Learning from the AA - Excavating Contemporary Visual Broadcasting Media Typologies across the Schoo

Architectural Association 4th Year HTS

LEARNING FROM TELEVISION 0.0 with JOAQUIM MORENO

BROADCASTING SCRIPT

Title:

“LEARNING FROM THE AA– EXCAVATING CONTEMPORARY VISUAL BROADCASTING MEDIA TYPOLOGIES ACROSS THE SCHOOL”

Written and narrated by:

Alix Biehler

Recording dates:

Friday, 7th December, 2018

Producers:

Alix Biehler

Tape No:

1 of 1

Duration:

23’ 00’’

1st transmission:

Friday, 7th December, 2018

CHECKED AS BROADCAST SCRIPT

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Figure 0: Logo of the TVAA, Communication Unit 1971 - 1991 AA Archive collection, c 1970

-3ALIX BIEHLER:

Edgar Dale’s learning studies have revealed that we remember best when being physically implicated in a situation or by simultaneously seeing and hearing about it. Hence, video is the best format to document an event.

The Architectural Association School of Architecture has always been renowned for its wide-ranging programme of exhibitions, lectures and publications. This strategy has enabled the school to be a key figure in global discussions within contemporary architectural culture. In fact, the school can be understood as two simultaneously and inter-connected evolving stands: on one hand the school as an educational institute, and on the other hand, as an incubator for architectural debate through public programmes.

In this episode, we will excavate and deconstruct visual media typologies currently used to broadcast within and beyond the AA. This inquiry into the AA’s public media will attempt to bring an understanding on how media can be used as an educational tool, as well as the limits and interpretations of what broadcasting is. We will be using material from the AA Photo Library, AA Archive, AA’s Public Programme, AA YouTube channel as well as interviews from various contributors from the AA. Now, let’s start by inviting AA Photo Library Assistant, Byron Blakeley who will help us bring to light the role of visual content at the AA, both static and moving, and how its use has evolved over time.

Bryon, let me start by asking you about how you came to take care of the AA Photo Library?

BYRON BLAKELEY:

It all started with being a student here at the AA. At the time, Valerie Bennett was in charge of the AA Photo Library and one evening, at a barbecue, she asked me if I wanted to come help out. Before I had finished the AA, I was somewhat involved in the Photo Library.

I’ve always been “into” films, just watching a lot of them. I remember when I started here as a student, I lived alone, I had no internet and I had the habit of borrowing lots of films and lectures from the Photo Library. As it was my only source of media, I ended up knowing the collection incredibly well.

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ALIX BIEHLER:

BYRON BLAKELEY:

ALIX BIEHLER:

BYRON BLAKELEY:

ALIX BIEHLER:

BYRON BLAKELEY: Comment added by the producer: “This was also another form of broadcasting in the AA, but let’s stay focus on the topic of visuals for now.”

How do you think students today engage with the material here in the archive, knowing that we probably all have internet now?

Well, difficultly. The digital switchover has challenged how people interact with the Photo Library. The collection isn’t very accessible in the sense that it’s not really known about. Although film has defiantly come back as a medium in the past years, the Photo Library is not yet used to its full potential. Actually, Instagram has helped in that direction because of the extensive use of GIF’s. Students and tutors are now more focused on moving images. At the time, many people used to come in here to find images for essays, presentations or any project (figure 1). There used to be a team of five people working here, even in the 90’s. It used to be busiest place in the school. It essentially was a hub, an AA Photo Library community.

Within AA Photo Library there is also the AA Cinema and the AA Film Club. How do all three fit together?

Well the Photo library being a collection of pictures and films of architecture, the Film Club and the AA Cinema is a place where the material can be shown. The Film Club season, which started four years ago, ended up being a program of six films curated around a theme. The first one was about dystopic visions with Blade Runner for example and the most recent was about sand. The curation of a season usually starts with two movies which have a common theme. I’ll then keep thinking about it, at the back of my head, for a couple of months until I have six.

Can you tell us a little more on how you reach out the AA community?

Well the AA Cinema started with a very small group of people such as Umberto Bellardi Ricci, a student at the time, and later a Foundation tutor.

He was also involved, with others, in the AA Independent Radio (figure 2) which ran in the 90’s. The AA Cinema started very simply with two chairs, a small screen and just watching films. Eventually, it grew into a bigger -4-

-5cinema with the opening in 2009 with Pascal Schöning, Diploma 3 tutor for many years, who cut the ribbon on the night of the launch (figure 3).

But in terms of reaching out to the school, today, the most effective are the postcards (figure 4) which we distribute in the AABar; people then start to collect and come the Photo Library to find out more.

ALIX BIEHLER:

BYRON BLAKELEY:

ALIX BIEHLER:

BYRON BLAKELEY:

What about your audience?

The format is very informal: six to ten people, usually the same, there are regulars, it’s a proper Film Club in that sense. We also receive students with relating projects, as well, and we have a small discussion at the end: I advise them on other documentaries relating to their topic. This especially happens in term 1.

I think we should also talk about the transition to the digital. How does the AA Photo Library adapt to that?

To make the collection more widely available, a couple of years ago, we started publishing the images through the internet. Online, we divided the collection into three groups: School Life, Schoolwork and Buildings and Places. At this stage, only a small part of the collection is online. The process is quite slow, but we have also made the decision to prioritise some areas over others. For example, most of School Life is digitalised, as it is the most popular and used the most, but Buildings and Places much less.

Also, we try and scan the older collections first and work our way forward, for conservation purposes.

Overall, we have 80% of School Life and Schoolwork online but Building and Places is around 10%. This discrepancy also comes from the fact the student assistants, as a way of getting to know the collection, pick a subject and scan them all in. It seems like the School Life was more entertaining for them to scan. Also, there is no point in scanning images of buildings if we don’t know where they are located, and this takes quite a bit of research as well. I’ve become a sort of Google Maps CIA agent, working out where buildings are located from an aerial view image. The context of -5-

-6the image is really import.

ALIX BIEHLER:

BYRON BLAKELEY:

In terms of the film collection, specifically, how do you manage the switch into the digital world, knowing that the collection keeps growing?

Well, every term I try and buy six or seven new films which fit within the collection but also relate to the topics that emerge from projects – the collection then somehow becoming a testimony of what we talk about at the AA. As far as I see it, there is no way we can have an online library of films in the way that we have in the form of our DVD collection because most of them are protected discs. Even the ones I collect today, some of them only come in DVD and you can’t find them online. If it’s a short YouTube clip then yes, I keep it on a USB and pass it around but in general, I like having the physical object. It means you’re dedicated to it more.

Ideally, I would have the collection online to make it more available to students around the AA who still don’t know about the AA Film collection but for copyright reasons, at the moment it’s not possible. Even the catalogue is still in a paper folder, students just have to come down here and ask, let’s say it’s part of the experience.

ALIX BIEHLER:

To come back on the AA Cinema, it’s almost a broadcasting project of the material collected down here. But, it’s very different from the way in which the Lecture Hall is used and functions for the AA Public Programme. The AA Cinema is like broadcasting within the AA and the Lecture Hall broadcasting outside. Would you agree with that?

BYRON BLAKELEY:

Yes, the AA Cinema is more like private space where more informal conversations happen. It’s a living room. AA Cinema (figure 5), until this year, used to be in 37 Bedford Square and for a moment I was wondering where it should now be. I finally tested it out in here and it’s perfect.

The space is cosy, the acoustics are great, and we have all the collections around us, which provides a great backdrop (figure 6).

Comment added by the producer: “At the time of the interview Byron and I are sitting in the Basement of 32, right next to the AA Archive.”

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ALIX BIEHLER:

We’ve talked about the AA Cinema as a form of broadcasting but if my facts are right, coincidentally, you have also been documenting the AA and broadcasting its life on Instagram, can you talk more about that?

BYRON BLAKELEY:

Sure! Ideally, when I go on documenting the AA, I would do it through film but because of the format of Instagram, I’ve had to adopt the medium of it, which are snaps with my phone. Somehow, it’s still a little bit archaic to be taking pictures and in our digital age and we should probably use more video footage, which I started to do on the AA Instagram story.

ALIX BIEHLER:

What is interesting is that although documenting the AA with Instagram is understood as a mode of broadcasting, and starting a conversation with outside individuals and institutions, in 50 years, it will be the format through which the 2018 AA Life will be understood, and we can question if that really makes sense. However, I think that the way in which the AA uses Instagram can be understood as broadcasting rather that advertising, which is a very fine line, broadcasting somewhat suggesting authenticity.

BYRON BLAKELEY:

Absolutely, when I go out and document the AA I treat it almost like journalism.

ALIX BIEHLER:

BYRON BLAKELEY:

So, what about Hooke Park?

Well, I was speaking to the Design and Make studio, and it’s true. At the moment, Hooke Park is completely isolated both in the sense that very little is broadcasted from there and very little is broadcasted to them. There is a complete lack of communication. They get no live feed of what’s going on here in Bedford Square, and why is that? Most of all public program event, which takes place in the Lecture Hall, is recorded, but somehow there is a delay for those recordings to go online and most of it actually never goes online, and if it does, it takes two weeks for a lecture to go online via YouTube. I think one can question how effective is that as -7-

-8a broadcasting method?

ALIX BIEHLER:

Byron, Thank you very much.

-PAUSE-

ALIX BIEHLER:

To build upon Bryon’s last comment, of course, the delay is a problem, but uploading the lecture on YouTube remains a great resource. From the moment in which the lecture is posted it becomes accessible to all, which is a statement in itself, but it also allows some flexibility in how one consumes the knowledge that is being shared. It allows the viewer to be able to rewatch things, and extract more from it, comparable to a library where there is no limit to how many times you can read a book.

When the AA YouTube channel was set up in 2012, it was a milestone, within the history of the AA, in terms of broadcasting. It was the first time the AA broadcasted its lectures outside of its walls. Lectures, that were in the past kept in the AA Photo Library dating back to 1974, were made accessible worldwide. The Lecture Hall, simultaneously, became a key element to the image of the AA, a backdrop to many conversations.

The Lecture Hall was not always the epicentre of AA school broadcasting and neither is the AA YouTube channel the school’s first example of broadcasting. As figure 7 reveals, in the 1930’s the Lecture Hall was used as the dining room, and over the years the space has gone through multiple renovations, additions and removals; starting with the chimney, which was stolen during Wolrd War II. Following this photograph, we went to find out more about the dynamics between the Lecture Hall as a space for broadcasting and the Lecture as a by-product of it, or the end product (figure 8). We followed AA archivist Ed Bottoms through the undergrounds of the AA and into the archive to find some unique documentation of the AA Lecture Hall from the 1970’s until today. From the 70’s we know that the space had just recently started to be used for broadcasting and recording, as you can see on the right of figure 9. It was also fitted out with an array of props to fit different types of presentation formats, depicted in figure 10. Curtains were installed -8-

-9for projection and sliding boards to provide both space for projection and support to illustrate. The colour of the room also used to be green, or blue, it is unclear from the colorization of figure 11, dating from 1980. Figure 12, dating from 1989, shot from below, demonstrates that the lecturer, here Cedric Price, would also have the opportunity to sit on a podium, above its audience. Smoking and drinking were permitted. The room is mostly dark, a light and a microphone assist the lecturer in his performance. Finally, in the 90’s the room is painted white, the wall lights are removed, and the lectern becomes the default way of presenting, as we see in figure 13, dating from 1999, with Brett Steel (former AA director) and Rem Koolhaas in conversation. Figure 14, captioned by the AA Photo Library: John Frazer via video link from Hong Kong, dating from the autumn of 1999, marks a new millstone in technological advancement for the AA. Indeed, the 70’s onwards mark the beginning of broadcasting for the AA. By following the lectures posted on the AA YouTube channel, we are able to determine that the first lecture to be recorded in the AA Lecture Hall dates from around 1976, as before that date the lectures were hosted at ArtNet. The lecture from 11 March 1976, figure 15, entitled Two German Projects: Dusseldorf & Cologne with James Stirling and which seems to take place in the Lecture Hall for one of the first times, is introduced with an invitation to join the event from the AABar, the Soft Room (today south end of First-year studio, First Floor) and the Communication Room (today extension of the First-year studio, Ground Floor) where a real-time relay video is organised as it appears that the Lecture Hall is full. This suggest that at this point in time the AA had both metaphorically and physically “wired” the institution for broadcasting.

Coincidently to this lecture and the evidence of the images described above, the 1970s also mark the decade in which the Communications Unit was founded and along with it TVAA. The department, initiated by former AA chairman, Alvin Boyarsky, in 1971 and led by Dennis Crompton, a member of Archigram, was introduced as part of the expansion of the school’s academic program and aimed to offer students new skills, in particular in video and introduce new ways of presenting and producing their designs. Alongside, TVAA, the school’s closed-circuit television network, broadcasted on monitors placed throughout the AA’s premises, supported -9-

-10by the information centre who advertised the events, figure 16.

In Irene Sunoo’s article entitled the Static Stage published in AA Files 61, we are given a detailed description of the scale which TVAA had.

(INSERT 1) “Though its activities would carry on in various forms into the following decades, it was in TVAA’s earliest years, roughly between 1974 and 1976, when its identity was strongest, its ambitions at a peak and its programming at its most diverse, airing fairly consistently at one o’clock each weekday afternoon. Aside from general announcements, broadcasts included films and videos made by students and of students’ unit work, replays of off-air television programmes and feature films, live footage of oversubscribed events held in the lecture hall, as well as taped recordings of recent past lectures. As Price has already demonstrated, programming also included interviews and discussions staged within the studio, exposing students more intimately to personalities visiting the AA whom they might not otherwise have had the opportunity to encounter.

Wired to the studio, a camera in the school lecture hall, a fixed television monitor on the first floor in the Back Members’ Room, as well as other unfixed monitors placed variably within the school, the control room broadcast both live and recorded programmes from within and to the AA. Pumping through cables that literally burst through doorways, corridors and windows, this televisual material crawled and penetrated the interior surfaces of the AA’s Georgian home, producing an intramural topology of information whose structural aspirations dovetailed with those of the Events List.”

ALIX BIEHLER:

In the 1974-1975 Prospectus, part in the AA library archives, shown in figure 17, the department is described with two responsibilities.

The first being education, which can take the form of either direct or support teaching and the second Servicing, from the provision of equipment and services to the recording of events. It is also further described more specifically that the services include: Equipment, Video Studio, TVAA, AA Darkroom, and a silk screen workshop.

The Prospectuses were also published with floor plans which allow us to describe the central location of the studio, pictured in figure 18, a photograph from 1970’s, and in figure 19, shot in 1980. Figure 20 illustrates the recording studio to be located in the back of the ground floor of 36 Bedford square (today the First-year studio), also supplemented by a control room and workshop space.

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-11We reached out to David Crompton, hoping to get a glimpse of the ideas, both conceptual and educational, as well the agenda behind the AA Communication Unit and TVAA.

(INSERT 2) The intension of the Unit was to develop students’ abilities in all the communication skills essential for the practice of Architecture. It also had the responsibility of technically servicing all school activities.

TVAA was only one of the activities of the Communications Unit. The educational goal of all of these was to encourage and assist in the development of communication skills of every sort from drawing through to photography, film and video. This was the intention of the unit’s establishment by Alvin and of all the Units tutors.

Initially, the Communications Unit was also responsible for AA Exhibitions and Publications, and one of the responsibilities of the Unit was to record school events. This was mainly lectures but also juries and other school/unit events. The operators for these recordings were mainly unit staff but we also sometimes had student assistants.

For some years we had daily, lunch-time broadcasts (seen on monitors in the Members’ Room).

These consisted of re-runs of lectures, event recordings and new programs made in the Communications Studio with visiting architects/designers/artists. We also had events such as the “Monday Matinees”.

ALIX BIEHLER:

However, in the 90’s the interest in video and broadcasting shifted, and the Communication Unit finally transformed itself into what AA students, today, know as Media Studies. In the prospectus of 1993 the Communication Unit is renamed Visualisation Studies and a year later, in 1994, it is officially titled as Media Studies and introduced with a new agenda. Likewise, TVAA, slowly disappeared from the scene, first by no longer being mentioned in 1990-1991 prospectus but more importantly the recording studio being transformed into a seminar room in 1998, as shown in figure 21.

Unfortunately, our time on air today is soon coming to an end. We hope we were successful in bringing to light different broadcasting typologies which the AA uses today and put them in relation to their histories. On our end, it has been fascinating to understand the limits and specificities of broadcasting in an educational context: the different use it may have and -11-

-12the different forms it can take according to the intimacy or public quality of some events as well as the audience-specific or open to all format of others.

In today’s culture, broadcasting methods are often valued according to their imminence and the number of “followers� it can generate but interestingly enough the AA does not seem to be too concerned with that.

Instead, the notion of informality and authenticity transpires to be far more important and this, throughout the history of the AA.

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Architectural Association 4th Year HTS

LEARNING FROM TELEVISION 0.0 with JOAQUIM MORENO

RADIOVISION BOOKLET

Title:

“LEARNING FROM THE AA– EXCAVATING CONTEMPORARY VISUAL BROADCASTING MEDIA TYPOLOGIES ACROSS THE SCHOOL”

Written and narrated by:

Alix Biehler

1st transmission:

Friday, 7th December, 2018

Producer

Alix Biehler

All images are sourced from the AA Photo Library or the AA Archive.

The bibliography is attached at the end of this document

CHECKED AS RADIOVISION BOOKLET

-14Figure 1: The Photo Library as a central element to the school until late 2000’s.

AAPhotoLibrary collection, 2006, photo © Valerie Bennett

Figure 2: AA Indepentant Radio performing in the AABar. AAPhotoLibrary collection, 2006, photo © Valerie Bennett

Figure 3: AA Cinema opening in 37 Bedford Square with Pascal Schoning.

AAPhotoLibrary collection, 2009, photo © Valerie Bennett

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-15Figure 4: AA Cinema Film Club season 1 postcard.

AAPhotoLibrary collection, 2014

Figure 5: AA Cinema Film Club session.

AAPhotoLibrary collection, c 2015, photo Š Valerie Bennett

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-16Figure 6: AA Photo Library and AA Cinema in 32 Bedford Square.

AAPhotoLibrary collection, 2018, photo © Bryon Blakeley

Figure 7: The Lecture Hall in the 1930’s.

AAPhotoLibrary collection, 1930, ©FR Yerbury

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-17Figure 8: Various lecturers presenting in the Lecture Hall AAPhotoLibrary collection, c 2015

Figure 9: A christmas dinner in the Lecture Hall during the 1970’s.

AAPhotoLibrary collection, c 1970

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-18Figure 10: School Meeting in the Lecture Hall with John Smith in 1971 AAPhotoLibrary collection, 1971

Figure 11: Event in 1980 taking place in the Lecture Hall AAPhotoLibrary collection, 1980

Figure 12: Cedric Price giving a lecture in the Lecture Hall AAPhotoLibrary collection, 1989, photo Š Valerie Bennett

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-19Figure 13: Rem Koolhaas and Brett Steele in conversation in the Lecture Hall AAPhotoLibrary collection, 1999, photo Š Valerie Bennett

Figure 14: John Frazer via video link from Hong Kong, Lecture Hall AAPhotoLibrary collection, 1999, photo Š Valerie Bennett

Figure 15: Still Frame from a lecture entitled Two German Projects: Dusseldorf & Cologne by James Stirling, 11 March 1976 AA Video Archive collection, also available on AA YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=woCTHNtiLlw (Accessed 26 November 2018)

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Figure 17: AA Communication Unit outline for the year 1974-1975A – A Prospectus 74-75, p.18-19, AA Collection Archive

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-21Figure 16: Advertisment for AA Information Center eventfone working 24/7 AA Prospectus 73-74, p.13, AA Collection Archive

Figure 18: The Communications Unit control room in the 1970’s AAPhotoLibrary collection, c 1975

Figure 19: TVAA meeting from the control room in 1980 with the TVAA logo visible at the back.

AAPhotoLibrary collection, 1980

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-22Figure 20: AA ground floor plan in 1975 locating the Communications Unit in the top left corner AA Prospectus 75-76, p.87, AA Collection Archive

Figure 21: AA ground floor plan in 1998 locating the Seminar Room and unit space, instead of the Communication Unit in the bottom left corner AA Event list 98-99, Week 1, AA Collection Archive

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BIBLIOGRAPHY AA Events List 89-90 / 98-99, AA Collection Archive AA Prospectus 69-70 / 98-99, AA Collection Archive AA School of Architecture YouTube channel. https://www.youtube.com/user/AASchoolArchitecture (Accessed 26 November 2018) Banham, Reyner. Frank Lloyd Wright. Radio Programme 8 of A305. BBC for The Open University, 1975.

Benton, Tim. “Broadcasting the Modern Movement.” Architecture Association Quarterly 7, no. 1 (1975): 45-55.

Bourdieu, Pierre. On Television. New York: The New Press, 1998.

Briggs, Asa. The BBC: The First Fifty Years. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985 Coffin, Frank. “The Open University.” In Peter Hoggett, ed., “The Open University.” Special Issue, The Arup Journal 9, no. 2 (June 1974): 2-7.

Forty, Adrian. “The Labour-Saving home.” Radio Programme 20 of A305. BBC for The Open University, 1975.

Graham, Dan. Video-Architecture-Television: Writings on Video and Video Works 1970-1978. New York: New York University Press, 1979.

McLuhan, Marshall. “Classroom without Walls.” In Carpenter, Edmund, and Marshall McLuhan, eds.

Explorations in Communication, An Anthology. Boston: Beacon Press, 1960 McLuhan, Marshall. “The Invisible Environment: The Future of an Erosion.” Perspecta 11 (1967): 1617.

McLuhan, Marshall. Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man. New York: Signet, 1964.

Moreno, Joaquim. The University is Now on Air, Broadcasting Modern Architecture. Montreal: Canadian Centre for Architecture / Jap Sam Books, 2018.

Rowland, Robert. “The University in a Palace.” The Listener, 17 February 1977.

Sunwoo, Irene. “I Know What You Did Last Summer... 45 Years Ago”, Lunchtime Lectures - Conversations on Education, London: Architectural Association, 12 October 2017 Sunwoo, Irene. “The Static Age.” AA Files 61 (2013): 118-129.

Wenham, Brian. The Third Age of Broadcasting. London: Faber & Faber, 1982.

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