ELEVEN: Back to the Future 2017

Back to the Future

Dreaming of future pasts Foreword by Laura Allen and Mark Smout

The natural tensions and antithetical relationships characterized by the struggle between preservation and progress provide lessons, opportunities and limits for the continuum of landscape and urban histories and, more importantly, determine their emerging futures.

The zenith of preservation is the UNESCO World Heritage List for natural, built and cultural landscapes, cities and monuments, that seeks to record and preserve cities and landscapes, making them, to an extent, future-proof and at the same time inadvertently fossilized in their current states.

The list is as diverse and wide-ranging as Easter Island, 17 works of Le Corbusier, the Statue of Liberty and the industrial ruins of an Argentinian Fray Bentos Factory. Listing provides protection through international law, however, it has also been described as a lethal weapon deployed in the act of preservation’s crimes against cities.

The Venetian Lagoon (the journey’s end of our European trip this year), is striving to maintain its inclusion on the World Heritage List despite a developing battle between tourism and culture.

The city hosts over 600 cruise ships and 20 million visitors per year which, as well as pumping in tourist money into the city, also endanger its physical fabric and cultural integrity in the terms of its UNESCO listing.

Could the construction of replica cities and pseudo landscapes, relocated across the world, be an alternative to the museumification of listed cities such as Venice? These embodiments of Umberto Eco’s concept of ‘Uffiziland’, such as the unfeasibly

blue and chlorinated Grand Canal at the Venetian hotel-casino in Las Vegas are designed to improve on the touristic rather than the authentic ‘experience’.

The opportunity for retelling and recasting of histories through copies and their significance in preservation, is given credence via museum collections such as the Cast Courts at the V&A, which contain collections of historic plaster and wax replicas of monumental sculptural and architectural fragments collected in the 19th century.. Their collection also reveals the contemporary role of copies in the preservation of cultural artifacts and global heritage threatened by war, climate change and societal pressures. The emergence of new technologies such as 3D scanning and digital printing, mean that copies can now be ‘dematerilalised’ to the hard-drive rather than the museum gallery. One can imagine a future reprinting, like a Jurassic Park style recreation of cultural artifacts, cut off from their context and meaning, reanimated nowhere and everywhere even at an urban or landscape scale.

In attempt to recast ‘Wonderland’ and to create instant histories, inspiration for our year’s work included UNESCO’s list of intangible Cultural and World Heritage, model villages, alternative preservation manifestos, fakery, architectural graveyards, demonstration landscapes, cultural migration, monuments and their doppelgangers.

This publication is produced by Unit 11 students on the MArch Architecture programme at The Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL. #unit11bartlett

Preservation Unit 11 queries an archival approach to preservation, seeking to produce a meticulous record of existing cities, landscapes and ideas in order to render them future proof, and at the same time fossilised in their current states. Be that the preservation of the tangible, by conserving and exhibiting essential architectural elements of Venice, or by developing physical methods to preserve the intangible heritage of the GIF. In an increasingly digital world, copies can now be ‘dematerilalised’ to the harddrive rather than the museum gallery. As all physical entities, including the digital, continually ruin - can we ever truly preserve a physical condition?

Intervention Unit 11 projects seek to ‘press pause’ on local social and architectural attitudes towards preservation, and suggest alternative future trajectories which look towards a re-imagining of rural and urban landscapes. Methods of architectural mimicry and copy making in the role of architectural preservation are scrutinised and reimagined to invent new design methodologies which look to steer an existing condition

away from its pre-determined or seemingly inevitable future with a view to initiate a new norm. Whether this manifests as an interruption of the tourist takeover of Venice, by refocussing attention on the local population, or by reimagined facades dictated by visual association and collective memory.

Augmentation Unit 11 projects have explored the process of augmenting, both physically and digitally, onto an existing condition. Physical augmentation allows for the realisation of new conditions and concepts. Innovative ideals, methodologies and technologies create untested conditions for the built environment.

Simultaneously with the success of the augmented game Pokémon Go in 2016, new possibilities for digital communication and physical interaction have been realised.

How can digital augmentation change our built environment and the process of architecture?

As the physical world is held in a state of existence or preservation, customisable digital realties can be overlaid and adapted. The progression of an idea creates unexpected evolution.

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Where Is the Art in Preservation?

By Dr Brendan Cormier Dr Brendan Cormier is the Lead Curator of 20th and 21st Century Design for the Shekou Project at the Victoria and Albert Museum. of ‘forever’. Museums are tasked with keeping things into the unseeable future, making ‘forever’ a concept so unpredictable that we are simply doomed to eventually fail.

But maybe preservation isn’t really about keeping things the same. While stasis may be the prevailing principle, when we drill down into the reality of material things, preservation is more of a Sisyphean struggle than anything else, going to extreme lengths to protect objects only to see them eventually wither away. The truth is, nothing lasts forever. This is nowhere more apparent than in the museum where I work, the V&A, where tireless effort is thrown at fighting the ravages of time. Light levels are strictly monitored, clotheating pests are tracked and eviscerated, and the wandering limbs of visitors are cordoned off.

And still, our objects slowly die. They fall over, break, fade, rot, chip. The problem is the mandate

I’d argue that preservation is still important, but that we need to frame it more as the art of not forgetting, which may or may not rely on maintaining a material thing in order to transmit knowledge. Preservation then becomes what an object says, rather than what it is. It becomes about how we design vessels of communication, transmitters of history, and traces of time, all in an effort not to forget the things we don’t want to forget. This line of thinking can not only open up new lines of inquiry and possibilities, especially pertaining to our increasingly digital non-physical world, but also allows for more poignant critique of our current preservation practices. How many historic buildings are perfectly maintained, yet fail in any way to broadcast a nuanced message about their past? Even worse, how often is preservation reduced to kitsch interpretations of a glorious history that never existed; buildings as historic propaganda? Simply put, in our struggle to preserve material things, we’ve neglected the narratives that we’re broadcasting. A return to narrative and communication, is a way re-instating an art to the preservation field.

PRESERVATION

Is preservation an artistic practice? At first glance it’s hard to see where any creative act might lie in an art hinged on keeping things the same. What decisions need to be made if the goal is to stay as is? Look at the cannon of modern design, and it barely makes mention of preservation, with few, if any of our exalted design heroes having staked out a career in the domain. Instead, preservation is more likely to be characterized by an eccentric assembly of nostalgic conservatives, battlefield reenactors, and hoarders of Victorian ephemera.

Or if I concede to a more generous view: it’s that of earnest people simply trying to hold on to some semblance of history in a fast moving world.

A worthy pursuit, but not seemingly one for the design school.

Recognizing this futility is the first step in perhaps making preservation interesting again, and folding it into the discourse of creative practice.

If all material things eventually die, then all of preservation is an artificial act: an act of careful addition and subtraction, reconstruction and removal. Or in short, we can say all preservation is an act of interpretation. What this line of thinking does is liberate us from the primal importance of the artefact, and open up a debate about more existential questions, like ‘Why do we keep things in the first place?’

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Reality Preserving A POST-INTERNET ARCHITECTURE

By Patrick Horne The Post-Internet Town Hall speculates on which physical architectural functions might remain in a future where traditional architectural functions are increasingly shifting online. It is now possible to work, learn, shop, pray and even fall in love online, whilst the advance of virtual reality technologies is making our new-found digital inhabitation more visceral, socially acceptable and hence profitable each day. The Post-Internet Town Hall thus proposes five architectural functions that cannot exist without physical grounding, united by a civic narrative.

Post-Internet Gallery - With websites such as Pinterest and Tumblr, our modern consumption of art is a hectic amalgamation of images brought to us via an algorithm. The Post-Internet Art Gallery explores how we might reinstate absolute physical curation into an art gallery.

Internet Law Courts - The Internet Law Courts explores the design of a courtroom that tackles the complex geographic intricacies of online law.

1. Travels in Cyber Reality

Cutting a plan and section through a digital environment, this drawing explores the role of the architect in our increasing inhabitation of Cyberspace.

2. & 3. Post-Internet Town Hall

Exploring the panorama as a new form of experiential technical drawing, these drawings attempt to illustrate our newfound crossinhabitation in the digital age.

Facebook Senate - Physicalizing the unprecedented qualities of digital speech as an effective method of democratic debate, the senate gives legitimacy to the online groups that attract far greater popularity than traditional ‘two-sided’ politics.

Technopaganist Chapel - The internet has given rise to thousands of new religious movements, and yet faith is physically catered for through a few rigid models of architecture. The Chapel is a multi-faith prayer space that harnesses the universal physical qualities of religious space into a uniform architecture, free of specific ornament.

The project culminates in an exploration of the panorama as a new form of experiential drawing technique (shown), whereby two-dimensional illustrations are spatially translated and tested through VR technologies. The drawings illustrate our newfound cross-inhabitation between physical and digital worlds, and are drawn from the point of view of visitors to the Post-Internet Town Hall.

PRESERVATION

Post-Internet Library - The internet contains more information that of the world’s libraries combined, and yet the selfemployed seek out workspaces in increasingly popular ‘creative workspaces’ and coffee-shop settings. The library explores the relationship between physical space and productivity.

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Choreographing Dec ay

1. Eversholt Anatomical Models

The models reflect the rebuilding of an archaeological artefact after it has been unearthed.

Here Eversholt Street is disected into a distinctive kit of parts.

2. Torcello Repository

Sitting at the mouth of the canal, adjacent to Torcello Island, the Repository mimics the decaying process of Venice.

3. Torcello Repository

This composite drawing describes the complex balance between the natural decaying process and its designed framwork from various viewpoints.

The Repository responds to the city’s habit of composing new settlements from an array of salvaged materials.

Situated next to Torcello Island, within the sparsely populated northern area of the lagoon, this new elevated island is a monument to the slowly sinking, eroding and crumbling landscape which surrounds it. Known as ‘Laguna Morta’ (dead lagoon) this somewhat forgotten corner is predominately comprised of swamps and salt marsh. Torcello’s Byzantine basilica, ancient baptistery and archaeological museum have to constantly defend against the difficult conditions created by the lagoon’s salt water. The Repository aims to recreate and intensify some of these destructive processes and in doing so will reveal the resilience or weaknesses of traditional Venetian materials and building methods: rubble masonry walls will purposefully crumble, mirroring the damage to the city’s porous brick embankments.

Designed as a series of choreographed sequences, the small details within the building, such as the selection of specific mortars or claddings will activate a series of different short-term or long-term processes. Each operation that encourages decay will be counteracted by a series of maintenance procedures carried out by a repository repair team: sinking bases will be propped, sacrificial plasters replenished and protective netting secured in order to ensure the running of the repository.

PRESERVATION

TORCELLO REPOSITORY

By Ellie Sampson Preserved objects and architectural elements exist within a hierarchy: the past is curated to showcase something with ‘universal significance’. However, both artefacts and architectural components can be taken out of their original context, gathered together and rearranged to create a re-imagined historical record.

The Torcello Typology Repository responds to the way in which museums have to constantly filter information and the ongoing categorisation of artefacts.

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Archiving the Intangible INTERNET PHYSICALISATION FACTORY

By Christopher Delahunt

1. GIF Tapestry

Ascribing value to the GIF, the tapestry physcially manifests fragments of our intangible internet history.

2. & 3. Google Venice

Inside the Internet Physicalisation Factory, intangible artefacts of the internet are montaged into physical tapestries.

Analysis of the GIF file format reveals design rules that can be manifested architecturally in Venice. The language of the GIF is based on pixels and colours. By scaling the GIF, these rules can be used to create digitally charged interventions in Venice, culminating in an internet physicalisation factory; an internet archive that backs-up data physically. The physicality manifests in the form of tapestry, after research into the GIF showed innate similarities between the two representational formats. The internet physicalisation factory collects digital cultural heritage of forgotten internet eras, and backs them up in a tapestry. The tapestry is displayed across Venice at the same resolution of Google Earth asserting Google’s control over the world wide web.

The final drawings of the scheme are designed as both an homage to the windows 95 era GeoCities GIFS and to illuminated manuscripts of the 15th century found on the internet and in the Biblioteca Marciana in Venice, respectively. Combining these two historical opposites embodies the running themes throughout this project: comparing gifs and manuscripts, comparing old-world explorers and new-world explorers, comparing ships and computers and comparing gifs, tapestry techniques and lenticulars, taking us back... to the future!

PRESERVATION

The charter of the preservation of digital heritage states that born digital materials should clearly be given priority among the UNESCO list of Intangible World Heritage.

GeoCities GIF artefacts are no less important than any other visual aspect of human history: they reveal the origins of a now ubiquitous internet culture showing where we have been, and how far we have come. GIF artefacts are presented within a digital treasure chest, the ‘Web Wanderer’s Wunderkammer’, giving value to the forgotten graphics of the old internet. As holograms, the artefacts take on special value; standing out from the infinite amount of data on the web today. ‘The Internet Archive’, a digital back-up of the internet located in a former church in San Francisco, preserves digital heritage. Can Venice can become a ‘internet port’ on a revived trade route along the once Silk Road? (now named Silicon Road) Giving the historic city a new means to once again become a powerful city of trade: trading digital objects, rather than physical ones.

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Commodifying #Heritage

Venice is facing a fragile future as the city attempts to prevent the permanent loss of its physical heritage. The City is battling against rising sea levels, whilst tourism continues to dominate the local economy. Every year, vaporetti disembark alongside the historic Sant’ Mark’s Square, allowing tourists to enter into the sinking fabric of Venice.

This flood of tourists further exacerbates rising house prices and has led to residents deserting the city in droves, which alongside overseas property investment, has left much of Venice’s architecture empty and in state of disrepair.

Venice’s physical architecture must be commemorated, even if the city must resort to the commerce that continues to destroy it.

1. Venice for Sale

A critical look at the commodification Venetian heritage.

Venice’s picturesque architecture will be dismantled in a final act of commemoration, and sold off to the highest bidder at the Venice Auction House. The façades of Venice are like a patch-work, they stitch together to form a textured blanket that depicts a rich and meaningful history.

The windows, doors and balconies are the gems within this fabric and carry importance as the liminal between the public street and private residence. The project critiques the commercial consumption of the City by irrevocably auctioning off the architecture of Venice. The cultural preservation of Venice can only be achieved through the distribution of these integral tangible parts of Venice’s artefacts. These fragments become the city’s currency to trade around the world to foreign states as relics of a city no longer. Individually revered as masterpieces and either hidden away in archives or displayed to discerning crowds, Venice is forever preserved.

PRESERVATION

AUCTIONING VENICE

By Alexander Liew

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2. & 3. Venice Auction House

Imagining a scenario whereby Venice‘s architecture is put up for sale in auction houses around the city.

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Intervention

By Dr Edward Denison Dr Edward Denison is a Lecturer and Director of MA Architecture and Historic Urban Environments at Bartlett School of Architecture.

UNESCO, the preeminent institution responsible for promoting and protecting the world’s heritage, is not immune to the prevailing winds of change. Founded on western perceptions of heritage in the twentieth century, the shortcomings in UNESCO’s practices (from the inherent contradiction of World Heritage designation undermining the very assets it seeks to protect, to the geographic, thematic and cultural inequalities in the distribution of World Heritage Sites) are threatening the integrity and legitimacy of UNESCO’s authority. The integrity of cities such as Venice and Lijiang has been severely compromised by their World Heritage status, while Italy and Spain have more cultural sites on the World Heritage List than the entire continent of Africa.

UNESCO’s World Heritage List reflects the tensions that characterise our age, with some important lessons close to home. The Maritime Mercantile City of Liverpool shares with the ISIS-induced ruin of Palmyra, Syria, the ignominy of being placed on UNESCO’s endangered list for permitting development inside the core zone. A wander across London’s Waterloo Bridge reveals the massive redevelopment of the Shell Centre that threatened to dump the World Heritage Site of the Palace of Westminster on the same endangered list. Of the Shell Centre debacle, Baroness Boothroyd said: “The growing number of tower blocks being planned for the other bank jeopardise the status and integrity of this Westminster site … Noble Lords have

As the debate between preservation and intervention rages in our own backyard, a different approach is being pursued in the unlikely setting of Asmara, the capital city of Eritrea. Since 2001, municipal authorities have imposed a moratorium on all new development in a bid to safeguard the city’s outstanding modernist heritage – not in the form of a Venetian-style museum but as an interim arrangement while outdated planning norms and building regulations are overhauled. For the last four years, the Asmara Heritage Project (AHP) has collaborated with researchers at the Bartlett School of Architecture to prepare Asmara’s nomination for UNESCO World Heritage status so that the moratorium can be lifted and much needed development can take place – the antithesis of the Venetian condition. Last year, this research won the RIBA President’s Medal for Research and in July this year at the 41st Session of the World Heritage Committee UNESCO will announce Asmara’s successful inscription on the World Heritage List.

Asmara is a pioneer not only for being Eritrea’s first World Heritage Site, but also for its rationale in seeking World Heritage status. The city also contributes to redressing the chronic underrepresentation of African sites and modernist sites on the World Heritage List.

These existing and imminent World Heritage Sites share with Unit 11’s agenda the architectural imperative to embrace change and challenge orthodoxies, not through a wilful disregard for the past that poses the type of threats to sites witnessed in Syria, Liverpool or London, but through a rigorous and determined pursuit of excellence. By their very nature, architectural interventions in historic urban environments pose exceptional challenges. To see a Unit rising to meet these challenges in a time of such rapid change is laudable and gives renewed hope for the future of the profession and of our cities.

INTERVENTION

We are living in a time of extreme flux. History is taking place in the present as we question the past and hope for a better future. Change at this scale and speed is comparatively rare and destabilises our relationship with history – societally and professionally. In the heritage sector, the past’s precariousness, whether tangible or intangible, can legitimise the entrenchment, strengthening, and protection of established norms, but it can also stimulate new ways of imagining, interpreting and intervening with historic urban environments. Put simply, intervention can be either backward facing or forward looking.

only to look at the architects’ illustrations for the redevelopment of the Shell site and the adjacent Elizabeth House project to realise the enormous size and scale of what is planned … I am afraid that we are approaching the point of no return. If this place is confronted by citadels of glass, steel and concrete on the other side, UNESCO has no choice but to tell the world that we are failing to meet our obligations. It would be a shameful blow to this country’s reputation, a dereliction of the Government’s responsibilities and a betrayal of future generations.” (Speech to the House of Lords, 26 November, 2014)

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Copywrong MACAU‘S EURASARIE

By Alexander Chapman ‘A World of Fragile Parts’ – an exhibition organised by La Beniennale di Venezia and the V&A within the 15th International Architecture Exhibition, explores the global issue of preservation and how copies can be used to perpetuate ‘material culture’. New technologies of digital fabrication and digital scanning have emerged, challenging the conventions of how we perceive the replica and its ability to preserve or surpass the original.

1. Macau‘s Gashapon

2. The UNESCO Historic Centre of Macau

An elevated perspective view of the phase one masterplan for the historic centre of Macau with four of the new copywrong extensions.

3. Leal Senado Extension

A full isometric drawing revealing the extension to site no.3 Leal Seando; showing a Wardian Case structure protecting the original heritage site with extension on top.

4. Replica’s of Doge’s Palace

13 Replica’s of Doge’s Palace shown in comparative elevation revealing its evolution through typology and scale transformation.

John Nash’s Royal Pavilion in Brighton is a case study for its wealthy collection and forms the basis of this project’s research, archiving a Chinoiserie catalogue and documenting the hereditary mistranslations of the microarchitecture which lie within its many wall. A contemporary revision of the Chinoiseries was realised, exploring new spatial possibilities, experimenting with its ability to further clarify or mistranslate the cultural narrative.

Macau, the East Asian island 40 miles west of Hong Kong, has accumulated new wealth through its rapidly growing casino industry, this year taking on seven times the revenue of the Las Vegas strip. However, this has seen a marginalisation of the UNESCO protected territory, with casinos expanding into its elected buffer zone and reducing Macau’s Sino-Portuguese heritage to mere existence.

This project creates an exportable series of architectural extensions to each UNESCO monument, using the notion of ‘copywrong’ – replicating its heritage architecture and ballooning its process into an ‘UNESCO resort’, whilst protecting the original component in situ using a ‘Wardian Case’ structure. This deals with the wear and tear damage due to cultural tourism whilst also creating a platform for Macau’s heritage to rival the casino skyline using the outlet of the ‘gashapon’, a collectable fad of gaming machines in East Asia.

This is the modern Euraserie; a catalogue of the ‘reversed Chinoiserie’.

INTERVENTION

Creating a platform for Macau’s heritage to rival the casino skyline using the ‘gashapon’, a collectable fad of gaming machines in East Asia.

Historically, the translation of some of these replica microarchitectures, especially between the Orient (East) and the Occident (West), materialized as ‘Chinoiseries’. These are the European interpretation and imitation of Chinese and East Asian artistic traditions, especially in architecture but also include the decorative arts, garden design, literature, theatre, and music. They often contain fragmented stories, purposely and accidentally mistranslated between cultures, often resulting a skewed vision of the East from the West.

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Reoccupying Venice FRAGMENTS OF THE IDEAL CITY

By Milo De Luca

New Venice prioritisies the city‘s urgent residental requirements, rather than satisfying it‘s commercial interests.

Shown here is a proposal for a new typology of housing that sits above the city.

2. Model of New Venice

This model demonstrates the form of the scheme, shaped upon a paper chatterbox in a critique of Venetian’s deteriorating private space in the wake of tourism.

3. Venetian Facade Study

The splitting of the original Venetian building facades and experimenting with the heights of these buildings provide a spectrum of spatial qualities.

Scrutinising the present lives of Venetians uncovers their underlying needs, expressing a requirement for improvement and a prioritisation of residential social activity and amenity spaces, above the celebration of the city‘s decadent deterioration of the existing ancient architecture. The City’s current preservationist approach is beneficial to the growth of the tourist monoculture, and not the residents. Residents are currently in need of a new intervention, able to impose their ideal city vision.

This improved, and appropriate housing for modern living and social activity spaces reactivates a decaying sense of community. It requires a radical response to its increasing ruin, one which is simultaneously characteristic of the existing urban landscape. However, the density of the city‘s urban layout and its position upon the lagoon provides a unique context and constraint to consider. By understanding the exact formal nature of the existing context, an intervention is able to insert itself between the architecture, between the narrow streets, courtyards, winding canals, bridges and stratified rooftops to provide new forms. In doing so, a proposed intervention, by process, may find itself constrained to being constructed as separate fragments, unified as a whole through the introduction of new connections which intertwine with the existing.

INTERVENTION

1. Section Through New Venice

Venice is a city in increasing physical and social ruin.

Flooding and tourism have severely damaged the city‘s integrity, whilst its politicians and UNESCO have exacerbated issues through policies of preservation which aim to retain its historical and cultural identity, in spite of a critical need for city-wide improvement and modernisation.

Crucially, the growing emphasis on the preservation of the city‘s ancient architecture across the last century has been effective for the attraction of tourists, who flock to the city in their millions every year. The reliance on tourism as its principle economy has, over time, created a number of issues. Tourism consumes the city‘s other forms of economies, putting pressure on its deteriorating infrastructure, and creating further pollution, as well as ignoring the requirement for improved, modern housing. Alongside the damage Venice sustains from the environmental issues (derived from its location on the lagoon), these issues have been detrimental to the residential population which, at its highest in the mid-20th century reached over 120,000, has now decreased by more than half to under 60,000.

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CURATING R R WILDERNESS DEVELOPER DREAMS What does the future of alpine architecture look like, and how will these distorted structures clinging onto the farmhouse’s nostalgic memory adapt to a future with a declining tourism industry? Can a new resort typology be developped to safeguard alpine communities through nuanced typology shifts?

A NEW ALPINE CONVENTION

By Ness Lafoy

1. Mega-Chalet Generator

Taking a critical look at the luxury chalet production industry the drawing imagines a cliched kit of alpine parts.

2. & 3. The Rewilding Resort

The landscape and program adapts to the changing snow levels and occupancy of the resort. In the winter months, the logistical framework is hidden from the tourists.

The project takes a critical look at the development of tourism in the Alps, the establishment of alpine architectural clichés and visual landscape cues in an attempt to move towards a new alpine typology which gradually adapts to a future without the ski industry. Can the lucrative industry be used to fund reforestation and species reintroduction projects across the French Alps, gradually re-establishing zones of wilderness to the region?

A new type of resort is proposed, with an equal focus on permanent residents and tourists. Acting simultaneously as the Headquarters for the French Alpine Commission’s efforts to rewild the alps and as a ski resort, the project aims to provide a future-proof alternative to unsustainable resort construction. Guided by Romantic landscape painting principles, pine forest landscape test beds are curated and assembled on site and arranged on the mountainside, providing a reconfigurable and picturesque backdrop to the resort. Each year, the test beds are transported to sites across the Alps and grafted into the landscape to provide ecological stepping stones in fragmented habitats, resulting in a new hybrid alpine landscape, a curated wilderness.

INTERVENTION

The European Alps have fallen into a pattern of large-scale ski resort construction. Aggressive resort development and the infrastructure required to support the industry have had devastating ecological consequences on the region.

The decimation of pine forests and loss of large untouched areas of wilderness has led to the fragmentation of a once continuous alpine wilderness, causing species extinction and a dramatic loss of biodiversity. A 20-year ban on the construction of new resorts ends in 2018, making this a critical time for the region. With climate change rendering the long-term future of the ski industry uncertain, and sites across the Alps ready for development, is there a more sustainable future development model for the Alps, a new type of hybrid resort, which seeks to initiate a collaboration between skiing and the preservation of the natural environment?

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SKI SCHOOL / NURSERY SLOPE/ PINE NURSERY

CHALET - SCAPE ACCOMMODATION ZONE

During the winter months the education areas are used for ski lessons. Under this new Alpine Conventoin ski instructors are also field workers for the rewilding resorts. This could change the way skiing is taught to the next generation, learning about the importance of caring for the alpine landscape whilst learning how to ski.

During the winter months, when the chalet scape is shrouded in a layer of snow, much of the substructure of the chalets and the test bed transport infrastructure is hidden. This provides the illusion of a more traditional alpine landscape, however each year upon their return, the landscape’s composition will have changed.

Ski School During the holidays the education zone operates as a ski school. The building’s adjustable roof ensuring snow does not fall onto the nursery slope zone during lesson hours.

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Chalet - Scape In the winter, snow obscures much of the infrastructure which moves the test beds through the accomodation zone and this in turn allows skiiers to pass through. Orange bumpers are placed on the exposed concrete corners of the chalets, partially disguising their true form and protecting passing skiiers.

Test Bed Maintenance Suite Balcony The holiday apartment’s balcony is partially shielded by the test bed on the upper floor but during storms snow must still be cleared from the balcony.

Caring for the alpine landscape becomes an integral part of the ski lesson. Rather than just learning to use the mountain for sport, children are taught about the fragility of the alpine landscape and included in the resorts efforts to maintain it.

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Everyday, the field worker updates the mountain information board on the shared terrace to the apartments. It relays information about the avalanche risk, temperature and which runs are open.

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Alpine Apparatus The apparatus in the winter is used to tape off the drop into the test bed workshop and manage queues for the moving carpet.

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SKI SCHOOL SKI SCHOOL PINEPINE SAPLING SAPLING NURSERY NURSERY During term time, whenterm fewtime, when few During tourists visit the resort,visit the the resort, the tourists education zoneeducation transforms zone transforms into the local primary school into the local primary school for the permanent residents. for the permanent residents.

During the summer holidays, During the summer holidays, the education zone is used tozone is used to the education run summer courses run summer courses educating visiting and local educating visiting and local families about the Alpine families about the Alpine Commissions efforts at the efforts at the Commissions resort. resort.

CHALET - SCAPE CHALET - SCAPE ACCOMMODATION ACCOMMODATION ZONE ZONE During the low season,During the the low season, the tourist suites and chalets aresuites and chalets are tourist utilised by friends andutilised by friends and relatives of the permanent relatives of the permanent residents. Without theresidents. snow Without the snow layer, the infrastructure andthe infrastructure and layer, true architecture of the resort true architecture of the resort is exposed. is exposed.

ery Slope

Playground / Playin Playgr

ter the pine sapling forest becomes a ry slope for the ski school. The ng carpet transporting children to the f the gentle slope which weves een the pine saplings.

During term time, the p During doubles as a grassy pla doubles field for the local prima field fo moving walkwaymoving is only school hours, and allow school transportation of the p transpo they have beenthey cultiva ha nursery to the landsca nursery workshop next worksh door.

Local PrimaryLocal School Primary School

Chalet - Scape Chalet - Scape During term time the education is During term timezone the education zone is In the summer, the ramps and tracks the ramps and tracks In the summer, used as the local school forlocal the permanent used as the school for the permanent which the forest test which beds are the forest test beds are residents of theresidents resort. Its facade ofplayful the resort.

Its playful facade moved along are exposed changing moved along are exposed changing can be manipulated and used as a climbing can be manipulated and used as a climbing the appearance of the landscape to of the landscape to the appearance frame and the adjustable becomes aroof becomes a frame and roof the adjustable controlled a more augmented, human controlled device for shading thefor playground. device shading the playground. a more augmented, human area. They pass inbetween the pass inbetween the area. They chalet scape platforms.

Without theplatforms. Without the chalet scape cover of snow, monolithic concrete cover of snow, monolithic concrete edges are exposed. edges are exposed.

Test Bed Maintenance Test Bed Maintenance The test bed workshop open in all is open in all The testisbed workshop Suite Balcony seasons for essential maintenence its seasons for essentialbut maintenence but its During the low season,During the holiday the low season, the holiday busiest time is busiest during the summer months, time is during the summer months, suite which is connected the field suitetowhich is connected to the field when new landscape testlandscape beds are test beds are when new workers apartment can be used by workers apartment can be used by designed and constructed in constructed the trench in the trench designed and visiting friends and relatives the and relatives of visitingof friends theto the playground. next Thisplayground. allows for daily next to the This allows for daily residents. residents. lessons in the schools where lessonscurriculum in the schools curriculum where Suite Balcony

the local children work alongside the alongside the thecan local children can work field workers and learn aboutand their resort field workers learn about their resort home. home.

adow Test Bed Terrace Meadow Test Bed Terrace

ng the summer months, Duringthe thefield summer months, the field ker maintains the test bedmaintains meadow,the test bed meadow, worker erimenting with soil types and with soil types and experimenting empting to reintroduce new species in a attempting to reintroduce new species in a trolled environment before they are controlled environment before they are ed to the foresrt test bedtocuration added the foresrt test bed curation ette. palette.

Alpine Apparatus Alpine Apparatus During term time the apparatus During term timelies theidle apparatus lies idle becoming a notice board or signage. becoming a notice board or signage.

3.

A Brief History of Alpine Resortification (extract)

By Ness Lafoy

THESIS

From Roman times until the early 1800s, the European Alps were shrouded in mystery – an unexplored, ‘uncharted wilderness at the heart of the world’s most crowded continent.’ The Alpine region represented a prison-like landscape – a place where outlaws were banished or individuals escaped to live separately from mainstream society and so became the setting for a multitude of horror stories. Rumours of ice witches living in the peaks, an entire alpine alien race and dragons who lurked in the rocky outcrops were widely believed.

Artists such as Albert Bierstadt, J.M.W Turner and August Wilhelm Leu in particular, painted numerous scenes in the French, Austrian and Swiss Alps.

Their paintings employ a key principle of romantic landscape composition; an abundance of layers or coulisses which form defined slices of ground each with their own characteristics, from the foreground to the background. The scenes are painted from a low perspective looking up to the peaks in the distance - from an accessible landscape, a bright flat meadow or pasture, looking up to the distant peaks, the angle and composition portraying a sense of wonder for the inaccessible high regions.

The resortification of the landscape refers to the transformation of the alpine landscape from a sparsely populated, largely inaccessible wilderness to a well-connected network of ski resorts and tourism related infrastructure. To resortify is to take command over the alpine landscape – to add a modern coulisse to the scenery, in the form of man-made augmentations and apparatus which attempt to tame the Alps‘ natural phenomena. In some ways resortification represents the inevitable outcome of the longing for the alpine landscape which developed in the late 1800s. As Marco Armiero wrote on the origins of the ski tourism industry, ‘romantic appreciation and modernization of nature were two sides of the same coin.’It was this contradiction between a desire to experience the pristine landscape and the human interventions that skiers depended on to enjoy it, that led to the construction of railways, roads, hotels and eventually, in the late 1920s just in time for the first Winter Olympics in 1924, the invention of the ski lift.

Perhaps the piste map is the modern equivalent of the Romantic alpine landscape painting, painted

by specialist artists, commissioned by resorts to distribute to tourists. In some ways they are detailed geographical maps, showing each ski run, chair lift and resort amenity along with a detailed key.

However, compared to a topographic map drawn accurately in plan view, it could be said that these maps are much more romantic in their nature.

Compositionally, the piste map bears striking similarities to Romantic alpine landscape paintings with clearly defined coulisses, transitioning from a familiar foreground to the distant backgroun peak-scape. The piste map is painted in some form of skewed elevation view, from the viewpoint of a particular resort. The drawing‘s foreground always depicts the resort town, often as clusters of small farmhouse shaped symbols, on flat land. The mid-ground layer, rises up behind the resort and presents the resortified mountain-side, disected with the green, blue, red and black lines of ski runs and chair lifts. Trees are removed entirely from this layer and the delineations placed on a smooth, white backdrop of the terrain for clarity, when in reality crevasses, clumps of pine trees and terrain variations would obscure much of this from view if painted accurately. Artists paint the pistes as clear cut out channels in a forest cloaked mountain-side representing a clear diagram of deforestation patterns.

If the distracting layer of symbols and delineation were removed from this type of map, we would be left with a painting which depicts the current state of the alpine landscape, one which could be more clearly compared to its historic counterparts.

The maps often depict areas of dense forest which morph into dramatic depictions of high alpine peaks in the distance which, much like the mist cloaked unreachable backdrops of Romantic alpine landscapes, hint at an untouched wilderness just out of reach, beyond the conquered landscape of the resort. These forests frame the resortified slopes, placing them in a psudo-wild context, giving the impression that this is a small patch of tamed landscape in an infinite wilderness when often, in reality, another resort lies on the opposite face of the mountain, in the mirror image of this map, obscured by the curated viewpoint chosen by the artist.

Fig. 01 ctions of buildings on FrenchFore piste ground mapsdepictions of buildings on French piste maps

Fig. 02 Fig. 02 Mid ground depictions of the annotated landscape Mid ground on French depictions piste maps of the annotated landscape on French piste maps

Fig. 01 ctions of buildings on FrenchFore piste ground mapsdepictions of buildings on French piste maps

Fig. 02 Fig. 02 Mid ground depictions of the annotated landscape Mid ground on French depictions piste maps of the annotated landscape on French piste maps

Fig. 03 ctions of pine forests on French Mid ground piste maps depictions of pine forests on French piste maps

4. Piste Map Analysis

The content and composition a collection of Piste Maps from European Ski resorts are examined and catagorised.

Fig. 03

ctions of pine forests on French Mid ground piste maps depictions of pine forests on French piste maps

Fig. 04 Fig. 04 Back ground depictions of distant peaks on French Back ground piste maps depictions of distant peaks on French piste maps

Fig. 04 Fig. 04 Back ground depictions of distant peaks on French Back ground piste maps depictions of distant peaks on French piste maps

1.

DISRUPTING CULTURAL MIMICRY PALAZZO PUBBLICO

By Johanna Just

Building up on previous research and design projects that focused on the perception of images in relation to representation and conventional preservation methods, ‘Palazzo Pubblico’ is a proposal that tries to disrupt the Venetian ‘set’ in order to help the city break free from the loop. As an attempt to reframe the cities fossilised image, Palazzo Pubblico offers the infrastructure for integration and cultural exchange and serves as a test piece for a new association based design method at the same time.

1. Associative Facade Records

The facade of Palazzo Venier is reimagined using forms generated with a visual association sketch game.

2. Palazzo Pubblico

This unrolled drawing of the Pallazzo Pubblico maps the building‘s elements back to their original association methods.

3. Venetian Facade Study

The new associative content is assembled into layered facade models.

The design forms an extension of Palazzo Venier dei Leoni, that hosts the Peggy Guggenheim Museum. The Palazzo was built in 1750 but never finished and constitutes one of the last gaps in the Venetian ‘set’. The special case of Palazzo Venier serves as an ideal testing ground to utilize the Venetian loop as a creative tool and experiment with new design methods.

Every day, the lagoon is flooded with international visitors: can their inner worlds serve as design resource to disrupt the image of Venice?

Creating a link to Venice‘s memory bearing character, the design for Palazzo Pubblico bridges between old and new, stage and audience, the city and its visitors. The designer’s role lays in curating the new architectural elements – gondola signs, combs, harlequin hats and so on – and in developing functional spaces that can cater for a complex program. The design will not only disrupt the set, but also fill the ‘Theatre of Memory’ with new, associative content – challenging existing preservation concepts that have let the city become a static museum.

INTERVENTION

Venice has everything to qualify as a theatre. A set of mind-blowing facades – witnessing the rise and fall of an empire that embraced the whole Mediterranean world, as well as rich traditions and strategies that filled this urban ‘stage’ with life and meaning. However, looking at the city today, the island is perishing under the burden of its own rich history, existing only to fulfil the tourists preconceived expectations as they take the same pictures as each other over and over again. Stuck in a self-referential loop the city is slowly becoming a corpse without future perspectives.

2.

3.

The Lagoon-Loop Scene II (extract)

By Johanna Just

From the off. “[The] city which cannot be expunged from the mind is like an armature, a honeycomb in whose cells each of us can place the things he wants to remember (...). Between each idea and each point of the itinerary an affinity or a contrast can be established, serving as an immediate aid to memory. So the world’s most learned men are those who have memorized Zora.” (Calvino, I. (1997) Invisible Cities, London: Vintage, 13) Marco: Tense. Greenwich Village you say? Interesting, but now that we’re here in front of St. Mark’s… can I just tell you one more thing about Venice as theatre set?

THESIS

Lorenzo: Well, go on then…

Marco: Okay. Do you remember my Professor here at IUAV? He wrote a lot about the ‘Theatre of Memory’ in relation to Venice that was invented by the renaissance scholar Giulio Camillo in the 16th century. (Scheppe, W. and the IUAV Class on Politics of Representation (2009) Migropolis: Venice/ Atlas of a Global Situation, Ostfildern: Hatje Cantz Verlag, 118) Lorenzo shrugs his shoulders. Marco takes his phone, googles for images of the ‘Theatre of Memory’ and hands it over to Lorenzo. Look!

Lorenzo: Not what I imagined it to be like…

Marco: His theatre “is based on the principles of the classical art of memory” and acts as a storage medium of ‘memory places’ hosting a codex of images to be called up by its visitors. (Yates, F. (1999) Selected Works, Vol. III, The Art of Memory, London: Routledge, 138) Lorenzo: Fair enough, but in what sense does this relate to the Basilica?

Marco: Enactment and associations have a long history in Venice: its buildings are symbols of the city’s power and success and were designed to demonstrate this. The facade of Basilica San Marco not only carries ornaments imitating architectural styles of the east, but also incorporates original stolen objects of conquered places. (Foscari, G. (2014) Elements of Venice, Zürich: Lars Müller Publishers, 45) Lorenzo: Right, I knew that…

Marco: This is where a parallel to the ‘Theatre of Memory’ can be drawn: “[The] memory building is to represent the order of eternal truth; in it the universe will be remembered through organic association of all its parts with their underlying eternal order.” Lorenzo seems interested. Looking at the Saturn series depicted in the ‘Theatre of Memory’ it becomes clear how this system works: the special characteristics of the planet are each to be remembered through associations that are directly linked with depicted symbols. (Yates, F. (1999) Selected Works, Vol. III, The Art of Memory, London: Routledge, 138)

4. Venice as a Theatre Set

Presented as a play, this thesis documents the interaction between two characters as they discuss how Venice can be seen as a theatre set.

Venice has always been obsessed with representation, it has a scenographic character – almost like a theatre set.

The city functions as ideal projection surface – through its building technique and its island-character.

4.

1.

PROTESTING ARTIFICIAL AMNESIA AN ACTIVIST ARTEFACT

By Anthony Ko

A castle or a city, that resurrects the vanishing memories and separatist notions, is established along the Frontier Closed Area (FCA) in Hong Kong. It is an artist incubation architecture that provides freedom to the artists to dwell, producing artworks that critique and respond to their uncertain future. Art will embody the democratic and political ideas which the Chinese communists reject, for instance the Hong Kong Umbrella Movement in 2014, and resonated riots in Mongkok afterwards. This is an activist and cacophonic architecture that expresses the dilemma of Hong Kong: the potential loss of freedom and openess of their community.

1. Heterotopic Artefacts

A catalogue of artefacts extracted from Hong Kong, that are then reimagined as architectural elements of the project.

2. City of Activists

The components are juxtaposed into a city that functions as an auction, art incubator and permanent residence.

Artists curate events and activities that are not merely about culture. They inflict conceptual and political thoughts on the underlying meanings of cultures to a place and formation of distinctiveness of oneself. Improvised and spontaneous actions become an art to delineate the indigenous characteristics of each culture. The architecture allows artists to become almost like activists, to influence youngsters of Hong Kong or travellers to recognise and disperse the actual identities of Hong Kong before Communist China‘s erasure on the city’s heterotopic history. Architecture is undoubtedly political, it has to transcend people from living parasitically in a city, into activists who would fend and protect the place from falling into oblivion by the malicious disruption of aggressive powers.

INTERVENTION

During the handover ceremony of Hong Kong from British hands back to China in 1997, the two sides agreed to allow 50 years of ‘Unchange’ to Hong Kong’s political and social system. It implied that in 2047, China’s Communist government could enter Hong Kong and expropriate everything Hong Kong people owned, ranging from land, heterotopic cultures and even freedom of speech. Of course, it didn’t take 50 years for China to begin intervening on Hong Kong’s autonomous governance. Architecture has to evolve into a political work, incubating the people as activists for triggering rebellious activities against China.

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Augmentation

By Dr Rory Hyde Dr Rory Hyde is the Curator of Contemporary Architecture and Urbanism at the Victoria and Albert Museum.

a handful of digital photos, we are now able to automatically create a 3D model of any building using photogrammetry. Sure, the results are pretty ropey, but just like watching 380px video on YouTube, it has it’s own particular qualities, is practically and available to almost anyone.

With this paltry baseline established, the history of television technology could be described as a race for resolution, culminating in Sharp’s $130,000 85-inch LCD screen with 7,680 x 4,320 pixels, released in 2015. But what Sharp didn’t see coming was the revenge of low-res.

The combination of mobile phone cameras, broadband and YouTube, produced a new media landscape that preferred the quick and dirty to the hi-def and polished. Why buy a BluRay disk of Iron Man 3 when you can watch a pirated version for free on your phone? The studios panicked, watching sales of their products plummet, they cried out ‘How will we live?!’

Could architecture be facing a similar crisis?

We have built our business model on producing bespoke one-off products of the highest quality, only affordable by society’s 1%. This was fine while there was no other alternative, but now the very same technology that swallowed up the television is coming for our buildings. Using only

Virtually overnight, every building in the city became open source. We can now cut, copy and paste from the built environment, drop our ‘catches’ into Rhino, scale them up, spin them around, and spit them out with Pepakura or soon - a 3D printer. And what’s more, you don’t need an architecture degree to do it. To begin with these low-res buildings will be considered legitimate architecture, with the AJ Small Projects Awards creating the new category of ‘glitch’. But soon the benefits will become clear to everyone, not just architects, and glitchy house extensions will be the norm. Faceted copies of the Doge’s Palace or the Taj Mahal, cribbed from tourist photos on Instagram and scaled down to 20%, will be tumbling around in people’s backyards, so cheap that they’re left in the street once the water gets in.

Those who can’t afford to print them out will just layer their creations onto the city. Instead of chasing Pokémon, we’ll be diving into the latest avant garde architecture, goggles strapped to our heads. Reality will be augmented, switching worlds as easy as switching TV channels. But sooner or later we might also ask ourselves the same question as the TV executives, ‘How will we live?’

Once the streets are full of the detritus of low-res architecture, 3D printed ornament fading in the sun, a new format will be born. We’ll wipe the AR channels clean, clear out the pixelated room sets, and build anew. Just like we’ve always done.

AUGMENTATION

The Alexandra Palace broadcast tower where the first regular public television signal was broadcast by the BBC in 1936. It’s an unassuming thing, an open truss made of spindly steel, like one leg of an electricity pylon, completely belying its central role in fundamentally transforming culture.

This first signal was broadcast on the MarconiEMI 405, which - although described as ‘high definition’ - gave a resolution of 377 horizontal lines in black and white.

1.

SPECULATING WITH SCALE MINIATUR WUNDERLAND EXTENSION

By Laurence Blackwell-Thale

1. Scales within scales

Exploring the interrelationship of scales in Wunderland through a playful visitor and model set narrative.

Representing people, landscapes and buildings in model craft materials allows both deceptive and perceptible relationships between colour and temperature, strength and size. Seeing a structure made from warm timber can make you feel hotter, even if you are in a cool climate.

This proposal for an extention to Miniatur Wunderland, Hamburg‘s most visited tourist attraction, builds up these layered connections until the visitor is totally engulfed in the scale change. Shared structures span between the visitor walkways and the egg-crate framework underneath the sets. Personal narratives shift between global timezones at a dream-like speed, as hot climates suddenly fuse with a backdrop of real ice or rising steam. Smaller sets interlace with the giant yet miniature slice of the world’s largest mountain, to emphasis the paradox of the building. The building is the model set, and the models are the building.

The material palette, range of interior climate types and therefore the distribution of sets, are all defined by the structural junctions of Everest. The interior is a souvenir to reality that has been allowed to defy conventional boundaries. A visit to Wunderland feels like you are trespassing in another world. Even the facade of the building questions human scale as giant replicas of UNESCO listed elements of its host site are blown up to dwarf the real and create a feeling of uncertainty. Heritage listed materials are swapped for mass-produced replicas that mimic model sprue kits and challenge a flawed UNESCO listing. The foundation of Wunderland is an endless narrative of fantastical fun, as every visitor overlays their own imagination onto the overwhelming number of 1:87 model interactions.

AUGMENTATION

The world of the miniature is a surreal fantasy. A shift in scale from the real to the miniature requires shifting to an alternate understanding of time, strength and physics. To scale the real world to a miniature one would translate into a destructive dystopia, where figures moving at inhuman speeds could carry incredible weights whilst only seeing a blurred out world. Figures would melt from the speed they are moving at and buildings would buckle from an over engineered super dense structure.

2. & 3. Model Scales

Sections of the 1:87 model are viewed at 1:1, as they would be seen in the modelbahn.

87:1 facade elements are shown scaled to 1:87 but are placed onto the model by cast 1:1 fingers.

2.

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1.

RECYCLING VENICE STUDIO PLASTICA

By Beth Bird Studio Plastica is intended to influence and reduce the impact of waste, produced by tourism, on the preservation of the Venetian Lagoon, by augmenting a picturesque Italian landscape into a heaped topography of innovative plastic construction.

Studio Plastica is both a plastic recycling center and workshop, located on the peninsula of a spoil island to the east of Venice. Plastic waste is lifted to the top of the building by an aerial tramway from Venice, and moves downwards from floor to floor, undergoing small scale recycling processes. The studio works to promote Italian craftsmanship, which has declined over recent years, by providing a workshop for designing and creating new plastic products such as spectacle frames, kitchenware, baskets and other items.

1. Plastic Reinforced Tongue and Groove Joint Test

Creating a functional use for Venice‘s waste, the project explored the reinforcement of traditional timber joints using shrink wrapped plastic.

2. Studio Plastica

Shown in section at both night and day, Studio Plastica is a recycling center and workshop that exists to promote awareness of waste produced by Venice‘s tourism industry.

The building not only deals with recycling plastic, but utilises plastic as a construction material. Developing the work of Micaella Pedros from the Royal College of Art, a series of notched timber joints connected by shrink-wrapped plastic bottles were established. This led to further investigation of Japanese joinery, development of CNC milled joints, and the subsequent design of a construction sequence for forming columns and inclined struts from the plastic bottle joints.

The building sandwiches plastic bottles between layers of architectural fabric as an insulating skin. Compressed plastic tiles mimic Italian marble, and are scattered across the facade, allowing light to filter in through the translucent skin.

This showcase of plastic waste serves to inspire us and change the way we perceive plastic as a raw material, as opposed to rubbish. Studio Plastica is a crystalline beacon by day, lantern by night, and a warning to those who visit Venice: come for the experience of breath-taking architecture, but please leave no trace of your presence behind.

AUGMENTATION

17 to 18 million tourists flock to the historic city of Venice annually, leaving behind a vast quantity of waste. In Venice alone, if each tourist buys one bottle of water during their stay, that’s a consumption of at least 17 million water bottles.

2.

1.

PHYSICALISING THE PHYGITAL LOW-RES CITY

By Agostino Nickl

1. Low-Res City Model

The Low-Res City samples systematically extracted squares of Hamburg’s urban landscape, and reimagines them as a tessellation of low-res fragments.

When juxtaposed, the cities test-bed‘s promote a new human relationship between digital technologies and physical craft.

2. The Snorlax Papercast

Reapplied to its habitat, the Pokémon becomes a publicly tangible artefact: the development of the Papercast technique facilitates the making of a guerilla-memorial that allows interaction with the public.

The game‘s popularity suggests a progression towards ‘Realised Augmentity’, in which AR is used as tool for the constrution of the ‘real’. A series of experiments investigated new uses of AR. An ‘Augmented Carving’ technique attempts to conciliate the digital and the handmade. In another experiment, AR was used for the first time as tool for large scale delivery, being employed as interactive – and spatial instruction for building a physical version of Minecraft.

After visiting Hamburg on a research trip, the explored technologies were reintroduced to challenge the notion of ‘smart’ cities: using datasets as play resource – the smart city could get a new layer of legitimation and participation.

For an island community threatened by redevelopment, a new scheme building on the notion of the game as social construct was proposed.

The design language of the Phygital Warehouse – an incubator storing physical ‘game’ resources, as well as their digital counterpart – is informed by 80 samples of Hamburg, mined from Apple Maps. Pinpointing where to grab data the intersections of a coordinate grid overlaying the city, limits the architect’s agency as curator. The 15x15 meter sized samples are used as enclosures as well as 1:1 testbeds for the laypersons to test Realised Augmentity as delivery method.

Low-Res City is a provocation of the image of the city, challenged by the recomposition of mined and physicalised specimens. It is employing new technologies of fabrication and perceptions of reality. Grabbed from the sky, can a shed in the backgarden, a street corner, a field of crops become truer representatives of the city fabric and its phygital moments?

AUGMENTATION

The immense success of Pokémon Go created public awareness about augmented reality (AR) and the phygital – a partly physical, partly digital phenomena.

Making the Phygital Physical (extract)

By Agostino Nickl Through the examination of Pokémon Go, a discussion has been opened up with far-reaching implications. Whilst the beneficial aspects of the gamification of the urban realm are not to be dismissed, questions concerning agency over phygital public space arise: the distribution of virtual game assets form locational advantages that can reinforce existing patterns of neglect and gentrification.

THESIS

Game developers and game designers should embrace the newly-gained responsibility they have acquired over public space, while local authorities find ways to limit and to shape how location-based games affect their communities. Architects and urban planners need to consider that, whether they want it or not, from now on they will ultimately be designing playboards as well as cities.

Does Augmented Reality encourage a modern, purely generic architectural language - a white canvas that only becomes a bearer of meaning through phygital appropriation? It looks like the opposite is the case: Pokémon Go illustrates augmentation at its best, when overlaid onto a rich urban fabric, which can serve as scaffold for future augmentations. Pokéstops work well because their sites are linked in cultural continuity to pre-existing points of interest. A city rich in distinct, memorable artifacts and places forms an ideal playboard.

Augmented Reality games dissolve Huizinga‘s concept of the magic circle and the clear distinction between game and reality, fun and seriousness.

In the age of big data, gaming promises to serve as its natural methodology. Whilst current political systems seem to struggle with the complexity surrounding us, the empowering idea of the game as a social system – building on a rich and ancient legacy – becomes compelling. As citizens of Smart Cities, we need to decide whether we want to be governed by unmanageable growing amounts of data or to collectively play, design and govern as „Smart Citizens“. But this utopia doesn‘t come without threats. As powerful social systems, games always enforce predetermined behaviors. I highlighted how allopoietic games as Pokémon Go reward actions maximizing the collection of usage data. If we commit to gaming methodologies as tools to renew our social systems, we want them to be autopoietic: if the magic circle is everywhere, it is crucial to create spaces to step out of it and democratically reassess and adjust its rules.

The phygital challenges ahead of us are too complex to be tackled by separate disciplines in isolation. As architects, we need to connect the physical component of our profession with the virtual one of game and interface designers.

Forming interdisciplinary teams together with local communities, social scientists and authorities, we can create frameworks in which Smart Citizens can assert their agency upon the urban realm. Games hereby open our eyes for what our cities should be: adaptive environments, responsive to individual needs, and continuously shaped by feedback loops between ideals and surrounding reality.

An encountered Pokémon doesn’t leave any trace on the physical city fabric it occupied - it is a fleeing, personal encounter only perceivable through one’s smartphone. A guerrilla installation could create awareness for their phygital presence by turning them in static objects, physically weaving them into the urban fabric. Like other memorials, they would augment the notion of the passerby.

A Snorlax that was encountered near the Bartlett School of Architecture was therefore rebuilt in 1:1 scale as paper model and placed at the point of its appearance. The function of the smartphone, once used as device to augment reality, was flipped: using photogrammetry software, it was employed to perceive reality. Having obtained a 3D-scan of the reenacted scene, a technique borrowed from game development, the downsampling of data into low resolution mesh keeping a high resolution texture, forms the basis for a newly developed crafting technique. It allows 3D-scans to be turned into cheap, fully textured paper memorials. These Papercasts join the virtual and real: the leaves and cigarette butts on the pavement have the same grade of reality as the Pokémon itself.

Papercasts form a tangible, but hollow representation of phygital moments: Augmented Reality becomes Papercast Reality. Once reapplied to its habitat, the Pokémon becomes a publicly tangible artifact: the development of the Papercast technique allowed to build a cheap guerillamemorial that allows interaction with the public, as starting point for a discussion about the digital overlay lately occurring in our cities.

2.

3. Augmented Carving

4. Augmented The Augmented Carving technique attempts Blockscapeto conciliate the digital and the handmade. AR

TEST #1 Using augmentation as a tool for accurate AUGMENTED large scale delivery to a physical CARVING reproduce version of an idyllic

This technique attempts to combine the digital and the handmade.

AR hereby is used as interactive guideline, the augmented 3D model is used as constant reference.

hereby is used as interactive guideline – within a block of limewood: the augmented 3D model is used as constant reference, significantly increasing the ability to get proportions, dimensions and depths right and aiding the controlled substraction of material.

scene modelled in Minecraft.

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4.

RECONNECTING REALITIES SANT‘ ALVISE LANDSCAPES OF HEALTH AND PLAY

By Emma Colthurst

1. The Play Tower

The allegorical brick creatures throughout the scheme become playful architectural moments and key digital markers within the hospital and gardens.

2. The Entrance Archway

The reborn arch transitions from classical colonnades through to broken arches and abstracted roof forms as the tiered orders narrow and progressively abstract to create the randomization and detail essential for the digital world.

Located within the social hub of Sant’ Alivse, the hospital weaves from a paediatric extension of the Hospital Fatebenefratelli into a series of community gardens, allowing Venetians the privacy to play, communicate and connect. Visitors chase personalized digital realities through the unfurling brick landscape as framed viewpoints are digitally processed. The allegorical creatures throughout the scheme become playful architectural moments and key digital markers within the hospital and gardens. The physical is consequently rebuilt through digital perception and a new architectural vernacular is born. To construct this vernacular, the scheme’s form and materiality progress Venetian architecture, and fashions a brick landscape with a reimagined Venetian ‘arch-order’. The reborn arch transitions from classical colonnades through to broken arches and abstracted roof forms, as the tiered orders narrow and progressively abstract to create the randomization and detail essential for the digital world.

To reintroduce the revered culture of Venice and honour historical principals, the Italian Renaissance Garden is reimagined through joyful community gardens. The paediatric ward and healthcare centre become the ‘villa’ and central axis to the perspective garden’s grid.

The community arrives through picturesque gardens with secretive grottos, spectacular fountains, water tricks and looming allegorical creatures that delight and surprise. This fantastical landscape becomes a progression of Venetian culture, community and architecture through the perception of digital and physical reconnection.

AUGMENTATION

Venice qualifies as the ‘Sinking City’ both physically and metaphorically. Venice’s youngest generations are alienated from the world’s physical and digital developments, and in later life leave the Venice Lagoon for opportunities on the mainland and beyond. Can Venice recapture the distancing interests of future generations? In a progressively digital world, augmented reality (AR) projects the digital onto the physical by ‘reading’ the user’s environment. AR is subsequently utilised in a generational social experiment to form a digitally readable architecture that reconnects Venice’s ‘realities’. Through a fantastical landscape and children’s hospital, Venice’s unique culture, community and architecture come together once more in an experimental scheme, shielded from tourist activity.

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YEAR 4

GRADUATING

Beth Bird bird.bethany@gmail.com

Alexander Chapman alexchapman91@me.com

Laurence Blackwell-Thale blackwellthalelaurence@gmail.com

Christopher Delahunt chris.j.delahunt@gmail.com

Emma Colthurst emma.colthurst@hotmail.com

Milo De Luca contact@miloaydendeluca.com

Patrick Horne patrick-horne@hotmail.com

Johanna Just j.just@ucl.ac.uk

Alexander Liew lexliew93@aol.com

Anthony Ko antkochunming@gmail.com

Joe Roberts josoephwgroberts@gmail.com

Ness Lafoy nesslafoy@gmail.com

Ellie Sampson ejs_92@hotmail.com

Agostino Nickl agostino.nickl@gmail.com

TUTORS #unit11bartlett

Laura Allen Mark Smout smoutallen.com Rhys Cannon grufflimited.com

THANKS Unit 11 would like to thank our many critics, contributors and benefactors: Rhys Cannon (Gruff Ltd.) Foster Structures Ali Shaw at Max Fordham

Brendan Cormier

Rory Hyde

Tania Sengupta

Edward Denison

Zoe Laughlin

Tomas Stokke

Stephen Gage

Holly Lewis

Gwen Webber

Dan Hill

Peter Liversidge

Patrick Weber

Joseph Grima

Luke Pearson

Elly Ward Morris

DESIGNED & EDITED BY Emma Colthurst Patrick Horne Ness Lafoy