Design Anthology PG23
Architecture MArch (ARB/RIBA Part 2)
Compiled from Bartlett Summer Show Books
Our Design DNA
At The Bartlett School of Architecture, we have been publishing annual exhibition catalogues for each of our design-based programmes for more than a decade. These catalogues, amounting to thousands of pages, illustrate the best of our students’ extraordinary work. Our new Design Anthology series brings together the annual catalogue pages for each of our renowned units, clusters, and labs, to give an overview of how their practice and research has evolved.
Throughout this time some teaching partnerships have remained constant, others have changed. Students have also progressed from one programme to another. Nevertheless, the way in which design is taught and explored at The Bartlett School of Architecture is in our DNA. Now with almost 50 units, clusters and labs in the school across eight programmes, the Design Anthology series shows how we define, progress and reinvent our agendas and themes from year to year.
Professor Frédéric Migayrou Chair of The Bartlett School of Architecture
Professor Bob Sheil Director of The Bartlett School of Architecture
2024 Bound to Fail
Farlie Reynolds, Ben Spong
2016 Constructing Pleasures
Nat Chard, Colin Herperger
2015 Nocturnal Science
Colin Herperger, Emmanuel Vercruysse
2014 Neither Here nor There: Supernatural Architecture
Kate Davies, Bob Sheil, Emmanuel Vercruysse
2013 Acts of Deception
Kate Davies, Bob Sheil, Emmanuel Vercruysse
2012 Fabricating the Real
Kate Davies, Bob Sheil, Emmanuel Vercruysse
2011 Spaces of Uncertainty
Bob Sheil, Emmanuel Vercruysse
2010 (Extra) Ordinary
Bob Sheil, Emmanuel Vercruysse
2009 Manufacturing The Bespoke
Bob Sheil, Emmanuel Vercruysse
2008 Protoarchitecture
Bob Sheil, Emmanuel Vercruysse
2007 Transgression
Bob Sheil, Graeme Williamson
2006 CODEMAKER
Bob Sheil, Zoe Smith, Graeme Williamson
2005 Made In London
Bob Sheil, Zoe Smith, Graeme Williamson
2004 Transplants/Transactions
2024
Bound to Fail
Farlie Reynolds, Ben Spong
Bound to Fail
Farlie Reynolds, Ben Spong
Interested in material, structural and spatial experimentation at a range of scales, PG23 champions innovative architectural strategies that boldly address the environmental challenges of our time.
Within architecture, the possibilities of failure are often confined within the laboratories and research centres of other disciplines –those of material scientists, acousticians, structural engineers and so on. From deep within their facilities, architecture receives determinate information through regulations, standards and conventions that govern the practice of architecture. While these tactics make valid and critical contributions to the safety of our built environment, the methods used to represent failure (or its avoidance) tend to numb any relationship architecture has to the phenomenon it should supposedly fear may fail. This year PG23 questioned the consequences that this reductive taming has for architecture’s own capacity to fail and seek out the possibilities that reside on the fringes of failure. We asked how architecture can reclaim and occupy this territory in more affirmative terms – to write its own experiments.
We journeyed across Sweden and Finland on our field trip to select the research sites for our projects, while immersing ourselves in Aino and Alvar Aalto’s experimental work, studying the master craftsmanship of the 18th-century Petäjävesi Church, and exploring the cutting-edge technologies deployed today at the Aalto University Wood Program. We also travelled to Pitkänen’s Chapel of the Holy Cross, Saarinen’s Helsinki Central Station, Lewerentz’s St Mark’s Church, and the Temppeliaukio carved deep into the city’s granite bedrock.
Failure became a mechanism to question our measurements of progress – did we really fail, or were the terms of our research too determined? Did we assume too much? We dared to approach architecture in novel ways that departed from each student’s personal interests, precisely balancing the utility and shortcomings of convention, and leading us beyond assumption into the world of the unexpected. Approaching our architectural projects in this way is not only more pleasurable but also holds the potential of establishing ways of building that are more sensitive to our ecological condition. It raises critical questions of architecture – its identity, authenticity, conventions and adaptability – and of the provenance of materials and the skills and people that make it.
Year 4
Mateusz Asmus, Grace Baker, David Byrne, Victoria Chan, Eleanor Crunden, Evelyn Jesuraj, Chueh-Kai (Daniel) Wang
Year 5
Niamh Cahill, Simona Drabužinskaite, Benjamin Faure, Cheolmin Kim, Soyun Lim, Nikita Norris, Olivia O’Driscoll, Muhammad Adam Ikhwan Saiful Rizal, William Smith, Robert Tang
Practice Tutor: Steve Johnson
Consultants: Brian Constant, Anthony Chilton
Thesis supervisors: Alessandro Ayuso, Ian Birksted, Daisy Froud, Christophe Gérard, Jane Hall, Tim Lucas, Filomena Russo, Robin Wilson, Oliver Wilton
Special thanks to Steve Johnson for his support of PG23, technical and otherwise. Thanks also to our collaborators and guest critics: Negin Amiri, Abigail Ashton, Tom Budd, Matthew Butcher, Barbara Campbell-Lange, James Della Valle, David Di Duca, Elizabeth Dow, Flurry Grierson, Kostas Grigoriadis, Florence Hemmings, Tahmineh Hooshyar Emami, Joe Johnson, Nikoletta Karastathi, Kyriakos Katsaros, Chee-Kit Lai, Stefan Lengen, Sara Martínez Zamora, Nicolas Pauwels, Dan Pope, Vseva Popov, Eoin Shaw, Mārtiņš Starks, Greg Storrar, Anthony Tai, Kate Taylor
23.1, 23.26 Niamh Cahill, Y5 ‘[Re]Foresting Pihlajamäki’. Located in Helsinki’s forest suburbs, this project explores the evolution of suburban landscapes and the environmental and social impacts of modernism on the city’s edge conditions. Drawing on the sociability of historical vernacular timber construction, the project fosters an understanding of how an architecture of care can enhance community and environmental stewardship through the co-design and construction of housing.
23.2, 23.4 Eleanor Crunden, Y4 ‘Moments in the Frame’. Jutting off Helsinki’s shore line, this project explores the intersection of architecture and identity as it draws material and spatial ideas from the Kalevala, a collection of Finnish folklore tales. Through carved interventions, mythical narratives are woven into reality through analogue methods that challenge a world solely fixated on technological advancement.
23.3, 23.5–23.7 William Smith, Y5 ‘Pressed to Impress’. As an amalgamation of a contemporary angler’s guild and the fabrication rudiments of a fishing boat workshop on Helsinki’s granite coast, the project employs insights from local aluminium boat-building construction. It accommodates the application of metal-pressing techniques and manufacturing processes to explore relationships between timber formworks and aluminium sheet metal.
23.8–23.9 Benjamin Faure, Y5 ‘Waxen Woodlands’. Sited in Tyresta National Park, south of Stockholm, the proposed herbarium responds to a burnt forest landscape in constant ritualistic metamorphosis between life and death. By engaging with the ephemeral temporalities of the forest, a novel method of forest archiving, inspired by Roman wax death masks, is advocated. Ultimately, wax becomes a material ‘presence’ within the woodland, preserving fragile memories of death in life.
23.10 Grace Baker, Y4 ‘For Peat’s Sake’. Finland is facing the catastrophic effects of climate change due to mass deforestation and the harmful burning of peat. This project challenges how peat production at the scale of architecture might contribute to the active restoration of the surrounding landscape. It proposes an education centre alongside a private enhanced mineral weathering lab. The architecture stands in limbo; while speeding up peat production, it anticipates and mitigates a pending climatic disaster. 23.11, 23.21 Chueh-Kai (Daniel) Wang, Y4 ‘Silo Quarrying’. Located in a disused grain silo, extractive methods are deployed to surgically adapt this important part of Helsinki’s industrial legacy into a gallery housing Nordic art. The proposal equates the de- and re-construction of a building to a larger idea on the coherence of spatial experience, drawing on the displacement experienced in the incommensurable pictorial space of paintings.
23.12 Cheolmin Kim, Y5 ‘The Fabricated Forest: Advancing Finnish Timber Techniques’. Composed of advanced glued-laminated (glulam) timber structures bound by traditional Finnish horizontal log joints, the proposal is set within the Seurasaari Open-Air Museum in Helsinki. As a museum, the design hosts timber structures, fragments of buildings and traditional tools abandoned throughout Finland to preserve its rich timber architectural heritage.
23.13 Victoria Chan, Y4 ‘SnowBound: A Narrative of Finland’s Weather’. Celebrating the cultural significance of snow in Finland, this project explores the relationship between weather and architecture at the extremes. Within a dual programme of a sledding and community centre, the project deploys latent structures that are activated by the presence of snow, radically shifting the spatial boundary of the building.
23.14–23.15 Evelyn Jesuraj, Y4 ‘Didactic Construction: A Community Crafted Workshop’. This project envisions a multigenerational workshop, gallery and kitchen in a
residential area in East Helsinki that reintroduces craftsmanship into a neighbourhood to combat harmful consumer culture. Built through a phased didactic process using locally extracted materials, the building is crafted through workshops and courses. The architecture becomes more complex and crafted through its chronological sequencing as knowledge builds.
23.16–23.18 Olivia O’Driscoll, Y5 ‘Disrupting Anarchitecture’. This is a project of protest. Employing steel tube bending and lightweight skins bound by scaffolding constructions, the proposed architecture seeks new ways to inhabit the city. Set in Stockholm’s old town, the architecture bolts onto the traditional fabric to live literally against the existing urban framework.
23.19 Nikita Norris, Y5 ‘The Narration of Stories: The Helsinki Visual Library of the Kalevala’. As a study into how architecture can convey stories, the visual library of the Finnish mythological epic reinforces Finnish identity 107 years from independence. Through a modern reinterpretation of the Kalevala, this project endeavours to find methods for the visitor to assimilate meaning through experience in spatial and material design.
23.20 David Byrne, Y4 ‘RokApotek: Blackeberg Local Pharmacy’. Blackeberg, a suburb in Stockholm, and its opposing island, Lovon, are geographically split but visually connected. Through an exploration of film’s portrayal of identity and its role in the production of sociocultural imaginaries, the project proposes a community pharmacy that blurs these lines, fostering dialogue and hybridising static identities.
23.22 Soyun Lim, Y5 ‘Harbouring Impermanence’. Architecture has historically aimed for permanence, yet buildings are inherently impermanent. This project challenges the conventional focus on durability by embracing impermanence, integrating it into a proposal for a new harbour in Helsinki centred around swimming and sailing activities. Ultimately, the project reinterprets erosion and weathering as key design drivers.
23.23 Simona Drabužinskaite, Y5 ‘Flesh and Steel’. This project disrupts conventional design tools that are built around efficiency. The methods used pose the question: what if space was designed the way it is experienced – through our inefficient and wasteful bodies? The conjoined twin-like programme of the casino and the gym unleashes their labyrinths into an unlikely dialogue, exploring their own respective interpretations of excess.
23.24 Muhammad Adam Ikhwan Saiful Rizal, Y5 ‘The Ghost That Sweats’. This project is a conversation between the concepts of the weird, the eerie and the uncanny in architecture. The project delves into the intangible and explores the limits of steam and fog –a byproduct of heat in bathhouses and saunas – as a form of materiality. Ultimately, ‘the ghostly’ alters our understanding of space and place, engulfing visitors in a formless bathhouse.
23.25 Robert Tang, Y5 ‘Embrace of Shadows’. This proposal investigates the potential of adapting to darkness in architecture and the subsequent ritualistic experiences it introduces into everyday life. It consists of a semisubterranean public bath, controlling aperture through a dual approach between granite excavation and built space. The resulting communal place cherishes the subdued Finnish daylight, particularly in the winter seasons.
Constructing Pleasures
Nat Chard, Colin Herperger
Unit 23
Constructing Pleasures
Nat Chard, Colin Herperger
Year 4
Dean Hedman, Jiatong (Karen) Hu, Andrea Matta, Kirsty McMullan, Ian Ng, Thomas Parker, Daniel van der Poll, Peter West
Year 5
Michael Arnett, Amy Begg, Joshua Broomer, Rania Francis, Muhammad Hussan Jubri, Flavie Caroukis, Wynne Leung, Luke Lupton
Design Realisation tutor: Ralph Gunson Parker
Thanks to consultants and critics James Craig, Bastian Glaessner, Tamsin Hanke, Perry Kulper, Shaun Murray, Jerry Tate, Emmanuel Vercruysse, and Simon Withers
Thanks to our sponsors RIAA Barker Gilette Solicitors
A background concern in the unit is the relationship between ideas and techniques; both in the way ideas can be embodied in materials and processes and in how thinking through materials and processes (in making and drawing) can tease out ideas. To help find some precision in such methods, we looked at the work of a number of anthropologists who instead of locating artefacts within established epistemologies have been constructing epistemologies directly from the artefact. The question we have been looking at is how to construct architecture in such a way that those who come across or occupy it might be seduced to have the same relationship with the building that these anthropologists have with the artefacts they study. Is it possible to construct an architecture where those who engage with it construct cosmologies that emanate from the architecture’s apparent logic?
To support our studies into these questions we ran two parallel projects; an invented object and a piece of architecture. The aim was to set up an ongoing dialogue between the research object, through which ideas within the architecture could be tried out as a (small) reality, and the architecture. In a number of cases this led to objects that in some way predicted the architecture, often as practical and conceptual tools to draw – and draw out – the ideas.
We wished to avoid prescribing objects or architecture primarily through practicalities and instead wanted to look at broader senses of purpose, hence the title 'Constructing Pleasures'. We were looking for motivations that might in modest ways infect a larger cultural realm than the piece being designed.
We started the year with visits to the Pitt Rivers Museum to imagine our own realities out of its artefacts and Rousham Park to study how the internal program infects the surrounding world. We also visited a range of intensely personal buildings in northern Italy where immense care had been invested in building their ideas as fulsomely as possible.
Figs. 23.1 – 23.2 Luke Lupton Y5, ‘Occupying The Unknown’. Architectural spectrometers reveal unknown worlds, locked behind ostensible exteriors. They are theatres of exploration, in which scenarios are choreographed to expose and interrogate instances of particularity, caught in an amalgamation of environment, body and context. The devices capture the tangible triangulation of pure duration – an epi-genius-loci that divulges physical substance on which to design. The horseracing track emerged, holding subtle layers of programmatic encryption beneath its surface. Fig. 23.3
Flavie Caroukis Y5, ‘The Orchestrated Café’. A choreographic architecture which explores the dynamic nature of improvisation in order to provoke its audience in an intuitive and inquisitive manner. Indulging in the sensation of kinesis,
the architecture is inspired by the world of performance, with its choreography expressing the multiple possibilities of movement within an ordinary setting of a café. The space seeks to unexpectedly provide its occupants with an extraordinary sense of reality.
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In-between states and subtle shifts form a domestic territory of discovery and exploration. The house delights in the possibility of precise tailoring and unexpected fit whilst also acknowledging the pleasures that ambiguity and uncertainty can offer. The act of dwelling and inhabitation becomes unique. Specific experiences orientate our understanding of space but remain open to the potential for alternative possibilities.
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Begg Y5, ‘The Tailored House of Nesso Pier’.
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Figs. 23.6 – 23.7 Kirsty McMullan Y4, ‘If These Walls Could Talk’. Investigating how architecture could be as expressive as its occupants. What if instead of humans learning to settle for the buildings they occupy, the buildings could learn to be more like humans? This posits an architecture that does not always co-operate, but would always be active in the conversation.
Fig. 23.8 Joshua Broomer Y5, ‘The Scenographic Edge’. This project is the creation of a cinematic playhouse, constructing a series of moments that combine the actors, the audience, the new, the existing and the outside world. The edges created reveal and contain these different ‘actors’ to become implicated in the show; between reality and a fabricated scene . Fig. 23.9 Mohammed Syafiq B Hassan Jubri Y5, ‘Towards an Ambidexterity in Architecture’. Anna (instrument)
drawing building plan. The project questions the unfamiliar aberrations of the left hand in drawing ambidextrous twin symmetrical spaces; based on Roger Sperry’s split-brain experiments, the value of ambidexterity in architectural drawing and spatial thinking. Drawing instruments are invented as a tools of discussion, teasing out the unfamiliar conventions of the ‘left hand’. The resultant architecture, a bicurriculum primary school, embodies the dual cognitive process of the brain, constantly encouraging alternative ways of learning.
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Fig. 23.10 Michael Arnett Y5, ‘The Florentine Clinic’. The role of the object in architectural design is investigated through making, exploring how the logic of the object can infect and inhabit other spaces with its character. Fig. 23.11 Peter West Y4, ‘Occupy Cavallerizza’. Situated in an illegally occupied building in Turin, an architectural balancing act implicates the body of the occupant in worlds beyond itself. Fig. 23.12 Dean Hedman Y4, ‘The Arboreal Archive & Research Lab’. Interested in our understanding of material space, the archive uses anisotropic gestures of wood as the primary design input. Through exposing hidden clusters of information in assembled spaces, the architecture is a deliberate attempt to construct internal didactic environments.
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Fig. 23.13 Jiatong Hu Y4, ‘The Murazzi Dance School’. This project explores the potential and possibility of mapping unknown relationships between geometries and different territories. The design focuses on the negotiation between public and private spaces and the transitions in between, with an emphasis on weaving a public route through private or semi-private entities. Fig. 23.14 Thomas Parker Y4, ‘Chasing Phantoms’. Phantom schisms and spectral jitters – these are occurrences that may only appear for a fleeting moment across an indefinite time. The architecture explores notions of a world caught on the periphery of our momentary perception, captured in a series of interventions grounded in fact, yet deliberately fictitious. Fig. 23.15 Dan van der Poll Y4, ‘The Poetry of Decay’. An investigation into the initial states of
erasure, their intrinsic relationship with architecture and the construction process, and the creation of new archaeologies. Aggregated states of flux take the form of a responsive architecture, which tells the story of its history, purpose and function. Fig. 23.16 Andrea Matta Y4, ‘The Boat Museum’. Exploring conservation and craftsmanship in the investigation of manufacturing techniques involved in local handicrafts. The study appreciates the skills and tacit knowledge embedded in a series of wooden boat constructions.
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Fig. 23.17 Rania Francis Y5, ‘Please Touch’. Through exploring the line between necessity and pleasure, space is created within elements beyond the physical. By placing human interaction at the forefront in the creation of intimacy, the architectural surface transgresses boundaries.
Fig. 23.18 Wynne Leung Y5, ‘Theatre of the Everyday’. Our minds and behavioural reactions are sometimes augmented or encouraged by the existence of momentarily mundane spatial / time voids. Personal desires are encouraged to be incrementally explored, creating momentary acts of guilty pleasure.
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Nocturnal Science
Colin Herperger, Emmanuel Vercruysse
Year 4
Michael Arnett, Amy Begg, Mohammed Hassan Jubri, Flavie Karoukis, Wynne Leung, Luke Lupton, Julian Siravo
Year 5
Luke Bowler, Nicholas Debruyne, Gary Edwards, Gregor Gregorov, Greg Storrar, Glenn Wooldridge, Liang Zhang
Thank you to our Design Realisation tutor, Ralph Parker. Thanks to our guest critics: Matthew Butcher, Nat Chard, Kate Davies, Stephen Gage, Chris Leung, CJ Lim, Olga Linardou, Shaun Murray, Juan Oyarbide, Frederik Petersen, Frosso Pimenides, Felipe Rilling, Matt Shaw, Bob Sheil, Graeme Williamson, Simon Withers. Special thanks to ScanLAB Projects, B-made and Thomas Pearce
Nocturnal Science
Colin Herperger, Emmanuel Vercruysse
Nocturnal Science complements the orderly steps of logic by overlapping the verifiable with the intuitive principles of the mysterious and confused zones of our reality.1
It is by logic that we prove, but by intuition that we discover. To know how to criticise is good, to know how to create is better. 2
In Unit 23, a rebellious irreverence towards the tools we deploy allows independent and curious designers to question the working methods of the architect and develop individual methods of practice outside the familiar and comfortable. The evolution of the unit as a design laboratory continues to place a strong emphasis on the exploration of ideas through making and physical production. These prototypes allow for rigorous testing, design iteration and tactile investigations, exploring the material and spatial consequences of our speculative inventions.
We have a close relationship with The Bartlett’s workshops. The unit’s proud tradition of experimentation and our wealth of expertise with cutting-edge technology as well as traditional methods and craft, enables us to utilise a uniquely broad range of tools and methods of production. The work evolves between the workshop and the studio, questioning how the act of making itself informs and re-informs its own evolution; how process can lead; and how the hand can inform the imagination. Fundamental to these principles, the studio welcomes experiments that hold broader implications for architecture as well as the challenge in hand.
Unit 23 works within a physically challenging context to develop our architectural positions. We ask students to consider what is sensed beyond the known, employing the rich potential of tacit knowledge in order to develop research questions from intuitive physical constructions and in direct contact with the material realm.
We are an experimental studio that encourages intuition and assists each student to develop his or her own research.
Project one, ‘Surgical Operations’, identified the fertile ground for the subject matter that each student developed throughout the year, while the building project, ‘The Dysfunctional House’, translates this research into an architectural proposal. The sites for this year’s work are set within the inspiring landscapes of central Chile. Our sites are not polite patches of ground to serve as plinths for our architecture, but are fluid – at the mercy of wind, altitude and the ocean – and our architectural moves engage in this rough and tumble. These extraordinary places became testing grounds where precise and colourful inventions – domestic and technological –successfully negotiate extreme site conditions.
1 François Jacob
2 Henri Poincaré
Fig. 23.1 Gary Edwards Y5, ‘Code of Conflict: Bathing in Light’. The hacker controls and tailors his environment through the typing of his fingers. His ultimate challenge is to hack the act of bathing, the last bastion of the disobedient physical world. A virtual voyeur is installed, from any other viewpoint then this privileged, anamorphic location, everything is distorted. The bather hides in the glitches and shadows provided by the moving elements, all are nodes on a timeline allowing for perfect synchronisation. As physical and technical limitations are solved, they dissolve into the setup. What emerges is the pure theatre of the construct, the actors and actions invented by the hacker. The conflicts and collision between them and their environment are in the end no more than the hacker’s own inner conflicts. Figs. 23.2 – 23.4 Amy Begg Y4, ‘Tailored
Prototype for a Carpenter’s House’, Andes Mountains, Chile, sewn plywood model. The project moves between the worlds of tailoring, leather craft and carpentry to explore the tailor’s pattern as a design tool. The final layered, sewn and steam-bent plywood constructions are formed through a process of adaption and fitting, where highly controlled points of connection, as well as areas of softening, strengthening and tightening, all transform the flat pattern pieces into the final articulated forms.
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Figs. 23.5 – 23.7 Greg Storrar, Y5, ‘The Hydrographer’s House’. The intrepid experimentalist relies on instruments to enable enhanced observation. These instruments are devices of the dramatic. They construct spaces within which the human observer can seamlessly move between scales, terrains, and time frames. In this experiment architecture, the body is a malleable territory, neither here nor there. The work develops through the design and fabrication of observational instruments. Early devices include a camera rig that compensates for the rotation of the earth, and an apparatus that captures time-jumps in large earthquakes. Emerging from these early fabrications, the Hydrographer’s House is an architectural proposition that explores the material and immaterial spaces of the experiment. The house exists
both upon the edge of a water tank in a subterranean laboratory, and on the edge of a cliff overlooking the boundless ocean. The architecture both contains, and is contained, by the experiment. The field is a synecdoche within the false field, built around the mechanical eyes of the camera and the gauge. The house is an elaborate construction of visual and performative similitude, enabling the displaced observer to inhabit the real ocean through the framed views of the staged experiment. The architecture that emerges is a composition of frames and allusions. It is strange and idiosyncratic, sensible and supersensible, real and hyperreal.
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Fig. 23.8 Luke Bowler Y5, ‘Two Houses for a Game of Chess’. Mixed media drawing. The drawing of the two houses is generated through conflict. As the houses are host to a game of chess, they too are designed by applying the principles of the game. The architectural move or decision made on one house forces a counter move on the other. This counter move adjusts, scales, or mirrors the architecture to suit its own needs. This results in a hybridised architecture with dual specificities. The houses are simultaneously specific to their own surroundings and a foreign context, generating an environment for the game of chess to be played. Fig. 23.9 Liang Zhang Y5, ‘Transformer - Dysfunctional Architecture - Magician’s House’. Perspective view from underneath the transformable architecture depicting the
moment at sunset as the house prepares itself prior to the start of the performance.
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Fig. 23.10 Gregor Gregorov Y5, ‘Observing Through the Architecture of Absence’. Within the contemplative landscape, an opening is cut through the ground and aligned to a church in Valparaiso, visually isolating it from its immediate context. The absence of the remaining cityscape is a conscious experience for the viewer as they stand in a precisely designed observation space, buried in a deep void into the ground.
Fig. 23.11 Gregor Gregorov, Y5, ‘Contemplative Landscape’, sectional drawing. A series of voids are constructed on the top of a hill in Valparaiso in order to create a contemplative landscape representing the natural cycles of birth, life and death. The separate spaces are designed to evoke a sense of presence, being and absence within the visitors through precise framing of city landmarks, handling of light and
material treatment. Fig. 23.12 Glenn Wooldridge Y5, ‘The Artist’s Chair’. 1:1 built prototype exploring the use of wax pistons in the creation of a kinetic environmental carapace for a travelling artist.
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Fig. 23.13 Nicholas Debruyne Y5, ‘Altitude Sickness’. In a precise choreography of moving figure and method of recording, the slit scan collapses time, quantifies motion and maps the rhythms of space. As a mode of perception, it offers a distorted sense of time, space, and place, one that comes closer to the realities of our increasingly fluid world. Fig. 23.14 Julian Siravo Y4, ‘Casa Pirquinero’. A network of copper cable and rock bolts is developed to support internal cladding in an underground domestic environment. Fig. 23.15 Wynne Leung Y4, ‘Off the Table: Tati’s Deconstructed Suitcase – Trapping the Projection’. Following the surgical operations of recording the coordinates of a projected moving image through drawing, a site case is produced containing a selection of dynamic joints and components. These individual components vibrate, pivot and extend in 3-axis for the various sized receiving surfaces and help deconstruct the projection of light and image in three dimensional space.
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Fig. 23.16 Flavie Karoukis Y4, ‘La Casa de las Piedras’. The House of Rocks is a place of domesticity and experimentation for the rock collector and his wife. From the dynamic earthquake shocks that disrupt the city of Valparaiso to the small subtle movements that interrupt the architecture, the house seeks to respond to these different modes of resistance. An abstraction of the body is thus translated into an aging form and dwelling niche for its occupants. These drawings are both a prototype of the tripod leg support as well as a sectional exploration of the reactive pendulum pods that are supported by armatures connected to the site. Fig. 23.17 Michael Arnett Y4 ‘The Sand Stable’. Cast counterweight node: cast pewter node at 1:10 scale in its 5-part CNC milled and hand carved lime wood mould. The node acts a prototype for
the counterweight element of the deployable tensioned sail which actuates the stables movement across the Open City dunescape in Chile.
Fig. 23.18 Mohammed Hassan Jubri Y4, ‘Haptical Studies’. Pencil on mylar film. Exploring the haptical relationship of a scene within a film, the drawing interrogates the bodily relationship of a mechanical articulated body to various elements in space over a period of time. The free dynamic body of the delicate structure is nestled into a solid element, grounding its position resulting in cyclical patterns as the body articulates itself on its 2-axis. The drawing lends itself to the development of the architecture later in the building proposal.
Fig. 23.19 Mohammed Hassan Jubri Y4, ‘House of Flying Optics’. Physical model. The scaled model is a possible version of its architectural manifestation on its third phase of construction over a four year period. Paralleling the pedagogy of The Open City, in Chile, spatial opportunities are constantly
interrogated during its construction process, resulting in a resolution or deviation from its original intention. It is also in this process that intuition and logic become agents to activate various sorts of spatial invention.
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Figs.23.20 – 23.21 Luke Lupton Y4, ‘Combustion Construction’. The seek for homogenous architecture. The inhabitation of the experiment. Explorations into igniting the fabric of the building: onion-cast plaster, sodium ice, brine bricks and ITO glass. Fig.23.22 Luke Lupton Y4, ‘The Pickle Protagonist’. A change of state, the observer is now the observed. The symbolic becomes the reality. The designer no longer conducts the experiment, he inhabits it. The pickle is no longer pictoric, its power shifts to the fists of the protagonist. A change of state, the sodium ions excite and ignite, the thermoplastic becomes elastic. Material manipulation fuels repeated iteration. A methodology is spawned which is formed of a nutritious duality of human intuition and chemical disposition. Fig.23.23 Luke Lupton Y4, ‘Designing Through
Experiment’. Design iterations are placed on the testing rig. This duality in design process highlighted the necessity for enclosure, insulation or protection.
Neither Here nor There: Supernatural Architecture
Kate Davies, Bob Sheil, Emmanuel Vercruysse
Year 4
Negin Amiridahaj, Luke Bowler, Joshua Broomer, Nicholas Debruyne, Gary Edwards, Grigor Rosenov Grigorov, Matthew Hudspith, Glenn Wooldridge, Liang Zhang
Year 5
Atilla Ali Tasan, Gladys Yanyi Ching, Aleksandra Natalia Cicha, Oliver Farmer, Rory Keenan, Hyder Mohsin, Richard Northcroft, Thomas Pearce, Eliza De Silva
Thanks to our consultants and critics: William Bondin, Matthew Butcher, Mario Carpo, Mollie Claypool, Stephen Gage, Ilona Gaynor, Bastian Glaessner, Jon Goldbun, Penelope Haralambidou, Colin Herperger, Andy HudsonSmith, Francesca Hughes, Guan Lee, Tom Lomax, Oli Oliviu Lugojan-Ghenciu, Andy MacFee, Ed Moseley, Shaun Murray, Tim Norman, Chris Pierce, Caroline Rabourdin, Gilles Retsin, Rupert Scott, Peter Scully, Christina Seely, Matt Shaw, Will Trossell, Peter Vaughan, Graeme Williamson, Simon Withers
Neither Here nor There: Supernatural Architecture
Kate Davies, Bob Sheil, Emmanuel Vercruysse
Unit 23 is a forum for in-depth design investigation. We pride ourselves on our hands-on approach to design through making and direct experimentation. Closely aligned with the workshop, it spans the gulf between the speculative and the tangible and places a strong emphasis on the exploration of ideas through elaborations of craft, rigorous physical testing and experimental production in order to test and explore directly the material consequences of our inventions. The Unit evolves as a design laboratory exploring the frontiers of dispersed spatiality and dissolved materiality as the increasingly blurred relationship between representation and the represented continues. We occupy the liminal territories of saturated space as drawn and built works have been devised to challenge the stability and meaning of the physical and the immaterial, the analogue and the digital, the real and the unreal.
Fuelling this experiment is the Unit’s intimate association with the Bartlett Workshops (now known as B-Made) and their progressive investment in new technologies that expand the role of designers into makers of architecture. Exploring the actions of design at the point of production, Term 1 was defined by projects in casting, 3D scanning, mechanics, and electronics. Each was led by a day’s instruction, practice, and critique, and followed by two weeks of design experimentation, documentation, tutorials and research.
Midway through these projects the Unit embarked on a European road trip that began with the artist Stelarc visiting our studio for a discussion, followed by a convoy to Theo Jansen’s Strandbeest workshop in Ypenburg. From there we headed to Paris via the work of Jean Tinguely, Gerrit van Bakel, and others. In Paris, we tracked down the clandestine group Untergunther, the team that famously restored the Pantheon’s clock. Along our way we visited and scanned abandoned railways, surrealist parks, subterranean habitats, a 1930s concrete silo, and Disneyland. All that we visited became a testing ground for the year’s projects, where individuals explored ideas of the supernatural, the unreal, hyperreal, half-imagined, invented, fictional, and fantastic. The Unit also travelled to Zurich in February to attend Fabricate 2014 – the Bartlett-founded international conference on making digital architecture. Running alongside these ventures Year 4 students collaborated to build a large-scale prototype as an invited contribution to the international Solar Decathlon in Versailles.
Fig. 23.1 Richard Northcroft Y5, ‘Materialising Ghosts’, photogrammetry camera rig for the Institute of Invisible Geometry, Walbrook Square, City of London [2016]. The project reveals the invisible and ever-shifting archaeology of the Walbook Valley, made famous by the discovery of the Temple of Mithras on the Bucklesbury House site in 1954. Manifested as a tactile 3D scan, the proposition inhabits a new gallery as a collection of infra-thin skinned spaces that reveal the historical architectural layers of the site, blurring the distinction between the authentic and reconstructed artefact.
Fig. 23.2 – 23.4 Thomas Pearce Y5, ‘Orchestrating The Edge’. This investigation reverse-engineers the phenomenon of edge noise. Mixed measurements appear in the 3D scanner’s point cloud when the laser beam hits the edge of an object and
creates ‘ghost points’ between foreground and background. These mixed measurements, normally seen as anomalous artefacts to be filtered out of the point cloud, are instead appropriated. The project devises masks or screens that, through the high resolution of their encoded perforation, become ‘all edge’. The resulting edge cloud inserts counterfactual geometries a series of sites along. Fig. 23.5
Thomas Pearce Y5, ‘Fleet Street in the City of London’. The scale model, built around one scanning origin on the street, becomes an instrument for the fabrication of the fictional edge cloud, scaled up and planted within the scanned city archive. The screens dissolve into high-tech surrealist mirages that deconstruct the veracity of the scanner and inject fragments of the imaginary into its representation of the city.
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Fig. 23.6 – 23.7 Oliver Farmer Y5, ‘The Next Best Liar’. The 3D scan has become currency for truth and evidence but will it grow into a medium for fakery and deception? Is the scanner the next best liar? 3D scans have become evidence; scans are collected data; data can be corrupted, manipulated and altered; the evidence cannot be seized and maintained in its original or in situ state. At bank station a crime is committed. The scanned evidence is corrupted through a designed particle choreography. The suspect is masked, the object is hidden, only fragments remain.
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Fig. 23.8 – 23.9 Eliza de Silva Y5, ‘Venus de Milo and the Flood’. The anticipation of the next great flood in Paris is the backdrop to the re-curation of artworks that are housed in the institutions along the banks of the Seine. The work speculates on the consequences of the city’s unstable water table, orchestrating the intersection of a very physical disruption with the almost mythical status of key cultural commodities. Through the interrogation of fragile thresholds, the project conjurs a condition that integrates, instead of isolates, art from extreme environmental conditions. Fig. 23.10 Atilla Ali Tasan Y5, ‘Material Prototype for a Continuous Cast’. The proposal describes the transformation of a disused railway – the Petit Ceinture in Paris – into an ever evolving public space. A machine running on the existing track establishes the
framework for stigmergic space-making. Each unit in the convoy serves as a fabrication hub and provides infrastructure for an insurgent construction scheme in post-industrial Paris, stitching an area on the deprived periphery into a wealthier neighbourhood across the tracks. The occupiers create novel ways to utilise the public space and propose complex spatial engagements in the cityscape.
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Fig. 23.11 – 23.12 Hyder Mohsin Y5, ‘Percussing the Sky: New Horizons’ Conducting experimental tests for the design of the Ultrasonic Mist Control Array in a proposed weather experimentation facility, the project imagines a future where newfound insecurity in Europe provokes France to initiate an experimental science-city dedicated to weather control. Situated in agricultural land outside Orléans, the project explores the technologies and theories of rain capture and weather control and through physical tests and experiments engineers the subtle visual qualities of weather. It proposes weather modification on a vast scale and speculates on its geopolitical consequences. Weather stations are designed for rain steering and capture; engaging mist and humidity as agents, constructing a phenomenological landscape.
Fig. 23.13 Rory Keenan Y5, ‘Covert Cartography’. Ubiquitous mapping technologies are increasingly used to survey and surveil our movements and actions. This project seeks to interfere in the mapping data set, turning to the world of military decoys for inspiration. A carbon fibre cocoon is slowly woven over the gardens of the Royal Geographical Society in Kensington by quadcopters, creating an evolving drawing for the eye of Google Earth over time. The image shows a prototype of a drone-woven carbon fibre cocoon.
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Fig. 23.14 Aleksandra Cicha Y5, ‘Biorealities’. Using cinematic near future scenarios, Aleksandra asks us to imagine how the merging of mobile networks and biotechnology might change the way we inhabit the city. A series of short films speculates on a future where data about our psychological and medical health (including whether we are lying) is collected by our mobile devices and starts to form a live online database that charts citizens’ identity, bodily condition, emotional health and mood swings. The image shows the Moral Amplifier being fitted to a patient. Designed to know if you are being truthful, it is a device which sits in judgement over our daily decisions.
Fig. 23.15 Gladys Yanyi Ching Y5, ‘Searching for Sonic Interference’. The project directly investigates the redistributing radio transmissions of Hertzian Space. The experiments test
the creation of two different conditions; a tangible presence and a void. For the first, electromagnetic signals are translated into sound signals, constructing a sensed landscape of transmission and forging a tangibile space from something invisible but instrumental to our daily lives. The second is a void within this transmission landscape, constructed from interference patterns. It asks whether the absence of signal might be a desirable and manipulable spatial quality in itself. The installation pictured acts as a scale model of the topography of transmissions.
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Fig. 23.16 Glenn Wooldridge Y4, ‘Solar Redirection’. As cities become ever denser, the project conjurs a future Paris where responsive systems redirect light around buildings into public spaces and parks. Robotic arms fitted with reflective panels create heliostatic systems attached to tall buildings in order to bend light around them. Fig. 23.17 Neguin Amiridahaj Y4, ‘Urban Space and Indeterminacy’. Positioned in a sensitive public space – where unusual objects might arouse suspicion – this viewing device allows room for a personal interpretation of the scene pictured within it. It heightens the perception of a public urban space, both through its very presence and through the selective, distorted and obscured views it offers.
Fig. 23.18 Group Research Y4, ‘Shadow Lines: an installation for the Solar Decathlon, Versailles’. A fabrication project, using
large scale robotic depositioning to build a 1:1 installation, to be shipped and installed in Versailles in June 2014. The geometry was visualised as a light path prior to printing using a UR10 robot.
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Fig. 23.19 Matthew Hudspith Y4, ‘Chateau Buttes Chaumont’, The urban winery seeks to bring the production of France’s most celebrated export back to the city and into the hands of the population. Anyone with the capacity to grow grapes is given the opportunity to produce a bottle of wine, blurring the boundary between consumer and producer. Fig. 23.20 Nick DeBruyne Y4, ‘Buttes Chaumont Running Pavilion’. A high performance running track perches over the city of Paris; vibrations from the running track are transmitted into a massive climbing net where visitors experience the sensation of floating above the city. Fig. 23.21 Liang Zhang Y4, ‘A Landscape Sculpting Machine’. The project transforms the landscape of the Petit Ceinture railway through an inhabitable printing machine. The drawing illustrates a plan view of the
proposition whereby material is deposited at the front and back, and the landscape of the track can be constantly adapted and re-inhabited. Fig. 23.22 Group Research Y4, ‘Shadow Lines’. A series of iterative models test material performance, tooling paths, fabrication geometry, and structural performance. Generations are passed seamlessly from desktop MakerBots to full scale prototypes using the KUKA KR60 robot. The work seeks to expand the functionality and utilisation of regular technologies and redistribute their default position from factory to studio.
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Acts of Deception
Kate Davies, Bob Sheil, Emmanuel Vercruysse
Unit 23 Acts of Deception
Emmanuel Vercruysse, Kate Davies, Bob Sheil
In Unit 23 we make things. We make things that make things up. We fabricate fabrications. We are devious, irreverent and not to be trusted. This year the Unit continued its re-appropriation of reality, constructing precise scaffolding for the imagination as we revelled in the skilful artistry of make-believe and dabbled in the dark art of manipulation. Our architectural constructs exist both live and mediated, with and without make-up, and the true site of the work exists in the no-mans-land between fact and fabrication.
Reality in the 21st century is increasingly defined by the untrustworthiness of its representation. Seeing is deceiving. Whether for artistic, commercial or political ends, images mediate our understanding of the world, conjuring powerfully convincing secondary narratives that can serve to reveal truth, obscure it or reinvent it entirely. Reality is constructed from what we are given to believe and all, it seems, is not as it seems.
The photographic document, data visualisation and the scientific image play a critical role in the accurate representation of events, objects and spaces, whilst at the same time cinematic tools, staged photography and theatrical techniques embroider and manipulate reality to support leaps of the imagination. We began the year with a series of explorations using a variety of representational and imaging technologies such as film, photography, 3D scanning and digital simulations to reimagine, remodel and rework reality, crafting a series of reconstructions, deceptions, acts of manipulation and make-believe. The act of observing was our focus for the year as we applied an acute eye for detail. We took inspiration from test facilities that employ precise modes of observation – ballistics, forensics, crash-tests – and from a rich tradition of cinema and theatre which use technique and artistry to creatively deceive. The Unit’s fabrications oscillate between figuring, disfiguring and reconfiguring. Our architecture emerges from the meticulous task of composing, staging and rebuilding. Throughout
the year, we alternated between acts of revelation and obfuscation in order to forge instruments of imaginative and elegant fabrication.
In the winter term, the Unit embarked on a road trip through California, from San Francisco to Los Angeles, visiting film studios, movie towns, silicon cities, ghost suburbs and military sites in search of fabricated places and spaces that have been invented or reinvented through cinema and mass media. The Unit focussed the major project of the year around the title ‘House of Fabrication’ and the projects explore design and proposition as a complex act that operates across a multiplicity of sites, spanning physical and digital realms and manifesting in a rich variety of guises.
Unit 23 is a forum for in-depth design investigation. We pride ourselves on our hands on approach to design through making and direct experimentation. Closely aligned with the Bartlett’s advanced fabrication labs, it spans the gulf between the speculative and the tangible and places a strong emphasis on the exploration of ideas through elaborations of craft, rigorous physical testing and experimental production in order to test and explore directly the material consequences of our inventions. The Unit’s work is diverse and personal and is driven by individuality and flair. It exists in twin digital and physical states. It is handcrafted, emerges from code and dissolves into point cloud. It lurks at the edges of perception and interferes within distortions of the senses. It sets its own terms of engagement, deploying active transgressions across the fertile territory between the apparent and the actual.
Special thanks to our critics and guests: Paul Bavister, Johan Berglund, Matthew Butcher, Mark Campbell, Nat Chard, Mike Dean, Ilona Gaynor, Ruth Gibson, Bastian Glassner, Ruairi Glynn, Penelope Haralambidou, Robin Jenkins, Birgir Jonsson, Simon Kennedy, Madhav Kidao, Guan Lee, Yeoryia Manolopoulou, Josep Mias, Ed Moseley,
James O’Leary, Jose Sanchez, Rupert Scott, Matt Shaw, Misha Smith, Tom Smith, Will Trossell, Peter Vaughan, Graeme Williamson, Simon Withers.
Year 4
Kairo Baden Powell, Yanyi (Gladys) Ching, Tom Farmer, Sarah Firth, Rory Keenan, Thomas Pearce, Eliza De Silva
Year 5
Kevin Chen, Jacob Down, Benjamin Gough, Kaowen Ho, Tom Svilans, Michelle Young
Fig. 23.1 Michelle Young, Y5, Waiting for Requiem. What type of evidence and how much of it is needed to convince you to fully understand something? Established from the claim that the presentation of objects of evidence is the making of fact through narrative fabrication, the project is framed both within the anticipation and aftermath of a fictional narrative to bring home the Hubble Space Telescope. Fig. 23.2 Yanyi (Gladys) Ching, Y4, A Nocturne. ‘... brief sharp movement against a background of static visual fields...’ J.G. Ballard. The project draws on evocative descriptions of cities at night, in literature, film and photography. The architecture constructs the spatial adaptation of a series of novels, by harvesting the ambient light of the city surrounding it. Fig. 23.3 Sarah Firth, Y4, Meteorological Sirens. A study of physical lines of sight from
the coastal outpost of a weather station. The architecture constructs a dense disorienting space that draws on the deceptions of inclement weather at sea, as a Siren on the pacific coast. Fig. 23.4 Rory Keenan, Y4, Invisible Choreography. The code, written on the body instructs a hidden performance piece in the city. It marks the times and spaces between moving security cameras and is accompanied by an empty piece of film footage as seen from through the lens. Fig.23.5 Tom Farmer, Y4, Act 00. One of a series of photographs constructed without digital manipulation. The first instinct of the digitally literate is to disbelieve an image. The work probes our notions of authenticity, featuring a series of visual illusions created by physical apparatus constructed in the camera’s blind spots.
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23.6 Kairo Baden Powell, Y4, House of Fabrication. A performative architectural prosthetic for the Golden Gate bridge, responding to the seismic landscape of San Francisco and the harmonic vibrations of the bridge, the intervention reinforces it structurally and reinstates it as an inhabitable public space. Fig. 23.7 Eliza De Silva, Y4, Unfolding Views. The project constructs a series of spaces for observing human behaviour and obscuring those doing the observing. The model shows the development of a series of perforated carbon fibre veils. Fig. 23.8 Thomas Pearce, Y4, Decoding Brutalism. In an automated procession, a set of Paranoiac Players harvests the Alexandra Estate´s surfaces, converting textures to sound and composing a syncopated Ballad of Brutalism.
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Fig. 23.9 Kevin Chen, Y5, The Garden of Earthly Delights. Inspired by Bosch’s eponymous triptych, The Garden borrows from the utopic vision of a sensual paradise depicted in its central panel, as well as the tortures of the Hell scene, to propose a garden of heightened sensual and synaesthetic encounters that appeal to the breadth of human sensation and straddle the ambiguous thresholds between pleasure and pain. Situated in a domed biosphere, the Garden is a hybrid landscape of technological interventions, controlled microclimates and natural vegetation. Fig 23.10 – 23.11 Benjamin Gough, Y5, A Frenectic Architecture: Frenectic, a term derived from the surgical procedure the Frenectomy, the reconfiguration of a biological organ restraint. The project investigates the concept of an architecture where a slow,
86-year movement is choreographed by restraining and directing environmental forces in order to choreograph spatial components. An inhabitable clock, components are initially laid out orthogonally and then slowly contort and reconfigure to create floors, surfaces and walls. Investigated primarily through models, spatial restraints embody the force of their environment through their reconfiguration and distortion over time.
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23.12 – 23.13 Kaowen Ho, Y5, Drawing Supersonic. Set within the Black Rock Desert of Nevada, the project deconstructs a Land-Speed Record attempt focusing on the experience of the desert at speed and the resulting distortions of a series of spatial and temporal elements. Through analytical drawings exploring the understanding of this distinctly American landscape at Mach 1 and the inherent dichotomy between geological time and supersonic time, the project proposes a series of architectural insertions that begin to immortalise both the event and the landscape in which it takes place by attempting to capture and prolong the phenomena of the sonic boom.
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Fig. 23.14 Jacob Down, Y5, Institute of Bio Spatial-Mechanics: Body-centric Trajectories. The project probes a unique set of spatial characteristics induced by extreme bodily motions. A series of rigs were built to explore directly a set of ineffable qualities evoked through forces exerted on the body, ones that are impossible to represent through conventional forms of architectural representation. The proposal explores the territory between thrill and the extremes of human endurance.
Fig. 23.15 Jacob Down, Y5, Multiple G-Terrain. Rotating at 1.2789 [rad./s] an artificial gravity is induced within the 107 .108m horizontally rotating structure. Occupants are centripetally pulled to the g-terrain’s inside surface defying gravity’s vector, but occupants are able to freely explore g-spaces of varying magnitude as they roam. The further
an occupant deviates from the centre of rotation, larger the magnitude of g-force induced on the body. Additional spaces include constant g-platforms, and the g-module. Fig. 23.16 Tom Svilans, Y5, The Bradbury Transcripts. The fragmentation of the Bradbury Building into an‘architecturalised film sequence’ seeks to address the continuity between actual and implied space, and the slippery territory between fact and constructed fiction. As the camera moves from set to set, changes of scale, virtual extensions and anamorphic geometries constantly seek to disorient the viewer and displace his or her assumptions of what is real and what is not. Similarly, actual events, recorded fictions, and imagined happenings are compressed and overlapped, further blurring the boundary between truth and deception.
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Fabricating the Real
Kate Davies, Bob Sheil, Emmanuel Vercruysse
FABRICATING THE REAL
Bob Sheil, Emmanuel Vercruysse, Kate Davies
In the film studios of Pinewood, Shepperton and Ealing, and in the television studios of White City, Portland Place and Horseferry Road, reality is constructed and reconstructed – rewritten, recomposed, revealed and obscured, cut and remixed – fabricated. Recordings that lie fragmented across the city in banks of wax, celluloid, nitrate, tape and data, are embroidered for artistic, political or commercial ends. This year the unit explored the slippery, devious and creative world that exists between the real and the unreal by investigating architectural subjects associated with the processing and production of public media. Elusive and pervasive, brand new and rich with tradition, the media industry is both crumbling and blossoming. It embodies technique and technology, artistry and piracy, flamboyant show and global business. Viewing this industry through the unit’s lens, we developed speculative propositions in three acts; ‘Splice’, ‘The MacGuffin* Projects’ and ‘The Broadcasting House’, constructing along our way a series of digital-analog chimeras that venture into pockets of unreal, imaginary and fabricated realities.
Framed as a speculative and polemic enquiry on spaces for the production of broadcast media, The Broadcasting House acts as a scaffold for the unit to question the act of viewing, the role of the viewer and the validity of that which is being viewed. Channel-hopping through the fragmented city, we set out to interrogate the mechanisms behind a set of fabricated realities, exploring slippages and transgressions between the actual and the imagined, the here and there, and the now and then, as the capital becomes backdrop, prop and plot device to a series of tall tales. Acting playfully into the physical and operating dextrously in the digital, the unit’s work acts within the space of the imagination, of control, of voyeurism, consumerism and power, of dreaming and trickery.
Unit 23 operates as a critical practice to establish and evolve the agendas, methods, attitudes and directions its graduates will take beyond the institution. We approach the subject and discipline of architectural production as a broad and curious field that oscillates between meaning and means, representation and realisation, experience and expertise. We investigate and experiment within the operations, protocols, roles, deceptions and tales of making experimental architecture. Students are expected to take possession of their work as critical research in developing their knowledge, skill and ideas.
Fabrication is a deliberately ambiguous term that provides a backdrop to the year’s questions. The Unit is a forum for in-depth design investigation. Closely aligned with the Bartlett’s advanced fabrication labs, it spans the gulf between the speculative and the tangible and places a strong emphasis on the exploration of ideas through elaborations of craft, rigorous physical testing
and experimental production in order to test and explore directly the material consequences of our speculations. The unit’s work is diverse and personal and is driven by individuality and flair. It exists in twin digital and physical states. It is hand crafted, emerges from code and dissolves into point cloud. It lurks at the edges of perception and interferes within distortions of the senses. It sets its own terms of engagement, deploying active transgressions across the fertile territory between the actual and its many manifestations.
*A MacGuffin is a plot element that catches the viewer’s attention or drives the plot of a work of fiction. Its specific nature may be ambiguous, undefined, generic, left open to interpretation or otherwise completely unimportant to the plot.
Special thanks to our critics and guests: Paul Bavister, Richard Beckett, Johan Berglund, Mark Burry, Matthew Butcher, Nat Chard, Ming Chung, Xavier De Kestelier, Mike Dean, William Firebrace, Stephen Gage, Ilona Gaynor, Oliviu Lugojan-Ghenciu, Bastian Glassner, Ruairi Glynn, Andy Hudson-Smith, Simon Kennedy, Asif Khan, Guan Lee, Luke Lowings, Yeoryia Manolopoulou, Matteo Melioli, Josep Mias, Ed Moseley, James O’Leary, Pernilla Ohrstedt, Alan Penn, Chris Pierce, Ru Scott, Matt Shaw, Gabby Shawcross, Marilena Skavara, Misha Smith, Matthias Suchert, Will Trossell, Nic Tyson, Peter Vaughan, Graeme Williamson.
Year 4: Mihir Benodekar, Behnaz Berengi, Kevin Chen, Stuart Colaco, Jacob Down, Meng Lui, Nurlina Marof,Richard Northcroft, Megan Passey, Tom Svilans
Year 5: Peaker (Chi Wai) Chu, Thais Kvejborg Espersen, Tom Harvey, Birgir Örn Jónsson, Madhav Kidao, Joseph Ransom Shaw, Thomas Smith
Fig. 23.1 (Previous spread) Tom Smith, Simulating a Crashed Architecture. An animated world of twisted spaces is constructed from four crash simulations, forming a technological ballet designed to choreograph its own violent destruction. The project is a richly saturated orgy of fetishism and precision inspired by both the meticulous reconstructions of crash-test simulation rigs and the mouth-watering collisions that unfold in slow motion across the cinema screen.
Fig. 23.2 Richard Northcroft and Megan Passey, The Factory of Unmade Films. Architectural ‘scripts’ describe tactical propositions for a playful rehousing of Stanley Kubrick’s archive as a sequence of cinematic spaces inspired by iconic Kubrick film sets and viewed as a vast tracking shot from the Westway Fig. 23.3 Jacob Down, Non-locomotive motion trace: A specifically constructed body prosthetic
and a 30-second long exposure photograph reconstruct the motion and boundaries of the human form through time, drawing out spaces of action but erasing the actor.
Fig. 23.4 Jacob Down, Westway Dynamics: A 45-second long exposure photograph explores the prescribed vehicular motions and speeds of an underpass below the Westway.
Fig. 23.5 Tom Svilans, Prototyping a Myth: The objects, fragments from the Guild of Redundant Technology, are made to be viewed in subdued light and are explorations of shadow on material surface. The Guild reclaims precious metals from prosaic objects, and recasts them in spectacular illusory interiors for the grand hall. The mark of the digitally guided tool is both a sign of precision and a device for optical effect. Fig. 23.6 Tom Svilans, Study model for the Guild of Redundant Technology.
Fig. 23.7 Tom Harvey, Vertigo: Instrumentalising Perception Through Durations Of Spatial Temporal Realignment. The year’s work explored architectural design as a means to distort and disrupt experiences and memories, overlapping real and subjective spatial scenarios which overwhelm frequently and unexpectedly. Playing with the shifting paradigms of consciousness, vertigo was seen as an emblem for the manipulation of space-time. In this context, the design process was an opportunity to test the limits of reality, to test the dissonance between subjective experience and cultural assumptions, to short-circuit the dependable physiological tendency to conform consciousness to outer reality and to instigate a sense of freedom. These overlapping spatial conditions were seen as the remit of the architect and the intention
of the project was to propose the overlapping milieu as spaces for experimentation that question the traditional contradiction of architecture as a profession guised as an art form and propose the design process as a means of research conducted within the frame of a playful artistic pursuit. In this vein, models explored notions of the multisensory and multiperspective, primarily through both spatial distortions instigated through mismatch in the senses and disequilibrium between the expected and actually perceived. This allowed for ambiguous impressions of motion in both the external and internal process, leaving the world and body to slip out of harmony and in doing so creating a gap in which one could fall infinitely.
Fig. 23.8 — 23.9 Madhav Kidao, The Theatre of Synthetic Realities. A series of real and fictitious locations and events, actors and devices, that attempts to question our production, embodiment and perception of social space as mediated through technology. Through the use of ubiquitous personal and mobile computing we have become both constant consumers and producers of information, both live receiver and transmitter. We, and our environments, exist simultaneously as physical and real-time digital manifestations, as such augmenting our relationship to space, time and experience.
Fig. 23.10 — 23.11 Birgir Örn Jónsson, Islands of Vision. Research suggests that life in technologically-intensive cultures is becoming increasingly guided by a foveal character of vision. The fovea is primarily involved with the processing of objects and detail, while peripheral vision deals with the gathering of environmental context, and is inherently spatial. The project questions this centre-biased consumption of space by seeking to occupy the more mysterious periphery. A field laboratory for spatial perception, it was tested through the making of tools that address peripheral vision and the dynamics of the visual field. It suggests architecture that encourages a more curious, playful gaze and seeks to reconnect with the observer by providing for a heightened sense of peripheral awareness. The scheme
reveals itself to the observer in layers interacting within specific zones in the field of vision. It skirts the edges and hides in blind spots, acting out a sequence of carefully constructed and cunning diversions in order to exist there at all.
Fig. 23.12 — 23.13 Joseph Ransom Shaw, The Unnatural History Unit. A polemical enquiry into notions of authenticity, the project unpacks iconic BBC nature documentaries, revealing an elaborate artifice. A sequence of spectacular studio sets is carefully tailored for the precise construction of these seemingly seamless natural wonders. It is architecture as ‘the making of’ documentary, offering us a glimpse behind the scenes of the factories supplying the natural world to our living rooms. Fig. 23.14 Thais Kvejborg Espersen, Twilight Theatre. The project is a series of performance spaces rearticulated by a sequence of architectural choreographies across time. The architecture is born from notation systems delineating the 3 phases of twilight. Two stages slowly track twilight, one at dawn, one at dusk, while a
third is positioned to celebrate midsummers day. The made pieces and mechanisms act as both kinetic models and dynamic spatial notation. Fig. 23.15 Peaker Chu, Cinematic Dreamscape. Inspired by abstract cinema, the project harvests and harnesses artificial light from the Westway to create a cinematic experience. A series of filmic architectural fragments are strategically located in relation to the sweeping arcs of passing traffic and feed off the shifting palette of colours and light qualities to create a distorted fluorescent and incandescent world; an abstract cinema driven by the buzz and flicker of the nocturnal city.
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Spaces of Uncertainty
Bob Sheil, Emmanuel Vercruysse
SPACES OF UNCERTAINTY
The unit operates as a critical practice for individuals to speculate on how the future of architecture is made and who makes it Projects are approached as polemic and visionary constructs in both digital and analogue realms where the construction of experimental and hypothetical protoarchitectures are understood as an essential platform for future architectural designer
As designers, we recognise that our expertise and scope must expand and diversify for rapidly changing contexts and needs As makers, we recognise how the process of exploring ideas and meaning through material resistance, the protocols of techniques, and the matrices of complex systems, is a fusion of visceral and cerebral endeavour. And as critics we understand that without a skilled, curious, informed and daring vision of the future, the profession of architecture is doomed to an irrelevant margin of vital discourse.
Spaces of Uncertainty began with a road trip from the Venice Biennale to Marseilles Vieux Port, passing through Verona, Florence and Turin, visiting, revisiting and discovering a catalogue of well known and less known works, places, spaces and things. Students were asked to locate their work anywhere on this path, exploring peripheral, abandoned or vacant plots and populating these locations with speculative projects addressing their found or destined condition. The response was entirely diverse, with projects for Marseilles including: A Ministry of
Cooperation, An imaginary L’Hotel de Ville for Gaston Defferre, An Embassy for the Roma nation, and ‘The Last Gasp’, a 350m solar farm on Les îles du Frioul for 2050 built using final remnants of oil and metals. In Venice, the outlook was equally particular and polemic with individual projects exploring a residence for the local ageing population, a sonic promenade on the Moses barrier, and the Mega Shed, a vast infrastructural enclosure at the Arsenale for building works and reparations
Projects deployed any appropriate media, method or tool, and students worked at varied scales from 1:1 to 1:10000, developing specific foci of individual investigation such as unique micro environmental character, particular local narrative or building typology, or related biographical context
Year 4: Chi Wai Chu, Thais Espersen, Tom Harvey, Kyle Hyde, Birgir Jonsson, Madhav Kidao, Michelle Lam, Ming Fung Ng, Joseph Shaw
Year 5: Edward Farndale, Daniel Goodacre, Thomas Impiglia, Daniel Lauand, Heather Macey, Emma-Kate Matthews, Jay Morton, David Shanks
Critics: Rachel Armstrong, Jason Bruges, Kyle Buchanan, Nat Chard, Nic Clear, Kate Davies, Xavier De Kestelier, Bernd Felsinger, William Firebrace, Murray Fraser, Stephen Gage, Christine Hawley, Simon Herron, Asif Khan, Guan Lee, Tom Lomax, Luke Lowings, Yeoryia Manolopoulou, Niall McLaughlin, Matteo Melioli, James O’Leary, Luke Olsen, Caroline Rabourdin, Sebastien Ricard, Ru Scott, Peter Sharpe, Jason Slocombe, Misha Smith, Liam Young
23.1 Emma-Kate Matthews, The Augumented Instrumentalist A sound perspective of the small listening chamber Composite physical model and acoustic simulation
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Fig. 23.2–23.4 Daniel Goodacre, Sojourning in the Fourth Age Models and drawings for a bakery and baths, parts of the sojourn for the elderly residents of Venice
The bakery adapts to the frequent flooding of the city and forms part of a new supportive infrastructure
Fig. 23.5 Heather Macey The Playhouse, Venice
The playhouse docks to three positions throughout the year, in relation to three performance events in the city of Venice The architecture physically expresses two calendars (climatic and contrived) At it’s most open, it caters for the event of Carnivale Fig. 23.6 David Shanks Tailored Earth at the Venezia Metro Interchange, Rome Fig 23 7 Edward Farndale The Last Gasp
Fig. 23.8 Thomas Impligia Ruderal Instruments
Fig. 23.9 Thais Espersen, North African Film Festival Fig. 23.10 Jay Morton, Romani Embassy Fig. 23.11 Tom Harvey, Human Error 23 12 Daniel Lauand, Battlefield at the Ministry of Cooperation, Architecture, power politics, and battle tactics converge on a highly charged site in central Marseilles Fig. 23.13 Birgir Jonsson, Centre for Underwater Archeology in Marseilles The projects uses the unpredictable and experimental nature of its programme as a vehicle of exploring semi-amphibious, fragmented spaces that constantly shift between environmental extremes Fig. 23.14 Birgir Jonsson, Centre for Underwater Archeology in Marseilles Fig. 23.15 Joseph Shaw, Transformable Structures Fig 23 16 Joseph Shaw, Mega-Shed for Reconstructing Venice
(Extra) Ordinary
Bob Sheil, Emmanuel Vercruysse
Dip/MArch Unit 23
Yr 4: Edward Farndale, Daniel Goodacre, Kyle Hyde, Daniel Lauand, Caroline Lundin, Heather Macey, Emma-Kate Matthews, David Shanks
Yr 5: Marcus Brett, Michael Dean, Misha Smith, William Trossell, Peter Webb
(Extra) Ordinary
Customary divisions between the built and the unbuildable, the inert and the reactive, the ideal and the real, have dissolved. Space, the matter of architecture, is no longer real or digital; it is a seamless hybrid of both. In this age, experimental design is no longer a clandestine discipline, confined to the suspicious and counterfeit materials of representation; it has transgressed the resistant protocols of manufacture, and subverted the decrepit legacies of mass production and slavish practice. Experimental design constructs the real world, whatever and wherever that is.
The unit expects its members to argue a position for both the design and the designer where ideas oscillate as a continuum of speculative and polemic prototypes through conversation, collaboration, production and observation. Students are supported in identifying independent and unorthodox research interests spanning both years of the programme. This year, themes that came to the fore included architecture’s relationship with ageing, biosynthesis, rhythmanalysis, serialism, geomorphology and self-sufficiency.
We thank the Centre for Creative Collaboration and its directors, Thias Martin, Brian Condon, Neil Gregory and Jess Bowles for their inspiration, generosity and hospitality. Also our critics and consultants for their stimulating provocations and expert guidance: Rachel Armstrong, Charles Barclay, Paul Bavister, Johan Berglund, Matthew Butcher, Nic Clear, Marcus Cruz, Colin Darlington, Kate Davies, Stephen Gage, Sean Hanna, Simon Herron, Guan Lee, Tom Lomax, Luke Lowings, Tim Marcot, Shaun Murray, James O’Leary, Luke Olsen, Ricardo de Ostos, Alan Penn, Caroline Rabourdin, Sebastian Ricard, Gabby Shawcross, Peter Sharpe, and Oliver Wilton.
Sheil & Emmanuel Vercruysse
Bob
Above and opposite: Mike Dean, The Watcher’s House.
Misha Smith, Prototype For a Spatialised Instrument.
Clockwise from top left: Emma-Kate Matthews, Terra-Tectonic; Marcus Brett Skin of the Bog; Caroline Lundin, The Manufactured Garden; David Shanks, Plaster Organ; Heather Macey, Revealing the Unseen; Dan Lauand, Gatehouse; Edward Farndale, A Self-Sufficient, Survivalist Architecture in a Neo-Lunar Landscape
Peter Webb, Digging Out London
Manufacturing
The Bespoke
Bob Sheil, Emmanuel Vercruysse
Dip/MArch Unit 23
Yr 4: Marcus Brett, Chris Campbell, Michael Dean, Sam Frankland, Misha Smith, Alvin Tan, William Trossell, Peter Webb. Yr 5: James Barrington, Francis Gilks, Justin Goodyer, Richard Lipson, Matthew Shaw, Timothy Tasker, Katrina Varian, Andrew Yorke. MArch: Lucy Reuter, Umut Yamac.
Manufacturing The Bespoke
The unit continues to pioneer and establish innovative and critical positions between analogue and digital design. In 08-09 it continued to transgress disciplinary protocols between the ideal and the real by infiltrating realms of architectural production beyond reach of the desk bound or paper based designer. Our tools are melded with those of the seamstress, the cabinetmaker and their digital siblings. Our knowledge evolves through tacit experience and inquisitive intuition; through the actions of forming, honing, assembly and testing; and with every step, extrapolation and proposition.
This year the unit was propelled by its ongoing investigation into Protoarchitecture through questions of self-sufficiency, interdependency, adaptation synthesis and ephemeralization. In the first half of the year, we surveyed the bombarded hulk of Orford ness in Suffolk, treating it as our laboratory bench upon which to conjure, invent and breed a new species of architectural construct.
In the second sector we formed a convoy through Northern Europe’s scarred wasteland, through Zollverin and Dessau, Blankenburg and Wachendorf. We saw 55/02 in incubation and shared suckling pig and Trappist beers with its inspiring craftsmen.
Special thanks to our critics:
Rachel Armstrong, Paul Bavister, Matt Butcher, Marjan Colletti, Kate Davies, Max Dewdney, Murray Fraser, Stephen Gage, Simon Herron, Asif Khan, Tom Lomax, Stuart Munro, Shuan Murray, Ron Packman, Peg Rawes, Matthias Suchart, Neil Spiller, Ben Sweeting, Jerry Tate, Sara Turnbull, Nina Vollenbroker, Michael Wihart, Graeme Williamson and Liam Young.
Bob Sheil and Emmanuel Vercruysse
Clockwise from top: Marcus Brett ‘Post Apocalyptic Quarantine Tactics’, Pete Webb ‘Seaside Prosthetics’, Misha Smith ‘Prototype for Acoustic Ecology’.
Clockwise from top: Michael Dean ‘Outlines of an Ordnance House’, Will Trossell ‘Good, becoming Moderate later’, Justin Goodyer ‘Prototype for Adaptive Bloom’.
Top: James Barrington: ‘Chthonian Ecology: Physiology of a Mechanic Phylum (Charon; The Boatman) Bottom: Andrew Yorke ‘Oil and Soil; The Resurrection of Milford Haven’
Clockwise from Top: Katerina Varian ‘The Tlonian island; an architectural interpretation in relation to the art of memory -The black circle of the indefinite present’, Tim Tasker ‘Cleansing the City’ (Section through the FSA as Bathhouse). Frank Gilks ‘Afterlife of an Island, A Will’o-wisp’ drinking/plotting table’.
Ric Lipson ‘Hear, Here’ an acoustic theatre modified by inhabitation. Overleaf: Matt Shaw ‘Stealth Space; Subverting the LiDAR Landscape in Parliament’s Zone of Ambiguity’
Protoarchitecture
Bob Sheil, Emmanuel Vercruysse
Dip Unit 23
Yr4: James Barrington, Francis Gilks, Justin Goodyear, Richard Lipson, Matthew Shaw; Timothy Taskor, Katrina Varian, Andrew Yorke. Yr 5: Jonathan Duffett, Thomas Dunn, Dale Elliott, Kristof Hanzlik; Matthew McTurk, Sara MohammadiKhabazan, Thomas Shelswell, Joseph Swift
Protoarchitecture
Protoarchitecture is part real, part ideal. It is a proposition that is prompted by vision rather than convenience. It may be plural or singular, evolutionary or revolutionary, temporary or permanent. It is at once a construct of the physical and the virtual. It does not conform. It is by definition, an exception. The unit operates a two year plan, beginning in Y4 with a small building design project. This year, it was ‘live’; to design and if luck has it, to build a small mobile space for experimental theatre with the Central School of Speech and Drama. We named this protoarchitectural investigation ‘from the ideal to the real’ and exhibited the work at CSSD in March. This was followed by more experimental and speculative ideas on performance, for which we built prototype after prototype. Ending with a work in progress, Y4 students have already begun to carry individual agendas into their final year. Y5 students meanwhile work from prototype to protoarchitecture, ending the year on
Clockwise from top: Model case at ‘Perform’ (CSSD April 2008), Ric Lipson, Timothy Tasker.
Clockwise from top left: Katrina Varian, James Barrington, Matthew Shaw, Andrew Yorke, Justin Goodyear, Francis Gilks.
Top: Sara Mohammadi-Khabazan. Bottom: Jonathan Duffet.
Top: Kristof Hanzlik, Bottom: Matthew McTurk.
Dale Elliott.
Thomas Dunn.
Transgression
Bob Sheil, Graeme Williamson
Dip Unit 23
Yr 4: Marivenia Chiotopoulou-Isaia, Jonathan Duffett, Thomas Dunn, Dale Elliott, Kristof Hanzlik, Mark Martines, Matthew McTurk, Sara MohammadiKhabazan, Thomas Richardson, Thomas Shelswell, Joseph Swift. Yr 5:Timothy Barwell, Michael Garnett, Paul Jakulis, Ryan Martin.
Transgression
1. Prop - An object that can be manipulated
The beginning is fast and furious. It starts by making experimental and inquisitive objects whose origins are captured through instant photography. Intuitive, spontaneous and accidental images will be generated in response to this year’s agenda: ‘Transgression’. We shall explore the proposition that embedded within habitual modes of design practice are essential properties that are unspeakable and subjective. We shall draw forth curiosities and stimuli and generate the scaffold of a personal design lexicon for use throughout the year.
2. Prototype - An original type that serves as a model for later examples We shift from consideration of objects to that of subjects. We will fabricate speculative constructs that expand upon ideas of ‘Transgression’ by looking at questions of space, use, conduct, protocol, physicality, and phenomena. Appropriate test sites will be found or invented according to the needs of the work. Individuals will develop their ideas through the production of models, photography, film, constructs, and/or installations.
3. Proposition
What expertise as designers can we offer the rigorous procedures of building production? For Y4 students this will manifest itself as a comprehensive building proposal developed through models of varied scale, complexity and materiality. For Y5 students individual agendas, the seeds of which were established in Y4 last year, will hone their skills as makers of innovative and challenging architectural propositions.
Sheil and Graeme Williamson
Bob
This page: Ryan Martin. Facing page: Paul Jakulis.
This page: Tim Barwell.
This page: Michael Garnett.
Top: Dale Elliott. Middle: Tom Dunn. Bottom left: Tom Shelswell; right: Jonathan Duffett.
Top: Kate Davies & Emmanuel Vercruysse. Middle: Marivenia Chiotopoulou-Isaia. Bottom left to right: Sara Mohammadi-Khabazan, Mark Martines & Joe Swift; Tom Richardson.
CODEMAKER
Bob Sheil, Zoe Smith, Graeme Williamson
Dip Unit 23
Yr 4: Aaron Brookes, Timothy Barwell, Catriona Forbes, Michael Garnett, Paul Jakulis, Ryan Martin, Ruth Oldham, Cheng-E Tham Yr 5: Ralf Eikelberg, Thomas Housden, Yiannis Kanakakis, Lucie Reuter, Manuel Shvartzberg
CODEMAKER
Unit 23 invites individuals to establish diverse and critical positions on making architecture For the unit, questions on how we design are of equal importance to those on what we design Propositions are established and developed through the production of objects, texts, drawings and interventions that test attitudes towards technology, theory, history, politics, culture, buildings and the city CODEMAKER refers on one level, to the production and design of information protocols from industrial processes, but it also may refer to t he intellectual meaning of that information For example; modes of conduct, behaviour, identity, and so on CODEMAKER suggests a method and application, a subject and an object, an idea and its translation
Project 1 : Fixtures and Fittings Objects usually associated with property inventories, Fixtures and Fittings occupy a liminal place between permanent and temporary, communal and private, universal and p ersonal, utilitarian and decorative Based on an extract from Perec's Species of Spaces, listing the humdrum actions within an imaginary apartment building, students were invited to invent and make a 1:1 Fixture or Fitting Project 2: A Private Collection Informed by Project 1 and our field trip to Vienna, Graz, Bratislava and Walter Pichler's farm in Burgenland, the project sought to expand the potential f or diverse and implied meanings for a Private Collection, exploring the illicit, the bizarre, the hidden, the repulsive and the eccentric
Our thanks to the following critics and consultants who generously offered their time and insight throughout the year: Abi Abdolwahabi, Matthew Barnett-Howland, Paul Bavister, Kate Davies, Max Dewdney, Matt Driscoll, Tom Emerson, Bernd Felsinger, Christophe Gerard, Brain Greathead, Stephen Greenberg, Richard Grimes, Sean Hanna, Simon Herron, Charles Holland, Jack Hosea, Prashant Kapoor, Eoin Keating, Brigid McLeer, Paul Monaghan, Luke Olsen, Ron Packman, Peg Rawes, Mark Smout, Emmanuel Vercruysse, Oliver Wilton, Umut Yamac
Bob Sheil, Zoe Smith and Graeme Williamson
This page: Michael Garnett, Prosthetic caviar cooler and mother of pearl tasting spoons for the National Institute of Stem Cell Research, Harley
This page left: Tim Barwell and Ryan Martin, Luthiery for Handel's Water Music & Phenomenological Site Model Top:
Ralf Eikelberg, Chelsea Physic Garden
Intensive Farming Facility for Skin Cancer Research and Treatment Clinic Middle: Michael Garnett and Paul Jakulis, Façade Detail for the National Institute of Stem Cell Research, Harley Street Bottom:
Tim Barwell and Ryan Martin, Luthiery for Handel's Water Music & Phenomenological Site Model
This page: Tom Housden, Homo Faber, investigations into subject object relations
This page: Yiannis Kanakakis, Surveying Machine for Mt Pentelikon Marble Quarry, Greece / 1000 year scale drawing
This page: Manuel Shvartzberg, Institute of Public Affair, Mission 1: Survellience Suitcase
This page: Lucie Reuter, Objects of Transformation, A Double Edged Gift, A Minature Escape, A Transportable Vestiary
Made In London
Bob Sheil, Zoe Smith, Graeme Williamson
Dip Unit 23
Yr 4: Pereen D’Avoine, Tom Housden, Manuel Irsara, Yiannis Kanakakis, Lucie Reuter, Manuel Shvartzberg Yr 5: Kate Davies, Chris Fay, Kirsten Holland, Christos Lefakis, Alastair McDonald, Tom McGlyn, Joachim Reiter, Umut Yamac
Made In London
Formed by enthusiasts for innovative practice and research, this unit is dedicated to generating a critical response on the subject and practice of architectural design Members are encouraged to establish, argue and develop propositions in diverse territories in order to test their methodology and attitudes towards such matters as technology, theory, history, culture and the city
The year began by examining questions of craft, identity, site and purpose by exploring the 104 existing City of London Guilds, Liveries and Worshipful Companies. Of these, about 50 have premises within the City of London boundary, each taking a given place in the Order of Precedence Although it is now common practice for a single worker to intersect with a number of occupational groups or to be active in two or more unrelated disciplines, new City of London guilds are still being formed From this starting point, members of the unit formed and developed a diverse range of individual works such as: The Ministry of Pestilence, The Embassy for Sealand and The Institute of Translators
Many thanks to our critics: Matthew Barnett-Howland, Iain Borden, Paul Bavister, Nic Clear, Bernd Felsinger, Adrian Forty, Stephen Gage, Jonathan Hill, Bill Hodgson, Charles Holland, Eoin Keating, Louise La Fargue, Ed Norman, Matthew Priestman, Peg Rawes, Yen Yen Teh, Tony White, Oliver Wilton Special thanks to everyone in the workshop: Abi Abdolwahabi, Martin Avery, Bim Burton, Richard Grimes, Robert Randall and Jan Kattein And finally a big thank you to our specialist consultant Ron Packman
Bob Sheil, Zoe Smith and Graeme Williamson
Top: Joachim Reiter, bottom: Christos Lefakis
Clockwise from top: Chris Fay, Alastair McDonald, Tom Housden Overleaf, left: Umut Yamac, right: Kate Davies
Transplants/Transactions
Bob Sheil, Zoe Smith, Graeme Williamson
Dip Unit 23
Yr 4: Noor Abdul Aziz, Jennifer de Vere Hopkins, Ross Duggleby, Christopher Fay, Ronan Friel, Christos Lefakis, Alistar McDonald, Tom McGlyn, Martin Xavier Perez Jensen Broby, Joachim Reiter, Thomas Stewart, John Stimpson Yr 5: Ian David, Nadine Holland, Barrie Shaffner
Transplants/Transactions
This year, our first in Diploma, we seek a critical understanding of architectural obsolescence and the city The year began with 'Transplant', a series of built interventions within the abandoned buildings of the former Queen Elizabeth Children's Hospital in Hackney, East London The work explores and reveals unique characteristics under the skin of redundant and decaying sites Later in the year, proposals for the abandoned spaces of Stralau Peninsula East Berlin are investigated as sites of 'Transaction' Designed in detail, fish auctions, newspaper archives, self storage repositories, and so on, seek to acknowledge the unique character of the city's ad hoc public realm Each project becomes a means to pursue the unit's underlying agenda; to practice and investigate the hybrid modes of design and making
Thanks to our critics: Abi Abdolwahabi, Phil Ayres, Roz Barr, Paul Bavister, Stephanie Brandt, Peter Culley, Kenny Cupers, Stewart Dodd, Paul Fletcher, Kieran Gaffney, Stephen Gage, Steve Hardy, Jan Kattien, Eoin Keating, Constance Lau, Tom Lomax, Luke Lowings, Yeoryia Manolopoulou, Ed Norman, James O'Leary, Mark Prizeman, Peg Rawes, Will Russell, Neil Spiller, Mark Smout
Bob Sheil, Zoe Smith and Graeme Williamson
Top to bottom: Alistar McDonald, Christos Lefakis, Tom McGlyn
Clockwise from top left: Christos Lefakis, Joachim Reiter, Ian David, Christopher Fay, Ian David