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Architectural'Association'School'of'Architecture' 7':'25'JULY'2014'
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The further backward you can look, the further forward you can see. Winston Churchill '
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' From'Cedric'Price’s'Fun'Palace,'to'Winston'Churchill’s'War'Room,'and'the'hundreds'of' spaces,'buildings,'and'years'in'between'and'since,'London'is'characterised'by'the'seminal' projects'that'define'the'form'and'culture'of'the'city.''''London'has'been'shaped'by'both'the' built'and'unbuilt'projects'throughout'its'history,'and'so'this'year’s'summer'school'will' revisit'the'neglected'legacy'of'unbuilt'architectural'genius'in'London.''' ' This'summer'students'will'invent,'speculate'and'design'their'own'London'Project'by' inventing'new'worlds'to'challenge'the'status'quo.'The'programme'will'challenge'students'to' consider'London’s'major'projects'as'propositions'that'suggest'new'architectures'alongside' cultural,'political'and'social'repositioning'of'the'city.' ' The'Summer'Architecture'School'will'invent'and'describe'Unbuilt!London!through' compelling'perspectives:'spatial,'social,'economic,'ecological,'cultural'and'technological.'It' will'use'London'as'its'primary'experimental'laboratory'of'ideas'and'actions.'Individual'and' collective'discoveries'are'encouraged'as'well'as'innovative,'evocative'proposals.'The'brief' and'intense'course—based'on'the'renowned'AA'Unit'System—emphasises'techniques'of' interpretation,'recording,'drawing,'making'and'thinking'through'diverse'media'types,'both' analogue'and'digital.''
UNBUILT'LONDON! SUMMER'SCHEDULE'2014' ' '
WEEK$1$ 7'July'Mon' ' ' ' '
GROUP'1'' GROUP'1' GROUP'1' GROUP'2' GROUP'2' GROUP'2' GROUP'3'' GROUP'3' GROUP'3' ' ' 8'July'Tue' ' ' 9'July'Wed' 10'July'Thu' ' ' 11'July'Fri' 12'July'Sat' 13'July'Sun'
9:00' ' 10:30' ' 11:00'' ' 13:00' ' 14:00' ' 15:00' ' 16:00' ' 14:00' ' 15:00' ' 16:00' ' 14:00' ' 15:00' ' 16:00' ' 17:00' ' 10:00'X'22:00' 18:00' ' 10:00'X'22:00' 10:00'X'22:00' 18:00' ' 10:00'X'22:00' 10:00'X'22:00' 10:00'X'22:00'
Registration,'Coffee'+'Croissants' ' ' Introduction' ' ' ' ' Unit'Presentations'and'Selections' ' ' Lunch' ' ' ' ' ' Computer'Lab'Introductions'' ' ' Workshop'Introduction' ' ' ' Tour'of'the'AA' ' ' ' ' Workshop'Introduction' ' ' ' Tour'of'the'AA' ' ' ' ' Computer'Lab'Introductions'' ' ' Tour'of'the'AA' ' ' ' ' Computer'Lab'Introductions'' ' ' Workshop'Introduction' ' ' ' Team'Announcements'+'Drinks' ' ' Design'Studio' ' ' ' ' *FORMAT$KURT$COBAIN$ $ $ $ Design'Studio' ' ' ' ' Design'Studio' ' ' ' ' *FORMAT$LINA$BO$BARDI$ $ $ $ Design'Studio' ' ' ' ' Design'Studio' ' ' ' ' Design'Studio' (Free'Day'Recommended!)'
36'Bedford'Sq' 4'Morwell'St' 4'Morwell'St' AA'Dining'Room' 39'Bedford'Sq'rm'101' AA'Workshop' Meet'at'Entrance' AA'Workshop' Meet'at'Entrance' 39'Bedford'Sq'rm'101' Meet'at'Entrance' 39'Bedford'Sq'rm'101' AA'Workshop' AA'Terrace' 16'Morwell'St' New'Soft'Room$ 16'Morwell'St' 16'Morwell'St' New'Soft'Room$ 16'Morwell'St' 16'Morwell'St' 16'Morwell'St'
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WEEK$2$ 14'July'Mon' 15'July'Tue' 16'July'Wed' ' ' 17'July'Thu' ' ' 18'July'Fri' ' ' ' ' 19'July'Sat' 20'July'Sun'
10:00'X'22:00' 10:00'X'17:00' 10:00'X'22:00'' 18:00' ' 10:00'X'22:00' 18:00' ' 10:30'X'12:30' 13:00'X'22:00' 18:00' ' 10:00'X'22:00' 10:00'X'22:00'
Design'Studio' ' ' INTERIM'REVIEW'ALL'UNITS! Design'Studio' ' ' *FORMAT$A.R.CHITECT$ $ Design'Studio' ' ' *BBQ$1$TABULA$LOOP$ $ *AA$STUDENTS$PRESENT$WORK' Design'Studio' ' ' *FORMAT$CHELSEA$MANNING$ Design'Studio' ' ' Design'Studio' ' '
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16'Morwell'St'' 4'Morwell'St' 16'Morwell'St' ' New'Soft'Room$ 16'Morwell'St' AA'Terrace' New'Soft'Room$ 16'Morwell'St' New'Soft'Room$ 16'Morwell'St' 16'Morwell'St'
$ '
WEEK$3$ 21'July'Mon' 10:00'X'22:00' Design'Studio' ' ' ' 22'July'Tue' 10:00'X'22:00' Design'Studio' ' ' ' ' ' 18:00' ' *BBQ$2$TABULA$LOOP$ $ $ 23'July'Wed' 10:00'X'22:00' Design'Studio' ' ' ' 24'July'Thu' 10:00'X'22:00' Design'Studio' ' ' ' 25'July'Fri' 10:00'X'17:00' FINAL'REVIEW!' ! ! ' ' ' 17:30'X'late' Summer'School'PARTY!' ' ' ' $ Individual'unit'schedules'and'special'events'will'be'announced'by'unit'tutors' '
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16'Morwell'St' 16'Morwell'St' AA'Terrace' 16'Morwell'St' 16'Morwell'St' Lecture'Hall' Bedford'Square'
FORMAT Issue 4 8—18 July 2014 FORMAT is ‘live magazine’ looking at the shapes that discourse takes. Guests mix anecdotes and analysis, seminars and screenings. Issue 4 focuses on four iconic individuals and the ways in which they innovated their respective disciplines and cultural fields. http://format.aaschool.ac.uk — Organised by Shumon Basar
ALL EVENTS TAKE PLACE IN THE NEW SOFT ROOM AT 600PM ENTRANCE IS FREE AND OPEN TO THE PUBLIC TUESDAY 8 JULY KURT COBAIN FORMAT
presents the neo-Teen Spirited tragic hero, mistaken myths and that celebrity cardigan with SHUMON BASAR and songs by TAMARA BARNETT-HERRIN THURSDAY 10 JULY LINA BO BARDI FORMAT
presents the Italian émigré architect turned Brazilian auteur and her radically inventive concrete, social settings with NAOMI BLAGER and MADELON VRIESENDORP WEDNESDAY 16 JULY A.R.CHITECT FORMAT
presents the invention of the image and character of an architect as the first design project, a fiction that assures a future to come with BRETT STEELE and SHUMON BASAR FRIDAY 18 JULY CHELSEA MANNING FORMAT
presents whistleblower Bradley Manning’s alter-ego as a portrait of the Internet in the early 21st century with OMAR KHOLEIF and TRAVIS JEPPESEN
TABULA LOOOP To take knowledge of is to take position on.
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BBQ 1: Knowledge Thursday 17th July - 6pm Diving into the genealogy of the term Tabula, we will take knowledge of three forms of artistic production: Tableau, Table & Tablet. Using three figures from three disciplines we will re-read our past through one of today’s most vocal tool: Youtube.
BBQ 2: Position Tuesday 22nd July - 6pm After our brief look back we will now jump in a possible future. The second evening will be a naive manifesto of the Tabula Looop. Refusing to be exclusive to any of the form of production the proposed argument will embrace quantity, messiness and fast paced production as a new paradigmatic mindset.
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Director! Natasha'Sandmeier' ' Programme!Co=ordinator! Andrea'Ghaddar' Student!Co=ordinator! Catarina'Sampaio'Cruz' ' ' UNIT 1 BABYLON Madeleine Kessler and Manijeh Verghese UNIT 2 MIND THE GAP Arantza Ozaeta and Alvaro Martin UNIT 3 UNBUILD TO BETTER BUILD Ana Marti-Baron and Clement Blanchet UNIT 4 LIVELOAD Michael Stanton and Esteban Salcedo UNIT 5 LONDINIUM #DIGITAL DIORAMA Javier Pe単a Galiano, Maria Jose Marcos, Gorka Blas and Kim Sewon Roy UNIT 6 THROUGH THE PEEPHOLE Scrap Marshall and Pasquale Iannone UNIT 7 LONDON STUMPS Anna Czigler, Aude-Line Duliere, Suzi Pain and Gabriel Sanchiz
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! unit'1' Madeleine Kessler and Manijeh Verghese
Week 1 Room
Week 2 Tower
Week 3 City
Each student will be assigned an unbuilt tower of London which they will reappropriate in a group collage to create the skyline of Babylon. This will become the backdrop to our first stage: the room. Within the room the students will frame Babylon, exploring city life at a human scale. A newspaper will be produced, for delivery each morning, reporting on the latest news from Babylon.
In the second week students will continue to develop a narrative for Babylon, but this time at Tower scale. Students will divide into pairs to create backdrops for individual towers of Babylon. News of Babylon’s development and expansion will continue to be reported through the daily newspaper, addressing how the city is read at Tower scale.
For the final week we will insert our towers into the wider urban grain and explore what it is like to live in Babylon at City scale. In pairs, the students will now develop the stage to become that of the city. The daily newspaper will continue to report the city’s news, now questioning the difference between the room, the tower and the city.
Questions
Questions
Questions
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What is the relationship between the room and the skyline? Who lives in Babylon? What is life like in Babylon?
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How does the tower relate to the room and the skyline? How do people and buildings interact with their neighbours?
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What are people talking about in Babylon? What are the latest development proposals for Babylon? How are these being received?
Activities
Activities
Activities
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AA Cinema Screening of Syndecdoche New York National Theatre Backstage Tour
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Centre Point Viewing Platform and Drinks PunchDrunk Talk / Tour AA Student Archives
Visit to Gallery AA Cinema Screening of Metropolis
Output
Output
Output
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Research unbuilt Towers Group Collage of Babylon Room Stage Set Daily Newspaper
Tower Stage Sets Daily Newspaper
City Stage Sets Daily Newspaper Special Newspaper Archive Edition
“Architects must continue to reclaim the city, even if it is only on paper” - Jane Alison, Future City Manijeh Verghese AADipl(Hons) An AA graduate with a previous degree in Architecture and Mathematics, Manijeh is a tutor, editor and writer. Having previously worked for practices in London and Boston, she currently teaches an Intermediate unit at the AA, is the Salon coordinator at Disegno magazine and is the editor and founder of the website, AA Conversations. Manijeh is interested in the idea of cultural context and the communication of information through various media and formats, which is the subject of her monthly article for Balmond Studio’s website, Thinking in Practice.
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Madeleine Kessler AADipl MEng.(Hons.) Maddie has been working at Studio Weave since graduating from the AA in 2013. Previously she gained a Masters degree in Structural Engineering and Architecture from Sheffield University. Maddie is interested in urbanism and the condition of the global city. She has worked in China, Switzerland, Belgium and The UK. Most recently, Maddie was awarded the KPF Traveling Fellowship, facilitating anexploration in cross-cultural exchange between urban centres along The Silk Road through Central Asia.
Madeleine Kessler Manijeh Verghese
15.07.2014
AR
14th of july Tutorials
7th of July
Group Collage
22nd of July Threshold Day From Tower to City
9.07.
2014
AA MA CINE
8.07.2014
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16.07.2014 Tutorials
23rd of July
17.07.2014
24th of July preparing for final jury
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FINAL JURY
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Arantza Ozaeta and Alvaro Martin
MIND THE GAP
CREATE YOUR OWN MICRONATION Arantza Ozaeta & Álvaro Martín
SCENARIO !
It was heartbreaking, if not obscene…to have to imagine here, a city.
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60% of the city of London was destroyed after the Great Fire in 1666; 600 acres devastated after World War II: a razed plane as the basis for a genuinely new beginning…but now, in this rebuilt and apparently full London, we DON’T have the very strong urge ii of making a new beginning.
WHAT IS ‘UNBUILT LONDON’? ! “Unbuilt is what is not made, constructed, formed” (def). The city of London is shaped not only by what is built, but by what is unbuilt. In a world of Google Earth where we think that the world is fully mapped out, and where the inner cities seem fully built, this Unit proposes, by expanding the notion of unbuilt, a journey through the remaining hidden geographies of London – FROM ODD LOTS TO GUTTER SPACES, LEGAL GAPS AND STOPPED CONSTRUCTIONS –. This is a stunning testament to how mysterious, empty and available the city still remains today. It is a celebration of both our love of places and the desire to discover and imagine new places.
BRIEF
PHYSICAL CONTEXT
= UNBUILT TERRITORIES
The Unit will not start from scratch, from the tabula rasa. Our cities have grown up and occupied all what is comfortably available: what is left is what is the most troublesome. We are looking for those urban territories virtually unusable but with potential, the plot of the XXI century, AREAS OF OPPORTUNITY HIDDEN to an untrained eye where the contemporary architect proposes new ways of inhabit. Because inhabit is not necessarily only construction but adaptation -ODD LOTS-; not build but place -LEGAL GAPS-; not make but recovery -STOPPED CONSTRUCTIONS-. We will act as INTRUDERS. Nothing can stop our boldness. We must fear taking something for granted. We are interested in the intruder and iii the intrusive, as reactive and complicit . [Jenny&Odell:&& 144&Empty&Parking&Lots,&2010]&
CULTURAL CONTEXT = MICRONATIONS
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[Kugelmugel:&& Micronation&in&Vienna,&1984]&
How can we colonize these spaces? The program, which will drive us to speculate through these unbuilt places, will be the most complex program reduced to the minimum: a Micronation. A Micronation is a community, an entity that claims to be an independent nation or state. iv Current society shows an increasing wish of individual participation to the construction of the collective . So a wide range of different forms of life, cultural codes, material worlds and identities is produced. These urban tribes usually share a culture, collective awareness, stable traditions and a place. And as architects we should learn to perform what these ALTERNATIVE COMMUNITIES need to be installed in the city, their urban dynamics, and develop NEW SPATIAL MODELS according to their culture. People v will inform our working frame. And the inhabitants of these places, those strong enough to love them will become a MICRONATION.
MEDIA CONTEXT = FAKE ENTERPRISES !
[Orson&Welles:&& War$of$the$Worlds,&1938]&
“What the eye sees and the ear hears, the mind believes.” (Harry Houdini) The Unit will focus on the construction of the EVIDENCES OF THESE UNBUILT MICRONATIONS, BUT REAL in our minds. We will slide between the real and the fictional, that world between the truth and the lie, brought to reality through a BRANDING STRATEGY. It is based on the photography as -the space of the most absolute blindness- and the mass media as connective bridge with the fragile spectator. A fake enterprise, in the style of Orson Welles, with enough narrative character to inform our practice. vi By understanding Architecture as an environmental construction as a landscape of events, a hyperplace constitute by dynamic, unfinished and evolutionary situations that offer a multiplicity of lectures and interpretations, students will explode their fantasy. Modeling this campaign, we will develop contemporary operative strategies, which will address spatial, social, economic, ecological, cultural, material and technological perspectives. This is a narrative exercise, a construction, which enriches our look by questioning it.
METODOLOGY & SCHEDULE Doing something intensively and quickly requires fast movements, immediate answers and constant self-criticism. Every week, new precise instructions are provided and we follow them; we must just ‘jump in’ without knowing the result. We will discover it!
1st week: TRACK UNBUILT SPACES !
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Our headquarters are the AA Buildings and we will cover an area of 1km around it. Here, we will track 3 kinds of unbuilt territories:
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1.ODD LOTS: “gutterspace” properties -unusually small slivers of land from the
city through anomalies in surveying, zoning and public works expansion. Small parcels of land hidden in-between the buildings and even on top of them. References: Odd Lots-Fake Estates, Gordon Matta-Clark, 1974 [1] and Pet Size, Atelier Bow Wow, 2003 [4]. [3]&
2.LEGAL GAPS: by negotiating with regulations and exploiting the loopholes and legal voids in the city planning legislation, we can find spaces of opportunity, (a)legal and available places. References: Study for Maximum Mass Permitted by Hugh Ferris,1922 [2] and the Subversive Strategies for Urban Occupation by Santiago Cirugeda such as Containers and Scaffolding.
[4]&
3.STOPPED CONSTRUCTIONS: what is not finished, what has been abandoned. References: Torre David [3], a 45-story office tower in Caracas stopped before
completion. Today, it is the improvised home of a community of more than 750 families, living in an extra-legal and tenuous occupation. Document 1 / CATALOG OF UNBUILT LONDON 2014 We will amass an archive of Google Earth captures, maps, photographs of these lands, videotapes and other documents. The compilation of this precise, multiple and diverse info will produce a collective CATALOG OF UNBUILT TERRITORIES in London 2014. Visit 1 / José Manuel L. Ujaque With this expert in the non-built, we will visit these forgotten spaces and learn to track hidden or unobvious unbuilt territories in LDN
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2nd week: CREATE YOUR OWN MICRONATION [5]&
In order to develop operative strategies for these spaces, our program will be the production of a Micronation, which requires of 4 fundamental features: a permanent population, a place in a determined territory, a Government and the capability to establish relationships with other nations.
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Document 2 / MICRONATION PROFILE We will act as Micropatrologists. We will produce a complete profile of these Micronations [5]: their inhabitants, traditions, culture codes, flags, leaders, currencies, date of foundation, maps and other facts. They will be published as an appendix of the last volume of the famous The Lonely Planet Guide to Home-Made Nations (2006) [6] and we will upload their own profile to listofmicronations.com Visit 2 / Francisco G. Triviño This PhD Architect will encourage students to speculate and embrace multiple disciplines in the definition of this singular program [7]&
3rd week: DESIGN A ‘PLACE BRANDING’ [7]&
[9]& [9]&
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We will produce evidences of these Micronations, which help us to describe them from multiple approaches such as their history and identity (Sputnik, Joan Foncuberta) [7], cultural codes, fashion and furnitures (Pao for the Tokyo Nomad Girl, Toyo Ito) [8], technologies (The Cushicle, Archigram) [9], etc. Document 3 / PUT A BRAND ON IT! Based on these images, collages, mini-prototypes, texts, etc. every Micronation will develop its own “brand” to introduce itself to the world. We will start by finding what is unique about it, we will follow a naming process to find the right term to call it, a visual identity process to find the right visual identity that projects its personality and value. Ambition, communicative quality, planning, materiality and exploration of this narrative tool will be our goals. We will learn from the adrenaline rush experiences of Red Bull, the corporative culture of Google and its religion -Googlism-, Ryanair as a brand which anyone loves to hate, etc. The launch of this Micronations Branding will take place on the Final Jury st where we will perform a Parliament: the 1 Convention of the ‘United AAMicronations. Come and Join us!
[10]&
Visit 3 / Cristina Gonzalez Bermejo & Andra Oprisan These Brand Strategists will introduce the main guidelines to create innovative, strong, experimental and seductive place brandings TO FINISH, THE ORGANIZATION OF THE ‘UNITED AA MICRONATIONS’ INVITES YOU TO THEIR 1
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PARLIAMENT!
CV & Bio Unit Staff Arantza Ozaeta and Alvaro Martín head the architectural office TallerDE2 since 2007 [ www.tallerde2.com ], which makes an ongoing commitment to research and knowledge, both in training and innovative practice. Their work has international scope, been recognized, published and awarded on several occasions. Arantza Ozaeta and Alvaro Martín’s work is mainly developed between Spain, Germany and Italy, where they are teaching, researching and building recent winning competitions. They studied architecture at the Madrid Polytechnic ETSAM and at the TU Delft of The Netherlands. In Rotterdam they collaborated in MVRDV. They completed the coursework for the PhD at the Madrid Polytechnic ETSAM in the Department of Advanced Projects where they are PhD candidates. They have been teaching at the Architectural Association (Summer School London 2013), the Architectural Polytechnic University of Madrid (Spain), Hochschule Coburg University of Applied Sciences (Germany), Politecnico di Milano (Italy), Ural State Technical University of Ekaterimburg (Russia). In addition, they have actively participated in debates and lectures. Arantza Ozaeta and Alvaro Martín won the European competition Europan-9 in Selb (Germany) in 2008, where they are developing an entire master-plan through the Urban Acupuncture Principle. Among their awards, they have received the German Bauwelt Prize 2013 “First Works”, Finalists at the XII Spanish Architecture and Urbanism Biennale 2013, the prize COAM Luis M. Mansilla 2013 as the Best foreign project made by a Spanish office abroad. Recently, the Spanish magazine ‘Arquitectura Viva’ selected them as "one of the eight most representative young Spanish studios", and director Arantza Ozaeta was shorlisted “Emerging woman of the year 2014” from the British magazine AJ.
Visiting Teachers Cristina Gonzalez Bermejo and Andra Oprisan are brand strategists at Saffron, a renowned Brand consultancy responsible for creating many brands for places like the city of London, Trinidad and Tobago, Poland and East Timor, among many other commercial and non for profit brands. Saffron was founded in 2001 by Jacob Benbunan and Wally Olins, who is considered leading brand practitioner by the Finantial Times [www.saffron-consultants.com] Francisco G. Triviño is a Spanish PhD. Architect and Teacher, an expert in “the mistake” as a potential tool usable during the design process, capable to reveal creative solutions. His intellectual approach is registered in the book “Atlas and Topology of the Error as a Productive System in Architecture” &[www.hipo-tesis.eu] José Manuel L. Ujaque is member of MEVA and he is fully focused on processes that deal with non-built solutions. His on-going PhD. research, titled “Negative postproductions: doing (almost) nothing in architecture”, is completely committed to demonstrate the veiled existence of this different attitude within the architectural field [www.somosmeva.com]
XREF + BONNETT , Alastair: “Off the Map”. Aurum Press, 2014. + BRILLEMBOURG, Alfredo; KLUMPNER, Hubert, Urban-Think Tank Chair of Architecture and Urban Design, ETH Zurich. “Torre David: Informal Vertical Communities”. Lars Müller Publishers, 2012. + KAIJIMA, Nomoyo; KURODA, Junzo; TSUKAMOTO, Yoshiharu. “Made in Tokio”. Kajima Publishing, 2001. + KASTNER, Jeffrey; NAJAFI, Sina; RICHARD, Frances. “Odd Lots: Revisiting Gordon Matta-Clark's Fake Estates”. Cabinet, 2005. + KOOLHAAS, Rem; MAU, Bruce. “S,M,L,XL” (Exodus, or the Voluntary Prisoners of Architecture, 2-21 pgs). Monacelli Press, 1995. + LATOUR, Bruno. “Paris: Ville Invisible”. Web: www.bruno-latour.fr/virtual/index.html + ODELL, Jenny. Web: www.jennyodell.com + RYAN, John; DUNFORD, George; SELLARS, Simon. “Micronations: The Lonely Planet Guide to Home-Made Nations”. Lonely Planet Publications, 2006. + SHAPIRO, Jody. “How to start your own Country” (72 min Documentary). Canada, 2010. + SORIANO, Federico. “100 Hyperminimals”. Lampreave, 2009. + STRAUSS, Erwin S. “How to start your own Country”. Paladin Press, 1999.
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&KOOLHAAS,&Rem;&MAU,&Bruce.&S,M,L,XL.&Monacelli&Press,&1995.& &KOOLHAAS,&Rem;&MAU,&Bruce.&Idem.& &SORIANO,&Federico.&100$Hyperminimals.&Lampreave,&2009.& iv &JAQUE,&Andres.&La$Arquitectura$es$la$Sociedad$Representada.&Archfarm&nº13,&2009.& v &KOOLHAAS,&Rem;&MAU,&Bruce.&Idem.& vi &ABALOS,&Iñaki.&La&Biennale&di&Venezia.&Spanish&Pavillion&2014.& ii
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Ana Marti-Baron and Clement Blanchet
UNBUILD TO (BETTER) BUILD “The further backward you can look, the further forward you can see.” Sir Winston Churchill
Tutors: Ana Marti- Baron Clément Blanchet
2014 AA SUMMER SCHOOL
UNBUILD TO (BETTER) BUILD 1/3
BRIEF “Cities also believe they are the work of the mind or of chance, but neither the one nor the other
Today the expected increase of urban population allows us to still consider London as an eternal evolving city. The studio will contemplate London architecture and history while letting some allowances to unbuild in order to better build. The reasons or criteria’s to erase parts of London should be constructed based on different themes, either could they be subjective and objective. The themes of Italo Calvino’s Invisible cities will be the starting ones to consider preservation: memory, desire, signs, thin cities, trading cities, eyes, names, dead, sky, continuous cities and hidden cities. The to sustain an overall development strategy. The unit will unbuild London in order to better invent, speculate, design and build new worlds. We will use London as it primary laboratory of ideas and actions. How to plan, think and unbuild a city to better build? How to keep the form and the culture of the city in a continuous evolving city? What is the sense of preservation? How to assume a new world that will be on continuous evolution? What will be the form and the culture of this resulting city? The further backwards you can look Italo Calvino’s Invisible cities will be our entry point. The book, because of its approach to the imaginative potentialities of cities, has been used by architects and artists to visualize how cities are, their secret folds, where the human imaginations is not necessarily limited by the laws of physics or the limitations of modern urban theory. It offers an alternative approach to thinking about cities, how they are formed and how they function. The invisible cities of Italo Calvino will help us to extract an invisible city containing the form and the culture of London to preserve. The further forwards you can see The next step will be revealing new territories for the evolving city. Once these new territories will by inventing new worlds to challenge the status quo. The new urban substance will be promoted to last for a cycle of 50 years in order to sustain progress for urbanism and architecture. AA SUMMER SCHOOL 2014 UNBUILT LONDON
UNBUILD TO (BETTER) BUILD 2/3
OUT PUT Students will work as a group to achieve consistency across the work. Graphic styles and techniques in all the research and design phases will be carefully set out by the group in order to achieve this. Digital tools will be introduced but the focus will be on working with hand made techniques as big drawings, collages, and model making. The construction of a big scale model of the city of London will be the masterpiece of the unit. This model will be a three-dimensional art attempt to represent a continuous evolving city. It will take the function of a table in order to represent the instable past, present and future of London. This piece will act as manifesto and will be offered to the AA school.
SCHEDULE Students will work individually, in pairs and as a group. The unit will investigate mechanism of participation, action and discussion as major tools to generate spatial and urban processes. The methodology will be a constant critical point of view: a continuous debate and discussion where nothing is granted. Exploration will be part of the process. Discussion and exchange about the work in progress will be an important part of the daily overall structure of the unit. Every week an external visitor will come to the studio and share his or her expertise according to the common issues. We wish to invite Steve Tomlinson (week1), Madelon Vriesendorp (week 2), and a specialist in model making in collaboration with the model shop (week3) WEEK 1 The further backwards you can look
Introductions and Presentations / One day visit of London selected areas / Work on the Invisible Cities texts / Students will read the book over the week / Everyday will start with a group discussion about selected extract of the book / Each student will explore one theme of Italo Calvino’s cities and how it could be translated in London. Document 1: Students will work individually. Every student will produce a big scale plan with its layer information.The unit will produce a common informed map of the Invisible City of London to be preserved.
WEEK 2 The further forwards you can see of these new territories / Design and invent a new world. Document 2: Students will work in groups three or four persons. Each group will produce a big scale plan of their own London to insert in document 1. Each group will also produced a booklet containing all the research and the outcome documents including plans, diagrams, sketches, texts, collages, models, etc
WEEK 3 The manifesto
Document 3: Students will work as a group. The group will produce a big scale model containing the research and projects of the two last weeks.
AA SUMMER SCHOOL 2014 UNBUILT LONDON
UNBUILD TO (BETTER) BUILD 3/3
BIBLIOGRAPHY Invisible Cities, Italo Calvino The City in the city, Oswald Mathias Ungers Ed: Lars Muller Publishers London Exodus S M L XL , OMA. Ed: The Monacelli Press La Defense Mission Grand Axe S M L XL, OMA. The Monacelli Press Morphologie City Metaphors, O.M. Ungers The city seen as a garden, Peter Cook. Ed: The Monacelli Press
TUTORS Clément Blanchet Architecture, where he joined in 2004. In 2011, he was appointed Director of OMA / France where he led some important urban studies and projects like the new library of Caen, the urban study for 50 000 new housing in Bordeaux and the new bridge for the city of Bordeaux. In 2014 he create his own studio Clément Blanchet Architects. He studied architecture in the AA school of architecture in London, in the Chulalongkorn Mahawitthayalai Architectural School in Bangkok and in the University of Illinois in Chicago. He graduated with high honors from the Architectural school of Versailles and has been an invited critic in France, England, Holland, Denmark and Sweden. He taught during the AA summer school in 2010. He currently teaches at the University of Copenhagen, prototyping a new studio in urbanism and at the Ecole Spéciale d’Architecture of Paris. Ana Marti-Baron of landscape, urbanism and public space. She studied in the Ecole Nationale du Paysage de Versailles-Paris ENSP and graduated with honors in Urbanism and Architecture from the ETSAB in Barcelona in 2003. She worked in the Urban Projects Department of the Barcelona City
resilient district and the 45 hectares park of the right bank in Bordeaux. Ana has been an invited critic at the Ecole Spéciale d’Architecture of Paris and at the Ecole Nationale Supérieure de la nature et du paysage de Blois (France). AA SUMMER SCHOOL 2014 UNBUILT LONDON
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Michael Stanton and Esteban Salcedo'
Summer School 2014
Live Load : Euphoric Space and Pleasure Zones
1. Lourau, René, “The Man in the Street,” in “Outlines of Urbanism as a Critical System of Thought,” February 13, 1967, in Utopie: Texts and Projects, 1967 - 1978, eds. Craig Buckley & Jean-louis Voileau, trans. Jean-Marie Clarke, (Los Angeles: Semiotext(e), 2011) p. 39 2. Nietzsche, Friedrich, as quoted without further attribution, and requoted promiscuously, in Virilio, Paul, The Art of the Motor, trans. Julie Rose (Minneapolis: U MInn, 1985) p. 99 3. Madelon Vriesendorp, Zoe Zenghelis, Elia Zenghelis
Public executions, royal pageants, workers’ riots, but also, and particularly relevant, the continuous quotidian turmoil of the streets; more recently the Nottinghill Festival, Gay Pride, violent protests on the periphery, the nightly swarm, raves and the concerts and detritus of popular entertainment. All, even the most “perverse”, are sites of pleasure, danger or excitement, lifting the urban animal out of the everyday, making the event transcendent.
Unbuilt! Within the many spheres of architecture this implies all that is contained within, addressing, assaulted by the conventional notion of building – events and happenings in other words – the live load of civic activity. London, like all cities, has monopolized, controlled, and been controlled by, such actions. From the vast unbuilt project of Christopher Wren following the great fire of 1666 to the Superstudio swath across London by Rem Koolhaas and associates, The Voluntary Prisoners of Architecture of 1972,3 and including the vast Modernist housing projects of the Smithsons and their peers; these megalomaniacal proposals, too large to build, articulated civic activity primarily. Such projects were visionary in the sense that all strong urban design is, given that it violates and proposes alternatives to the urban standard and accommodates the population as a figure to its ground. In their scale, they depended on collaboration with the multitude, to borrow Chantal Mouffe’s politically charged term.
"What matters most to modern man is no longer pleasure or displeasure, but excitement." Friedrich Nietzsche 2
“One should not confuse sexual saturation with mad love, the institution of the failed encounter with the institution of encounters, the gospel of the carnival with the gospel of the lightening bolt.” 1 René Lourau, “The Man in the Street”
Our studio will begin with a quick 72-hour event/exercise in live-load dynamics, immersion and production, envisioning the pregnant void. This will be followed by a research phase. Like detectives unravelling a case, assessment of data, particularly the dynamic images presented by film, will demand interpretation and urge transformation. Mistakes are not possible but lack of rigor is. The group will be renamed The Vice Squad and the work will be seen as “evidence,” in a search for clues, licit and illicit. The Squad will gather information - demographics, topographies, circulations, etc., but also the ineffable atmospheres that waft through London, marking ludic, haptic and euphoric spaces.
For workshops to maximize the special opportunity that a concentrated single-focus series of exercises offers, its schedule must accommodate and adjust as options present themselves and as skills and needs emerge. Call and response must be part of the method within a basic structure. Almost inevitably the schedule will change, both in the length of particular episodes and in their content. Given this caveat we present a format:
The workshop will transform into action those theories studied in the laboratory, fully immersing students in the subject matter through personal interpretation. It will also recognize that architectural design itself is event, process and extrapolation much more than production or image. To approach these conditions, short excursions - tours and experiments - will concentrate interests. A set of exercises will thus develop, some of them executed collectively. The lines defined in the workshop (happenings, events and parties or instance) become a structural guide for these investigations to follow.
Lectures: (will approach the discipline from various divergent angles) Partizan Publik (http://www.partizanpublik.nl/) and/or Monnik (http://www.monnik.org/), social agitators and futurist historians, from Amsterdam. Casper Henderson, writer addressing energy, science, environment and human rights: former senior editor at OpenDemocracy, a project for open global politics, contributing editor and member of the editorial advisory board at chinadialogue, and a member of the advisory group for Artists' Project Earth; author of Book of Barely Imagined Beings: A 21st Century Bestiary
Unbuilders! This will be followed by proposals that will assemble as a group work. The site(s) reflect the three states of matter – solid, liquid, gas – within the earth, on the water, in the sky! All these realms have been, and continue to be, exploited in London, with often unbuilt results. Thus the studio work ineffable, floating, interred, imagined – becomes the latest installment, the last event – again unbuilt.
They will collect documentation, production notes, pictures, photographs and objects. This exercise defines multiple impositions of an object and its construction, in a gesture that follows in the footsteps of the ready-made and interest in reproducibility as framed by Duchamp, Cornell and the event/shapes of Fluxus. These various guided exercises highlight the architectural as thought process. Event challenges construction, of key relevance to the current global economic situation. The DJ shapes a model. Her session is deliberately enigmatic and random. Likewise the group will assemble a kit to unbuild the city, not by destroying but by recomposing. A set of tracks from The Vice Squad can generate a shuffle version of the city of London.
This will be followed by proposals that will assemble as a group work. The site(s) reflect the three states of matter – solid, liquid, gas – within the earth, on the water, in the sky! All these realms have been, and continue to be, exploited in London, with often unbuilt results and particular impact. Thus the studio work - ineffable, floating, interred, imagined – becomes, the last event – again unbuilt. As part of the final show, students will have to again build a case (literal and figural) - a reflection on the production process and resulting forms, as a catalogue of visual and linguistic elements and motifs that have interested the Vice Squad during the research period.
They will consciously engage a system implementing the BUREAU OF PUBLIC SECRETS’ (Guy DeBord and Gil Wolman’s) “A User’s Guide to Détournement,” of 1956. The Squad will thus produce a case file, with “perps’” and “crime scenes”, drawing especially from detective drama, in particular Film Noir! Jules Dassin’s, Night and the City, from 1950 and set in London’s underworld, is a particular example.
4. Deleuze, Gilles, “Crisis of the Action-image,” in Cinema 1. The Movement-Image, trans. Hugh Tomlinson and Barbara Habberjam, (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1986) p. 208 referring to Cinématographe on John Cassavetes, no. 38, May 1978
“This is in fact the clearest aspect of the modern voyage. It happens in any-space-whatever – marshaling yard, disused warehouse, the undifferentiated fabric of the city – in opposition to action which often unfolded in the qualified space-time of the old realism. As Cassavetes says, it is a question of undoing space, as well as the story, the plot or the action. They are sites that appear to have been torn from the seeming continuum of progress and that reveal particularly propitious chasms and wounds.” Gilles Deleuze, “Crisis of the Action-image” 4
The classic distinction separating teachers and pupils cannot, and should not, survive the described process. Studio collaborators will seek, among other things, the reinvention of methods and standard practices, proposing to transcend the academic and dilute the boundary between the built and the unbuilt to re-etch architectural practice. This workshop intends to modestly revamp architectural intelligence and identify new issues. It is expected that some of the results will acquire life after the workshop, in the shape of innovative practices or forming part of research chains - objects of contemporary and rigorous study - redefining and reaffirming architecture from outside its “built” norms.
As part of the show, students will have to build its case (literal and figural). It will be a reflection on the production process and the resulting architecture meanings, as a catalog of visual and linguistic elements and motifs that might interest The Vice Squad during the research period.
Films: Michelangelo Antonioni, dir., Blowup Juan Carlos Fresnadillo, dir., 28 Weeks After Guy Ritchie, dir., RocknRolla Allen Hughes, Albert Hughes, dirs., From Hell (loosely based on the book by Alan Moore)
Bibliography: Keller Easterling, Enduring innocence: global architecture and its political masquerades Simon Gunn, “Public Spaces in the Victorian City,” in The Public Culture of the Victorian Middle Class; Ritual and Authority and the English Industrial City Manfredo Tafuri, Architecture and Utopia: Design and Capitalist Development Erika Rappaport, Shopping for Pleasure: Women in the Making of London's West End Seth Koven, Slumming: Sexual and Social Politics in Victorian London Lars Lerup, After the City, in particular “Stim and Dross” Judith R. Walkowitz, “The Shady Nightclub,” in Nights Out: Life in Cosmopolitan London Peter Bailey, “Sexuality and the Pub,” in Popular Culture and Performance in the Victorian City Gilles Deleuze, Cinema 1. The Movement-Image Lynda Nead, “The Meaning of the Prostitute,” in Myths of Sexuality Alan Moore, From Hell George McKay, DiY Culture: Party and Protest in Nineties' Britain
Partizan Publik (http://www.partizanpublik.nl/) and/or Monnik (http://www.monnik.org/); social agitators and futurist historians, from Amsterdam. Casper Henderson; writer addressing energy, science, environment and human rights: former senior editor at OpenDemocracy, a project for open global politics, contributing editor and member of the editorial advisory board at chinadialogue, and a member of the advisory group for Artists' Project Earth; author of Book of Barely Imagined Beings: A 21st Century Bestiary Juan Herreros; professor Columbia University and ETSAM, copiously awarded architect but also prolific author, emphasizing theory, method and urbanism.
Lectures: (unbuilders will approach the discipline from various divergent angles) These will include:
Architect (2010 ) from the University of Granada , have been awarded scholarship in various universities ( ENSA Marseille 2005 , Central University of Chile 2007 , ETSA Madrid 2011 ) by different institutions, most notably the Bancaja , scholarships Scholarship competition practices Arquia foreign reports and La Caixa scholarships for postgraduate studies . He has worked in several studios which include , Architectures Torres Nadal in Murcia, Elisa Valero Architects in Granada and Ateliers Jean Nouvel in Paris . Since 2011 he co-founded nkarquitectura that has earned some prizes in national and international competitions . His academic production is shared between research and teaching. He has participated in publications as San Rocco Magazine or Desierto and presents a number of chapters in books among which highlight the recent monograph on Caño Roto published by the Ministry of Public Works. Regular participant in conferences , has presented at the International Campus of Ultzama, Ceramics Congress and has been lecturer or visiting professor at an assorted group of universities as ETSA Coruna , IED Madrid or The EAIE Cartagena and institutions such as The College of architects of the Region of Murcia and the Casa encendida MAdrid . Currently developing PhD studies in the ETSA Madrid and is Assistant Professor of Projects 8, 9 and PFC in the same school and member of the Emerging Practices in architecture research group, leaded by Juan Herreros.
Esteban Salcedo
During Fall 2013 he was a speaker at “Beirut Now, a Panel on Urban Landscape’s Conflicting Desires” sponsored by the AIA New York Center for Architecture and at “Trans-Atlantic Panel Improving the Howard St. Corridor - Transit: Creative Placemaking,” supported by The Mayor’s Office of Baltimore and the Goethe Institute. This was followed by participation in an international symposium on Creative Placemaking at MICA in late May. A lecture “Jefferson's Revenge” was presented at The Society for Utopian Studies 38th Annual Meeting, “Utopia and Freedom,” in Charleston, SC where he is also moderating a paper session. Two lectures “Parametric Rococo: A Short, and the Long, History of Landscape Urbanism” and "Conciliatory Figures: Giuseppe Vaccaro and the Naples Central Post Office" were presented at the International Conference "Architectural Education and the Reality of the Ideal," in Naples. In addition the paper on Landscape Urbanism and another on Low-Tech Sustainability were published in the conference proceedings. In March he presented the paper “Ludic Utopia: the pursuit of happiness” at the conference “Ecstasy and Aesthetics” the Sixth Annual Geo-Aesthetics Conference in Baltimore. Stanton is currently completing an article on the new Spanish mannerism for the journal LOG. He just collaborated with a Spanish performance artist and Danish filmmaker on Fakeless, a project exploring emotion and the city and is preparing drawings and material for an exhibition of work from his Beirut office for display in several venues in fall 2014.
In 2012 Stanton’s installation “Witness/Vanitas,“ was selected in the referred exhibition “House Show” at the Urbanite@Case[werks] Gallery, Baltimore and at the Faculty Exhibition at MICA. In 2012, Stanton was also co-curator of the Baltimore Modernism Project: 01 - Selections from Archives of the Baltimore Architecture Foundation, DCenter, Baltimore and author of the connected essay “Charm and Character”. Also in the same year “Reconstructing a ‘Nation Divided into Fragments’” reviewing the book, Lessons in Postwar Reconstruction: Case Studies from Lebanon in the Aftermath of the 2006 War, appeared in the first issue of the International Journal of Islamic Architecture. In 2010 an article “Yamasaki and the Fatal Monument,” was published in Abitare: Interior Design Architecture Art. Two essays “Terrain Vague” and “Modernisms” composed part of the book, BEYROUTES, a critical urban text disguised as an “alternative” guide. This evolved from a design workshop Stanton co-directed in Lebanon during the summer of 2007.
Michael Stanton was educated at Antioch College and Harvard. His March is from Princeton. He organized and directed 12 2-to-4-week architectural workshops in Beirut, Barcelona and Venice and has conducted study-abroad programs for The Universities of Miami and Minnesota, and for Tulane in New Orleans where he taught throughout the ‘90s. Subsequently he was Chair of the Department of Architecture and Design at the American University of Beirut where he lived for a decade and has taught at diverse art and architecture schools including The University of Texas, the Royal Danish Academy and, most recently, the University of Maryland, the Maryland Institute College of Art and ETSAM (Escuela Técnica Superior de Arquitectura de Madrid) where he and Salcedo were colleagues. His architectural and urban design work has won awards from Progressive Architecture and the ACSA, as well as winning several design competitions one of which awarded him Fellowship in the American Academy of Rome in 1990 – ‘91. He has lectured internationally including at the Tate Modern and is the author of more than 50 articles and referred papers and two book chapters. He has recently completed a two-volume book entitled An Urban Memoir: The American City Beyond Good and Evil. He has been a visiting critic at 54 architecture schools plus the Dutch Art Institute in Enschede. In the last few years he has repeatedly visited Columbia, Princeton, Cooper Union, Catholic University, Morgan State University and the University of Miami in this capacity.
Michael Stanton
Tutors:
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Javier Pe単a Galiano, Maria Jose Marcos, Gorka Blas and Kim Sewon Roy ! '
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Scrap Marshall and Pasquale Iannone ! '
AA SUMMER SCHOOL 2014 UNBUILT LONDON - UNIT 6
THROUGH THE PEEPHOLE: THE CITY OF LONDON UNBUILT
The City of London remains after two millennia at the very heart of London, vital to the apparent prosperity of UK. Yet the Potemkinism of gleaming towers, financial power, and control hides a rich, complex, and dense history. A city constructed of ingenuity, skill and determination is fragile and fragmented – a tinder box that is equally susceptible to fire as it is to the volatility of the economic markets. The Square Mile of layered histories and multiple pasts is a site of innovative housing and diverse cultures that masks deep rooted economic and social disparities. This unit aims to interrogate the strange and volatile piece of the urban fabric that sits between the nostalgia of the past and the promise of an improbable future. By unbuilding The City Of London, the unit proposes to materialise, through direct contact and observation, its many hidden layers, and speculate on a more dynamic and visceral model of social construction at the very centre of London.
UNBUILDING LONDON
The process aims to make compelling speculations of London, which challenge the notions of old and new, permanent and temporal. The project will consider manuals – in the broadest terms – as the conceptual framework to develop the means and methods for reading, understanding, and representing the spatial and material history of the City of London. The work of the unit intends to go beyond the canonical and develop a multifaceted and engaging approach to representing the City in its most compelling form. Critically, the unit will re-examine and question the relationship between established and emerging processes of analysing, making, and representing space. Subsequently by unbuilding London and rethinking the tools we use, the familiar will become unfamiliar, and opinions and ambitions will emerge.
Looking beyond the image, through a direct investigation of the fabric of London, we will expose and distil the city's many pasts and futures into an alternative manual of instructions as a means to learn from and speculate upon its condition. From this book, details and materials will be abstracted and combined to make a series of physical three dimensional pages. These models will be the foundation and resource to construct and assemble pieces of an alt-modern city, where the pernicious and pervasive notions of past and future will be interrogated to speculate on a more provocative present.
In the same manner, our preconceptions of London and its potential can be interrogated, and the details and layers of the city’s composition exposed. By turning Étant donnés on its head, the unit will firstly construct a manual to read and then re-read London. This compendium will become a resource to make and build details – a material reality – that can then be used to form images of an alternative Square Mile.
THE CITY OF LONDON - A MATERIAL HISTORIOGRAPHY
Following Duchamp’s death in 1969, Étant donnés was willed to the Philadelphia Museum of Art and was transported from his tiny studio in New York to the institution for permanent installation. The disassembly of the sculpture necessitated and utilized a “Manual of Instructions” that Duchamp had prepared for the very purpose before his death. An elaborate ring binder of Polaroids, sketches and annotations, the manual describes the sequence of breaking down and subsequently reassembling the work, exposing the hidden details of its construction and organization. Arguably as fascinating as the artwork itself, the manual exposes the strange details, order, logic and sequence of its assembly and gives clues to and questions the construction of the image itself: an apparently complete image composed of disparate, abstract, incomplete parts. The image mirrors the manual: no single technique could construct the image, and in turn no single mode of representation could adequately describe its assembly.
THE MANUAL
Approaching the work, the viewer is confronted by a heavy wooden door with two small holes. By peering through the holes, the viewer sees a woman lying prone in a thicket of twigs, a gas lantern in hand. Off in the distance a waterfall spills into a bucolic landscape; the scene lit with the warm glow of the lamp. Strange, comical and disturbing the image continues to confound and confuse. The work is not a two-dimensional image but rather a large three-dimensional diorama constructed of a dense and elaborate assemblage of materials and artefacts, including layers of brick, steel, glass, plywood, screws, cotton, hair, paint, foam, rubber, cork, paper and putty. Twenty years of cutting, casting, nailing, and gluing, of assembling and deconstructing, of making and remaking are embodied in the physical work and the resultant image.
In 1966 Marcel Duchamp shocked the art world by revealing that he had not quit art twenty years earlier as many had suspected. On the contrary, he been secretly constructing a bewildering and complex work: ‘Étant donnés.
Étant donnés: 1. La chute d’eau, 2. Le gaz d’éclairage (Given: 1. The Waterfall, 2. The Illuminating Gas)
THE IMAGE AND THE MODEL
THE CITY OF LONDON - A MATERIAL HISTORIOGRAPHY AND A MANUAL OF INSTRUCTION
Scale: Individual Output: Dioramas/Images
Workshop: Objects to Images
To present both the findings of the unit and the individual members' opinions and architectural ambitions, the manual and material details will be reworked and interrogated to create a model and scene and an image that presents a speculative but critical proposal suggesting an alternative mode of construction in the City of London. The final work of the unit will then be presented and critiqued as part of the larger summer school.
WEEK 3: IMAGES
Scale: Groups of three/four Output: Large scale ‘Pages’ comprising material objects and details
Workshops: Materials, modelling & the city
Seminars & Discussions: London: Cinema & the City Assemblage & mixed media portfolios AA Archives: London Projects
The second objective of the unit will be to turn initial observations and impressions into compelling material artefacts and details. To do this we will utilise the various workshops of the AA to make compelling large scale ‘pages’ – tectonic objects – extracted and manipulated from the manual that give presence and a material reality to the findings of the manual.
WEEK 2: MODEL PAGES
Scale: Unit Output: Manual
Workshops: Printing & Publishing
Seminars & Discussions: London: Modes Of Investigation London: Cinema & the City Paradise Lost: Photographing the City
As a point of departure, the unit will look at various models and methods of looking at the City with a particular interest in photography and film. Together with architecture's own modes of investigation and representation, these alternative perspectives will provide a catalyst to go beyond the conventional and articulate a more critical and engaging approach to understanding the City.
To begin to interrogate the City of London, we will take extended walks and tours, trawl archives, critique film and photography, and gather assorted ephemera to compile an extensive body of knowledge that will be recomposed to form a manual that will present an alternative interpretation of London.
WEEK 1: MANUAL OF INSTRUCTIONS
This pedagogical approach will take the form of three overlapping but distinct phases, each involving additional collaborators who will provide additional input, knowledge, and critique. Each phase includes a series of workshops/seminars and objectives, working from the scale of the collective unit to the individual. London itself will be the units primary resource where the level of engagement with the physical and cultural makeup of the city will determine the quality of the group's output.
The unit's approach will mirror that of the context of its investigation where an extensive network of architects, theorists, and former students will present projects, working processes, and critical stances while assisting the unit to assemble a set of skills, techniques, and opinions.
UNIT AGENDA & SCHEDULE
Further workshop tutors: forthcoming.
Dr. Pasquale Iannone is a Film Lecturer, Writer and Broadcaster. He holds a PhD from the University of Edinburgh where he teaches a variety of Film Studies courses. His research interests include Film Aesthetics (especially sound and music), the history and theory of European cinema, landscape and film and adaptation studies. Pasquale is a regular contributor to Sight & Sound and Senses of Cinema as well as various BBC Radio programmes such as Radio 4’s The Film Programme and Radio Scotland’s The Culture Studio. His film curation work includes seasons at BFI Southbank, Glasgow Film Theatre and Edinburgh’s Filmhouse.
Scrap Marshall completed his diploma at the Architectural Association in London in 2012 following a career in the music and film industry. Working as a engineer for Abbey Road Recording Studios and the BBC World Service. He was awarded The Sir Henry Holloway Prize twice, The Dennis Sharp Writing Prize, the Ralph Knotts Memorial Prize and was a prizewinner in the 2012 RIBA President’s Medals. He co-founded the Public Occasion Agency in 2010 and ran a research program at UCLA AUD during 2012 and 2013. His work has been presented, published and exhibited in both Europe and the US. He teaches a AA visiting school in Oregon and currently lives and works in Los Angeles, California.
BIOS:
The unit will take an interest in film, photography and literature that offer alternative views of the city while precedents set by a variety of artists and architects will provide inspiration and a critical lens. London writers including Patrick Wright and Iain Sinclair, photographers Eugene Atget and Joel Sternfeld, and filmmakers including Patrick Keiller will give a perspective for viewing the city. The work of writers and historians Svetlana Boym and EH Carr will provide the means to question alternative forms of history. While Duchamp provides us with a key precedent, the work of Kurt Schwitters and Cornelia Parker will help examine the process and art of assembly and disassembly.
REFERENCE MATERIAL:
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Anna Czigler, Aude-Line Duliere, Suzi Pain and Gabriel Sanchiz ! '
Watkin’s tower 1891
Pinnacle tower 2008
With an ever-evolving skyline and 236 new towers in the pipeline, how does one reinvigorate unbuilt London’s tangible trace: the stump?
Londoners love naming their buildings: the Gherkin, Walkie Talkie and Cheesegrater are all nick-names of highly innovative landmark buildings, each a formal and structural representation of what architects and engineers can do if given the opportunity. What happens if that opportunity vanishes and construction stops? Londoners will still lovingly name this building “Stump”. London’s two stumps, the Pinnacle and Watkin’s Tower were objects of their designers’ highest ambitions to create the tallest and most complex structure in the skyline of London. They do not only represent engineering ingenuity: they were meant to be an icon, a tourist attraction and a market-driven idea that fell just short of riding their wave of momentum. Stumps are the materialized thresholds between the built and the unbuilt, where the dream stops and starts over again.
With the theme of this year’s AA Summer School program, we invite our students to look forward and to look back as the unbuilt towers of London will inhabit our mental speculative skyline. The point of departure is the ‘stump’: an abandoned structure that was destined to become a tower on the London skyline. Students will study and replace a failed London tower using their own imagination. They will build a structure that carries Victorian optimism and embraces a future vision for London.
Unbuilt London AA Summer Unit 2014 by Anna Czigler, Aude-Line Duliere, Suzi Pain and Gabriel Sanchiz
Grafting new dreams on London’s unbuilt towers.
LONDON STUMPS
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LONDON STUMPS
Unbuilt London AASummer school 14
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Following an initial research period about the Pinnacle and Watkins’ Tower history, students will have a closer look at drawings and narratives of the competition proposals for the Watkin’s Tower. With these in mind, participants will then develop a spatial and structural concept and build upon the available stump to complete their tower. The unit final product will be series of towers large-scale models; these proposals will be the shell for student’s imagination. Participant will then create collages representing the most suitable, visionary program to inhabit their structure for future London.
Project and output:
The original 1890’s entries for Watkin’s Tower competition were creative in many ways: the drawings where presented with a short narration describing an imaginative program, (“a captive parachute - to hold four persons”-, a sanatorium, a vertical village, winter gardens, a temple or a colony of aerial vegetarians) or an overly ambitious structural concept. Using these entries format as precedent, the students’ imagination will occupy the shadows of the unbuilt tower proposals. Looking at the past will take us in the future, where the original narrative can be an inspiration for a proposed addition to the new fragments of London’s Skyline.
The studio will investigate the failed visions of London’s stumps. Students will research the dreams and ambitions of their developers and architects, understand the motivations and market forces, the urban implications and the engineering background required for such an undertaking. The unit will ask what failure means in a structural sense and see how to test for possible failure. From the stumps, the students will repair history and propose a new structure to complete the unbuilt towers. They will then inhabit them with a new narrative-based program. Our sites will be the two stumps, with Watkin’s tower projecting us in the past and the unbuilt Pinnacle into the future. We will travel to the 19th century, the industrial revolution, the time of optimism and utopia, where all fantasies were tested and where engineering was pushing the boundaries of steel to its limit. We will also investigate the concrete core of the Pinnacle in order to understand the spatial and structural differences of concrete and steel.
Exercise 4: Large crafted group models. In groups, students will build the selected concepts as large scale models (1/100) that they will literally graft on the previously made stump. Each model should be of a single material and use it in its authenticity and with a particular care to its physical and visual characteristics.
Exercise 3: Prototyping an icon. E ach student will come with a diagrammatic proposal for a new tower that will re-use their chosen stump, a process that involves consideration on the design narrative, structural systems, ecological and environmental ideas and technological innovation. The structural and material differences between the concrete core of the Pinnacle stump and the metal frame of Watkin’s Tower will dictate different attitudes. The findings will be presented in form of concept models, analogical or digital. The most successful 4 proposals will be selected to be iron cast or 3D printed as iconic landmark (1/2000).
Part B. FABRICATE structural and spatial concept
Exercise 2: The unit will also gain a better understanding of the context by making the stumps models that will serve as a base for the large final models.
Exercise 1:Participants will explore the past or the future by choosing for either the Pinnacle or for a tower among the 68 original designs submitted for the Watkins competition. Students will be asked to analyse the vision, materiality and narratives of these towers. The research should address the following: what motivated the investors? What were the urban and infrastructural implications of such a project? What was the narrative behind the entries and designs? What was the engineering task? Why did the project become a stump?
Part A: EXPLORE history and context
Methodology and Schedule
LONDON STUMPS
Unbuilt London AASummer school 14
Exercise 6: Programming and populating. With the spirit, vision and curiosity of the Victorian era but with a contemporary mind and London’s current urban context, energy and needs, this exercise is an opportunity for participants to question which innovative program could fulfill London’s ambitions and what the tower typology can offer our modern cities. With the model picture as a background and using a digital or analogical collage technique, students will populate the inner space of their structure with the imagined program. This image will be atmospheric, encapsulate the spirit of the proposals and be the money shot for each dream. A short descriptive story will accompany each vision.
Exercise 5: Photo shoot. Participants will take the time to carefully photograph their model and nicely edit and frame the picture, with the initial competition layouts for the Watkins towers as template.
Part C. OCCUPY with a visionary program
Gabriel Sanchiz, after earning his undergraduate diploma at the Architectural Association in London, received a scholarship to study a master’s programme in Emergent Technologies and Design which was awarded with distinction at the same institution. He subsequently joined the geometry department of structural engineering firm Adams Kara Taylor where he worked alongside numerous architects in developing ambitious projects. In 2008, Gabriel joined David Chipperfield Architects where over 5 years, he focused on a number of high profile cultural and residential projects. Gabriel founded gsg architects in 2013 to pursue his own ambitions and is currently working on a number of retail and residential projects in the UK and abroad.
Suzi Pain’s first Bachelors degree was in Applied Art and she has strong interest and experience in metal work, ceramics and furniture. Following this she gained her undergraduate and post-graduate diploma in architecture at London Met and went on to work for Peter Zumthor in Switzerland and then David Chipperfield in London. She has taught interior design at Middlesex University and currently teaches a first year studio in architecture at Kingston University.
Aude-Line Duliere holds a Master of Architecture degree from the Harvard Graduate School of Design. Previously she studied in Brussels at the Institut Superieur d’Architecture La Cambre and at Sint-Lucas Architectuur. Since 2003, she has worked as an architect and movie production designer assistant in the U.S. and across Europe. Her academic interests build on the dual nature of her experience and explores the relation between architecture and cinema. In 2010, she co-authored Once Upon a Time... Monsterpieces of the 2000s! (ORO Editions). Aude-Line was teaching assistant at the GSD and acted as design critic for student’s works at Kingston university and London Metropolitan University. Since 2010, she works at David Chipperfield Architects in London.
The Architect’s journal “Skyline”, issue April 2014.
Anna Czigler works at ACME and is project architect for the high profile Minories Development in the City of London. Anna studied at the Harvard University Graduate School of Design (GSD) where she received her M.Arch II in 2010. She was awarded her professional B.Arch degree from Cornell University, NY in 2006, with a concentration on architectural theory. Between her studies she worked in Hamburg, working on competitions as well as built commissions. After her studies at the GSD, Anna worked at Sauerbruch Hutton in Berlin. She was working on many international competitions and was an architect on the new office and retail development of Two New Ludgate in London, currently under construction. During her studies at the GSD Anna focused on fabrication techniques and has done many large scale installations. After her studies her work has focused on developments in London where she has to navigate between market needs and innovative design ideas.
LONDON STUMPS
Unbuilt London AASummer school 14
From top left corner: Wembley stump; Pinnacle stump; Original competition entry for Watkin’s tower; Monsterpieces book; Beaux-arts Ball 1931; GSD studio 2009
Visual references
Torre de David, Daniel Schrwartz, Markus Kneer, 2013.
New London Architecture, Exhibition London’s Growing up! 2014.
The Illustrated London News, 1890-1892.
Hirschman Sarah M. , Lindsay Anmuth, Testing to Failure: Design and Research in MIT’s Department of Architecture, SA+P Press, 2011.
Di Palma Vittoria, Diana Periton, Marina Lathouri, Intimate Metropolis: Urban Subject in the Modern City, Routledge, 2008. Lefebvre Henri, the Production of Space, 1974.
Conzett Jurg, Bruno Reichlin, Mohsen Mostafavi, Andreas Hagmann, Structure as Space: Engineering and Architecture in the Works of Jürg Conzett and his Partners, Architectural Association Publications, 2006. Lynde Fred. C. for the Tower Company , Descriptive illustrated catalogue of the sixty-eight competitive designs for the great tower for London; Industries, London, 1890.
Barker Felix and Ralph Hyde, London, As it might have been, John Murray Publishers, 1982
Bibliography
Bios