UNIT 3 - INSTALLATION CITY 3013

3013 INSTALLATION

CITY

Lawrence Lek + Onur Ozkaya + Jesse Randzio SCENARIO In 3013, London is saturated. Constrained by the green belt, it has become the densest city in the world, with its economy dominated by the production of information. The expansion of the virtual economy contrasts with the spiralling decline of the physical infrastructure that allows the city to live.

Rampant capitalism has enveloped the public realm, resulting in a complete privatisation of urban space.

Zones inhabited by commuters and pedestrians are saturated with screens and projections, enveloping every surface with advertising. With no chance of expanding outwardly, the city aggregates internally, consuming all public space within. London grows, but there is nowhere to meet.

BRIEF The Unit will develop temporary site-specific installations of public spaces that address the evolution and obsolescence of the city. A language of growth and decay will be developed through a collective 1:1 installation and large-scale models drawn from studies of hyperactivity within London today. Students will develop prototyping techniques to address two complementary rates of change – the way materials agglomerate to form a city, and the way people interact directly with their environment.

In a thousand years, whatever seems significant today will be a faint memory of collective culture. By projecting so far into the future, disbelief will be suspended long enough for students to express their imaginations fully. The unit s explorations will address three key questions: 1. If architecture lives for three weeks, how will its form change?

In a future governed by impermanence, the language of architecture changes from eternal edifice to temporary installation. How can it adapt and evolve to survive?

2. Can public spaces be created with their own obsolescence in mind?

Temporary urbanism emerges out of opportunism, accumulation and chance interaction. Is there a choreographed sequence of adaptation that will allow London to thrive in 3013?

3. How can speculation about the distant future inform the present?

How should this be implemented today?

METHODS

&

PHASES

Methods are sequenced in order of scale to lead up to the 1:1 installation. Each stage begins with a workshop to examine precedents from a range of fields and to introduce new tools and techniques.

Week 1: Un-Mapping the City @ 1:25 + Collage To speculate on the future, the present must be studied.

Students will study points of saturation and overcrowding within London to produce 1:25 study models. These will form a three-dimensional map of how the public interacts with the city; public space will be described as an agglomeration of networks, boundary conditions, and circulatory systems. In addition, students will catalogue the city, studying it as a landscape of materials and textures. Through this mapping, the unit will speculate on the intensity of London in 3013.

Studies: Collage City / Metabolist Plan for Tokyo - Tange

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Week 2: Urban Prototype @ 1:10 To understand the possibilities of future technology, contemporary prototyping techniques should be explored.

Physical forms will emerge through intense experimentation, speculation, and analysis. In line with urban explorations of growth and decay, the Unit will conduct material workshops in accumulative approaches to form (casting, weaving, tessellating, jointing, growth), and subtractive approaches to space (cutting, forming, removing, excavating, decay).

Digital tools will be introduced, but the focus will be on understanding how to work with materials directly. This knowledge of contemporary techniques will allow students to imagine how a do-it-yourself approach to fabrication might develop in future.

Studies: Tadashi Kawamata (above) + Biological systems of growth and decay

Week 3: Installation @ 1:1 To experience the future, it should be built in the present.

The students will develop a 1:1 scale installation to create a public space drawn from their vision of London in 3013.

The unit will integrate studies of present-day London with transformative material systems, to create an installation that provides a focus of maximum intensity and then disappears without a trace. Notions of impermanence and adaptation will be addressed in the phased construction and removal of the structure(s).

The surreal contrast between an imagined future and the present reality will be recorded through time-lapse photography. This temporary intersection between present and future will enable the students to imagine how a city can exist as an aggregation of installations.

LEARNING

Studies: Merzbau –Kurt Schwitters (above) EXYZT Collective (top image, Pg 1)

OUTCOMES

Speculation about the future allows us to see the opportunities within the present. The Unit addresses the current recession and lack of new public space in London through direct intervention and by focusing on the urban installation. The projects of the Paris-based EXYZT collective such as the Dalston Windmill and Southwark Lido show the potential of this approach.

By installing a fragment of the future in the city of today, students will learn how to work together to reconcile theoretical agendas with the practice of making. These issues will be addressed: 1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

6.

Urban Metabolism: Timescale: Material Scales: Collective process: DIY Attitude: Prototyping:

Mapping and translating the functioning of the City.

Learning about the life-cycle of the city and of artefacts within it.

Learning about the limitations of moving between scales.

The collective imagination of the unit will determine its work.

How to use limitations of space, scale, and time as a creative opportunity.

How to adapt both sophisticated and primitive design techniques.

The unit provides a meeting point between interdisciplinary practices. While financial limitations have forced many architects to confine their experimental work to galleries, many artists are seeking to escape the confines of the white box by directly engaging with the city outside. The Summer School workshops and seminars will allow the unit to discuss the work with artists, architects, and critics involved in the field. The work will be documented through video, drawings, text, and the sharing of digital models. This research will be communicated online through an open-source website.

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TEAM Lawrence Lek, MA (Cantab), AADipl www.lawrencelek.com lawrence.lek@gmail.com Lawrence is an artist whose installations use physical and virtual media to examine the relationship between natural and artificial forms. He trained at Cambridge and the AA. He is currently working on an installation at Cold Harbour Gallery in Brixton, and an interactive sound and projection project at the Russian Club Studios in Dalston. In 2011-12 he will be attending the Cooper Union s new postgraduate research programme to develop AR.boreal, an inhabitable sculpture that grows according to online interaction. His projects were featured in the inaugural issue of the White Review, the UK s first crowd-funded arts journal and his video and sound art projects have been performed at the ICA, the Rich Mix cinema, and the Roundhouse.

He has previously worked with Charles Tashima, Ken Yeang and Foster + Partners, and was lead designer for a series of inflatable tensile canopies for a 130ft carbon-fibre racing yacht with Kite-Related Design. He has taught architecture and design on a part-time basis since 2005 and was visiting critic for the 2010 AA SummerMake workshop in Hooke Park.

Onur Ozkaya, BFA, MSc (AA), MCSD www.onur-ozkaya.co.uk onur-ozkaya@hotmail.com Onur graduated from AA EmTech programme in 2007 after studying Interior Architecture & Environmental Design at Bilkent University, Turkey. He is currently teaching Interactive Interior Design at London Metropolitan University and at the American Intercontinental University, and is a visiting tutor for second year Architecture students at the University of Nottingham. He is collaborating with several London and Istanbul based architectural practices on fabrication and industrial design solutions.

He was with the Specialist Modeling Group at Foster + Partners from 2007 to 2009, specializing in prototyping and manufacturing solutions. Between September 2009 and January 2011 he taught BA(Hons) Interior Architecture and Model Making courses at the Arts University College at Bournemouth. His work has been published and exhibited as a winning entry for the Green Room Competition at Tokyo Design Week in 2009.

Jesse Randzio, BA (Hons), AADipl www.jesserandzio.com j.randzio@gmail.com Jesse studied at the AA, where he spent much of his time at Hooke Park working with timber, steel, concrete, rope, and steel cable. He has been involved with the design and construction of the first three additions to the Hooke Park architecture collection since the property has been in AA hands (Summer Pavilion 06, Crossings Bridge, A Separate Place), and worked for three years as Workshop Assistant at the AA. He currently designs and builds deep energy renovations of old housing stock in America, and is Resident Tutor for AA SummerMake at Hooke Park.

Before coming to the AA, Jesse worked for 2 years at Bumpzoid, a small architectural practice in the West Village, NYC. Before that, he earned a BA with honors in English from Colby College in Waterville, Maine, USA. Throughout his four years at Colby he worked in the theatre scene shop as Shop Assistant, designing and building stage sets, and as Teaching Assistant, supervising set design and construction courses. He has taught after school and summer vacation theatre workshops for elementary school children. His work has been exhibited in Koshirakura, London, Minneapolis, and Tokyo.

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