PhD RESEARCH PROJECTS 2013
TUESDAY 5 MARCH 2013 Conference: 9.30am–6.30pm The Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL Wates House / 22 Gordon Street / London
CONTENTS
5 6
8
Preface
22
Introduction
The City as a Field of Identity
AMY THOMAS
and their Deviations in Early 20th
Formation: National Narrations
Losing Face: Automation and
Century Izmir and Thessaloniki
its Impact in the City of London 24
10
ANNA HOARE
Post-nomadic Subjects and the Material
26
Relations of Permanent Temporary
through the Archive of the
Edward Wilson Watercolours
CAMILA SOTOMAYOR
28
the Ruin through Terrestrial
30
DAVID BUCK
16
32
Architecture: Travels between America
Empty Words Build Empty Homes:
and Germany
Language, Politics and Participation
18
34
as a Catalyst for Collaborative
Experimentation
Redefining Musical Notation
36
JANE MADSEN
Portland: Material Time
ZUBIN KANGA
‘Not Music Yet’: Graphic Notation
ELO MASING
Mapping or Choreographing?:
20
TILO AMHOFF
Scientific Management and Modern
DAVID ROBERTS
in the Pursuit of Public Housing
RUAIRI GLYNN
Motive Architecture
In an Open Field: Temporal Landscape Notation
PWYLL AP STIFIN Resonant Chambers
Micro-materials 14
POLLY GOULD
No More Elsewhere: Antarctica
Dwelling
Department of Decay: Reanimating
OLIVER PALMER
Mind Control in Architecture
The View from the Traveller Site:
12
KALLIOPI AMYGDALOU
38
Biographies Credits
PREFACE
Dr Penelope Haralambidou
Co-ordinator, MPhil/PhD Programme
Professor Jonathan Hill
Director, MPhil/PhD Architectural Design
Dr Barbara Penner
Director, MPhil/PhD Architectural History & Theory
P
hD Research Projects 2013 is the
critics and the audience. The conference
exhibition related to doctoral research
or methodological links, while this year’s
seventh annual conference and
at the Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL. The event is open to the public and involves
presentations by students undertaking the
MPhil/PhD Architectural Design and MPhil/
papers are organised in pairs of thematic exhibition considers the relations between doctoral research, architectural design and art practice.
Organised and curated by Dr Penelope
PhD Architectural History & Theory with
Haralambidou, PhD Research Projects 2013
PhD in Anthropology, UCL. This year we
Anthropology, UCL; Dr Sarah Callis, Royal
invited contributions by students from MPhil/ have also invited contributions by MPhil/PhD students at the Royal Academy of Music,
to mark our recently formed collaboration with the school.
Leading to a PhD in Architecture, the
has five invited critics: Dr Victor Buchli,
Academy of Music; Professor Nat Chard, University of Brighton; Dr Neil Heyde,
Royal Academy of Music; and Dr Despina Stratigakos, University at Buffalo.
Presenting this year are: Tilo Amhoff,
two Bartlett School of Architecture doctoral
Kalliopi Amygdalou, David Buck, Anne Hoare,
creativity. Over 70 students are currently
Madsen, Elo Masing, Oliver Palmer, David
programmes encourage originality and
enrolled and the range of research subjects
undertaken is broad. However, each annual PhD conference and exhibition focuses on
Ruairi Glynn, Polly Gould, Zubin Kanga, Jane Roberts, Camila Sotomayor, Pwyll ap Stifin and Amy Thomas.
a smaller selection of presentations from students who are starting, developing
or concluding their research. The purpose of the conference and exhibition is to
encourage productive discussions between presenters, exhibitors, staff, students,
5
INTRODUCTION
Harmony and Discord
T
his year’s PhD Research Projects
in research that sprouts beyond Vitruvius’s
doctoral researchers in Architectural
Architecture he lists astronomy, drawing,
conference and exhibition unites
Design and Architectural History &
Theory at the Bartlett with Anthropology at UCL and the Royal Academy of Music. As the fabric and setting of our everyday life, architecture is, by its very nature, an interdisciplinary practice. Vitruvius said as much over two thousand years ago,
remarking that ‘the architect should be
equipped with knowledge of many branches
many branches of study. In Ten Books on
geometry, history, medicine, philosophy and law, to which our contributors can add not only anthropology and music, but biology,
economics, film, geology, painting, planning and robotics, research that cuts across
disciplinary boundaries. Which brings us to the violent diagonal slash that slices across these pages.
Philosopher Julia Kristeva invokes this
of study and varied kinds of learning…
gesture to convey the dynamic interaction
and of theory’. But some remain cautious
disciplines. She insists many academics
knowledge [which] is the child of practice of the widespread application of this
term. Jane Rendell, an energetic advocate of interdisciplinarity, argues that real
engagement in such work is emotionally,
intellectually and politically demanding as it ‘requires us to be critical of what we do and open to change’.
PhD Research Projects seeks to
address the question of interdisciplinarity
in form as well as content. We have invited
contributions from doctoral researchers from within and outside the Bartlett engaging
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between theory and practice and between are ‘locked within the specificity of their field’ working in isolation rather than in
collaboration with colleagues, ‘and therefore do not teach their students to construct a diagonal axis in their methodology’. PhD
Research Projects aspires to construct this
dynamic diagonal axis by curating sessions that pair researchers together around
theoretical, practical and methodological
interests, building a space for these many branches to not only meet but to spread between and across one another.
Throughout these papers, we can
bear witness to a flourishing synthesis of
research within shared overarching themes.
sound be material? Can notation be space? Is performance structural?
Our hope is that by bringing researchers
One dominant discussion permeating
together, in harmony and discord, the
producing, or being produced by, systems
of doctoral research to critical and creative
many papers is the role of architecture in of control. Such conversations range
from the societal level, examining violent
architectural interventions by the state, to
microscopic manipulations of entomological behaviour and to seemingly abstract
systems in financial and industrial sectors
in which regulated processes become a kind
pairings open up processes and relationships evaluation, inspiring interdisciplinary
exchange and arousing a curiosity in the
audience to engage in the dialogue, asking
questions of each other and of themselves.
Amy Thomas and David Roberts
of dynamic architecture. The ethics and
aesthetics of these discussions are probed by
a variety of methodological approaches, from archival research into architectural plans to scientific experimentation with animals.
In a similar way, the theme of perceived
decline and renewal is expressed in multiple mutations ranging from the political to
the parasitical: magnified investigations of biological decay and documentary
evidence of geological erosion become
inadvertent yet poignant metaphors for
broader discussion of cyclical deterioration and ‘regeneration’ of social housing. The practices of drawing, filming, painting,
performing and writing act as conceptual,
collaborative and reflective tools to cast new light on these shared considerations. This permutation from matter to
metaphor is reflective of a broader antipathy to binary classification weaving throughout
the research in relation to the question: what is architecture? In particular, the dichotomy of materiality and immateriality is explored
and challenged through the medium of sound, musical composition and performance. Can
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AMY THOMAS THE BARTLETT, UCL
Losing Face: Automation and its Impact in the City of London
T
he main problem of this thesis
by the Stock Exchange motto Dictum Meum
a reciprocal relationship between
was made concrete via messenger operated
is to establish whether there is
the financial system and the physical realm within which it operates. The research
addresses the City of London, otherwise known as the Square Mile, London’s
legislatively and geographically distinct
financial district. Historically the financial centre of the British Empire, the City is
now home to the largest offshore financial
Pactum – ‘my word is my bond’. The latter payment and clearing systems, organised around the hours of trade, provoking the
need for proximity between institutions and
specific architectural arrangements, resulting in an urban agglomeration of banks and
other institutions in the immediate vicinity of the Bank of England.
This paper considers the manner
market, the Euromarket, sitting within a
in which the increasing automation of
colonies, sustaining its position as one of
infrastructure to mechanical and digital
web of tax havens that were once former the world’s leading financial centres.
Prior to the deregulation of the Thatcher
years, the City of London was largely self-
regulated, operating via what Moran refers to as ‘an explicit ideology of cooperative regulation’, institutionalized within a
system of market-specific, club-like bodies, such as the Stock Exchange and Lloyds
insurance market. Supervised and operated via its members, the components of each institution were tied together through a
mode of exchange that prized face-to-face contact, reputation and trust, epitomised
8
payment systems (i.e. moving from a human processes) in the ensuing decades caused a shift in the architectural paradigm and
geographical arrangement of the Square Mile. More specifically, it assesses the
extent to which the erosion of this spatiotemporal ritual in turn erased the kinship
structures that supported it, and the culture
surrounding self-regulated financial practice in the City.
9
ANNA HOARE ANTHROPOLOGY, UCL
The View from the Traveller Site: Post-nomadic Subjects and the Material Relations of Permanent Temporary Dwelling
A
nthropology’s engagement
elicitation of modernism’s interdependent
personhood draws attention
Traveller site was reluctantly conceded as a
with architecture and embodied
to how social and material worlds and
embodied subjectivities are inter-produced – contingently, creatively and in conflict.
Anthropologists have drawn on Bourdieu,
theorising the body as the site of techniques mediated by the symbolic architectures of the house, through which orders of
separation of ‘public and ‘private’, the
stop-gap between nomadism and sedentism (being settled). Fifty years later, the site is
a centre of productive instability where, as
Engels described, political economy, property, and the materialities of dwelling and family life collide.
The European Court at Strasbourg has
social relations and their inequalities are
tantalisingly described the UK’s Travellers
in bodily practices and exchanges. Foucault
ruled that sites are ‘homes’ under Article
incorporated, naturalised, and objectified discloses the body coming into being
within micro-structures of power diffused through architecture’s materialisations of
knowledge, where genealogies of the ‘self’ in labour, creativity, inequality and pain are gradually laid down as physical and cognitive substance.
With similar concerns in mind, this paper
describes a raid on a UK Traveller site, and a court case in which Travellers appeal a
planning refusal to legitimise their privately owned site. As an after-thought to the postwar planning system, which translated ‘commons’ into ‘public space’ in a new
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as ‘nomadic in spirit but not in practice’, and Eight of the European Convention on Human Rights, forcing piecemeal reform. Officially, UK sites constitute permanent states of
temporary dwelling, as the state struggles
to sustain an ideological distance from the house, which is encoded in the law’s ‘G/
gypsy’ and in the performativity of ‘G/gypsy’
subjects. Mediating relations with the state,
Traveller subjectivity, the ‘self’ of the G/gypsy, architecture and dwelling constitute the
asymmetric forces of the UK’s post-nomadic architectures.
11
CAMILA SOTOMAYOR THE BARTLETT, UCL
Department of Decay: Reanimating the Ruin through Terrestrial Micro-materials
T
his is not a ruin fetish. At present,
can understand the world of the living and
and ‘decay’ will return splendidly
positive potential for reanimating the world
an Internet search of ‘architecture’
glossed-up images of a dying Detroit Motor City, abandoned asylums or
moulding bunkers. Looking closely, these
photographs fetishize architecture’s ageing
the dying as simultaneously holding new
around us. Above all, the Department is a resource, studio, laboratory, and play-pen for the decay minded.
Creating a world unto itself, the decay
process, exalting material degradation as
we see with the aid of technology now
while a ghosted humanity lurks in empty
employed by the Department of Decay
symbolic portents of our own mortality,
doorways and windows in place of human figures. Here is the building in ruins, the
object of architecture in limbo. But what if the ruin was not an end to the life of a
building but rather suggested the potential for reanimation? Long after the building is abandoned, its materials continue to
transmute in an active cycle until all that
remains is dust. It is within this active cycle
that in the Department of Decay there is an opportunity to rethink our definition of ruin
and engage with decay at the cellular level, as both trace and register of an empty building. The Department of Decay crosses the
fields of art, architecture, science and fiction to explore all matters of material ageing. The Department is a platform where we
12
becomes a landscape. The methodologies approach design through a combination of scientific and subjective observation, where design can be an experimental
vehicle between architecture (i.e. space) and materials at the cellular level. Part
of these methods is the ability to work in
parallel with natural processes, to question
them and to develop technologies to subvert expectations. No longer are we isolated
from the world through observation. The Department relishes the opportunity to control and participate in what Nature might be. The architect is a biologist, an alchemical orchestrator.
13
DAVID BUCK THE BARTLETT, UCL
In an Open Field: Temporal Landscape Notation
T
his research takes its title from the
notational strategies and tools to address
notation, non-diastematic markings
fall outside of both precedents. Lastly,
beginnings of Western Art music
termed in campo aperto, and seeks to
develop notations for landscape architecture from the synthesis of music notation with
landscape design. It sets aside Goodman’s
the components of landscape sound that
the research then applies these notational
tools to the composition of a new auditory landscape.
The notations, in chalk and charcoal,
five syntactic and semantic requirements
encompass both drawing and erasure.
to defer to the open possibilities inherent in
create them, with traces of past actions
for a notational system, preferring instead composer Busoni’s definition, ‘notation is
itself the transcription of an abstract idea’.
Currently focusing on a 1977 score titled
Green Meadows, the research first examines the notational strategies used by its English composer Finnissy in the evocation of the Sussex Downs landscape, from melodic
contour to the simultaneous sounding of
They bear witness to the activities that
visible on the surface. Like a landscape they not only reveal lines of current activity, but
also past paths and places visited. In addition to documenting the research process and outcomes, this reflective process ensures the notation is also a generator of ideas and a research methodology.
If we accept English composer Cardew’s
different temporalities. Next the study
suggestion that ‘notation and composition
a tripartite approach to the notation of
new strategies for landscape notation this
moves to the Australian hinterland, adopting landscape sounds: via an investigation of the limitations of Western music notation; by
applying an ethnomusicological approach to the transcription of aperiodic time
and non-diatonic tonality; and through the subsequent development of new
14
determine each other’, then by developing research will lead to new understandings of landscape itself.
15
DAVID ROBERTS THE BARTLETT, UCL
Empty Words Build Empty Homes: Language, Politics and Participation in the Pursuit of Public Housing
T
he history of housing the
and Watt, and the socially critical practice
has a predictable circularity in
an interdisciplinary dialogue.
working population in Britain
architectural form; one generation’s panacea
of Rendell, Watkins and Pearson to create My thesis examines how changes in
becomes the next generation’s problem,
the theory, design and representation of
it has passed. My thesis is a practical and
I use methods of archival research,
only to be reappraised with remorse after theoretical investigation into this cycle. It
follows the life of an East London housing
estate to allow its inhabitants to reflect on the utopian promises of public housing in
order to reclaim the principles of equality, dignity and security at its foundation.
I focus on the Haggerston West Estate
built in the late 1930s by the London County Council Housing Department which is to be demolished in 2013 and replaced by a mixed tenure and mixed use development typical
of contemporary regeneration programmes. The accelerated retreat of social welfare
under austerity measures has paved the way for a dismantling of public housing in ideal
and form. This has catalysed a groundswell
of renewed interest in housing estates from academics and practitioners seeking to
mend their conceptual, built and social fabric. I draw from the work of Ravetz, Phillips
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public housing are expressed in language. discourse analysis and oral history alongside participatory practices to take the ideals
of public housing back to the sites - plans, manifestos and spaces – and subjects
– architects, politicians and residents –
from and for which they were conceived.
The outputs to date include a documentary/ fiction film, public photo-installation and
site-specific performances each devised and written collaboratively to enable residents and the public to develop their own lines of enquiry into these critical debates.
17
Image: Briony Campbell
ELO MASING THE ROYAL ACADEMY OF MUSIC
Mapping or Choreographing?: Redefining Musical Notation
T
his paper deals with certain aspects
determine the nature of information to be
to my compositional practice, which
to be applied in any specific case.
of musical notation that are relevant
casts the physicality of instrument playing
transmitted and the mode of communication Based on these views, the process
as one of the basic starting principles of
of physicality-centred composition can
choice of a notation belongs directly to the
instruments, and also choreographing
compositional work. It can be argued that the process of musical creation. It is a question
of defining, for each composition, the areas of interest the composer is dealing with in
that particular piece. The composer has to
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be defined as both mapping musical
the movements of the performer. The ideas discussed in this paper are primarily based
on the doctoral research I have done so far at the Royal Academy of Music.
19
JANE MADSEN THE BARTLETT, UCL
Portland: Material Time
T
he island of Portland, in Dorset is a
left behind in the quarries, and geology of
uses of architecture; it is a landscape
viewed as sites of immanent or potential
site made by the material needs and
constructed by absence and disruption. This almost-island barely tied to the mainland by Chesil beach is an uncertain edge. Portland is a place and material inscribed by time
through multiple histories and interventions. My particular focus is on the potential for architecture to retrieve links to absence, disruption and collapse. The concept of
collapse is shown as space, time and material. Recurrent costal landslips have exposed
the strata of Portland’s Jurassic limestone showing its potential as architectural
material. Four centuries of quarrying have left Portland scarred by dislocation and
absence. I have been exploring the island of
Portland as an unstable space of uncertainty.
Portland’s landscape has been created by the removal of its stone; it is a built environment made from the voids left by quarrying.
The time-based medium of moving
image is used to survey Portland as place and material inscribed by time, with film
installations showing technical and material images of the quarried stone, the spaces
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the cracks in the limestone cliff faces – each collapse. The films are projected continuously, whilst the duration of the projection creates
and marks out time. In addition, mechanical movement of the film repeatedly running
through the projector causes the material
of the film to scratch, deteriorate, and break down: collapse continues to occur in time and in the presence of the viewer.
21
KALLIOPI AMYGDALOU THE BARTLETT, UCL
The City as a Field of Identity Formation: National Narrations and their Deviations in Early 20th Century Izmir and Thessaloniki
T
in order to explore the formation of a new
sides of the Greco-Turkish border following
and, ultimately, nationalism. Restorations,
his research explores the involvement of architecture and urbanism in the
process of early 20th century nation-
building through a parallel study of two
cities that found themselves on the opposite a series of conflicts between the two sides. It examines their violent transition from
the imperial to nation-state era within the framework of peripheral modernities.
Thessaloniki and Izmir were wealthy
multicultural ports of the Ottoman Empire until the early 20 century. th
The new city plans are studied here
urban identity and to trace the spatial
imprint of competing and intersecting
ideologies such as imperialism, colonialism demolitions, expansions and excavations
are examined both as products of political aspirations and as producers of a new
narration for the cities, one that attempts to establish a specific relation to each country’s past and to the West.
By studying specific spatial interventions
After its dissolution, Thessaloniki was
initiated by successive administrative
in 1912 and Izmir became part of the
Greek Administration, Turkish Republic) and
incorporated into the Greek Kingdom
newborn Turkish Republic in 1922. Apart from the demographic changes and the
shift from ethno-religious to class-based
spatial divisions, both cities were destroyed by massive fires. Their destruction was
understood by their respective political
elites as a great opportunity to modernise and rebuild them anew. Both sides invited Western architects to redesign them,
Hébrard and Mawson in Thessaloniki, Prost and Danger in Izmir.
22
authorities in Izmir (Ottoman Imperial State, in Thessaloniki (Ottoman Imperial State,
Greek Kingdom), I aim to highlight diverging approaches to their identity and the survival of built forms that carry latent memories.
23 Image: APIKAM, Izmir
OLIVER PALMER THE BARTLETT, UCL
Mind Control in Architecture
M
y work explores the role
of a single ant, causing her to follow her own
environments, drawing on
attempt to choreograph an entire colony of
of architect as designer of
speculative fictions created by theatre, cinematography and hard science.
In particular, my interest lies in control
systems and the use of paranoia as a means to alter behaviour. These principles have long been the subject of architectural
investigation (such as Bentham’s Panopticon, 1785), fiction (as in Orwell’s Nineteen EightyFour, 1948), as well as being tested through large-scale social engineering experiments during the Cold War (1945–1991). However, where it is unfeasible – and unethical – to
experiment with humans, my project uses
ants, whose colonies can be safely disrupted, dissected and experimented with.
I construct a series of environments as
small-scale architectural installations, which invite viewers to reflect on issues of control. The installations then serve as metaphors for the human environments that they
represent and are fed back to observers.
My work to date includes the ‘Godot
Machine’ – a Sisyphean device which
monitors and controls the movements
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trail indefinitely, and the ‘Ant Ballet’ – an
ants through use of robotics and specially
synthesised ant communication pheromones. The work is presented as film, installation, performance and text.
25
POLLY GOULD THE BARTLETT, UCL
No More Elsewhere: Antarctica through the Archive of the Edward Wilson Watercolours
N
o More Elsewhere is a practical and theoretical project, which
takes the encounter through the
archive with the extreme environment of
Antarctica as a departure point for making
art and investigating an eco-ethical aesthetic. I aim to apply feminist theory, anthropology, philosophy, and art practice methods of
copying and distortion, to the understanding of contemporary representations of
Antarctica. How are techniques of vision and ethics of positionality informed by the multifaceted interpretation of no
more elsewhere?
No more elsewhere is a polysemic phrase.
It can refer to the end of the Heroic Era of Antarctic exploration, or to the imminent
future disappearance of the melting icecaps and to the time when the evidence of their
existence is preserved in climate-controlled air-conditioned archives. As an exercise in
art making and in writing, it indicates a poststructuralist approach to criticism in which there is no outside of the text or art work, while exploring, to the contrary, ways in
which writing and art create ‘elsewhere’ as part of their effect.
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This research is undertaken in the
context of contemporary art practices
featuring Polar landscapes that are either
predicated on the artist ‘being there’ (Cape Farewell, SPRI Artist Residencies) or,
in contrast, are derived from secondary
mediated encounters with the landscape
(Eliasson, Neudecker). Making watercolours in Antarctica and in the archive are both
activities subject to climate; Antarctica’s
climate limits due to freezing temperatures, the archive due to institutional restrictions
enforced for the sake of conservation. What
can my archival encounter with the Antarctic watercolours of Wilson tell us about the contemporary envisioning of extreme
environments? My encounter is explored
through practical making of art works, such
as the Anamorphic Landscape series of handblown mirrored glass globes on watercolour
paintings of anamorphic inverted panoramas, each titled after a Wilson watercolour.
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PWYLL AP STIFIN ANTHROPOLOGY, UCL
Resonant Chambers
M
y paper examines the means
configurations as in concrete and steel
perception in the conventional
body. My paper presents an ethnographic
by which spaces unavailable to
phenomenological sense can be produced
by sound alone. I present a case study where the absent Twin Towers of the World Trade Center are made manifest in post-9/11 New
York through recourse to sound’s materiality. Audio recordings of Fire Department of
New York radio communications stored in a panel beside Ground Zero allow visitors to experience the interior of the building
during the conflagration in an affective way. I focus on the materiality of this situation.
Sound waves produced by human bodies in one space move through the technological
infrastructure and flow directly into listening bodies in another almost ten years later,
producing a new, hybrid space of co-presence. These sound waves produce resonant
chambers, spaces which are momentarily
formed from a vibrating, motile matter which stabilizes briefly before dissipating. Whereas sound waves are not
conventionally considered as material
entities, this case study aims to demonstrate that they can be equally formative of spatial
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through direct interplay with the human account of the experience of visitors to
the museum and describes the palpable effect that the recordings have on their
bodies. Though these resonant chambers
are short-lived, drawing together separate
times and spaces and locating them inside the sensorium of the listener, they are extraordinarily powerful.
29
Image: Alice Rothwell
RUAIRI GLYNN THE BARTLETT, UCL
Motive Architecture
A
rchitecture is traditionally
performative objects and spaces, there is
to social interaction. But architects
of motion are most engaging and why.
considered the spatial backdrop
enabled by computational technologies
increasingly create spaces that can engage actively within these social interactions. My research focuses on the non-verbal
aspects of human computer interaction,
embedding kinetic behaviours into physical objects. This work is inherently time based and I characterize time-based architecture into three distinct conceptual modes of behaviour:
1. Automatic: pre-determined behaviours that follow a linear arrangement from beginning to end.
2. Reactive: pre-determined behaviours that
follow non-linear arrangements, triggered by stimuli.
3. Interactive: un-determined behaviours that follow non-linear arrangements
formed through exchanges between participants.
While increasing numbers of designers
are using robotic systems to build novel
30
little discourse in design on what forms I explore how and when we perceive
animism and causality in moving objects. I hypothesise that the most salient of
motions are those which give a subjective impression that something is alive. My
research examines the minimal amount
of motion required to elicit immediate and seemingly irresistible interpretations of
life, inspired by the perceptual research of
Michotte (1946), Heider and Simmel (1944), and Tremoulet and Feldmann (2006). I
have developed a test rig for suspending
and animating simple geometric figures to investigate methods of eliciting anima, in parallel with computer vision systems to
observe human levels of engagement and
to explore novel forms of exchange between architecture and inhabitant.
31 Image: Simon Kennedy
TILO AMHOFF THE BARTLETT, UCL
Scientific Management and Modern Architecture: Travels between America and Germany
T
he many affinities between
concerned with the organisation of labour
architecture are such an established
this particular narrative about the relations
scientific management and modern
part of the canonical architectural history that it becomes difficult to distinguish
between myth and reality. In this paper
the affinities establish two relations, firstly
between America and Germany and secondly between the scientific management of
and industrial production? This paper revisits between scientific management and modern architecture to question its focus. It proposes an alternative reading with an emphasis on the organisational aspects and the shared concept of the ‘plan’.
This paper revisits textbooks on factory
labour and industrial mass production
organisation to trace the transfer of concepts
production of architecture.
building industry, as well as the contribution
(Taylorism and Fordism) and the
Recent scholarship on the subject
continues to emphasise aesthetic aspects
of the affinities. For Gartman (2009), ‘mass production created a new look that was
synonymous with modernity’. For Guillen
(2006) architects re-interpreted scientific
management in aesthetic terms, ‘modernism in architecture emerged as an aesthetic
implementation of ideas first developed by engineers and scientific managers’.
But how could an organisational theory
become an aesthetic theory? And does the
aesthetic focus of the architectural historian overlook one key aspect, that scientific management was first and foremost
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from the machine-tool industry to the
of architectural techniques such as models,
plans, and other diagrams to the organisation of industrial production. It re-investigates
the writings of protagonists such as Mayer, Wagner and Rode and their notion of
work-plan and building-plan, and the role
of architecture in the formation of scientific management. After all, motion study’s
first application was on the world’s oldest mechanical trade, bricklaying.
Image: Zeitschrift des Vereins Deutscher Ingenieure, 1899
33
ZUBIN KANGA THE ROYAL ACADEMY OF MUSIC
‘Not Music Yet’: Graphic Notation as a Catalyst for Collaborative Experimentation
I
n the past five years the collaborative
as a large watercolour painting served as
performer has emerged as an important
in the collaborative process. This paper
relationship between composer and
field of enquiry. Challenging the assumptions of distinct roles and creativity in solitude, recent research publications by Östersjö, Roche, Hayden/Windsor and Heyde/
Fitch have examined their own creative practices to explore many different
models of collaborative relationships. My
doctoral research in this field examines the collaborations on twelve innovative new works for solo piano, one of which is the
graphically notated score, Not Music Yet, by
Australian composer David Young. This paper explores how Young’s use of graphic notation played a catalytic and transformative role in the collaborative process, opening up a creative space where sonic and pianistic experimentation were necessary for
interpretation and where the ‘traditional’ creative priorities and responsibilities of
composer and performer were dissolved and redefined.
As a concert pianist, I commissioned
Young to compose a new work for solo piano in 2010. Young’s decision to notate the score
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both a point of resistance and a catalyst
explores Young’s strategies of managing
and manipulating interpretation as well as
my own practice in creating a performable
realisation of the score, using a wide variety
of extended techniques. As this realisation is tested and further developed in a workshop, the traditional roles of composer and
performer are inverted, as Young handed over complete control over fundamental
compositional decisions, while attempting to control the theatrical and pianistic subtleties of the resulting performance. This paper
draws on audio and video documentation of
workshops, score excerpts and recordings of the premiere performances in August 2012 and positions them within the context of
my doctoral research, which examines the
effects of notational practices, imbalances of authority and external pressures on the collaborative process.
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Image: Erland Howden
BIOGRAPHIES
Amy Thomas is a PhD student at the Bartlett.
David Buck studied landscape architecture
Her research addresses the impact of financial
at Manchester University and urban design at
flows on the built environment with a particular
Kobe University in Japan. He is the director of
focus on the City of London. Amy also teaches
his eponymous design practice in London and has
Architectural History at UCL and Queen Mary
written extensively, most recently collaborating
University. Her doctoral studies are funded by
with Fumihiko Maki and Toru Mitani on the book
the Schools Competition Act Settlement Trust
entitled The Design of Place.
(SCAST). David Roberts is a PhD student in Architectural Anna Hoare has a background in architecture
Design at the Bartlett, a course tutor in UCL
and construction, having trained and worked
Urban Studies and a parliamentary researcher.
as a carpenter and joiner after university. Her
He is part of the collaborative art practice Fugitive
career as a furniture designer/maker included
Images, currently filming a documentary/fiction,
architectural consultancy. She spent three years
Estate. David is the author of Slab, a collection
developing widening participation in industry
of concrete poems and photographs.
and education for a European initiative addressing women’s under-representation in SECT, before
Elo Masing is an Estonian composer/free
studying anthropology.
improviser based in London, UK. Her music has been performed internationally by renowned
Camila Sotomayor explores ruins as contemporary
soloists and ensembles. She is currently studying
zones of architectural reanimation. Her PhD
towards a PhD at the Royal Academy of Music,
in Architectural Design at the Bartlett is
exploring the physicality of instrumental
investigating time-based design through material
performance in chamber music. She is mentored
decay at the microscopic scale. She is the founder
by Professor Simon Bainbridge, and with support
and director of the Department of Decay and has
from the Royal Academy of Music, receives private
been Unit tutor for the Bartlett’s MArch Urban
tuition from Rebecca Saunders.
Design programme since 2010.
36
Jane Madsen is an artist and writer working in
Pwyll Ap Stifin is currently completing his
moving image; her work includes experimental
PhD, entitled ‘Sounds and Silences of 9/11’,
films, installation and documentary. She is
based on a year’s fieldwork conducted in
currently undertaking a PhD in Architectural
New York. Previously he worked as a field
Design at the Bartlett with practice supervised
archaeologist and is interested primarily in
by the Slade. Jane has taught at UAL in Fine
questions of materiality and immateriality,
Art, History and Theory. In her practice the
space and the senses.
main themes are: home, place, territory and architecture/s.
Ruairi Glynn is a Lecturer at the Bartlett teaching on MArch Architectural Design and MSc Adaptive
Kalliopi Amygdalou holds a Diploma from the
Architecture & Computation and Associate
School of Architecture of Athens (NTUA, 2009)
Lecturer on MA Textile Futures at Central Saint
and a MSc from the LSE (MSc in Culture
Martins College, UAL. His research explores
and Society, 2010). Currently she is a PhD
kinetic and interactive installations, which
candidate at the Bartlett, working on processes
have been shown most recently at the Centre
of modernization and nation building in early
Pompidou Paris, the National Art Museum
20th century Izmir and Thessaloniki. She holds
of China Beijing and Tate Modern.
a scholarship by the Alexander Onassis Public Benefit Foundation.
Tilo Amhoff is Senior Lecturer in Architecture History and Theory at the University of Brighton
Ollie Palmer is an artist and designer. He uses
and PhD candidate and Teaching Fellow at the
installations and film to develop and explore ideas,
Bartlett. His PhD research investigates the notion
and has exhibited and taught internationally.
of the plan in late 19th and early 20th century
In 2012 he was awarded an AHRC scholarship
Germany. He is a founder member of Netzwerk
to develop a PhD focusing on mind control in
Architekturwissenschaft.
architecture. He is also a tutor on the Graduate Architectural Design and Adaptive Architecture
Zubin Kanga is an Australian pianist. He has
and Computation courses at the Bartlett.
recently performed at the Borealis (Norway) and London 2012 festivals as well as appearing
Polly Gould is an artist and writer. In 2012, as
as soloist with the London Sinfonietta. A PhD
part of Eggebert-and-Gould, she curated the
student at the Royal Academy of Music, London,
show of international artists and associated
he has collaborated with many of the world’s
publication titled TOPOPHOBIA, Fear of Place
leading composers including Michael Finnissy
in Contemporary Art which toured to Danielle
and George Benjamin.
Arnaud, London, Bluecoat Liverpool and Spacex, Exeter. She has a forthcoming solo show at Danielle Arnaud in May 2013.
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CREDITS
MPhil/PhD supervisors
Jawad, Tae Young Kim, Felipe Lanuza Rilling,
Dr Jan Birksted, Professor Peter Bishop,
Constance Lau, Guan Lee, Tea Lim, Jane Madsen,
Dr Camillo Boano, Dr John Bold, Professor
Igor Marjanovic, Matteo Melioli, Malca Mizrahi,
Iain Borden, Dr Victor Buchli, Dr Ben Campkin,
Oliver Palmer, Christos Papastergiou, Signe
Dr Marjan Colletti, Professor Sir Peter Cook,
Brink Pedersen, Mariana Pestana, Henri Praeger,
Dr Marcos Cruz, Dr Julio Davila, Michael Edwards,
Felix Robbins, David Roberts, Natalia Romik, Eva
Professor Penny Florence, Professor Adrian
Sopeoglou, Camila Sotomayor, Ro Spankie, Theo
Forty, Professor Colin Fournier, Professor Murray
Spyropoulos, Ben Sweeting, Cindy Walters, Stefan
Fraser, Professor Stephen Gage, Professor
White, Michael Wihart, Alex Zambelli, Alex Zirek,
Ranulph Glanville, Dr Andrew Gorman-Murray,
Fiona Zisch.
Dr Penelope Haralambidou, Professor Christine Hawley, Professor Jonathan Hill, Professor Bill
MPhil/PhD Architectural History & Theory
Hillier, Adrian Lahoud, Dr Ruth Mandel, Dr Carmen
students:
Mangion, Dr Yeoryia Manolopoulou, Professor
Wesley Aelbrecht, Tilo Amhoff, Kalliopi
Ruth Morrow, Jayne Parker, Dr Barbara Penner,
Amygdalou, Sabina Andron, Pinar Aykac, Tal
Dr Sophia Psarra, Dr Peg Rawes, Professor Jane
Bar, Eva Branscome, Eray Cayli, Stella Flatten,
Rendell, Professor Bob Sheil, Dr Stephanie
Stylianos Giamarelos, Nicholas Jewell, Kate
Schwartz, Professor Philip Steadman, Dr Hugo
Jordan, Irene Kelly, Thomas-Bernard Kenniff,
Spiers, Professor Neil Spiller, Professor Philip Tabor.
Torsten Lange, Abgail Lockey, Suzanne Macleod, Kieran Mahon, Nathan Moore, Dragan Pavlovic,
MPhil/PhD Architectural Design students:
Brent Pilkey, Matthew Poulter, Regner Ramos,
Adam Adamis, Yota Adilenidou, Luisa Silva
Sophie Read, Sarah Riviere, Ozayr Saloojee, Maria
AlpalhĂŁo, Nicola Antaki, Rachel Armstrong,
del Pilar Sanchez Beltran, Amy Thomas, Nina
Alessandro Ayuso, Jaime Bartolome Yllera, Katy
Vollenbroker, Danielle Willkens.
Beinart, Joanne Bristol, David Buck, Niccolo Casas, Emma Cheatle, Ines Dantas Ribeiro Bernardes,
Completed doctorates 2012:
Catja de Haas, Bernadette Devilat, Pavlos Fereos,
Ricardo Agarez, Nat Chard, Tat Lam, Pinai
Pablo Gil, Ruairi Glynn, Polly Gould, Mohamad
Sirikiatikul, LĂŠa-Catherine Szacka-Marier.
Hafeda, Popi Iacovou, Christiana Ioannou, Nahed
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This catalogue has been produced in an edition of 300 to accompany PhD Research Projects 2013, the seventh annual conference and exhibition devoted to doctoral research at the Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL, Tuesday 5 March 2013. Edited by Penelope Haralambidou, David Roberts and Amy Thomas. Designed by Avni Patel | www.avnipatel.com Printed in England by Aldgate Press Limited. Published by the Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL. Wates House, 22 Gordon Street, London WC1H 0QB Copyright © 2013 the Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system without permission in writing from the publisher. www.bartlett.ucl.ac.uk PhD Research Projects 2013 is supported by the Bartlett School of Architecture and the Graduate School Skills Development Programme, UCL.
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On the cover: Polly Gould, Erebus and Northern Islets, 2012.