AVATAR M. Arch 2008/2009 -------Project Catalogue In conjunction with the M.Arch Exhibition 29 Sepember 2009 - 3 October 2009
For Architectural Education and Fighting Ubiquitous Fashion
“A building project…has to be substantially completed before construction can begin. In order to live up to these imperatives and yet be capable of innovation, some contemporary architects have sought to collapse “theory” and “practice“ in new “algorithmic” processes of design that avoid subjective “judgement” and produce novelty through instrumental mathematical operations. Made possible by powerful computers and ingenious software, the new algorithmic magic creates novelty without love, resulting in short-lived seduction, typically without concern for embodied cultural experience, character, and appropriateness” Alberto Perez Gomez (1) The term “Cyberoque” is probably ten years old. It was predicated on the notion that the new virtual technologies would blow life into architecture and we would head off to a new architecture of billowing surfaces, voluptuous skins and seductive invaginations. Indeed, the formal articulations that are possible to the contemporary architect are much increased, albeit mostly in a familiar series of articulations begat by similar software applications. Much has been sacrificed to this formal necromancy and this includes properly articulated plans, expedient economic structural logics and the exquisite dovetailing of form and programme. Unfortunately all these tropes and trends lead us not to an architectural world of individual liberation, unleashed creativity and empowerment but to a world of ubiquity and a lack of self-critical engagement in the process of design and, most crucially of all, a lacuna of human communication through architecture that engages the human condition in all its myriad complexities and desires. Alberto Perez- Gomez’s work is a shining beacon that advocates the erotic, the love-ly and the poetic possibilities of architecture. Most contemporary architects shy away from these exuberant notions and are content to hide like children under corporate skirts.
During the last five years the MArch Architectural Design AVATAR Course has been developing a large and dense series of theoretical projects that address some of the surreal possibilities of the new technologies in response to ideas of individuality, mnemonics, poetics, machinery and the history of art and architecture. We are living in an era of millennial ecstasy, we are now cast forever out of our skins. We are transparent, elsewhere and smeared across our world, our digital or visceral smudge visible and vulnerable. Our new architectures search for an ecstasy of creation, a choreography of chance, the liberation of particularity and a dislocation of the designer self, ‘I got mine, get yours! in a world where all is possible, the question is begged: Are you doing anything that really needs to be done or are you blinded by the sweet caress of the digital delirium, the warm embrace of the hyper connected, disconnected spectacle? It sucks you dry, adapting to your every action, and growing stronger bit by bit. Now is the time to think differently. All our post-modern desire is good for is an obsession with Apples and BlackBerrys – Digital Fruit. We desire the exceptional, we want to be different, and we want all things to have a special relationship with us. We make our world by desiring within it. We should build our architecture with desire. Neil Spiller
1 Alberto Perez-Gomez, Built Upon Love- Architectural Longing after Ethics and Aesthetics, MIT Press, Massachusetts USA, 2006, p.28
CHRISTINA ACHTYPI ARCHITECTURAL SPACE AND THE BURLESQUE BODY The project is an exploration into the spaces between the body and architecture, specifically the idea of desire and obscenity. The work is constructed around literatures, namely "Lady Chatterley's Lover", "Lady Chatterley's Trial', "The Harem" and "Chills and Fevers",which act as a basis for the inquiry. The body in the text is only referenced as part of a referencing of text. The body in question relates to the veiling of desire, as it becomes inhabited and revised in the text, as an objectified architecture of the unobserved illicit body. Each of the above narratives deals with different constructions of the relationships between the body and the idea of the desire. Lady Chatterley is considered as the sensual body in a text, that is judged through its absence, in a courtroom. The text is discussed without any reference to the actual body. The unscripted transcripts of language reveal the totem of taboo and illicitness as desire, as obscene. Text is chosen as an agency for exploring the unseen aspects of the body inhabited by desire and as a means of rendering them visible. Language constructs the imaginary sensuality as eroticm. Text and language work together and construct the unobserved sensual body of the author and/or his characters. The observer questions the issue of the body in the text as illicit or pornographic testimony against the author. At the same time, a contradiction happens. Language is a construction of words with multiple meanings, unclear signs and gaps. The reader is invited to construct the meaning of the words and of the voids, based on his imagination, his own translation. The reader believes that judges the author, but in fact, he judges his own interpretation of the author's methods.
Phil Watson
The imagined body in the text, as obscene text, is constructed against the harem as a legitimate actual body of architectures. The contextual issues in translation are essentially the architecture of this inquiry. The possibilities of the translation of the body create a new architectural site, a fluxing body in the body itself (as a system in another, a body in another... ).The site is the courtroom as harem, which contains furniture, as extracts of the interior of the body of the text (illicit body).The material of this architecture is created by the construction of sensuality as illicit furnitures of the performance of the illicit (noise, whispers, touch, traces...) The aim of this project is to reveal the interior of the obscene body and translate it into space conditions.
Tyler Joseph Barnard Hello, My name is Joe ...and I’m an addict Advancements in high-speed technology and the individualization of “Joe Briefcase” in our postindustrialized economies have given birth to the production of non-place (Augé). The film speaks of the effects of ‘image-fiction’ on our current spatial tactics and strategies in everyday life. The creation of the film was made using various techniques of representation, such as trompe l’eoil or depth of field, to create the illusion of space. The eventual breaking down of the image in the film questions our ultimate belief in the image and the power of its addiction.
Nic Clear
KA SING CHONG The Voice of Architecture and its Technology
The architectural translations of the object contained between the visual and described world
We often confront translating the visual – which is never easy in words. Vision can register motion and immobility, however, it favours immobility. When we register the motion, we often reduce it into a series of still shots because our eyes do not see clear what motion is. In contrast, there is no way to stop sound and have sound. All sensation takes place in time, but no other sensory filed totally resists a holding action, stabilisation, in quite this way. We consider architecture specifically as language, in examining the relations between the rules of grammar and the conventions of architectural order, and in comparing the function of both media as expressive communication. So, speaking, listening, reading, and writing are all different aspects of language. When we listen to a person speaking, it is not the same as listening to a broadcast or a recording. The voice is different to the recording as the sounds are created by different methods. Sound exists only when it is going out of existence. It is not simply perishable but essentially evanescent, and it is sensed as evanescent. For example, I can stop a moving picture camera and hold one frame fixed on screen. If I stop the movement of sound, I have nothing but silence, no sound at all. This thesis looks at the architectural translations of the object often contained between the visual and described world in the overlapping moments of translating.
Phil Watson
CORDELIA HÄNEL Slow motion landcapes
”The Endurance” & Archived Architectures
The fascination for a landscape within the existing measurable timebased reality - overtaking the function of an archiving device recording scenarios and creating a new method of archiving an historical event. The Moments of cristallisation visualizing the moments of archiving a timebased event - Sir Shackletons Expedition to the Antarctica in 1912 - trying to cross the frozen ice with a timber ship - “The Endurance”. A string with pressure moving seeminglessly through an ice cube similarly a boat will find its way through frozen water - or glaciers being moved. But leaving traces behind. By reusing those exisiting natural laws - exploring them on different scales creating an own subtle slowly changing parallel slow motion landscape expressed in varios different scenarios and moments. The Slow Motion Landscape interrupted by a passing through ship going through the process of 2 systems one slowly controlling the other one timber & ice the two elements that are clashing. The collapsing of one system triggering an initiating progress of an ice based archive - like a seedbank of frozen seeds - when in a 20 year cycle the plant itself has to grow another baby seed, which again will be frozen - in order to keep the archive updated. The timebased Slow Motion Landscape embedded in the SelfUpdating- Archive - the fragments of the Endurance floating under the ice expressing an historical event through imagery -the Archived Architecture.
Shaun Murray
Rebal Knayzeh Imagining Palestine I’m lying in bed thinking to myself: there’s a warm feeling in the room that reminds me of home. It’s still dark outside but I can tell it’ll soon be daybreak. The first rays are already showing through. I get out of bed feeling ill at ease. Something’s odd...I get up and look out the window. The colors seem hesitantly wavering, not sure whether it’s day or night. What’s that on my bed? I pull back to look down at a sleeping me…what? Me? I’m still asleep? He wakes up. What’s going on? who are you, I want to ask him. He looks around the room and notices, as I notice that there’s a lemon tree on the wall. His astonishment is mirroring mine. There’s an archeddoorway on the wall where there was nothing before. He shifts his eyes to look up to the ceiling as I do the same and he sees a lantern hanging instead of his light fixture. When I look down again, he’s still lying asleep. In fact, he hasn’t moved at all. … I began with a paradigm defined by Edward Said in Orientalism (which I used as my starting point in establishing the definition of the Other). To begin, there is: the Other as a construct of: The Westerner-Observer who is looking at an: Actual: Oriental-Observed through the Imaginary: Gaze The Virtual, is therefore, the space where the Other as well as Self exist.
Nic Clear
SVETLANA KHIDIROVA SEISMIC TECTONICS AND POLYGRAPHIC LANDSCAPES Institute of Vibration Engineering Research
The aim of my project is to create such an unusual architectural design so that it could go with the contemporary industrialised city needs, following working processes that are entirely new to me. My ideas are based on the collection, collaging and reuse of industrial materials left in our world. My architectural proposal is aiming at reexamining such architectural issue as the use of unusual (for the contemporary world) raw materials for architectural constructions. Thus, I am designing an architecture based on the recycling of industrial seismic raw materials. The idea is developed such as how to create a sustainable architecture in the UK out of the already existing raw material Route master bus, which is a passing of object that has been an icon of London through years. The project offers a fresh perspective on the vehicles' iconic contours. The technique which I am developing in my project allows to make a sustainable architectural construction and to release the country from the massive amounts of waste left on the scrap yards. I am identifying a way towards a new architecture- a magical one that composes itself from “out of service� seismic industrial objects.
Andrew Porter
1Routemasters for scrap at Streathem Garage, UK; 2 Clarification of routemaster parts for the future reuse as the key building material; 3 Possibilities of creating architectural forms through recycling the routemaster bus parts; 4 Institute of Vibration Engineering Research (demonstration / exhibition hall, auditorium, laboratories)
Geraldine Lo Another Day in Third space Another Day in Thirdspace attempts to propose the Other space, where one occupies between the actual and virtual domain. The film questions to what degree are we “the same� as our virtual self and virtual space, and the interchangeability of self in a Thirdspace dialogue. The scenes are set among various ubiquitous architecture, the by-product of our universal interchangeable identity. This Thirdspace is the synthetic space, a hybrid of reality and simulacra. There is no need to suspend our suspicious of disbelief in a Thirdspace since everything is real, it is the things we experience.This space possesses the opportunities to offer new possibilities or it just simply exposes us to our banal virtual double. The thesis project is a contemplation and reflection on a Thirdspace. The film tries to communicate what it likes to be in a Thirdspace and the place a character has within this space.
Nic Clear
REN LUO The Landscape Besieged Torcello is just an unattractive and deserted island to the north-east of Murano island. There is only one street left with one waterbus station. But before the 10th century, Torcello was the largest city in the whole Venice lagoon, as well as the location of Venice Doge and bishop. The young republic was under Byzantium Empire’s protection and supervision. The only ancient building left on the island now, the Cathedral of Santa Maria Assunta, is one of the oldest architectures in Venice lagoon. The obvious Byzantium style design tells the history quite contradicted to the Venetian legend. The well-known fact about Venice’s future is: the water city is sinking into the water. The bottom of the lagoon is sinking while the sea level is rising year by year. Venice might disappear from the sea surface some day. Yet the story of Torcello is quite different. Torcello was abandoned by Venetians because the whole area around the island has turned into land since 7th century. The salt marsh formed around the island might turn into dry land some day. And the most important geographic defense from the barbarian hordes- the sea- could not function well any more. Even merchant ships could not approach the port of Torcello. The Rialto, on the other hand, was far from mainland and capable for ship port. It rose since then and finally took Torcello’s place. The system is a metaphor of Venice. It is also about the relationship between human and natrual, between urban and suburb. The system interacts with changing enviroment, trying to creat a perfect salt marsh system. It could react to changing eco-condition inside the system, as well as the Venice High water from outside. But even like this, it can never mantain a output forever. The ‘perfect salt marsh’ could never be really finished. As the system migrates to a new site, the former marsh land will be left defenseless from the lagoon. The soil will be wash away and finally disapear. The efforts made by human to creat a ‘perfect nature’ bring urban into real. City is supported by various machines and social systems. They cooperate with each other in order to defend human from nature’s invasion. Hence human’s ego grows, making people believe artificial world is immortal. Venice was believed to be the most powerful city in the world. People did believe Venice had conquer the lagoon-- even the mediterranean sea. But the death of Torcello reveals how nature could reclaim its former territory. The peace between human and nature is just a frigile balance.
Andrew Porter
Yun Pei Lee Desire Lines The project established a basis for which memory will be created containing the images of daily life in the urban space, the facilities used and the various routes a person will utilize. Thus, the scenes of everyday has recreated in our minds to form impressions of what can be seen urban space. The memory of urban space has related to the daily life and local experiences, after it has been translated and decoded from the memory of the person. It should be noted that memory can be changed and replaced so most of the memories will be based on the true facts, however there will be times where reliance on memory would sometimes lead to discrepancies with what occurred in reality. How memory will occupy the urban space is one of the issue that had concerned in the project. The project has also involved a discussion based on transformable of memory. This is the occurrence whereby fiction and concepts of the imagination in the memory may offer possible changes to urban cognition. Furthermore, since the memory has unlimited space, the reformation of urban fabric can be easily established. Once a person builds up individual memory, they may influence the public by sharing their memory and related information through the use of mass media or social networks. Therefore, further deliberation regarding the consequences of “Shared Memory� should be considered as they also influence the original urban space.
Nic Clear
Yung-En Lin Neo-London Map
2.5 Dimensional Urban Landscape
This project is dealing with the fragment of spatial experience in vision with 2.5 dimensional presentation.The project aims to find another method as the suggestion to represent people’s spatial experience in vision. The architectural argument is that 2.5D is chosen as a technique to describe urban image instead of 2 and 3 dimensional presentation. The reason is 2.5D not only represents the benefit of 2D vision in switching images place by place while describing city travel experience, but also has real depth as well as 3D, which makes the presentation more dynamic and real. The first main process of the project is to apply the image to break the real space in vision. Micro city was made by fragments of stuff and machines to reorganise them together into a huge object, and occupied and extending in the installation room. Used the mini camera to re-catch some piece of views from model and projected them into huge images on the wall to blur the distinction between axctual and virtual space in vision, which is the method of breaking the real space. The second process is to create 2.5D presentation from image. The similar concept as the beginning of image dividing method was also applied in the MArch studio and Tate Modern. Besides, inserted images between the depths of images from different perspectives transformed the models into the multiple perspective and imaginable models, which realised the vision jumping between different places just in very few second. The Neo-London Map represents an urban traveller who considers what London could look like in personal mind including personal city image, imagination, experience, and memory. All of them putting together with 2.5D technique totally reconstruct London into an imaging city.
Stuart Munro
MEI-FANG LIAO Reconnecting geometry of journey This project is about a peculiar journey in which the crucial aim is not necessarily to arrive the final destination but to record and describe the experiences of journey by the observer. In other words, the most relevant aspect of this journey is the information being “experienced” by observer before reaching the arrival per se, in Stone Circle, a historical site located in Oxfordshire(UK). Initially, the project investigated a series of narratives that reflect interactions between the observer and environment. These narratives are constructed by photographs taken along the journey. The journey to be presented will be divided into four stages. The first one is about preparation for the journey. Secondly, the transport during the journey is shown. In the third stage, the experience of “touching” the environment will be emphasized. Finally, it will describe the perception of arriving. The first stage of this project is a gradual process of collecting fragments of narratives available through the track. The purpose is to use the concept of ”light and shadow” to discuss not only how they are entangled with the environment but also to what extent they establish an original “conversation” with the architecture. Hence, this project focuses on the light and shadow as elements appropriated by architecture. In the second stage of this work, the goal is to explain and describe details of the photographs taken in the previous stage. These pictures represent the experience about the journey and will be analysed according to their perspectives of light and shadow. At the same time, the project analyses and interprets the effect of light and shadow through a succession of drawings. In the context, the drawings are results of experiments made to test a subjective or even abstract conception about how light and shadow can be projected in the environment. The pictures are frozen images of the journey; by contrast, the drawings are a result of dynamic experiments. The drawings should be understood in this project as the bridge between environment and architecture. By using distinct means of representation, such as photographs and drawings, this project suggests that there are multiple ways in which observers can establish an interaction with the environment. Consequently, different connections between the environment and the architecture can be possible. In summary, the project develops a series of drawings about an original journey of light and shadow; in which surface challenge the concept and the perception of the traditional model of space in depth. This project proposes an initial work for developing 3D model to depict the spatial journey.
Shaun Murray
YORGOS LOIZOS A FreakShow
From its early history, the photographed space - a constructed reality for many has recorded the so called divine beauty [i.e. La Castiglione], mannequin dolls that have be seen as animate and automata / photobooths were used for our instant self-portraiture; Portraits through some kind of technological (or no-tech) gaze that create mnemonic evidence. The project searches to make spatial connections between cameras and photographic back plates, a day time's skeletal pier and the night time illuminations of seascapes, a darkroom, a shop window (to be found in the edges of a theatreland); A Freak Show, where the bizarre becomes extraordinary and special. During this research, the use of various sites on different scales such as a West End's shop window, a disused pier seen as a perspective machine, Coney Island's crashed hyperrealism, seaside cut-out attraction billboard / mannequin fashioned different narrative and new critical possibilities through the development of the project. However, this is an ongoing work; it explores the awareness of the designerphotographer-observer of the continuously developed relationships of objects and ourselves in an architectural space. In many cases, it is something that can mostly be experienced through the redundancy of the every day. The latest pieces of the project bring the hypothesis of light sensitive tectonics, the ones to be unveiled through a time based process, or die suddenly by overexposing them to violent light; 'solarized' aesthetics - smeared by chemical sands and salt waters - that have been born by accidental light leak.
Stuart Munro
This page: Photographer's gaze, flash moment of 1/250 seconds crystallizes Castiglione's Legs [photographic drawing 20x24 in]. Previous page from top: 'Olympia' doll on light sensitive sand [photographic print 91/2 x12 in]; Ten Seconds Movement around a mannequin body inside a shop window [photographic drawing 20x24 in].
DANAI MELESSIDOU FRAGMENTATION AND MEMORY Putting the body back in the derelict lead mining factory
The project is an exploration of fragmentation and memory. It is looking at architecture as time and history. This investigation developed by crossing over the issue of traces of the body and the dereliction of a lead mining factory at Lavrion, Greece. The aim is to create an environment in order to remember the past, to discover the “unknown� and decipher the traces that have been left in time. The methods of the factory and the ways of the body working there are remembered between the world of sculpture and the world of architecture. The derelict lead mining factory is a place that has been used and left empty; people were working there and now it is derelict. It contains the idea of memory and the body, traces and stillness, interrupted by bits of light and water. The absent body is put back in the place, under the frame of the body being seen as a site of reconstruction and technology as a means to deform the body. The skin of the space is read as the skin of the body extended. Body fragments recomposed as pieces of skinsurfaces, reacting to light-movementtemperature, are now worn by the derelict building.
Phil Watson
ANNA NIKOLAIDOU FUSION ARCHITECTURES
The work is constructed against the idea that the objects share simple formalizations of language. In this project, the objects are created as ideas. Although a word is simply a word, it generates endless fusions of spaces and other possibilities of objects. The aim of this project is to investigate these new possibilities of objects, their new identities, as well as the fusion of spaces that are created. The objects assume the role of the actor/ performer and each object has a role in the construction of a new space. The performance is a combination of the different identities and utilities of the objects/actors. The window becomes a kettle, become a steam iron etc. The function of one component is located in the function of the other. The components used to fabricate the theatre are made of thin oblique cuts through objects. This is done so that a section of the actual object and its actual characteristics are viewed from an angle not normally seen/never seen. The outcome is intended to be a series of utilities. A performance between the choreography of objects and paralleled utilities. The fusion of the objects is made by using light density from x-rays. This allows the section to be seen as a transparent layer of light, as a density map. As a result, the idea of reading through the depth of a landscape and seeing through several layers and the spaces between is introduced. If we were able to x-ray a city, we would see beyond its fabric. If we were able to visualise architecture as a series of connected spaces that are not divided by walls, we would be imagining a naked city breathing on the abyss of technology. The new architecture is transparent, flowing through sequences no longer divided into.
Phil Watson
Tuba Ozbay space c Project ‘space c’ is a science-fiction film exploring space at different speedscales based on Einstein’s [1923] dream of ‘what would the world look like when we are travelling at the speed of light’. The film investigates how to visualize the landscape of acceleration. With the declaration of the Special Theory of Relativity in 1905 by Albert Einstein, the possibility of time dilation at the speed of light raised questions about deformations of space in time. The theory acknowledged time as one of the dynamics forming space, calling it as space-time. This paper searches the rules that form space, starting with Euclidian geometry by examining the work of scientists and artists on interpretations of motion, space and speed. Besides designing new geographies experienced at high speed approaching the speed of light, the project re-examines the dynamics forming space by using time-based tests at different velocities. As the traveler accelerates, space begins to lose its identity by the flattening of depth and diffusion of details into each other which are actually the aspects determining space; dimensions, color, texture… hence speed becomes a new concept of scale in the profession of architecture identifying space. In other words, the film concludes that space has relative identities with respect to the speedscale at which it is experienced.
Nic Clear
Hyun Jun PARK Noesis III : Hyper-place
An architectural experiment through shifting space and time in-between the virtual and the actual
Since the digital technology has been developed, the boundary between actual and virtual space is getting vague in the contemporary ubiquitous society . The emergence of synthetic space between actual and virtual space demands that architects should consider a new spatial paradigm to design this new potential architectural space. The purpose of this thesis project is to explore this synthetic space embodied by digital technology and to experiment the spatial idea of shifting space. The most significant character of digital space is non-linear time and space. Since cyberspace began, the World Wide Web has been constructed by the HTML technology, which is an initial of HyperText Markup Language . The spatial structure of the HTML has non-linear topological space because whole information is directly interconnected with each other through embedded hyperlinks. According to Vandendorpe(2009) , people do not read ‘hypertext the same way they read a novel, and browsing the Web is a different experience from reading a book or newspaper’ because of this character. Physical conditions have no meaning in the digital space. There are only hyperlinks between space A and B. People shift from web site to another web site through hypertext without any process. The spatial idea, Hyper-place, is based on the spatial structure of hypertext. In particular, in terms of different levels of reality, this thesis project experiments to construct spatial montages through projected space within the screens. This project also concerns digital space which consists of subjects created by digital technology. While showing the space and events which belong to different time and space, TVs/screens construct extreamly temporal architecture between space and projected space within the screen.
Nic Clear
CAMILA E. SOTOMAYOR MIRROR | MIRROR The dichotomy of alternates, what is and what isn’t, is fascinating. Held in a London apartment, virtual smears and residues result from the shared experiences of smell, touch and sound. Here is a project that emerges from making the subconscious concious while creating an environment derived from accummulation and flux. virtual smear |noun. sing. Palimpsests produced between objects in space and their users. Invisible to the naked eye Virtual Smears very much pertain to our physical world. Smears embody the secret life of surfaces, sounds and smells within an existing space. Their virtual nature is a result of their invisibility and as such, are posited in the middle of the Mixed Reality [MR] continuum as Cybrids virtual residue |noun. sing. A spatial gradient produced over a period of time when a virtual smear is fossilized under an active smear. Slippages. adj. action pertaining to a Virtual Smear between physical object, Residue and user.
While visualizing Apt. 35b as a site active with pinched spaces, the lens of analysis was pulled to the hidden lives inside each room as parts of the entire virtual system. Virtual architecture can exist only by means of the physical systems that sustain it; requiring the body and mind of the imaginer. Since concepts of space are imaginary, Mirror Mirror embodies the co-dependency between Virtual Smears and Actual Space as a cognitive tool created in order to unveil and understand the extraordinary within the ordinary that surrounds us. A secret life of surfaces and spaces we occupy daily erupts from a daily routine, revealing clashes within rooms, through walls and floors. Loveseats, tables, handrails, toilets all bloom palimpsests through surface slips, sound and smell. Like a chopping block that develops cuts and stains over time with use, everyday household objects grow fields that swell and congeal with interaction with the inhabitants of Apt. 35b. The secret lives of Apt. 35b’s objects in space are catalogued as Virtual Smears. The afterlife of Smears exists in its Virtual capacity to “patch” over actual decay. The more a loveseat is used, the more it actually decays, however the virtual smears and residues buildup space dependent on use and frequency.
Shaun Murray
Danai Surasa Uncanny Architecture : Modernities failure The questions of this project are whether it is possible to capture the notion of ‘uncanny’, in moving image, and how one could possibly do so. Broadly speaking, the uncanny is considered obscure. It is hidden somewhere, here and there. It is present, but not visible. We maybe perceive and feel that it is uncanny, but it is almost always impossible to explain or illustrate its existence, form or shape. Perhaps there is no general agreement of what shape and form the uncanny is. My project is then not attempting to give a shape or form of that formless uncanny so much as to make a film project that provokes us to think of the subject of uncanny in our everyday lives. The aim of the project is to explore the dimension of ‘uncanny’ whether it represents in objects or in spaces, in landscape or architecture, in the interior or the exterior, and to demonstrate that ‘uncanny’ through medium of still images and films. While this design project is intended to explore the idea of the uncanny dimension as possibly to be expressed through the techniques of narration and filming, the theme modernity’s failure is chosen to control the overall story of the project. The purpose is to explore the anxiety of peoples in modern society, and I choose what seems to be abandoned spaces in unban landscape in London as the locations of uncanny. The film shot attempts to reveal and represent the uncanny of which inhabitants have become conscious about their architecture and city. How do we film the hidden dimension that architecture and city affect the way in which inhabitants live their lives and cause them to feel uncanny?
Nic Clear
CHIA-HAO TSAI The altering body
a white dress as an interface between the body and its environment
This project aims to construct a white dress as a physical analogy to architecture. The purpose is to understand the relationship of between a body and its environment within architecture. It aims to reflect and record the status of architecture within the body and its surroundings by designing the dress from pattern cutting and making ‘lasts’. The architectural argument of this project defines the white dress as an analogy to architecture. It is to deal with an ‘architectural paradox’ of failure, deceit and distortion of truth. The white dress is a piece of architecture, connected to the spatial condition by body movement. It is an interface to record the status of the altering body moving in a space. Architecture no longer just stands for the ideas we thought it did. In this project, several researches and methodologies are used to discuss the interface in-between the bodies and environments. This project begins with making prosthetic objects from body to intend to establish how to record the reactions between the environment and the body. In the pursuit of discovering the space from a dynamic movement, and developing a scheme in a three dimensional space, the techniques for capturing the fluid status of body motion and scanning of the environmental factors are fundamental in order to establish the relationship between the motion and environments. Then, it is brought to generate the geometry of surface from the dynamic body. Then it extends to constructing a white dress to deal with the pattern cutting and spatial geometries by making mould and casts by designed ‘lasts’ for the relationship of the body and environment, and think about at the moment the architectural ‘last’ is the surface of buildings. And then, the surfaces made from lasts with a feedback system are designed to exposes the relationship.
Shaun Murray
SHIN TSENG BIOPUNK DANDY
“Shin’s final architectural portfolio is an intriguing proposition where a chance, symbiotic infection generated by a slime mould-like organism before the industrial revolution, creates an extended hybrid nervous system with physcial & chemical connectivity that we currently experience with the internet. The result is suggestive of Bruce Sterling’s SF ‘The Difference Engine’ with an organic outcome.” - Rachel Armstrong
Simon Herron
SIN-ING WANG Magnetic Think Belt The works is focus on microwave radiation which is a kind of electromagnetic wave. The energy harvesters device can harvest the energy of microwave from the power station and store them in a bus stop. In additional, they will move and cut the grass in this process. A new path will be created by them which can show us the main trend of microwave radiation in the park.
Shaun Murray
TZE-CHUN WEI Motion architecture
an architectural space construct by motion with surface, light and particle.
This project explores the architecture of motion, the traces left between moments. These are considered as interval spaces in an architecture that is made of complex algorithms that blur and intensify space. It begins with a series of experiments to explore motion and its traces. The idea of a vector field is developed into a golf course to simulate the idea of point to point and its trajectory. The dust house is modelled to record and re-record the motion as traces through the vibration of dust particles. The snake dancer is an idea of the two motion objects that interact and influence the space in between, this is developed as a golf club that remembers the motion of a body, the different rotation speeds of different parts are replicated through the extended surfaces, The project is then extended to explore 3D animation as a landscape that is constructed by surfaces, lights, particles, projections and reflections. In this animation, the virtual camera becomes an agency to visualize and capture the spatial quality of this motion landscape. This is developed in 3 scenes.
A. Floating Projections of Surfaces B. Floating Reflections of Surfaces C. Motion Landscape with Swirl Object
Phil Watson
JI YAO WAVERING ON THE SHOAL —Digestive And Breathing Systems The Digestive System It aims to either sediment the hazardous particles, or convert them into the end products of microorganisms (probiotics). The process will cater to the factors in the environment, such as tide, wind, rain and sunlight, using the sediments and microorganisms to built a restless landscape as well as play the part of ecology defender of the lagoon. The Breathing System Contained in the air near the surface of the water, there are a lot of mineral particles and microorganisms made by the aforementioned digestive system. Especially when there is enough turbulence in the water, the exchange of materials between water and air will intensify. The system aims to inhale the air full of the exchanged materials from the water and let them be more available to the customers, just like what lungs do. The Core Behavior: Making Turbulence To realize the above-mentioned project, turbulence is the most important catalyst. Turbulences in the water can stir up sediments on the riverbeds to realize the process of generating microorganisms, as well as increase the exchange between water and air. The core behavior of the objects is making turbulence by utilizing the natural power architecturally. The Methodologies Turbulence as the Most Important Catalyst/ Digital Simulation of the Flow/TimeBased Research/ Transformation of Natural Power Architecturally Conclusion A new landscape will be formed in between of geological formations and mandate sites in the lagoon, turning the lagoon a restless landscape that responds to the
Shaun Murray
ZHILI XU IN ADVANCE OF THE CLOUD
—An In-between “Rift” Space of The Visual World This project concerns the allegorical space of objects and how these spaces maybe constructed as architecture. Within Max Ernst’s surrealist work called the “Yachting”, the island is stopped and the body talks about stoppage as well. The picture may be separated by different types of Rift space in-between objects. So the whole view is about the allegory of time viewed as the horizon of the observer observing in a temporal landscape of stoppages. That refers to the mortality of the viewer and the objects and their temporality. My composition will be inhabited inside “Yachting” among the space which is formed by sky, boats, sea, island and observer in the picture. Surrealists like to say: “ I don’t want this sky, I don’t want this ground...I would like to take all these things away and make my own.” There are 4 pieces of Cloud far away on the horizon, Cloud Tools shake by the wind while Ground Tools twist by the sea wave. They are together creating cloud stoppages and being projected far away on the horizon as a new view. By the sea there is a sculpture studio for a surrealist at a pier. Tools are inside the wardrobe. The man is observing the Cloud beyond and is going to use the Tools to make his own clouds.
Phil Watson
SAMOO ARCHITECTS & ENGINEERS L&B Tower 890-6, Daechi-Dong, Gangnam-Gu, Seoul 135-839, Korea Tel: 82-2-2184-5114, Fax: 82-2-2184-5901 Apple Tower 175, Jamsilbon-Dong, Songpa-Gu, Seoul 138-861, Korea Tel: 82-2-3400-3114, Fax: 82-2-3400-3915 SAMOO ARCHITCTURE PC The New York Times Building 620 Eighth, Avenue, 38th Floor New York, New York 10018 T. 212.852.9009 / F. 212.852.9074 Contact info : info@samoony.com SAMOO ARCHITECTS & ENGINEERS #714 BurJuman Business Tower P.O. Box 126156, Dubai, U.A.E. T. 971.4.351.6277 / F. 971.4.351.6082 Contact info : :samoodubai@samoo.com SAMOO ARCHITECTS & ENGINEERS #714 BurJuman Business Tower Room 10A77, NO 2299, Yanan Road(W)E Shanghai, China T. 86.21.62360905 / F. 86.21.62360905 Contact info : :54922@samoo.com www.samoo.co.kr/eng
Course Director Neil Spiller Course Coordinator Andrew Porter M. Arch Tutors: Shaun Murray Stuart Munro Phil Watson NIc Clear Andrew Porter Simon Herron
Publisher Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL Foreword Neil Spiller - Course Director Cover Image Shin Tseng, “Biopunk Dandy� Printed in England by Diamondcolour Copyright 2009 The Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording or any information storage and retrieval system without permission in writing from the publisher. ISBN Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL Wates House, 22 Gordon Street , London WC1H 0QB T. +44 (0) 20 7679 7504 F. +44 (0) 20 7679 4831 architecture@ucl.ac.uk www.bartlett.ucl.ac.uk
UCL Bartlett School of Architecture Wates House 22 Gordon Street London WC1H 0QB UK T +44 (0)20 7679 7504 F +44 (0)20 7679 4831 architecture@ucl.ac.uk www.bartlett.ucl.ac.uk