EDGEcondition - vol.03 - Art & Architecture by EDGEcondition

EDGE CONDITION Vo l u m e 0 3 SEPT 2014 ‘ar t and architecture’

ON THE COVER

EDGE CONDITION Volume 03 SEPT 2014 ‘art and architecture’

‘Myth of the Image’ by Bryan Cantley CLICK HERE FOR MORE INFORMATION ON THE COVER ARTWORK.

EDGEcondition issue 03 published online Sept 2014 UK Editors: Gem Bar ton Cara Courage Cover ar twork: Copyright Br yan Cantley Opinions expressed are those of the authors. Ar t Direction: Gem Bar ton @EDGE_CONDITION www.edgecondition.net mail@edgecondition.net

WELCOME

Editors’ note Rendell’s 2006 seminal text Art and Architecture has the subtitle of ‘a place between’, a fitting theoretical springboard into this issue on the two praxes and how they interact and also for EDGEcondition as a publication that looks at what is in the spaces between architecture and other professions and how they operate. There is an assiduous dialogue between ar t and architecture but both can operate as singular practices, the conversation not always to each other, but to the side or past each other. Nonetheless, the boundaries between ar t and architecture blur and inform each other and it is with this in mind that our Ar t and Architecture issue was devised. The practice found in ar tists such as Jeanne van Heeswijk’s IJburg, a residential area on a cluster of manmade islands outside of Amsterdam, are resonant of such a blurring, where ar t is infused in a build project to inform its design as a human space, not ‘devised in the conference room and on the drawing board.’ Operating from a house in Housing Block 35, Het Blauwe Huis, from 2005 to 2012, Jeanne invited ar tists to join the IJburg residents in a continuous conversation, a research and development process, the outcomes of which shaped the lived experience of the area. Questions were around how a new locale takes its material and cultural form, how space is used and (re) appropriated, taking place in a durational performative ar t situation: ‘This combination of location and a

par ticular moment in time, coupled with the oppor tunity to be temporar y residents of IJburg, offers par ticipants an ideal platform for studying, acting on and co-designing its public space. By describing and simultaneously inter vening in ever yday life in this area, Het Blauwe Huis facilitates the acceleration and intensification of the process of developing a cultural histor y.’ The blurring of ar t and architecture or the space between the two does not have to operate at such a scale, at such depth or over such a timeframe however. This issue sees ar ticles from people across the ar t and architecture spectrum that work in myriad ways, from diverse inspiration points to equally diverse ends, from the photo essays of ostensibly ar ts spaces both public and private, to the presentation of architecture as exhibition to the public, and to the programming of ar t into built space. Our next issue is ‘Teaching the Future’, focusing on architecture education from primar y school to graduation and outside of such a formal education, with thought-pieces on what architecture could and should be, looking at the pedagogy of its teaching, its gaps and what skills need to be taught to equip our next generation of built environment professionals. If you wish to contribute, please contact us here. Cara & Gem.

LISTINGS LETTERS:

FROM PERSONAL EXPERIENCE:

04 Sara Seravalli introduces her charity auction project ART MEETS ARCHITECTURE.

58 Liz West gives us a insight into the life of a practising ar tist in CONSTRUCTING MY SURVIVAL

08 Graeme Brooker shares his concerns over the apparent invisibility of the world of interiors in REVIEWING THE FARRELL REVIEW.

62 Br yan Cantley shares the process and thinking behind the cover ar twork ....TO BE TRANSFORMED.

FEATURES: 10 Rachel Armstrong, Producer at ARTANGEL takes us through examples of THE PSYCHIC SPACE. 16 Commissioning editor Helen Castle explores the realm of digital publishing in CANNY COMMUNICATION IN THE ARCHITECTURE IN THE AGE OF ‘MESSY MEDIA’ - par t two.. 22 Rachael de Moraivia’s essay talks about ow Virginia Woolf built feminist discourse on the foundations of modern architecture in A SHOEBOX OF ONE’S OWN. 28 Philip Hall Patch details his innovative use of salt in ar t and construction in the ar ticle THE INDEFINITE PLEASURES OF SALT. 34 Andrew Walker and Merjin Royaards delve into the depths of sound and space with their robotoic installation, ACID HOUSE.

70 Amberlea Neely itroduces us to the independent, not-for-profit organisation dedicated to the making of great places - PLACE 74 Aerospace Engineer narrates a trip San Francisco MOMA in MUTABLE SPACE. OP-EDS 76 Ordinar y Architcture take us through the histor y and it’s use of Supergraphics in BIGGER THAN THE BOTH OF US. 84 Mia Tagg tells us all about Homebaked, the grass roots art installation and business in MATTERS IN OUR OWN HANDS. 88 The team behind Processcraft take us through the impor tance of technical studies and engaging with students in CRAFTING ARCHITECTURE PHOTO-ESSAY

AN INTERVIEW WITH...

98 Photographer Paul Karalius and Open Eye Galler y Director, Lorenso Fusi, explore the intricacies of PHOTOGRAPHING ART SPACE.

46 Jennifer Davis, curator at Rear view Projects inter views her friend and commissioned ar tist Jiminez Lai

106 Photographer Richard Boll shares the concepts behind his shoots in BYPRODUCTS OF CREATIVITY. 116 Jim Stephenson shares his first hand experience of documenting the construction of the Serpentine Pavilion in UNDER CONSTRUCTION.

LETTERS

#AmeetsA Dear EDGECondition, “Architecture Meets Ar t” (#AmeetsA) was born almost a year ago when I left London to relocate to Scotland. Together with all the boxes and furniture I brought up with me, were two ideas I was hoping I would find a way to give bir th to. “Architecture Meets Ar t” was one of the two. Architecture Meets Ar t is a charity event that combines the two worlds of architecture and ar t in one, giving the oppor tunity for architects and designers to express their creative side while suppor ting a ver y impor tant cause. I asked architects, designers and ar tists to create a unique piece of work inspired by Glasgow, its architecture and personality, leaving complete freedom to the par ticipants to pick their favourite style. As a result, the exhibition of all donated ar twork, at the Italian Centre in October, presents a broad mix of mediums, from sculpture, installation ar t, design and painting. Par tnering on this first edition of #AmeetsA and on future events is Scotland’s leading charity for children and adults who have a learning disability, ENABLE Scotland. I couldn’t have found a better par tner for this venture. ENABLE Scotland has jumped on board with tons of enthusiasm and energy and is actively contributing to the success of the event. Six months have passed since we launched the initiative and the response we have received has been overwhelming, fueling our optimism and excitement. Ar tists, architects, designers and photographers from all over the UK have offered their help; David Mach, Turner prize nominee; Timorous

Beasties; Narinder Sagoo, par tner at Foster + Par tners, the minds behind Glasgow’s The SSE Hydro and Armadillo; Prof Alan Dunlop, internationally acclaimed architect and lecturer, as well as a gifted draughtsman and ar tist; Paul Stallan, award-winning architect, educator and amazing ar tist and deep ar t lover. In addition to this, there will be contributions from architects and designers of the Mackintosh School of Architecture, Page/Park, Holmes Miller, Contagious Design, Nicholas Szczepaniak Architects, Dress for the Weather, photographers Tom Manley and David Simpson, architect/illustrator Anna Gibb and ar tists Andrew Squire, The Papercut Ar tists, Marion Gardyne.

It was no surprise to see ar tworks dedicated to the Glasgow School of Ar t – to which a propor tion of the money raised will be donated. It’s been really interesting to see which landmarks have inspired our ar tists. Glasgow School of Ar t inspired the remarkable collage by David Mach, as well as work by Marion Gardyne and Christine Thomson – aka the Papercut Ar tist – has donated her stunning ‘Mackintosh’ paper cut dedicated to the school. Christine’s designs utilise a quirky modern take on this otherwise ancient ar t form. Zaha Hadid’s Riverside Museum has been a popular inspiration too, being por trayed by both Andrew Squire who donated a colourful and stunning oil on canvas painting, as well as the team at

by ANDREW SQUIRE

by ALAN DUNLOP

by NARINDER SAGOO

Contagious Design who have combined a graphic reinterpretation of the museum with an exemplification of the Glaswegian humour and culture. Tom Manley, ex Architect turned contemporar y photographer, has donated his photograph ‘Murano Street – Glasgow Tenements’, which is also the subject of Paul Stallan’s painting, and Dress For The Weather’s sculpture. Prof Alan Dunlop, Ex-Mackintosh School of Architecture alumni and prolific figure in UK architecture, joins the par ticipants’ list and donates two drawings of Glasgow’s South Rotunda. A team of students of the Mackintosh School of Architecture led by designer Lee Ivett is working on an installation that will function as a reflective/ sanctuar y space; while Narinder Sagoo of Foster + Par tners has created a stunning and extremely detailed drawing of the view from the other side of the river over Glasgow’s Armadillo, the Hydro and crane. The original ar tworks will exhibited at the Italian Centre (49 Cochrane Street) from 15th to 29th October and then feature in an exclusive auction at the event’s Gala Dinner on 30th October, with funds raised going to ENABLE Scotland and The Glasgow School of Ar ts Mackintosh Building Fire Fund. from Sara Seravalli marketing and Events Manager Owner, Double S Events www.doublesevents.com www.ameetsa.com sara@doublesevents.com @SaraSeravalli

REVIEWING THE FARRELL REVIEW:

by GRAEME BROOKER

Dear EDGEcondition, The Farrell Review was published earlier this year. It was written in order to ‘capture a snapshot’ of the current condition of architecture and the built environment. The desire to initiate the ‘beginning of a dialogue’ about space, the profession and its future, with a foregrounding of placemaking and existing buildings, is encouraging. In general there is much to commend. However there is a noticeable omission in the review. It is an absence that in its ver y presence diminishes the work. Throughout the review the roll call of built environment agents are reiterated: planners, landscapers, architects, conser vationists, engineers, developers, house builders, even ar tists, they are all there. The interior and its architects and designers are never mentioned. Designers and the makers of interior space, both impor tant and also numerous contributors to the built environment, are not cited: why? In the whole review there is only one mention of inside space. It is an example that is described as a ‘highly flexible and adaptable interior and no internal zoning so uses can be mixed’ (p110). This exemplar is used as a ‘valuable model’ for new development and is seen as paradigmatic for several ‘exper t panel members’. Its invisibility is telling. This omission may be a good thing, but I can only speculate. Surely it is not a rerun of the clichéd monologue of friction between spatial disciplines? Maybe the interior, its wonderful slipper y qualities, its unfixed theoretical, historical, spatial and regulator y qualities are still too difficult to comprehend? But, many of the reviews recommendations are already extant in the education and practices of making the interior. Interior Architects, Designers and Decorators are relaxed about their

unprotected status and don’t need the shield or sword of regulator y bodies prescribing how they under take their education and work. The review refers to the removal of the ‘straightjacket’ of title protection. It gazes adoringly at the open cultures and practices of ‘big designer fashion labels’ where the straightjacket is not only well made but also beautifully fitted. The outdated structure of architectural education, that the review seeks to replace, already exists. You will find this model in interior architecture, design and decoration programmes across the UK and the world. They specialize in placemaking through new designs, building reuse and the analysis and repurposing of heritage sites. They teach students to adapt derelict urban wastespace, utilising a diversity of approaches and processes for remaking their built environment. These programmes generate content through under taking projects with a diverse and unusual range of occupants, they critically engage with social issues and needs. This model is multidisciplinar y, has multiple career-paths and employability options and is skills rich. Many of the students have chosen these programmes because they see the interior as the future of the built environment. After all isn’t the fluid and ambiguous city spaces of transpor t hubs, airpor ts and stations, shopping spaces, work, culture and leisure environments including our homes ensure we are all just living in one big interior anyway?

from Graeme Brooker Head of depar tment Fashion + interiors, Middlesex University (Seat 24 carriage C London to Brighton) g.brooker@mdx.ac.uk @autopilotgraeme

F E AT U R E S

THE PSYCHIC SPACE (OUTSIDE OF THE INSTITUTION) by Rachel Anderson BA Fine Ar t Producer, Collaborative Projects www.ar tangel.org.uk www.meetyouthere.net

There’s an acceptance within public art that we can make work outside of the Institution, beyond the walls and protection of the white cube and in the public space. Outside of the Institution exists in simple art terms, as a place which isn’t a designated art space, and so therefore has another set of physical parameters –a shopping center, a park, a house, a street, a night sky (I’m including night sky because although it isn’t a physical space in this society it is still owned and managed as if it were). As a producer of collaborative projects I develop work that is not situated in any particular physical space (although a response to physical site may be an important component of a project) it is situated immediately and directly within the social, political, emotional and psychic space beyond the Institution.

Searching beyond the clair ty of the physical building, I find the edges of the Institution harder and harder to define... when is a wall replaced by a rule? Where does the control end? Where is it safe for trust and tenderness to lead the heart, where do we hear our true selves over the noise of social engineering and expectations, where does the complex design of our place begin and end and how do we make space to breathe and create?

SMOTHER, Sarah Cole, Artangel 2010. Photo by TAS KYPRIANOU

Most of the people I find myself working with, whether artists, colleagues, young parents, prisoners or carers are sprinting from pillar to post in endless search, busyness, emotional intensity and distraction. The Institution is just one protagonist in the State, what value systems do we meet…? Remember the context. Context is everything. We live in a - White supremacist, Heteronormative, Ableist, Hierarchical, Capitalist Patriarchy. Remember this every day. Context is everything. Where we sit on this spectrum of division affects our every experience; whether we are going to the corner shop or for heart surgery, to ask for help or to give help. The Institution is just one protagonist in the state. Outside the Institution, where do we begin? As a protagonist of the state the values and influence of the Institution affect far beyond any physical walls. When we work with an emphasis on the context instead of the values of the Institution we can create moments that are truly outside of the Institution.

Beyond the idea of wrong doing and right doing there is a field, I’ll meet you there. Rumni

If you’ve come here to help me you’re wasting your time, but if you’ve come here because you believe your liberation is somehow tied up in mine then stay and let us work together. Lilla Watson

When we have prepared the psychic space we can momentarily hold back the more violent aspects of our social structure and allow for something else to come to the forefront… a question, an expression, a truthful voice. We create a temporary uprising, a psychic gateway, (for some) a turning point, an awakening, a possibility revealed.

Like festivals, uprisings cannot happen ever yday - otherwise they would be ‘non-ordinar y’. But such moments of intensity give shape and meaning to the entirety of life. The shamen returns - you can’t stay up on the roof forever but things have changed, shifts and integrations have occured - a difference in made. T.A.Z, Hakim Bey

Unreliable Narrator, Mirza Butler, Waterside Contemporary

1// MUSEUM OF NON PARTICIPATION KAREN MIRZA & BRAD BUTLER, 2007PRESENT 2007 During the Pakistani Lawyers movement in Islamabad they viewed the protests and subsequent state violence from a window in The National Art Gallery. The year is 2040 there have been riots in the streets of London after Britain has run out of petrol because of an oil crisis in the middle east. Protestors have attacked public buildings. Several policemen have died. Consequently, the government has deployed the army to curb the protests. After two days the protests have been stopped but twentyfive protestors have been killed by the army. You are the Prime Minister. Write a script for a speech to be broadcast to the nation in which you explain why employing the army against violent protestors was the only

option available to you and one, which was both necessary and moral. Eaton College King’s Scholarship examination 2011 The Unreliable Narrator, Mirza, Butler, Waterside Contemporary, 2014 A place, a slogan, a banner, a performance, a newspaper, a film, an intervention, an occupation— the museum ‘acts’. The revolution won’t be led by red flags and the sound of Bella Ciao. It will come like a flood in the night, with boundless power and uncatchable form, it will be unreasonable, it will be angry, it will be untamable.

SMOTHER, Sarah Cole, Artangel 2010. Photo by TAS KYPRIANOU

2// SMOTHER SARAH COLE 2010 The performance belongs neither to the mothers nor to the performers, but contains something of them both – an aesthetic third. The mothers performed then pass through the audience; each member meets them through the mother they have known, or have been, or could become. The aesthetic third is none of these particular mothers but connects the lives of them all. Lynn Froggett, 2011 An 18-year-old mother and her two-year-old child are kept under 24-hour observation by social services, they are filmed and audio recorded.

tower a girl searches for her lost cherries Skating on thin ice she ricochets between walls and tries not to throw the baby out with the bath water. There’s a child on the ceiling….climbing the walls she fetches him down. Sitting on the toilet she eats strawberry flavor ice cubes and cries when they finish, we all laugh, its funny.

In her home the landlord has positioned the furniture to conceal the stains. Climbing the narrow stairs of a three-sided

CANNY COMMUNICATION IN ARCHITECTURE IN THE AGE OF

‘MESSY MEDIA’ by Helen Castle Executive Commissioning Editor at Wiley Editor of Architectural Deasign (AD) @hecastle | @ADbooks

This article is based on a lecture first given on 27 November 2013 at the University of Greenwich and then updated and expanded for presentation at SALT Galata in Istanbul on 29 May 2014.

This is the second of a two-part article, the first of which will appeared in Vol. 02 ‘Presenting Architecture’.

Architecture is not a single medium practice. Since the Renaissance when architects became the practice of artists/professionals rather than artisans, and the widespread adopting of printing, architecture has relied on a combination of media. Media which now takes in: drawing, language, models, photography, film, diagrams, computergenerated images and animation. This mix is most apparent in the output of big practices like Foster + Partners and Zaha Hadid Architects, who have dedicated communication teams that oversee their social media and websites, but also liaise with the traditional press, publishers and broadcasters for any TV, radio and film requests. Norman Foster was most notably the subject of an admiring film documentary ‘How Much Does Your Building Weigh, Mr. Foster?’ in 2010 and Zaha Hadid was featured in a BBC TV profile by Alan Yentob in July 2013. The same investment in time and resources that goes into what is conventionally regarded as ‘PR’ extends to the output of other media in these leading practices, such as images of unbuilt and built projects. Foster’s office, for instance, has its own visualisation team producing computer renderings under Narinder Sagoo, who is the Partner heading up Design Communication.

Narinder himself is renowned as a singular drawing talent; AD first published his work as a young graduate in Neil Spiller’s Young Blood in 2001 and then again in the 2013 Drawing Architecture issue;(5) ‘Drawing Man’ Narinder now has his own following on Twitter. Foster’s also achieves a evenness in the visual quality of the representation of its built work by using the same photographer, Nigel Young, for most of its buildings. Having looked at combined media at the highest level of corporate communication, is

it possible to drill down below the multimedia aspect of architecture, are there other characteristics of communication in architecture that can be identified as intrinsic to the practice of architecture? Does written and verbal communication in architecture have its own unique qualities? Richard Hoag, who is a Professor of Architecture at Kansas State University, with his colleague Professor David Smit from the English department, has undertaken a study of the writing of architects in the US and has developed a programme in teaching

(5) Op cit Drawing Architecture and ‘Narinder Sagoo’, Neil Spiller (guest-editor), Young Blood, Architectural Design (AD), John Wiley & Sons, February 2001, pp 8 –3.

(6) Richard Hoag and David Smit, ‘Making Arguments in Practice and in Studio’, paper delivered at the AAE Conference 2013, Nottingham Trent University, 3-5 April 2013.

writing skills to architecture students.(6) In his study, he highlights how most of the major writing in the field of architecture is not descriptive or explanatory but persuasive. When communicating with clients and fellow designers and architects, through presentations, briefs, programmes and award submissions, architects are persuading their audiences that they are fulfilling their requirements and of the strengths of their design approach and skills. Persuasion necessarily involves making claims or propositions, controversial statements that

must be supported with evidence. Here writing or narrative plays an important part because images alone can be interpreted differently according to the background and experience of those looking at them. You cannot solely depend on images alone speaking for themselves – images require to be supported by text and vice versa texts require images to support them. Thus the writing of architects is multi-modal, it takes in both text and images. Writing also pays. According to Hoag’s research students who have strong written communication skills and

can contribute to the written materials of their practice can expect to receive a starting salary of $5,000 US more than their peers. The most critical points in an architect’s and student’s careers will take place when you are standing in front of a client or a jury having to present your work in person with a clearly constructed argument supported by strong visuals. To structure a persuasive argument verbally, firstly you need to be able to formulate it in writing.

the most prominent and influential figures in architecture Rem Koolhaas. Koolhaas’ father was a successful novelist and screenwriter, he himself trained as a journalist before studying at the AA in London. It was through his book Delirious New York (1978) that he first came to the fore: the success of his publications prefigured that of his practice. His early work also shows a clear indication that he knew where his strengths lay, as his ideas were accompanied by the arresting images of his wife Madelon Vriesendorp.

Perhaps the best example of this is one of

Narinder Sagoo of Foster + Partners, Chateux Margaux Winery New Building (pencil drawing on trace and hand coloured), 2010. The pencil sketch was drawn at concept stage for client perusal. The winery is now under construction. .

Foster + Partners Design Communications team, concept image for a new UAE Pavilion for Milan Expo 2015 (digital image). Narinder typically produces a hand drawing for an image like this to discuss the storytelling and content. This is then reproduced digitally by a team of artists.

You do not have to be Koolhaas to be an effective communicator. It is just a matter of going in there with a knowing approach - being canny - firstly be prepared to take a step back and work out what is you are being required to write at any one time, in terms of format, style and convention, and then apply it. Hoag has identified 33 different genres of writing in practice for his students from marketing materials, PowerPoints and award submissions through to building programmes, planning proposals, life-cycle-cost proposals, contract negotiation correspondence, risk management proposals and risk management reports. One of the greatest issues I have as an editor on AD is when I commission an article and I get back a text written in a totally different genre. For instance, it comes back in the style of an academic paper or a technical project description. Whereas, for instance, an article in AD is intended to be informative and clearly explain ideas and concepts to students and architects in an engaging magazine-like way, an academic paper is generally written with the totally different remit of impressing other academic colleagues. It is often more oblique in its focus, features opaque language and uses an academic style of foot noting and numbered headings. When putting together any type of communication - whether in writing, online, on film or as a presentation - you need to think about length, how it should be illustrated and who your audience are for any type of communication. These are just the sort of conventions that have been hardwired into social media. With Twitter, for instance, you are confined to 140 characters, you are habitually shrinking URLS, and there is a ready palette of hash tags, mentions, retweets and favourites. Similarly TED Talks have established a specific format for their talks - speakers have an allotted maximum time limit of 18 minutes and are directed to level their talk at a ‘smart general audience’, avoiding industry jargon. Notably some of the most successful speakers employ strong storytelling techniques to hook us in. Certainly, there is a sense that there has been a TED effect as other events attempt to duplicate the success of their succinct and inspiring format. In social media, there is also consensus developing around balance of content: an unofficial rule of thumb is that you should be only tweeting about yourself 30% of the time; steering clear of boring your network by using a platform as a one-way marketing broadcast. Social media provides a unique opportunity to enter a wider conversation and even a debate; tip your hat to a

colleague; tell us what you are reading; about the buildings, films and food you like; crack a joke; and highlight the gaffs and mistakes that you observe in everyday life. Author and Harvard Fellow Alexandra Lange, in an article on architecture and social media in Dezeen, entreats architects to: ‘start thinking about social media as the first draft of history’. For ‘What social media can do for architects is make criticism, interpretation, dialogue and history part of daily life.’ (7) DaeSong Lee is a Korean architect and Adjunct Professor at Hanyang University, who is also a regular sharer of AD Facebook content. He describes to me his daily Facebook routine as follows: ‘it’s kind of newspaper, scrapbook and noticeboard sharing ideas, keeping news etc. It’s like a morning newspaper, before commencing work, I post and read through all Facebook stories with a coffee. (I love this 30 mins!), it has become a hobby.’(8) Like Perry Kulper and Ryota Matsumoto, his foray into social media started as a means of keeping in touch with friends and colleagues from overseas – Lee studied at the AA and University of Westminster in London. He soon noticed that his professional network, school colleagues and students alike liked to read his posts, share and comment. Sharing images, links and articles has proved good teaching material and useful reference for his design team. DRAFTING DAILY HISTORY Whereas previous generations of architects had to wait to be published in print until they had won their first competition or built their first building, there is now no formal point of entry. As soon as a student enters architecture school they can be participating in the circulation of content and ideas, whether they are writing a blog and posting their own images or just sharing. How architects set about communicating at a time when there is such a profusion of media and social media may not be as complicated or difficult as its first appears; ultimately, though whether the responsibility of creating your own ‘draft of history’ on a daily basis proves a gift or an imposition only individuals can decide.

(7) Alexandra Lange, ‘It’s easy to make fun of Bjarke Ingels on Instagram’, Dezeen, 7 January 2014. (8) Facebook message exchange between DaeSong Lee and the author, May 2014.

A SHOEBOX OF ONE’S OWN HOW VIRGINIA WOOLF BUILT FEMINIST DISCOURSE ON THE FOUNDATIONS OF MODERN ARCHITECTURE by Rachael de Moravia Cox Senior Lecturer, University of Gloucestershire Writer/Modernist/Flaneuse www.rachael-de-moravia.com rachael@rachael-de-moravia.com @rachael_moravia

Any discussion about art and architecture must, to my mind, address literature, and when I recently re-read Virginia Woolf ’s feminist polemic, A Room of One’s Own, it occurred to me that Woolf not only uses architecture as metaphor - but that she actively moulds modern architecture into her language - and with it the ideals of gender equality. Virginia Woolf ’s writings do not simply reflect the spirit of the modern age, she engages the principles of modern architecture to build a new vocabulary for women. Her legacy is a feminist discourse – or rather a feminist concourse – around which future generations of women, and women writers, still gather to share ideas.

Virginia Woolf by GEORGE CHARLES BERESFORD, 1902

A Room of One’s Own addresses gender inequality, and the nature of that inequality in literature. Woolf uses architectural descriptions, structures and internal spaces throughout to represent the situation of women. She states that a woman must have ‘a room of her own if she is to write fiction’ (Woolf, A Room of One’s Own, Norton Vol.2 6th ed. p. 1927 ) and she laments how difficult it is for women to achieve this. As Woolf walks through the ‘courts and quadrangles of Oxbridge’ she becomes aware of a change in the space around her. She feels encapsulated by glass, a material which would soon be favoured by modernist designers and architects. It envelops her in a

small, yet fragile, bubble of clarity: Strolling through those colleges past those ancient halls the roughness of the present seemed smoothed away; the body seemed contained in a miraculous glass cabinet through which no sound could penetrate, and the mind freed from any contact with the facts. (Ibid, p. 1918) Of course, this bubble is shattered when she is refused entry to the library on account of her sex, and when she is chased off the grass: only male Fellows and Scholars are allowed right of way across the turf. Woolf is talking both literally and metaphorically about inequality when she says that ‘gate

after gate seemed to close with gentle finality behind me.’ However, she is emboldened by her experience and vows, ‘there is no gate, no lock, no bolt that you can set upon the freedom of my mind.’(Ibid, p. 1918) Woolf links ‘freedom of mind’ with interior space in her 1921 sketch, The Mark on the Wall: I want to think quietly, calmly, spaciously, never to be interrupted, never to have to rise from my chair, to slip easily from one thing to another, without any sense of hostility or obstacle. I want to sink deeper and deeper, away from the surface, with its hard, separate facts. (Woolf, Norton, p. 1918)

Woolf does not describe a traditional drawing room here; she is not sitting embroidering, or playing the piano, as might be expected of a woman at that time. The space she describes is open and uncluttered, and as such, it allows freedom of both movement and mind. She continues by describing an escape from ‘the standard thing,’ that is, the accepted conventions, social etiquette and interior décor, ‘from which one could not depart save at the risk of nameless damnation.’ (Ibid, p. 1918) She explains: There was a rule for everything. The rule for tablecloths […] was that they should be made of tapestry with little yellow compartments marked upon them, such as you would see in photographs of the carpets in the corridors of the royal palaces. Tablecloths of a different kind were not real tablecloths.’ (Ibid) The coming age, Woolf predicts, would see the tablecloths, along with the conventions (and attitudes to women), ‘laughed into the dustbin’ with ‘the mahogany sideboards and the Landseer prints.’ (Ibid, p. 1919) This is metaphoric home renovation, stripping out the old to make way for the new; the modern age. Woolf ’s description of the tablecloth, featuring a yellow pattern, echoes Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s vivid description of the wallpaper in her short story of 1892, The Yellow Wall-Paper: I never saw a worse paper in my life. One of those sprawling flamboyant patterns committing every artistic sin. It is dull enough to confuse the eye in following, pronounced enough to constantly irritate and provoke study, and when you follow the lame uncertain curves for a little distance they suddenly commit suicide – plunge off at outrageous angles, destroy themselves in unheard of contradictions. (Perkins Gilman, The Yellow Wallpaper, Herland, and Selected Writings, Penguin, p. 168) Whether intentional or not, Woolf succeeds in linking the two: the pattern of the ‘smouldering unclean yellow’ (Ibid) wallpaper appears to trap the figure of a woman behind it, like the bars of a cage; while Woolf ’s tapestry tablecloths have yellow ‘compartments’ (Woolf, Norton, p. 1919), indicating partition, separation, exclusion. These designs are a symbol of oppression; they reflect restriction for women. Compare this with the room that Woolf describes in The Mark on the Wall. The narrative space she describes is altogether different: there is no Landseer print above the mantelpiece, no tablecloth and no hideous wallpaper. Assuming the mark is

an old nail, she says it ‘has revealed its head above the coat of paint, and is taking its first view of modern life in the sight of a whitewalled fire-lit room.’ (Ibid p. 1920) The phrase ‘white-walled’ is indicative of a key element in modern architecture and design. Indeed, white has become synonymous with the modern movement. Interior designer Syrie Maugham pioneered the all-white room in the early 1920s: ‘Other architects and decorators had used white in their rooms, but Syrie bleached the colour from her rooms completely’. (Larson, History Today, January 2013) The Bauhaus architects were famed for their use of monochrome schemes both externally and internally. Le Corbusier described his building designs as ‘white geometric volumes’. (Favole, The Story of Modern Architecture, p. 48) As such, ‘each shape was figuratively reduced, so that its essential form coincided with its physical limits’. (Ibid) Walter Gropius, director and principle architect of the Bauhaus, described his academic buildings and residential blocks as ‘pure white volumes’. (Ibid p. 44) On a linguistic level, the use of the word ‘volume’, meaning ‘space occupied’, in architecture draws a beautiful and poetic parallel to the literary use of the word; that of pages bound together, books or collections of works. It suggests that books are space, occupied. Perhaps Virginia Woolf felt this too: that the freedoms of modern white volumes permitted women the space to imagine, and to write fiction. In order to appreciate the concept of space in Woolf ’s writing, and the freedom that this space afforded women, it is necessary to examine a modern building in greater detail. Designed in 1929, the Isokon Building on Lawn Road in Hampstead provides an eloquent expression of Woolf ’s vision. The Lawn Road Flats were ‘the first block of flats to be built in Britain in the fully modern style’, and ‘the only ones to retain important interiors.’ (English Heritage List) Although it is now grade I listed, the Isokon Building lay derelict during the 1980s and 1990s, and was considered one of the ‘shoe box’ and ‘carbuncle’ buildings which Peter Barry alludes to in his discussion of postmodernism. (Barry, Beginning Theory, p. 81) The building housed thirty-two residential units, consisting of studio flats for single occupants and one-bedroomed flats for couples. Alexandra Harris describes the revolutionary living space thus: These were visionary statements of the potential for independence in the twentieth century: to live here you did not need (and could not have) a family or a mass of inherited furniture. The building was a

Isokon Gallery by TOM DE GAY

vote of confidence in the unattached man and – radically – the single woman. (Harris, Romantic Moderns, Thames & Hudson, p. 38) Architect Wells Coates aimed to achieve ‘freedom of movement and clarity of space’, and his philosophy echoed that of the Bauhaus architects. Writing for the Architectural Association Journal in 1938 he explained: ‘We get rid of our belongings and make for a new, an exciting freedom’. High-profile proponents of the modern movement made the Isokon Building their unofficial headquarters, and residents included Walter Gropius; painter and photographer László Moholy-Nagy; writer and co-founder of the Institute of Contemporary Arts, Herbert Read; and Marcel Breuer, who designed many of the fittings and furniture within the units, including the iconic Isokon long chair. Novelist Agatha Christie lived there, while Barbara Hepworth and Henry Moore were regulars at the Isokon’s in-house club, the Isobar. The interior space was minimalist, and Coates heeded Alfred Loos’s warning that ‘decoration is a crime’. ‘Because there were no odd ledges for the accumulation of knick-knacks,’ suggests Harris, ‘there was little danger of these pristine spaces being ornamented by their inhabitants’. Moreover, the Lawn Road Flats ‘succeeded in banishing the decorated, possession-packed Victorian interior, and in doing so took their place in a distinguished line of clutter-free modern buildings.’ (Harris, pp. 38-41) Woolf ’s interior descriptions reflect these ideals. She articulates how the space in a modern building makes understanding clearer, and how minimal decoration leads to greater clarity. For example, with fewer walls (less obstruction) and more glass (clearer vision), the architect (the writer) can create something that is simpler, more honest, more real perhaps. Moreover, in a modern space such as the Isokon Building, men and women were accepted on equal terms: women had the same freedoms as their male counterparts here, and the studio flats were occupied by single residents of either sex. Woolf does not use the language of architecture solely to express her thoughts on the position of women, however. She extends her use of architectural metaphor to the emerging style of modernist literature. Her manifesto on this new style of writing, Modern Fiction, was described by her friend and biographer John Lehmann as ‘a blueprint for the new novelists’. (Lehmann, Virginia Woolf, p. 47) The word ‘blueprint’ - a plan for an architectural or engineering project seems very apt. Woolf alludes to changing the form of her narrative technique in structural

terms, too. In a diary entry, dated 26 January 1920, she says there would be ‘no scaffolding, scarcely a brick to be seen.’ What she is describing is a form of impressionism, the stream of consciousness technique that we find in her later fiction. In Professions for Women, she describes ‘The Angel in the House’; the traditional, virtuous Victorian woman, who was ‘charming’, ‘unselfish’ and ‘sacrificed herself daily’. The Angel in the House was the symbol of oppression, so, according to Woolf, ‘killing the Angel in the House was part of the occupation of a woman writer’. Woolf claimed it was necessary to kill off the old to make way for the new. Woolf ’s ideas remain relevant today, and perhaps even more so, in our postmodern world of virtually constructed environments and cyberspace. In her essay Cyberfeminism with a difference, Rosi Braidotti revisits this idea, and suggests that Woolf ’s ‘injunction that the creative woman needs to kill “the angel in the house” that inhabits the most ancient layers of her identity’ is still important. She says ‘It is the image of the caring, nurturing, self-sacrificing soft female that stands in the way of self-realisation,’ and adds that, ‘the new is created by revisiting and burning up the old.’ What Braidotti ultimately calls for is a postgender state, where everyone is capable of multiple and contradictory behaviours. She suggests that we ‘need more complexity, multiplicity, simultaneity and we need to rethink gender, class and race in the pursuit of these multiple, complex differences.’ When Braidotti talks of rethinking gender, she is reiterating Woolf ’s idea that: ‘It is fatal to be a man or woman pure and simple; one must be woman-manly or man-womanly.’ (Woolf, A Room of One’s Own, p. 1981) I would also argue that Braidotti is re-articulating Woolf ’s assertion that ‘life is growing more complex’, and Woolf ’s suggestion that the ‘modern mind’ was ‘aware of the relations and subtleties which have not yet been explored.’ (Peter Conrad, Modern Times, Modern Places, Thames & Hudson, p. 61) Moreover, these connections ‘which have not yet been explored’, are, I believe, precisely what Le Corbusier referred to when he wrote: ‘Our own epoch is determining, day by day, its own style. Our eyes, unhappily, are unable yet to discern it.’ (Le Corbusier, Towards a New Architecture) * An unabridged version of this essay (including full references) will be published on www.rachael-demoravia.com in November 2014.

INDEFINITE PLEASURES OF SALT

by Philip Hall Patch BArch, DipArch, MArch Project Architect, Heatherwick Studio www.saltlicksar t.co.uk www.studiostvitus.co.uk phil@studiostvitus.co.uk ALL IMAGES COURTESY OF THE AUTHOR

Salt Licks is proposed as a two storey structure – a canvas of salt – that sits on the beach facing the North Sea. Designed to weather under the onslaught of the sun, rain and windblown sand, it will be a constantly changing and evolving structure in dialogue with the eroding coastline it is set against. Nature becomes the artist, revealing its forces, its actions and motivations as the salt is reclaimed and returned to sea from where it came. ‘Nature becomes the Artist…’ Therein lies the provocation; in the intrapersonal leap of letting-go. ‘Good’, or even ‘great’, architecture is typically judged on the level of control that is expressed, not only through the conception and detail stages of development, but often through a deterministic attitude to use and inhabitation. The Modernist Project would have it that the conceptual idea from (typically) a single author, is immutable and that the physical expression of such should be timeless; thus the obsession with technical precision, pure forms and ‘whiteness’ in architecture, all converging to create a liturgy of an implied moral code. To achieve this level of precision in the ‘real world’ of material things requires a commensurate control of both processes

and people, restricting freedom of thought and action for the possible contamination of the original Project. The indefinite pleasures of Salt. Other than the driven snow, salt is one of the few naturally occurring substances that is pure white in colour. Once extracted from the sea or extracted from salt mines it may be further refined for use in industrial processes. One of these is for use in water softening machines where salt blocks are formed under high pressure to create modules with the density of engineering bricks and the surface texture of marble. Due to the particle size involved the blocks are typically formed to two-decimal places of accuracy. For an architect, the exactitude and purity of such a brick is spellbinding. The possibility of constructing a structure with such exactitude, with a material whose whiteness is not a surface application, but an integral part of its molecular make-up, whose texture recalls the great icons of architecture from the Parthenon to the Villa Savoie. But here comes the letting go… The use of salt speaks not only to its economic and social history but also of the spiritual qualities ascribed to it by major religions who saw in its immutability,

preservative and anti-septic (and therefore healing) attributes parallels with the divine, and evidence of eternal contracts with the Almighty. By comparison to Salt Licks, Salt Field was commissioned for HOUSE as part of the Brighton Festival, in the spring of 2014. It re-framed the concerns of Salt Licks within a different dimension; from the vast expanse of nature’s horizons to the intimate interiority of the domestic space, be it a space challenging the assumptions of its own making. The Brighton Waste House was completed in May 2014, a live research project designed by Baker Brown McKay Sustainable Design with the University of Brighton, Salt Field marking its opening. A truly unique endeavour, the Waste House has been constructed entirely from waste and recycled materials, given value and reframed with new meaning from the context given: for example clothing – old fabric and wastage from new – forming insulation in the walls, or the geology of the earth expressed through rammed-earth walls formed from the building’s own excavations. Although a test-bed for the innovative re-use of materials in construction, it is also recognisably a domestic house in scale. Within the primary entry-level space lay an undulating field formed of over a thousand salt blocks. From the ceiling a single but continuous drip of water dissolving the salt at the centre of the field and allowing it to recrystallize elsewhere on the field. A literal and physical migration of material across a notional territory, the grid of the blocks called to mind the line and measure of cartography or the arbitrary determination of boundaries, which the moving salt subverts. A literal and direct metaphor for the Festival’s themes of migration and immigration can be seen in this movement of ‘stuff ’. But so too a renewed dialogue about value; common salt which is now so ubiquitous it is all but

invisible, seen in a new light – re-valued as the substance common to our collective survival – the material that profoundly and intimately links us all as human beings. The exhibition continued upstairs with a combination of salt sculptures made of individual salt blocks, using water as the cutting tool (subjecting the blocks to verbs of spray, splash, soak and drip), along with macro photography; of the negative ‘cuts’ formed by water next to the extraordinary beauty of crystal growth. The sculptures continuing to grow of their own accord to this day. The divergences between Salt Licks and Salt Field are as evident as the similarities. Both large scale installations of salt blocks presenting an initially pristine inviolable surface. One vertical, erect, rooted, facing the onslaught of nature. The other supine, restless, dissolving before our eyes. One curious phenomenon is how both projects as conceptual pieces have captured the imagination of those who have encountered them. The quality of narrative and storytelling seems to create images and possibilities in the minds eye that are more engaging than the visualisations and photographs of the actual installations. So what might it mean for architectures to be created where the forms and expressions are constantly evolving in dialogue with the environment in which they are present? To what extent may architecture be challenged to cede its dominance, its explicit and implicit networks of control? Personally, the provocation brings me to a psychotherapeutic or spiritual notion of being in the moment; of being ‘present’. What then might it mean to use the term ‘presence’ intentionally to describe an architecture that is looking neither to the future, nor the past, but simply being – in the present moment – in time…?

ACID HOUSE

HACKING ARCHITECTURE THROUGH TECHNO

The Acid House is an acoustically interactive architectural â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;hackâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;, which through spatial feedback loops, enables occupants to compose and recondition their own sensor y environments. Designed as an adaptive, deployable, multi-sensor y sub-system, the installation parasitically attaches to the site, amplifying the latent acoustic signatures of the surrounding spaces, sensitising both their surfaces and cavities (transforming them into playable architectural instruments). Through interactive illuminations and tactile vibrations it gives the architecture a material sonic presence. The resultant fusion provides participants with the tools to explore and test new auditor y-spatial relationships and engender a more active perception and occupation of space.

by Andrew E Walker BA(Hons) MArch Student / Architectural Researcher andrew.edward.walker@gmail.com @Andrew_E_Walker

+ Merjin Royaards BA music, BA(hons) Fine Ar t, MArch Urban Design, Phd student Architectural Design www.merjinroyaards.com merjinroyaards@hotmail.com

AcidHouseDiagram by ANDREW E WALKER

Fig1_TheAcidHouse_OnOff_Andrew E Walker

Sonic space and visual space, sound and architecture, unfold onto our senses at a ‘phase-difference’ with each other. We resolve this lapse in a similar way to the brain resolving the angular differential of light falling onto our retinas. That is to say: we perceive sonic and visual space as stereo- sensor y/stereosensually unified. The manipulation of this unity however, may cause a rupture in the continuum of spatial experience; effecting a spacing of its par ts that affects the shape and scope of our perceptual field. The Acid House is conceived as a laborator y of sound

and architecture. It is a re-appropriated space set up to run experiments based on investigations into light-to-sound synthesis and ver tical montage (and their implications on spatial experience) following in the pioneering footsteps of Generation Z. While countering the overwhelming occularcentric cultural bias, the installation does not tr y to eradicate vision, but to temporally shift, or render fluid the dominance of one sense over another. By unsettling the natural balance between sonic and visual impulses, the experience of space is

unavoidably altered in ways that are both unpredictable and dynamic. As such ‘movement’ and ‘chance’ were exceptionally impor tant conceptual considerations when designing the installation. Wes Jones in his essay on stillness states; “movement may be considered architecturally in the same way as massing or materiality”, 1 yet it seldom is. Most of the manufactured environments we navigate, especially internal configurations of space, tend to be largely inanimate backdrops – stable, predictable terrains and relatively static containers. This spatial iner tness

and fixity can engender overly-habitual behaviour in occupants, and as Henri Bergson warns, what begins as habit may metastasise into an ‘inattentive’ kind of perception, such that we become ‘conscious automata’, 2 in other words; passive occupants. For while habit may aid in creating a sense of stability and continuity, it can also lead to a perceptual obsolescence, even boredom – as “when ever ything becomes familiar, there is the threat of no attention, no perception, not seeing at all.” 3 Running contrar y to this, the Acid House installation set

out to explore ‘what if ’ the spaces we occupied were less predictable, less deterministic and less stable? Can an installation through systematic chance and unscripted reconfiguration stimulate a more engaged perception, and as a result, synthesise a more active form of occupation? Can ‘architecture-as-theatre’ recreate Brecht’s ‘Verfremdungseffekt’ – de-familiarising space such as to evoke more creative forms of use/inhabitation? The application of this hack aimed transcend space’s role as a passive container of objects, and the negative residue of form-making, in

order to become a field condition of spontaneously co- ordinated distributions... extrinsic and nebulous and most impor tantly responsive. 4 Working against the hegemony of the static and non-dialogical space, the project also aspired to move away from conventionally restrictive masterslave spatial models towards more conversationally driven (cybernetic) architectures.

Fig2_TheAcidHouse_SetUp_ Andrew E Walker and Merjn Royaards

By incorporating ‘aleatoric impulses’ into the installation (inspired by the likes of Lynda Benglis’ ‘uncontrolled’ poured sculptures and Barr y Le Va’s ‘random distributions’), notions of spatial authorship are brought into question. By allowing for uncer tainty and random process in spatial and acoustical production the Acid House becomes an

Fig3_TheAcidHouse_Lumino-Kinetic Signal Cascades_Andrew E W

open ended performance, whose multisensor y composition is displaced to the indeterminate interactions between site and occupants, transforming the architecture into a reflexive, aleatoric instrument, perpetually producing new, surprising perceptual conditions, while simultaneously enabling a more creative occupation.

Fig4_TheAcidHouse_ [de]Constructive Interference – Graphical Sound_Andrew E Walker, Merjin Royaards, Rashed Khandker

A feedback loop between light and sound is used as a signal processing technique where space is both made audible and visible by one’s movement through and engagement with it; a composition lit up by itself and created by occupancy. [Figure 3] Two ambient mics and two transducer mics are placed to register sound as it emanates through the negative and material of the Acid House. Their signals are fed into four separate, but communicating patches in Max/MSP and projected back into the space as a quadrophonic

soundtrack and as a graphical light-score through a series of four cathode ray tubes. Software here is used as a way of aligning the recorded sounds into a grid, a ‘techno architecture’ structured as a layer cake of percussive and ambient pulses. The CRT’s visual output is captured back as sound through fixed and moving photo-diodes, providing a second and purely analogue (sub) sonic layer [Figure 4]. The CRT’s then take on a double role as translators of architecture’s audible and visible spectra.

Fig5_TheAcidHouse_Robotic Dancer s_Andrew E Walker, Rashed Khandker

To ensure the unpredictability and openness of the feedback loop, movement and action exer t a direct influence on the amplitude, harmonics, cross-fading and filtering of both the digital and analogue systems. Like the CRT’s, the trio of suspended robots function primarily as translators, in their case translating occupant behaviour (motion, proximity etc) into signal amplitude. Adjacent mounted infrared distance sensors scan the physical limits of the space, and within

those constraints, randomly par tition it into less tangible sub-territories of potential occupation, creating a series of invisible, undulating proscenia. Once complete, the devices begin to oscillate back and for th, seeking out ‘actors’ with which to perform. If an occupant then enters one of more of the detector fields a series of motion sensors work in unison to give approximate information about their location and momentum. The robots then conver t this information into a choreographic score – actuating synthetic limbs which

scissor and slice through the space in an elaborate mechanical capoeira, creating dynamic barriers that par tition and fuse pockets of space as a result. Attached to the tips of the robots’ proboscises are miniature solar cells, which conver t light flickers into sound signals to be fed back onto site as a superimposed sonic layer [Figure 6]. The resultant contor tions, jerks and acrobatics of the devices (emerging through occupant interaction) thus modulate the signals being fed back into the system.

Fig6_TheAcidHouse_ Scanning Space_Andrew E Walker, Rashed Khandker

In this sense, the synergy between occupants and devices is akin to an audience manipulating a conductor’s baton, only this relationship is deliberately less linear and intentionally more ambiguous. Embedded in their programming, the robots use algorithms that elicit qualities of boredom and curiosity. These are expressed through interaction with the occupants and the time they spend within cer tain proximities of each device. While the devices attempt to lure people into their territories through lumino-kinetic gesturing [Figure 7], dwelling too long at cer tain points in their field of view can result in a ‘disinterest’ from the device which would then seek other

occupants to engage with. A process of learning the associative behaviour and ‘imagined’ proxemics of the device allows occupants to modify their sonic environment through their own movement, enabling them to choose between tr ying to remain invisible or constantly ‘of interest’ to the system [Figure 8]. In darker conditions the illuminations produced by the robots (a direct visual representation of the ‘kick’ created through the looping vibrations from the contact mics) not only attract occupants but create scotopic labyrinths which conceal/reveal, divide/ unite, clarify/obfuscate space(s), fur ther heightening the causal awareness of the occupant.

Conclusion William James, though he never in fact used the term, understood the stream of thought as a signal- process; a path whose end is contingent to its beginning and along which our perceptual- and experiential fields oscillate through a daisy-chain of internal filters, distor tions and phase shifts. James’ philosophy of experience underscores the crossmodal integration of the senses, not as exclusive to par ticular neurological conditions such as synaesthesia, or sensor y substitution, but as something hardwired into all of us. The accidental discover y in the 1970s of the McGurk effect, as well as the slippages and after images so

common in this world of flickering screens and fluttering cones, have since corroborated this notion and shown that we are indeed all synaesthetes by nature. The concept of light-to-sound synthesis is deeply rooted in the idea of signal processing, both as an expressive technique and as a way of making sense of the world. The early 20th centur y Russian avant-gardists’ theories and experiments stubbornly, perhaps even naively, insisted on treating sound, light and movement on equal terms, but they were acutely aware of the fluidity between the senses and they understood the processual nature of

experience and creativity. It is perhaps no coincidence that contemporar y thinkers on interactive and sonic ar ts such as Steve Goodman and Brian Massumi are still heavily indebted to the work of William James. The intellectuals and ar tists of ‘Generation Z’ were the first, and in some instances the last, to experiment with James’ ideas, experiments which came to an abrupt end during Stalin’s Great Terror of the 1930s, but which are as impor tant and relevant today as they were almost a centur y ago. The Acid House system is a prototypical interpretation of these historic and contemporar y theories of signal processing, spatialized and applied to

an inhabitable experience. However by prioritising ambiguity over clarity, interaction over passivity, dynamism over stillness, and uncer tainty over control, the installation also encourages occupants to become conscious of their own perceptual mechanisms and their malleability, enabling them to play a more creative role in their own perception. By doing this, the installation liberates architecture from a potentially endless and increasingly rapid cycle of obsession and obsolescence.

Fig7_TheAcidHouse_ Occupant Interaction 1_Andrew E Walker, Rashed Khandker

Wes Jones, Stillness: http://www. jpaessays.info/stillness.html

Bergson, Matter and Memor y, trans. Nancy Margeret Paul and W. Scott Palmer (MIT Pres, 1988), p.17-133

Georges Teysott, â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Boredom and Bedroom: The Suppression of the Habitualâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;, Assemblage (no. 30, 1996), p.47 see: Yeor yia Manolopoulou, Architectures of Chance, (Ashgate, 2013)

M. Hensel, A. Menges & C . Hight (Eds.), Space Reader : Heterogeneous Space in Architecture, (John Wiley & Sons, March 2009)

Fig8_TheAcidHouse_ Occupant Interaction 2_Andrew E Walker, Rashed Khandker

Scan the QR code above to watch the video of the ACID HOUSE installation, or alternatively click here.

Rear View (Projects) is Jennifer Davis, an architect, and Su-Ying Lee, a contemporar y ar t curator, who are based in Toronto, Canada. Both a curatorial collective and an itinerant site for ar t, they experiment with unconventional exhibition platforms to mobilize new interactions between ar t, place and audiences. They commissioned Chicago-basedTaiwanese-Canadian architect/graphic novelist Jimenez Lai and his team at Bureau Spectacular to design a project for an publicly accessible urban site â&#x20AC;&#x201C; a laneway in Torontoâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Little Por tugal neighbourhood. Flipping Proper ties is a continuation of an ongoing study of superfurnitures by Lai and was on display from July 11, 2014 to September 14, 2014. Jennifer caaught up with Jimenez over Skype in late August to discuss the project exclusively for EDGEcondition. PHOTO by Brilynn Ferguson

Jennifer Davis M.Arch, MRAIC Co-curator, Rear Vew (projects) www.rear viewprojects.com

PHOTO by Matthew Messner

Jiminez Lai M.Arch Leader Bureau Spectacular www.bureauspectacular.net info@bureauspectacular.net @jiminez_lai

PHOTO by Brilynn Ferguson

PHOTOS by Brilynn Ferguson

JD: The one time I came to Bureau Spectacular in Chicago was two and a half years ago. I propositioned you to do a project curated by myself and Su-Ying in Toronto called Flipping Properties. Tell me, what where you thinking at that time? JL: Naturally I agreed because I like you guys. It’s promising for a small galler y like this to take shape so I wanted to be a par t of it. JD: At that point we had a site in mind: a dead-ended laneway. Usually just a space where people park their cars, it would turn into a gallery of sorts once

we put a project there. It just took a while to execute an exhibition with no existing infrastructure. We managed to convince the Toronto and Ontario Arts Councils to fund our project. JL: The laneway site raises issues about exhibition that we’re currently thinking about at Bureau Spectacular. We’re designing a museum so we’ve been asking the questions: What is a museum? What is an exhibition? Exhibition is action or event. So if we follow that train of thought, that program is event, we revisit that age old question that Bernard Tschumi set for th. What you and Su-Ying have done,

taking an unlikely location and inser ting an event, produces a space that is not necessarily the prototypical exhibition space. I think that’s super interesting. JD: You have an arsenal of ideas that you’re continuously developing in your cartoons and installations. What ones did you mobilize for Flipping Properties? JL: One is the idea of shape as language. Or shape that develops into idiograms. We looked at the pentagon, the par ticular one with two perpendicular angles that hit the ground and a gabled top, which we read as a house. There’s an interchangability of the word house

IMAGE COURTESY OF BUREAU SPECTACULAR

and that shape. We were wondering if we could violate that word or violate that shape by flipping its orientation. For Flipping Properties we extruded the pentagon in one direction only – there’s nothing funny about the extrusion then sliced it twice at 45 degree angles. This produced an abundance of oblique surfaces, which is something we’re really keen about. When you produce an oblique drawing, the surfaces are at 45 degrees to the picture plane. There’s a play here in terms of the drawn object and three dimensional object. JD: The conventions of architectural projection are something we’re familiar with seeing on paper. But seeing it in 3D, in person, is another thing altogether!

JL: Here at Bureau Spectacular, we saw the project only as scaled models leading up to the exhibition. But being there in person I discovered something else. Especially in photographs, we see the pieces of the project acting as frames framing each other, depending on the distance between the three par ts and the given vanishing point. It was a Russian doll effect in terms of the three objects framing each other. That was a surprising discover y. JD: Figuring out how to flip the pieces in the actual laneway was an adventure in itself. JL: I know. We did it with brute force. JD: Once it was in the space, we realized there were only a limited

number of maneuvers because of the geometry of the given conditions and the geometry of the components. JL: We dealt with this in a related project, when White Elephant was exhibited at the MOMA in New York. It’s similar to Flipping Proper ties in the sense that it’s hard on outside, soft on inside. Both projects also flip. We quickly realized, when it comes to the “moves”, it almost like dealing with the knight piece on a chess set: a little harder to anticipate because it’s always moving on a diagonal. It takes three or four moves to get where we want to go. For both projects we were making sketches of these paths and marking on the ground where the objects would travel.

IMAGE COURTESY OF BUREAU SPECTACULAR

JD: You mentioned hard and soft. Let’s talk about that idea in relation to this project. JL: In terms of line quality, hard would be a rigid or flat line, the red exterior of Flipping Properties. Where the fluid line is soft - the interior. We can make those associations.

the body’s reaction to how it’s used? JD: We think it’s intuitive because when people interact with it they naturally sit and drape their elbow back. So it’s easy to use but… JL: It was designed. JD: It doesn’t just happen, right?

JD: There’s something about the soft shapes of the inside which give rise to different activities that can happen there. JL: Although the soft lines on the inside may seem intuitive, they’re not. They’re actually highly composed. A basic principle we were working with was the body’s reaction to dimensions. Given ever y orientation, could we anticipate

JL: We were working without signage or text to instruct people what to do. This suggestive choreography is something that we’ve become really interested in. It’s a social project as far as sprinkling in the magic dimensions to ask people to give cer tain postures. If you put your elbow in a cer tain way and you look relaxed, you look nonchalant; you create a character out of somebody. Perhaps

that person can become more attractive to the opposite sex, or the same sex, depending on who the person is. How the architect can do that without graphic is a lesson we’re still learning. JD: There was an event, Open Sesame, where a panel of critics discussed current exhibitions in Toronto including Flipping Properties. When one critic visited the project she was chatting with three little boys who were playing on it. These kids were questioning whether their shoes – soccer cleats and Crocs - were appropriate or not. They were thinking about how the project interacts with bodies, or their footwear at least. JL: This ties this back to our earlier conversation about exhibition. When in

PHOTO by Kevin Pazik

a galler y or an ar t museum, the ar tworks are hung on the wall. Typically people don’t touch them because we’ve produced a social understand of the zoning guidelines concerning what is touchable and not touchable. Somehow the collective conscience says, “don’t touch it.” But here, we’re saying, “Yeah, you can touch it because its outside.” But then there are finer degrees of how to touch it, or whether you touch it to abuse it. There’s something in that train of thought as far as how we behave socially when we’re confronted with what is meant to be sacred. JD: Another critic said it’s begging for someone to have sex on it. I told her you’d be fine with it. Am I right? [laughing] JL: Absolutely. JD: A related issue here is the boundary between private and public. Have you done any like this before that is left to the elements and accessible? JL: We designed 99 Chairs for Storefront for Ar t and Architecture, which was similar to Flipping Properties in terms of the invitation to the body. It was put in a park and made of a much more malleable material. In that case, however, the kids were actively tr ying to destroy it and treating it like gym equipment. That was rough to watch. JD: We always knew that Flipping Properties would be outdoors so it was built to weather the elements. In terms of the human element, no one has vandalized it yet. I wonder if that’s a function of it being tucked away so the people who find it had to seek it out. JL: Hey, I’m no urban designer, in fact I don’t really do it. But there is something I do think about in terms of urban design: nooks and crannies. This laneway is an interesting condition because a dead end invites misbehavior, private behaviors. JD: Nooks and crannies are where you can get away with stuff. JL: So, you’re watching a prototypical movie and a drug deal happens. Where do you suppose it happens?

An alleyway. Bruce Wayne’s parents were shot in an alleyway. Nooks and crannies have this quality of inviting these types of misbehaviors. Finer grains of local culture require these spaces. For subcultures to dwell you need nooks and crannies. This laneway is slightly different than a preplanned, highly visible dead end… JD: Like a cul-de-sac in a suburb? JL: Yeah. Our laneway seems like a dead end that happened over time. JD: The laneways in Toronto have a planned but unplanned quality about them so once in a while people will take advantage of that and take ownership over the space. For example, a garage on the laneway around the corner is used as a clubhouse by some young guys. They drink and fix cars and their activity spills into the laneway. I’m interested in that type of use. Our project asks, “What else can we use this laneway for besides parking our cars?” JL: Your proposal here would be, “Let’s develop subcultures.” To me, it’s a much less useful solution. JD: ‘Useful’ in the traditional sense. JL: Look, when I say less useful I actually mean it as a compliment. JD: I know what you mean. Not useful in terms of contributing to the GDP. JL: Not useful for sustenance or sur vival. The project’s contribution is the embellishment of culture in a developed society. JD: Have you seen that our brochure is translated into Portuguese? One person in the Toronto art community said that when he saw the program it “made the project make sense” because it connected it to its neighbourhood, Little Portugal. JL: What other grounds should we cover?

JD: Can you frame the project in a larger trajectory of your work and where you’re going next, literally, in your life. JL: I’m about to star t teaching at UCLA so it’s a sad farewell to University of Illinois at Chicago, a place that harbored a criminal for years. [laughs] I’m not a criminal. They really gave me a chance, and the time and space to come into my own. It was clear always that I wanted to have an experimental practice, but what would this practice look like? I moved into the studio space you’re seeing. I thought: “It’s big. If I could have a house inside of a house, that’s a star t.” JD: So you built the Briefcase House inside your studio. And lived in it. JL: I had lots of dissatisfactions about the design of the Briefcase House. And so at that point, working with Thomas Kelly, we made White Elephant. I put a lot of money into it and was kind of broke for roughly a year, which gave me a lot of time to think about the potentials for superfurniture. JD: You’ve spoken before about how installation practice is something that a lot of young architects do. It’s a big enough scale that you can deal with architectural issues. But early in a career it’s a big as you can feasibly execute, literally in the case of Flipping Properties, which barely fit on a flatbed. But also in terms of budget and other pragmatic constraints. JL: Yeah, yeah. The practice saw a lot of evolution doing these installation projects but my interest level in doing another is not ver y high. In other words, Flipping Proper ties might be it. I tend to do a project really intensely for a while and then I get bored and move on, finding ways to swer ve a previous train of thought on to something else. That may be evident in the way this conversation is going! JD: If you’re transitioning to designing

PHOTO by Kevin Pazik

buildings then maybe it’s fitting the last superfurniture has crept outside gallery. JL: It’s kind of funny – look at our reper toire! We haven’t even designed buildings yet and we’ve won awards for being architects. Now it’s time to tr y and design buildings with this office full of really talented people. JD: What about your representational style in terms of the graphic novel? Will that still be there?

JL: The car toonish sensibility has become an architectural sensibility as opposed to a linear stor ytelling. Let’s get into this a little more. You and I went to the same school, right? And the type of work that I do, it’s really surprising that I went to that school if you think about it. JD: One common design approach at University of Toronto is very researched based. Empirical research is translated into diagrams and finally into a building. JL: So that was my education, and yours

also. I like the school a lot and miss it. But I was always looking for something else. JD: What I’m hearing from you is a will to make your own path in terms of your methods for designing, and your own representational and formal languages. Somewhat related, I met Su-Ying at U of T. Her final project for her curatorial masters was to present an exhibition, but rather than use the campus gallery she was offered, she

distributed artworks throughout the city. Like her, we each need to decide how to position ourselves relative to our education. And that’s useful. JL: It is useful. As far as what you and Su-Ying are doing in terms of the ad hoc quality you’re bringing to the institution of the exhibition, we’re coming back to the idea of what is held sacred. To me there is a philosophical question in there somehow about the rules that we construct for ourselves. And the will with which we violate the rules. Especially when the rules are not scientific.

FROM PERSONAL EXPERIENCE

CONSTRUCTING MY SURVIVAL from Liz West Ar tist BA(hons) Fine Ar t www.liz-west.com @lizwest_ar t

Being an ar tist has cer tain pressures associated with it, not ever yone understands these pressures, of course. It is only those working within creative fields that seem to ‘get’ it. Finding enough drive to lead your own selfinitiated activities on a daily basis can be a struggle to say the least. It takes willpower, determination, ambition and the knowledge that you may never live the life of a millionaire to become a creative. Those not involved with the ar ts seem to think our career choice is a walk in the park. The common misconception is that we get up at whatever time we choose, work from home perhaps; think we have total and utter freedom... ... We do have freedom, to an extent. But in order to be successful, you can’t just sit around all day at home after a nice lie-in. If we lounged around all day we would never progress, never make any money and cer tainly never win any suppor ters. We need to be seen to be doing things, getting ourselves know by; blogging, making, going into our working studios, being public about our activities and engaging with the public. Sometimes though it is not possible to maintain such drive.

ALL PHOTOS by LIZ WEST

After a major exhibition, commission or project I often find it hard to get going again. I donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t think this behaviour is unusual. I hope, or presume, this hardship isnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t just felt by me? When we have poured blood, sweat and tears into a project, it can be exhausting. There is no wonder that it is difficult to pick up where we left off. Last year I made a solo exhibition of large light-works in a vast industrial unit in Manchester City Centre. I prepared for the show for approximately six months; I secured funding, worked through new ideas, made lots of work, prepared promotional materials, marketed the exhibition, had lots of people come to look and critique the new work, then... then it was all over. I had an overwhelming feeling of pride, yet also felt incredibly hollow. That emptiness came from not knowing exactly what was going to come next, I was secretly terrified. Where was my next pay cheque going to come from?

When was the next time I would have the oppor tunity to show my work publicly again? Where were my new ideas going to come from? With all this in mind I decided to set a daily project. I was initially given the idea for this project by an ar t college tutor, she instils drive into students on a daily basis and therefore is well versed is helping people when they feel stuck. That tutor also happened to be my mother meaning she wanted to help me for more than just professional reasons. She told me I had to make, document and take apar t a new idea ever yday I went into my studio. This sounded simple and easily achievable. Not too scar y.

instead of perfect craftsmanship; I had to use materials that were already available to me within my studio space, therefore I could not buy anything new to use; I had to clean my studio completely so it was clean and fresh ready for the following day; I would tr y and sustain the project for as long as I found it helpful and necessar y (this turned out to be 25 days); I would write about each day on my blog, this helped contextualise the new idea.

I took these instructions as a star ting point and then twisted them to fit my own agenda. I gave myself a set of rules for how to make the work; I had to use make-shift methods for construction

On the ver y first day of my project, I felt extremely ner vous as I travelled into my studio on the bus. I had no idea what I was going to create, no idea of the materials I would choose and no

clue about how people were going to respond (including my dear mum). When I told people what I was doing, they thought it was exciting and liberating, by the end of the project I found this to be true. I arrived at my studio, procrastinated for a while (this involved; making a brew, listening to the radio, re-arranging and tidying my belongings, writing a to-do list and chatting to fellow studio holders). The time came when I knew I just had to get on with it. Grabbing the nearest thing to me, which happened to be lengths of CLS timber left over from a past installation, I decided to wind some tape around the top to make a

tripod structure. It seemed easy so far, what was I so ner vous about? I got into it. By the end of the day I had created a swinging light structure using red, green and blue fluorescent bulbs that hung from my impromptu tripod and created multiple shadows of rainbow hues. This initial ner vousness (sometimes fear) turning into delight (and relief) happened ever yday for the next 25 working days. I had produced lots of new ideas and multiple configurations for new works. I nicknamed this output my â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Construction Projectâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;, as I did exactly that; construct.

placement and position of my materials made me think in a different way. I now feel liberated and able to think freely. I have just finished a series of thoughtful and time-consuming commissions; an outdoor light work for Kendal Calling music festival, a series of workshops and ar tworks for Blackpool Illuminations and the design and fabrication of a crazy golf hole for a curated project in Croydon. In the past I would have felt unsure about the future, instead I am excited and raring to get back in my studio, knowing I have the constructs and knowledge of how to sustain my practice as an ar tist.

The deliberate selection versus the final

... TO

TRANSFO The Myth Of Imager y by BRYAN & KIM C ANTLEY PHOTO by MATT GUSH PHOTOGRAPHY

... BE

ORMATIVE

by Bryan Cantley Owner, Form:uLA Professor of Design Theor y, CSUF www.facebook.com/pages/formula bcantley@fuller ton.edu @uLAform

“… In a closely watched copyright case with broad implications for the contemporar y art world, the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit on Thursday decided largely in favor of the artist Richard Prince, who was found by a federal court in 2011 to have illegally used photographs from a book about Rastafarians to create a series of collages and paintings. The appeals court, which heard the case last May, ruled that Judge Batts’s interpretation was incorrect and that “the law does not require that a secondar y use comment on the original artist or work, or popular culture,” but only that a reasonable obser ver find the work to be transformative…” Cour t Rules in Ar tists Favor Randy Kennedy The New York Times April 25, 2013

In this ar ticle I will discuss the ‘The Myth of Imager y’ painting which attempts to explore the nature of representation and the synthetic condition in its limited surface catalogue. Architects, such as myself, regularly appropriate images of context into which they superimpose their visions. Unlike with ‘The Myth of Imager y’ this ‘sampling’ is almost always a digital image, whose fair use rights are hard to locate. In this piece of work ‘The Myth of Imager y’ the ar tifact and process are somewhat different. The background: My wife, Kim, is a painter of realism. That is, of objects rendered as real, but locate themselves in a context shift to construct a narrative of use, placement, and identity. Through many conversations about the nature of context, my thoughts turned to exploring the idea of using one of my theoretical architectural propositions to provide the fodder for a different level of conversation- that of the architectural insinuation. Our discussions have uncovered a dialogue of ‘image’ vs. ‘painting’, in terms of both the physicality of medium and the content of intention (con-tention?). The painting, one might argue, produces a condition of multiplicity, divergence and upended chronology. We can compare the original layers of paint [though it is difficult to determine which of the obser vable layers of paint are in fact original…] as a scenario of multiple events, overlapping timelines, and separate materiality. Each of these categories can be held

intellectually independent of the content of the painting, though I find the parallels and overlap to be much more wor thy of discussion. The image has its own set of corresponding variable criteria. The original content of the painting is a traditional pedantic landscape. The new content deals with an ar tificial mythology where technology has evolved past the suggested period, based on the clothing and actions of the two figures in the center of the painting. Are we to assume the two chronologies are concurrent, or are they merely tangential to one another, causing a dialogue of non-congruent technologies and phase por tals? The question for us, and then ultimately the viewer, becomes the question of the synthetic - the ersatz nature of both the image and the painting as a threshold to the nature of architectural suggestion - as well as the conversation about the precious object quality so debated in the ar t world. Typically, architects use context and appropriation to suggest a singularity of idea and voice to their propositions. One might argue that this idea of representation begets the conversation of real vs. ar tificial in the discipline of representation- though the imager y typically used by fellow architects is in fact ar tificial, that is not the final intended outcome.

The donor painting: The $25 painting (by W.Chapman) is rather mundane - a boy and girl, dressed in clothes from a bygone era sit under brimmed hats with a lunch pail, fishing and looking off into the vista of a lake. The ribbons on her dress, his suspenders and long-sleeved shir t suggest a time before the ubiquity of technology and mass communication. The irony was not lost on us as we searched for the perfect donor image - since the inser ted object, the Mobile Gatherspace©, is an architectural condition of the future [even to us in 2014], a scenario that suggests ‘place download’ and global space connectivity. We began by scouring swap meets and antique shops, looking for the ideal combination of color, size, subject mater, cost and painting style, since the impetus was to tr y to recreate the architectural phenomenon in a style that matched the original painting. We rejected dozens for their lack of content or painting styles that would not suggest a reality, vir tual or otherwise. There were indeed other paintings that were executed with a much higher level of skill, but since this was to be an experiment, it was difficult to justify the $300 price tag this would have carried. Also added to the selection criteria was the attempt to ‘make precious’ that, which has been discarded, or is in its ‘second use’, to couple with the idea of multiple time[s]. The process was fairly straightforward, though quite challenging as there was an interesting and thick oscillation between analog and digital. Once we photographed the painting, I then had to find a camera view in the digital model that would blend with the donor perspective. After finding integration, the next task was to duplicate the sun angles to simulate the shadows found in the image. The model was rendered, then cut and pasted into the Photoshop version of the full painting, to confirm position and lighting. The real challenge was then to paint on top of the model image using a trial and error method of filters and effects to attempt to make the object read as if it was painted possibly at the same time as the original, so that the paradox of image vs. time would be somewhat believable. After

arriving at a conclusion that satisfied both the architect and the painter, we simply printed out the digital image and used that as a guide to superimpose this media-shifted object into the image, using a master y of traditional oilpainting techniques. Is ‘The Myth of Imager y’ the ar tificial representation of a natural system, or the natural depiction of a synthetic condition? The image captures a lake and surrounding topographies: a natural condition. The painting, quite literally, is mock or a simulacrum. The superficial and literal reading is that the act of painting, regardless of time between strokes, is a natural condition of the verb ‘to paint’. In other words, there is only one medium involved. Paint is the natural hinge. It is both the action and the outcome. Painting… The depiction, the content, the image is highly synthetic for several of reasons. First, the inser ted object [the Mobile Gatherspace] is ar tificial to it’s contextit’s man-made, in high contrast to the original subject matter. Second, the object itself is that of a highly advanced technology, a collection of completely ar tificial systems. Since the painting is natural based on the first obser vation, we may then conclude for the purposes of this discussion that the ar t object is indeed representing several layers of the unreal. So what then is the mythology of this endeavor, as the image title suggests? Is the architecture a reality, a shift in context if not literal time? Is the architecture a mere projection onto the surface of the painting, thus maintaining the purity of the original content?..... is it a condition of Folded Chronologies? Again, then, are we viewing the painting or are we viewing the image; are we looking at one through the filter of another, or are we looking at them as a singular event? Multiplicities filtered through the membrane of singularity. The advantage of this type of multidisciplinar y experiment is the multiple readings that each allows. In the ar t world, it is rare to define an image/

DONOR PAINITNG by W. CHAPMAN PHOTO by MATT GUSH PHOTOGRAPHY

The Myth Of Imager y by BRYAN & KIM C ANTLEY PHOTO by MATT GUSH PHOTOGRAPHY

COSMOLOGY PANEL (detail) by BRYAN C ANTLEY PHOTO by MATT GUSH PHOTOGRAPHY

CHIRAL CHRONOLOGIES (detail) by BRYAN C ANTLEY PHOTO by MATT GUSH PHOTOGRAPHY

object as a study or representation of something other than itself- a painting is the definite object, not a study for a larger painting per se. It is the thing. However in architecture, the image/ object is almost always a symbol for another state of the entity- a reduced scale and controlled material representation- a thing not about itself as much as it is another manifestation. It is another thing. A drawing of an object is usually not the finale- it is typically a study or signifier for a prereality version… the object is to be built (ironically enough usually not of the architect’s own hand, itself an interesting condition of authorship and identity). So then this par ticular ar tifact bridges, if not destroys the typical role of the represented condition. There is no correct way to interpret. The only wrong way would be to not interpret. My work typically attempts to obfuscate the traditional roles of the designated symbol in architecture denotation. Drawings are not objects they are deconstructions of time, layers of states of being, mis-representational hybrids of construction technology and the graphical notation that usually ser ves as directions for said assembly. I use the phrase “ not drawings of objects, but drawings of drawings” attempting to expand the boundaries of what it means to draw [obser vation], and what it means to draw architectural thought [exploration]. The NSFW (Not Safe for Work) series have tried to construct a similar argument within the field, initially the nomenclature was chosen because the drawings were using accepted architectural graphic notations, but in a way that prevented not only the singularity of constructed tolerance, but the individuality of reading and intention as well. Since technical drawings (construction documents, or CD’s in the US) have been used to ‘get stuff built’, or achieve ‘work’ as a business as well as ar tistic reality, these drawings began to take similar notational systems and refute their original meanings/ applications, thus not being safe as CD’s for build ability, as well as prosperous business models. They were not safe for work… Do they, in fact, work? That is an entirely different question, left to the obser ver….

PLACE

Culture Night belfast Launch by AMBERLEA NEELY

PLACE is an independent, not-forprofit organisation dedicated to the making of great places across Nor thern Ireland. PLACE is composed of a multi-disciplinar y team combining exper tise and extensive experience in architecture, town planning, visual ar t, curation, design, social science, education, research, community engagement and event management. by Amberlea Neely BA Hons Fine Ar t MSc Cultural Management PLACE Manager www.placeni.org amberlea@placeni.org

That is how we describe ourselves. In 10 years we have evolved from being an organisation with a ver y direct relationship to the architectural sector, to one with a much broader integration into space, into place and with people. Architecture of course plays a large par t in what we do, but we have (consciously or subconsciously) lost the term ‘architecture centre’ along the way. While there is a strong strategic direction for the organisation, the way in which we work is quite organic. As projects develop and new networks are made, future ideas are born and ever ything connects. The PLACE team all have diverse skills and experience meaning that our por tfolio of projects and programming is varied yet interrelated. Our work is not limited to Nor thern Ireland having recently par tnered with organisations across the UK and Ireland and par ticipated in research and debate across Europe. We develop and deliver projects with local and central government, as well as working with educational bodies and cultural organisations. We create village plans with communities, capture histor y through stories and mapping, and train the public sector in good design. We nur ture a love of architecture, planning and design with young people through an annual site specific Urban Design Academy facilitated by urbanists, historians and designers and our regional deliver y of UK wide project somewhereto_ which provides physical and vir tual space for 16-25 year olds. Our public programme offers the oppor tunity to experience urban walks, talks, workshops and exhibitions which happen in our own space and at other venues. We are co-

curating a Nor thern Irish programme with the British Council, to run alongside the 2014 Venice Biennale which will happen in the Ulster Museum and Golden Thread Galler y as par t of Belfast Festival at Queens called Absorbing Modernity 1914-2014. We also publish our own books on emerging built environment issues such as housing and vacancy. We work from the ground floor of a listed building in Lower Garfield Street in Belfast’s city centre. The street is a charming and vibrant public route between the cultural and shopping districts but the area suffers from a high level of dereliction. Our space had been vacant for a few years before we moved in, having had a lively histor y as a typewriter company, a flour merchant, a cabinet makers and more recently, a record store and an electrical shop. Our desire for the space is to be catalytic in making and influencing change within the urban fabric of the city, in line with our Vacant to Vibrant campaign which initiates solutions for empty buildings and spaces. The basic refit to create the open plan office, meeting space and galler y revealed the original ceiling and pillars and the wall of windows along the front offer a vista in and out, encouraging passers by to pause and look in. Our bespoke street furniture pieces, the result of a collaborative project with Street Society at Queen’s University Belfast and ar tist Liam Crichton, add somewhere for people to stop and sit. Our current programme is a series of events called ‘Where is Lower Garfield Street?’ which focuses on sharing the histor y of the street’s buildings and public realm through interaction with exper ts who have had some connection

PLACE by JOE McGOWAN

to the spaces. Architect George Scott designed the white tiled building opposite and duo Oscar and Oscar redesigned the bar next door whilst Dr Paul Harron has written a PHD on Young and McKenzie, the designers of our building. The programme will also generate new discussion around the empty spaces along the street, including the upper levels. This type of public interaction is impor tant to PLACE and we believe that by introducing subtle changes and actively programming inside and out, we can make a regenerative difference to the area and this year, for the first time Culture Night Belfast held their launch par ty at our front door.

Our move to the new space in May 2014 coincided with 10 years of PLACE and our first exhibition marked this impor tant milestone with a curated archive of our best work. We now have plans to test the space in terms of programming, using the room itself as an object on display. Working with designers across ar t and architecture, we will introduce new ideas, installations and experiences that both question the space and the idea of exhibiting architecture. This investigator y body of work will experiment with how the space can be used, informing future work and programming while also referencing the histor y of the building.

So, our space is our headquar ters, itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s where we plan future projects, zone in on the details and make it all happen. It is where we can begin exciting conversations with par tners and stakeholders, showcase our work, and interact with the world. Our programming of the space provides fresh oppor tunity for discussion. It creates animation at street level. It also creates a face to face presence for the organisation, where people can experience the exhibition, pick up one of our publications, meet the team and par ticipate.

PLACE Refurbishment by AMBERLEA NEELY

MUTABLE SPACE

PHOTO by JOHN McDONALD

by John Q McDonald Aerospace Engineer, University of California, Berkeley http://sprg.ssl.berkeley.edu/~jmcd/art/ @jqmcd

I’m fascinated by art museums. I even like how they smell. Carr ying two memberships, I can go look at paintings whenever I want, which, in a sense, diminishes their specialness, and gives works of old or new art a vague familiarity, at once comforting and unsettling. With the advent of jewel-box museum buildings, works of art have something in common with the architecture. Each is now a unique object more or less enduring through time. Indeed, the paintings often endure far longer than the buildings. When I was young, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art occupied space upstairs in the 1931 beaux-arts War Memorial building in the city’s Civic Center, designed by Arthur Brown, Jr. It smelled of light dust, it was hushed, and the art didn’t leap from the walls, seeming somehow anemic, receding, even though I knew little about its significance, or of its lack thereof. Yes, perhaps, until a jazzy Jeff Koons retrospective, with its titillating warnings and lessons about the shocking nature of some art. The galleries moved south of Market Street in 1995, into a brick-faced blockhouse by Mario Botta. The vast rooms were a crisp gleaming white, with bright wooden floors and an elegant simplicity that invited a hush as I stood in front of On the Bridle Path. The 1939 painting of horseback riders in Central Park is remarkable in its humbleness, though not remembered as one of Edward Hopper’s most notable works. xx There is a rising shuffling noise, whispers and repeated echoes of ssshhh! from little voices. Adults appear, arms outstretched, shepherding two or three dozen children ten or eleven years old, none of whom want to be here (well, maybe just the one, the one who seems entranced by color) and all of them shushed into a mandator y awed silence. Adults, after all, are here tr ying to think such profound thoughts! The little group slides by, and clusters in a corner near a Diego Rivera, next to a Frida Khalo. And still, there are audible whispers. “Hey, whaddya call a buck that’s blind?” I shake my head a little, remembering the punchline. “No eye deer!” General whispered mirth,

giggles, groans. Despite myself, I smile up at Hopper’s painting. “Hey, whaddya call a blind buck that can’t have sex?” I turn a little, seeing one tow-headed kid elbow another. “No fuckin’ eye deer!” Snickering and laughter echo against white walls, and I wonder a moment how a long dead artist might respond. But hey, what would be the big deal? At one time, even the Met felt it necessar y to post signs asking people to refrain from spitting in the galleries. Still, I see. At least, I think I see. Someone once asked me: do you dream in color, or do you merely think you dream in color? I could only guess, what would be the difference? I look up at the painting. Behind me, dozens of little feet shuffle to the next galler y. Little voices whisper and snicker and recede. They look at a Rothko and they think they could do better with finger-paints. Perhaps they could. And I hope they tr y. Looking back, things seemed to have come easy to a successful artist. In his time, Hopper was asked why he painted such ugly lonesome places. I look now, upon the edge of Central Park, three horses galloping below street level, into a dark space below a small bridge. They are all motion and activity, flaring nostrils on the horses, flowing hair on the riders. What I see most closely, though, is the architecture of the building looming in the background. Standing back, I glance over and see the last trailing kids disappear into the farthest galler y. From here, the building looks like a stone-faced apartment house. It is familiar and gray and it looms into shadows in the distance. What time of day is it, anyway? The sky is an ominous dark gray. Perhaps the gleam on the horses’ flanks is as much from a light rain as from the sweat of exertion. Hopper is, of course, known for his gloomy architecture: windowless sheds on Cape Cod dunes, lonely gas stations in the late evening, blank apartment houses with one or two windows glowing yellow, rows of brick-faced storefronts on an empty street. He was a remarkable draftsman, but his predilection for angles and facades resulted in a somewhat stiff mien in what should have been animated organic figures: stiff women on barren beds, men leaning awkwardly over empty desks, a pair of wooden comedians on a blank stage. I step forward again, looking into the brush strokes that resolve themselves as I approach. At this distance, I am amazed at how coarse the strokes are. There is a deep gray green tone to the windows in the apartment building, simple single wet strokes on a wet browngray surface. Here he reveals an eye

attuned to seeing the painting from a distance greater than one long arm plus one long paint brush. As always, when I look at a painting from such proximity, I am impressed. There is an ease to these architectural features, casual care. Remove the scarecrow riders, and this would be a great painting. Edward denied he strove for the lonely feeling in his paintings. Today, one cannot really look at them without a tinge of appreciative nostalgia. But, were he working today, his canvases might be of the Chevron station down the street, maybe a Starbucks, the buildings we hardly notice at all. It is hard to say for sure. I envy Hopper’s ease. He eased the paint onto the canvas with casual strokes. He eased into a circle of New York artists and was practically the Whitney’s painter in residence. He eased into old age in a bright studio on a windy Cape Cod dune. I look at his paintings, he wasn’t a ver y rapid painter, and I see a course of life in art and art in life. But that’s only what I see in the painting. Hopper himself was a difficult, repressed, and troubled man. His relationship with his wife was of an abusive co-dependency. He struggled with his art and never really had much respect for his own work. He clung to it and he desperately longed for it to support him. Hopper succeeded, still, after years of mindless illustration and obsessive drudger y in etching. He had a goal in mind, and lived to see it happen, but I would never have wanted to be him. I stand here at the painting, and it tells me one thing. Hopper’s life tells me another. How does one step forward? How does one step away? How does one take something he created and live by it? xx In the end, the museum auctioned the painting -- deaccessioned, in the euphemistic language of the business -for ten million dollars in 2012. With the proceeds, it purchased another Hopper, Intermission (1963) featuring another vast gray empty space and another of his tense figures. On the Bridle Path, with its gloomy gray apartment house, finds itself in another room somewhere, filling another space, but enduring. In the meantime, Botta’s museum shut down in 2013, torn open to accommodate a vast glittering addition by Snøhetta. The interior landscape of the museum migrates and mutates with time, ever tr ying to better display the works of modern histor y, and to connect to twenty-first centur y patrons. The paintings quietly tr y to endure.

OP-EDS

BIGGER THAN THE BOTH OF US by Elly Ward & Charles Holland Fonding Par tners & Directors Ordinar y Architecture www.ordinar yarchitecture.co.uk hello@ordinar yarchitecture.co.uk @ordinar y_arch

PHOTO by JAMIE KOWAL

PHOTO by NICHOLAS HANNAH

Ar t and Architecture are so often linked together that we tend to assume that they are closely related activities. Although this assumed reciprocity seems vastly overstated – especially in the increasingly technocratic and specialist realm of architecture in the 21st centur y – there have undoubtedly been periods of creative cross-fer tilisation and genuine exchange. Obvious examples include the relationship of early modernists including Le Corbusier and Adolf Loos to the ar tistic avant garde of their time and the cross-disciplinar y activities of the Independent Group in the 1950s. Another example of such genuine exchange, albeit less documented, occurred in the late 1960s, predominantly on the west coast of America when a movement that came to be known as Supergraphics emerged as the result of a series of collaborations between graphic ar tists and architects. Today we think of supergraphics as

any large-scale lettering applied to the exterior or interior of buildings, as wayfinding devices or for communicating information or for adver tising. But at the time of its inception, Supergraphics had less to do with any of these things and was actually an attempt to push the boundaries of what was thought possible in the mediums of both graphic ar t and architecture. Borne out of early postmodern ideas about architecture and coinciding with the Pop and Op Ar t movements of the time, Supergraphics sought to challenge the spatial limitations of architecture’s inherent physicality. Two-dimensional designs were applied to various surfaces in such a way as to be transformative, attempting to remove solidity, gravity and histor y, and to define space in a non-physical way. Way beyond mere decoration, the intent was to construct a visually immersive environment and its effect was supposed to be reality altering.

IMAGE COURTES Y, ON THE ROAD

The first notable instance of this radical new approach appeared at Sea Ranch, a housing project by architect Charles Moore working with graphic designer Barbara Stauffacher Solomon. Large blocks and stripes of bold colours were applied to the interior spaces in geometric forms that were derived directly from the architecture itself. Structural elements such as staircases, dividing walls and doors became exaggerated and distor ted, the two-dimensional shapes extending beyond the architectural plane forming sculptural elements of their own. One of the most significant and perhaps successful ar tistic collaborations between an architect and a graphic

designer was realized at the Los Angeles Olympics in 1984. Jon Jerde, the architect, was already known for his use of highly coloured and graphic, iconic symbolism to create larger than life buildings and interiors such as the Hor ton Plaza in San Diego. His collaborator on the Olympics was Deborah Sussman, a graphic ar tist who had worked as par t of the Eamesâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; multidisciplinar y practice for several years. It was her task to create a distinctive graphic identity for the Games which could be deployed at the various venues around the city. Famously constrained by an almost nonexistent budget, together they designed

a series of spectacular temporar y structures made from scaffolding poles, tents and cardboard tubes, all decorated in an exuberant palette of colours and patterns inspired by the surrounding and immigrant cultures that have influenced Los Angelesâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; character. The hybridisation of architecture and graphic design in this instance was more than just a spectacular solution, its overall effect was powerful enough to set the aesthetic identity for the city by which it is still recognised today. In both collaborative and ar tistic terms, the pursuit of Supergraphics was experimental in its nature and ambitious in its desire to generate something that

genuinely extended the spatial effects of architecture. It allowed graphic designers to realise their ideas at a scale not restricted to paper and in three dimensions, and architect to be able to effect transformations not possible through solid construction alone. In the words of Deborah Sussman: “to create something bigger than the architecture”. In his essay on the work of Charles Moore in the issue of Volume dedicated to the 1960s counter-culture, Jorge Otero-Pailos sought to directly link Moore’s use of Supergraphics with an interest in distor tions of perception and mind-altering spatial effects. In an intriguing reversal of critical opinion on

post modernism in general and Moore’s work in par ticular, he proposed a more radical agenda for supergraphics related to the periods interests in psychedelia and experiments in spatial perception. Our own interest in supergraphics influenced two recent projects that were both, perhaps not uncoincidentally, also realised in Los Angeles. The first was situated in direct reference to perhaps the most iconic of all signs, the Hollywood sign on top of Mount Lee: 45 foot high letters that were erected originally to adver tise real estate and are now preser ved as a historic icon for the film industr y and the city worldwide. Commissioned to

produce an ar twork for the site we responded to the sign’s iconic status by building several huge, white, threedimensional letters and scattered them along the three mile trail up to the sign. These were accompanied by a series of viewfinders that suggested the letters had tumbled down the hill and that the sign was slowly falling apar t. By constructing three-dimensional versions of the sign’s letters that were larger than life at eight foot high (yet only a quar ter of their real size) we provided visitors with an oppor tunity to interact with the icon, to touch, hold and have their photo taken with it. The letters we built were not inhabitable,

IMAGE cour tesy of ORDINARY ARCHITECTURE

nor did they ser ve any specific function except the â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;superâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; experience of being up close to them. Some spectacular moments resulted from the transpor tation of the letters from the workshop: strapped into the back of a pick-up truck in Downtown LA and taken along the freeway to the base of the trail where they then had to be physically carried up the trail. When the event was over the letters were carried by down the hill to become rather spectacular impromptu seating for the after-par ty. The letters even enjoy a second life now after the event, the foamboard used as formwork for concrete and transformed into sculptures that ser ve a more practical function as outdoor furniture in the garden of a house at the foot of the hill. Almost as if the letters found their final resting place after tumbling down the full extent of the trail, becoming petrified permanent versions of themselves - like a re-appropriated, supergraphic ruin. Los Angeles is currently mourning the recent loss of Deborah Sussman who sadly passed away last month aged 83, so when we were approached to collaborate on an event with Los Angeles-based practice LA-Mas it seemed fitting to make a tribute to her work. Using a palette of colours derived from her designs for LACMA and references to the icons and other techniques she employed at the LA Olympics, we designed a series of large-scale numbers which were cut out and hand-painted in a number of unique decorative patterns to identify each of the venues taking par t in the event. Strikingly distinct from the various architectural backdrops they stood against, and enlivening many an otherwise blank wall, the numbers each assumed a character of their own whilst providing an readily recognizable identity for the whole event. Both these projects attempt to update the experiments of the Supergraphic movement, using scale disjunctions and contextual displacement within the perceptual field. Removed from their specific context, the objects slip ambiguously between graphic twodimensionality and a more haptic and sculptural presence. They also express our simple and unabashed enjoyment of supersized graphic elements in the landscape.

HOMEBAKED MATTERS IN OUR OWN HANDS by Mia Tagg www.homebaked.org.uk @HomebakedA

Homebaked is many things to many people, which makes it very difficult to describe. Stripped right down, Homebaked is three things: it is a grassroots political movement, an art installation and a business. These three strands are brought together in a completely ordinary late Victorian end of terrace bakery in a traditional working-class area of Liverpool. I say ordinary, it is architecturally ordinary, the buildingâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s context, location and legacy is extraordinary.

IMAGES cour tesy of HOMEBAKED

The Building Built in 1907, 199 Oakfield Road was purpose-built to accommodate a bakery and retail space on the ground floor with residential space on the first floor. Since its completion, the bakery has been run as a family business and in its first 103 years only changed hands once, when the Kelley family sold the deeds and the business to the Mitchells in the 1960’s. The bakery is still often referred to as ‘Mitchell’s’ by local residents. In order to understand Homebaked, it is important to have some insight into regeneration politics in the area, especially the HMR initiatives of the 2000’s. There is a wealth of information available on this subject, one which is well worth looking into. Towards the end of the 2000’s, as the HMR initiative ground to a halt, most of the houses and other businesses around Mitchell’s bakery were boarded up. With the customer base displaced, and the area reduced to a ghostly shadow of its previous self, the Mitchells were forced to close down in January 2011. In the window their message read: “We tried to stick it out, but we can’t. God bless you for your custom.”

Mitchell’s bakery window was spotted and 2Up 2Down, with support from the Liverpool Biennial, signed a lease agreement with the Mitchells and took over use of the bakery as headquarters for its activity. Discussions about who and what should reside in the bakery retail space took place throughout 2Up 2Down; 199 Oakfield Road is after all the face of the whole organisation and all that Homebaked and 2Up 2Down are. While these discussions were taking place, regular bakery customers would pop in and ask when the bakery was reopening. The local residents love for the bakery made the decision to reopen as a bakery an easy one. One of the bakery’s most avid supporters, Jessica Doyle, retrained from an artist to a baker and is now a key member of Homebaked staff and board.

The People Towards the end of 2009, the Liverpool Biennial invited Dutch artist, Jeanne van Heeswijk to make work in the city. Jeanne was familiar with north Liverpool, having worked on a project in Bootle a few years earlier. Witnessing the level of degeneration achieved by the stalled HMRI, Jeanne became adamant that her next big project would take place in Anfield.

2Up 2Down collaborated with ABCC and BNENC’s youth groups and schools in the area, placing particular emphasis on young people taking charge of their future communities. Marianne Heaslip from URBED Architects, along with the Biennial, worked with the young people, creating designs for the interior and exterior of the bakery and the six adjoining terraces along Oakfield Road. With Homebaked Cooperative Bakery housed downstairs, upstairs would provide affordable housing for those who need it. The design won Jeanne and Homebaked the Curry Stone Design Prize in 2012 and the refurbishment for the housing above the bakery is scheduled to start in winter 2014/15. Unfortunately, it seems the six adjoining properties will not be saved, so Homebaked CLT are designing alternative housing to replace them.

A consultation with local residents was launched and the hunt for a suitable empty building to sequester for the project began. The initial project was named 2Up 2Down in collaboration with the Liverpool Biennial and focused on appropriating the disused terraced houses for contemporary living, production and trading. The note in the

2Up 2Down became Homebaked Community Land Trust (CLT) and Homebaked Cooperative Bakery in 2012. The Homebaked Cooperative bakery is a community owned cooperatively run business and trades out of 199 Oakfield Road. The bakery also hosts most Homebaked events and employs eight

people. The bakery is also where most of the volunteers assist the project; some are keen bakers, others are attracted by Homebaked politics, but most have a foot firmly in each camp. The CLT act as landlord to the bakery and focus on politics and property in a more direct sense. All aspects of Homebaked are informed by Jeanne’s art practice: democratic collaboration, an unwavering central theme of social justice and an intrepidity and persistence in challenging the status quo. These are not qualities traditionally associated with business, these are attributes associated with groundbreaking art and political movements. All of this is represented in the building, which means that it has transcended its architectural averageness, and become a symbol for all that Homebaked is. Homebaked’s inclusive nature has attracted an unusually artistic workforce; DJ’s, painters, sculptors, photographers, film makers, musicians, writers, performers and drama practitioners all contribute to the bakery and CLT in one capacity or another. Since our presence at the 2012 Biennial with the legendary Anfield Home Tour, Homebaked has hosted a community gardening event, a symposium on giving, explored the role of artists in in a more sustainable society with Future Farmers and Situations, we collaborate with Squash Nutrition and host viewings for their Food for Real events, and we work with Writing on the Wall on their literary festival. It is all this that makes Homebaked an artwork: firstly, Homebaked is an artist’s vision; secondly, the building has become a physical manifestation of a community’s solidarity, perseverance and humanity. 199 Oakfield Road has transcended bakery status and become a kind of living sculpture: a conceptual piece about strength in fellowship. I don’t want to give anyone the impression that going about things the Homebaked way is easy, but the core values of collaboration,

CRAFTING ARCHITECTURE

by Angus Ritchie & Daniel Tyler Bsc (Hons) MArch Founding Par tner Processcraft www.processcraft.co.uk @processcraft

PHOTO cour tesy of PROCESSCRAFT

We propose the innate quality of architecture is that it must be experienced in the real and explored the idea of an approach to architectural education that required the testing of ideas through physical manifestations of design. American architect Tom Kundig remarked on the inherent ability that art possesses to elicit a response from the viewer that an image of architecture remains unable to evoke. Does this require a piece of architecture to be realised in order to be understood? Architecture engages with the senses differently to art, it must be felt, this is the magic of the real. Four years of study at various architecture schools across Europe we realised a lack of interaction with the real within our UK institutions. Rather than producing purely theoretical drawn projects we have identified a need to engage with the physical, understand the tactile nature of material and test within the real world throughout a student’s architectural education. To do so we conducted a series of Technical Studies with groups of students, run in conjunction with the traditional curriculum with varying stages of the architectural school, which not only ranged in scale, material and form, but also explored existing and emerging methods of fabrication. We carried out these studies in the first semester primarily with first year students, introducing them to the workshop and allowing them to engage with tools and materials which provided us with experimental results and physical expressions of a student’s engagement and understanding of the physical. We set out to challenge the existent taught process of idea - plan - theoretical object, whereby images of the imagination are flattened through the ‘lossy’ development of drawings prior to realisation. We proposed the exploration of the hand and the eye in unison resulting in a tacit knowledge of material throughout a student’s process and through our interventions in the curriculum we now suggest a new approach

PHOTO by ROSS C AMPBELL

of imagination - hand â&#x20AC;&#x201C; realisation, which addresses the lack of practical understanding in the current architectural programme. Through our engagement with younger students we were given the opportunity to work at a larger scale and properly test our thesis. The Scottish Scenic Routes initiative is a scheme based on an existing Norwegian programme hoping to encourage people to stop and view the Scottish Landscape through architectural installations. The initiative was based on the idea of promoting young designers and as such a dialogue was started with our University through which funding was offered to promote their project. This quickly developed into an idea of realising a 1st Year room with a view concept as a physical built form. A design that framed three views through reflective stainless steel enclosures was selected as a concept for our proposed structure. Understanding the budget constraints placed upon us we where required to distil this concept into a single Lookout that framed the three views within a single form. By undertaking the role of the complete project and building the Lookout ourselves, we were able to engage and understand the various complexities and visceral qualities of the materials we were working with. Parallel to our process of design and construction we undertook further Technical studies that responded to our brief to rigorously test ideas and inform the design which we could not do merely through drawn representation. TS07 Edge Conditions is one example of how we tested and considered a design idea in the physical prior to the realisation of the final object. It was concerned with the junction of the mirrored stainless steel and plywood panels and whether we tried to express or hide the meeting points. We chose to express the edges of the ply and to introduce an aluminium channel to allow for an amount of tolerance during the build process and to provide a shadow gap, which resulted in an outline of the form within its context. This process of testing in the real resulted in an understanding of the materials during the design process and a level of craft in the final object. Through our continued dialogue within the real world we were able to further develop our detailed design through conversations with experts. In particular through several meetings with the metal fabricator we

PHOTO cour tesy of PROCESSCRAFT

were able to develop and understand the technical demands of the chosen material. During one meeting the discussion revolved around our technical study model looking at lamination methods and the ability to bend metal around edges. On edges where the Lookout would be subject to excessive wear or weathering we decided to fold the metal over. Through this iterative process of meetings with the client and suppliers and physically testing these ideas we were able to develop the design to a level of detail that would allow us to not only understand what we had drawn but to go on and construct the final object. In realising the final object we were able to investigate the process of building from our own set of drawings and understand the implications of lines on a piece of paper. Once the final object was placed in the landscape we could then relate the Lookout to its design process and experience complexities that we were unable to anticipate or foresee. Having only visualised the Lookout through static representations, the experience in person is completely different. Blurry reflections in the steel shift as the user meanders closer to the cube, focussing only as they edge closer. As you pause and sit you become overwhelmed by the warmth and smell of the timber enclosure only to then recognise the sound of distant waterfalls and fleeting birds captured and amplified by the positioning of the seats. In essence this is the magic of the real. While the Lookout remains distinctly a piece of architecture it embodies the qualities of art that Tom Kundig describes. We have only been able to evoke these emotions by working at the most rigorous of scales, illustrating our full understanding of designing such a structure. The critique of our thesis has developed from merely subjective criticism to an appraisal of the emotions and senses that architecture should elicit. This has only been possible through the development of our process in which we imagine a new approach by which a student learns by the hand and eye in unison resulting in a tacit understanding of material and process.

PHOTO by DAN TYLER

PHOTO cour tesy of PROCESSCRAFT

PHOTO by ROSS C AMPBELL

PHOTO by DAN TYLER

P H OTO - E S S AY

P H OTO G R A P H I N G A R T S PAC E

Photographer Paul Karalius and Open Eye Galler y Ar tistic Director work together regularly, Here they share their thoughts on the processes and implications of documenting ar t in space. Photos: Paul Karalius

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by Lorenzo Fusi Ar tistic director Open Eye Galler y www.openeye.org.uk

Photographing a space that showcases photography, often referencing the histor y and developments in the realm of photography, is like thinking in terms of Chinese boxes. Conceptually, it is a rather fascinating space, which we have tried to explore by means of our latest exhibition at the galler y entitled “Not All Documents Are Records: Documenting Exhibitions As An Ar t Form”. This show looks at the role played by photography in creating the visual histor y of international exhibition platforms, such as biennial exhibitions, operating at the intersection between documentation and ar tistic creation. What I am personally looking for in installation shots is the sense of space and context. Unlike other media, photography generally does not need a good reproduction: it is already self-reproduced by the ‘original’. It is instead key for us to document the way photographs are displayed and brought to fruition inside the galler y. What we want to document the physical experience during the visit; the relation between ar tworks, audiences and the architecture; the rhythm created around the images on display; the sense of scale and propor tions. Ultimately, we want to picture the discursive element underpinning the curatorial choices we make.

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by Paul Karalius Photographer www.paulkaralius.com paul@paulkaralius.com @paulkaralius

The galler y space can change quite significantly for different exhibitions, with the room layouts altered to reflect the concept behind the ar twork. The space can take on a completely different meaning and creates an interesting relationship between the transitor y exhibition, where you’re capturing an event that is unique, and the physical structure of the building that displays the ar twork. Photographing someone else’s photography is quite intriguing and the most recent exhibition ‘Not All Documents Are Records: Photographing Exhibitions as an Ar t Form’, I found myself photographing someone else’s photographs of someone else’s photographs of exhibitions which felt more like a riddle than an assignment. My aim is to add something fur ther than purely documenting the work and giving consideration to the architecture and people interacting with the exhibition is usually my star ting point to add different dimensions. I approached the Open Eye early last year to photograph the building for a personal project based around spaces used for learning and cultural activities. The galler y was interested in the images which in turn led to a number of commissions throughout the year to photograph exhibitions for a broad range of ar tists and quite diverse installations. I photograph the installations and sometimes the launch events. The galler y is confident with its exhibitions and they don’t provide shot

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lists or parameters to work under. This allows me to work with a lot of freedom and approach the work almost as if it were a personal work. Understanding how the ar twork fits within the galler y space is the key to making the imager y work and light, space and materials come into play. The space between rooms often creates intriguing perspectives for the viewer and I tr y to include shots that focus on this transition from one room to another. Between the rooms you only have a par tial view of the ar twork that you’re approaching with the rest obscured by the internal structure of the building. The building and the ar twork interact within your view and I tr y to make the photograph lead the viewer forward into the room. The launch evenings are predictably busy and it’s interesting to obser ve how people interact with the ar twork, the space and even each other. Viewers have different experiences and reactions to the ar twork and I tr y to take images at quieter times when people are engaged personally with the work. On some occasions the architecture is the main focus and on others it could be the ar twork or the people. They are all par ts that need to be considered. In shots where the ar twork is the key element I will tr y and take these from the perspective of the viewer, making the figures less defined and secondar y as they would appear to a someone who was immersed in the ar twork.

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BY-PRODUCTS OF CREATIVITY by Richard Boll Freelance Photographer www.richardbollphotography.com richard@richardbollphotography.com @Rbollphoto

The projects are motivated by a love of minimalism and visual simplicity. I get a lot of satisfaction in finding strong and balanced compositions in various visually interesting environments. These projects were tied together by being based around “creative” environments, be it ar t studios where painting and sculpture is produced, photographic studios with infinity cur ves or the white walls and simple details found in galler y spaces. I found this interesting as it was in some ways looking at by-products of creativity and the production of ar t work. It was looking at the left over mess after sculpture or paintings had been produced and which were now elsewhere, or the backdrops in photography studios rather than the object or person who is put in front of them, and the galler y walls, not the ar t that is hung from them. * ALL IMAGES BY RICHARD BOLL.

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STUDIO 1 The subject matter is minimal: detritus from the production of other ar t work. Through combining light and form to create a poetic interpretation of space, the work is positioned as much in the canon of minimalist painting as within the context of contemporar y photographic practice. The photographs represent a search for balance and refinement.

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STUDIO 2 These images were produced in 2008 and explore the unlikely, minimal refinement inherent in a variety of photographic studio spaces. Such functional spaces facilitate and play regular host to the pursuit of photographic excellence, yet on closer inspection yield up their own form of understated, natural harmony.

When the various drop-down paper backgrounds and seemingly depth less â&#x20AC;&#x153;infinity cur vesâ&#x20AC;? are juxtaposed against the cluttered studio interiors, they offer quiet, meditative por tals, akin to minimalist abstract paintings. This on-going project takes an oblique view at the production of ar twork through the depiction of creative environments.

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T H E S E R P E N T I N E PAV I L I O N UNDER CONSTRUCTION

by Jim Stephenson Architectural Photographer www.clickclickjim.com jim@clickclickjim.com @clickclickjim

Every year The Serpentine Gallery in London’s Hyde park invite an international architect to design a temporary pavilion to stand on their lawn through the summer. 2014 marked pavilion number fourteen and was designed by Chilean architect Smiljan Radić. For the last two year’s I’ve been commissioned by the gallery to document the construction of the pavilion, so they have images to use in press as well as for their archives. Following construction projects, particularly for temporary structures such as these, is something I find fascinating tripods get left at home and I shoot faster, with a looser style (mainly to avoid cranes and diggers). I used to work as an architect and I always far preferred being on site than at a computer, so on these construction photography commissions I like that I get to put on my hard hat, hi vis and steel toe-caps and stomp around in the mud for a bit. For the pavilion, public discussion about the merits of the design begin long before construction does. The internet buzzes with comments and opinions as soon as the gallery send out their press release announcing the architect and their proposed design, so to see the structure emerge from the lawn over the course of a couple of months offers a unique insight. In terms of appearance, the differences between Sou Fujimoto’s pavilion in 2013 and Smiljan Radić’s in 2014 could barely have been wider. Where Fujimoto created a transparent cage ‘cloud’ for the lawn, Radić responded to the setting with his pebbleesque structure that, during the day appeared as a solid mass, but at night revealed that the GRP cladding was semi-transparent as it glowed into the evening. That said, the influences both architects spoke about were not so far away - both referencing nature and their response to that. That, I suppose, is where some of the enduring interest in the pavilion project lays - the chance to witness how different architects, different minds with different points of reference, react to the same site. * These images show the construction of Radić’s pavilion, from start to finish all taken by Jim Stephenson.

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C O N T R I B U T E TO EDGEcondition? FORWARD FEATURES LISTINGS Vol. 04 // Nov 14 "teaching the future" Vol. 05 // Jan 15 "placemaking" For fur ther themes and information please visit our website. When submitting a letter or pitch please email it to mail@edgecondition.net with the ‘Vol. number and title’ in the subject line. We work approx 1-3 volumes in advance. We are currently on the hunt for cover ar tists for future issues. To contact the ar t director please email mail@edgecondition. net with ‘cover ar tists’ in the subject line. For fur ther information about content, to suggest future topics and themes for discussion and for media collaboration please feel contact the editors, with a relevant subject line header to mail@ edgecondition.net

Vo l u m e 0 4 OUT NOV 2014 ‘teaching the future’