and Inter 12 projects.

CAREERS & PRIZES Superfusionlab, the practice founded by Nate Kolbe (former AA Unit Master) and Lida Charsouli (AA DRL MArch 2000), received an Honourable Mention in the Cypriot Competition for the Museum of Agricultural Heritage in Eptagonia Lemessos. www.superfusionlab.com Abdel Halim Chehab, Suraj Suthar and Swapnil Gawande (AA EmTech MArch students) were awarded a special mention for their entry in the EVOLO Skyscraper Design Competition 2012. www.evolo.us/competition/ aakash-skyscraper/#more-16658 Carlos Umana Gambassi (AA LU MArch 2010) was honoured the Research Category at the XI International Architecture Biennale celebrated in Costa Rica on 6 May 2012. He participated with his final project in the MA in Landscape Urbanism programme, ‘Tactical Morphologies’. Salma Samar Damluji (AADipl 1977 and former AA H&U tutor), Chief Architect and Founder of the Daw’an Mud Brid Architecture Foundation, based in Hadramut (Yemen), was one of five architects who received the Locus Foundation Global Award for Sustainable Architecture 2012, for her work and projects in Yemen, at a Ceremony in Paris on 13 April 2012. www.dawanarchitecturefoundation.org

ACME, founded by Friedrich Ludewig (AADipl(Hons) 2001) has been successful in a number of recent competitions. The office has been selected as winners of a competitive bid process by Chester Council as masterplanners for Northgate, a large regeneration project in the historic city centre. A team led by Deena Fakhro (AADipl(Hons) 2008) won the international competition for the Royal Institute in Human Development in Riffa/ Bahrain and will hand over completed detailed design information to the client this summer. And a team led by Julia Cano (AA DRL MArch 2008) won a commission to develop a parametrically designed, robot-assembled brick façade for a large department store in the centre of Hamburg, Germany. Madeleine Kessler (AA fourth year student) has been awarded the 2012 KPF Travel Fellowship. She will spend the summer travelling through China, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan and Turkey, exploring the merging of East and West in both the ancient and (rapidly developing) modern world, along the ancient trading routes of the Old Silk Road. www.kpf.com/news.asp?id=109 dotA, the practice of Yan Gao (AA DRL MArch 2005), Assistant Professor at the University of Hong Kong, has recently won first prize on a competition for social housing in Shenzhen, China. They also completed the interior design for a Spanish wine bar in Beijing. Arjan Scheer (AADipl 1999) recently received second prize in an open two-stage competition for a ‘Booster Station’ to be situated in a park near Rotterdam. Drago Vodanovic (AADRL MArch 2008) and Tomas Jacobsen (AADRL MArch 2009) are launching an architecture school at the south end of Chile, in Puerto Montt city. They refer to it as a school ‘in the end of the world’ and have worked on the project for almost two years. http://ptomontt.arquitecturauss. cl/?category_name=noticias Jan Pietje Witt (AADipl 1999) of Studio Witt has won one of the three ‘Young Architects Hamburg 2012’ awards, given to architects under 40 years of age for outstanding achievement in their first six years in private practice. www.drost-consult.de/media/ 1338881991_Broschuere_JAH.pdf

Ben Reynolds (AADipl(Hons) 2012) co-founder of Palace architectural design and research practice, was selected to show work at the École spéciale for DIAGRAMME(S) exhibition www.esa-paris.fr/ExpositionDiagramme-s.html?lang=fr palacepalace.com Mollie Claypool (AA H&T MADist 2009, DRL tutor and HTS lecturer) has been appointed as Web Editor of the European Architectural History Network. White Cube Bermondsey, by Casper Mueller Kneer Architects, founded by former AA tutors Marianne Mueller (AADipl 1995) and Olaf Kneer (AADipl 1993), has received an Excellence in Design commendation from the UK Chapter of the American Institute of Architects. www.aiauk.org/annual-design-awards www.cmk-architects.com RARE, the practice of Michel da Costa Gonçalves (AA EmTech MA 2005) and Nathalie Rozencwajg (AADipl 2001), Inter 4 Unit Masters, has won a number of awards. They were awarded Building of the Year in the ArchDaily Awards (by popular vote) for their Town Hall Hotel refurbishment, which was also declared ‘Five of the Best Hotel Interiors in London’ by ELLE-UK . The practice was featured in Architecture Now! Vol 8, and Nathalie Rozencwajg received a commendation in the Architect’s Journal Emerging Woman Architect of the Year design award. Nuria Alvarez Lombardero and Francisco Gonzalez de Canales (Inter 8 Unit Masters) of Canales & Lombardero and academic initiative Politics of Fabrication Laboratory, were selected by Arquia Proxima Young Architect 2012. University College Hospital Macmillan Cancer Centre by Hopkins Architects opened its doors to patients on 2 April 2012. Bonnie Chu (AADipl 2008) was involved with this project at Hopkins from the start of the construction stage. www.hopkins.co.uk/s/projects/6/138 Studio Egret West, co-founded by AA Alumnus Christophe Egret (1968), have completed the Shoal in front of the Olympic site entrance, around the northern edge of the Stratford Centre. They have also received several awards for their new library building in Clapham. http://egretwest.com Brazilian practice Estúdio ARKIZ, co-founded by Alexandre Hepner (AA SED MSc 2011) has won a competition for the construction

of a sustainable hotel for the 2014 São Paulo World Cup. Hotel Aliah was developed in partnership with hiperstudio. www.arkiz.com.br Andrew Tam, Sanaa Shaikh (both AADipl 2010) and Helena Westerlind (AADipl 2011), along with Portuguese Architect Bernardo Dias, have combined their talents to form S/A/U/C/E – an Architectural Collective interested in socially driven design, building upon their successful AA ventures including Cinema Lalibela and Project Kiteweb. They have recently been shortlisted for Hackney City Farm’s competition to design a new shop extension made from locally sourced re-used materials. www.wearesauce.com Serie, the practice founded by Chris Lee (AADipl(Hons) 1998 and Director of the AA’s Projective Cities programme) and Kapil Gupta (AA DRL 2000), has won a competition to design the New Singapore Subordinate Courts Complex. Construction will begin next year and is scheduled to complete in 2019. www.dezeen.com/2012/06/15/ singapore-subordinate-courts-by-seriearchitects-and-multiply-architects

OBITUARIES Brian (Beak) Adams (AADipl(Hons) 1949) died on 28 November 2011 aged 88. He worked with the Hertfordshire County Architects’ Department straight after graduating, engaged on the ‘Hertfordshire Experiment’, the now celebrated programme of primary school design, and in the early 1950s joined the LCC Architects Department created by Robert Matthew. In private practice since 1955, he was responsible for designs as varied as the interior of the Davidoff Cigars shop on the corner of St James’s and Jermyn St in the 1970s and Bute House Preparatory School for Girls (Hammersmith) in 1956, which his son Rob Adams, founder of Adams & Collingwood Architects, was commissioned to refurbish 40 years later. Brian married fellow AA student Catherine Elder and remained an active AA Member throughout his life, serving on the AA Council between 1957 and 1960. Austrian architect Günther Domenig, founding partner of Domenig & Wallner, who famously designed the Z-bank building in Vienna, passed away on 15 June 2012. Numerous tributes have been published in the architectural press. Peter Cook in The Architectural Review reminds us that the AA’s Alvin Boyarsky staged an evocative exhibition of the work of the practice in the 1980s, at a time when Domenig was embarking on his life’s dream and magnum opus: the construction of the Steinhaus on the lakeside site outside Klagenfurt. The wherewithal for this undoubtedly came from some very substantial commissions that helped place the practice’s work in the international architectural conscience. Robert Elwall, assistant director of the RIBA’s British Architectural Library and the founder and curator of the RIBA Library Photographs Collection and RIBApix died 7 March 2012. Read more at www.architectsjournal.co.uk. We were sorry to learn that Professor Harold Cassius (Hal) Higgins (AADilp(Hons) 1950 and former AA Councillor), died in June 2011. As founding partner of Higgins Ney & Partners since 1954, Higgins developed a strong reputation for high-density, low-rise housing with novel planning arrangements, receiving a Civic Trust Award in 1970. As public housing projects declined the firm’s other specialism, exhibition design, came to the fore. Beginning with the interior of the Museum of London, Higgins Ney quickly attracted museum clients in the UK and overseas, including Saudi Arabia and

Libya. Chairman of Higgins Gardner & Partners from 1986, his work focused on the adaptation or alteration of historic buildings, most notably the Bank of England Museum (winner of the 1988 City Heritage Award), which accurately reinstated Sir John Soane’s Bank Stock Office. Higgins also had a strong connection with academia, lecturing at Kingston School of Architecture, at the Hochschule für Technische, Stuttgart, as chair of architecture and housing at University College Dublin, and visiting professor at the University of Virginia. AA Members and students of the Department of Tropical Studies will be saddened to hear of the death of Renate Köenigsberger in May of this year. Renate escaped Nazi Germany with her mother, arriving in Britain in the mid 1930s where, following time at a Church of England boarding school, she studied Chemistry at St Andrews and Glasgow University, subsequently working as an industrial chemist for Beechams and at J. Lyons’ laboratories. In 1957 she married the pioneering architect and planner Otto Köenigsberger, who was the driving force behind the AA’s Department of Tropical Studies. Renate continued her studies, taking a PhD and then lecturing in Chemistry at Surrey University, a role she combined with looking after Otto following his development of a brain tumor and subsequent operations. After Otto’s death in 1999, Renate compiled an abstract of his publications and ensured that his research material and hugely important archives (now donated to the AA Archives) were accessible to scholars. AA Alumni from the 1960’s and early 1970’s may remember Mike Leonard, who has been described as ‘the fifth member’ of Pink Floyd. Leonard studied architecture at Leicester University and dance at the Laban Institute under the founder Rudolf Laban. A true renaissance man, gifted intellectually and physically, he was a keen high board diver, skier, ice skater, pianist, harpsichordist and drummer, as well as a celebrated landscape gardener and architect. He taught at Hornsey College of Art and at the Hochschule für Gestaltung, Ulm. As a tutor at London Poly in the early 1960’s he met some of the later members of Pink Floyd, first year students of architecture at the time, who moved into his house and founded a band then known as Leonard’s Lodgers. Leonard’s research at Hornsey College on the interplay between rhythm, movement and light gave form to ‘light machines’ (built at 39 Stanhope Gardens, his home, office and workshop), the main inspiration behind Pink Floyd’s signature light shows as recognised in Nick

Mason’s recent biography of the band. Leonard’s step brother David Hardman studied at the AA, where Pink Floyd played a legendary gig at a student party. Leonard died at his home in May. AA Graduate Michael Ball, a friend of fifty two years, is preparing an obituary for the architectural press and would appreciate contributions from those who knew Mike via mb.ball@btinternet.com ‘In 1969 Royston Summers went to the RIBA to collect his medal for Good Design in Housing from the Minister of Housing, Tony Benn. After the function he returned home and changed into jeans to go to collect his dole money…’ – the first lines of a touching obituary of AA graduate Roy Summers (AADipl 1961) published in The Independent on 12 June 2012. After a short spell working for Cornwall County Council, Roy Summers set up his own practice in Blackheath in 1964, specializing in energy-efficient housing for which he won a number of awards and prizes. At the AA Roy was site architect for the extension at the top of the Morwell Street block, where the Graduate School offices are currently based. Roy died in Bristol on 30 May 2012.

NEXT ISSUE’S THEME

ARCHITECTURE AS RESEARCH

CONTRIBUTIONS TO AARCHITECTURE@AASCHOOL.AC.UK

SCHOOL ANNOUNCEMENT

VENICE ARCHITECTURE BIENNALE 2012 MEMBERS’ TRIP TO THE 13TH VENICE ARCHITECTURE BIENNALE 21–23 SEPTEMBER 2012 The AA Membership Office is organising a weekend visit to the 13th Venice Architecture Biennale, Common Ground, directed by David Chipperfield. Vanessa Norwood, head of AA Exhibitions, is co-curating this year’s British Pavilion with Vicky Richardson (British Council) and will lead a private talk on their work at the Biennale. Members attending this trip will also get a 3-day pass to both the Arsenale and Giardini and two nights accommodation. More details to be announced. www.aaschool.ac.uk/membership/events

STUDENT ANNOUNCEMENT NEXT ISSUE’S THEME

THE COMMONPLACE FULCRUM, THE AA’S FREE WEEKLY, WILL BE PRODUCING A DAILY SHEET, FOR FOUR DAYS AT THE VENICE ARCHITECTURE BIENNALE THIS YEAR, AS PART OF THE BRITISH PAVILION.

ARCHITECTURE AS RESEARCH 27–30 AUGUST 2012

Its theme and title, ‘The Commonplace’, is a response to David Chipperfield’s curatorial direction for the Biennale: ‘Common Ground’. Fulcrum was started two years ago by students on the premise that post-crash Western society is experiencing a period of total paradigmatic metamorphosis, from which we can only assume it will emerge in a radically altered form some time after the end of the decade. We are accordingly trying to track that change and speculate about the potential futures this change offers us — contributors have included previously

unpublished writers as well as some of the world’s best known architects, scientists, philosophers, economists, and artists. Our format is a single sheet each week with two opposing articles on the same topic arranged as a dialectic. The name Fulcrum refers both to the pivot around which the articles operate as well as the tipping point beyond which established normality breaks down. fulcrum@aaschool.ac.uk fulcrum.aaschool.ac.uk

CONTRIBUTIONS TO AARCHITECTURE@AASCHOOL.AC.UK

SCHOOL ANNOUNCEMENT

ING ARCHITECTURE VENICE ARCHITECTURE BIENNALE 2012 MEMBERS’ TRIP TO THE 13TH VENICE ARCHITECTURE BIENNALE 21–23 SEPTEMBER 2012

The AA Membership Office is organising a weekend visit to the 13th Venice Architecture Biennale, Common Ground, directed by David Chipperfield. Vanessa Norwood, head of AA Exhibitions, is co-curating this year’s British Pavilion with Vicky Richardson (British Council) and will lead a private talk on their work at the Biennale.

Members attending this trip will also get a 3-day pass to both the Arsenale and Giardini and two nights accommodation. More details to be announced. www.aaschool.ac.uk/membership/events