Aarchitecture 25

In photography cameras are calibrated using an arrangement of black squares that allows the device to organise all of the information it captures. For the printer to produce this image a ‘dead-line’ is required – the point which is defined as the inside limit. The contributors to this issue have set out a myriad of interpretations of the very universal condition of the deadline. Looking at the statistics of the AA community with regards to this topic, there seems much to be hopeful for as AArchitecture celebrates its silver anniversary.

Tim Ivison posits the deadline as the means by which work is determined or perhaps ‘calibrated’. The manner in which Ryan Neiheisier questions the productivity of its placement in relation to the distribution of work questions the productivity of its placement. Kosha Joain Ahmadi remarks on the interruptive nature of this condition in regards to the everyday, while Mengchan Tang speaks of a grave form of the end point.

With regards to a more architectural nature, Victoria Eugenia Soto Magán speaks of alternative approaches to interpreting buildings and PhD candidate Ricardo Ruivo attempts to show that at times we mistake what should be regarded as targets for deadlines. (Editors’ note: we have attempted to understand the deadline of this issue as an actual deadline and not as a target). Monia de Marchi explains the rationale for using a brief to introduce the deadline

25

News from the Architectural Association

AArchitecture

AArchitecture 25 / Term 3, 2014/15 www.aaschool.ac.uk © 2015 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

Student Editorial Team: Costandis Kizis Konstantilenia Koulouri Moad Musbahi Editorial Board: Zak Kyes, AA Art Director Alex Lorente, Membership Brett Steele, AA School Director Graphic Design: Claire Lyon AA Photography: Valerie Bennett and Sue Barr Newsbriefs and obituaries editor Bobby Jewell Printed by Blackmore, England Architectural Association (Inc) Registered Charity No 311083 Company limited by guarantee Registered in England No 171402 Registered office as above

Cover: Plot symbol ‘25’ from The R Project for Statistical Computing

In photography cameras are calibrated using an arrangement of black squares that allows the device to organise all of the information it captures. For the printer to produce this image a ‘dead-line’ is required – the point which is defined as the inside limit. The contributors to this issue have set out a myriad of interpretations of the very universal condition of the deadline. Looking at the statistics of the AA community with regards to this topic, there seems much to be hopeful for as AArchitecture celebrates its silver anniversary.

Tim Ivison posits the deadline as the means by which work is determined or perhaps ‘calibrated’. The manner in which Ryan Neiheisier questions the productivity of its placement in relation to the distribution of work questions the productivity of its placement. Kosha Joain Ahmadi remarks on the interruptive nature of this condition in regards to the everyday, while Mengchan Tang speaks of a grave form of the end point.

With regards to a more architectural nature, Victoria Eugenia Soto Magán speaks of alternative approaches to interpreting buildings and PhD candidate Ricardo Ruivo attempts to show that at times we mistake what should be regarded as targets for deadlines. (Editors’ note: we have attempted to understand the deadline of this issue as an actual deadline and not as a target). Monia de Marchi explains the rationale for using a brief to introduce the deadline

25

News from the Architectural Association

AArchitecture

condition to students. We also have a new feature from the AA Archive that examines past personalities which perhaps can be seen as token to look to the future while re-examining the past and present. Either from the stress of the impending hand-in or that fateful submission, there is still a shred of optimism.

Student Editors: Costandis Kizis – PhD, 4th Year Konstantilenia Koulouri – Diploma 4, 4th Year Moad Musbahi – First Year

Contents 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16

R I P the Limits to Growth Disappointed Correspondence Another Interview The Death Line Rant Celebrating a Silver Jubilee Deadline Archives Learning Architecture in Socialist Neverland A (Deadline) Reminder

Biomass Boiler House

17 20 24 26 28 29

Parc de la Villette Competition 1982 2014 The Culture of Deadlines at the AA AA Personalities No 1: Robert Furneaux Jordan Workshop Frenzy AA Publications & Bedford Press Recommended Reading

30 News

Next Issue’s Theme School Announcement Student Announcement

Some deadlines and data on important architectural competitions of the last 100 years.

2

Victoria Eugenia Soto Magán, AA Graduate School student, writes about planned obsolescence in architecture as an alternative methodology to interpreting buildings.

An approach to the turning point of this issue demands a series of initial prejudices: —— Architecture as efficient synthesis of art and science; —— The relationship between man and technology: new concepts and the needing of creativity; —— Design as interaction of technologies, generation of production processes and aesthetic criteria.

Since the industrial revolution and its descendant consumer society, economy has accelerated rapidly. As a result, architecture, as well as other areas, began to produce

28 October 1922, 189 entries

more for fun than necessity. This led to an alarming and inevitable unsustainable development of our society. We need to look back to 1972 and refer to the report commissioned by the Club of Rome at MIT titled ‘Limits to growth’. This report was severely criticised and ridiculed initially by economists, scientists and political figures. The aim of the book was to show, scientifically, how population growth and natural regeneration of resources are not directly proportional, and how much less this is acceptable in our limited system.

And therein lies the limitation of the planet to grow: the finite capacity of land cultivation, production of raw materials and, not least important, the finite capacity

Club of Rome in Frankfurt, receiving the Peace Prize from the German Book Trade, 1973 © Engelbert Reineke

R.I.P. the Limits to Growth

For more information on the Graduate school at the AA please visit www.aaschool.ac.uk/graduate

3 of our ecosystems to absorb pollution.

‘If the present growth trends in world population, industrialisation, pollution, food production and resource depletion, continue unchanged, the limits to growth on this planet will be reached sometime within the next one hundred years.’ We are located in the early 70s, and are therefore at the starting point of the first approaches for sustainability, where one of the first scientific predictions for the end of life on earth was stated.

But it is necessary to clarify the idea of how sustainability is derived from a previous concept, which is the sustainable development. If we go back to 1987 and have a look on the report by Gro H Brundtland (whose first steps started at the World Commission on Environment and Development organised in 1983 by the United Nations) we verify that the claims were nothing more than the analysis of the possible connection between development and environment. The concept is not stated, however, until 1992, during the second Cumbre para la tierra held in Rio de Janeiro, where the need to extend the original definition of sustainability and to unite the terms of social justice, economic progress and preservation of the environment was suggested. While concern for the sustainable was planted, it was also hinted that the economic model we had driven since the industrial revolution was unsustainable.

Our mission is to effectively enable the development of society, tackling its needs and demands, without risking the development of future generations because of our poor management or our inability to proceed properly. We live in a world of limited natural resources and therefore we must be aware of this fact, controlling its use, as all previous civilisations have been doing.

On the other hand, and due to what has been already said at the beginning of the text, we have reached a turning point in history in which green has become a fashion label, transforming it into an adjective

rather than a fact. We understand the (un) sustainability in the context of this work, since its approach as strategy and guarantee respond to the global (ecological, social and economic) crisis. Architecture has led to the depletion of short-term nonrenewable natural resources, and this has resulted in the inability to produce and consume according to today’s standards in development.

Our main concern as architects is to adapt and readjust existing production systems to current needs. We are in need of new strategies, of reinventing existing concepts; eco-efficiency means to produce more and better quality, with less quantity.

We need to give higher values using fewer resources, minimising the environmental impact of production activity without increasing the economic cost and social harm. We have the theory, but we need to trust it.

Imagine for a moment that your non-eco-efficient home has the same expiration date as the appliances it contains.

To propose planned obsolescence in architecture could be a methodology to interpret buildings nowadays, a mechanism to create this adverse consumer reaction to discover that the manufacturer (the producer–architect of non-eco-efficient buildings) has invested in design. Your product is turned obsolete more quickly, in order for customers to qualify for the competition basing their choice in durability and good product quality (ecoefficient architecture), thus guaranteeing a more sustainable development of our society, but as well, a way to establish a necessary deadline on what has been already predicted by the ‘Limits to growth’.

Future Sailors navigate in contexts where no room for revolutions exists, but turns from rigid and disjointed structures are possible... changes of direction by which necessarily will change the direction of the active, conscious and participatory life in a multiple mobility world.

– Sloterdijk, 2011

Chicago Tribune Tower competition

4

Disappointed Correspondence

The deadline is a fundamental component of what is now universally call ‘the project’.

Whether we are writing, designing or presenting, the project demands a deadline to give shape to ‘work’.

The shape that a deadline can give to work is, initially, superficial: it roughly determines when the project starts (now) and when it ends (the deadline).

However, depending on the space between these two points, the nature and quality of work can change, and by choosing or moving a deadline, or even the proximity one has to the deadline in question, can drastically change the work that is actually performed.

For instance, the methods one might use to complete their project might change based on the relative proximity of a deadline. Freeform writing might take the place of thorough exposition, Google image search might take the place of handrendered design. Loose improvisatory notes might be used rather than a fully fleshed-out script. On the other hand, distant deadlines can provoke long periods of silence, or the elaborate construction of detailed embellishment where a simple mark might do.

Beyond the physical output, the deadline can also shape the psychological atmosphere of the project. Stress is too vague a word, but there are certainly ways of articulating the elasticity of cognitive and emotional pressure that weighs down or lifts up at the juncture of a deadline.

25 January 1927, 377 entries

We should note, though, that not all kinds of work are equally conducive to the deadline. Some forms of labour are more likely to obey a mark on the calendar than others. If one is expected to speak or perform in front of a group, then the deadline is absolute – the only alternative is cancellation. However, an unfinished presentation can always be filled in with improvisation, if one has the confidence.

If a design work is to be presented and discussed critically, it can be assumed that the majority of the work came together in the last 48–72 hours. Furthermore, an unfinished work can still be discussed and speculated upon. A ‘work-in-progress’ is often acceptable. With writing, deadlines suffer from a dual problem. The first is that very rough writing can usually be turned in on the deadline with the promise of a better draft in the near future. Second, a deadline can be missed entirely and blamed on interruptions, technical errors, sudden emergencies, or pressing concerns or indeed on nothing at all. This is achieved by temporarily cutting off contact from the client. In my experience, writing deadlines are seldom if ever enforceable. Editors often make a deadline that is weeks, even months before their actual publishing deadline. What can you say? The threat of physical humiliation is far greater than the abstraction of disappointed correspondence.

Contestations by Tim Ivison and Tom Vandeputte is available to buy at the AA Bookshop www.aabookshop.net

Tim Ivison, PhD student at the London Consortium and co-author of Contestations (2014), wonders how the nature of work is affected and controlled by the conditions of a deadline, and the potential of a missed deadlines.

The act of following up on work and the enforcing procedure.

5

The League of Nations Headquarters competition

6

Taking the form and ethos of Another Pamphlet as an inspiration for the format, Moad Musbahi interviews first year tutor Ryan Neiheiser on his outlook and the ideas behind the journal.

We ask the contributors to each write something, we ask them upfront to give up their attachment to their article in the issue.

I am super antsy that we haven’t done an issue in a while now.

It was like three or four years ago. It was with two friends of mine, Giancarlo Valle and Isaiah King so it was three of us who set it up.

One of the main premises of the journal is that authorship is sort of denied. It is kind of split. Some of them give themselves away.

I did spend some time trying to see if I could link them. So the idea is to at least create a bit of distance between the author and the voice that they have.

Through a certain scale of distribution, there is a certain scale of time that goes along with it as well.

Since that brings about the idea of deadlines, in a sense as each issue has to start and stop, while the Another Pamphlet as a thing could, perpetually, not have a deadline. An issue of the journal as a project, or the Another Pamphlet itself as the project? That brings about the

681 entries were submitted in 1971…

The images we do attribute. Which is interesting, we didn’t quite think of that one ahead of time. © Another Pamphlet

Another Interview

7 idea of deadlines, in a sense as each issue has to start and stop, while the Another Pamphlet as a thing could, perpetually not have a deadline.

In some ways both of them are projects, as each individual thing is a project onto itself. It has more specific deadlines, although even that is permeable, it’s the three of us getting together and doing it.

It is always meant to be in this periphery of our attention.

Deliberately so. It’s not like any of us are quitting our jobs to do this thing, it’s meant to be on the side to collect, some sort of excuse to think through ideas. We have gone completely out of our way to make this thing as easy as it can be, hopefully for the authors and for us. Super fixed format, very little editorial oversight or agenda upfront, printed on 8 1/2" by 11" or A4.

The simplest sort of production.

So it is designed to be standardised, to further blur the distinction between the authors and the editors. And to choose the topics, every so often, we get together naturally, have a few drinks and talk about what is interesting. So the topics grow out of that each time. It is basically an excuse to get together.

The overall project as a sort of deadline itself. That is increasingly what we talk about as well. We did the first six issues in two years, we were pretty motivated and did it fast, and now it has taken us almost a year for the next issue, the seventh issue. We have ten topics.

So we are going to at least try and get to ten. For me I can see it being a much longer, ongoing, project.

For more information see www.anotherpamphlet.com

Here is something A conversation we’re having to get this next circle of acquaintances that we have involved in that conversation. It’s not so much a project that is trying to grow a readership or build an audience. The first three or four issues, we basically just stuck them in envelopes and paid for the stamps ourselves. I’d rather just do it for ourselves and a next level of acquaintances. It is another way of getting in touch with people. We got a little funding and there was pressure to expand and broaden the audience and send it to more traditional sorts of bookshops.

That ultimately slows things down

There is a back page that has a list of contributors and bios.

Each submission is limited to 300 words and one image. The A5 zine is self-printed, folded and stapled.

(Both interviewer and interviewee are merged, their identity is kept hidden and the order of the interview is rearranged.)

for the Pompidou Centre in Paris

8

The Death Line Rant

The death line diagram by Mengchan Tang

Mengchan Tang, AA Part I graduate and current MA student at Columbia University, is writing a death line rant.

We all know how it feels: the ubiquitous existence of a time limit for everything we do. ‘It needs to be done by…’ is a common expression that we rarely ask why, because the answer seems so obvious.

For architects nowadays in a so called developed economy, if we do not transfer the body of work of a project downstream, the actual construction will not commence. If nothing is built, the client does not receive financial returns.

Because architectural projects are mostly financed through loans, investors will accumulate debt and ultimately face the risk of bankruptcy.

According to the above logic, our client cares less about the quality of a project and more about the delivery of it.

Nonetheless, the endless tweaking of the curvature of a wall is more important to us the architects than the people who pay for it. The procrastination in excuse of pursuing perfection can only be stopped by the approaching deadline.

‘We need to start producing final drawings after this day.’ Such a claim comically creates a new deadline before the actual deadline. The chain reaction of this logic produces a series of mini-deadlines to organize a complex project – or make the project even more complex. This seems to

In 1988 more than 1400 entries were submitted for…

To see more work by Mengchan Tang see http://pr2013.aaschool.ac.uk/inter-01/mengchan-tang

9 reveal the essential function of a deadline: to ensure the final delivery of a project.

Having the expectation of a delivery date/time makes a business plan calculable. The power of quantification is overwhelmingly promising. Hence in a market-driven world of capitalism, we are surrounded by deadlines and computational algorithms with quantifiable parameters.

Even more extreme, the communist ideal was the one that attempted to construct a centrally planned world that every little thing was to be calculated and predicted.

If they could quantify individual needs and emotions, they would. It was a utopia of science.

However, the quantification and measurement of time has always been referential rather than absolute. The seeming regularity of solar and lunar movements and the change of seasons are all tactile evidences of time. Agriculture was developed through the expansion of our knowledge of time. Once we started to understand how flora and fauna react to the flow of time, obtaining food became predictable. Deadlines of crop planting resulted in harvest. Such practice unveils our true reference of time: life itself.

The deadline of life is of course, death.

In the end, that is the moment we have to stop working. Maybe doctors understand the importance of deadline better than architects. Nothing is more powerful and terrifying than the termination of a heart.

It is the death line.

The death line therefore, is the absolute reference for all other deadlines, for they are in comparison superficial and less dominant. This perspective helps us to understand the nature of architectural practice. Since the death line is essentially personal, for those who are aware of their approaching deaths, it tends to engender individualistic worldviews.

Pyramids and tombs have been built specifically to anticipate the arrival of the death line. Monuments have been built to immortalise personal power and prestige with the limit of life in mind. Architects

even design buildings with signature styles to leave marks beyond their times. Those projects are offerings to the death line.

They are products of fear.

However, if architecture is by and for the human race, it should also be brave enough to tackle our common fear, and march beyond the perspective of individual life spans. Even building for the public has its death line, for such political projects are based on the lives of their constituencies.

Ironically, we still have the notion that architecture is built to last for generations, or to even be permanent.

The only type of projects that were not bounded by individual death lines seem to be certain prestigious cathedrals in Europe for their construction periods being more than a hundred years ­– they are the ones built in a time of voyage and colonialism, when the ultimate arbiter seemed so powerful and respected because God was the client. They now symbolise the fearless history of the west – and indeed, the rest of the world had been fearful of their undaunted adventures of discovery and conquest!

The lack of projects that aim beyond the life span of a human being, though, seem to be a missed opportunity. It is not a proposal of lavish construction project comparable to those exploiting the labour and wealth of the colonies. Yet having a project that does not have a deadline, actually overcomes the death line of individualism, and can truly unfold human potential.

‘How much longer do we have?’

‘We still have the rest of our lives to figure it out.’

‘I will not consider any work to be finished by then. Maybe I should pass it to our grandsons.’

the new library of Alexandria

10

Celebrating a Silver Jubilee

The always present tagline ‘News from the Architectural Association’ brings to mind the discussion Walter Benjamin has about Tretyakov in the Author as Producer.

Remarking on the need to return back to the press, as an instrument, a tool, to break down the divide between author and reader and that, ‘the rigid, isolated object is of no use whatsoever. It must be inserted into the context of living social relations.’

In this breakdown, it is interesting to see how AArchitecture approaches the relation between author and reader. Page 8 of the current issue is the thousandth page. In approaching this milestone, we look back at the previous issues of this nine-year-old newsletter with this in mind.

But first of all, is it a newsletter? In issue 7, AArchitecture was described as something ‘between a newsletter and a zine’ and indeed a category never quite contained the content it published.

In the third year of its short history it called for the first student-editor to join the editorial team. Gradually, more students joined the team and finally took over, by forming in issue 16 its first student-run editorial team, supervised and consulted by the editorial board. With that issue, AArchitecture issues started to have a theme. Did it mutate from a newsletter/zine to a thematic magazine? On the contrary, rather than define a format, it made a call for content to push it forward, undertaking the task of calling the AA community to think on common topics. The themes, either well thought about or just invented on the spot, have been always open for various

In 1989 424 entries were submitted for…

interpretations, promoting the plurality of agendas that a single word can cover, rather than a thematic approach. Moreover, it has been a means of expression for students and members; either by seeing it as a mediator between project and writing or as a platform of discussion of issues of concern, the pages of AArchitecture constitute an active, open discussion rather than a register of activity.

So far in the 25 issues we are counting more than ten exclusive interviews (including Rem Koolhaas, Claude Parent and Denise Scott Brown), three guestedited issues, ten topic-specific issues, 16 student editors and 262 contributors.

Not bad for such a young publication – but we are not satisfied. There’s always more in trying to capture the diversity, the rigour and the energy of the Architectural Association. If one looks at the places in which architectural discourse takes place, AArchitecture seems to sit on the periphery.

It straddles its position as it has its finger on the pulse of the school and the context of the community at large.

For more info: www.aaschool.ac.uk/aarchitecture

The current editors ponder on their role and the purpose of the publication as it reaches its 25th issue.

The front covers of issues 1, 3, 5, 7, 11, 15, 16, 19 and 23 of the AArchitecture newsletter

11

The Grande Arche of Paris competition

AA Studios, 1960. All photos © AA Photo Library

12

Deadline archives

1976, 1979, 1989 and 2001…

For more information on the AA Photo Library see photolibrary.aaschool.ac.uk Top: AA Percy Street Studios, 1980s.

Bottom: AA First Year Drawings, 1993, photo Valerie Bennett

13

four different architectural competitions for the Acropolis Museum in Athens.

Learning architecture in socialist Neverland Ricardo Ruivo’s PhD at the AA is about the friction between historiography of socialist architecture and modernism.

In November 17, 1935, comrade Stalin gave a speech at the First All-Union Conference of Stakhanovites, a movement of workers who made their cause the over-achievement of production targets. Stalin described the founders of the movement as simply as that: They were trying to get their enterprise out of difficulties and to over-fulfil the economic plan.

But in seeking to achieve this aim they had to smash the old technical standards.1 I don’t know about you, but this sounds to me like the subconscious expectations of a unit master. I believe the creative smashing of standards and boundaries, which is at least implicitly associated with artistic education, is an outcome expected to pop out of a regime – the student is led into overdrive, similarly to the way Stalinist planning is presented as naturally leading to the development of the New, Stakhanovite, Man. There is, however, an important twist.

Last October it was decided to shorten the process of new PhD proposal submissions at the AA from one year to a term. I was commenting afterwards that it was a good decision, but that we should face it like Stalinist planning, and not expect it to be fully achieved. Obviously, the last proposals were submitted by February, two months behind the target. But half a year earlier than usual.

Recent work on the Soviet five-year plans shows that the whole thing about over-fulfilment was mostly rhetoric. Robert Allen shows how this firstly functioned in 1928-32, using data on iron production

19 June 1995, 481 entries

– an original target of 8 million tonnes was raised to 16, of which only 6.6 million was achieved (nevertheless double than 1927). Results came short of the targets, but production doubled in only four years.2 Stalinist planning is never about the deadline, it’s about using the target to control the process. This is something deeply imbued in Leninist political thinking. Every socialist country ever has claimed the target of reaching Communism, and none has ever claimed to have reached it. It seems Communism exists precisely in that space of tension between a possible

Yuri Pimenov, Wedding on Tomorrow Street (cropped), on the cover of Steven E Harris, Communism on Tomorrow Street: Mass Housing and Everyday Life after Stalin

14

15 present and a future that never is. It must be the target, but cannot have a deadline.

Every proper communist knows that, and thus must hate Khrushchev, who in 1961 said that Communism would be reached by 1980 at the latest.

There is this joke about Khrushchev that Reinhart Koselleck likes a lot:

For more information about the PhD programme visit phd.aaschool.ac.uk

‘On the horizon, we can see Communism,’ Khrushchev remarked in a speech. Someone interrupted and asked, ‘Comrade Khrushchev, what is a horizon?’ ‘Look it up in the dictionary,’ he replied. Back home, the inquisitive fellow found the following definition: ‘Horizon: an imaginary line that separates the earth from the sky and that moves away when being approached.’ 3 The joke is absolutely right; the Khrushchevite deadline was total nonsense. Read Harris’ Communism on Tomorrow Street, a research project on the Khrushchevite housing campaign, and you’ll see it quite clearly. 4 A look at its cover, Pimenov’s painting Wedding on Tomorrow Street, allows us to see immediately that the Soviet dream looks basically the same as the American dream, with one fundamental difference – when they marry, the house is not built yet.

Ever since Le Corbusier uttered the ridiculous claim – architecture or revolution – all architects have felt inadequate for not having, through architecture, either achieved Communism, in the case of utopian socialists, or replaced it, in the case of social-democrats. These are the only two real kinds of architects, and they both always fail miserably. Architects who happen to become teachers extend their feelings of inadequacy to their students, turning them into Khrushchevite Stakhanovites.

All architects have therefore become afflicted by an acute case of Khrushchevite deadline fetishism. What is in the horizon is the target, not the deadline. Confuse them, and enthusiasm becomes procrastination.

That’s how PhD students used to take a whole year to have a proposal. Architecture

students have this urge, in part taken from their teachers, to become fully grown architects, or to have fully grown proposals.

It’s just that there’s no such thing. You never fully grow, you just grow. To fully grow, or, to ‘grow up’, is a petty-bourgeois deviation that Khrushchev was stupid enough to believe in. When Wendy asks Peter Pan how to get to Neverland, the land where you never grow up, he answers, ‘Second to the right, and straight on till morning.’ The lack of a definite distance, of a spatial deadline, is the very precondition for never growing up.

Growing up is nothing more than a deadline imposed on the horizon, setting up a date for achieving Communism. I understand architects wanting to reach Communism.

I do too. But architects really should learn from Stalin, who was much smarter than Krushchev, and quite a bit more humane than the average unit master. You cannot plan to reach Communism. And certainly not by the end of the academic year.

1. Joseph Stalin, Speech, First All-Union Conference of Stakhanovites, J V Stalin, Works 14 (London: Red Star Press, 1978) 95.

2. Robert C Allen, Farm to Factory: A Reinterpretation of the Soviet Industrial Revolution (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2003).

3. Reinhart Koselleck, The Practice of Conceptual History: Timing History, Spacing Concepts (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2002) 127.

4. Steven E Harris, Communism on Tomorrow Street: Mass Housing and Everyday Life after Stalin (Washington DC: Woodrow Wilson Center Press/John Hopkins University Press, 2013).

Extension of the Prado Museum, Madrid

16

A (Deadline) Reminder Kosha Joian Ahmadi, Oslo School of Architecture graduate and third year Intermediate 7 student, thinks about producing work while the reminder arrives incessantly

A deadline reminder in the form of an email in red with caps lock is sent.

Enough with anecdotes and digressions.

I need to focus on the main subject, I am meant to have one.

The rush hour before juries and even tutorials is productive, but completely brain dead.

If there are two modes of working within a project: Thinking mode and working mode, then the deadline pushes the latter.

What used to give the lines I draw a meaning are gone.

Instead there are more lines and less meaning, a dead drawing.

A deadline reminder in the form of a determined conversation is received.

But what is my position?

Do I need to give up my well edited, graphically beautiful composition in order to contribute to the discussion?

It’s maybe time to expose my private pile of drawings.

A deadline reminder in the form of an interruption in the library takes place.

What I should have done by now was to make a model.

I should not organise the private pile of drawings.

I shouldn’t even draw.

Now I need to develop the diagram into Architecture.

It’s the diagram with clear intentions translated into form, at the point the project gets interesting.

But is this true if one doesn’t believe in architectural form?

A deadline reminder in form of a dream/nightmare wakes me up.

30 July 2002, 407 entries, World Trade Center

For more information on the work of Intermediate 7 see www.aaschool.ac.uk/inter7

Enough with dead drawings.

They are without intention, not clear and merely a graphic, playing.

Where is my position?

This is after all an academic institution.

Biomass Boiler House

Hooke Park is the Architectural Association’s woodland site in Dorset, southwest England. The park hosts several educational programmes focused on architectural design, construction and timber research.

Recently, the students of the Design & Make programme completed the Biomass Boiler House. A semi-below-ground building that consists of a boiler room and a woodchip fuel bunker. The walls of the Boiler House were constructed from stacked curved timbers from trees that have naturally grown with curvature.

The building will be part of the district heating system and will supply heat energy to the existing and future Hooke Park campus buildings.

For more information on Hooke Park, Design & Make and the Biomass Boiler House please visit www.designandmake.aaschool.ac.uk

Photo Valerie Bennett

17

Parc de la Villette Competition 1982 2014 Monia De Marchi, programme Head of First Year, discusses with Costandis Kizis the reimagining of the Parc de la Villette and the introduction of the cult of the deadline in first year students.

First Year Studio Brief: Parc de la Villette Competition 1982 2014 Competition Phase 1: one week (Deadline: Monday, 1 December 2014, 09:00) Submission: One printed drawing (90 x 135 cm portrait) with a programmatic plan, diagrams, and statement. Silent jury selected five entries.

Competition Phase 2: one week (Deadline: Wednesday, 17 December, 09:00) Submission: A model (part or whole), revised programmatic plan, an open output (i.e. film, images, drawings) Costandis Kizis: Hi Monia. This year, in Term 1, you launched a competition based on the brief of the legendary 1982 competition of the Parc de la Villette.

How did you come up with the idea of its relaunching?

Monia De Marchi: The pedagogical reason was to expose the students to a deadline, in a project with a given brief, requirements and submission details. The second reason was related to the content of this fascinating competition of 1982. It was a popular competition not only among landscape architects but also for designers and architects who saw in it the possibility to design a park following then recent theories on urbanism, on the contemporary city, and on the formal language of architecture. In a way the competition expanded the question of ‘what an architecture project could be’. Also, I think the competition brief captures that experimental period by requiring a programmatic plan; this medium, in a way, enables the possibility of alternative projects that go beyond design and move towards strategies, organisation and systems.

None of the first year students were born when the competition happened – for them it is already history.

Was it among your objectives to introduce the students to the idea of making recent architectural history of use for their own ideas?

In the First Year studio, the entire Term 1 is about ‘re-…’ reinterpreting, reimagining, rebriefing, etc. We look at past references, projects and figures of architecture. There is no intention of learning by paying homage; we tend instead to rework past projects within specific topics.

12 December 1982

This competition was called Parc de la Villette Competition 1982 2014, and students were initially asked to update the brief and rethink what is a park. What mattered was not the Parc de la Villette itself, but the competition as an unfinished project. In that sense, 1982 is not really recent history! The aim was to use and search material from the past and learn from it by understanding it and questioning it.

For all the reasons you mentioned, do you see La Villette as a unique case, or would you consider re-launching other competitions of the past, such as the Pompidou or Les Halles?

What was mostly important was the exposure to past briefs that have challenged the project of architecture. We search figures and projects that embrace a moment of shift; idiosyncratic projects rather than canonical, samples instead of exemplars. The other option was the 1922 Chicago Tribune competition, because of the brief requirement for a typical plan and an external perspective. That brief embraced the spectacle of the building as a container of a generic space.

The students had a deadline of a week. Do you think that tough deadlines are beneficial for the project and the emergence of new ideas? Do you think architects work better under pressure? Does architecture need time, or speed?

I don’t think deadlines help or compromise the quality of a project, this cannot be generalised. In general, I find the format of competitions a

first phase, 472 entries

Detail of shortlisted project, phase 1. Photo Sue Barr

18

19 bit limiting. I would love other formats of deadlines, as it happens on other creative professions (film, fashion, art, …) where one controls more the content of work and the constraints are mainly the format of the submission and the deadline. In architectural competitions too many things are imposed: the brief, the requirements, specific formats, the starting day, the deadline. Everything is very planned. But there are also good aspects; competitions allow to discuss the works in relation to each other. If we all submit a project within the same brief and output there is a way of comparing the work and learn from it, and this is inspiring – especially in the First Year studio.

Do you think that a project can be saved the last night before a deadline?

It might happen. Sometimes pouring out something quickly can be more innovative than something planned for a longer time; still in both cases the project is probably the synthesis of an overlay of searches, thoughts, and trials which take time. There are no rules.

For more information about the First Year Studio, please visit aafirstyear.com

In a competition, as in silent juries, students are not called to present their work; it’s the printed image that talks for them. The students just observe the jurors talking about their work.

Yes, there is an intention behind this. We constantly learn how to translate what we think, what we imagine, what we envision into a visual form. And then we tend to use our words to express thoughts that didn’t make it to the visual form. In the First Year studio, when we embrace silent juries it is not because discussion is not important but because we insist to the visual translation. The ambition is to learn how to construct a daily discussion more than how to present an argument; we then step back, let the works talk and learn by seeing if the project can stand for our ideas and positions.

Have you ever missed a deadline?

Oh yeah… Who hasn’t?

In the First Year studio, we did the Parc de Villette competition to learn how architecture projects could be translations of theories, and how to work on a tight timeframe.

What was more challenging for the students was not so much meeting the deadline but updating the brief to let the work speak. The students did amazingly on having in such compressed time developed their own position on the question ‘what is a park in the city now’. And what was a surprise for all of us was how the design proposals were more clear and direct than any verbal explanation. This is probably what is good on a tight deadline: you need to be synthetic with what you draw!

And you only draw what matters!

Parc de La Villette competition, Paris

20

The Culture of Deadlines at the AA Almost everyone will face a deadline during their lifetime.

Deadlines have become unavoidable phenomena, constructing due dates, introducing time limits and establishing targets. What does it mean, though, to live in a culture of deadlines? AArchitecture posed five questions that attempt to understand how we behave when faced with this imminent word.

5+2+114636 HOW OFTEN DO YOU MEET DEADLINES?

VERY RARELY

RARELY

OCCASIONALLY

ALWAYS

VERY FREQUENTLY

6 June 2003, 1557 entries

TO WHAT EXTENT DID MISSING YOUR LAST DEADLINE AFFECT YOUR MOOD / LIVELIHOOD?

21

‘The fear of failure is very powerful’

31+8+61917

‘I felt like it was all over, the walls closing in’

‘Lamenting over a missed opportunity to express’

‘I have an MSc in project management’

A GREAT DEAL

I NEVER MISSED ONE

‘It’s rare for me – my reputation is to deliver’

MUCH

‘Went out to get fucked right after submitting a shitty piece of work as usual’

NOT MUCH

LITTLE

SOMEWHAT

‘It was unrealistic’

‘It depends on the stage of the project and the consequences, I guess’

‘It was regarding work where no one cared about anything, so it had no affect whatsoever:)’

Grand Egyptian Museum

22

5+17+2730201 37+19+1351412 ON AVERAGE, HOW MANY HOURS DO YOU SLEEP THE NIGHT BEFORE THE DEADLINE? 8+

0

7–8

1–2

3–4

5–6

HOW MANY DEADLINES HAVE YOU MISSED IN THE LAST FIVE YEARS? 10+

4–10

0

3

2

1

18 July 2005, 314 entries

23 HOW DO YOU PROCRASTINATE BEFORE A DEADLINE?

Browsing the internet Smoking a cigarette Drinking alcohol Watching movies Exercising Daydreaming Having sex Partying Eating Cooking Making duty lists Taking selfies Cleaning up your room 0%

10%

20%

30%

40%

50%

60%

70%

Performing Arts Centre Seoul competition

24

AA Personalities No.1: Robert Furneaux Jordan

The critic, journalist and broadcaster, Robert Furneaux Jordan (1905–78), is one of the most intriguing figures of the postwar AA. Remembered primarily as the architectural correspondent for The Observer and author of such classics as Victorian Architecture (1966) and A Concise History of European Architecture (1969), it was nevertheless during Jordan’s short, dynamic stint as AA Principal between 1949 and 1951, that the AA’s International profile as a progressive, modernist school was cemented. Interestingly enough, he also holds the distinction of being the only head of the AA school to have had a successful career as a novelist – writing a series of lurid, satirical crime novels, unbeknownst to the majority of his colleagues and students, under the pseudonym of ‘Robert Player’.

Jordan trained at the AA in the late 1920s and lectured on history and design from 1934 until his retirement in 1963. He was a committed socialist and acted as joint editor of Comparative Broadcasts (1938–40), published with Jack Pritchard. He was also secretary to the Cambridge Peace Aims Group and responsible for the World Radicalism manifesto in 1939 and the Charter of the Rights and Duties of Man in 1940.

On his appointment as AA Principal in February 1949 Jordan called for a revolution in architectural education, stressing in his inaugural address a need to move ‘away from the drawing board towards the science and technique of building’.

Correspondingly, site work was encouraged

3 October 2006, 355 entries

and students were found positions on a variety of construction sites including the Royal Festival Hall and Brynmawr Rubber Factory. Jordan was instrumental in persuading Alvar Aalto, Ernesto Rogers, and Enrico Peressutti to teach short courses at the AA and also managed to secure the current Prime Minister, Clement Attlee, and Frank Lloyd Wright to present the prizes at the 1949 and 1950 graduation ceremonies, respectively. Well liked and respected by his students, it appears, however, that the pressure of the role was too much for Jordan and he resigned in June 1951, suffering severe overstrain. His breakdown, a symptom of a longstanding, recurrent illness, was possibly exacerbated by the recent death of his brother, the journalist Philip Jordan.

Jordan’s first detective novel, The Ingenious Mr Stone, or, the Documents in the Langdon-Miles Case was published by Victor Gollancz in 1945, while he was teaching at the AA. After his retirement Jordan made something of a come-back with four novels including The Homicidal Colonel (1970) and Let’s Talk of Graves, of Worms, of Epitaphs…

(1975) – the latter, a dark, satirical tale of the passage of a Victorian clergyman from archdeaconry to the papacy, embracing poisoning, lust and intrigue.

For further information on the AA Archives see www.aaschool.ac.uk/archives

A new feature from AA Archives and AArchitecture brings to light a past personality who helped shape the school.

AA Archivist Edward Bottoms writes about the educator and novelist in this issue.

Robert Furneaux Jordan Š AA Archives

25

Czech National Library, Prague

26

Workshop Frenzy

Below 36 Bedford square, next to Ching’s yard, the AA houses the wood and metal workshop. A noisy room, filled with materials, machinery, determined students and two dedicated craftsmen. It is a space that has contributed to the making of numerous projects. Students come here to conduct experiments or actualise their design. Whatever the purpose, it is a historical room of the AA, slightly different from the Georgian rooms upstairs.

Konstantina Koulouri: You have been head of workshops at the AA for almost three years. You must have encountered several deadlines through students that come and work here. Which deadline is the most stressful one according to the workshop?

William Fausset: Well, obviously it is Projects Review. Every course, from every corner of the school needs to work in the workshop to set up the show. But these are always scheduled and so they are expected. We know what is coming, so in some ways they are not the worst. I suppose the most stressful deadlines are those that tutors or courses would set at the very last minute and would give the students a task to do within a certain timeframe. Usually, the task seems to be a bit ambitious within the timeframe of what they might actually be able to do. Also, there are times when it is a perfect storm and everything comes at once. Different courses from different parts of the school will, unknowingly, set things up at the same time. Then, we will have different groups all fighting for the same resources with a very short timeframe to do large scale works.

12 March 2007, 80 entries

Willliam helping students in Wood and Metal workshop, 2014.

Photo Valerie Bennett

William Fausset, Head of Workshops at the AA, discusses with Konstantina Koulouri the deadline frenzies unfolding in the Wood and Metal Workshop.

27 Is there a machine or tool that can be considered the most dangerous one during a deadline? Or is there a tool that is more popular than others?

It can be anything! Whether a tool is hazardous or not, does not depend on the tool itself. The student who controls it will at times render it unsafe, depending on how sleep deprived or desperate they might be. Or if they are rushing, then there is far more chances of an accident occurring. I wouldn’t say that there is a more popular tool. It is really the culmination of everyone working at once within the same space.

It is the business and activity within the space that creates the hazard.

At times, it can get more congested towards the band saw, table saw and chop saw area. But then we might have a lot of metal works going on and that area can also get very congested. Or lots of big structures are getting moved around the space. People have to do a sort of acrobatics to get out of the way or under the way of things that are being made.

For more information on the Wood and Metal Workshop and other facilities at the AA visit www.aaschool.ac.uk/workshop

From your experience working in an architectural school, do you think that architects cope well with deadlines?

My wife is an architect so I better be careful of what I say! But yes I think they do somehow. They do manage to cope with deadlines in some strange way. I don’t know how healthy it is? But I think they do achieve an awful amount and get a lot done within at times a very limited timeframe. Sometimes working really late to the deadline.

It is not how, personally, I would like the workshops to work but yes it is quite impressive what gets done. I believe that ideally a steady and reasonable pace is best for workshop practices!

And, lastly, what is the most absurd request you have had in terms of workload or construction?

There are too many to remember. We quite often have somebody who has a day and a half to make a structure out of steel that could be the size of a room and that will withhold a structure suspended in it. But they have never welded before and they have never worked with metal before! And it all needs to bolt together and be taken to a site. We are already busy with lots of groups of people and that can just come out of the blue at any time. Unless you have got a lot of experience in working with metal or are in a quiet workshop it is very hard to make that kind of work. So we have quite a few very large-scale structures that really would take probably two or three days to do properly and it needs to be done within a day. Somehow we manage, I am not sure how, but we do find a way. At times it comes from every direction, so we have ways of somehow making it come all together.

Camp Nou, Barcelona

28

AA Files 70 Edited by Thomas Weaver 176 pages, 297 x 245 mm, ills, softcover June 2015 978-1-907896-73-6 £15 The latest issue of the AA’s long-running and award-winning journal, AA Files, features a rich assortment of essays and articles, including conversations with Renzo Piano, Richard Rogers and John Miller, a pre-history of the Pompidou Centre through a review of many of its competition entries, a profile of the former AA unit master and historian Robin Evans, a detailed analysis of the contribution of Henry Astley Darbishire to the design of Peabody housing estates in the late nineteenth century, a reappraisal of Oscar Niemeyer’s COPAN building, and a convincing homily to the ten things a perfect city requires.

26 March 2012, 544 entries

Nightswimming Photographs by Giovanna Silva A project by Chiara Carpenter & Giovanna Silva c 160 pages, 270 x 220 mm Extensive color ills, hardcover Summer 2015 978-1-907414-49-7 c £15 Historically the dance club is both an anthropological and architectural phenomenon. The cultural and economical evolution of society progressively transformed the idea of entertainment, and consequently the spaces in which it is formed and shaped. Today discotheques are hardly designed by architects, but rather temporary occupations of spaces which are dedicated to other functions. Through the photographs of Giovanna Silva, a selection of interviews and critical texts, Nightswimming explores this fascinating world from the 1960s until today.

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

AA Publications & Bedford Press

29

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

Recommended Reading

Prisons Kyle May 160pp, 216 x 140mm, illustrated, paperback New York, 2014 ÂŁ15.50

Mobility of the line Edited by Ivana Wingham 240pp, 300 x 230 mm, illustrated, hardback Basel, 2013 ÂŁ50

More than ten million people around the world are currently held in a prison, jail or some other form of penal institution.

According to the World Prison Population List, prisoner counts have been increasing across every continent. Architecture has an undeniable role within the incarceration systems that shape and control the lives of millions of people. As the number of prisons in the US has more than tripled over the past 40 years, and nations such as Sweden are actually faced with the challenge of closing and repurposing correctional facilities, now is the time to critically examine an often overlooked architectural typology.

The line is the constitutive element of every drawing and forms the core element of any design. It resists reduction to simple linearity, but rather takes on complex and dynamic forms that attract the viewer in various ways, both consciously and suggestively. Whether analogue or digital, the movements and effects that lines produce are different for each type of line: straight, meandering, interrupted or even invisible. The book is a stimulating celebration of the manifold aspects of line, using unique examples from architecture, design and art, combining interviews with designers and essays by various authors.

The National Library of Israel Competition, Jerusalem

30

AA News Careers & Prizes Amelia Holliday (AA HCT MA 2012) has been appointed as one of the cocreative directors of the Australian Exhibition at the 2016 Venice Architecture Biennale with ‘The Pool’.

The exhibition will create a pool within the exhibition space of the new Australian Pavilion (the first twentyfirst-century pavilion in the Giardini) through an immersive multi sensory experience that will transport visitors poolside. Within this designed landscape, a series of Australia’s most remarkable pools will be profiled. wp.architecture.com.au/venicebiennale/ creative-directors-and-exhibition Alessandro Bava (AADipl 2013) has been awarded the second Re Rebaudengo Serpentine Grant for emerging talent. The award was given

by Julia Peyton-Jones and Patrizia Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, chair of the Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, on 1 April 2015. The event included a discussion ‘Living in the Age of Airbnb’ with Bava, Hans Ulrich Obrist and Peter Cook. Bava and practice Bava and Sons, also recently completed their first project in Paris, at Fondation Cartier, commissioned by 89plus and Google Cultural Institute, designing the workspace for the nine residents of the Nouvelles Expériences en Art et Technologie exhibition.

Alejandro Rodriguez (AA DRL MArch 2008) constructed a Parametric Pavilion with his undergraduate students at the Tecnologico de Monterrey Campus as a final exercise for the semester in the class Tecnologias Avanzadas en la Arquitectura.

The project started with an algorithm created by one of the students where a pyramidal shaped component was placed across a vaulted surface, creating a strong differentiation by changing its height. Another algorithm was elaborated to unfold all the 195 components to a flat surface to be laser cut and then folded to generate the pyramidal shape from a single piece of 3mm Coroplast.

Anna Kulik (AA EmTech MSc 2013), co-founder of MOBO Architects, has won a competition to refurbish the vertical and horizontal access structures of the UNESCO protected fortresses that surround Cartagena’s colonial walled city in Colombia.

MOBO was also featured in Architects Journal in February as part of their New Practices section. www.moboarchitects.com/cartagena www.architectsjournal.co.uk/business/ new-practice-mobo-architects/8678158. article Kenyan Architects Diana Lee-Smith (AADipl 19964) and her husband Davinder Lamba won a competition last year for the design of a Memorial to the Victims of Torture and IllTreatment in the Colonial Era (1952– 60). It is currently under construction at ‘Freedom Corner’ in downtown Nairobi. The memorial, due to open in May 2015, is part of an out-of-court settlement reached in 2013 between the British Government and the Mau Mau War Veterans Association. The sculpture, by Kevin Owuor is based on a live reconstruction by war veterans of their survival system in the forests during the Mau Mau struggle. The competition was overseen by the Board of Registration of Architects and Quantity Surveyors of Kenya.

Abhishek Bij’s (AA DRL MArch 2009) practice Design Plus has won a National Design Competition for the International Sports Complex, Dadra and Nagar Haveli, India. 7 Projects

by Design Plus were also published in a masterplan by the government of Dadra and Nagar Haveli (Union Territory) www.youtube.com/ watch?v=vxQOeRiixw0 designplus.org.in/ Professor Charles Matz (AA Member) & Jonathan Michael Dillon have been using Lidar technology to capture images of the city and people of Harar, Ethiopia. Lidar technology uses pulses of laser light to map the contours of 3D surfaces and structures and is used extensively in the oil and gas industry for surveying landscapes. Read more about this project in an interview with Matz and Dillon on LiveScience.com www.livescience.com/49920-lidartechnology-works-of-art.html

10 September 2014, 1715 entries

Maria Paez (AA Member) and Brendon Carlin (AA DRL MArch 2011) have launched the AA Visiting School programme Tropicality. The 14 day programme will be hosted in its first year by Veritas University in San Jose, Costa Rica in August 2015. Through a series of immersive workshops, artists, filmmakers and architects will introduce new tools, media, and thinking through which students will produce a series of elucidating drawings, photographs and a short film looking at domestic life in Costa Rica. www.aaschool.ac.uk/study/ visiting/costarica ACME, founded by Friedrich Ludewig (AADipl 2001) has been successful in two competitions.

The office won the first prize in the competition for the new Saxony Bank Headquarters in Leipzig, Germany.

The proposal was chosen from among projects by a total of 20 shortlisted practices. A team led by Julia Cano (AA DRL MArch 2008) won the competition to develop a 350,000 m 2 mixed-use complex in Moscow. The project is now under development and the planning application is to be submitted by mid-summer. www.acme.ac Soomeen Hahm (AADRL MArch 2010) and Igor Pantic (AADRL MArch 2011) were selected as one of the finalists of the 2014 ALGODeQ competition, with their project Isomorphic Agency. The competition called for a design of innovative software which would make an outstanding contribution to the field of algorithmic design and architecture.

Igor and Soomeen also participated in the 2014 ACADIA Hackathon event, where their team won first prize. www.soomeenhahm.com www.igorpantic.net www.algodeq.org 2014.acadia.org/hackathon.html Sushant Verma (AA EmTech MArch 2013) co-founder and head of rat[LAB] has initiated rat[LAB] EDUCATION Platform in India to encourage a discourse in computational design in the country. The platform is set up to introduce the idea of computational design and encourage computational thinking in India by bringing in students and educators from disciplines of engineering, architecture, fashion, product and graphic design.

31 rat[LAB] EDUCATION functions in conjunction with rat[LAB], which is the first computational design / design technology company in India facilitating architects with projects of all scales and typologies. www.rat-lab.org Jim Eyre OBE (AA Past President & AADipl 1983) has become the first architect to be awarded the prestigious Bodley Medal. The Bodley Medal is the highest honour of the Bodleian Libraries of the University of Oxford and is presented to individuals who have made outstanding contributions to the worlds in which the Bodleian is active: literature, culture, science and communication. Eyre’s practice, Wilkinson Eyre, have recently refurbished the Bodleian’s Weston Library which will reopen in March 2015. www.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/bodley/news/ 2015/feb-03 Sharan Sundar (AA DRL MArch 2012) and Suraksha Bhatla (AA SED MArch 2011) won second prize in the Evolo 2015 Skyscraper competition with their Shanty-Scraper design. The project seeks to provide housing, work and recreational spaces to the inhabitants of Chennai city’s slum in India. The skyscraper is designed to reutilise the city’s post-construction debris including pipes, corrugated metal sheets, timber, etc. www.evolo.us/competition/winners2015-evolo-skyscraper-competition www.archdaily.com/614728/evoloannounces-2015-skyscrapercompetition-winners

Published & Exhibited Peter Blundell Jones (AADipl 1972), Professor of Architecture at the University of Sheffield since 1994 has co-edited a book of essays with Mark Meagher about the experience of moving through architecture.

Architecture and Movement: the Dynamic Experience of Buildings and Landscapes was published by Routledge in December.

Roberto Boettger (AA 4th Year) has written an article about the AA for Brazilian magazine Au (February 2015). The text gives a critical panorama of the school based on interviews with Ricardo de Ostos

(Inter 3), Ana Araujo (Inter 2), Juliana Muniz Westcott (Rotterdam Visiting School), and Franklin Lee (Rio de Janeiro Visiting School). The article touches on particular themes such as the AA’s international student and staff body, as well as its global outreach with its public events; the AA as a series of domestic spaces converted into an institution; the unit system and flexible curriculum; diversity and experimentation. www.au.pini.com.br/arquiteturaurbanismo/251/artigo338512-1.aspx Gudjon Thor Erlendsson (AADipl 1999) who runs the London based office AUDB participated in an installation project with design firm Iyi Ofis in Istanbul. The installations, modular floating docks, won second prize in The Guardian World Cities Day Challenge and were also exhibited at the 2nd Istanbul Design Biennal. www.audb.archi Arturo Tedeschi (co-director AA Rome Visiting School) published the book AAD Algorithms-Aided Design in October 2014 through LePenseur.

The book presents design methods based on the use of Grasshopper® and provides computational techniques to develop and control complex geometries. The book covers parametric modelling, digital fabrication techniques, form-finding strategies, environmental analysis and structural optimisation. It also features case studies and contributions by researchers and designers from the world’s most influential universities and leading architecture firms. www.aabookshop.net/?wpsc-product=aadalgorithms-aided-design Salma Samar Damluji (AADipl 1977) PhD(RCA) was invited to deliver the Leçon Inaugurale in March 2014, the prestigious annual lecture given at the Ecole de Chaillot, Paris. This was published into a book in February 2015, by the Cité de l’architecture et du patrimoine.

Lectures & Events Eduardo Rico (AA Landscape & Urbanism co-director) lectured at the Simulating Natures Symposium at the University of Pennsylvania in March 2015. The lecture dealt with the use of physical and digital simulation of landforms as part of a wider form of territorial praxis. www.design.upenn.edu/landscapearchitecture/events/simulating-natures In January 2015, Soomeen Hahm (AADRL MArch 2010) and Jooeun Sung (AADipl 2003) directed the AA Visiting School Seoul Winter Social Algorithms. The workshop focused on the application of social data and agentbased design in the field of urbanism and computational architecture. AA Seoul teaching staff also included AA Alumni Igor Pantic (AA DRL MArch 2011), JinSeok Park (AADipl 2002), Jaewon Yi (AADipl 2008) and DaeSong Lee (AADipl 2006). In March 2015, AA Seoul students’ work was on display at Yonsei University. seoul.aaschool.ac.uk www.facebook.com/socialalgorithms Krists Ernston (AA 5th Year Student) along with the foundation for cultural initiatives IZOLYATSIA is organising an architecture residency programme in Ukraine that will run from July to August 2015. The programme aims to invite ten inventive professionals from the fields of architecture, art, data visualisation and science in both physical and digital media and is currently running an open call for curators to participate. For the Summer 2015 programme, Eastern Ukraine is chosen as a case study, more specifically the city of Mariupol and the network of cities within the war zone that adjoins with Russia. www.izolyatsia.org Sadie Morgan (Outgoing AA President and founder of dRRM Architects), Vanessa Norwood (Head of Exhibitions) and Vicky Richardson (Director of Architecture, Design and Fashion at the British Council) spoke at a joint discussion at the National Gallery of Arts, in Tirana Albania on 24 February.

Jose Alfredo Ramirez (AA Landscape Urbanism Co-Director) and Eva Castro (AA GradDiplDes 1996) lectured at Harvard Graduate School

Gugghenheim Helsinki competition

32 of Design. The talk was titled ‘The Grounds of a Radical Nature’ and took place on 22 April. www.gsd.harvard.edu/#/events/ eva-castro-the-grounds-of-a-radicalnature.html Ahmad Sukkar (AA March DRL 2006) presented a paper entitled ‘Crossing Boundaries between the Body, Space and Architecture in the Islamic Tradition’ on 20 March 2015 at an international conference entitled The Aesthetics of Crossing: Experiencing the Beyond in Abrahamic Traditions, which was funded by the European Research Council and hosted by the Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies, Utrecht University, Netherlands. www.academia.edu/10177353

Obituaries In this memorial for Frei Otto (HonAADipl), Richard Burton CBE of ABK remembers the architect and engineer and their collaborative work in what is now the AA’s Hooke Park campus in Dorset.

Otto, who died on 9 March aged 89, had recently been awarded the Pritzker Prize and was world renowned for his tensile and membrane structures, especially the 1972 Munich Olympic Stadium. He was awarded an Honorary AA Diploma in 2003 and became an Honorary AA Member in 2011.

The AA owns the only two permanent examples of Frei Otto’s work in the UK: the workshop and the prototype house (now used as a refectory) at Hooke Park. These were designed by Frei, his daughter Christina, Ted Happold, Michael Dickson and myself at ABK. The prototype house was built by Bill Moorwood of ABK in one of the wettest summers in 1986. The campus now run by the AA carries on the ethos of Frei’s work by running the 16-month Design & Make course in which students design and then build their designs.

When I started working with Frei on Hooke Park he sent the team a hand drawn report on how to build with thinnings (young saplings that are removed to let the main tress grow well).

This knowledge was gleamed partly from Frei’s first professor in Berlin, whose experience was in the use of the thinnings in 1945, and partly from Frei’s ability to match his highly imaginative

approach to design with a practical application of detail.

As the designs for Hooke progressed, the jointing up of thinnings became a key subject which Frei and Ted Happold argued and discussed over six weeks. The options were either a bound joint, Frei’s preference, which was tested with 75% transmission of forces, and an epoxy joint which Ted had designed and tested with 90% transmission. The choice was finally settled following a good dinner between the three of us, at which it was agreed to use the epoxy joint. This was formed by making a conical hole in the circular end of the thinning and filling it with epoxy into which metal fixings were cast. This both high-tech and low-tech solution liberated the huge potential in the use of thinnings at a very low cost, and now that we have had it under use for nearly 30 years, we know that it works.

I see this story as an example of Frei’s ability to collaborate with others, and especially with that superb engineer Ted Happold, whom he worked with on many of his buildings, particularly in the Middle East. But also his willingness to support high-tech solutions, and to use materials to their maximum potential, a principle he learned as a prisoner-of-war at 19 years old, when he was in charge of buildings in a vast POW camp in France.

The designs for Hooke Park vitally depended on the use of models, an essential in the process of design according to Frei, all of which are now preserved at Frei’s exhibition of models in Karlsruhe.

Frei was a practical designer with a vigorous imagination and a fine aesthetic sense. A genius who collaborated with other designers. Working with him was for me one of the best collaborations in my professional life and led to a friendship I will miss.

It is fitting that the AA should now be a custodian of his work here in the UK. It is with great sadness that the Architectural Association learnt that the Czech architectural educator Dalibor Vesely DipArch DipEng MA MPhil 1934–2015 died of heart attack on 31 March 2015 aged 79. A member of staff at the AA for many years, Vesely ran a Diploma Unit from 1973–83 and was a Complimentary studies Course tutor from 2003–09.

He also served as an AA Councillor from 1984–87, and in 2013 was awarded Honorary Membership of the AA. A Service was held in his honour in East Finchley on 1 May 2015. A full obituary will be included in the next issue.

rush to catch the next deadline.

Anglican clergyman, art historian and AA Member since 2000 The Revd Thomas Devonshire Jones died 27 February 2015, aged 80. Devonshire Jones who was a vicar at St Mark’s church in Regent’s Park sought to bridge the gap between Christianity and Art and was a director of the Art and Christian Enquiry (ACE), working as a consultant for the National Gallery and the Arts Council of England. He had recently edited the latest edition of The Oxford Dictionary of Christian Art and Architecture in 2014. www.telegraph.co.uk/news/ obituaries/11492684/the-reverend-tomdevonshire-jones-obituary.html Other deaths the AA were notified of include Alumni Stanley John Howard (AADipl 1950) and Sylvester Bone (AADipl 1958)

Next Issue’s Theme

Non Sense

Contributions to aarchitecture@aaschool.ac.uk

School Announcement

Projects Review 2015 Private View: Friday 26 June 2015, 6.30–10.30pm Members’ Evening: Monday 29 June 2015, 6.00–8.30pm

The AA Projects Review exhibition is celebrated in the AA’s main building and Bedford Square garden.

Projects Review 2015 offers an overview of the AA’s 2014/15 academic year.

On display are hundreds of drawings, models, installations and photographs from all the AA’s units, courses and departments; documenting the diversity and experimental nature of the AA School.

At the AA, architecture is pursued as a form of cultural knowledge, across yearlong design projects and portfolios. We believe that truly great schools don’t just nurture and support architectural talent, they build audiences for experimentation, out of which new architectural ideas, visions and projects emerge. Please join us as part of this audience, which the AA remains committed to promoting at the cutting edge of architectural culture, practice and learning.

Projects Review 2015 is part of the London Festival of Architecture 2015.

The exhibition will be open to the public from Saturday June 27 2015 until Saturday July 18 2015. Monday to Friday 10am– 7pm; Saturday 27 June 1–5pm; all other Saturdays 10am–5pm All AA Members will be sent Private View invitations in the post by early June.

Student Announcement

RIBA Funding Schemes Funding for Postgraduate Studies

RIBA AHR Stephen Williams Scholarship The RIBA AHR Stephen Williams Scholarship is worth ÂŁ5,000 and will support one student for a period of postgraduate studies of up to 12 months in the UK or abroad. The winning applicant will also be given the opportunity of mentoring from a senior member of AHR Architects for the duration of the scholarship period.

Applicants must have graduated from a Part 1 programme validated by the RIBA in the UK and at the time of application, students must either: be enrolled in, or have been granted a placement offer for, an RIBA-validated Part 2 professional qualification in the UK or abroad or be enrolled, or have been granted a placement offer, in a Masters course (nonRIBA Part 2) related to architecture, at a university department that also offers courses validated by the RIBA in the UK or abroad.

The deadline to apply is Tuesday 26 May 2015. For more information, visit www.architecture.com/ahrscholarship

RIBA Wren Insurance Association Scholarships The RIBA Wren Insurance Association Scholarships were established in March 2013 followed a generous donation by The Wren Insurance Association Limited.

The five scholarships, each worth ÂŁ5,000, aim to support outstanding Part 2 students who have the potential to make a significant contribution in the field of architecture.

Applicants must have graduated from a Part 1 programme validated by the RIBA in the UK AND at the time of application, must be enrolled in an RIBA-validated Part 2 professional qualification course in the UK, and will be starting the final year in September 2015.

The deadline to apply is Friday 8 May 2015. For more information, visit www.architecture.com/wrenscholarships