From the Editors, As we move towards the end of the academic year, we focus more and more upon our individual projects, perhaps only engaging briefly with the work of our friends in the studio around us. Yet as we become more introvert, we begin to miss a collective dialogue about our shared practices, concerns and inspiration as a school. While the lecture series, tutorials and seminars provide excellent intellectual stimulation, we find some of our most important breakthroughs towards our understandings of architecture have come from conversations and debates with each other, especially with people with different perspectives and experiences than our own. We’d like to offer something to kick-start a conversation; a catalogue of our journey through Advanced Architectural Design (AAD) from the first half of the year. How we operate in AAD is vastly different to how we have worked before; it is almost a complete inversion of the ‘traditional’ design process aimed at developing a visual fluency to support a unique creative process. The year began with a series of tasks centred around the theme of Arcadia, which served to provoke us into considering architectural effects and qualities independent of programme, site and tectonics. As we returned after Christmas we have been encouraged to investigate structures and architectural
elements - walls, columns, floors, etc. - and it is only recently we’ve been asked to consider a site. Programme is still open for discussion, but seems likely to be optional. This zine is a sample of the studies we have undertaken to explore the qualities of our ‘Arcadias’ from the Autumn semester. The work contained within is rough, unfinished, experimental (but still thoughtfully produced) work-in-progress, a far cry from the polished world of end of year shows - and that’s the idea. We have created this zine because we want to see people less afraid to show unfinished work and openly share ideas that may not directly lead anywhere. We want to see raw thoughts, concepts, sketches, manifestos. We want to read more pamphlets and posters, to participate in open crits with the entire school pitching in their opinions, to attend more exhibitions, participate in more debates and have a chance to see more work-in-progress. We know there is inspiring and challenging work being produced on a daily basis, and we’d really like to see more of it. In showcasing our work in this zine and distributing it through the school (and beyond), we are reaching out to the different studios, specialisations, year levels, and disciplines within the School of Architecture, inviting you to join us in creating a studio environment that is more open to sharing, challenging, and discussing ideas. Rob & Kevin, March 2014
Editors Robert Dutton Kevin Wang
(@robdutton) (@kphw)
MArchD Applied Design in Architecture MArch Architecture
With Thanks To Andrew Holmes // Declan Malloy // Joel Chappell // Nina Shen-Poblote Oxford School of Architecture
Advanced Architectural Design , Autumn 2013
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Et in Arcadia ego Oil on Canvas Nicolas Poussin, 1637-38
Foreword England in the 16th and 17th century dreamed of a lost world, an ideal and unapproachable realm of bliss and beauty. That realm had a name—Arcadia. The virtues this Arcadia cherished were the mirror image of the established order; an overriding belief in the power and understanding of local community; a trust in the past and its customs; a love of nature, not as a commodity to exploit, but as a place in which to find rest and comfort; an independence from the power of central government; and a rejection of commercial values, relying instead on the mutuality of communal relationships. It was an organic ideal, a belief not in exploitation but in the balance of different parts of society. To some extent, ever since, these have been the values of the counter-culture, an underlying thread of idealism, which has run throughout the history of the modern world. To the imaginary realm of virtuous sweetness, Virgil had added another element. Arcadia was an earthly condition and subject to mortality. Death was a part of Arcadia: Et in Arcadia ego. The beauty and perfection were tinged with sadness, and the sadness worked not as the destroyer of the beauty, but as poignancy, an addition to it, a melancholy sense of the transience of earthly things, which served, paradoxically, to enhance them. Before the sleek compendium of good taste conquered the world, there was another Arcadia, a knobblier, more complex, more troubled and more vital thing.
Andrew Holmes, Programme Leader, Advanced Architectural Design
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Collect images from the non-architectural world of Structure, Landscape, Cityscape, Enclosure. Use nothing from contemporary architecture magazines. National Geographic is a good source.
chapter 01 1. Combine no more than 3 images to make a structure in a cityscape. 2. Combine no more than 3 images to make detail of a structure. 3. Combine no more than 3 images to make a room.
The possibilities of infrastructures come from the interrelation of new and old. When these correlate a new meaning of infrastructure is conceived, thus generating a new structural idea in understanding kith.
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A glass walkway leading to a contradicting city of classical structures depicts an idea of looking beyond the norm in different perspectives. An exercise in trying to search and understand Arcadia, the image shows one’s pre-conceptual ideas of having contradicting structures leading to one another, hence to infinite possibilities.
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The coral city expands organically, weaving its way around rock forms. Expanding off the city are shards of solar fields which collect sunlight to feed the city. The collage begins to challenge the gridded ordering of cities against the ordering of nature, suggesting an unordered world made more interesting by its complexity.
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A porous surface acts as a translator between mediums and qualities. Micro-modules feed upon light and sound, processing them through a lattice web of void and structure, leading into an architecture of poche and interstitial spaces in which boundaries and thresholds between void and space are never fixed and always fluctuating.
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Collect three A4 colour images of: Book Covers Authors Titles Pages Words Illustrations Photographs
chapter 02 Recombine them to form your own ‘Never Ending Stories’. Continue to work on them through the year
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Day after day, children seems to disappear into thin air all around the world. Alice must re-enter the wonderland left behind in her youth to save those that no longer exist. Will Alice be able to find her White Rabbit, and bring back those that are lost? The disappearing children can be understood as a loss of child-like sensibilities; the possibilities of Arcadia and the perception of place that is lost as one matures. By returning to the Blank Slate (Tabular Rasa), Arcadia may be found(?)
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Years after the world has reach Peak Chocolate, the supply of cocoa beans has finally ran out. Willy Wonka is left with a working factory and no chocolates to make. In a desperate attempt to save his fortune, he turned penguin farming. However, all is not as it seems... The gruesome tale of humans to penguins within the walls of Wonka’s factory is more sinister than one can imagine.
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Walk in and around the Brick Lane area. Take 6 hours or more. Stop, look, and listen. Go into interesting pubs, cafÊs, shops, churches, and anything that takes your fancy en route. Plan your journey to include at least 10 interesting places that reect your idea of Arcadia.
chapter 03 This is not an exercise in photographing buildings badly. Carefully compose all images. Think what you want each picture to say. A photograph says only one thing.
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The garden offers harmony and relaxation in the centre of the city, but nothing seems to be natural any more. Artificial plants with artificial colours, giving the expression of a garden.
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The visual idea of movement in Arcadia where the character in motion becomes the main focus rather than the still characters on the screen. The series of movements with different facial expressions defines the capturing of the ‘ghost’ in Arcadia. The unreadable image could be visually impossible, as the uncertain image becomes the highlight of the study of what Arcadia could be where the elusiveness distortion of movement is only captured under the effect of camera.
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On the theme of change and mutable objects, I focused on the waterfall. In particular, I was exploring the sensation of looking through water and creating illusions through the different states of the water. This image focuses on the qualities of the waterfall and the different surfaces it has at the different stages of falling.
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This memoir is conceived to describe routines within Brick Lane, and the city. Every piece may be slightly different, but the illusion of choice is insignificant compared to the rigours of the factory floor. Coffee or Tea is the daily life of a worker, of habit, and of repetition. It is not the choice of drink, but our action that is being controlled.
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From the Brick Lane site, collect & pick up paper, ephemera, objects.
chapter 04 Make one or more A1 collages on white or black cartridge paper.
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The Nature of Our Looking. Forever we will search and give our thought to the picture we have in our minds.
chapter 05
One Day Sculpture
Possibilities: Select a location, Dress as one of your characters from your three Never Ending Stories, Pose, Photograph. Or‌.
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A time traveller is traveling from the past in our present in order to explore the city of the future. Nothing seems the same, the buildings, the nature, the materials, the light quality in the city.
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“In the year of 2100, Earth encounters a catastrophe occurrence called “The Fall”, a large apocalyptic explosion. The explosion destroy several parts of the Earth and transform its inhabitant into mutants”. The main character of the story is experiencing a fast growing hair on his body, as well as moving mouth onto his hand and vanishing thumbs from both hands. The circumstances of living in the new lost world, in an abnormal condition, transform the sadness of the mutant behaviour into a greater life of perfect reality (the Arcadia), thus infiltrated the new independent life. The idea of One Day Sculpture character is inspired by the various creatures that exist in Brick Lane, from posters, street arts, pamphlets, etc.
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This planet is light years from ours, far away from the Mother earth, it’s mirrored surface reflecting the real Arcadian world of the past, millions of years ago.
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This sculpture explores the narrative qualities and peoples associations with objects. I visited every shop in Brick Lane and asked them if they would donate an item. My aim was to focus on the idea that objects are not what they are but what they become, and how the stuff around us defines us. I created a ‘swap-shop’ by hanging the bags on trees next to a path with each bag having a name-tag to show who had donated each object. The contents of the bags would therefore be in continual change. The image has been rotated to create the illusion that the bags are floating.
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1 - migration 2 - creation of a narrative environment 3- appearance of the third culture kid (TCK). The pattern being more defined and harmonious along with the stages, but the identity is lost
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Progressions are made within architecture to cater, respond, or anticipate the physical body, still spaces exist independently of these bodies. Tschumi argues there is no architecture without violence, this violence will remain if spaces are continually conceived without the bodies that occupy them. Allowing the structure and the body to engage in a symbiotic relationship to create space, one does not exist without the other. The space created is arguably more intimate, immediate, and flexible. Relieving of the subjectobject problem within enclosed territories.
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Lights, Camera, Architecture! Traces of the movement of the body are captured in light. The limits of the body, of the range of human motion are recorded in the camera. Velocity, position and orientation create texture, line and porosity. Layers of light imply depth, but dimension, proportion, scale are indiscernible. Is the architecture in the light, in the body - or in the camera?
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The model is the interpretation of the fur system from Caribou, the large reindeer species live in the Arctic region. The fur analogy model consists of two layers, the inside layer performs as the dense wool, and the outer layer is the analogy of thick hair which originally acts as an insulation to keep the heat. For the model, white modelling wax is used as the dense wool, so it acts as a medium between the outer layer and the body. For the outer layer, thick wire is used as an interpretation for the thick fur of Caribou, which acts as the heat insulator as well as a body protector.
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chapter 06
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This is a casting from a 3D printed brick purified from the form and element of Devil’s Causeway, which is in a form of irregular hexagons. It accidentally shows how the 3D printer printed it, with the line texture on the surface.
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I began exploring the behavioural effects of materials in water using melted wax. The temperature difference in combination with the materiality of the wax creates a series of forms that act as frozen moments, capturing the kinetic movements in the water. This process of creating instant and mutable structures, which generate their own form, explores my Arcadian idea of a place that is constantly adapting itself to suit the needs of the environment and the occupants.
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‘Dancing is essentially the termination, through action, of a certain kind of symbolic transformation of experience…a dance is a visually apprehended, kinaesthetically felt, rhythmically ordered, spatially organized phenomenon which exists in three dimensions of space and at least one of time. It is articulated in terms of dancing on the level of the articulation of the dancers’ bodies; in the body-instrument space which…is ninety-dimensional.’ It is articulated in terms of a dance on the level of a pattern of interacting forces; the form space of a dance… is the empirically perceivable structure which modulates in time.’ While a dancer’s body is constrained to certain moves when performing, the eyes are as well dancing on a certain rhythm when looking at a still image.
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Model with plaster, metal mesh and dowel rod. It shows a scene mixed with different qualities of material, exploring contract of virtual and solid.
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The model defines an interpretation of different movement made by expressions. One sees the ‘ghost’ movement but not expressing it in definition physically. Ghost movements differ as they progressed in motion giving diversities in looking further into one’s understanding and perception of Arcadia.
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Exploring the qualities of 3D Printed Discs
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A future Arcadia grows in the city. The grid from the metal structures and the scaffoldings from the construction that takes place in the city of London, are creating new spaces above the city. A new artificial nature is growing in these spaces, in order to create new gardens in the city.
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This hand drawing is abstracted from the casting. It shows a scene of the space between two walls, which is narrow and high. It seeks a quality of light atmosphere. I tried to present a scene that is against the light, which makes the edges of the wall blurred and some part of them even disappears.
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Movement, space, and time are the three most salient characteristics shared by dance and architecture. All these three elements are inseparable and must be present for dance and architecture to exist. While Time in dance establishes rhythm, dance transcending time through experience and memory, Time in architecture reveals spatial qualities, architecture transcending time through the collection of memories. 53
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A small man-made damn is manipulating the flow of water; this catalyst creates the waters dramatic energy. Due to this manipulation the leaves are being contained, this structure is then reflecting light.
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An experiment to recreate the lighting quality in ‘Man Manipulating Nature.’ The catalyst for this piece is heat, with melted plastic left to naturally curl, containing an organic form within. A variety of lighting filters are then applied to the sculpture.
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Georgios Apostolopoulos
Wardululu Alsaffar
Thomas Cheek
Hung Du
Robert Dutton
Nicole Elliot
Adam Faiz
Loh Siang Fook
Fatimah Khari
Jungyeon Kwak
Jane Lin
Tuong Bui Minh
Afra Muti
Adhitya Pandu
Ben Russell
Ralph Saull
Iulia Stancicu
Natalie Stangoe
Lu Fang Tao
Kevin Wang