INTERMEDIATE 7 2011 / 2012
EASTERN PROMISES: INCUBATOR GALLERIES
Prospectus Statement: Intermediate 7 is concerned with transfers between conflicted urban systems, relying on design infrastructures to align formal and programmatic strategies. Learning from Moscow’s sophisticated materialism, we will exploit clashes between culture and commerce to define new hybrid typologies. Diverging artistic and entrepreneurial resources have severely hindered the development of Moscow as a global cultural center, with paradoxical coexistence of cultural refinement and commercial excess at its core. However, tensions between public institutions and private networks, confined collections and dynamic outlets, as well as display spaces and creative products suggest latent possibilities. We will be rigorously opportunistic to convert such artificial ruptures into generative associations. By advancing experimental formats of pragmatic research and speculative design, we will reconcile the Russian extremes of grandiose museums and makeshift markets, imposing salons and underground dealerships, as well as gigantic expo-cities and miniature pop-ups. Unit interventions will activate a sequence of underperforming sites outside segregated social circuits by installing new mediators between creative hubs and shopping routes. We will amalgamate exhibition zones, retail areas, cultural institutes, studios, archives, etc., developing new types of ‘incubator galleries’ – able to attract, nurture and proliferate a range of commercial and cultural events. As both subject and product, ‘design’ will affect display media and filing structures on several scales. Relying on synthetic ‘infrastructures’, we will accommodate spatial and functional, static and dynamic, imposed and emergent components. Diagramming, mapping and graphic analysis will expose active ‘elements’ in juxtaposed urban sites and typologies. Contrasting elements will be combined in conceptual frameworks and physical prototypes. Formal prototypes will poach diagrams of production-displayconsumption, while concrete program structures shortcut to graphic shapes and intricate surfaces. We will pursue a ‘plastic fit’ between form and program inspired by case-studies from leading contemporary practices. The logic of loose control will inform how we curate and manage at the levels of city, building and content. Diagrammatic tools will allow discrete transpositions between urban and architectural concepts and forms. Alternating between social and spatial effects, we will assemble beautiful apparatuses and imageable condensers. Our ‘galleries’ will emerge from the mix of diagrammatic matrices and seductive renderings, composite drawings and intricate models. Theoretical and practical products will be collated in extensive ‘catalogues’ of urban scenarios, design models and final artifacts.
KEY STAGES OF WORK: TERM 1 Exercise 1. APPEARANCE / OPERATION Display Devices and Augmented Elements
We will jump-start unit work with two short drawing and mapping exercises, trying several conceptual and graphic approaches to both spatial and programmatic elements. Working in small teams, you will sample London sites defining the range of source typologies from museum to store (from Tate Modern and Barbican to Vyner Street galleries and Selfridges). We will look at different exhibition space and their links to auxiliary programs. To focus our tests, we will extract characteristic display ‘devices’ (e. g. plinth, frame, panel, container, etc.) and connect them to architectural ‘elements’ (e. g. wall, stall, façade, corridor, etc.) Using a combination of documentation and drawings techniques introduced during a workshop, we will manipulate how the device looks (appearance) vs. how it works (operation). Integrating devices into larger elements, you will augment them in terms of attraction and performance, developing them in relationship to product and body. Culminating in a hybrid drawing, the exercise will test how formal variations affect patterns of interaction, circulation and distribution. The augmented elements will also begin to affect display media and filling systems on larger scales. Output: device ‘operations manual’ (drawings, mappings, a study model); augmented element (hybrid drawing – appearance + operation); unit-wide: catalogue of gallery ‘elements’.
Exercise 2. ELEMENT / INFRASTRUCTURE Element Transfers and System Exchanges
We will proceed to a second, brief design exercise, transforming the London sample site through an augmented element. You will transfer your elements into another host typology (e. g. from museum to a store), re-shuffling two site “experts” into a new team. Introducing the unit’s methodology, we work on two key scales – element vs. infrastructure – as well as draw on case-studies from contemporary practices additional catalysts. Following a seminar / workshop on mapping and diagramming, you will record intersections between several infrastructural systems, such as display, storage, circulation, service, etc. Exploring how a particular system would accommodate foreign elements, you will pursue propagating effects of such an adjustment, emphasizing maximum effect with minimum intervention. Juxtapositions of formal structures and program diagrams will open up broader discussions of cross-pollinated typologies. Setting the stage for research | design in Moscow, you will practice working on a micro-scale of the city through an architectural element, while learning to relate to broader contexts. Output: exchanged London site: composite maps, map-drawings and visual essays; unit-wide: catalogue of typological diagrams and case-study prototypes.
IN CONTEXT: PRAGMATIC RESEARCH AND DESIGN PROVOCATIONS Moscow Research, Diagnostics and Catalogue
Testing experimental formats of pragmatic research and speculative design, we will launch a project on the ‘Moscow Catalogue’ (Cultural + Commerce). The Catalogue will attempt to reveal compromises between public institutions and private networks, confined collections and dynamic outlets, as well as display spaces and creative products. In anticipation of the trip, we will tap into underutilized artistic and entrepreneurial resources of turbulent Moscow. We will try to reconcile the Russian extremes of grandiose museums and derelict markets, imposing salons and underground dealerships, as well as gigantic expo-cities and miniature pop-ups - looking for hidden rules behind inconsistencies. We will query symptomatic texts and case-study projects in the context of Moscow ‘paradoxes’: Control / Freedom: (e. g. master-plans and mega-structures of expansive cultural centers and expos vs. transient fields of display units and ad hoc uses; top-down cultural revitalization programs vs. bottom-up proliferation of private markets and gallery networks); Stability / Instability (e. g. persistent planning regulations and formal shells vs. parasitic galleries, makeshift markets and migrant public institutions; permanent façades and exhibition vs. trade turnovers); Expression / Suppression (e. g. iconic museums and landmark trade centers vs. contained gallery conversions, inaccessible archives and marginalized markets). Original paradoxes will open up avenues for research on specific city domains (e. g. images, spaces, typologies, events, collections, etc.) driven by a set research themes (e. g. art and economic control; art production and consumption; curatorial agency of architecture; city as a museum and market; local and global cultural trade; etc.) Using thematic framework, we will mine Moscow context for transferrable design inventions. Revealed inventions will suggest alternative ways to resolve design tensions in our interventions. We will use two methods simultaneously: ‘diagrammatic diagnostics’ and ‘graphic condensation’ Diagrams will extract key principles of operation and condense spatial and programmatic structures; graphics will visually associate hidden patterns of exchange, and build a local vocabulary of shapes and patterns. Between diagrams, images and texts, we will expose latent transitional urban strategies, design approaches and curatorial operations. Curatorship will become central not only in relationship to exhibiting products, but also in manage our emerging designs and unit outputs. Play with conceptual filters, extract and re-constructions will add power to our research conclusions and design ‘provocations’ (see Exercise 3 below). Following a unit trip, we will curate the AA exhibition and the accompanying ‘Moscow Catalogue’ as a published volume (beginning of Term 2; tbc).
Exercise 3. DESIGN PROVOCATIONS Moscow Prototypes, Transplants and Rejects
Our pragmatic research will be directly linked to design ‘provocations’. Alluding to critical utopias of “paper architecture”, provocations will aim for maximum graphic and conceptual impact without constraint of scope, practicality or methodology. Learning from Moscow’s pragmatic approach, we will stage clashes of commerce and culture and exagerrate their architectural effects. Building upon idiosyncratic mixtures that challenge established typologies, we will put forward both architectural hypothesis and urban scenarios. Design hypotheses will be tested in quick exercises on select Moscow sites. With particular attention to the primary leisure plus entertainment circuits such as Boulevard Ring, we will tackle a series of potential application sites ‘in-between’ segregated cultural and commercial spheres, ranging from landscape segments and block voids to contested buildings and infrastructures. You could either choose one of the proposed sites or suggest an alternative one to fit your agenda, while specifying its relationship to the unit’s extended urban circuit. Earlier exercises on gallery elements and infrastructures will need to react to Moscow site’s unique predicaments and resources. You will once again transplant your gallery elements and systems, and ‘augment’ using excavations and projections on the proposed site. This way, your provocations will occupy a strategic position at the intersection of ‘exported’ and ‘imported’ design models. This exercise will help you make the most of the unit trip, flagging key case-studies, city itineraries and site options in advance. Output: ‘Moscow Catalogue’ (Culture + Commerce): thematic chapters (in teams) and inset projects (individual); Design provocations (individual) - hybrid plates: images, posters, visual essays, etc. + maps, diagrams, drawings (selections to be included in Moscow Catalogue); Moscow trip plan: itineraries, key case-studies and target sites.
TERM 2: Intervention 1: DESIGN INFRASTRUCTURES Incubator Infrastructures, Elements and Prototypes
Our interventions will activate a strategic sequence of underperforming Moscow sites by installing new mediators between creative hubs and shopping routes. You will define programmatic content in addition to the core exhibition zones (such as retail areas, cultural institutes, studios, archives, theaters, mediateques, exploratoriums, restaurants, landscapes, etc.). Customized briefs will call for new types of ‘incubator galleries’ – able to attract, nurture and proliferate a range of commercial and cultural events. You will also be able to finetune the thematic focus of exhibitions within a broader category of ‘design’ - from artistic objects to architectural projects. The logic of ‘loose control’ will inform the way we begin curate at the levels of the building and content – attuned to product categories, display elements and filing systems.
In order to incorporate heterogeneous element while allowing for growth and change, we will resort to synthetic site infrastructures. ‘Infrastructure’ will be interpreted as an advanced design systems, developed on two interconnected levels – program and form. You will assemble, layer and hybridize several systems of elements within conceptual frameworks and material prototypes. Frameworks will bring together diagrams of dissimilar devices / elements and account for their interactions over time. Design versatility will draw on practical applications of multi-element theoretical models of infrastructure (while observing how networks, fields and ecologies relate to megastructures, mat-buildings and mechanical structures in design practice). The seminars and workshops will provide additional tools to address common design tensions – such as the problem of translating organizational infrastructure into forms and patterns. You will be able to discretely convert your infrastructure, moving from abstract diagrams to design models and finally to formal prototypes. Drawing on advanced modeling and prototyping techniques, you will initiate a building set of material elements that would continue to evolve and mutate as they inhabit a dense site model. Output: site infrastructure (diagrammatic templates, layered axo-maps, scenario sections, composite models); site elements: study models and / or a set of 3d prints.
Intervention 2: FORM / PROGRAM Gallery Affiliations, Decorated Diagrams and ‘Plastic Fit’
Helping you concretize your infrastructure at the level of the building, Stage 2 will focus on the power struggle between form and program. You will face the need to specify new programmatic links and formal affiliations between accumulated elements, adjusting your prototypes in response to conflicting demands. For program, you will respond to displaced functions, additional flows or continuous use cycles; for form, you will need to support multiple grounds, nested envelopes and layered surfaces. To open up new adjustment options, we will high-jack a conventional design track, opting for an opportunistic “zigzag” between formal and programmatic practices, methods and processes. Suspectible to various influences, we will be willing to try dissimilar approaches on our “soft” prototypes but travel light – dispensing with ideological baggage, methodological guilt and graphic consistency. After passing introductory “courses” such as “Green Dots” (after R. E. Somol), you could also enroll in workshops on Decorated Ducks, Figured Functions, System Shapes, Expedient Intricacy, etc. With a focus on ‘decorated diagrams’, you will access technique to help you loosen up a functional structure in pursuit of a particular graphic effect. Both programming form and formalizing program, you will destabilize conventional tight or loose fit between the two domains and speculate on a superior ‘plastic’ fit. Proceeding through leaps and shortcuts, we will be able to tweak and collide structures of form and program, suggesting thicker typologies.
Exercise 4: Combined Arsenals and Plastic Prototypes
To help saturate and accelerate your project, we will run a parallel research + design exercise on combined arsenals from diagram-driven contemporary practices. At each key turn of the project, you will analyze and poach a key diagram from a relevant contemporary project, slowly weaving together a project that straddles divided camps of form and program. These camps will be anchored by Peter Eisenman (+ Greg Lynn, Reiser & Umemoto, FOA, NOX, Asymptote, R & Sie, etc.) vs. Rem Koolhaas / OMA (+ Bernard Tschumi, Field Operations, SANAA, Diller & Scofidio, MVRDV, etc.). Your projects will occupy a zone between these two camps, two figures or two specific case-studies. Armed with arsenals from both sides, you will advance a ‘plastic fit’ manifesto and a brief design manual. Output: Form + Program: diagrammatic models; applied combined prototypes; presentation quality physical model; Gallery proposal (diagrams and key drawings: plans, sections, elevations); ‘Plastic Fit’ Manifesto and Design Manual
TERM 3 Intervention 3: MULTIPLIED EFFECTS Beautiful Apparatus: Infrastructural Formalism and Dual Impact
During the last stage of the project, we will refine our galleries in terms of efficiency and effect. We will proceed to re-make crucial ‘segments’ of the gallery infrastructures and mechanisms in physical models and drawings. Coming back full circle to our first exercises, we will try to balance appearance with operation. Having learned the advantages of deliberate slippages and mis-fits, we will be able to engage in two concurrent pursuits. On one hand, we will clarify infrastructural organization and programmatic performance of our incubators in synthetic drawings and maps. On the other hand, we will unleash visual and atmospheric impact of both gallery spaces and installations, using enhanced images and graphic provocations. We will not let rational evaluations of compelling engineering of our devices, condensers and mixers to interfere with our irrational reactions to desirable objects and seductive environments. . Workshops will focus on exploiting the gap between dissimilar concerns in line with ‘infrastructural formalism’: programmatic vagueness and visual clarity; assembly and cosmetics, diagram and image, etc. Alternating between social and spatial effects, we will assemble ‘beautiful apparatuses’ and ‘imageable condensers’. The projects will be resolved both in terms of efficient organization and visual attraction. For final presentations and portfolios, we will re-map multiple effects of the project at the levels of product, building and city. Output: two-tier project documentation (detailed drawings, renderings, simulations + program diagrams, scenarios, phasing plans); final segment model; revised site infrastructure, design provocation, urban scenario, etc.
TECHNICAL STUDIES STATEMENT Systems and Elements This year, Inter 7 will integrate Technical Studies into the design process by focusing on spatial structures and systems and their influence on form and program. Prioritizing structural and material ‘systems’ and their key ‘elements’, you will interrelate two key scales of design. You will not only build a technical foundation for an advanced formal solution, but also test the “fit” between two key design systems – formal and programmatic revising your spatial structures vis-à-vis programmatic diagrams. Striving for a holistic approach to ‘design infrastructures’, we will accommodate interactions between multiple abstract and concrete, conceptual and material systems. We will work closely with Technical Tutors and invited consultants to address issues of stability, support, and enclosure as well as operation, growth and change. Technical research and experimentation with spatial frameworks will open ways to add, exchange and hybridize spaces and uses. We will be alert to opportunity costs: a structural system can allow or prevent extended processes of subdivision, transformation and reprogramming of gallery spaces; while a material element solution will limit options for filing, transfer and display of products. We envision the following key options for ‘systems’ in the TS submission, customized to individual targets and briefs. First, given the importance of urban and disciplinary contexts, it could be an augmentation of the existing building (Moscow site or target object) or a typological case-study (museum, gallery, store, etc.). In such cases of “adaptive re-use”, you could focus on negotiations between inherited and colonizing structures, considering parasitic, additive or composite options. You could analyze how the existing system works and how it is constructed, while speculating on effects of removals, substitutions and attachments. This option would be also useful for those seeking to combine borrowed elements and structures into a hybrid ‘incubator’. All contributing case-studies will be challenged on a deeper “structural” level in order to move beyond conventional support and enclosure solutions. Another option would be to develop variations of integrated structural / formal systems in response to programmatic requirements. This option would catalyze experimentation with ‘plastic fit’ between form and program. You would try to not only translate a program diagram into a spatial structure, but also let enhanced structure alter provisional diagrams. Some examples from recent practice and past unit work include: alternating structural floors for support and service vs. non-structural floors for fluid reprogramming; circumscribing large interior voids for public spaces and events within dense stratified structures for generic uses such as storage or display; integrating surface and structure to enable smooth form while streamlining programmatic flows; thickening and layering grounds surfaces to complement institution program; etc. Finally, you could focus on a local sub-system that helps mediate between two or more larger systems of the building. You could start with a transition point and / or active zone that plays a defining role in your gallery. Considering how to undertake underground construction, to span over or envelope several structures, or to create an autonomous interior volume, you will need to pay particular attention to large-span, retaining, and floating systems for ingenious solutions. Regardless, TS will emphasize specific ‘elements’ and their role within a system. The elements could range from gallery ‘units’ to display ‘devices’ and could be detailed either structurally or materially. When material research is crucial to performance, exploration of inventive ingredients, processes and assemblies could drive the design development at the micro-scale of an element. As the unit emphasizes links between research and design, particular attention will be paid to case-studies from Moscow context and contemporary practices that rely on technical innovation for their performance. TS experiments with systems and elements will be carried out using diagrams and detail models, conceptual analyses and intricate drawings. For those projects emphasizing material resolution of the element, physical models and samples will be essential. The outlined options are based on the assumption that technical questions will originate in three design exercises on elements and infrastructures from Term 1, and that the TS development will align with Interventions 1 and 2 during Term 2 (Late TS option).
OUTCOMES: We will approach portfolio as a curated ‘exhibition’ of graphic outputs, an edited ‘collection’ of statements and manifestos, as well as a ‘line’ of marketable design products. We will generate conceptually ambitious and graphically dense compendia that emphasize the interplay of ideas, experiments, influences, accidents and post-rationalizations. Theoretical and practical products will be collated in extensive ‘catalogues’ of urban scenarios, design models and visual artifacts. Final portfolios will draw on the vast archive of outputs, including: Cogent project statements and manifestoes set in appropriate theoretical context; Design exercises on augmented commercial / cultural sites, their devices, elements and infrastructures (maps, drawings, hybrid map-drawings, visual essays); Analysis / projection exercises, abstracting key elements and system of sample sites and transposing them into design infrastructures (diagrammatic templates, matrices and diaries; serial drawings); Design | research chapters of the ‘Moscow Catalogue’ and exhibition products (essays and visual essays, pamphlets, condensed images, diagrammatic analyses, etc.); Design provocations (posters, diagrams and drawings); Design infrastructures and elements (diagrammatic maps, composite drawings, layered / collapsed models, element 3d prototypes, etc.); Form / program prototypes (case-study scenarios, diagrammatic models, hybrid drawings and combined prototypes); Gallery building proposal (two-tier, full design documentation: fragment models, synthetic drawings, augmented images, etc.); Plus any other creative documentation of inspiration, resources, processes, side-effects and / or repercussions of the project. By being a part of this research | design unit, you will learn how to: - channel research and design, responding to urban contexts and relevant precedents via informed and polemical projects; - think and work on both abstract and concrete levels, using a range of advanced visual and conceptual tools to convert ideas into tangible deliverables; - project diagrammatic and infrastructural systems that reconcile multiple constituents and exceed a building in terms of impact; - renovate design methods and technique to aid translations between several scales and stages of the project: from urban site to building, from organization to space, from diagram to form, etc. - connect theory and practice, efficiently using theoretical debates and precedents to propel your inventions, while generating new concepts and theories during your design process.
PRELIMINARY SCHEDULE TERM 1 Week 2 – 3: EXERCISE 1: APPEARANCE / OPERATION Display Devices and Augmented Elements Analysis and Extraction from Cultural and Commercial sites, London, UK / Augmented ‘Elements’ in Context Workshop: Drawing the Element’s Form and Program Pin-up Week 4 – 5: EXERCISE 2: ELEMENT / INFRASTRUCTURE Element Transfers and System Exchanges Research | Design: Operations Manual / Urban Element Workshop: Mapping Elements and Infrastructures Seminar: Mapping and Diagramming: Graphic Typologies and Analytical Categories Process Jury HTS / Unit Research Proposals Week 6: Open Week Workshop: Projective Representation (tbc) Week 7-11: IN CONTEXT: Pragmatic Research + Design Provocations Moscow Paradoxes + Latent Solutions; “Moscow Catalogue”
Research Themes Revised / Teams – Expert Allocation; Shared Research Database Initiated Diagrammatic Analysis: Resource Compilation, Analysis and Modeling Graphic Condensation: Augmented Images, Posters, Cartoons and Visual Essays Workshops: Diagrammatic Diagnostics; Sampling The Image of the City Seminar: Urban Conflicts and Infrastructures – Student Presentations Research | Design: Manifestos + Speculations Research | Design: Gallery Elements / Analysis to Projection Charette: Design provocation 1 Process Jury Week 9-11: EXERCISE 3: Moscow Prototypes, Transplants and Rejects Exercise Transplant and Design Provocation Cultural and Commercial Typologies and Precedents – East / West Re-Siting Elements / Moscow Sites Seminar: Museum and Curatorship Seminar / Workshop: Research to Design - Visual Methods and Precedents ‘Charette’: design provocation 2 Week 11: Moscow Trip Itineraries, Key Case-studies and Site – Proposals Complimentary Studies Submissions TS3 Submission Proposal Week 12: Moscow Unit Trip (Dec. 10 – 18; Dates to be confirmed) Urban Lab: Case-Studies and Sites / Key Elements Joint Workshop and Presentation: Strelka – TBC
TERM 2 Week 1: “Moscow Catalogue” and Design Provocation 3 Site / Design Intervention 1 Proposals Brief 1: Proposed Term Jury + AA Exhibition (tbc) Week 2 - 4: Progress Reviews / TS3 Submission Proposal Reviews Intervention 1: DESIGN INFRASTRUCTURES Incubator Infrastructures, Elements and Prototypes Site Proposal + Re-Mapping Diagrammatic Analysis + Visual Narratives (Systems, Conflicts, Opportunities) Brief 1: Revised Infrastructure and Elements: Programmatic Strategy + Formal Components Seminar / Workshop: Design Infrastructures / Frameworks and Ecologies Seminar: Elements Applied Diagrams: Gallery Prototypes Week 4: Combined Tutorials Week 5: Open Week Workshop: Advanced Digital Modeling (tbc) Week 6: Mid-Term / Process Jury Week 6 –11: Intervention 2: FORM / PROGRAM Gallery Affiliations, Decorated Diagrams and ‘Plastic Fit’ Brief 1: Deconstructed; Brief 2: Proposed Design Infrastructures – Form and Program Workshop: 1. Programming Form / “In-Formation and De-Formation”; 2. Formalizing Program Seminar: Tight / Loose Fit; New Mode of Consistency; Mediations and Disjunctions – Student Presentations Form and Program Combined Prototypes; “Plastic Fit” and Modeling Workshop: Modeling ‘Charette’: Form + Program Prototypes TS / Unit – Systems Presentations
EXERCISE 4: Combined Arsenals and Plastic Prototypes (Parallel to Intervention 2) Research | Design: Case Studies Analysis, Scenarios and Diagrammatic Templates Plastic Fit Manifesto and Operations Manual: Form vs. Program Week 8: Workshop: “Switching Camps”: Functional Shapes + Decorated Diagrams Revised Proposal in Context / Re-Mapping the Site Week 9: Later TS/Option 2: TS 3 Interim Juries Workshop: Portfolio Week 10: 2nd Year - Submissions Hand-in Week 11: Gallery Prototype / Portfolio Draft Intermediate Previews for 3rd Year / Part 1 3rd Year Submission Hand-in TERM 3 Week 1: Later TS/Option 2: Final Document Hand-In Term Jury Week 2 – 4: Intervention 3: MULTIPLIED EFFECTS Beautiful Apparatus: Infrastructural Formalism and Dual Impact Research | Design: Organizational Strategies and Atmospheric Effects Program + Atmosphere; Form + Performance. Two-Tier Project Documentation Brief 3: Revised Seminar / Workshop: Infrastructural Formalism and Beautiful Apparatus (or how to have both seductive imagery and rigorous organization) Process Jury Week 5 – 7: Seminar / Workshop: Expediency vs. Intricacy - “All Systems Go” Workshop: Advanced Visualization Media (“Augmented Image”) Revised Proposal / Efficiency and Effect Workshop: Portfolio Week 7 2nd Year End of Year Reviews Week 8 Resolution / Re-presentation Re-packaging: Catalogues and Portfolios Research | Design: Final Reflection / Manifestos, Posters, and Matrixes Week 9 AA Intermediate Examination (RIBA/ARB Part 1) Exhibition: “Incubator Galleries” + Catalogue (Exhibition and Catalogue Publication Production)
UNIT MASTERS AND CONSULTANTS: Maria Fedorchenko studied at UCLA, Princeton University and Moscow Institute of Architecture. She practiced in Russia, Greece, and the US (including Michael Graves & Associates) and directs a design consultancy. Her research and design has been exhibited and published internationally. She taught studios and seminars at UC Berkeley, UCLA and CCA since 2003 and has been involved in HTS and Housing & Urbanism Programmes at the AA. Tatiana von Preussen was educated at Cambridge University and Columbia University. She has practiced in both London and New York where she worked for James Corner Field Operations on The High Line park. She has taught design and advanced representation at Columbia University. Previously a partner of the research group Gleamlab, she is currently a director of vPPR Architects. Consultants (full list tbc): João Bravo da Costa; Monia de Marchi (AA); Richard Difford (University of Westminster); Damien Hodgson (3D Reid); Francesca Hughes (AA); Melodie Leung (Zaha Hadid); Kathy O’Donnell (Berlage Institute / Brighton University); Damian Rogan (Buro Happold).