Level 6 Portfolio 2013

level 6 portfolio 2013 architecture | university of dundee

Level 6 Portfolio 2013 The Level 6 Portfolio is an annual pamphletStyle publication that provides a snapshot of work undertaken this year at the Architecture Department, University of Dundee. It compiles a selection of studio and written work from all years and is published for Degree Show. Edited, composed and produced by students, this is the sixth in a series.

Thanks to all those who submitted work and again, to Lee Wishart at the DPM Unit.

Editorial Colin Baillie Simon Baxter Sarah Brown Mike Grieve Cameron McEwan Jen Moffat Alex Muirhead Peter Munnoch Jamie Russell

Vessel A place to preserve the intimacy of the individual Plaster model 3

Jennifer Moffat, Y5

Demarco Archive and Residence Development sketch studies and elevation model Pencil on paper, card model Simon White, Y3

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The Soane Museum: An Adaptive Architecture Pen on Recycled Cartridge

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Euan Russell, Y5

Demarco Archive and Residences Plywood scale model

Peter Munnoch, Y3

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Red Castle : A Monument on the Landscape Condition Study Brown card model 7

Jamie Duff, Y5

Artists Retreat Axonometric AutoCAD, Photoshop Drew Hopper, Y1

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Community Intervention Axonometric drawing, workspace study Rendered hand drawing, Photoshop 9

Simon Baxter, Y5

Air Rights Steel section cube Rooms and Cities, Y5: Jennifer Moffat, Jill Morton, Michael Grieve, Laura Keane, Fifian Yip, Thomas Piggot, Alasdair McAlpine, Lorna Hughes, Magnus Popplewell, Fraser Davie, Euan Russell, Qutham Jamjoon, Charlotte Stewart, Orlaith Phelan, Thomas Rainey.

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Rooms study Plans of fifteen rooms AutoCAD and Illustrator 11

Rooms and Cities, Y5

“Form follows function” An Investigation Brent Delta North Sea Oil Rig “A Place Without Place” AutoCAD line drawing study Daniel Gibson, Y4

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The Biographical Theatre Isometric Drawings of the Stage of Inchbank House Pencil and Ink on paper, Photoshop 13

Blair Smith, Y5

Artist Retreat Scale model and Photoshop

Jamie Russell, Y2

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Habitat - Kenmore Composite image of plans and elevations Pencil and pen on paper 15

Hugh Ebdy, Y1

The House, the Container of Home - The Immersive Interior Study identifying our intimate attachment to space Model: card, paint, printing, photomontage Charlotte Torck, Y4

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Wilton’s Music Hall Tracking the visual trajectory Pencil drawing, Photoshop 17

Laura Keane, Y5

Through the Grapevine Exploration of the potential for agriculture and rural regeneration Pen and pencil on cartridge Jake Dinsdale, Y5

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Progressive Patterns // Extending Territories Defining patterns, progressive section AutoCAD, Photoshop 19

Sarah Brown, Y5

Collective Artifact - A Town Hall for Leith Scale model and plan

Colin Baillie, Y4

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Structural build-up of Studio 3D Max and Vray

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Macro Micro, Y5: Min Chen, Dean Crosley, Michael Findlater, Ciaran Golden, Ruaridh Nicol, Joanne Potter, Ryan Watson, Gabriella Da Cruz Welsh

The Long Façade Study of Hans Kollhoff’s Leibniz Kolonnaden Berlin AutoCAD, Photoshop Joe F Drinkwater, Y5

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Digital_Physical Metamorphosis Experimentation into facial metamorphosis Plaster model 23

Will Hayward, Y4

Waterfront Master Plan Proposal Brown card model and diagram Architecture and the City, Y5: Francis Young, Orlaith Swords, Joe Drinkwater, Ally Hunter, Fego Peters, Lema Nail, Keith Sinclair, Sarah Whyte, Alex Corvinus, Ethan Liu, Ruairi Gaffney

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Archive of the City and the Public Space of Knowledge Strategy diagrams / Register House: Public Rooms AutoCad line drawings 25

Michael David Grieve, Y5

Three buildings within the concrete jungle Pantone pens, pencil, charcoal, ink, tippex Qutham Jamjoom, Y5

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The Intimate and The Distant Models of distant elements within a city Card model 27

Alasdair McAlpine, Y5

Influenced by project work or personal preoccupations, these last pages include critical and creative writing about architecture.

Learning from the Dutch Slaveya Moneva Notes on the Autonomy of Architecture Cameron McEwan The Study of an Attic Space Jill Morton Redefining the British Mosque Harriet Bramley A Discussion With Space Andrea Santoni I was in my room, I was not in my kitchen Tom Rainey The Story of a Student Flat Magnus Popplewell

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An environment that is challenging and calming at the same time; one that would provoke the young person to escape their comfort zone, yet it would not allow moments of vulnerability; it would always be intriguing to explore, yet never too distracting. ‘Lots of unobstructed free space and enough areas for a number of different activities to take place’ – those are just some of the recipes for making the perfect educational room.

The spaces that surround people have proven to impact significantly their behavior, their nature.

Regardless whether analysed in terms of its affect upon a person in their workspace, home, recreation areas, their private back yards or the whole city seen as a conglomeration of the above, the influence is always occurring. Even a slight alteration in any of those surroundings might create a significant difference in one’s behavior. Having proven its most direct influence upon a child, one recognises the school and educational environment as one of the most important influences in a child’s life and their future development as a person. It is never merely the direct teacher’s talk that forms a child’s mind. A space like this should be generous enough for every educational discipline, from mathematics classes to improvised yoga exercises in the early afternoon. The trick? Accommodating all of them within one classroom unit. Positioning an area for every single one of those activities would first generate an enormous footprint and after that, might feel uninspiring, even restricting. An open plan decision is the immediate following association, possibly just as inadequate as the previous one. For a young child, less than a meter and a half tall, the modernist openness and freedom of movement is more likely to feel oppressing and frustrating, more likely to be seen as a warehouse-like object, a place ideal for nothing else than solely running from one side to the other.

What is truly needed is a combination of elements within a small space that would not define separate areas, but would only suggest them; also ones that would transform a modest footprint feel as it is in fact much bigger.

Imagining successful design of an educational building, an architecture student’s first thought is ‘Herman Hertzberger’. Simple and elegant, logical as well as intriguing and entertaining, the spaces he creates are etalons, the one we learn from. Yet, the question still stands: who did he learn from? And why do the Dutch seem to be so easy in finding the right design approach? The answer might be found in their

fine arts.

The Dutch are masters in changing the scale from vast to small, from domestically intimate to curiously interactive with the neighbouring areas, the surroundings. Being a country with a relatively cold climate, building low houses with tiny windows and small rooms is regarded as the default mode. This directly affects the manners of drawing and painting of their inhabitants. The Little Dutch Masters, as they are commonly known, do not have the tradition of going en plein air. It is cold and windy outside, so they simply prefer working at home, in their rooms.

The logic in the final product is not striking, a lot of interiors. Yet none of them feels extremely enclosed: the sensation of open space, freedom of thought and imagination, their presence is almost physical. Always a connection to something else, to someone else.

Always a window within sight. This ‘window’ could be a hole in the wall, it could be an open door through which the viewer peeks into the neighbour’s back yard.

This ‘window’ is often another painting hung on the wall. Spaces are directly interlocked with each other, inevitably connected. It ‘breaks’ the ‘big’ into smaller pieces which are never autonomous, but always components of a bigger configuration. Effectively, this technique could be seen as depriving the image from the damp transitional spaces. Connecting directly all the functional areas one with each other in a sensible way, the need for a device that solely serves for getting from point A to point B, is no longer occurring. Translated all back into the language of an educational building, this approach could truly be seen working. That transitional space in a school is the corridor, usually the one that leads to a pupil’s classroom. It plays a major role in social interaction, this is the space where small class exhibitions could happen, the space where a child waits for their teacher before class, the space where by accident people often meet their best friends. Those are not the people children share the same room with, they share the space in front of it. That practically transforms the corridor into a threshold towards the outside, into a direct extension of that same classroom.

When approaching the smaller classroom from the bigger volume of central common areas, the scale of the consecutive areas gradually decreases. The first thing that is seen by a child who enters the room is a big window that is not obscured by structure or ornamentation. Almost like a landscape in a small gloomy Dutch painting.

Learning from the Dutch

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Slaveya Moneva, Y2

One place to situate the theme of autonomy is in Emil Kaufmann’s discussion in the 1930s on the work of Enlightenment architect Claude-Nicolas Ledoux.

Kaufmann emphasised formal aspects such as: cubic masses, bare walls, frameless apertures, and flat roofs.

For Kaufmann, the isolation of parts, their dialogue as either repetitive or oppositional elements, represented a formal autonomy. Autonomy re-emerged in the 1970s when architects challenged pseudo-scientific and technologically-driven projects, such as: Kenzo Tange’s 1960 project for Tokyo Bay with its raised roadways from which residential units could endlessly aggregate, Buckminster Fuller’s 1962 domed geodesic smog shield over midtown Manhattan, Archigram’s pop-image megastructures like the 1964 Plug-in City, Paolo Soleri’s anamorphic urbanism, and in Italy, Archizoom’s anarchic No-stop City, a continuous urban structure “without architecture.” In projects like these, formal issues are replaced by statistical analyses, technological optimism, and the potentially infinitely extendable, “open-form.” This path of development is opposed by those architects who follow the theme of autonomy in architecture. In recent years, autonomy has been discussed once again in texts by Pier Vittorio Aureli, Michael Hays, Reinhold Martin, and Anthony Vidler.1 The introduction of historical critique into the discipline of architecture is a characteristic theme of autonomy.

However, it is complicated by two general positions

that refer to the argument about what kind of historical critique is appropriate. One kind of critique proposes an ideological critique of the history of architecture. An examination of all the contributing factors around architectural form, such as the social, cultural, economic and political, in order to understand how architecture is produced through power. The other kind of critique proposes a typological critique of the history of architecture and its formation as the city. An examination of typological-form in order to understand the processes, principles and formal operations that underline the production of form. In particular, the relationship between the form of the individual building as it relates to the wider collective realm of the city, and the history of architecture. It is important to say that both attitudes are independent of one another, but share a commitment to the repositioning of the “I” of architecture to the “us” of the city. Whether through understanding the form and role of architecture within the city as a product of social, cultural, economic and political concern. Or as much for architecture as a product of the historical, urban and typological structure of the city itself.

Again, both positions prioritise the collective mind over the individual.

There is a problematic overlap in these positions because architecture supports social, cultural, economic and political aspects and is their concrete manifestation. Thus, architectural form cannot be

Notes on the Autonomy of Architecture

Cameron McEwan, PhD

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considered as a single, isolated event because it is bounded by both the material and immaterial reality in which it exists. However, what the theme of autonomy can do, is open a discussion on what it means to view architecture as autonomous. Thus autonomy refers to notions of separation, resistance, opposition, confrontation, and critical distance, which can be instrumentalised by the architect through the production of images, and texts, aswell as buildings.

It is worthwhile to note a few specific examples in the recent history of architecture.

Manfredo Tafuri, in Architecture and Utopia bleakly surmised architecture to be an instrument of capitalist development used by regimes of power, thinking it useless to propose purely architectural alternatives.

However, he said that it is the conflict of things that is important, insisting on the productivity inherent in separation. In Critical Architecture Michael Hays writes that architecture is an instrument of culture, and also is autonomous form. The former view emphasises culture as the content of built form, and depends on social, economic, political and technological processes. The latter concerns the formal operations of architecture, how buildings are composed, and how architectural form is viewed as part of a continuing historical project.

Aureli develops an autonomy thesis in The Possibility of an Absolute Architecture, in which he articulates an engagement with the city through confrontation. Aureli writes that it is the condition of architectural form to separate and be separated. In this act of separation, architecture reveals the essence of the city, and the essence of itself as political form. For Aureli, it is the process of separation inherent to architectural form that the political is manifest.

In the work of Aldo Rossi the autonomy of form produced critical distance between the legacy of modern functionalist architecture and its critique, of which Rossi was a key proponent. To outline an example, we can refer to two projects undertaken in the early 1970s. A school at Fagnano Olona, and a cemetery outside Modena. Both projects share a precisely defined bi-lateral plan-form. Extending perpendicular from this axis are wings which arrange classrooms in the school, and graves in the cemetery. Either end of this central axis is marked by a circular and a square element. At the school, the circular element is a library which enters into the courtyard, and the square element is a gym hall. At the cemetery, the former is a conical grave and the latter, a monument to the war dead. Both plans refers

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to the axially arranged institutions of prisons, hospitals and asylums. In so doing, function is superseded by autonomous form, and the history of architecture is collapsed into a single building.

By way of conclusion it is illuminating to recall the political category of agonism posited by Chantal Mouffe in her book On the Political. We can think once again of the I/us relationship of the opening paragraphs, and more particularly the interrelated, we/they relationship. For Mouffe, the agonist principle develops from the idea of the political as a space of permanent conflict and antagonism, and hence a constancy of the we/they opposition. In antagonism there is no shared ground in the we/they opposition, so opponents are enemies. While in agonism, there is recognition of the legitimacy of the opponent, so enemy becomes adversary. Remembering that autonomy refers to notions of separation, resistance, opposition, confrontation, and critical distance, we could say that a crucial meaning of autonomy in architecture is to constantly produce a form of agonism through the production of images, texts, and buildings.

See for example: Aureli, Pier V. The Possibility of an Absolute Architecture (MIT Press, 2011), Aureli, Pier V. The Project of Autonomy: Politics and Architecture Within and Against Capitalism, Reprint 2012 (Princeton Architectural Press, 2008), Hays, K. Michael. Architecture’s Desire (MIT Press, 2009), Martin, Reinhold. Utopia’s Ghost: Architecture and Postmodernism, Again (University of Minnesota Press, 2010), Vidler, Anthony, Histories of the Immediate Present: Inventing Architectural Modernism (MIT Press, 2008).

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‘The well-rooted house likes to have a branch that is sensitive to the wind, or an attic that can hear the rustle of leaves.’ (Bachelard, 1994:25) Situated on a remote island in the Inner Hebrides, just a few hundred metres from the shore line, the house sits exposed to the unpredictable climate of the Scottish west coast. Tucked away at the top of the house the attic lies hidden from gaze, used as a container for forgotten belongings and once treasured possessions. Accessed through a small hatch in the ceiling, the long narrow and cluttered space is revealed. Unmistakably distinct from the level beneath the transition between the spaces is articulated by the shift in structural and material expression, the exposure of the roof trusses supporting timber slats contributes to a raw aesthetic unfamiliar with the rest of the house. The layers of enclosure stripped back to reveal the structure (otherwise concealed) unveil a thin protecting membrane introducing a vulnerability and susceptibility to the outer conditions. Heightened by the absence of a visual link a degree of ambiguity and immediacy is achieved through an acoustic awareness of the external conditions imposing on the attic, the sound of the weather as it acts upon the timber skin unable to penetrate the surface intensifies the feeling of interiority while establishing position out with the physical enclosure. The sense of fear instilled by the threat and hostility of the intangible is countered by the contrary sense of security and reassurance imbued by the scattered arrangement of familiar objects.

The experience documented from within the attic captures the tension between interior and exterior, by juxtaposing the conflicting conditions of inside and outside, a dialogue initiated by the thinness and fragility of the enclosing skin, prompting a simultaneous consciousness of the paradoxical positions.

According to british writer and painter Adrain Stokes there are two pivotal responses encountered during infancy in which all ensuing adult experience is rooted.

The first is established as ‘envelopment’ associated with the sheltering bond between infant and mother, ‘oneness’. This is likened to the qualities experienced in interior space, which can be described as tactile, protective and tangible. However according to Stokes this initial experienced is followed by an unsettling realisation of detachment and exposure, whereby the infant is made aware of its independence an analogy made with exterior space. Having established the polar positions in terms of spatial experience he

suggests that in most cases only one can predominate however in rare circumstances a dual experience of the conditions can ignite enjoyment which is true to that of a masterpiece.

The significance of space in understanding man’s being in the world is relayed by french philosopher Gaston Bachelard in his book ‘The Poetics of Space’.

His belief that in everyone there exists an ‘Onieric House’ proposes an image formed by the subconscious, differentiated primarily by its verticality. Bachelard refines the topoanalysis of his oneiric house by exploring the dichotomy between the attic and cellar: ‘Verticality is ensured by the polarity of cellar and attic, the marks of which are so deep that, in a way they open up two very different perspectives for a phenomenology of the imagination. Indeed, it is possible, almost without commentary, to oppose the rationality of the roof to the irrationality of the cellar. A roof tells its raison d’etre right away it gives mankind shelter from rain and sun he fears. Geographers are constantly reminding us that, in every country, the shape of the roofs is one of the surest indications of climate. We understand the slant of a roof. Even a dreamer dreams rationally; for him, a painted roof averts rain clouds. Up near the roof all our thoughts are clear. In the attic it is a pleasure to see the bare rafters of the strong framework. Here we participate in the carpenter’s solid geometry.’ (Bachelard, 1994:17) For Bachelard it is evident the attic and the cellar offer very different poles of experience appealing to the rational and irrational mind respectively. He argues that the roof bestows rational thought by revealing its primary function to provide shelter from the threats imposed by weather, he also draws attention to the articulation of the rafters suggesting pleasure at the sight of the exposed structure which would be otherwise concealed. As for the cellar it is contrastingly portrayed as the more dark and aloof entity of the house: The cellar dreamer knows that the walls of the cellar are buried walls, that they are walls with a single casing, walls that have the entire earth behind them.

And so the situation grows more dramatic, and fear becomes exaggerated.

In the context of the city he is quick to point out the absence of the cellar and attic, concluding that the

The Study of an Attic Space

Jill Morton, Y5

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urban dwelling lacks the vertical quality of intimacy as a result. He notes the contrived relationship between the city domicile or as he calls it ‘the superimposed box’ and the environment stating that the notion of verticality has been lost with the increased use of elevators and ‘stacked’ organisation of single story dwelling stifling a dialogue with earth and sky (outer conditions). The solution he offers to the ailment of the city dwelling is the application of the imagination, in a particular example in Paris he suggests the city as a metaphor for the ocean, envisioning the bed as a boat rolling with the waves, restoring the balance with the natural environment deprived in the urban setting.

Bachelard makes a clear distinction in the expression of the antithetical spaces not only in their vertical relationships but in their spatial language evident in his descriptions. His topoanalysis illustrates the radical response of the human subconscious to varying spatial conditions thrust upon it, placing emphasis on structure, material and position.

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west, and why has there been little attempt to distill the true ideas and symbols of the mosque into an architectural language which is befitting to the local context of the west and its epoch? These are problems which are being tackled in the Middle East with some successful outcomes, of course this is perhaps due to the religious context, being an Islamic country, it is the single most important ideal and Islam governs all areas of life in the home and outside, however, Islam is the second largest religion in the UK today and as the Muslim population grows, so too does the demand for mosques.

A mosque is not just a place of worship, a mosque is the focal point of the community. It is a place where the transformative mission of Islam must be put into practice by services for the needy, services for the community, services to help people to achieve the objectives of Islam, it is a centre of education. That is what a mosque should be, it is not what an awful lot of mosques are today. And the other thing is that mosques have to be welcoming, open places, not just for muslims because the transformative mission, the social objectives of Islam doesn’t just belong to Muslims, they are for everybody.

The Mosque is necessarily iconographical. But it is also more. Emphasis should be given to the typology of the building in particular its reference to external spaces within the city fabric and how this might create a dialogue with non-Muslims and hopefully an understanding of Islam. The issue of whether the mosque should have a dome and minaret is a controversial one and perhaps one that will never settle, therefore perhaps this discourse shall be set aside to an extent and the true important elements of mosques can be focused on such as the prayer space, community facilities and the neglected but important space of the courtyard or “paradise garden”.

It is the role and perception of the mosque in the British society that must change, how it can serve the community, not just Muslims and how it can begin to educate Muslims and non-Muslims alike about Islam.

By designing Islamic centres which relate to their street context and also to the wider context perhaps it will serve a wider community and become accepted by all.

“The architectural language of mosques in the West that has yet to mature”. The architectural form seems to be stuck in an age of the Ottoman empire and has neither developed nor understood its primordial historic origins. Why has the Ottoman architectural style become the archetype for the mosque in the The Mosque

Harriet Bramley, Y5

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Me : “Space, are you out there?”

Space : “What do you mean?”

Me : “I mean, I can’t see you, how do I know you exist?”

Space : “Well, it depends on how you define ‘exist’?”

Me : “Well....it means, to have objective reality or being.”

Space : “...Well I am here, I am all around you, so I consider myself to exist, yes. Tell me, does love exist?”

Me : “Of course it does...why?.”

Space : “How do you know that love exists?”

Me : “Because I feel it, I feel love inside.”

Space : “But you don’t see it do you?”

Me: “Well, no of course you don’t see love, it’s just...a thing, a feeling inside.”

Space : “Well, I am going to suggest to you that in fact, you do see love, you see it all the time. Not in the conventional sense way of ‘seeing’ of course, but you see it as a reflection. When you see someone that you love, they act as a trigger, projecting the feeling

of ‘love’ back to you. So love is really a reflection of your own feelings. You perceive love.”

Me : “I see, so you are saying that because I understand that I love, then that is confirmation that love exists. But tell me, what does love have to do with this?”

Space : “Well...I’m the same as love.”

Me : “So...you’re trying to prove to me that I do see you?”

Space : “Of course, you’re looking at me now; you’ve always looking at me. When you close your eyes, you may think I’m not here anymore...but you are still feeling me.”

Me : “So if you’re just like love then that means that because I perceive that you exist, then it means that you do exist?”

Space : “Exactly, what else is a better confirmation of anything, than your own mind. Your own perception?”

A Discussion With Space

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Andrea Santoni, Y4

In my room, the building façade screens me from the city without and presents to it a unified image of order. This is an inside and outside, I’m inside the mask looking out, I hope you see what I want you to see.

You’re outside the mask looking in, I see what I think you see. But in this relation something ‘slips away’, a stolen glance; this is the reflection of the city in my open window that makes me question the efficacy of the screen, it is my neighbour listening to his radio on the balcony that overlooks the window at which I prefer to sit, it is the hotel bar in the piazza below where I wish I was instead.

An inside and an outside and its partition, this is the stuff of architecture. It is perhaps unsurprising then, that, when he writes those lines, ‘an outside and an inside’, it’s to architecture that Beckett turns. In his masterpiece, The Unnamable, its subject, the Unnamable I, is described as a tympanum:1 ‘an outside and an inside and me in the middle, perhaps that’s what I am, the thing that divides the world in two, on the one side the outside, on the other the inside, that can be as thin as a foil, I’m the partition, I’ve two surfaces and no thickness, perhaps that’s what I feel, myself vibrating, I’m the tympanum, on the one hand the mind, on the other the world, I don’t belong to either.’2. In The

Unnamable, Beckett uses the tympanum, as an idiom to express an interrelationship between registers of subjectivity, of language and of space; for Beckett, the speaking subject is always spatial.

I am the Tympanum, the partition, the division between inside and out, Beckett’s fiction is notable for its distinct topological character. ‘Imagine a space, a person in it, that again,’3 is as succinct an observation as would be possible, were we trying to find a unifying theme that runs through his work. If we employ the preceding reference as a yardstick, we find that the space [the where that we imagine], the person [the who it is that is in it] and, furthermore, the that again [the when that is again] appear to have become radically unstable.

Beckett’s Unnamable I is always caught in flux between two spatial extremes, it describes a movement between enclosure and expansion that problematises inside-outside relations. In The Unnamable, like a möbius strip, the inside is already in the outside, trace its surface, the outside is in the inside, repeat ad infinitum, two sides of the same surface, I return to the same point, back again where I started. The tympanum is a surface that incloses an interior and excloses an exterior.

I was in my room, I was not in my kitchen

Tom Rainey, Y5

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‘Where now? Who now? When now? Unquestioning.

I, say I’, The Unnamable begins by ‘stripping out’ the usual suspects: ‘say I’, everything else needs a reference. A voice describes a succession of spaces which contain a succession of ‘I’s, it can be a jar, a pit, a prison, a skull, it can be covered by a tarpaulin, it can be a room. This space, a room, whatever it is, the ‘I’ hopes it’s concave, but the room cannot provide a stable reference. There can be no doors or windows, it can be dark, known only by its echo, but the containing spaces of The Unnamable always dissolve into an uncertain relationship with landscape. First it’s the sea, above the level of the window, it’s a boat on a river, it’s the I searching for it’s own image in the mountains and the plains. It’s a forest and its clearing, the space of the room, carved out of the weald, and I return again to the same point.

The space of The Unnamable is at once interstitial and transtitial, it is a third space between an inside and an outside, which is the interstitial tympanum. It is also a transtitial slippage between inside and outside; which is its radical continuity. Back in my room, the windows are open, I look out at the mountains, I watch people in the piazza, I lie on the floor wishing the ceiling was higher. Down in the piazza, I sit at the edge, I sit on a chair at a table, I drink a beer, there are cheaper beers in my fridge, back in my kitchen.

[1] In architecture, the tympanum is the screen-like panel located below the arch and above the lintel, often a site for sculptural depictions of the Apocalypse or the Final Judgement in the Romanesque.

[2] I am the tympanum: an excerpt from Samuel Beckett’s The Unnameable, pp. 133-135, New York: 1958 [3] From Beckett’s ‘Appendix II: Faux Départs’, 1965, in Samuel Beckett: The Complete Short Prose

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I am a student flat.

Born in 2007, I am still young, but I am old enough to have found my feet. My job is to be a house for students at university. Most are young, leaving home for the first time, full of excitement at being in control of their life for the first time. Some are older, others are from far away, but for most, the set-up is the same: 6 people, 6 bedrooms, 1 living room / kitchen, 9 months residency. People come and go, year by year, but I remain, waiting new occupants.

The rhythm of my life is linked to the rhythm of the university.

My summer is quiet, I am cleaned and taken care of, delicately tended to and prepared for the year to come.

Soon September comes and the influx begins, at first a trickle, but soon a flood. Cars come laden with goods, parents shuttle back and forth, books, quilts, clothes, pans, plates, people pile up, they go and return with food, bags and bags of pasta, piling up, pushed away, hidden away, night comes, parents go, parties begin, people meet, people go out, people come back, they sleep, they romance, they drink, they rest, they recover. Slowly they begin to settle down: the pace slackens, studies become more important. Posters go up, photos appear, bags get unpacked, books appear on shelves, work rests on desks, habits form.

After three months of this life and activity, arguments and parties, I get a chance to rest.

bedrooms or libraries.

Over the next two months the quiet becomes thickened with stress as exams come along. This is a messy mixed period. There are notes scattered on floors, dishes pile up by the stressed and then tidied up by the procrastinating. Each person in the flat has a different story. For some it is short and fast paced, others have a long, lingering period of work. Sporadically exams come and go, deadlines appear and pass, people celebrate the finish or worry about the end. And then they pack up and leave, bit by bit. Early leavers, late hangers-on. Posters and photos are picked off walls, clothes are refolded, removed, bagged, boxed. The only traces left are some blu-tac marks on the walls and some rubbish in the bin.

And then, not with a rush, but more with a whimper, it is quiet once more. An anti-climatic end. Now I wait for the last stragglers to leave. For the cleaners to clean.

Repairs to be repaired. Waiting through the sultry Summer for the next cycle to commence.

Winter is here and many people leave, go home to the family and I can cool down and breathe. Some still remain, the odd person from flat to flat. A short breath as I see in the turn of the year.

By January the people return. Here and there some people have changed; some have left, changed to a new path in life; some have arrived, through erasmus schemes or others for a new experience. My pace of life increases again for another three months. In each of my rooms things have changed. New and more posters are on the walls, books, files and notes are scattered round the bedrooms, people’s items and artefacts have found their home in corners or under beds. Scratches and marks line the walls and furniture, stains and worn patches scatter the carpets and chairs.

Easter comes and once again it is more quiet. Fewer have gone home, many stay, but this time they are worried. Looming deadlines cause them to hide in The Story of a Student Flat

Magnus Popplewell, Y5

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Colophon The Level 6 Portfolio is published by Architecture: University of Dundee, May 2013.

Printed by University of Dundee Design Print Marketing (DPM), BSI Building, Miller’s Wynd, Dundee in an edition of 150. Typeset in Tw Cen MT and Franklin Gothic Demi. Cover: Conqueror Contour Embossed Brilliant White 300gsm. Body: Cocoon Silk 130gsm (50% recycled). Cover image: Sarah Brown (2013).

dundee.ac.uk/architecture issuu.com/level6por tfolio