EDGEcondition Vol.02 'presenting architecture - JUNE 2014 by EDGEcondition

EDGE CONDITION Vo l u m e 0 2 JUNE 2014 ‘presenting architecture’

ON THE COVER

‘Being There’ by Squint/Opera CLICK HERE FOR MORE INFORMATION ON THE CO VER ARTWORK.

EDGEcondition issue 02 published online June 2014 UK Editors: Gem Bar ton Cara Courage Cover ar twork: Copyright Squint Opera Opinions expressed are those of the authors. Ar t Direction: Gem Bar ton @EDGE_CONDITION www.edgecondition.net mail@edgecondition.net

WELCOME

Editors’ note Welcome to Issue two of EDGEcondition, ‘presenting architecture’. Our first issue was an overwhelming success, reaching over ten thousand readers - thank you all that contributed and read the publication that made it that success. Our take on presenting architecture is a wide horizon of all that can be said to communicate architecture. This is not (just) about having a good conference stage presence, or knowing how to work a pitch, or having the best looking boards and buildings models out there. It is about a wider dialogue, one that isn’t one-sided and one that is fluid. It’s about what we say to others, implicitly, explicitly or without even knowing, about what we do and the why and the how we do it? It’s not just about the visuals of the work, but about the positioning signals we give to others within and without the sector ; the words we use or don’t, the images we chose or don’t, and of how these work together to communicate the stance that we take.

Thus, in this issue you’ll find ar ticles on architecture and prose and poetr y; in film; in the studio and galleries spaces; in archive’s; and in magazines. These look at communication in the sector from a tangential and oblique perspective, such is the concern of EDGEcondition; but the ways of communicating directly through the verbal, non-verbal and visual is of course included too but from those that offer a distinctive perspective. EDGEcondition is curating this year’s Free Range pecha kucha, on the theme of ‘re-appropriate’ and a feature on our impressive group of practitioners from ar t and architecture is also included in this issue. Our next issue, ‘art and architecture’ is out at the end of September with a similar wide interpretation of the theme. If you would like to contribute to this issue or comment on any of the topics in issues one and two, please contact the editors via mail@edgecondition.net. Cara Courage & Gem Bar ton

LISTINGS LETTERS:

FROM PERSONAL EXPERIENCE:

04 Jacklynn Niemiec & Jason Austin evaluate new methods for the ominous ‘final review’ in architecture schools in PRESENTING ARCHITECTURE IN REVERSE.

42 Myra Stewar t discusses her thoughts and theories on alternative methods of site analysis in AT PLAY.

08 Engineer Bruno Tonelli shares his thoughts about BEING ON THE EDGE of architecture.

43 Athanasiou Geolas & Evangelina Guerra Lujan share their passion for words and images in IT ALWAYS BEGINS WTH AN ARCHIVE

09 Graeme Brooker highlights the absence of the presentation of surface in university education in PRESENTING SURFACE.

46 Ar t Director Patrick Myles tells us how to put a building on a page in CHANGING THE DIMENSIONS OF ARCHITECTURE.

10 Recruitment Consultant and design graduate Fred Vinall shares his experiences of the employment circle in OUT OF THE FRYING PAN. 11 Film critic Armen Karaoghlanian tells of his practice analysing films in terms of architectural space in FIGHT CLUB. FEATURES: 12 Creative agency SQUINT/OPERA deliver a fascinating tale of threshold between the image and the reality in BEING THERE. 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 one.. 23 5 visual responses to the Ted Landrum poem ARCHITECTURE & LANGUAGE. Featuring Federico Babina, Paul Karalius, Thomas Lear Grace, Catrina Stewar t, Kyle Branchesi

OP-EDS 50 Our editor Gem Bar ton talks about the changing face of architectural representation in THE EVIL WITCH OF BANALITY. 60 Architect George Wade questions the need for neatness in BLESS THIS MESS. 64 Cass PhD candidtae Rachel O’Grady analyses the re-use of a 1914 Nor th Indian guesthouse in PRESENTING THE PERIPHERAL AND THE EXISTING. 70 Lawrence Bird explores the depiction of the built environment in movies, manga and anime in ONCE BY WATER, ONCE BY FIRE. PHOTO-ESSAYS 76 Por trait photographer Valerie Bennett gives us the stunning personal stories behind phographing famous architects. in THE STORIES BEHIND THE LENS

AN INTERVIEW WITH... 36 Lead graphic designer on Wes Anderson’s blockbuster The Grand Budapest Hotel, ANNIE ATKINS

86 Jim Stephenson ON ARCHITECTURAL PHOTOGRAPHY 101 - EDGECONDITION CURATE FREERANGE

LETTERS

PRESENTING ARCHITECTURE IN REVERSE M OV I N G B AC K WA R D S I S N OT N OT M OV I N G F O RWA R D S

Dear EDGECondition, Don’t read this letter yet. We are not done, not even close. The thoughts contained here are a mess, full of unedited conversation not yet organized and borderline incoherent. We have been wondering when the incomplete is acceptable, and if the act of presentation (or in this case, a submission) is categorically finite. We hope not, we consider this letter an oppor tunity for critical dialogue, one we hope you find yourself interjecting within. Recently, at the conclusion of the foundation architecture studio and first year teaching at a new university, we hosted our final review – the final review of the spring quar ter but also the final review of the entire first year of foundation architecture studio, which in most architecture schools, acts as a rite of passage into the architecture program and celebration of the hard work, lost hours of sleep, and relentless (and often ambiguous) quest to define the meaning of architecture. (And for both of us, the review was also to showcase our teaching and curriculum tweaks to our curious colleagues within the depar tment that also doubled as a long inter view for another year of employment.) Heeding our own advice that we often recited to the students, we decided it was time for us to “take a risk and embrace the potential of failure – because failing produces knowledge.” We set out to curate a final review that critiqued the 04

classic role and format of the final architecture review. The classic and conventional final architecture review is structured with each student individually presenting their entire chain of work for the semester (or in our case, for the quar ter), while the invited jurors critically absorb the student’s verbal presentation, while ruminating on their visual presentation that is staged on a ver tical pin-up surface. Upon the completion of the student’s presentation, a few clarification questions are asked by the jur y and then from this point forward, the student remains quiet, (especially first year students), waiting for the first comments, desperately hoping for some positive reinforcement (and emotional suppor t) after relentless hours of investment into the work. At this time, the jur y – typically being pressed for time with the number of students in the first year architecture class – barrages the students with their personal interpretation and criticism of the work that hangs in front of them. Often, since the “final” work reflects the most recent development of the design project, the process work that generated the “final” work is often seen as less impor tant, unfinished, and for cer tain, incomplete and juvenile in relation to the “final” work. Thus, the “final” resolution almost always trumps the ar tifacts of the design process – which, for us, are the gems of their thought process, evidence of their design intentionality, and the residue of their individual design genius.

CLASSIC Vs INCOMPLETE from the authors.-

And despite the curation of a thoughtful set of jur y members, the final review often turns into a oneway conversation – between smar t, and sometimes out-spoken jurors and a neophyte student caught in the headlights. As for the rest of students that are anxiously waiting for their turn in line – they congregate behind the jur y desperately tr ying to stay awake, simultaneously rehearsing their verbal presentations in their heads and daydreaming about their luxurious summer sleeping schedule that lies ahead.* *Disclaimer : Okay, the picture we just painted for a typical final review in the preceding paragraphs may not always be the case, but having been on numerous design juries at multiple universities over the course of the last decade, we find that the description above is disturbingly accurate of the conventional final review format.

The format of our “final” review would not weight the “final” work in unequal propor tion– but instead, provide a platform for sketch, process, analysis and conception to be equally celebrated igniting conversation and discussion between student and juror and highlight design intention and translation of concept over final objectivity and deliver y. HOW DID WE DO IT? We designed the “incomplete” final review – the recipe follows: Organization of work: Stations of work (a total of six) collectively exhibiting similar individual project deliverables (i.e. each individual student has equal representation within each station – models with models, final drawings with final drawings, par ti sketches with par ti sketches, study models with study models, etc.). Organization of jur y: Groups of three students (with similar typological project attitudes) paired with one juror ; each student group escor ts their assigned juror to each of the six stations, spending a total of 10 minutes per station before rotating to the next station. Each student had an oppor tunity to briefly describe a few words to their juror about their work within the station to initiate the conversation. Each jur y member spent a combined 60 minutes with their group of three students. Organization of presentation: Depending on which station number each group of students and juror 06

star ted from (i.e. nos. 1-6, where station #1 showcased initial concept studies and #6 showcased final-quality polished perspectives), the students had to present their work moving both forwards and backwards focusing only on the exhibited media at their par ticular station. WHAT DID WE LEARN? When given an oppor tunity to candidly talk to a juror about their

work within a less then formal review platform, the students performed without hesitation or reser vation – they were able to intelligently ar ticulate their big ideas as well as the detailed grain within their work. And it was at this moment, that we, as their instructors, realized just how much they learned from not only us but more impor tantly from one another. They were invested not just in their own work but the collective work of

collaborative conversation and critical dialogue played within a discontinuous exhibition of their work. The collective conversation within each group of students acted as the agent for new design discoveries – prompting inquir y and renewed potential within their work – reflecting on their editing and thinking processes - while tactically tr ying to uncover the strongest threads of commonality from all phases of the project. Additionally, the fragmented format revealed to the jur y the impor tance of evaluating the design process as an equal player within the deliver y of the final review. In an era when 3-d modeling software can quickly generate and render a photo-realistic glossy image of an architectural work that appears final (need we say, complete), we realize that this presentation of what architecture is or how it operates behind closed doors couldn’t be far ther from the truth. The process of design is messy and the associated design thinking that comes with it isn’t linear all the time. Moving backwards is, in fact, necessar y to move forward within the development of a project. As architects, we must be flexible, constantly adjusting on the fly to new forces that can influence a project. We must be agile – and uncommitted to just one possible resolution and embrace the act of moving forwards and backwards within the process in lieu of remaining static and attached to a single moment in time. So, as educators, we must embrace the notion of unfinished idea as a productive means for presenting architecture.

6 STATIONS OF THE INCOMPLETE REVIEW, from the authors.

their peers, utilizing the work on the wall that wasn’t theirs s as a means for situating their own work and personal position on the project. The conversations flowed, histor y lessons were told, architecture precedents were suggested, comparisons were made, notes were being taken, and the dialogue between students and the juror didn’t stop until the timekeeper shouted “time!”

The feedback was unanimous from both jurors and students – our “incomplete” presentation format constructed the desired, comprehensive and open-ended (or we prefer incomplete) conversation that we found absent from the classical final review model. But perhaps the most impor tant revelation about our experiment (admittedly, it was a complete experiment!) was the role that the

We want students to stop apologizing for incompleteness, what are they so sorr y about? If architecture is going to position itself in a larger conversation, it needs to be open and we need to encourage the application of curiosity and possibly even failure. Shouldn’t we be the conversation star ters rather than the finishers? from Jacklynn Niemiec + Jason Austin Assistant Teaching Professors, Dept of Architecture + Interiors Drexel University

BEING ON THE EDGE Dear EDGECondition, When I was asked to write an essay for EDGECondition Vol.01 about my practice and about the theoretical basis that stands at the origin of it, I consciously bypassed the theme of a possible relation between what I was going to say and the condition of ‘being on the edge’. In other words in my ar ticle I never directly detailed anything related to ‘the vocation and activity of those positioned on the fringe of the formal architecture sector ‘, as the Twitter bio of EDGECondition says, or, to say it better, in my opinion, I draw a picture of a theor y and a practice of a designer that tries to be exactly in the middle of ‘the formal architecture sector’.

architecture itself, to find a true basis for our buildings and societies, and to put together in a dignified way all this ‘mess’ that is always related to architecture and that is just faintly defined by a great series of related, parallel and bordering disciplines.

I think the idea that is at the basis of the magazine is thus fundamental for the future of architecture as it explicitly (and consciously) highlights that we have, as designers, to care for all the edges of our main field to reach an authentic result in what we design and do.

Consciously. But as Thomas Hardy well knew, any written piece says many things more than what the conscious will of the writer thinks. This thought has inhabited my mind in all these weeks after the issue of the magazine, ‘till the moment when I realized that all of the architecture sector is permanently and definitely ‘on the edge’, as an inner and even constituent ‘condition’ of the discipline. I say this because more and more architecture is a multi-related discipline, due to technology, engineering, sustainability and more, but also because architecture, since the beginning of time, has always been related to psychology, memor y, behaviour, rite, even more than knowledge of materials or geometr y. We are all in an edge condition because it is towards all the edges of the discipline that we have to look to find a more poignant reason for

Maybe architecture is not only interrelated to a myriad of other disciplines but more and more less definite as a field of knowledge. Maybe architects today can be web designers, vir tual designers, movie makers and more. But even in the middle of ‘the formal architecture sector’ it’s paying attention to all these edges that makes our discipline true and authentic, human-related and truly life-enhancing. Being on an edge condition is a good star ting point for the architect of the 21st centur y. from Bruno Tonelli Master in Civil Engineering (specializing in Architecture) Head of architectural design at Studioar tec www.e-ar tec.it info@brunotonelli.com @brunotonelli

PRESENTING

SURFACE

DOME OF THE ROCK, Andrew Shiva

Dear EDGEcondition, I decorate. You decorate. We decorate*. The improvements made to space are often replete with the presentation of any number of new surfaces. Newly finished walls, flooring and ceilings complete a rendition of space that come with new planes, a covering that reflects a new look. Like a smoothly plastered wall new surfaces can obscure a myriad of contested issues. The presentation of identity through surface proposes a series of complex (edge) conditions: what is the embellished surface communicating to its occupant and why? In all of the University courses I have worked in, examined and validated, the analysis and construction of spaces, presented in a variety of ways, is afforded paramount impor tance. Their critical analysis, rigor and creative communication are subject

to testing against agreed national standards, a process that measures the approved outcomes of learning. Spatial ideas, types and projects are benchmarked and filtered through tightly worded and heavily formatted or thodoxies. To embellish space, through its ornamentation, is rarely, if at all, discussed. Of more concern is that decoration is not recognized as a means of learning about space. This absence of the presentation of surface masks a deeper dilemma. Play, folly, whimsy chronicle the components of decoration. They are fundamental elements that embody the rudiments of ornamentation and comprise of narrative, stor y-telling and the experimentation with and creation of distinct spatial identities. These essential components of the fabric of the interior contain the contested subject of taste, and the complexities of trend, fashion and

exquisiteness. Yet, I decorate. You decorate. We decorate*. We need to represent surface. I want students to understand what it means to decorate. The intellectual understanding of decoration does not yet exist in any course, module or format in an educational institution. Nobody is learning about the application, theor y and histor y of decoration and this has to change.

* A 2011 repor t by the office of fair trading concluded that the home improvement market was wor th 27 billion pounds annually. from Graeme Brooker Head of depar tment Fashion + interiors, Middlesex University (Seat 24 carriage C London to Brighton) g.brooker@mdx.ac.uk @autopilotgraeme

O U T

O F T H E

F RY I N G

PA N

Dear EDGEcondition, A recent study I came across suggested undergraduate architecture students face an unemployment rate of 13.9%. If you compare this to the education and health sectors, both at 5.4%, you see the odds you’re up against. It is that time of year again when students step up to receive their hard-earned, crisp certificate of education. The purpose of the following is to shed some light on what these young graduates might expect next...

First things first, it is going to be hard, it won’t be easy. You may get lucky. But the reality is, for the majority, it will take a long time and some serious persistence. The good news, however is you got through your degree and therefore I know you can handle it. So hang in there. As a graduate design myself I had a completely skewed vision of what the world of design was in fact like and it was a shock to the system once I found myself outside of the walls of my university studio. Recently, a junior designer I know, now working for a prestigious luxur y private residential design firm, was asked ‘did you not learn about the purpose of skir ting boards at university?’ I laughed when she told me the stor y, but it’s a genuine reality of the transition between university and industr y. There is an unrealistic expectation of junior designers to have conformed to the mediocrity of daily design life the moment they step through the door. It is a doubleedged sword, as the longer you stay in fur ther education, the longer you off-put preparation for the realities of the real world, whilst the sooner you leave, the sooner your creative spark may arguably be extinguished, if only temporarily. Tap into your creativity as deeply as you can whilst you can, because you might not find skir ting boards exciting, yet.

It is now widely believed the UK is on its way out of a recession, and it’s hard not to believe it myself. Clients are contacting me on a daily basis. Casting a net of curiosity out to see what the market’s like perhaps? No, actually. Well, maybe some. But the truth is, firms are hiring. We belong to a 100MPH culture. An employer does not have the time to sift through 500 applicant CVs to a job, the reality is they will use a recruitment agency to source the most appropriate candidate, to filter down the options available to the employer. Except design firms don’t always want to pay fees for a junior designer, and why would they? So do you see the predicament you may well have just fallen into... What makes you employable? Experience. How do you get experience? Contacts, persistence, chance, luck, more persistence. The chances are you don’t have a family friend who happens to be a director at OMA. The chances are you have bills to pay like the other 99% of us. The chances are you can’t afford to work for free. And why should you? I’ll tell you: to get experience, to make you more employable.

Unfortunately, there is a growing obstacle I regularly find myself faced with - the topic of internships and the culture of exploitation within design. As a junior designer in London, it’s likely to be tricky landing your first job. My advice would be, take the internship (if able), take any thing you can get, but have a three-yearplan, or a three-month-plan, or a three-week-plan... Just make sure

you have a destination you want to get to and keep distancing the target as it nears. Stay motivated. Sniff out oppor tunity and soak it up - become a sponge and don’t ever stop, and remember also that you may have to kiss a few frogs before you find your perfect job. Also, be war y, if it’s been 6 months, and you’re still not being paid for your ‘internship’, then the sad truth is you may in fact be a victim of exploitation. I know people to whom it has happened to, and as well as being completely illegal, it is the manipulation of hungr y young vulnerable designers in an industr y where ‘trust-funders’ are pipping less for tunate graduates to oppor tunities. This is a problem being fuelled by both par ties, due to a conveyor-beltculture of replaceable graduates who are happy to work for free. A good way to compare the market and retain flexibility is to freelance, however whilst testing the waters can be fun and diversify your work experience, it won’t match the stability and security that a permanent job provides. Ver y few people have uninterrupted, linear career paths and the textbook execution of graduating and finding the dream job or company and staying there for the foreseeable is rare these days. There is a lot of movement within industr y, however I would invite you to embrace this and go with the flow, but keep your eyes open. There’s a whole world that begins when your comfor t zone ends, just remember a smooth sea never made a skilled sailor. from Fred Vinall BA Interior Architecture Recruitment Consultant

FIGHT

CLUB

Dear EDGEcondition, In 2011, Mehruss Jon Ahi and I formed Interiors, a film and architecture journal that would be dedicated to the examination of films in terms of cinematic space. I come from a background in film studies and film production whereas Mehruss comes form a background in design and architecture. In our respective careers, we both felt that there was a distinct lack of critical discussion on the relationship between both mediums. This lack led to the creation of a journal that would focus on the role of architecture in cinema, examining films from the perspective of the architect, and, conversely, exploring the role of architecture in film and understanding the filmmaker’s relationship with architecture. Interiors allowed for the merging of both of our backgrounds. In breaking down a film in terms of cinematic space, we could better understand the relationship between both mediums. In addition to this examination, we would also design a floor plan of these filmic spaces, using architectural tools as a new way of reading films. This journey into studying film and architecture prompted numerous questions for us.

What can we learn by studying floor plans of film spaces? What purpose, if any, does a floor plan ser ve when studying a film? The most impor tant question, perhaps, was, why is any of this impor tant? This is a question that comes up more often that one would imagine. Roger Eber t once said “film criticism is impor tant because films are impor tant.” In his opinion is that film is the ar t form of the twentieth centur y. This seems to be the goal of EDGEcondition as well -- that is, this magazine exists as a way of creating a space for new examinations. In the case of Interiors, our answer to the question of “why?” was because we felt that there had been a distinct lack of critical discussion between film and architecture. The goal of my team would be to fulfill that gap. from Armen Karaoghlanian Bachelor of Ar ts, Cinematic Ar ts Critical Studies, University of Southern California Adjunct Faculty, Woodbur y University Co-Founder and Editor-in-Chief, Interiors www.ArmenKaraoghlanian.com www.INTjournal.com interiorsjournal@gmail.com @armenlovesmar y

F E AT U R E S

BEING THERE by SQUINT/OPERA Creative Agency www.squintopera.com @squintopera

Since the dawn of architecture there have always been architectural visions. lovingly crafted images of sublime streetscapes and great urban vistas of an idealised world where buildings are exquisite and impressive and the sun never sets. However, there’s one key element that’s often missing … the people.

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Our approach is to start with the people, the users and the viewers, to see how we can best explain the architect’s or developer’s vision. The process begins by meeting with the project team, talking through their ideas and concepts, getting to the essence of what the project is about, understanding the design and how it has evolved, and even, occasionally, collaborating to help realise the scheme.

After the initial design stages, architects and developers can become so immersed with the business and detail of how to build, they can forget why they are building. So this is where we come in.

By distilling the many stories behind a complex scheme we can help align the team’s vision and to find its heart. The simpler the story the more powerful it will be. It’s also sometimes the case that this process provides an opportunity for architects to think afresh about their designs, see them from a new perspective and perhaps introduce changes; making a film is almost like test driving the building or the scheme. By the very nature of this work, projects are rarely complete when we are brought on board, so we often help fill in the gaps. Because most of our artists, producers and directors have an architectural background this is something we are very comfortable with.

Collaboration, for example, was key to the production of the competition entry for the Gardens by the Bay project in Singapore where we worked with landscape architect Grant Associates (cover art). Of course the landscape architects led the way, but we helped to really flesh out and develop ideas like the huge artificial trees which have now become a signature part of the project. In this case, along with many others too, this animation demonstrated that a filmed competition entry is very powerful in helping to tell the story so that the judges, many of whom may not be architects, can understand and appreciate the ideas.

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In other examples, we have been commissioned to make a film featuring one building, and to help tell the story, we need to create the full cityscape as a backdrop. Years later itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s possible to find that some aspects of our fictitious designs have been incorporated into the completed development. And when working on the architecture, thereâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s even been the opportunity to affect the broader scheme for example with some product design. In one of our films for Stonehenge and English Heritage, we needed to move tourists from the visitor centre to their destination and for the purposes of the animation we designed a series of carriages pulled by a Land Rover. The client liked the idea so much, the carriages were subsequently built almost identical to our designs and are now in use.

STONEHENGE VISITOR CENTRE, render by squint/opera

We love it when this sort of thing happens. For us, itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s the sign of a successful collaboration with the architect and developer because it means we have captured the essence of the place and its story. This is more than just the look of the place, itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s how it feels. We can add another dimension, so the best films need to address all the senses.

STONEHENGE VISITOR CENTRE, render by squint/opera

Architectural visualisation can be a positive contributor to the process, and we know we have succeeded when we reach that point of crossover when the vision is transformed into reality.

CANNY COMMUNICATION IN ARCHITECTURE IN THE AGE OF

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

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 first of a two-part article, the second of which will appear in the next issue, Art and Architecture, out in September ‘14. It used to be so simple. Ten years ago, an architect finished a project, won a design competition or completed a building and they sent it to an architectural magazine to be published. It was a matter of coming up with the stuff, knowing the right editor, sending it off to them and then following it up with a phone call, or even a boozy lunch. It was all about influence, connecting with the right people, and perhaps a bit of flattery, but the decision of how, what and when you got published was ultimately out of the architect’s hands. Other people were responsible for the media – journalists, critics, editors and broadcasters. Though traditional publishers and broadcasters still remain in control of a good portion of the media – print, electronic, online, TV and radio – the widespread adoption of social media has shaken everything up. Power has devolved. We have all become individual generators, curators and disseminators of our own and others’ content. The huge array of choices that social media provides can be bewildering and overwhelming. For many, it is so debilitating that is an excuse to do nothing, or very little. Who would go into an overstocked supermarket and just because there is so much choice of food on the shelves, come out with an empty trolley, and go hungry? For architects, not engaging in social media in a knowing and considered way makes all the difference between getting their work out there and getting noticed, or remaining entirely unnoticed.

ESCAPING THE BASEMENT Perry Kulper is an architect and Associate Professor of Architecture at the University of Michigan, who has become well known for his beautiful and inventive architectural drawings; he contributed an article to Neil Spiller’s September 2013 issue of Architectural Design (AD) ‘Drawing Architecture’, and this year he was invited by Eric Parry to display two of his prints in the architecture room at the Summer Exhibition at the Royal Academy of Arts in London. (1) Five years ago, Perry started posting his drawings on Facebook in order to show a faculty friend from SCIArc what he was working on and as an alternative to setting up his own website. Perry describes his approach to Facebook as one of knowing caution: ‘I was, and probably remain, wary. It’s the nature of me working quietly in a basement here in Ann Arbor, or in a small work space in our house in LA, essentially by myself. Virtually all of the drawings are design worksheets to develop things and are not intended to “be in the world”.’ (2) It was, however, this experimental and exploratory nature of Perry’s work that captured people’s attention and imagination. As he says: ‘I received Facebook messages from people all over the world wondering about how I make drawings, saying they like them, many faculty have said they use the drawing images to expose students to what drawings might do, it has allowed some publications of some of the drawing images.’ Perry has 2,500 Friends on Facebook and commonly gets a hundred or so likes in response to a post. This development of an immediate audience for his work has in turn made him more responsive or media savvy: ‘I do think that partially as a result of getting things out into the world just a little that I am more conscious of a set of factors now that “exceed” me simply working on the work – audiences, how something might print (if there was eventual interest), what people in fast social mediums make of the work, etc.’

(1) Perry Kulper, ‘A World Below’, Neil Spiller (guesteditor), Drawing Architecture, Architectural Design (AD), John Wiley & Sons, September 2013, pp 56–63. (2) Email exchange between Perry Kulper and the author, May 2014.

Perry Kulper, Thematic Drawing, Central California History Museum speculative project, 2001: as featured in Drawing Architecture

Ryota Matsumoto, Pharse-shifted Ember (mixed media on paper), 2009.

If Facebook helped Perry get his work out of the basement, it has provided Japanese architect Ryota Matsumoto with an alternative creative outlet from his day job; Ryota is the principal of his own practice Ryota Matsumoto Studio in Tokyo. He started using Facebook and LinkedIn around the middle of last year to keep in touch with friends and mentors in Britain and the States who he had met while studying at the Architectural Association and the University of Pennsylvania.(3) Ryota began by posting built work but was encouraged by friends to post his old student ink drawings and then recent colour images. This enabled Ryota not only to reconnect with the likes of David Turnbull and Jane Harrison, who he knew from his studies at the AA, and Winka Dubbeldam from Penn, but it has also given him the opportunity to extend his network and get to know a new group of international designers, such as Perry Kulper, Bryan Cantley and Attilio Terragni. As a consequence, his recent coloured work has gained momentum. He now not only has a sizeable reach on Facebook with over 3,000 friends, but since the end of last year has been working on drawings for Italian and Spanish publications. He also has a travelling exhibition of some recent work in Italy under way.

GETTING ‘MESSY’ What is interesting about both Perry Kulper’s and Ryota Matsumoto’s experiences of social media is that both of them regard it as a route to traditional publishing. It is not a matter of either or. I work as a commissioning editor on the architecture programme at Wiley, London. This means I approach authors to write books and then work with them to develop manuscripts for publication. In this capacity I also edit AD, which entails commissioning six guest-editors a year to edit an issue of AD around a particular theme. Wiley specialises in knowledge and knowledge-based services in areas of research, professional development and education. Fifteen years ago, Wiley led the way in electronic publishing by creating Wiley Online Library, a dedicated platform for its extensive portfolio of journals, and is now a key provider of e-learning digital solutions. What I still though predominantly do for my part at Wiley is page based: I publish print and electronic books and journals. Publishing is on the frontline of shifts in media. Whereas people used to get all their information from printed books, magazines and papers, there is now a wide variety of sources available to them online and often for free. This means publishers cannot afford to bury their heads in the sand and carry on just as they were before. Some far-reaching thinking and changes are currently taking place. This makes it both a nerve-racking and also an exciting place to be as you have to constantly question what you are doing and how to proceed. So this has all led me to think a lot about communication in architecture and also the media, and why and how it is important for architects and students of architecture. For me this article and the lectures on which it was based have been a great opportunity to formulate some initial thoughts around the subject. As soon as I started to research and think about this subject it became apparent that neither communication or the media are nearly as messy, perplexing or arbitrary as we often characterise them to be - thus the ‘messy’ above is in quotation marks. Certainly, the changes in the way content is now disseminated have been fast. The World Wide Web only came online just over 20 years ago, Facebook 10 years ago and Twitter eight years ago. iPads have only been around for just over three years, since the Christmas of 2010. 22

The way we talk about new media reflects this sense that we believe things might be out of control or have a life of their own. We talk about stuff going ‘viral’ over social networks - giving a sense of ‘infection’ or ‘contamination’. We also talk about ‘memes’ – those often humorous images, videos, bits of writing that are copied and spread so rapidly by internet users, with slight variation, that they are likened to genes in the way that they self-replicate, mutate and respond to selective pressures. In fact it is the individual rather than the content that is very much in control. Whereas traditional broadcast media, such as TV and radio, used to broadcast at its audience so communication was one way, individuals are now able to participate in the circulation and shaping of stories and images. When we choose to respond to posts on Facebook or Twitter, for instance, by sharing and commenting it is far from passive – it is a decisive and some might even say defining action – a clear declaration of our beliefs, likes, humour and interests. Someone, who has done a lot of interesting research around this subject, is Henry Jenkins, Professor of Communication at University of Southern California, formerly at MIT. Jenkins did a lot of work on fan culture and gaming in the 1990s and 2000s that in a sense has anticipated the participatory culture that is more widely experienced today through Facebook, Twitter LinkedIn, Pinterest, Tumblr and Instagram. Jenkins has contested the use of the word viral and memorably characterised new media as ‘spreadable’ like peanut butter, ‘sticky’ as it spreads.(4) But why is a discussion of communication and the media relevant to students of architecture and architects? You might think that architecture is all about design and imagery, conveying your ideas visually – whether it is in 2D or 3D. Isn’t it after all what students dedicate all their time to at architecture school? Visual representation is a major component of architectural practice – but it cannot stand alone.

The second part of this article by Helen Castle will appear in our next issue, Art and Architecture, out in September ‘14.

LANGUAGE & ARCHITECTURE A VISUAL RESPONSE TO A TEXTUAL NARRATIVE

In an industr y where objectivity and interpretation balance precariously, EDGEcondition were inspired to showcase these var ying insights by inviting different creatives to respond visually to a text written by archipoet Ted Landrum.

LANGUAGE & ARCHITECTURE ( A DUOLOGUE ) *

Act Ar ticulate Avoid & Annoy Bustle Burgle Bully Browse & Brag Correct Calm & Coax Disguise Dwindle & Delight

Architecture & Language

Embed Epitomize Estrange & Exhume Figure Flummox Flatter Fork & Fix Gesticulate Glamorize Gamble Glom & Gerr ymander

Language & Architecture

Hallow Herd Hide & Heed Involve Ignite Idolize & Ignore Jubilate Jinx Juggle & Join Kindle Keep Kiss & Kill

Architecture & Language

Loom Lobby Lather & Liken Mine Mend Mourn Mystify & Meander Normalize Nationalize Nudge & Need

Language & Architecture

Officiate Opacify Ostracize & Overdo Persist Placate Perplex & Probe Quarr y Quilt Quibble & Queue Rouse Rehearse Rank Ramble & Reveal Sleep Slur Stipulate Situate & Surmise

Architecture & Language

Tickle Topple Temper & Transform Urge Unite Usher Understate & Undo Vacillate Veil Vex & Vow

Language & Architecture

Waffle Wizen Wake Whip Warp & Woof X-rate & Xeno-philanthropize

Architecture & Language

Yield Yoke Yearn & Yawn Zip Zonk Zenith & Zero

* This poem first appeared in the book Quality Out of Control: Standards for Measuring Quality (Routledge 2010).

Ted Landrum (b. 1968) is a poet, critic, teacher, and collaborative artist, with extensive architectural and teaching experience in the US and Canada. Since 2009, he has been teaching architecture at the University of Manitoba, both as a frequent sessional instructor and as a guest critic. He is currently building a collection of â&#x20AC;&#x153;archi-poemsâ&#x20AC;? called Midway Radicals, and an online archive (www.ubuloca.com), each exploring the overlapping edges between poetr y, philosophy, architecture and art. www.ubuloca.com 24

ARCHILANGUAGE by Federico Babina architect and graphic designer www.federicobabina.com babina@ubika.it @fbabina

â&#x20AC;&#x153;Architecture is symbolically representitive of language in that buildings can be read as texts.Architectural language is an authentic linguistic system obeying the same rules that govern the articulation of natural languages. Why not tr y to transform words into architecture? A poetr y that draws the architecture and an architecture designed by a poem. Giving architecture the form of a poem - shape a poem as a building whose structure is supported on words.â&#x20AC;?

LIVERPOOL CENTRAL LIBRARY by Paul Karalius Architectural Photographer www.paulkaralius.com paul@paulkaralius.com

AN A-Z IN CONSERVATION OF THE DELIGHT by Catrina Stewart BSc Architecture, MArch Par tII Architecture Cofounder and par tner at Office S&M Associate Lecturer at Oxford Brookes University www.catrinastewar t.com www.officesandm.com office@officesandm.com @CatrinaLStewar t

SCORE FOR A BRICK by Thomas Lear Grace tlg@97520.net

“From one side of the street across to the other, a duet composed with an alphabet of architectural glyphs. Here’s a few seconds of that score, accurately accounting for the inevitable spiral warp of space stirred into time.”

ARCHITECTURE > LANGUAGE > ARCHITECTURE by Kyle Branchesi Designer

by Shane Reiner-Roth Designer

www.scalefulness.com kjbranchesi@gmail.com @kjbranchesi

www.ever yver ything.com shanereinerroth@gmail.com

Formally and phenomenologically, architecture spawned language for Ted Landrum. As a response to his poem, we have produced architecture from language to inspire the eternal return. 4,3,4,3,5,3,2,2 / 23, 27, 17, 22, 28, 27, 41, 18, 26, 22, 18, 20, 27, 29, 29, 31, 26, 23, 29, 32, 33, 27, 19, 27, 23, 18, 17 / 4,5,3,3. 4,5,5. 4,4,4,4. 4,5,4. 4,4,4,5,5. 4,5,4. 6,2. 4,4. â&#x20AC;&#x153;This is how space begins, with words only, signs traced on the blank page. To describe space: to name it, to trace it, like those portolano-makers who saturated the coastlines with the names of harbours, the names of capes, the names of inlets, until in the end the land was only separated from the sea by a continuous ribbon of text. Is the aleph, that place in Borges from which the entire world is visible simultaneously, anything other than an alphabet?â&#x20AC;? Georges Perec

AN INTERV

ANNIE

lead graphic designer on Wes An

VIEW WITH

AT K I N S

ndersonâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Grand Budapest Hotel

EC: So, you lived in a real place (Gorlitz) whilst helping to create a fictional place (Zubrowka) with a man famed for heightened colour, activity, accuracy and symmetr y. How was that, apar t from amazing?

AA: Yes, it was really amazing. We all lived in this tiny little town on the ver y edge of Germany for the winter. You could literally walk across a footbridge and be in Poland for dinner. Working in Wesâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s world was extraordinar y â&#x20AC;&#x201C; especially using the colour palette in this one, the pinks and the purples and the reds. 38

EC: Would you say that yourself, Adam Stockhausen (production designer) and Wes Andersen were architects-of-sor ts, building Zubrowka from imagination, to the page and then to the screen?

In a sense, I suppose, and of course there were also draughtsman in the ar t depar tment who were responsible for drawing the architectural plans that were used to actually build the sets. Adam is a wonderful designer and I hope to work with him again soon.

EC: I believe a vacant depar tment store became the setting for the sumptuous Grand Budapest Lobby, whilst the exterior of the building as regularly shot, was actually a model miniature. What was it like living and working in this grey area between reality and representation?

Yes, Adam designed the hotel set to fit in to the bones of a ver y beautiful old ar t nouveau building. It was rather dilapidated and took a great amount of love to get it to the state you see it in as the Grand Budapest! There were six floors and we set up our offices on the top floor, so ever y day we could look down and see the set come to life. It was quite surreal to be working away on a prop and hearing the sound of gunshots coming up from the set.

EC: Wes has ver y disciplined and ordered methods, such as the rigid 90 degree pans and the horizontal sweeps. What sor t of impact does this have on the design and production?

Wes is ver y thorough in ever y aspect of his filmmaking, including the graphic pieces. Sometimes we would make 20 or 30 passes at a prop before he was happy to shoot on it.

EC: You personally created all of the beautiful iconic graphics in the movie, from the Mendl’s confectionar y boxes, to the perfume bottles and telegrams. What were your references and inspirations?

I lead the graphic design and worked with another designer, Liliana Lambriev, to create all these pieces. We looked at a wealth of ephemera from 1930s Europe newspapers, passpor ts, all kinds of stationer y. Ever y prop we made star ted with a reference, then went through many many passes to get them to fit the style and tone of the movie.

EC: How impor tant is your sketchbook to the design and development process of your work?

I have hundreds of notebooks around me and I wish I could say they’re full of beautiful drawings but sadly they are mostly scribbled measurements! EC: You previously worked on The Tudors, a period TV drama filmed in Ireland. How did this amazing job oppor tunity come about?

Yes, The Tudors was my first job in the industr y. I felt completely thrown in at the deep end as I

knew next to nothing about the Tudor period, but I’ve since learnt that ever y new project feels like that as you’re always working to a different time, or a different world, or a different style. EC: What advice would you give a young designer wanting to enter the world of TV and film production?

Study production design, or graphic design if that’s your chosen area, and go and see an ar t director at your local TV studio about a possible traineeship. Be prepared for long days and having to be exceptionally organised and productive. And good luck!

ALL IMAGES USED WITH DIRECT PERMISSION FROM ANNIE ATKINS

FROM PERSONAL EXPERIENCE

by Myra Stuart MA Interior Design Designer / Research Assistant http://playfularchitecture.wordpress.com myra.stuar t@gmail.com

Recently I have been pondering the parameters of play. How techniques of play and stor ytelling can be used as a means to access information we may not see by conventional working methods. Examples such as academic David Gauntlett getting inter viewees to play with Lego, to draw out different levels of information from research inter viewees then would be available using purely verbal means. Discussions by writers such as James Corner about the impor tance of exploring and choosing how we map and sur vey a site. These have contributed to my desire to pose the question of whether playful methods can be used to engage more fully with complex sites. Sites where a building’s histor y, or a communities present, require careful handling and ‘drawing out’ in order to create a sensitive and appropriate response to spatial design needs.    How we choose to draw the lines on the map, to construct the narrative within our initial investigations will lead to what we go on the perceive, design and construct. How we investigate, and how we choose to go on to present our original findings, will go on to create the spaces we make.

What role can playful collecting and collating of information play in revealing aspects of a site and its needs that might otherwise remain hidden? How much does this sor t of playful engagement achieve in the context of drawing out the complexities of a site in order to design for a multi-faceted, ‘challenging’ area or old building? Architect academic Caroline Butterwor th utilises methods of stor ytelling and street theatre as a deliberate shift in the process of site sur vey, using these methods to discover hidden elements within a site. This enables users to give more in depth information and stories to the designer, and records aspects of the site that would be missed by ‘traditional’ architectural means.

A flip side to this is a danger of infantilisation of our cityscapes.

Less considered forms of playing as a means to understanding an area have ended up bypassing complex realities and taking an area away from long standing aspects of the local community, as some forms of ‘ar tist led’ gentrification processes.   Perhaps playful means of site sur vey, like any other, are only a useful tool when they open to and engaging with the various local realities. Ar tist and writer Katy Beinhar t springs to mind as someone currently completing a PHD on the changing realities of Brixton market, and what place ar t and ‘creative forms of engagement’ can have in hearing a more complete version of local people and users realities as the market goes through a process of change. Working with local residents and community workers to organise domino games to speak with the older generation, alongside constructed pieces to tell the histor y of the site to sell at the market, what stands out about her approach is an adaptability to engage with the various and changing site users. Perhaps it is the process itself that changes things, the bringing through and drawing out of playful tactics and

â&#x20AC;&#x153;IT ALWAYS BEGINS WITH AN ARCHIVEâ&#x20AC;? from Evangelina Guerra Lujan Urban Architect Public Space Designer Master Advanced Studies in Spatial Design Director of the Urbanism, Architecture and Public Space Design Depar tment at CEISA Mexico and Founder and Director of The Nomad Network

from Athanasiou Geolas BFA + BArch Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) Editor of The Drafter y M.A./Ph.D. Candidate, HAUD at Cornell University ageolas.com @athangeolas

http://about.me/thnmd eg.plustank@gmail.com @ ____thenomad

The ephemeral. It was the ephemeral that relieved that toxic ever yday. A street carnival, those low budget nomadic pieces leaving trash in their wake; or, a sudden purr of an urban cat. She continued her wander. The city lay submerged in its obscure torpor, but there were a considerable amount of obser vers to glimpse the intrigued face of the migrant as she caressed the burghal bricks full of dirt and stories. Kids with masks chanting the unknown sparkled the streets, and the sun rays burned the buildings walls. The sun painted the town and this particular palette was unfamiliar. Her sight was blurred but she continued her journey. She began collecting them, all the most precious images ever seen: a woman knitting a chair on the sidewalk with dark, freckled skin and eyes of taciturn blue. Her hands were pale as if she had sunk them in white paint. Her moves as she knitted were so stealthy that she seemed an invisible creature. The rope she uses is thick and gritty and as she dances with it, and intertwines her arms into it some almost invisible abrasions

are born. She augments her pace and she notices she is finishing and her forehead sparkles in the sun and the sun sparkles in the buildings glass. She caresses her forehead and takes a deep breath. She holds with two hands the rope, and makes a knot and smiles. She carefully takes the wooden anatomy and places it next to other, identical chairs, all next to each other on the side walk. The artisanal archive is facing the street. Ever yone passing by ignores it. Ever yone but me. From her neck hangs a Santeria necklace and she grabs it with one hand and kisses it. Mar veled at her strange nature, I realize my forehead is sweating and sparkles under that same sun. I clean it and take a wooden structure. I recognize that rope and start the next chair. And there in the street, next to my archive of wood and rope, the ones ignoring my existence, the kids with masks, the bricks and the stories, under a combination of contradictor y realities, we all began to blossom.

We obsess over words. The more arcane the definition the better, the more insidious or insatiable or incomprehensible the more alluring they are to us. The word “obscure” for instance, a word which seems to have far more synonyms than antonyms; or the word “Archive,” which as obscure becomes less and less spoken, has become radically more common. It is most likely because of this obsession that when we look at images, we see words; and when we look at more than one image, we can’t help but form sentences. To us, archives of images compel stor y after sentence after word, and from them we imagine potential spaces, narratives filled with mood and character. The presentation of architecture, of the built environment, or any of sor t of speculative space always begins with 44

an archive. But without interpretation, archives tend only to make sense to the person doing the collecting. With each selection and juxtaposition we embed personal narratives and biased viewpoints; we tell the stories we’ve formed in our minds out of all these little bits and pieces tied together and set down on the street. This is what makes architects like archivists. The making of an archive is an act of visualization; one at a time we collect single pieces of exemplar y thoughts and roving ideas. We select this method of drawing or that kind of light; and, each addition to our ceaseless archive forms more fully the potential characters of all our future spaces.

As with the stor y above, It seems like ever yone has some variety of archival project underway. The Nomad Network is one version (or perhaps many at once) of an evolving archival practice engaging multiple authors. The Drafter y is an archive that wants to build a place where the materials and methods of contemporar y drawing are acknowledged in their criticism.. Looking back to our days in architecture school, each project began as a collection of images, a row of newly checked-out monographs, or a notebook of intricately woven phrases, definitions, and small diagrams, all in one non-linear collection. Never theless and most significantly, archives rely on their presentation. Publishing is a primar y method

for opening archives to the world, projecting personal narratives and biased viewpoints out into the feelings and experiences of others. Otherwise, a collection of wooden chairs lining the street under a sparkling sun may be no more than aging wood.

would be left? Space without meaning, empty of desire, free from bias makes no sense. All spaces have a stor y to tell, or a desire to become something, or a constellation of ideas and ideals, influences and culture.

Without remembering the world around it, why construct a monument? What gives a public space meaning? Does meaning come from the way we perceive a public space, or the way we understand it? Is it possible to understand a public space free from collections of words, images, and stories? What happens when perception no longer has an archive of experience from which to draw its understanding and we move around without our memories and references and predictions? How much space

Both online and in print, PLUSTANK will gather the moods that go into the making of spaces, the cultural memories that shaped our childhood and our darker desires through their subtle spatial intuitions. Plustank is an archive of visual narratives: the sacred and obscure, the delicate, beautiful, censored, and forbidden. Altogether these unacknowledged characters and overlapping identities construct a space of deep, intuitive meaning. In order to present this nebulous archive we will publish a series of cahiers. Combining the archival practice and

diverse authorship engaged by The Nomad Network, and The Drafter yâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s close focus on the material of representation in a print publication, Plustankâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Cahier of the Obscure will recite unspoken stories floating silently around us through the voice of many authors. As the cahiers circulate and each piece of the archive reaches a readerâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s hands, the stor ytelling begins. And just like the woman of the stor y, moving back and for th between spectator and par ticipant, finding herself in the place of the one she had just obser ved, archivists of all varieties can take pieces of this fake memoir one small piece at a time, listen to it, and then begin again.

CHANGING THE DIMENSIONS OF ARCHITECTURE What happens from the building to the printed page from Patrick Myles Ar t Director patrickmyles.carbonmade.com design@patrickmyles.com @Patrick_Myles

I’m not an architect but I specialize in representing architecture on the printed page. I’m a graphic designer and magazine ar t director and a great deal of my work involves translating 3-dimensional structures into a 2-dimensional format either on paper or via a computer screen. I’m not alone in this process. I collaborate with architectural photographers and often the architects themselves who supply me with their visualisations and drawings. I also work with architectural journalists. In most cases they would have visited the buildings before me and have their own opinions of what is impor tant to represent and brief me accordingly. I’ve also been privileged to work with great editors like Vicky Richardson on Blueprint (currently head of Architecture, Design and Fashion at the British Council), and more recently Hugh Pearman at the RIBA Journal, who is also the architecture critic of The Sunday Times. The process begins with discussing the main concepts behind the projects, and we look through the photography, and the various drawings of site plans, floor plans, elevations and sections. 46

If appropriate we might also include sketches, models and renderings. But more often than not the photography and drawings combined are enough to describe the building or scheme. Editorially there is limited space due to issue size and the amount of pages that can be dedicated to each feature. Therefore the picture editing has to be selective, and each image chosen to communicate a specific view of the architecture. Also when I am looking through the material and considering how to approach the layouts I’m also looking for a strong opening image through to an appropriate end shot, and possibly an arresting front cover.

So from a graphic point of view architectural imager y in all of its forms can be required to ser ve more than just accurately representing building. When I redesigned Blueprint magazine in 2006 the process did not only include the magazine design but this was also an oppor tunity to reconsider the use of imager y star ting with the front cover. Although Blueprint has always covered a broader range of

design disciplines with the relaunch unlike before we decided to set a rule of always choosing architecture for the front cover to reflect the core subject matter of the magazine. But the photography chosen or ar t directed for the cover was not purely descriptive, but intriguing and atmospheric with a graphic impact that would lead to it being picked up from the newsstand. An example of this is when I worked on a cover and feature for ZHÂŹ architects the recently completed Maggie Centre in Fife, Scotland. Although

the photographer Helene Binet had been commissioned to document the building, par t of the brief was also to shoot an exclusive image for the cover of Blueprint magazine. When I discussed this with Helene, one of the challenges that became apparent was how to photograph such a landscape structure to fit a por trait cover format, as well as allowing space for the logo and cover lines. I suggested that the cover image could be quite abstract compared to the rest of the more descriptive photography that she was shooting for the feature itself.

As a result, Helene confidently came back to me with one unusual night shot that worked perfectly to make a bold and dynamic front cover. Drawings on the front cover of an architectural magazine is nothing new, however rather than just use a supplied architects work I chose to collaborate and see what could be achieved working together. The process was fundamentally the same as ar t directing a photographer or illustrator as giving guidance on how their work could be used in

ALL IMAGES PROVIDED WITH DIRECT PERMISSION FROM THE AUTHOR

the context of a magazine. I thought it worked par ticularly well when collaborating with East architects on an issue where we featured their new public square in Bermondsey that was completed in 2009. A profile piece on the practice included more images of the square, but the theme was continued in another broader feature on the design and use of public spaces. Various locations in London were selected and appropriately used a repor tage style of photography capturing the spaces in use.

Editorially showing the function and the life of the built environment might be fundamental to what the piece is about. For example the photographer Iwan Baan is acclaimed for doing just that and his own take on architectural photography is to capture the built environment in use and more often than not that includes people being in shot. The RIBA Journal recently published his images of the newly completed Glasgow School of Ar t building (shor tly before the disastrous fire), and as is his style, Iwan creatively included people within the building

helping to depict an overall sense of function and scale. As an ar t director and designer of architectural magazines and books it is impor tant to identify key images to translate 3-dimensional architecture into a 2-dimensional format. If correctly edited and presented with good journalism the reader will be taken on a descriptive tour of a building and come away with a good understanding of its form, function and ambitions.

OP-EDS

THE EVIL WITCH OF BANALITY from Gem Barton BArch, DipArch Designer | writer | academic www.gembar ton.com hello@gembar ton.com @gem_shandy

‘Once upon a time, Architecture was at the forefront of social innovation, addressing issues that the entire society felt were worth finding creative solutions for. A curse was then cast on Architecture: the Evil Witch of Banality tricked the architects into believing that their ideas were worthless, that society didn’t care about them, and that the only way to advance their projects was to produce vacuous glitzy renderings. Only those would

lure developers into financing projects, and publications into publishing them. You are the hero that is being given the chance to battle the Evil Witch of Banality. Your magic power is Creativity. Your ace in the hole is Good Communication. Will you accept the call to this epic battle?’ [From Blankspace Fairy Tales Competition Brief]

“SOMEDAY YOU’LL BE OLD ENOUGH TO START READING FAIRY TALES AGAIN” C.S. LEWIS

Drawing is a method of communication and just like language it develops and alters as time passes. Throughout my 15 years immersed in the design world as a student, an academic and a practitioner I have seen the trends come and go; the solid black backgrounds and the double line glass hatching, but as I get older and progress further in my career I often wonder what changes have we to look forward to? And what role can I play as a design tutor in ensuring my students have the skills of the trade as well as an ability to create new techniques and adapt existing methods?

I worry that students too often find themselves referencing their tutors’ preferences rather than the modernity and the opportunity of a growin communicative world. Eight years ago I found myself researching content for a book on architectural drawing techniques, something I was, and still am fascinated by - after a spate of visiting degree shows I was in awe of the sheer talent our future architects and designers had. Fast Forward to now and if I see another moody, over-hatched, poorly-smudged, bird-riddled, underground section drawing I will immediately combust. As architects, designers, clients, projects, audience, society and ecology evolves so must our methods of communicating with/about them. We add new words to the dictionary every year, we amend our phrasing and diction based on to whom we are conversing – it seems the world of linguistics is far more responsive than it’s illustrative counterpart. Where is the change and innovation in the world of architectural communication?

Fairy tales are the answer. Well, maybe not the answer, but a weighty prompt nonetheless. In my quest to find like-minded souls I came across Blank Space in NYC who describe themselves as ‘.[..] an online platform for architecture, founded in 2013 by Matthew Hoffman and Francesca GiulianiHoffman. Matthew is an architect who believes architecture can be more interesting, more fun and more social. Francesca is a journalist who believes that communication is omnipresent, and that good communication helps great ideas change the world.“ In the spirit of this mantra they launched an open competition last year called ‘Fairy Tales’ in which creatives around the globe were invited to write and create their own architectiral fairy tale. Judging their honed narrative, story-telling and illustrative prowess was an impressive panel including Will Alsop, Paula Scher and Nigel Coates. Leafing through the online submissions is akin to a soul-cleanse for the monochrome palette, an explosion of colour, form and most importantly variation. The communcation styles are all so different - it is exciting! It’s exciting to see that options are being explored and shared. The resultant critical acclaim the competition has received alongside the support of the judges is a positive sign for the world of architecture as well as representation. A sign that vibrance and enjoyment is to be rewarded, a sign that the traditional methods of the past can be simultaneously parked and respected, a sign that there is always room to experiment and challenge the way we communicate with one another. Change is a foot. people are craving more, they want options, stimulation, newerbetter-bigger-brighter-cleaner-slicker... it’s a good time to be an architectural storyteller.

A SELECTION OF ‘FAIRY TALE’ ENTRIES from Blankspace.com

selected images from

CHAPTER THIRTEEN BY Kevin wang & Nicholas Oâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;Leary 1st place Fairy Tale Competition Read the accompanying narrative on the Blank Space website.

selected images from

MAN AND GROUND BY Anna Pietrzak 2nd place Fairy Tale Competition Read the accompanying narrative on the Blank Space website.

selected images from

OSCAR UPON A TIME BY Joseph Altshuler, Mari Altshuler & Zachary Morrison 3rd place Fairy Tale Competition Read the accompanying narrative on the Blank Space website.

BLESS THE MESS by George Wade Architect

People love a well-presented person. Whether it is a boy meeting his girlfriendâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s parents or a politician aiming for election, first impressions matter and these impressions hinge on being well presented. It is amazing how these attitudes per vade the world of architecture. At university there are always those that are more worried about the clothes they will wear for a crit, or the type of paper they print on, rather than the quality of the work itself.

From our earliest encounters with design, we are always taught to be well-presented. Whether it is not going over the lines whilst colouring in a picture, hand writing in a straight line or providing

the full set of plans, sections and elevations. This mantra is drummed into us as we go through school and university and promotes design as a form of organization. Well-presented means nicely dressed with hair combed and with good manners. In the professional world we are surrounded by well-mannered architects. Winning a job is often about safety first- as we fill in the forms to apply for projects, it is all about QA, belts and braces, reassurance and track record. Design is Building Information Management. On the AJ website you struggle to read about design, as each ar ticle informs you about the latest planning laws, governmental direction, workplace regulations or tower heights. We are told to put more detail into our drawings at ever y step

to make them look well thought out and realistic. Does it look enough like a serious project? This is all par t of a lifelong shift of focus away from the work itself.

Why should work be serious and well-presented? When you visit an ar tistâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s studio it is often a world of organized mess, usually the blear y eyed resident scrambles around to find a cup and chair for you amongst the work in process. Yet in the centre of this world often sits the immaculate work itself. The focus is fully set upon the matter in hand, the ar t which presents itself beautifully to you. And nothing else matters. Those architecture depar tments lucky enough to form par t of an ar t school sit alongside other courses where the element of surprise and beauty are still vital components in education. Other architecture courses perhaps have more in common 62

with their neighbours the project managers and quantity sur veyors. At the Royal College of Ar t, the glimpses you catch of the painters, sculptors, jewelr y makers and others are just as impor tant as the architecture course itself. Visits to the messy alien worlds of the sculptors are 100% focused on the process of delight, which is a hugely impor tant par t of architecture, yet something that is often sorely missed. So what can we do to focus on the messier side of our work, to aim for delight and beauty? I think that a clue lies in places like Testbed1 in Battersea. This old warehouse building lay empty for years until in 2010 the owner decided to let people use it as a blank canvas with no agenda. Since then it has seen a diverse mixture of inhabitants put on shows in theatre, music, painting, design, food and much more. It is hidden off the main street, and we often see people wandering around tr ying to find a way in. That is par t of the charm, it does not work

in an obvious way that leans on the organized cities that we are used to. It is a mess but a beautiful mess. The offices above this space have welcomed film makers, illustrators, graphic designers, developers, web designers and architects. In the spirit of Riverside Studios, The Royal College of Ar t and par ts of Shoreditch, the joy of such places is the chance meeting in the bar, to share in a communal experience and collaborate with others. This beautiful mess results in an idea or some kind of inspiration, or maybe not, but the process becomes one that is not about being well-presented, but about the work itself. Sadly such places are always under threat, victims of their own success as they attract development. Indeed, Testbed1 now a hive of creative activity is scheduled to be demolished and replaced with a block of apar tments. This new proposal to replace it seems well mannered and that is the problem. It does not

even attempt to address what the existing building has become. The beautiful mess will be replaced with a coffee shop and like many par ts of London before it, will be gentrified and organized. What this results in is a well-presented city, a well-mannered smar tly dressed city. And ultimately design is reduced to organization and communal activity is reduced to sharing wifi. When will we learn that being well-presented is not the best way to star t? A messier way of life should begin during our education, a school system that encourages rules to be broken, that lays the foundations for enjoyment in our work and a different mode of thought. The system at the moment seeks to quickly organize us as we speed towards A-levels and university, until we have lost all perspective. We have become so obsessed with the end product, that we lose sight of how we want to live. Another example is the new Nine

Elms master plan in London. A series of giant towers provide thousands of expensive apar tments. Such effor t has gone into the size and shape of the towers above and their impact on London’s skyline, that little consideration was put into what happens at ground level. At the last moment, a cultural master plan was proposed to inject life and interest, but by that point the councils had no power over the developments and the developers no will to engage with a new brief. The landscape has been formed with good intentions and is in itself well designed, but the trouble is that it is fairly benign. The ground level is populated with retail, coffee bars and leisure facilities in a way that has become the international standard. Don’t frighten people.

Keep it normal and wellpresented. Is this really what we see as the future of London? The city that has brought us so much music,

We are in real danger of wiping away the flavour from our city, eradicating the joy and life and replacing it with a neutralized lifestyle. The gentrification of places such as Spitalfields, Brick Lane, Angel and Old Street is replacing streetscapes where you can feel the histor y and the complexity with bland carpets of nothingness. Sometimes before you even visit a place you can picture the array of coffee houses, American clothes stores and chicken emporiums. We should look around us and actively make a note of what we love, what contributes to our lives, because if we don’t use it enough it might be hoovered up and replaced. ‘Bless this mess’ was a sign on a housewife’s wall which excused the state of her house, but I would say bless this mess in hope that we can hold onto a little bit of the chaos and the disorder so that our lives might be more flavoursome and inspiring.

design and art? 63

PRESENTING THE PERIPHERAL AND THE EXISTING: Reinterpretation & Repair of a 1914 North Indian Guesthouse. by Rachel Oâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;Grady BArch MA(Cantab) Dip.Arch PhD(cand) PhD Candidate: Department of Rapid Change and Scarce Resources, Cass School of Architecture www.thecass.com/people/o/rachel-ogrady rachelogrady@googlemail.com @Rog_London

In collaboration with par tner NGO the Centre for Urban and Regional Excellence, (CURE), based in the cities of Delhi and Agra, Nor th India, I am carr ying out research projects that sit within a larger ‘slum upgrading programme’ being implemented in an urban district called Tajganj, Agra, a 16th centur y Mughal town. This upgrading project will provide urban ser vices such as water supply, as well as infrastructure and housing projects for 15 registered slums clustered to the south of the Taj Mahal. The instruction to ‘protect cultural heritage’ or similar often appears in the brief that a development practitioner is handed these days and this project is no exception. My research projects look more closely at conflicting ideas of what this cultural heritage really is, and how these conflicts might be addressed across the upgrading project. One of these research projects is the repair of a dilapidated guesthouse built in 1914. One might ask why so much time should be spent within a slum-upgrading project repairing a forgotten colonial relic - surely there are more urgent matters to address? Actually, the process of interpreting or reinterpreting - the guesthouse has been vital to gaining the kind of insight needed across the larger scheme.

Often, the urban conditions that are fundamental to the cooperative, collaborative experience a city should provide are necessarily experienced peripherally. They can accidentally be destroyed during large-scale development projects because they don’t always show up in sur veys or analysis as something warranting protection. The reinterpretive process developed by our team, composed of CURE, myself and a group of local Tajganj residents, could be described as a series of collaborative judgements: moments of stepping back and re-evaluating. Each time this happened, obstacles and oppor tunities revealed themselves that had previously been hiding in plain sight, and once visible could be presented to residents and authorities alike as something to value. The team invented a game called ‘plaques’, where par ticipants collected stories and legends about their basti, (settlement), that were linked to par ticular sites and buildings. We followed recognised etiquette to indicate that resident-par ticipants were controlling - hosting - the game rather than our team, and it would be their job to interpret and present the results. For example, acting on the advice of the core team of chosen par ticipants - young people who are to be trained as tour-guides for

the area - we approached the head of the basti Mosque Committee for permission and help. They then took on the responsibility of making sure it was a success. Two sets of data were collected: one set that revealed a local consensus about the area’s histor y outside of living memor y - par t of the basti’s collective identity, and vital to the residents’ claim to the site. The trainee-guides were asked to exhibit the stories as they thought best, in the streets and buildings of the basti, and the second set of data was gained from direct obser vation of how they reacted when cultural and physical obstacles affected the task. Visiting the sites that featured in the stories, it became obvious that places that were most impor tant to people were scrupulously maintained by committees formed for the purpose. This alternative kind of ‘cultural heritage preser vation’ is currently underappreciated by heritage protection bodies, which are heavily influenced by European historicist approaches. However, noticing where and how local commitment to place is acted out is par t of understanding this city. Most residents put more effor t and money into sites that they share than those they privately own. They invest in par ticipating in collective effor t because these committees can call on other organisations in the city if they want an issue to be raised with the municipal authority - a kind of democratic capability we have largely lost here in the UK. Redecorated as new materials and crafts become popular, residents reestablish these fragments of the city

as meaningful to them. Considered a destructive practice by many we found that this kind of cyclical reconstruction had been banned in the name of ‘cultural heritage protection’ in cer tain sites. However, behind this banning, an invisible transfer of decision making power from the local committee to the municipal authority had taken place. Showing this power transfer as something as factual and destructive as material alteration is an impor tant par t of how we present this research to those making decisions across the upgrading project. Through the ‘plaques’ game, we were able to find out that the owner of the guesthouse had returned to Agra 20 years ago, having moved to Delhi in 1947 during Independence and Par tition. Many houses in Taganj were abandoned at this time or left to ser vants who reinvented themselves as owners, both continuing and irreversibly changing habitual practices in the area. The guesthouse had fallen into disrepair. On tr ying to mend the building, he found that heritage legislation had been used to protect the mosque opposite his building, and he was only permitted to make repairs in a manner considered aesthetically ‘sensitive’ to the mosque - repairs that he could never afford. Trapped somewhere between enormous change and a law that refused to accept change at all the house crumbled and the family retreated into the one remaining structurally sound room. The guesthouse was constructed by local Raj Mistr y (skilled masons), using new construction techniques that spoke of aspiration: aesthetically it reflects the bungalows built by

British officers. At the same time, two separate storeys with independent entrances kept classes apar t. For better or worse, it was ‘of its time’ and could be understood as such. By the time we discovered the building, attempts to tr y and fight change had simply led to a schism between what UNESCO call ‘tangible’ and ‘intangible’ heritage. The culture in and around the building had evolved, the material had putrefied, and neither made sense of the other. To the residents the building was no longer meaningful: it was merely a health hazard. Reinterpretation and repair of a building is curation, and it became obvious during this project that people with the kind of wisdom of place that can only come with spending a lifetime in it can’t help but present it as meaningful when they take on the role of curator - in a way that an outsider will never achieve. If our team decided to present the stor y of this building through its curation, there would be severe breaks with tradition: the residents’ histor y would be dictated to them in a way that was flat and irrelevant. Offering up the building for reinterpretation through stor ytelling, and re-presentation through curation and repair by the residents themselves gives us, and hopefully future residents and visitors an insight into a previously invisible set of local urban values and investments.

In architecture, we can often focus on presenting architecture at an imagined moment - an opening, a photograph, a projected ‘programme’. However, it is the reinvention of this guesthouse, over and over again, that will preser ve its interpretability as a fragment of the simultaneously continuous and interrupted stor y of the city.

ALL IMAGES USED WITH DIRECT PERMISSION FROM RACHEL O’GRADY

O N C E B Y WAT E R , ONCE BY FIRE: THE END OF ARCHITECTURE IN IMAGE

by Lawrence Bird Ph.D., M.A.A. Architect, filmmaker vimeo.com/lawrencebird independent.academia.edu/BirdLawrence lawrence@lawrencebird.com @lawrencebirdMAA

Architecture has a long histor y of presentation in images. Sometimes these come from architects themselves, but perhaps more often they come from architectureâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s obser vers: painters, engravers, printmakers, ar tists. In modern times these representations have been augmented by others in film, television, and graphic enter tainments. Most recently they can be seen in comics, animation, manga, anime, and their variants around the world. The architecture of cities has been

Film still, Metropolis (Fritz Lang, 1927)

a focus of much of this modern work; one of the most renowned and earliest examples in film being Fritz Langâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s overwrought Metropolis. In the 1920s, films preoccupied with cities were popping up all over Europe, and this film is just one of Langâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s contributions to this obsession. Metropolis presented a picture of the modern city going haywire: a robot run amuck, an evil oligarch, revolution, a devastating flood, disaster. It put ongoing architectural debates at the centre of that manic picture:

splicing together contemporar y New York, constructivist and modernist visions of the future city, and German architectural projects aimed at the recovering national pride during a post-war economic crisis. The picture Metropolis painted of the modern city could also be seen in the popular culture of the time: photographs, magazine covers, newspaper illustrations depicting the thrill and dread of city life.

Film still, Metropolis (Rintaro, 2001) That those emotions, or something like them, are still par t of our response to city life might be suggested by the re-emergence of this at the beginning of the next centur y. Metropolis was back on the big screen, this time in the form of an animated film by the director Rintaro. This time an entire race of robots rose up against a capitalist despot; and there was a second revolution too, of human beings put out of work by robot labour. Once again a city was shaken to its core. This time the city was completely razed as the superweapon in the building at its hear t was trained on the sun and then back again at the ear th.

aerial photograph of Hiroshima (U.S. Navy, 1945)

Book cover, Metropolis (Osamu Tezuka, 2001)

But in this presentation of the stor y, Lang’s tale was only a secondar y source. The primar y one was a comic book from the 1940s, also called Metropolis, by Japan’s most impor tant manga ar tist, Osamu Tezuka. Tezuka’s intermediate Metropolis, which was different from Lang’s in many respects, had also been about a robot, and a war between robots and humans, and city destroyed in the battle between man and his works. But of course it was probably also about another war between races and nations, one that had just come to an end and had brought almost ever y Japanese city to the ground.

film still, Tekkon Kinkreet (Michael Arias + Studio 4˚C, 2006)

Urban destruction is a famous trope in manga and anime. It layers a local histor y of urban destruction by ear thquake, fire, and atomic bomb onto the global anxieties about modern and urban life that have provoked this kind of imager y in fantasy and science fiction since their beginning. This destruction is not always violent; it’s sometimes gentle and poignant, and tied to the slowermotion destruction wrought by the processes of urban development, the “creative destruction” of capitalism. Whether they are strong or weak, architecture is always the target of these serial urban apocalypses. Sometimes, as in Rintaro’s Metropolis, it’s also the weapon. We have a lot tied up in architecture – it’s our greatest work, it creates our world, in so many ways it stands in for us. So when it is razed, in the same action we are laid waste. That we destroy it periodically in film, comics and animation matters, even more so because these images resonate with others we see daily news or in realtime feeds. Architecture figures in these too, with a par ticular connection to

vision. These acts of destruction are often staged; they are about visibility. The destruction of the World Trade Centre, brought down in the year Rintaro’s Metropolis was created, was a highly visible attack on one of the key icons of American financial power. OMA’s Beijing Television Cultural Centre is a landmark for China Central Television, an agency all about politics and image. One of the buildings in this complex went up in flames as a result of its display – as the backdrop for New Year’s fireworks – in its inaugural year, in fact before it had even been officially completed. Destruction following on rather rapidly from the act of creation. Today visibility is frequently about the global eye of a satellite or drone, as in this image of the siege of Homs in which the US. Depar tment of State has helpfully pointed out where we can find “smoke” and “fire.” In many conflicts this eye is omnoptic and omniscient and often couples the role of obser ver with the role of destroyer. We should consider the possibility that what’s at stake here is not just architecture and what it represents, but the image of architecture: what represents it. Images present

architecture to us, and even more impor tantly they present ideas about architecture. The most compelling visions for our cities, for example, have been conveyed to us in the past through “iconic” images, images that stick and last through time, even over centuries. Such images have been at the hear t of modern urban propositions; in fact a criticism of the modern approach to architecture is that it has been all about vision. Modern architecture produced cities that were not of this ear th, because it only ever imagined them from the air ; buildings that were unlivable because they were designed for the camera not the body. And it’s iconic buildings in par ticular that keep getting picked off; they seem to draw fire. Whereas once architecture’s image was to produce and preser ve, it seems more inclined today to wreck. It has become fissile; rather than presenting a new world, the best it can offer is a scab over the old.

Tokyo Bay Masterplan (Kenzo Tange, 1960)

Aerial view of Neo-Tokyo, film still, Akira (Katsuhiro Ohtomo, 1988)

P H OTO - E S S AY

T H E S TO R I E S BEHIND THE LENS by Valerie Bennett photographer www.valeriebennett.com Valerie@valeriebennett.com @valeriebennett_

“I first met Colin Rowe through his sister-in-law Dorothy Rowe. He was living in London in 1992 when he was writing ‘As I Was Saying’ with the help of Alex Caragonne. Alex was a great cook and I often got invited to dinner when we would use the beautiful pointed silver cutler y Colin bought in Trieste. When I suggested a portrait Colin was quite reluctant as he had not been photographed for many years, but somehow I managed to persuade him with Alex’s help. When I arrived to do it Colin had been out of the flat for the first time in weeks and had had a haircut and bought a new blue shirt. The expression in the photo was when I put a fifth roll of film into the camera to take ‘just a few more’..”

“I photographed Fergus Henderson at St John for the Public Occasion Agency in 2011. The POA was founded by Scrap Marshall and Jan Nauta. I arrived at St John at 11am and Fergus greeted me with ‘would you like a glass of Madeira?’ This came with a slice of hot cake - I took the photo and walked all the way home smiling. Fergus trained as an architect at the AA and founded the St John restaurants famous for use of offal and other neglected cuts of meat ‘nose to tail eating’”.

â&#x20AC;&#x153;I talked to Mike Davies about taking a photograph of him for about ten years before actually doing it. One of the founding partners of Richard Rogers Architects, Mike wears red from head to foot. He said that he was holding an open studio weekend and that he would be in his studio with his telescopes and maybe it would be a good time to do a photo. I had no idea what he was talking about - telescopes? It turns out that Mike is a keen astronomer and makes his telescopes from pipes and tubes bought in B&Q and uses them to view and photograph planets and stars from vantage points all over the world. They have a wonderful Constructivist quality.â&#x20AC;?

â&#x20AC;&#x153;My friends Mo Wong and Chris Thorn have just set up their design practice Moct Studio. I thought it would be nice to take a photo for them to use. Their dog Gugu is a big part of their life so I thought I should include him sitting on their desk if at all possible - this is what gave me the idea of portraits of architects with animals. Of course it was not easy to get him to sit on the desk as I had visualised.â&#x20AC;&#x2122;

“Roz Barr Architects were in Venice for the Biennale and are working on ‘Masegni’ a two stage installation project addressing the themes of conser vation, preser vation, and dereliction in the usually inaccessible church of San Lorenzo. They had a key to the church so I arranged to meet them there to do a group portrait.” 84

AR C HI T E C T U

P HOTO G R AP AMEX HQ, Jim Stephenson

URAL

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

Sometimes I am asked to guest lecture at universities about my work. I usually start with an anecdote about meeting three beautiful French women in Croatia who got very excited when they learnt I was a photographer, imagining all the glamourous locations and beautiful people I work with, and then got very disappointed when I told them I photograph architecture. “Que?” “Bâtiments” “Bâtiments?” “Oui”

PHY 87

It’s a story that has its embellishments, but it’s grounded in truth. Outside the small world of architecture, people are often confused by the notion that someone can specialise in something so niche. Indeed, I’ve even met architects who seem bemused by it. Not so my former boss when I was still working as an architectural technologist for a practice in America, who insisted that if we could spend so much time designing a building the least we could do was to learn how to photograph it properly. It’s an interesting idea to consider, that architects should learn to photograph their own works. They have likely spent years working on the project, taking it home with them, living with the design, the amendments and the build process. Exploring the local area to work with (or against) the context and the existing fabric. Researching what the building needs to do and how best the design can respond to that.

AQUATICS CENTRE Jim Stephenson

NEUES MUSEUM, Jim Stephenson

In theory, who better to document all this than the architect? As a photographer, I’d like to think I have an eye for an image that maybe isn’t something that can be learnt, but I suspect the real reason why architects choose to work with photographers is the need for a sense of removal from the project. A fresh pair of eyes that aren’t just looking at the snags and the value engineering. To get a mix of this fresh perspective and an educated view on the project and the architect’s intent involves building a relationship with the designer. The vast majority of the work I photograph starts with a chat with the architect about the project, what they were aiming for and what they are hoping I’ll record.

So, what is architectural photography supposed to do? How do we document a building in a photograph when architecture is something that is intended to be experienced in person?

OSLO OPERA HOUSE, Jim Stephenson

Since the rise of modernism in the 1920’s and 1930’s, the prevailing style in photographing architecture has been somewhat clinical. A vision of the building as a sculptural object in perfect sunshine, devoid of people making it look untidy. In his fascinating - and not entirely complementary to my profession - 2012 article for The Photographer’s Gallery, Owen Hatherley looks at Albert RengerPatzch’s unpopulated photographs of Walter Gropius’ Fagus shoe factory and suggests that Bertolt Brecht “surely had him in mind when he wrote ‘a photograph of a factory tells us almost nothing about that factory’”. This isn’t to say that no-one was trying to photograph architecture any differently to this. The images of Julius Schulman, arguably the godfather of architectural photography, although heavily staged could not be accused of being cold and clinical in any way. In 1970, as part of Manplan - a series of eight quite radical bodies of work in the Architectural Review that cast a critical eye on the state of contemporary architecture, led by then-editor Hubert deCronin Hastings, the documentary photographer Tony Ray Jones was commissioned to photograph housing and visited estates such as the Thamesmead, Lillington Gardens, Pepys Estate and Weston Rise. The Manplan series was groundbreaking in that Hastings used it as an opportunity to commission photojournalists and documentary photographers, thus giving over a proportion of the magazine’s image quota to photos where, far from being banished from the frame, the people were the subjects and the architecture the grand backdrop. It’s odd today to think of Jones’ images, and all of those used in Manplan, as being controversial, but the project was cut short after only eight episodes as it proved unpopular with readers. This style of photographing architecture, documenting how people use the spaces, has now very much found its feet. Having spent a number of years working in architecture practices, where the people who were going to use the space led almost all of the early design choices, the idea that they would then be ushered away for a photograph didn’t seem right.

Surely the best way to celebrate a work of architecture is to show it being used? 95

SHANGRI LA 2O13, Jim Stephenson

The popularity of this more documentary style is evident in the types of images that are being used more and more on the design and architecture blogs, and in the publications. This is in no small part to the incredibly prolific Dutch architectural photographer, Iwan Baan who has built a sizable reputation on his documentary work on the buildings of some of the world’s most famed architects - famously racking up endless air miles in the process. It’s not the only way to photograph buildings of course. It’s a style I personally get a lot of joy from, but where the architecture lends itself, there are beautiful unpopulated, sculptural photos to be had. Hélène Binet’s stunning monochrome abstract images of contemporary architecture by the likes of Zaha Hadid standout. I consider people the most important variable when photographing a finished project, but the play of light on materials, the textures, the composition of building elements all have their beauty that deserves to be recorded.

Our aim then, as photographers, is to consider that there’s a strong chance the people viewing these images, will never visit the building. We can’t hope to recreate the feeling you get in the space, the very emotional response, but we must hope to provide a teaser for it - something that will invoke some of the excitement that good architecture provides us with.

SOUTHBANK BANDSTAND, Jim Stephenson

EDGE CONDITION C U R AT E S F R E E R A N G E EDGEcondition is both delighted and excited to be par t of this year’s Free Range shows, curating the pecha kucha on the evening of the 14 July at The Old Truman Brewer y, London as par t of the Architecture and Interiors week..

CONFIRMED SPEAKERS:

With this years’s theme being ‘re-appropriate’ we have brought together a roster of eight high-profile and exceptional practitioners from the architecture and ar ts sectors here and from the US to muse on this subject from their diverse perspectives. We asked a hadful of the speakers to share with us what ‘reappropriate’ means to them, here’s what they said...

Torange Khonsari, PUBLIC WORKS GROUP

Alex Haw ATMOS Andrew Shoben GREYWORLD Ed Woodham, ART IN ODD PLACES

Christian Ducker, GUNDRY & DUCKER Esme Fieldhouse STUDIO WEAVE Elly Ward ORDINARY ARCHITECTURE Morag Myerscough SUPERGROUP LONDON

Thank you to Graeme Brooker, Head of Depar tment of Fashion + Interiors, School of Ar t & Design, Middlesex University and Peter L. Dixon, Senior Lecturer & Academic Lead for Employability & Enterprise, Leeds School of Ar t, Architecture & Design for inviting us to curate the event and giving us the oppor tunity to get such a great line-up of speakers in the same room.

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A L E X H AW AT M O S “Re-appropriate” holds a few contradictory ideas in perfect tension. Its referrent - ‘appropriate’ - suggests something fitting, suitable, relevant; to then have to reappropriate suggests completely reconfiguring the boundaries of acceptability; redefining what’s appropriate; perhaps even achieving something INappropriate, ill-fitting, and unacceptable. To the theorists, it’ll suggest a progressive agenda of signification and liberation; to the pragmatists, it might suggest either cheeky Venturi-esque subversiveness - or another kind of proto-conservative revivalism, reclaiming lost architectural languages - or environmentally, the reclamation and salvage of otherwise-waste material. www.atmosstudio.com @atmos_studio

E L LY WA R D ORDINARY ARCHITECTURE To us re-appropriate means something joyfully brazen and direct - we happily borrow, steal and pilfer from existing objects, buildings and situations. Buildings evolve and change and that adaptation and re-use is an important part of architecture, especially in housing. Adapting rather than erasing existing buildings requires a subtler understanding of how people live. Continual adaptation contributes not only to the narrative of a building’s history but tells us about the history of society itself. ordinaryarchitecture.co.uk @ordinaryelly @ordinary_arch

CHRISTIAN DUCKER G U N D RY & D U C K E R Re-appropriate for us means re-appropriating history - taking references from the past. Things that are still readable in the final scheme and not just abstraction. In terms of interiors I think that there had been too much thoughtless re-appropriation resulting in an eclectic jumble where the original references have been lost. There is a overuse of secondary references resulting in lots of very different things looking the same. I think it’s more interesting to be a good generalist rather than a specialist. www.gundryducker.com @gundryducker

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E D WO O D H A M A RT I N O D D P L A C E S My current practice is to reclaim public space in a mindful and creative way. I wouldn’t ever speak for any sector publicly, especially a wider one. It should signal to look (really look) at how people move through urban space organically. Be aware of the ‘desire trails’ and the value of human connection. My pecha kucha is on the importance of public space. www.artinoddplaces.org @ArtinOddPlaces

ESME FIELDHOUSE S T U D I O W E AV E www.studioweave.com @studioweave

At Studio Weave, we feel it’s important to let ourselves be inspired by all sorts of things, from pigeons to philosophers, not just architects/ure. Our projects re-appropriate history, references, and characters, rather than drawing a line under what has happened before and juxtaposing it. I suppose all design must involve an element of re-appropriation by its very nature. In architecture it is a lot to do with taking an existing building or space and re-imagining it to accommodate a new brief. Re-appropriation done imaginatively could be an invaluable tool for solving problems and testing solutions that positively shifts perceptions of things and places.

ANDREW SHOBEN GREYWORLD Re-appropriate. It means a healthy reuse and improvement of an idea when I say it about our work, and an evil theft of our ideas when used to describe someone else’s work. :D It’s a dangerous word, fraught with winks and nods, in-jokes and criticisms. If the ownership of ideas was less important, I expect the world would be a better place. But owning ideas is sadly very important, and so it often signals A Bad Thing. http://greyworld.org @greyworld

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C O N T R I B U T E TO EDGEcondition? FORWARD FEATURES LISTINGS Vol. 03 // Sept 14 "art and architecture" (submission deadline 15.09.14) Vol. 04 // Nov 14 "teaching the future" (submission deadline 17.11.14) Vol. 05 // Feb 15 “placemaking” (submission deadline 19.02.15) 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

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Vo l u m e 0 3 OUT SEPT 2014 ‘architecture & design’