AA School of Architecture Diploma Unit 4, John Palmesino and Ann-Sofi RĂśnnskog Brief 2011-2012
Polity and Space The Coast of Europe A project for the remodernisation of the coast of Europe Diploma 4 builds further on the research on the transformations of the Coast of Europe. Continuing the engagement with real-world issues, the work will combine architecture and urbanism to re-think the structures of cohabitation in Europe at a time of profound political, institutional, technological and economic change. Uncertainty and non-determinism will set out a field of potentials for the transformation of the material spaces of contemporary Europe. Today the idea of Europe presents itself as a complex overlapping of delays, accelerations, conjunctions, fractures and slow adjustments. The construction and transformation of Europe has always engaged its relational condition: we will consider the coastal territories of Europe as architecture, as the construction of territories over time. This architecture is a complex arrangement undergoing changes and transformation, a composition of speeds and slownesses, acceleration and deceleration, of differential velocities, upon which form and the development of form depends, not the reverse. As a work in progress the notion of Europe challenges us to redefine contemporary space beyond continuous and extensive territorial entities, beyond the hierarchies and certainties of the nation and beyond the sweeping urbanisation processes: it holds back on them and reorganises the inhabited space in a series of differentiated individual transformations and disetaneous changes. A series of innovative processes – that reshape the links between the physical environment and the societies that inhabit them – contributes to the construction of the European space as an assemblage of layered and asynchronous environments in transformation. The work at Diploma 4 will envision how architecture can connect to these processes and enter, take up or lay down these rhythms. When architecture acts to transform the city, it challenges the relations between individuals and their spaces of operation. It questions well established patterns of perception and expectations and calls for a re-evaluation of citizenship, cohabitation, governance and agency. The mental and material spaces of contemporary Europe are a mixture transformed by a multiplicity of agents where architecture acts as a sectoral rationality amongst other practices. The projects developed at Diploma 4 inquire into the capacity of architecture to affect and be affected by these multiple rationalities and differential speeds, and take the form of complex integrated plans that operate at different scales and across multiple timelines. Architecture is today confronted with a complex condition, where the situational analysis of the present cannot be disjoined and independently understood from a diagnostic bearing on the possibilities of transformation. The research investigates two strands of this development: on one side we will inquire into how new remote-sensing technologies are shaping contemporary spaces of operation and individual and state sovereignty, and on the other side we will focus on the agency that these new technologies elicit and entail. Diploma 4 works for integrated and sustained transformations of the contemporary inhabited landscapes of Europe. Your projects will combine the design of precise and contained architectural devices with new forms of assembly and complex visualisations of territorial transformations. You will achieve a capacity to analyse and strategically design real-world integrated plans, combining remote-sensing with architectural visualisations.
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The Peninsula Europe’s landform is marked by two vast depressions to north and south, flooded by the oceans to form two parallel chains of seas that penetrate deep into the interior. The European peninsula, with its outreaches, bays, meanders, and straits is a unique set of environments, urban structures and political organisations in constant transformation. It is defined in the north by the North Sea – Baltic Sea lane that connects the Atlantic to Russia. In the south the Mediterranean – Black Sea chain stretches from Gibraltar to the Caucasus. Today the coast of Europe is not only marked and shaped by natural forces: it is a complex mixture and accumulation of biological, geological, social, cultural, economic, technical and urban structures that form a crucial system that is re-negotiating and adapting its material forms in the face of the pressures of globalisation and geopolitical changes. It is a complex contemporary urban and metropolitan system ensconced within a number of rapidly changing natural forces and processes: an architecture. The project for the re-modernisation of the coast of Europe engages architecture and its gathering potentials to form integrated spatial plans that can move the notion of locus and place beyond that of stability and duration. We will explore the role that architecture as collective construction plays in the redefinition and innovation in the positioning of Europe in today’s world. The design process will explore how architecture can envision the construction of contemporary space at a time of cosmopolitanisation, reshaping of notions of citizenship and redefinition of technological agency. Through a rigorous observation, analysis and modelling of the transformations apparatuses that inform contemporary space, our research and design Unit will operate directly in the field, envisioning architectures and integrated spatial plans not as final and stable configurations, rather as shared spaces of reference for the multiple initiatives that contribute to innovation. We will be thinking architectural research not as a preliminary to action, rather as a mode of enquiry of the internal, autopoietic form-generating process and agencies of the contemporary territories. The materials produced during the year will combine projects, analysis and strategies to form a clear and sustained argument for an integrated plan for the re-modernisation of Europe. We will deal with issues that concern Europe’s future through architecture, we will outline how the discipline can engage in precise terms with other knowledge production practices. The project will experiment the paths that contemporary architectural intelligence can mobilise to innovate and shape the wider re-organisation of European space in the 21st Century, away from a technocratic and deterministic approach to the relationship between the physical environments and the well-being of its populations. Thinking through what are the capacities and potentialities of architecture to affect and be affected by real-world issues, the Unit will rethink and re-imagine the spaces of contemporary Europe through a series of specific and precise territorial architectures designed to unfold over differentiated timelines and operating in the midst of complex material systems. The 136106 km of European coastline, ranging over four seas – the Mediterranean, the North Sea, the Baltic and the Black Sea – and two oceans – the Atlantic and the Arctic Ocean – are almost equal in length to the Equator. With almost 50% of the nearly 500 million inhabitants of the EU-22 coastal countries, the coast of Europe is a vital and strategic element for its future. The European space is transformed by accumulation, addition, superimposition, intensification and consolidation, rarely by outright replacement or elimination. The project for the re-modernisation of Europe investigates how architecture can engage with the layered and differentiated modalities of growth and change – combining intensification, preservation, modernisation, stagnation, downturn, stasis, decay, growth, conservation, dispersal, abandonment, erosion, consolidation, densification – that are reshaping the territories of Europe and its Seas. The project is defined by the arrangements of motions into which it enters, which is always composed and recomposed by individuals and collectivities.
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Projects 2009-2011 European Atlantic Coast The Architecture of Distinct Geographies, by Tom Fox
The Subarctic Region Temporary Municipality©, by Yi-Jen Chen
The Potentials of Collapse in the West Mediterranean, by Georgios Eftaxiopolous
Common resources, licensing and management as form-generating processes in the North Sea, by Yi-Jen Chen Destruction, protection and management in the fragile Tyrrhenian coastal territories, by Mun Khwan Agnes Yit Deorganising Borders Contemporaneity in the Oresund Metropolitan Region, by Ying-Chih Deng
The Southern Mediterranean Towards Radical Hospitality, by Tom Fox The Adriatic Coast Citadels and UNESCO as Potential of Transformation, by Ai Bessho
Il Milione - Re-articulating Trade in the Adriatic Archipelago, by Helen Evans
The Baltic Sea A New League of Cities, by Oscar Gomes Energy Kremlin An Urban Transformation Device for Kaliningrad, by HyeJu Park
Transformations - The Total Urbanisation of the Turkish Society, by David Hellström Conflict in Architecture Strategy for Water Distribution in Cyprus, by EunJoo Park
The Black Sea Remoteness as a Potential, by Sanem Alper Frontiers and Borders The recolonisation of Russia, by Ioseb Andrazashvili
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Integrated Plans - Fathoming Differences Your work will investigate the potentialities of architecture intelligence to address the challenges that Europe is facing at the outset of the 21st Century. We will operate directly in the field, using design to evaluate, test and analyse the current state of affairs of a series of territories undergoing profound transformations: the Coast of Europe is an assemblage of liminal areas facing a liquid space crossed by a multiplicity of trajectories, circulations, migrations, exchanges, trades, conflicts and re-negotiations. What are the patterns of these changes? How can architecture affect them? How are inhabited spaces shaped by the multiple uncoordinated initiatives and forces that characterise today’s European connection and relations? How to fathom their differences? How does architecture interact with their internal form-generating processes? How to modify, accelerate, hinder, divert, consolidate or shift them? How can architecture guide innovation in the relation between space and society? What is needed for something new to appear? You will work on a selected stretch of the Coast of Europe, contributing to a general project that envisions innovative paths for the re-modernisation of its territories combining differentiated intensities in the urban and natural spaces. The following is a general outline of the interests of the unit that will be further developed during the progress of the works. -The British Isles beyond the distinction urban-rural: metropolitan reorganisation, new infrastructures and integrated urban planning at a time of institutional change. -The English Channel: a vast natural space at the heart of Europe’s most densely inhabited metropolitan areas, seat of exterritorial freight, migration, off-shore financial and military flows. -Reinventing forests and parks as alternative spaces for modernisation: how can the human processes for protecting natural areas be reinvented as modes for curating innovation and renewal? -UK Manufacture and the reorganisation of postindustrial landscapes at a time of transformation of the ‘pancreative’ economy. Can the thrusts to refocus on engineering and sciences be a potential for urban rethinking? -Scotland at a time of institutional reform: how to envision the human landscapes of contemporary Scotland away from its constructed image of immaculate nature and remoteness? -The White Sea and the re-alignment of Russia towards Europe through the heavy exploitation of prospected mineral resources and novel trading sea-routes. - The Barents Sea: What are the potentials of risk-management for the re-invention of urbanity and inhabitation in the High-North? How can architecture operate away from neocolonial patterns of hyper industrialisation of the sea? -The Coast of Norway as a liminal space between the ore mines and mineral resources of the Scandinavian Peninsula and the oil and gas resources of the sea: new geopolitical border regimes and transformation of the lansdcape. - The Gulf of Finland and the realignment of the metropolitan systems of Helsinki, Turku, St Petersburg and Tallin towards the space of the Baltic Sea. -From Sevastopol, Crimea, across Georgia to Baku: the potentials o the Transcaucasus mountainous range between strategic infrastructure and autonomous urban structures. -Odessa and the reorganisation of post-soviet space beyond heritage and cold-war infrastructures -The Aegean Archipelago: irreducible plurality and collapse of state-system bounding policies. -Mediterranean Straits and Deep-Sea Harbours: from the Suez canal to the Bosphorus and the Strait of Gibraltar. Standardisation of intercontinental spaces of logistics and transport as the creation of alternative polities. -Strait of Gibraltar and the metropolitan re-organisation of a region divided by geopolitical apparatuses. -Iceland and the reshaping of democratic space after the financial meltdown. -The Bay of Biscay and the threat of marginalisation: a network of border zones, coastal and continental, and their relation to the over-centralised hinterlands. -Western Mediterranean: the threat of beauty and the petrification of identities in the coastal zones of Catalonia, the Midi and the Costazzurra. -Adriatic Sea and Greek Archipelago: strengths and weaknesses of the contemporary territorial structures and the transformative processes of post-national realignments.
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Learning at Diploma 4 - Think Tank Diploma 4 cherishes individual initiatives and interests, it is set up as a collaborative environment where different forms of learning architecture can find synergies and profit from individual differences and independent approaches. The main impetus of the work at Diploma 4 is given by the multiple ways through which architecture intelligence can interact with, affect and be affected by the complex human environments of contemporaneity. The work at Diploma Unit 4 will place particular attention to the formation of a strong and individual visual language that supports analysis and argumentations. The unit will engage in the set up of a dynamic and experimental environment where you can develop your specific interests in cultural and design development. The learning at Diploma 4 is a complex set of exposures to current debates and technical advancements in a plurality of domains and is aimed at moving the profession away from a technocratic condition. While directly activating specific proficiencies and techniques, expertise is considered as a tool to achieve integrated visions and to question what are the potentials for innovation in the spatial configurations and dynamics of contemporary Europe. The work of Diploma 4 engages with real-world issues, and uses architecture and urbanism to explore the multifaceted contemporary human environments and design ways to integrate its often divergent trajectories. When we think of the contemporary territories as architecture, i.e. as a complex construction over time, our focus is on the study of the compositions of relations, or capacities between different elements and things that don’t proceed at the same pace and speed. In this sense, architecture is both the object and the method of our work. Diploma 4 acts as a think tank on the potentials of re-modernisation of the coast of Europe. Our research work starts with the hypothesis that the contemporary spaces of the coast of Europe can be much more than what they are. How can we identify the current transformation processes that are shaping and moulding the inhabited spaces of the coasts of Europe? How can we activate architecture intelligence to surpass them and produce sites that are beyond what we already know? At Diploma 4 your work will be embedded in a vast network of researchers, designers, thinkers and practitioners that are at the forefront of the discussion on the transformations of contemporary space. Diploma 4 operates as a think tank, connected to a number of European and international institutions such as the Centre for Research Architecture, Goldsmiths, University of London, the Jan van Eyck Academie Maastricht, The Netherlands; the ZKM/ HfG Karlsruhe et al. The unit is conceived as a conjunction of expert trajectories, where the role of the architect is constantly questioned and reconfigured in relation to the development of real-world problems. In this sense the unit advocates for an ecology of practices, where constant negotiations between a diversity of knowledges generates a reformulation of notions of the brief. Inherited questions are what seems to characterise the current cultural horizon, and the unit works are aimed at reconsidering what an agenda for change can be and what are the necessary conditions that need to be set in motion to bring change into being. The unit is aimed at students who are interested in developing independent and individual research and designs, ready to engage in debates on the future of architecture intelligence and the potentials of the European space and its geopolitical structures. You will have a strong background in architectural culture and design, excellent visualisation skills and a vivid curiosity in exploring contemporary cultural practices and transformation processes. The work will be a specific mixture of thinking and doing, with an emphasis on constructing complex thesis to influence and change the current state of affairs. You will develop a strong cultural, economic, technical and political argumentation and set forth an innovative way of shaping and re-energising architectural practice. The Unit work is accompanied by a Diploma History and Theory seminar that analyses the contemporary relations between polities and space and continues the collaboration with the MA in History and Critical Thinking.
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Work Plan The work at Diploma 4 consists of a year-long project for the re-modernisation of the Coast of Europe. The work will be organised as a complex thesis that proposes an integration of existing and proposed transformation processes for a selected territory of the Coast of Europe. The work will be reviewed and discussed individually on a weekly base, with collective discussions and roundtables linking your individual project to the larger research. Your work will investigate the potentialities of architecture intelligence to address the challenges that Europe is facing at the outset of the 21st Century. We will operate directly in the field, using design to evaluate, test and analyse the current state of affairs of a series of territories undergoing profound transformations: the Coast of Europe is an assemblage of liminal areas facing a liquid space crossed by a multiplicity of trajectories, circulations, migrations, exchanges, trades, conflicts and re-negotiations. What are the patterns of these changes? How can architecture affect them? How are inhabited spaces shaped by the multiple uncoordinated initiatives and forces that characterise today’s European connection and relations? How to fathom their differences? How does architecture interact with their internal form-generating processes? How to modify, accelerate, hinder, divert, consolidate or shift them? The first two terms are conceived as a continuos workflow, marked by a three-week rhythm of development, which will bring you to develop your design in full detail. From the outset of the year, you will be working on the design: the preliminary work moves away from the notion of investigation as a practice that focusses on what is necessary to know before acting and thinking –research before design– and approaches the notion of the project as a space that generates, transforms and innovates agency. The third term will be dedicated to the full detail elaboration of your thesis. We present the work as a series of samples and fathoming into the multiple objects, situations, actors and spaces, social processes and individual subjectivities that shape the liminal spaces of Europe today. We will activate architecture at different levels of magnification: observing the territories as complex assemblages of procedures, networks, infrastructures, populations, historical processes, ecologies, natures and urban spaces, we will trace the specific ways by which these territories are wrought and reshape their physiognomy in relation to globalisation, climate change, economic change and the complex mobilities and circulations that characterise contemporary Europe at an age of its institutional reorganisation. During the design phase of term1 and 2 the Unit will travel to the Coast of Europe and take part in current debates. The plan is to visit International Institutions and the European Space Agency in The Benelux area, and to head to the High North to witness its emerging geopolitical conditions.
Term 1
In Term 1 Diploma 4 meets on Tuesdays and Fridays, if not otherwise informed in the weekly email. Tuesday is individual tutorials and Friday 10AM we meet for a roundatble discussion around a topic, afternoon is for pechakucha presentations of the workprogress. Followed by the HTS Seminar on Polity and Space at 3.30 PM. There is a pin-up with guests at the end of each 3 week round. First meeting is on Friday September 30 at 2PM in the unit space for introduction to Diploma 4, with earlier unit books and students. T1 Week 1-3 / 26.09-14.10.2011
Polyptych
The first three weeks of the project will work out a preliminary set of visual and spatial analysis of the contemporary transformations that carve the spaces of operation in each of the above mentioned territories. We will investigate the form of the territory, its geopolitical relations, the current state of affairs of the economic circulations and population mobilities, the prominent aspects of each specific shoreline and its evolutive dynamics. Through the construction of a polyptych that assembles visual images of the main issues and actors shaping each stretch of coast, we will build a visual essay and an argumentation about the current state of affairs in the areas we are studying. The polyptych will be an archive of contemporaneity, marking the multiple sources and fields that contribute to forming Europe today. _ Output: Polyptych matrix of 10x25 A4 carefully selected and edited images pinned on a wall and miniatured on an A2 (InDesign, learning advanced research methods) Pin-up: Fri 14.10.2011
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T1 Week 4-6 / 17.10-04.11.2011
Territories
Remote Sensing: the second element that works towards the definition of your project will look at the forms of change and of transformation. You will deploy advanced imaging technologies to detect and analyse patterns of change in the physical spaces of contemporary Europe, aiming at understanding how to intervene in the complex palimpsest of European space. Remote sensing technology are methods to detect change in the material configuration of the territories of Europe: you will focus on all that is being transformed. You will produce a rigorous cartography of the paths and changes of contemporary European territories, mapping and tracing the transformations in climate change, population dynamics, trade relations, ecological dynamics, maritime traffic, economy structural changes, recreation and tourism, energy consumption, security and surveillance, transports and resources, water dynamics. The remote sensing images will form a coherent atlas of change that will contribute to the identification of the potentials of the coast. A series of seminars and roundtable discussions will discuss the role of contemporary technologies for automated image making in the debates on the extension of parliamentary and assemblage technologies to include nonhuman and networked agents, from urban surveying as governmentality to changes and alterations in contemporary notions and practices of sovereignty, from complex notions of agency to rethinking the relation to natural processes. _ Workshop: Mon-Fri 17-21.10.2011 Output: 6 panels in A2 of visualised data of the coast (OpenSource data imagery and visualisation programs, Photoshop, Illustrator, 3D modelling, Google Earth Pro) Pin-up: Fri 04.11.2011
T1 Week 7-9 / 07.11-25.11.2011
Devices
The third element of the work toward your integrated plan will investigate the specific architectural apparatuses that shape your section of the coast. In considering the complex mixture of built form, social procedures, spatial arrangements of the cities, territories and regions of your trait of the coast, you will work out the initial hypothesis for your design. In the stage, you will focus your attention on the design in full detail of the spatial transformation devices. This will be done by combining architectural interventions with scenarios, urban reorganisation and urban projects. You will work out in detail a number of architectural elements that form the hallmarks of their integrated plans. The focus in Term 2 will be on exactitude: how can architecture guide the multiple and complex transformative processes? Where should architecture address precision? How does architecture incorporate visibility that can structure the public sphere and organise the many sectorial rationalities that shape it? You will design in full detail the different elements of their integrated plans, with a string focus on the organisation of precise transformation devices. These architectural elements are complex mixtures that activate and affect existing transformation patterns and are aimed at establishing a shared space of operation for the multiple agents and actors operating in the reshaping and moulding of the contemporary European coasts. The work for the project of re-modernisation of the coast of Europe will focus on the existing potentials inscribed in the material and cultural processes of each section of the territory. You will identify the principal issues at stake in his selected region, examine the various dynamics to produce an integrated spatial plan that can guide the multiple forces towards a synergy and innovation in the use of resources. _ Output: 6 panels in A2 of architectural visualisations of devices (CAD, 3D, physical models, animations..) Pin-up: Fri 25.11.2011
T1 Week 9-12 / 28.11-16.12.2011
Thesis
At the end of Term 1 all you will have defined the main outlines of their integrated plan, and identified specific and precise modes of intervening in the physical space in order to achieve synergies and positive affects. As these plans operate along lines of intensity and complexity, it will be fundamental that each work can identify with precision the levels of intervention and begin to envision how the architectural proposal can affect the lines of evolution of the key elements studied. In this phase, the main interest is on synergies and precision. Your work will be articulated as an outline of a complex thesis with detailed and specific interventions in local space. At this stage, 5th year students will have fully developed their TS5 statement and prepared for its testing and implementation in Term 2. _ Output: Workbook size A3, edited argument of project, min 50 pages (InDesign), including project statment 350 words TS5 submission: Technical study statement of intent and workplan with images, 2 pages Fri 09.12.2011 Jury and Christmas Party: Fri 16.12.2011
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Term 2
In the second term you will continue to evolve your project towards a more complex resolution, incorporating into it a variety of elements and components. In Term 2 Diploma 4 meet on Tuesdays and Fridays, if not otherwise informed in the weekly email. Tuesday is individual tutorials and Friday we meet for a unit discussion and group tutorials. There is a pin-up with guests at the end of each 3 week round. The Unit will collaborate with the MA in History and Critical Thinking. The project book from the end of Term1 is being continuously edited and extended. During your Winter break you would have developed and updated your project book, and completed your complementary studies hand-ins. T2 Week 1-3 / 09.01-27.01.2012
Assembly
You will investigate contemporary forms of reassembling the stakeholders of your project. Identifying how change can come into being through the reorganisation of social and institutional structures, you will prefigure a plan of action for your project that will integrate the initiatives of the multiple existing agents. A key part of the projects for the re-modernisation of the Coast of Europe will be the design of a new territorial authority that re-assembles stakeholders strengthening the instruments and institutions, those within local, provincial and national governments, but also those within broader civic society, NGOs, corporations and international organisations that can build capacity. There is an urgent need for new assemblies that can organise and curate the transformations at the different scales, establishing connections between the emerging self-organised transformation processes and the general conditions at the regional, national and international level. Your project will identify how clear architectural form can become the driver for multi-lateral action in the transformation of inhabited space. _ Pin-up: Fri 27.01.2012
T2 Week 4-6 / 30.01-17.02.2012
Timeline of Transformations
Your project will be tested and tried in its capacity to adapt and include uncertain and unforeseen conditions into a stable and coherent arrangement. The growing set of uncertainties facing the 21st century human territories need to be understood as an urgent call to prepare for adaptation and the inclusion of differentiated timespans and self-organisation as a mode of operation for architecture, spatial planning an urbanism. Your project will activate architectural knowledge beyond its current object-oriented procedures and engage it as a transformative set of practices. In this phase you will design a series of timelines that prefigure the consequences of the stages of implementation of your project, engaging with a set of sectoral rationalities. You will define your project as a calibration and synchronisation of existing transformation processes. In this sense, your project will take the form of insertion of a set of propensities to change, intensify and stabilise the non-deterministic transformative patterns of contemporary Europe rather than a final and stable and final configuration. _ Workshop: Animation (Joel Newman) Pin-up: Fri 17.02.2012
T2 Week 7-9 / 20.02-09.03.2012
Integrated Plan
The final period of Term 2 will be a moment of integration of its various elements into a coherent argumentation and thesis. You will develop the project into a complex book, which combines images, texts, drawings, diagrams and maps. This book will be at the same time the archive of your year-long process of design and investigation, as well as the documentation in support of your integrated plan. It will operate at different scales, from the individual project to the larger territorial networks and cohesions, and across different rationalities and discourses, envisioning how architecture can contribute to the current debate on the future and re-modernisation of Europe. _ TS5 Interim: 05-09.03.2012 Pin-up: Friday 09.03.2012
T2 Week 10-11 / 12.03-23.03.2012
Previews
This period will be dedicated at the full development of the various constitutive elements of the integrated plan, with a strong focus on producing innovative imagery and modelling that will confluence in the final portfolio. You will develop your presentation skill both visual and oral for the preview tables. _ 4th Previews: Tue-Wed 13-14.03.2012 5th Previews: Wed-Thu 21-22.03.2012 Easter Party: Fri 23.03.2012
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Term 3
The final term of the year will be entirely dedicated to the development in full detail of your thesis, to the construction of your autonomous argumentation and the preparation of the documentation of your design processes and investigations and your portfolio. In this phase we will deepen the focus of the work and structure the argumentation with a series of individual sessions to develop your specific take on how architecture operates in today world, and develop your thesis to its full potential. In the third term you will edit and compile your materials into a coherent argumentation. During your Spring break you would have developed and updated your project book and completed your TS5. We will meet on Tuesdays and Fridays, if not otherwise informed in the weekly email. Tuesday is individual tutorials and Friday we meet for a unit discussion and group tutorials. T3 Week 1-2 / 23.04-04.05.2012
Developing argument _ TS5 Hand-in: 23.04.2012 Pin-up: Friday 04.05.2012
T3 Week 3-4 / 07-18.05.2012
Compiling
_ Diploma Jury: Fri 18.05.2012
T3 Week 5-6 / 21.05-01.06.2012
Editing
T3 Week 7-9 / 04-22.06.2012
End of Year Reviews and Diploma Committee _ 4th End of Year Reviews: Wed-Thu 06-07.06.2012 5th Diploma Committee: Wed-Thu 13-14.06.2012
www.aadip4.net
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The Subarctic Region - Temporary MunicipalityŠ, by Yi-Jen Chen 2011
The Southern Mediterranean - Towards Radical Hospitality, by Tom Fox 2011, AA Diploma Honours
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Technical Studies 5 The work at Diploma 4 conceives of contemporary space as a complex mixture material and human processes of transformation. The focus for the Technical Studies is on the potentials of new imaging technology for measuring transformations in the inhabited space. You will investigate how the deployment of remote-sensing technologies allows for a reinvention of agency and action. Complex diagnostic technologies currently being developed entail new modes of measuring, testing and intervening into the complex material and organisational environments of contemporary human spaces and have direct connections to the government and control of space. The TS work will focus on innovative satellite remote sensors, geodesy, thermal images, radar refraction, 3D point clouds and other innovative image technologies in order to envision how complex material systems act and design solutions for their integration in coherent spatial arrangements. From the outset of the year the Technical Studies work will be strictly linked to the development of your unit project, and will develop in collaboration between the TS Staff lead by Javier Castanon and the Unit. By the end of term 1 the Fifth Year students will have developed their integrated plans to a level that allows them to identify which material structures of the designs they intend to develop further in their Technical Studies. In Term 2 you will work on a coherent Technical design thesis towards the integration of different material systems into your own unit design work. The TS work is seen as a key strategic and integrated component of the unit project. TS at Diploma 4 is conceived as an activation of specific technical processes and expertise that will drive the integration aspects of the individual designs. Each student is expected to outline a material transformation strategy and to investigate its consequences on the physical and material organisation of their field of intervention. Diploma 4 supports Option 2 for the TS design.
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History and Theory Studies Polity and Space The Diploma Unit Work is accompanied in the first term by a History and Theory seminar on the relation between contemporary polities and the forms of the spaces they operate within. Seminars will be held by John Palmesino on Fridays between 3.30 PM and 5PM, except the first session which will be at 5Pm on Thursday 6 October 2011. Cohabitation, with all its conveniences and accompanied by all its struggles, has for centuries been the main purpose of the construction of cities and of the infrastructures to protect and maintain them. The very act of construction yet implies separation, the set up of differences and demarcations, it implies making differences visible, not allowing others in. It implies generating a differentiated and striated society. Architecture is today undergoing a set of negotiations and re-alignments that wrought it towards a constantly changing position. The relation between the form of the inhabited territories and the institutional framework has never been a static one: the shifts, expansions and modifications in the forms of contemporary polities are reflected in the material configuration of their spaces of operation. The seminar analyses a series of architectures that have made the relation between polity and space a problematic one, where the challenges to preconceived and well-established forms of cohabitation has lead to the rethinking and reshaping of power. The material basis of contemporary transformations of the operations of states, multinationals, international organisations and sub-state polities show up to traditional forms of intervention, where differences and confrontations are modulated and outplayed. The grim doubts that these constructions have cast on the established notions of sovereignty will be the departing point for a detailed theoretical analysis that sets architecture as both the object and method of analysis of transformations of contemporary life. Session 1: Session 2: Session 3: Session 4: Session 5: Session 6: Session 7:
Observing transformations: Uncertainty in the inhabited landscapes Between Space and Society Self-organisation: multiple autonomous agents A Nature: Contemporary Sovereignties Territories, Circulations, Boundaries, Horizons: Knowledge Production and Architecture Inter Alia: Architecture as a Practice Amongst Other Practices Agency
Bibliography Giorgio Agamben , ‘State of Exception’, Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press 2005 Arjun Appadurai, ‘Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization’, University of Minnesota Press 1996 Hannah Arendt, ‘The Human Condition’, Chicago: University of Chicago Press Fernand Braudel, ‘The Perspective of the World’, Berkeley: University of California Press 1992 Gilles Deleuze, ‘Bergsonism’, New York: Zone Books 1991 Gilles Deleuze, ‘Pure Immanence: Essays on A Life’, New York: Zone Books 2001 Okwui Enwezor et al. (eds.) ‘Democracy Unrealized. Documenta 11 Platform 1’, Ostfildern: Hatje Cantz 2002 Michel Foucault, Security, ‘Territory, Population, Lectures at the Collège de France 1977-1978’, New York: Picador 2007 Achille Mbembe, ‘On the Postcolony’, Berkeley: University of California Press: 2001 Irit Rogoff, Terra Infirma: ‘Geography’s Visual Culture’, London and New York: Routledge 2000 Aldo Rossi, ‘The Architecture of the City’, Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press 1984 Saskia Sassen, ‘Territory, Authority, Rights: From Medieval to Global Assemblages’, Princeton: Princeton University Press 2008 Daniel Heller-Roazen, ‘The Enemy of All. Piracy and the Law of Nations’, New York: Zone Books 2009 Isabelle Stengers, ‘Cosmopolitics I’, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press 2010 Immanuel Wallerstein, ‘World System Analysis’, Durham: Duke University Press 2004
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Diploma 4 Reading list Polity and Space: The Coast of Europe Ulrich Beck, ‘World at Risk’, Cambridge: Polity 2009 Fernand Braudel, ‘The Perspective of the World’, Berkeley: University of California Press 1992 Fernand Braudel, ‘The Mediterranean’, Vol. 1, Berkeley: University of California Press 1995 Ricky Burdett, Deyan Sudjic, ‘The Endless City’, London: Phaidon 2008 Jonathan Crary and Sanford Kwinter (eds.) ‘ZONE 6 – Incorporations’, New York: Zone 1992 Lorraine Daston, Peter Galliston, ‘Objectivity’, New York: Zone Books 2007 Norman Davies, ‘Europe – A History’, London: Harper Collins 1996 Jared Diamond, ‘Collapse: How Societies choose to fail or succeed’, London: Penguin 2005 ETH Studio Basel, ‘Switzerland - An Urban Portrait’, Basel: Birkhäuser 2005 Michel Feher (ed.), ‘Nongovernmental Politics’, New York: Zone Books 2007 Paul Krugman, ‘Development, Geography and Economic Theory’, Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press 1997 Paul Krugman, ‘Geography and Trade’, Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press 1992 Rem Koolhaas, Stefano Boeri, Sanford Kwinter, Hans Ulrich Obrist, multiplicity, ‘MUTATIONS’, Barcelona: Actar 2000 Klaus Lanz (ed.), ‘Who Owns the Water?’ Baden: Lars Müller Publishers 2006 Bruno Latour and Peter Weibel, ‘Making Things Public’, Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press 2007 Bruno Latour, ‘Reassembling The Social’, Oxford: Oxford University Press 2005 Bruno Latour, ‘We Have Never Been Modern’, Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press 1993 Donella H. Meadows et al., ‘The Limits to Growth’, Signet 1972 Philippe-Alain Michaus, ‘Aby Warburg and the Image in Motion’, New York: Zone Books 2004 multiplicity, ‘USE – Uncertain States of Europe’, Milan: Skira 2002 Saskia Sassen, ‘Territory, Authority, Rights: From Medieval to Global Assemblages’, Princeton: Princeton University Press 2008 Aldo Rossi, ‘The Architecture of the City’, Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press 1984 John Palmesino, Ann-Sofi Rönnskog, ‘Toward a Territorial Agency, A Case for the Markermeer’, in Volume N. 18, 2008 Immanuel Wallerstein, ‘World System Analysis’, Durham: Duke University Press 2004
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Territorial Agency John Palmesino and Ann-Sofi RÜnnskog are architects and urbanists. They have established Territorial Agency, an independent organisation that combines architecture, analysis, advocacy and action for integrated spatial transformation of contemporary territories. John is Research Advisor at the Design Department of the Jan Van Eyck Academie in Maastricht. He is researching for his PhD at the Research Architecture Centre at Goldsmiths, where he also teaches. He has previously been Head of Research at ETH Studio Basel / Contemporary City Institute and has co-founded Multiplicity, an international research network. Ann-Sofi was previously a researcher at ETH Studio Basel, she has studied in Helsinki, Copenhagen and Zurich. Mission statement We live in an urbanised world, with profound transformations in the organisation of our polities and their spaces of operation. Territorial Agency addresses these changes and the innovative modalities of organising and managing the relation between polity and space, and architecture and urbanism as the agencies of that relation. Territorial Agency is an independent organisation that innovatively promotes and works for sustainable territorial transformations. Territorial Agency is engaged to strengthen the capacity of local and international communities in comprehensive spatial transformation management. Territorial Agency’s projects channel available spatial resources towards the development of their full potential. Territorial Agency works for the establishment of instruments and methods for ensuring higher architectural and urban quality in the contemporary territories. Territorial Agency’s work builds on wide stakeholder networks. It combines analysis, projects, advocacy and action. The activities of Territorial Agency are grounded in extensive territorial analysis, that focus on complex representations of the transformations of the physical structures of contemporary inhabited territories; in comprehensive projects for the strengthening of regional performance and in the organisation of seminars and public events as a process of building capacity to innovate. Contact www.territorialagency.com research@territorialagency.com
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