MacMag 45 2019/2020 by The Glasgow School of Art

Mac Mag 45 /

2020 The Mackintosh School Of Architecture

ISSN 199567

2019

MacMag 45

From the Editors

Alesia Berahavaya Annie Higham Connor Doyle Fredrik Frendin Gabriella Togni

This year has certainly been a rollercoaster at the Mac, as it has been for most in the city and indeed the world. The year began with a sense of empowerment; as swarms of students gathered on Scott Street armed with homemade placards and optimism, eagerly waiting to join the leagues of Glasgow citizens passing at the bottom of the hill. This was Glasgowâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s addition to the September 2019 global climate strikes. Millions of people across the world joined the global voice demanding action to curb environmental destruction. It seemed as though the planet was getting a lot louder, with images of pink boats and the rise of Extinction Rebellion still very much prominent in the memories of people across the country. But not all the noise was climate related. Protests in Hong Kong and subsequent violence reverberated throughout western media, as Brexit negotiations dominated the UK news. This felt like the year that everything was going to change. Tasked with selecting a theme for this yearâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s MacMag, the editorial team deeply felt the sense of apprehension and demand for change that was so evidently affecting people across the globe. Both of these were tinged by an optimistic belief that the status quo can shift if we, the people, make our shared voice heard. From this, the

Letter from the Editors

editorial team wanted to explore the positive progression that architects and designers are making within the built environment, and thus focus on the theme: Proaction: how emerging architects are confronting the issues of today’s precarious world. This edition sets out to explore the ways that current students, tutors and practitioners are responding to the issues we face today, and to question whether architecture can drive change beyond the built environment. Little did we know that the year would bring about even more significant changes to the lives of the students, with the closure of the beloved Vic Bar, nationwide university staff strikes, and the Covid-19 viral outbreak that has paralysed the world, forcing the school to close its doors early for the remainder of the academic year. With that in mind, this year’s publication will be the first fully digital issue in the magazine’s 45-year long history, and is released in tandem with the launch of the Mackintosh’s first fully digital degree show. We hope it will give MacMag and the work of the students the opportunity to reach a substantially wider audience that ever before. The year has also been hit with sadness at the Mac due to the loss of respected tutor and alumni, Mark Baines, who sadly passed away after a short illness. Mark was part of the MSA community for nearly 50 years, and was the creator of the original MacMag, editing the first three issues himself in the 1970s. In this issue we hope to capture the feeling of this moment in time, and how we as designers are trying to create positive change in these precarious yet seminal times. We hope that we can persuade our readers to share with us in this provisional sense of optimism for our future.

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Letter from the Head of School Sally Stewart

Head of the Mackintosh School of Architecture

Things Changed Earlier this year I was asked if I would write an article about the Hillhouse in its new context of the Box created for it by Carmoady Groarke. The Box is a response to the threat to its existence brought about by a combination of its technical specification and climate change that has amplified the legendary Scottish west coast weather. The Box is a temporary response to an extreme situation, but one that mirrors that those that we are encountering with increasing regularity and ferocity and in many contexts. As it happened, I had to write my piece while visiting a school of architecture in Perak in the North of Malaysia for the RIBA. With no distractions in the evening (the town seemed to shut down after 7pm), once I had managed to link my Ipad to my phone and connect to the outside world, it was relatively easy to complete my research, order my thoughts and edit the piece, while making the deadline set back in London. During the day we saw student projects based in the tropics, and every afternoon we were reminded of where we were when the daily downpour brought some equilibrium back to the campus, although it played havoc with the drawings hanging in the exhibition. Drawing paper and humidity donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t get along. Each evening after dinner we returned to our rooms, having exhausted the possibilities the Hotel and the adjacent supermarket offered, to what is now

Letter from the Head of School

familiar as a form of self-isolation, and one that as social animals we found odd to say the least. At the beginning of this session it seemed that the biggest challenges we would be tackling would be those around the climate emergency. That’s not to say the climate emergency has gone away. Far from it, it has only have been pushed from centre stage by something apparently more immediate and personally threatening. There is something to think about there, do we only act when things impinge on us personally? I’m writing this sitting in what has become my new office. I can see colleagues every day but haven’t been in the same room as any of them for over two months, and I’m missing them. My short commute has disappeared but the time regained has been absorbed in the apparently continuous round of Zoom calls and on line meetings. I know I’m fortunate to have what I need to be able to do my work form home, enough space so I am uninterrupted, and at the same time can step out of the office anytime I want to, and a couple of cats who regularly monitor meetings. So while I can still function, I’m acutely aware of what is missing, and that what passes for normal at the moment is no substitute for what we do, think and produce when we are working and thinking together, exchanging ideas and shaping the future. Over the past two months the decisions we have had to take as a school that sometimes been unprecedented and sometimes seems extreme, but which still focus on the Mackintosh School of Architecture being the recognisable long after we have worked out how to deal with COVID-19. So for the present, won’t be able to celebrate the end of the year or graduation together with family and friends. We won’t be able to drift through the degree show and take in the work in the normal way, but we will be able to immerse ourselves in the Graduate Showcase and direct many more people to see the extraordinary work that has been produced. We won’t have a hardcopy of MACMAG 45 on our shelf but we can still enjoy it virtually – a real achievement by the MACMAG team. We may even have time on our hands, but be unsure what to do with it. Things have changed, but just like the Hillhouse, the Mackintosh School will still be there waiting for us to get back together. I hope its soon.

MacMag 45

Tribute to Mark Baines

Johnny Rodger Professor of Urban Literature

It is with great sadness that we hear of the passing away of Mark Baines. Mark was part of the Glasgow School of Art for nearly 50 years and below his colleague and friend Professor Johnny Rodger shares with us Markâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s important role in architectural education and practice.

Tribute to Mark Baines

As an esteemed and respected teacher, practitioner and critic, Mark Baines played a distinctive and vital role at the heart of architectural culture in Glasgow and Scotland in general. Any comprehensive list of his important achievements and his experiences could never be detailed in the space available here, and his place in Glasgow life was a unique one. His long connection with the Mackintosh School of Architecture started in the early 70s when he was amongst the first cohort of full time architecture students at his beloved Glasgow School of Art. After going out to work as a practicing architect for a few years, he returned to teach in the School in 1982 and he taught there right up until 2020. Generations of students were influenced by his encyclopedic knowledge of the field and his quiet, patient, insightful and inspirational analyses which opened up a whole new spatial and structural world to them. He was the critical eminence grise behind the student edited annual MacMag, and he guided and oversaw the production of that publication which has refined and exposed the creative spirit of the Mac students since 1974. Public recognition of his position as a towering figure in the pedagogical culture of the Mac came when at the Royal Incorporation of Architects in Scotlandâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s annual Design Tutor of the Year Awards in 2013 he was given a Lifetime Achievement Award. After MSA, Mark started his professional career at the firm of Gillespie Kidd and Coia. The firm had a long association with teaching in the school going back to the 1920s and arguably longer, and Mark joined them as they were at the cutting edge of the rebuilding of the country after WWII. His experience there under the tutelage of Isi Metzstein and Andy MacMillan, set the standards for his own life as an architect and architectural teacher in terms of the fundamental importance of drawing, the vision of the discipline as a collaborative one through the methodologies of the studio, and the necessity of a discursive critical approach to the work. Mark went on to work with other firms like Ian O Robertson Architect and Ian Bridges Architect through the eighties and onwards , especially on housing

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projects, and in 2007 completed the design and construction of the massive Merchant Building – a contemporary response in scale and material to the historical setting of Glasgow Cross – with his firm Gholami Baines. As a critic Mark Baines played a prominent role as a public intellectual, writing chapters and articles for magazines, books and catalogues, putting on exhibitions and giving talks to innumerable groups and societies. Although his knowledge of architecture and architectural history was inexhaustible, and his moral and ethical discourses on where we live and how we do it drew a broad civic public, he became particularly well known for his critiques in a few specialist areas. After working with GKC and studying their work he became one of the acknowledged world experts in the field, writing extensively on the importance of their work in an international sense. Among the exhibitions he curated on the GKC work, his 2007 one drew the biggest viewing public that The Lighthouse has ever had for any show. He was also an authority on the great 19th century Glasgow architect, Greek Thomson, wrote extensively on his work, campaigned to save numerous of his buildings, and was Chair Person of the Greek Thomson Society. Although his own tastes and indeed practice were of a contemporary not to say modernist outlook, Mark Baines worked tirelessly to broadcast to the world the genius of Thomson’s work and his importance to architectural history. Mark was a respected and admired colleague, and was recognised by his fellows for the perspicacity of his vision, the originality and acuity of his judgment and the consistency of his approach. For many people he embodied the successes of the studio system at the Mackintosh School of Architecture, as a humane teaching and learning environment. Generations of students and colleagues from all around the world have been humbled then inspired by the breadth of his culture and his willingness to share it. He will be missed greatly at The Glasgow School of Art to which he was totally committed as a creative and collaborative institution.

Tribute to Mark Baines

Contents

MacMag 45

Foreword

Manifesto

In Conversation with Jane Wernick

21st Century Raw Earth Architecture

Interview with Roger Boltshauser

The Journey

Stage One

Stage Two

Stage Three

Uniting the MASSes

I like how they do things here

Prize Winning Student Work 2019

Alumni Spotlight: Louisa Bowles

Friday Lecture Series

An engineerâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s perspective on activism

Earth architecture as a way towards a dialectic between nature and humanity

Raw earth in professional practice

Architectural Education Pathway

Going on exchange during a global pandemic

New modes in practice

Contents

The Invisible Architecture of Society

108

Where have students worked?

110

Stage Four

112

Domesticity & Labour Urban Housing forum

124

The Egg

130

Stage 5

132

Investigating Antwerp

148

Populism, Pluralism and the Post-Political City

154

Scotlandâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Anthropocene

162

Interview with Colin Porteous

168

1970-2020. The Bourdon at Forty

186

Closing Remarks

The architectâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s role: social structures and conventions in the public realm

The empowering effect of a self build project

Our manipulated landscape

At the forefront of environmental architecture for three decades

MacMag 45

Proaction: How are emerging architects confronting the issues of today’s precarious world?

1. GSA students take part in School Strike for Climate. Alesia Berahavaya. 2. Mouvement des gilets jaunes. GETTY IMAGES 3. Hate Zine Issue 6. ‘The Death Issue’. https://www.hatezine. co.uk/buy/hate-zine-issue6-the-death-issue

Manifesto

MacMag 45 sets out to explore the ways current students, practitioners and tutors are

responding to the issues we face today and to question whether architecture can drive change.

MacMag 45

In Conversation with Jane Wernick An Engineer’s Perspective on Activism Interview by 14

Connor Doyle Gabriella Togni Fredrik Frendin

Jane Wernick CBE, FREng is a structural engineer, passionate about projects that give delight. Her impressive portfolio includes projects all over Europe and North America, including Glasgow’s very own BBC Scotland building, and she has collaborated with some of the most recognisable leading architects. Jane started her career working at Arup, where she most notably designed the structure of London’s iconic landmark, the Millennium Wheel. She founded her own practice, Jane Wernick Associates, in 1998, and has gone on to win a number of awards throughout her professional life. In recognition she has been awarded a CBE and achieved Fellowship of the prestigious Royal Academy of Engineering (FREng). Jane has delivered lectures at universities around the world and her career includes teaching roles at several institutions, like the Harvard Graduate School of Design, the Architectural Association and a visiting professor at MSA. She is an advocate for change within the built environment and has been a member of think tank groups The Edge and RIBA Building Futures. Following her talk as part of the ‘Future Is Unwritten’ lecture series at the Mackintosh School Of Architecture, MacMag sat down with Jane to talk about her career and the future of the profession.

In conversation with Jane Wernick

MM: You founded your own company, Jane Wernick Associates in 1998 after having started your career at Arup. Was approaching work with your own aims in mind the motivation for setting up your own practice?

JW: I had a pretty good time with Arup; I went to Los Angeles in 1986 and set up as a satellite of the San Francisco office. I then went back to London in ‘89 and was made Associate Director, which is what you might call an adjectival title Director, so it’s not listed in the company’s house. Over the following years I saw a lot of my peers being promoted to be Directors. They didn’t ever make me a Director. By the time I left Arup I think I was 45. I didn’t want to stay there getting bitter about the fact that I hadn’t been promoted. In the end, what happened was that I had worked a few years previously on a possible project with David Marks and Julia Barfield [of Marks Barfield Architects - principle designers of the London Eye] for the Met Office that was going to be a visitor centre with a spire above it. It was a lovely project, but unfortunately it had stopped. A couple of years later it seemed that it might go ahead, and David and Julia said to me that they’d like to work with me on it, but not through Arup, so they kind of encouraged me to leave.

Jane Wernick CBE, FREng

When I left Arup’s office in LA, I did a sabbatical at the Graduate School of Design at Harvard and met various people who introduced me to teaching in the UK when I came back. I ended up doing some teaching at the AA [The Architectural Association School of Architecture].

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One of the things that had happened after I came back from LA, was that Peter Rice [the renowned structural engineer at Arup] got ill and I was asked to look after virtually all of the projects he had been working on with Renzo Piano. Peter also introduced me to Zaha [Hadid] and I was being invited to give lectures in different places. In fact, I’d worked on a competition with David Chipperfield for the Venice Cemetery Island, and when I was leaving Arup, David said he would like to carry on working with me. Zaha also said that she would like to work with me. At that stage, nearly all of David’s work was abroad and he was collaborating with architects in whatever country the project was in, so that worked out quite well for me, as I could do the same. Although at the time I had a tiny practice of just myself with a couple of structural engineers on a consultancy basis, we were able to collaborate with the local engineers wherever the project was. I worked on the competition for BBC Scotland with David [Chipperfield]. So overall I was lucky that I had quite a good transition. In particular the BBC Scotland was a huge project for a minuscule firm to be involved with. I think Arup were quite shocked that I left. At that stage they had never made a female structural engineer a Director; in fact, they did make one almost immediately after I left. My motivation for leaving was really that I wanted to feel valued.

View from one of the Millennium Wheel’s observation pods. Design by Marks Barfield Architects, with Arup.

In conversation with Jane Wernick

MM: You had these incredible relationships with these architects and because of your role at Arup you were then able to take these relationships further, but it’s almost like an opportunity that most people wouldn’t have…

JW: I definitely feel gratitude to Arup for those introductions and those experiences. I was very lucky that I met Peter so very early in my career. He liked unusual people, and just by being female I was unusual [Jane laughs].

“The most important things about collaboration are trust and respect. That doesn’t mean you have to have the same opinions as your collaborators, but you have to respect that they care about what they are trying to do. That’s kind of ethos as opposed to aesthetics. I can work with people who have a different aesthetic approach to things, so long as they care about the quality, and the impact of the building on its environment and the people who use it.” MM: Is it important to you to have the same ethos as the architects you are collaborating with?

JW: There are two aspects to this - what do you share with the people you’re collaborating with, and your personal feeling about the work you take on. I think the most important things about collaboration are trust and respect. And that doesn’t mean you have to have the same opinions as your collaborators, but you have to respect that they care about what they are trying to do. That’s kind of ethos as opposed to aesthetics. I can work with people who have a completely different aesthetic approach to things, so long as they care about the quality, and the impact of the building on its environment and the people who use it. I’ve not really worked with developers. It becomes kind of self-fulfilling in a way because I’m technically not someone who looks like a “suit”. So I haven’t reallly had developers say they want to work with me on large commercial projects. One’s personality does influence the work you end up with.

MacMag 45

MM: It takes quite a lot of faith in your own abilities, especially for small practices starting out to be able to say ‘no this doesn’t align with what I want to do’.

JW: I don’t remember ever needing to say that. It’s not like people were asking me to do projects I didn’t feel comfortable with. It didn’t arise which is maybe strange. There’s certainly been a couple of times where I’ve collaborated with someone and I thought ‘well I’m not going to go out of my way to collaborate with them again’. But they probably felt the same, so I haven’t had to say ‘no thank you’. By the time I get to be working on a project I already know the architect. I suppose the only exception to that might be the Living Architecture houses where we got the commission through being recommended to the client, Alain de Botton, who wanted to have the same consultants for all of the houses and the architects would be different. We [Jane Wernick Associates] didn’t necessarily know the architects beforehand, but we knew there would be good quality architecture; that was the whole premise of the houses. So that wasn’t a struggle.

“We have an obligation to be both engineers and citizens. We can’t separate the two.” MM: You’re often quoted as saying you like to do projects that “give delight”. In the Living Houses was there more of a shared goal than in other projects?

JW: Yes I suppose so, because Alain’s idea was questioning why doesn’t the British public want to buy modern houses; why isn’t that their aspiration?’ In the States and mainland Europe, that tends to be what people want. He postulated that perhaps the only modern architecture people experience in the UK is civic architecture. So he had the idea to build these holiday homes that people could experience, by living and staying in them overnight, and so see how good a modern building could be. The whole purpose was to convince people that these would be delightful places to be in. So yes it was great from that point of view.

MM: The Kew Garden Walkway is another project that people really respond to. Why do you think that is?

JW: We had a great collaboration with the architects, particularly Julia Barfield, and Tony Kirkham, the chief arboriculturist at Kew, and David Marriot who ran the project’s steel fabrication company. David and Tony got on really well and obviously they had to collaborate on the building of the walkway. The tree surgeons would have to climb up the trees and move branches away and all that sort of thing… It was always

In conversation with Jane Wernick

The Kew Tree Top Walkway at Kew Gardens, London. Design by Marks Barfield Architects, with Jane Wernick Associates.

the goal that the trees should be the star of the show that our structure should not be competing with them. I do think the choice of material - we used weathering steel which does not need to be painted - turned out to be one of the wonderful things about the project, because it just blends in so well with the colours of nature. Because you can’t get rolled sections in weathering steel we had to use fabricated sections, and could therefore make tapered pylons, with a triangular cross section. I really like that cross section, because it looks so sharp; I’m rather against circular hollow sections as a structural form, because they look so blobby. The structure itself is visually pretty light. The whole notion of taking people up into the tree canopy… that was Tony’s idea; It was a really nice thing to do. There are not many places where you can do that. MM: You gave a talk here at MSA’s ‘Future is Unwritten’ lecture series, during which you spoke openly and passionately about the climate crisis. It’s been one of the only lectures as part of the series that has tackled the crisis head on.

JW: In the early 80s, Arup took on a project at the Trident nuclear base at Faslane; and I heard about it because suddenly Arup Associates, which was the part of Arup that had architects in it, were up in arms. 80% of them signed a petition saying Arup shouldn’t have taken this project on. I was speaking to my engineering colleagues and some of them were saying, “Oh look we’re engineers first, we shouldn’t be political”. Others were saying “Well, we have to have these weapons, so we shouldn’t say that we won’t take part”. I felt

MacMag 45

terrible about it and I wrote to Ove [Ove Arup – founder of Arup Group Ltd] and all of the partners, saying that I didn’t think this is what Ove talked about in his so called ‘key speech’. It was a speech he [Ove Arup] gave to the firm in 1970, where he spoke about moral principles and the wellbeing of the staff. In fact, if you google ‘Ove Arup key speech’ you can easily find it. Arup give a copy of it to everyone who joins the firm. It was good that we were allowed to express our opinions. And apparently Arup [Ove Arup] himself threatened to resign over it. It was around about that time that I became really clear in my own mind that we have an obligation to be both engineers and citizens. We can’t separate the two. In fact, I gave Jane Wernick Associates to an employee benefit trust, and I made it a condition, in a separate agreement, that for the life of the firm they would never take on either nuclear or military work of any sort. I think it’s important that no one has to work on a project that they disagree with.

“Architects actually get better breadth of teaching than engineers do. But no one is getting enough on climate change. I think it’s really important.” MM: That sounds similar to the Architects Declare movement at the moment.

1. For more information please visit: www.leti.london

JW: I’m very happy that in parallel nowadays there’s Engineers Declare; I think there’s even a Client’s Declare, and they are all adopting a very powerful set of declarations. And the other thing that’s been happening is the London Energy Transformation Initiative [LETI]1. One of their founders now comes along to our Edge Debate2 meetings, which is great! Just last week, they launched a Climate Emergency Design Guide, which they were helped to develop by CIBSE [Chartered Institution of Building Services Engineers] amongst others. It’s been downloaded thousands of times already. You can download the design guide on the LETI website . There is also an Embodied Carbon Primer beside it. These documents should be embedded in education now. We need to make sure that people are teaching [these ideas]. Architects actually get better breadth of teaching than engineers do. But no one is getting enough on climate change. I think it’s really important.

In conversation with Jane Wernick

MM: During your talk at MSA you spoke about urbanisation in terms of metrics, which as architects we’re not discussing in academia. For example, embodied energy per meter squared, or net vs gross floor area. Are there any broad points that we need to consider when we’re designing buildings for the future?

JW: There are so many disadvantages to tall buildings. It’s not just the energy; it’s the social aspects. I can’t see why we should go so high. I’ve become more entrenched in this view over the last few years [JW laughs]. I also think we should be campaigning for proper legislation to stop people buying flats that they keep empty as investment vehicles. Surely that can be dealt with by some kind of tax regime. We need economists to help. If we didn’t have those empty properties in London, we possibly wouldn’t have the housing crisis here, It might be the same around the country. Then there’s the issue of whole life costing, and developers wanting a quick return. Surely that can be helped by some kind of taxation regime. And we need to look at foreign ownership of empty buildings. In Switzerland you can’t own a property until you’ve lived there for several years; other countries do it but we [UK] seem to be a pushover.

MM: In your lecture you mentioned the fact that VAT is charged on retrofits but not on new construction…

JW: We should just stop that, that’s just rubbish. Europe was being used as the excuse because apparently once you put a VAT percentage on something you can’t reduce it, but actually the EU is doing really good things on climate change. Certainly if we’re going to be ‘Brexiting’ then we should definitely take advantage, and immediately just smash it. It could be one of the only good things!

MM: How has your personal work developed from taking part in The Edge think tank and the Building Future group for RIBA. Do you see value for students to start taking part in multidisciplinary groups and initiatives outside of what they’re doing in academia or in practice?

JW: Definitely. I probably didn’t start thinking about anything, apart from bending moment diagrams as it were, until I went to work in the States in 1980. Growing up in London after the war most of the modern architecture was quite grim. But when I visited Chicago I really got it about modern architecture; I saw the Frank Lloyd Wright stuff, and the Wrigley Tower, and the Hancock Tower. It was the first time I started thinking more about architecture as opposed to just structural engineering in a very narrow sense. When I came back to England I was looking with new eyes at everything that was going on around me. But I didn’t really know anyone to talk to about it. It wasn’t until I went to LA in 1986 and first started working for Arup, that most of my friends ended up being architects; by that stage I was 32, so it was quite a long time before I started talking to people in the other disciplines much. I could have done it younger, it would have been

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better! [JW laughs] So I would really encourage it. I think all these architect care things are great at giving people a chance to think outside the box more. MM: The theme of the magazine is a response to the feeling of anxiety that young people experience with all these radical shifts happening. If you do suffer from climate anxiety, how do you cope with it? Do you think we can have some hope moving forward?

JW: The way to deal with anxiety is to try to be doing something. I think that’s the only way. Whether or not we will be successful I don’t know. Extinction Rebellion and Greta Thunberg have been fantastic in just raising awareness and I hope that they keep going. I’m very anxious about Brexit. I think I’m more anxious about Brexit because it’s such a retrograde step. I suppose, I’m pinning all my hopes on your generation to try to turn these things around. I wish we could reverse Brexit. If you hear of any organisations that are doing that do let me know.

MM: Thank you so much Jane.

2. For more information please visit: edgedebate.com

21 Century Raw Earth Architecture st

Earth architecture as a way towards a dialectic between nature and humanity Martin Zizka Stage 4 student

In January 2019 at the World Economic Forum at Davos, climate activist Greta Thunberg made a powerful emotional appeal of alarming intensity that sent shockwaves of student-led climate strikes across the world: â&#x20AC;&#x153;Our house is on fire!â&#x20AC;?1 Shortly after and within the span of just a few months, unprecedented and record amounts of wild forest fires ravaged the Amazon rainforest, the Siberian tundra and Australia, ending the warmest decade in recorded history.

21st Century Raw Earth Architecture

In response to global warming in the construction industry, timber in architecture is booming, which is good, because forests sequester carbon at their highest rates during their prime growth period before being mature enough to be cut down. However, the huge and little addressed problem with the timber industry is that the monoculture forests which supply the market with high-tech engineered timber products, are themselves biological deserts, because the chemicals which these forests rely on to artificially boost their productivity inhibit other forms of life. In other words, our techniques are not holistic enough. We address carbon sequestering issues through living forests, but limit the life to the specific kinds which suit our industries, while the enormous cost of biodiversity loss still passes unchecked. According to the Global Status Report 2017 published by the World Green Building Council, the construction industry and the architecture it produces are responsible for the approximately 36% of global final energy use. Contrast this with the roughly 2% of global carbon emissions from private flight travel and it is immediately perceptible that the media discussion around the responsibility of the individuals is imbalanced, compared with the responsibility of industry professionals, developers and investors. This emphasises the need to search for new building techniques which are less ecologically harmful while still being culturally relevant and attractive.

“We address carbon sequestering issues through living forests, but limit the life to the specific kinds which suit our industries, while the enormous cost of biodiversity loss still passes unchecked.”

https://www.theguardian.com/ environment/2019/jan/25/ our-house-is-on-fire-gretathunberg16-urges-leaders-toact-on-climate

There has been a slow revival, in the last 40 years or so, of the ancient techniques of raw earth building which have proven to have a dramatically lower embodied energy footprint in construction, building use and end of use deconstruction than standard industrial materials. The use of the words ‘raw’ and ‘unstabilized’ referrer to the understanding that earth does not need to be baked to produce bricks or stabilized with concrete, as it then looses many of

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its fundamental qualities, such as its low embodied energy, its hygroscopic moisture regulating qualities and its stable chemical structure which allows it to last for thousands of years if well protected. Native to the European continent and the British Isles, raw earth building techniques seem promising in helping to achieve global targets to lower emissions and avoid global heating. However, for a number of reasons, earth has been labeled as poor, weak and unsuitable for construction in the urban realm and recent developments remain limited mostly to rural contexts. As its popularity rises, its limits are being tested by university research laboratories such as the Material-Lab at ETH Zurich [Image 01], and its cultural relevance reasserted with renewed vigour by raw earth architecture pioneers in Europe such as Anna Heringer, Martin Rauch, Roger Boltshauser, and others. The resistance of profit oriented industries to change and adapt to an increasingly plundered and barren world, mirrors a prevalent attitude at architecture schools which have become mouthpieces and extensions of a conservative and profit driven construction industry. Not only is earth architecture not taught in architecture schools, it is actively discouraged as unsuitable, which may be understandable given its inherited cultural connotation of being a backwards material which deteriorates quickly. Current promoters

Image 01 Material-lab at ETH Zurich, led by Annette Spiro between 2012-2014 Experimental pavilion examining possibilities of making rammed earth vaults. Source: ETH Zurich, Prof. A. Spiro, Gian Salis.

of unstabilized earth architecture suggest however that this is because we have forgotten how to detail earth buildings correctly as most traditional knowledge has been forgotten. In Roger Boltshauserâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s introduction

21st Century Raw Earth Architecture

to his recent collaborative publication Pisé: Rammed Earth: Tradition and Potential, he suggests that one of the reasons that technological developments of unstabilized earth architecture have seriously stalled for the last 200 years is because modernity and the industrial revolution favoured steel, concrete and bricks2, materials whose production it is easy to monopolize and control to maximise profit. In rammed earth construction, on the other hand, the use of raw, unstabilized sub soil found immediately under the fertile top soil often contains enough clay particles to be used directly for the construction of load-bearing structures, interior partitions or facades, and is usually given away for free to avoid paying for its disposal. In fact, it is estimated that out of the two million tons of subsoil excavated in Paris each year and deposited in landfills, 90% could be used for sustainable raw earth construction.3 Image 02 City of Shibam, Yemen.Local vernacular methods used raw earth to construct entire cities. Some buildings are protected with a coat of lime paint or plaster which still allows the earth to breathe.

Source: Jialiang Gao/peaceon-earth.org/ Wikimedia Commons.

Boltshauser, Roger, Nadja Maillard, Cyril Veillon, and Romain Anger. Pisé: Rammed Earth: Tradition and Potential. 2019, p.6

Heringer, Anna, Lindsay Blair Howe, and Martin Rauch. Upscaling Earth: Material, Process, Catalyst. 2019, p.104

Houben, Hugo, and Hubert Guillaud. Earth Construction. 1994, p.8

Ibid., p. 9

Currently, it is estimated that around 30% of the global population live in unbaked, raw earth homes.4 In the Middle East and Africa, earth buildings have been traditionally built for the rich and the poor alike, including multi storey cities in Yemen [Image 02], or exquisite cultural artefacts in Europe such as the Alhambra complex in Spain built largely with earth in the 12th century.5 In Europe, earth construction was once widely used in the past. In 1793, in the midst of the scientific Enlightenment period, French architect Cointereaux published an extensively illustrated ‘howto’ rammed earth guide which was translated into many European languages, detailing its social and economic potential. In England, specifically in the Devon

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region, as well as in Ireland, thousands of cob houses made out of a mixture of clay and straw still stand today. In France, many public and commercial rammed earth buildings can be found in towns and cities, even though most of them are in rural areas and villages. As traced by the French earth building organisation CRAterre, historical earth buildings in Europe are documented from Lithuania to Portugal, and Bulgaria to the fertile Central Lowland region of Scotland between Edinburgh and Glasgow.6

“The advantages of earth construction need to be assimilated into the complex political and ethical structures of the cultural armatures of society which have ostracized the method as weak and poor.”

Houben, Hugo, and Hubert Guillaud. Earth Construction. 1994, p.10

Evans, Ianto, Linda Smiley, Michael G. Smith, and Deanne Bednar. The Hand-Sculpted House a Philosophical and Practical Guide to Building a Cob Cottage.2004, p.28

Boltshauser, Roger, Nadja Maillard, Cyril Veillon, and Romain Anger. Pisé: Rammed Earth: Tradition and Potential. 2019, p.203

Heringer, Anna, Lindsay Blair Howe, and Martin Rauch. Upscaling Earth: Material, Process, Catalyst. 2019, p.106

As a free building material found in most parts of the world, raw earth building can diffuse economic power structures as it is accessible to all and easy to use. This is evidenced by the many low-tech cob, adobe and straw-bale natural building movements, which have facilitated the construction of thousands of low-cost, owner built earth homes across Europe and North America7 in recent decades. Yet likewise, it can be assimilated into the industrial process through prefabrication, as has been proven by Martin Rauch’s development of high-tech rammed earth prefabrication lines for wall segments which have made it possible to build large scale projects with architecture studios such as Snøhetta and Herzog & de Meuron. In the latter case, The Ricola Kräuterzentrum, in Laufen, Switzerland is currently the largest unstabilized earth building in Europe and has a weather facing unstabilized raw earth façade with 11 metre high walls, and was built using earth excavated from a local clay pit and mixed with locally sourced gravel.8 [Image 03] A study conducted on the production of the façade states an 87% reduction in embodied energy in comparison with conventional lightweight facades.9 Hence, it is by comparing the properties of raw earth with industrial building materials that its advantages become most apparent. As Romain Anger and Laetitia Fontaine state in their article Rammed earth, texture and function, “all building materials change over time: Iron rusts, wood rots, stone and

21st Century Raw Earth Architecture

cement are exposed to chemical attacks. Earth, on the other hand, is different. It is the result of a long erosion, decomposition and weathering process, a material in its final stage that is in chemical equilibrium with the atmosphere.”10 Earth’s chemical stability allows it to last over millennia while also making it easy to deconstruct, enabling it to be used over and over again, thus making it very well suited for a future circular economy.11 Image 03 Ricola Kräuterzentrum, Herzog & de Meuron, 2014 Photo highlights the high tech design possibilities and use of prefabricated rammed earth walls. Earth consultant: Martin Rauch. Source: https:// www.arch2o. com/ricolakrauterzentrumherzog-demeuron/

10.

Boltshauser, Roger, Nadja Maillard, Cyril Veillon, and Romain Anger. Pisé: Rammed Earth: Tradition and Potential. 2019, p.168

11.

Heringer, Anna, Lindsay Blair Howe, and Martin Rauch. Upscaling Earth: Material, Process, Catalyst. 2019, p.56

12.

Rauch, Martin, Otto Kapfinger, and Marko Sauer. Martin Rauch: Refined Earth, Construction & Design with Rammed Earth. 2017, p.11

13.

Gómez Alberto Pérez. Attunement: Architectural Meaning after the Crisis of Modern Science. 2016, p.142

Yet the benefits of using earth as a building material cannot be validated by reason or scientific analysis alone. The advantages of earth construction need to be assimilated into the complex political and ethical structures of the cultural armatures of society which have ostracized the method as weak and poor. Because raw earth building techniques avoid adding cement or baking the earth to ‘stabilize’ it which alters its chemical structure and inhibits the hygroscopic moisture regulating properties of clay, earthen walls retain “living” water and breathe in a similar way to the human body. According to Martin Rauch, earth has more than any other material, including wood, “the most ideal active resonance with the physiological systems of our physical and psychological senses”12. In the recent book on phenomenology and meaning in the built environment, Attunement: Architectural Meaning after the Crisis of Modern Science, Alberto PerezGomez studies the conclusions in recent research in cognitive science which has amassed increasing amounts of evidence that human consciousness is an embodied dynamic system in the world.13 This essentially means that our bodily sensations of the

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14.

Gómez Alberto Pérez. Attunement: Architectural Meaning after the Crisis of Modern Science. 2016, p.144

15.

Borch, Christian, Böhme Gernot, Olafur Eliasson, and Juhani Pallasmaa. Architectural Atmospheres: on the Experience and Politics of Architecture /Christian Borch (Eds.); with Texts by Gernot Böhme, Olafur Eliasson, Juhani Pallasmaa. 2014, p.95

16.

Heringer, Anna, Lindsay Blair Howe, and Martin Rauch. Upscaling Earth: Material, Process, Catalyst. 2019, p. 112

17.

ibid., p. 44

environments we inhabit are directly constitutive of our emotional and cognitive identities, evidencing “deep continuities between mind, life and world”.14 For architecture, this suggests that the effects which the intrinsic properties of materials have on the human psyche should be taken into much greater consideration.[Image 04, p 34] Similarly, the artist Olafur Eliasson states that “all materials have psychosocial content”15 which is reflected in his hugely successful multisensory installations which challenge entrenched cultural modes of purely visual and cerebral conceptual art. His artistic practice of expanding the perceptual realm to include all the senses mirrors observations in Anna Heringer’s book Upscaling Earth, where she describes earth as a fundamentally sensual material with a “mythological substance”, and an “archaic power”16, suggestive of a strong link between raw earth and a much older pre-reflexive sensorial cultural human identity, which nevertheless still plays a fundamental role in how we experience reality. Because of its archetypal appeal and beneficial hygroscopic properties, earth resonates with the biological and emotional basis of human nature in ways that modern materials arguably cannot, while its archaic nature suggests it is not used from an ideological or stylistic position, but because of its intrinsic qualities. Combined with cutting edge technology, raw earth architecture is perhaps not as regressive or romantic as it may seem to its critics, but initiates a new mode of dialectic between nature and contemporary human culture. Given the overwhelmingly positive attributes of raw earth architecture which span the economic, cultural and environmental spectrum, one is forced to ask: why is earth not used more in construction? Is it because of inherited colonialist attitudes towards earth as a poor man’s building material which is still ubiquitous in former colonised countries?17 Or because it lacks the ‘symbolic’ strength of concrete and steel which emulate the force of our capitalist society? Accepting it is impossible to answer these questions in the scope of a single essay, it seems the limits of earth construction will be tested in the coming years thanks to its booming popularity, and hopefully, its cultural and ecological relevance to society will continue to evolve with growing academic research and support as well as through practical architectural implementation.

Bibliography

Boltshauser, Roger, Nadja Maillard, Cyril Veillon, and Romain Anger. Pisé: Rammed Earth: Tradition and Potential. Zürich: Triest Verlag für Architektur, Design und Typografie, 2019. Borch, Christian, Böhme Gernot, Olafur Eliasson, and Juhani Pallasmaa. Architectural Atmospheres: on the Experience and Politics of Architecture /Christian Borch (Eds.); with Texts by Gernot Böhme, Olafur Eliasson, Juhani Pallasmaa. Basel: Birkhauser, 2014. Evans, Ianto, Linda Smiley, Michael G. Smith, and Deanne Bednar. The Hand-Sculpted House a Philosophical and Practical Guide to Building a Cob Cottage. White River Junction: Chelsea Green Publishing, 2004. Heringer, Anna, Lindsay Blair Howe, and Martin Rauch. Upscaling Earth: Material, Process, Catalyst. Zurich, Switzerland: gta Verlag, 2019. Houben, Hugo, and Hubert Guillaud. Earth Construction. London: Intermediate Technology Publications, 1994. Gómez Alberto Pérez. Attunement: Architectural Meaning after the Crisis of Modern Science. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2016. Rauch, Martin, Otto Kapfinger, and Marko Sauer. Martin Rauch: Refined Earth, Construction & Design with Rammed Earth. Munich: Detail - Institut für internationale Architektur-Dokumentation, 2017.

Interview with Roger Boltshauser Raw Earth in Professional Practice

Interview by Martin Zizka

Roger Boltshauser is one of the leading voices promoting and demonstrating the potential and capacity of raw earth as a construction material, most notably through his collaboration with Martin Rauch and his recent publication Rammed Earth - Tradition And Potential. Stage 4 student Martin Zizka spoke to Roger in connection to a Friday lecture he had planned to hold, but was sadly cancelled due to the Covid-19 outbreak.

Roger Boltshauser

MZ: Is it possible to detail unstabilized load bearing and non load bearing rammed earth walls in such a way as to forgo excessive erosion in the harsh western winds of near coastal cities such as Glasgow?

RB: The question is not whether, but how this could be realized, because it is possible for sure. The climatic characteristics of the desired construction site must always be evaluated first. As a second step, constructive measures must be taken to protect the unstabilized rammed earth wall from excessive erosion. However, these constructive measures are not only a necessity, but we also use them to shape the architectural expression. Many beautiful details can be found in historical clay buildings, for example in France. We are also particularly interested in hybrid constructions, i.e. the combination of clay with materials such as wood, bricks, steel or concrete, which we are researching and developing. In this way, the strengths of the respective materials can be optimally exploited, as a whole they complement each other perfectly.

“It is important that the material is part of the design right from the start and can thus shape the architecture. This is how projects are created to allow them to be built in rammed earth, but which also benefit from the material’s expression and power.” MZ: Is rammed earth a suitable load bearing and facade material for all kinds of buildings including civic, cultural and residential buildings in inner cities with street frontages, and what are your personal experiences with their potential implementation?

RB: Absolutely. In our office, residential buildings (e.g. House Rauch in Schlins), office buildings (e.g. Atelier Dubsstrasse in Zurich), school buildings (e.g. School Pavilion Allenmoos II in Zurich), but also buildings with special uses such as a sports facility (e.g. tool shed and finish tower Sihlhölzli in Zurich) or even an Ozeanium (e.g. Ozeanium Zoo Basel in Basel) have already been built with this material. It is important that the material is part of the design right from the start and can thus shape the architecture. This is how projects are created to allow them to be built in rammed earth, but which also benefit from the material’s expression and power. Although, for example, there is a tradition of rammed earth buildings in Switzerland, the knowledge about it has unfortunately been lost. So today we are working on getting our clients excited about the material and showing them what the material can do. This is certainly a challenge, but it can be mastered, especially if we refer to historical as well as contemporary references.

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MZ: What are your experiences with the challenges currently facing the implementation of unstabilized earth building in cities, and do you believe as an architect that earth, properly used, could bring about a similar revolution in construction and design as concrete did in the early 20th century?

RB: Earth as a material was displaced by industrial materials, with the result that knowledge in rammed earth construction was lost, and further innovation failed to materialise. This missed development in research and building experience with rammed earth must now be made up for. Our construction industry produces billions of tons of excavated material, which is disposed of in landfills instead of being used as an environmentally friendly material for construction. We want to change this. However, there is a lack of parameters, standards and references that can be used to convince building owners, investors, authorities and engineers as well as other specialist planners. So we are constantly developing new details and construction systems, both in practice and in teaching. This is challenging, but also extremely exciting and very instructive. It is not possible to copy standard details from the textbook, much more of an understanding of the material must be gained in order to be able to design with it. We are convinced that a new contemporary architectural language can emerge from designing for the climate, be it with rammed earth or other materials. MZ: Thank you for your insight Roger.

Image 04 Rauch Haus, 2008. Designed by Roger Boltshauser, built by Martin Rauch Image: https:// www.architonic. com/en/project/ boltshauserarchitektenrammedearth-houserauch-familyhome/5100620

The Journey

When speaking about the path to becoming an architect, it is always so hazy and uncertain. This diagram explains the steps MSA has in place for completing architectural education. With the overlap in undergraduate and postgraduate Architecture courses, MSA has a great number of students from different backgrounds. This creates a culture of vibrant connection between returning and new students, therefore creating a sense of community like no other.

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Introduction Kathy Li

Stage 1 is an introductory immersion into the incredible complexities of architecture. It serves as a deep foundation of knowledge, upon which students can build the rest of their architectural studies. As we enter a period of global uncertainty, precipitated by concerns about the future of our inhabitation of the planet, it is crucial that we personally and professionally conduct ourselves in ways that make a positive contribution to the world. This year Stage 1 adopted an ethos that put guardianship of the ‘Planet’ and care of ‘People’ at the heart of what we do. In our studio projects we examine architectural design through the prism of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals of 2015 to ‘transform the world’ and the UK Government’s legislation contained in the Equality Act 2010. The aim of each is to drive responsible actions in respect of our planetary resources and the imbalances in our society. The particularities of the design work explored ‘human scale’ from city wide to street level in the first project ‘Place’. An investigation into the opportunities of creativity in designing for disabled people occurred in Co Lab 1: ‘Being Human: Different’. Aspects of materials in sustainable design and qualities of atmosphere were undertaken in the project ‘Comfort’. In our last project ‘Joy’, a proposal for a thermal bath to complement the coastal spool at Pittenweem, students used strategies for sustainability as the core to develop their designs. For the entirety of the year the production of outputs concentrates on creative ways of ‘seeing’ and ‘doing’ architecture. There is an emphasis on production of work by hand, which allows a very physical relationship with the design process, thinking directly through the pencil not via a computer. This year was also the start of the New First Year Experience (FYE) which introduced two new courses Co Lab 1 and Colab 2 which required an overhaul of the entire programme in Stage 1. Over two 4 week projects, the FYE provided opportunities for students to share and collaborate with other first year students from disciplines across the entire art school. Crucially it integrates theory with studio and allows students to experience how other creative people work, in turn contextualising their chosen discipline of architecture.

Stage One Stage leader

Kathy Li Co Pilot

Isabel Deakin Miranda Webster Studio Tutors

Chris Platt James Tait Sam Brown Iain Monteith

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Jesse Ho, Zhuoqi Liu, Morgan McComb

Stage One

S1. Comfort For our second studio project â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Comfortâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;, the design is inspired by the Grand Canyon, Arizona (USA). We were exploring how light and shadow could effect the comfort of a space, and we focused on the Grand Canyon because of the way the light spills through spaces in the rock and seems to ignite the red colour, giving the canyon an endearing glow. The shape of the void we created inside the cube is based on these spaces within the canyon, and we decided to create smaller pockets on the roof of the cube for light to come through, to accentuate the contrast between the light and shade within the space.

Model photographs exploring the light and shadow within the void. Foam.

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Ryan Woods

Joy

Stage One

Left: 1. Conceptual render. Below: 2. Concept sketch. 3. Section.

For the final project of the year ‘Joy’, my interpretation of the brief considered primarily the ritualistic experience of visiting a bath house, through process and environment. The site in Pittenweem is very exposed to north-westerly winds. The concept of a wind block as the main intervention manifested into a path from the top to the bottom of the slope. This ‘ritualistic’ route allows for the user to move from pool to pool, warm to hot - eventually arriving at the tidal pool. The natural topography of the site is therefore acting as the process itself, rather than the building.

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Morgan Mccomb

Our Habitat

Stage One

Colab 2 Project

Left: 1. We created posters and shared the event details in the area. 2. Exhibition in the Kiosk. To give back to the local people that came to the workshop and aided us with our research, we provided tote bags that people could design with their favourite outcome from the workshop.

‘Our habitat’ was a collaboration between Morgan McComb (Architecture Stage 1), Katie Smith (Communication Design), Olivia Bunyan (Painting & Printmaking) and Léon Moonie (Photography). The project started with a visit to Govanhill in Glasgow to get to know the area. Discovering the Kiosk [A project in Govanhill by Lee Ivvett and Duncan Blackmore] kickstarted the project as we had a place in the area we could inhabit. The Kiosk is an ongoing architectural project based on community needs. The key activity we carried out was a workshop in the Kiosk asking people ten questions about themselves and Govanhill, while asking them to draw shapes that represented their answers on one page; which resulted in a large collage. This collage was developed into a large-scale mural inspired by Govanhill. We held a small exhibition in the kiosk to thank locals for allowing us to tap into their community and show them our interpretation of the area they live in. We displayed paintings, print and photographs inspired by the area. Watch a short video showing the contents of the exhibition here. 45

The mural. We used a warm colour palette inspired by the area.

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Introduction Luca Brunelli Neil Mochrie

The overarching theme of Stage 2 Studio is ‘community’ which, inspired by the philosopher and social critic Ivan Illich, is explored through the idea of architecture as a tool of conviviality. In his book ‘Tools for Conviviality’ Illich outlined a critic of the impersonal and alienating limits of a society driven by technology and dominated by its tools. ‘‘Convivial tools” can give people the freedom to interact and to contribute creatively to the environment in which they live outside the dominant forms of production and consumerism. Architecture can be therefore a tool of conviviality to explore, re-imagine and conceive different, alternative forms of ‘community’. In stage 2 we explore conviviality within two different contexts. Semester 1 looked at the urban context of a Scottish small town-centre and asked students to contribute to the revitalisation of the local high street by addressing the renovation and extension of the existing local library. The programme of accommodation requires to reinterpret a public library as a range of public rooms open for study, discussion and innovation. By intervening on an existing building, the brief engages students with the contemporary debate on sustainability and adaptive reuse. It requires them to interrogate the existing structure, and to carefully craft a tectonic strategy to achieve a resilient architectural response. Interspersed with the library project, two weeks were dedicated to a collaborative project with product design engineers focusing on inclusive, modular and flexible accommodation for the GSA campus in Forres. In semester 2 the convivial dimension began to be explored at the scale of dwelling in a semirural context. Following a housing precedents study and an abstract, place-less, prototype terraced housing design the final project moved to a speculative, site specific, response within the particular landscape and built fabric context of the World Heritage site of New Lanark. The final brief required students to design a “live/ work” intervention that can host more sustainable lifestyles reducing transport needs, lower energy use and sharing of resources, affording new and convivial live/work conditions that can stabilise the population within a renewed rural economy.

Stage Two Stage leader

Luca Brunelli Co Pilot

Neil Mochrie Studio Tutors

Graeme Armet Johnny Fisher Isabel Garriga Alan Hooper

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Euan Clarke

Boâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ness Library

Stage Two

From left: 1. Section A-A. 2. East elevation. 3. Ground floor plan.

The library provides a space for visitors to meet, relax and enjoy. Secluded private areas, conducive for learning are intertwined within convivial areas promoting social environments. Strong, simple, geometric voids sub-divide the library into private group spaces and create a contrast to the general open plan areas. The retained existing buildings facilitate formal meeting areas and private study as well as introducing a large exhibition space and multi purpose convivial hall. There is a clear focus in providing a space where interaction is apparent. The building works like one massive room with minimal doors and clear horizontal and vertical visual connections. All the spaces work together to provide a contemporary, technologically based â&#x20AC;&#x153;libraryâ&#x20AC;? for todayâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s living.

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Pu Zhang A Convivial Library

Exploded isometric drawing.

Rendering of an external view.

The Boâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ness library & gallery is designed to be a distinct, attractive and new superstructure in the town with the capacity to bring stimulating functions and conviviality, by adapting and reusing the existing library. Evolving from an insignificant idea of nature displacing and reoccupying man made structures, the project has since proposed creating a pristine and transformative landmark which has the potential to revive and restore the vibrancy and liveliness of Boâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ness in a sustainable way. Concepts such as the progressive interaction rooms to stimulate multigenerational and multidisciplinary exchange of knowledge and skills, a reading tower with balconies and central light-well, and a bright transparent convivial room have all been concretised.

Stage Two

Daniel Smith & Frances Grant Designing for Tomorrow

Model photograph.

We aimed to explore the relationship between living spaces and lifetimes: how light dictates our everyday behaviour and how needs imposed on homes change throughout family life. The tree is a great metaphor for change throughout life; its growth, shedding of leaves and its adaptability focused us onto designing housing which followed this example. The design allows for this adaptability through the inclusion of open spaces and multiple access points; flexible design allows the home to change throughout generations granting families autonomy over their homes and anticipating future changes in the way we live.

Perspective section.

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Imagined interior view.

Antoni Ruszkiewicz Boâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ness Library

Stage Two

The project for a public library in Boâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ness, Scotland, focuses on promoting conviviality, integration and communication through its design. Of all the characteristics of the Scottish town, its meandering streets are perhaps the most prominent. The main intention behind the design was to blend a singular center for the town with its constituent parts. In doing so, the library links each street together in one building that gives the residents a roof under which they can collaborate, connect, and learn simultaneously. The proposed intervention introduces an enclosed space that emphasised the closes of Boâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ness. Extensions of the walkways and pathways surrounding the building traverse through it and open into terrace seating, steps and other communal spaces. Through manipulation of form, the building reconditions the existing structures and consolidates the parts all together. The panoramic vista from the terrace reconnects the town to its surrounding nature that was formerly detached from it.

Ground, first, roof and location plans.

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Introduction Tilo Einert

The aim at the end of Stage 3 is for students to leave the undergraduate course with a wellestablished set of design, representation, and technical skills to enter the PPYO (Professional Practice Year Out) with confidence and intellectual maturity. These skills have been developed, refined and strengthened through a two-semester long design project which integrates the subjects of Architectural Technology and Interdisciplinary Design to engender a holistic approach to architectural design. Under the theme ‘energy - landscape culture’ the project task was to design a residential music retreat and a public performance hall on a site at the periphery of Balloch that stretches along the banks of the river Leven, to the shores of Loch Lomond and the breath-taking landscape of the National Park. Semester 1 started with generating a fundamental understanding of place and context through the exploration of a masterplan for the site and the development of a concept for the two buildings within it. Students then embarked on the design of the residential music retreat and the detailed development of its environmental and constructional aspects. Semester 2 focused on the design of the performance hall through ‘Interact’, allowing the project to evolve collaboratively with students from the disciplines of architecture engineering and quantity surveying, forming ‘Design Teams’. The year concluded with the pinup of a comprehensive representation of the years’ work. Architects at their core are ‘placemakers’, and the aim for the project ‘energy - landscape culture’ was to engage with both the poetics and pragmatics of working in a national park context. As climate change is the greatest global design problem of our time, students devoted their attention towards optimizing the energy efficiency of their building proposals. The challenge set for everyone was to take a ‘how low can you go’ approach to the carbon footprint throughout the design process, from the inception stages through to the orientation, form, structure and detailed design, whilst maintaining the aim to shape buildings, spaces and places that meaningfully respond to context.

Stage Three Stage leader

Tilo Einert Co Pilot

Kirsty Lees Studio Tutors

Adrian Stewart Ian Alexander Henry McKeown

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Kacper Ryske

Riverside Retreat

Stage Three

Left to right: 1. External perspective: to maintain the perception of the natural soul of the site. 2. Internal inhabited views.

The residential retreat is located in an idyllic landscape of Balloch. Situated by the riverside the retreat becomes a metaphor for escapism. In order to achieve energy self-sufficiency, the project of a residential retreat is based on passive use of solar energy. All communal areas are spread around the open ground floor plan. At the south part of the communal areas, there is a large sun space stretching across the south-west facade. It serves several functions from a pleasant place of botanical discoveries, to a dreamlike meeting and circulation space. The open floor plan allows flexibility and facilitates the distribution of the warm air to the communal areas.

Ground floor plan.

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Olivia Bissell

The Balloch Sistema Project

Stage Three

Left to right: 1. Tying the two footprints together: The site plan depicts the horizontal and vertical axes that the scheme embodies and emphasizes how the long decked walkway. 2. Long section and elevation. 3. Subtle liveliness: The residence is a place of retreat, but also a place full of youth.

This project is developed for the charity Sistema; an organization focusing on connecting children and music. Situated in the town of Balloch, the project anchors itself right on the bay of the Loch, reaching out into the water itself; naturally fitting with the coastal influence that drove the concept. Comprising of two sections; a residential retreat and a public performance hall, the intention is to allow children of various ages, to retreat to the scenic location to learn music, develop friendships, and ultimately gain the confidence required to perform music for friends and family at the end of their stay. The residence is deeply influenced by a coastal experience, taking angular form, timber construction and whimsical colouring from the beach hut typology. The performance hall represents the end of a journey for the children when they play their final concert after their retreat.

Detailing a simple structure: The structure of the performance hall is intended to be visible through its transparent skin and subtle connections are key to making the glulam grid structure a statement brining stability but also character to the hall.

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Katharina Bitschnau

Energy Landscape Culture

Stage Three

The path as a journey. The path as a process. The path as a goal.

Left: 1. Context along the bay. 2. Site plan.

A band of sequential spatial experiences connects the built environment with the landscape. It opens up the existing urban fabric and creates an accessible and clear connection with the park. The residential retreat acts as a gateway building and spans the public square to interact with the existing surroundings. The overall principal for the building is to take on a zero-carbon approach and therefore it is shaped by the environment.

Inhabited sectional perspective.

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Tobias Quezado Decker

A school of music in Balloch

Stage Three

Left: 1. Expressing the pedagogy of the school of music through the architecture. 2. The project is formed by two distinct approaches. The new space for Balloch, a public square, with a series of buildings loosely arranged around.

Balloch exists at an edge. It sits just below the Highland Boundary Fault and at an eastern tip of the conurbation that stretches from East to West across Scotland. North of Balloch, the landscape dramatically changes, from gentle hills rich in coal and sandstone - the fuel and material for industrial and urban development- to hard granite, rugged mountains and deep lochs. The project recognises both this ancient, geological context and its immediate suburban context. The series of buildings proposed, therefore, mediate this boundary, acting as a gateway to the north and the Highlands. The private spaces, the school of music, sits like an object in the landscape; it is inward looking yet creates a series of openings onto the landscape. This movement, from the populated south to Highlands and public to private is mirrored by the journey of students at the school of music; they start secluded in the landscape, but as they gain confidence, they move towards the larger public spaces of the project to share their music.

1:50 Roof structure model. The structural model tests the glu lam column and roof structure as a series of assembled components. It shows the relationship between the roof, the columns and the elements that this also supports: the circulation deck and the brise soleil facade.

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Something that had been there all along

Pauls Rietums

The House That Always Was There

Stage Three

Left: 1. Concept - Something that was always there. 2. Balloch pier axonometric. Below: 3. Early eye level drawings of the riverscape.

Instead of taking place in sparse acoustic venues, Sistema orchestras have always dwelled in nonspecialist settings directly within communities in need, prioritising social action over education tradition. How can a venue custom built for Sistema maintain this notion? To address this, Sistema’s methods were compared to those of Levi Strauss’ bricoleur. Similarly to a bricoleur, who “creates structures by means of events”, Sistema deﬁnes a venue by holding orchestra recitals in the available settings. By doing so, Sistema is shaped by the conditions and accessible resources, but at the same time can create new meanings and events within the environment. The response to the brief is not a design of a new building to be placed on the site, but rather an assemblage of the honest and mundane objects of the River Leven. A frame of one of warehouses on the riverbanks is dismantled and moved to a parking lot on the Balloch pier. There, it is furnished with rooms akin to giant bunkbeds and inhabited by the orchestra. A place to celebrate the education program and the unspectacular River Leven.

Study of portal frames – Garshake Water Works.

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Perspective section. Section detail, 1:20

Thermal bridging analysis

Plan section, 1:50 Below: material elevation, 1:50 Left: Perspective section, 1:50

Pauls Rietums Continued..

Exterior material studies.

Stage Three

Interior material studies.

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Uniting The MASSes Tim Lewis Mass Coordinator & Stage 3 Student 68

MASS is the Mackintosh Architecture Student Society, an organisation run by students of the school. The society aims to be the catalyst and backdrop for the incredible studio culture the Mac is renowned for, whilst also raising money to support and further our education. Every year MASS puts on a variety of events from parties to debates to life drawing. With the devastating closure of the student union bar, The Vic, the role of MASS has become ever more important. And so, this year we’ve slightly focused on the more social side of the society, with hugely successful freshers’ parties, ceilidhs and speed dating/ drawing events. But perhaps other sides of MASS have suffered because of this, with less educational events being held and let’s be honest the MASS bar is closed more often than not. But the thing about MASS is it’s taken over by a new group of students every year; what some years may do well, other years may lack completely. This keeps the society completely refreshed every year, and it could be completely re-invented by next year. One thing we’ve been particularly proud of this year is the way we’ve advertised events through posters spread around the school. This came through a discussion early on, as members of the society felt that MASS was quite exclusive to architecture and could do a lot more to encourage interdisciplinarity. We’ve really enjoyed experimenting with processes in the caseroom in the Reid building and hope that the results

‘PUB BY SUB’ Oct 2019

‘LIFE DRAWING’ Nov 2019

‘DREAMS OF SUSHI’ Jan 2020

‘CARD COMP’ Dec 2019

â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;CHRISTMASS POT LUCK Dec 2019

‘BURNS NIGHT CEILIDH’ Jan 2020

‘SPEED DATING/DRAWING’ Feb 14th <3 2020

I Like how they do things here

Going on exchange during a global pandemic

Tobias Quezado Decker Stage 3

When I first talked with MacMag in November about the possibility of writing an account of my exchange, I was both excited and nervous about my upcoming encounter with the usual things; a new culture, a new language and a new school. I was preparing to join the Accademia di Architettura di Mendrisio for the spring semester of 2020. The promise of experiencing a radically different culture of education had drawn me to the South of Switzerland. I felt ready to really jump into intense and focused work and to devote six months to this experiment. I boarded a train at Glasgow Central bound for Mendrisio, passing breezily through to London, Paris and then overnight to Milan.

Erasmus Diary

I am now three months into my exchange, and nothing has happened as expected. After two weeks, it became clear that the semester was going to take a radically different route. The early period of the CoVID-19 outbreak was marked by confusion and uncertainty and my decision to stay on exchange was not an easy one. Schools internationally, including GSA closed, but the Accademia stubbornly resisted, closing fairly late and only when it became really apparent that students were unable to make it to school as officially instructed. I myself became ill and couldn’t travel home, almost forcing my hand to stay. The scale of the crisis was not clear to us and perhaps even now, continues to elude our understanding. For the first two weeks my time was very exciting, perhaps a normal exchange experience. I had Italian classes and settled into my student flat - the Casa dell’Accademia in Mendrisio. The Accademia runs a unit system; students apply to the unit of their choice for the semester. In the unit students work under a professor and closely with two assistant professors. The small units of around 20 students cultivates an intimate and informal system. My Unit, under Martino Pedrozzi, was planning to design and construct a real scale playground in a small Ticinese mountain village. This was to run concurrent with a study into urban voids and spaces for leisure - an open brief pushing for personal inquiry. Parallel to this are theoretical and scientific courses - a self enrolled collection of essays, coursework and practical tests.

“Lectures were canceled and the promise of late nights in the studio, wood-working at 4 am and the chaotic rush of making models and producing drawings disappeared.” Things changed quickly, however. The Intellectual vibrancy of the school is stimulated and sustained by a large and international group of academics and architects; they fly in to Milan, only 40 minutes by train from Mendrisio, every week, to teach. This model became impossible to maintain once the international situation began to shift. Lectures were

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The living area turned studio in the Casa, Mendrisio.

cancelled and the promise of late nights in the studio, wood-working at 4 am and the chaotic rush of making models and producing drawings disappeared. The school, however, was quick to adapt; tutors began independently to arrange online tutorials and alter expectations and methodologies to suit the unexpected conditions. The studio closed indefinitely and I have discovered instead a solidarity and ambition among the students here to continue pursuing our studies in new and enterprising ways. Rather than the studio, lecture theaters, exhibition spaces and workshop, rather than the bar and the gardens, we have the Casa. From the Casa we cut models, attend lectures and eat; we also sleep. My exchange is not at the scale of a country or city anymore but at the scale of a bedroom. Mendrisio is quiet. I was impressed by the ambition of the school to pursue the semester - not hubris but a careful response. The courses were swiftly adapted. This motivated my own drive to pursue my work with rigour and focus. The small society of students left in Mendrisio continue to adapt to the changing conditions: rationing materials and sharing tools; secretly sharing a banned hot wire cutter between bedrooms. Living in the student house in Mendrisio has helped keep the spirit of the school going. Many students went home but those that stayed found more commonalities, possibly, than the normal unit system would have allowed. We work in a single spaces where my three flatmates bring their and we share work, materials and ideas across ateliers. There is constant

Erasmus Diary

Exchange at the scale of a bedroom: Camera nella Casa dellâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;Accademia.

Inhabitated section of my bedroom in the Casa.

Inhabitated plan.

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overlap and exchange; work easily spills into dinner when all happening in the same space. Rather than jumping on a train down to Italy, the slower pace has permitted more time to enjoy the beauty of the surrounding mountains of Ticino Living precariously as students and navigating towards unknown ends is challenging. It is good to have others with me on the journey.

The neighbourhood was desolate, now with small signs of life.

The future is uncertain; the idea of exchange as we know it may take a while to return. Friends planning to join universities in Germany, where semesters start later in the year, had their exchanges abruptly cancelled. How exchange will take place next year and further on is waiting, as with so much else, for us to redefine it. My time in Mendrisio has, however, really shown me how quickly and successfully we can adapt to new situations with carefully considered optimism.

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Madeline Baker

Bath House

Prize Winners 2019 - Stage One

JB Wilson Prize & GIA Award Winner Left: 1. Final model. 2. Section drawing.

My project focuses on creating a proposal for a community bath house situated on Hogganfield Loch. Emphasising the contrast between hot and cold water, my bath house utilises sea bathing and outdoor baths to boost circulation in the body. Primarily inspired by the concept of the Swedish â&#x20AC;&#x153;Kallbadhusâ&#x20AC;?, the use of the site as a community hub is reflected through its intimate connection to the loch setting. The public walkway which projects onto the Loch allows the building to take full control of its position on the site. The walkway and outdoor pools are linked by the undulating canopy, creating a connection between the public and private realms. The cascading roof form mirrors the movement of water and the body through the space.

Site plan.

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Rachel Thompson & Pauls Rietums

Prize Winners 2019 - Stage Two

SEDA

Krystyna Johnson Sustainability Award Left: 1. Conceptual view of the communal interior. 2. Sectional model 1:50.

This project considers the implication of live/ work contemporary conditions in a rural context. Experiencing the site through exploration, reflecting upon its topography, vegetation, existing site architecture and established presence as a World Heritage site. Each inhabitant starts with a 4x4m module with the opportunity to develop and expand, forming clusters with other like-minded people creating workshops to express and celebrate collective interests. The key component of the scheme is the participatory aspect of the architecture with the residents personalising aspects of the grid and growing their own homes through self-build activities and projects.

Massing model 1:200 @ 1:1

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Charles Dunn

Clyde Laboratory

Prize Winners 2019 - Stage Three

GIA Award Winner 2019 ADS Award for Best 3rd Year Student Sheppard Robson Part 1 Prize Holmes Miller Part 1 Prize

Sitting low, this Boat Recovery Centre is rooted in its landscape. Its form is closely related to the tectonics of the site, in turn allowing the visitor to engage directly with the contour of the land throughout the building. By exploring sacred typologies, there is an attempt to consider the functions of the building in a sacred and ritualistic manner and in doing so create a building which calmly and quietly inhabits its surroundings. A repetitious fluted facade is reminiscent of a sea wall, reinforcing a sense of mass, firmness and grounding the building to the land.

Left: 1. South facade.

1:50 Study model: Cement, sand, aggregate.

Cast Ceppo facade panels.

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East elevation.

Conservation laboratory, interior study.

Recovery space, interior study.

Prize Winners 2019 - Stage Three

North entrance facade.

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Above: Elevation along the River Clyde showing south elevation of Platform Below: Long section

Ella Walklate

CROSS SECTION

Platform

Prize Winners 2019 - Stage Four

GIA Award Winner 2019

Left: 1. Long section through South Entrance. 2. Cross Section through tower and auditorium space.

Platform is an urban building that brings knowledge to the heart of Glasgow city. Nestled to the west of Glasgow central station, in a somewhat under used and under valued yet well connected site within the city center, this urban building exploits learning and knowledge into a civic building. It is a space for both young and old to read, learn, study, meet and gather. It is a place for testing, creating, exhibiting and presenting the latest ideas and innovations. Traditional spaces of learning such as schools, universities and libraries are scattered throughout the city and have their own restrictions of opening hours and admittance. Platform consolidates learning into one active public building that is open to all with day and night activities. The building provides a hybridity of mixed use spaces responding to the flexible working and learning within a contemporary city.

ENTRANCE HALL

Perspective of North Entrance hall.

Alumni Spotlight: Louisa Bowles New modes in practice Interview by Connor Doyle Gabriella Togni

Louisa Bowles is a graduate from the Mackintosh School of Architecture and a specialist in environmental design. Louisa is a partner at Hawkins\Brown where she leads the Sustainability Team that developed the Whole Life Carbon strategy, which uses their in-house revit plugin H\B:ERT to assure that all projects are measuring and monitoring the balance between the embodied carbon and operational energy. MacMag sat down for a chat with Louise about how she got to where she is today, what she does and what drives her in the workplace.

Alumni Spotlight

MM: What attracted you to study at the Mackintosh School of Architecture? And how was your experience of Glasgow?

LB: I was keen to explore a different approach to design and education for my Diploma following two years out in small and large practices in the UK and Australia. I loved being in Glasgow. The grit of the urban fabric and topography was a real contrast to places Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;d lived before, but the size and scale of the city is completely accessible. It was a place I felt completely at home in.

MM: After graduating, how did you develop your pathway to your current role as head of the Sustainability Group and partner at Hawkins\ Brown?

LB: I started at Hawkins\Brown in 2004, just a couple of months after graduating, when the office was 40 people. The interview was an indication of the type of working environment it would be as it was challenging, but friendly and welcoming. The fact that the practice has manged to keep the balance of exciting opportunities within a supportive environment as they have grown is one of the reasons I still enjoy being part of it all.

Louisa Bowles, graduate from the MSA

The first major project I worked on was the New Biochemistry Building, a ÂŁ50m life sciences research building for the University of Oxford. I ended up being the Project Architect, and it defined much of the early part of my career. I always had an interest in sustainable design, but it was important to me also to understand the nuts and bolts of being an architect at all stages of design. And so I spent the first few years of my career leading a variety of buildings from concept to completion including HE research buildings, schools, community centres and charity commissions, always exploring how to best integrate the engineering so the building performs to its optimum.

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New Biochemistry Building, University of Oxford by Hawkins\Brown.

Gradually, as the office has grown, Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve assumed more of a lead role - first of an architectural studio and now of the Sustainability Team and strategy. I led our Life Cycle Analysis and embodied carbon research during our collaboration with UCL and am now slowly growing our dedicated sustainability team. The Sustainability Team acts as an internal consultancy within the office to support the architectural teams in competitions and all the way through the design process. Our current priority is early stage design as this is when the biggest wins can be made.

Atrium in the New Biochemistry Building, University of Oxford by Hawkins/Brown.

Alumni Spotlight

MM: At Hawkins\Brown, you have worked in partnership with the UCL Institute for Environmental Design and Engineering (IEDE), through their Engineering Doctorate program, to create the Hawkins\Brown: Emission Reduction Tool. Could you describe the tool for us?

LB: H\B:ERT is designed as a Revit plug-in. It works by measuring the volume of materials tagged in the model and applying carbon coefficients to automatically calculate the embodied carbon within a design. Anything that is drawn or tagged will be included. It has been designed as a visual tool as we found most other tools were spreadsheet based and a real disincentive to architects actually using the data to make design decisions about materials.

“Learning these skills as a student will need to become part of the curriculum in order to design to combat climate change, but the earlier they are learnt, the more they become second nature and a design tool, rather than a constraint.” MM: How does the tool work?

LB: We have found it most useful to measure elements of the building, such as structural bays or façade build ups from RIBA Stage 2 onwards. This is where material decisions are made and locked in for the life of the building, which can be tens or hundreds of years, so it’s really important to get it right. We are now developing the tool to take account of the operational energy analysis our M&E engineers provide so we can move towards making design decisions based on an understanding of the carbon emissions of a project over its whole life.

H\B:ERT, a Revit plug-in designed by Hawkins/Brown.

MM: How does this tool inform your designs? What can students learn from this?

LB: Through the research weâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve done and conversations we have in the office we realise this is a new way of thinking. Designing using minimal carbon and using that as a driver has the potential to create a new direction for architecture. It will drive architects back towards passive and responsive design, as well as being more careful and knowledgeable about the source location and composition of the materials they propose. As we move towards industry benchmarks, building in certain materials will become more difficult to justify. Learning these skills as a student will need to become part of the curriculum in order to design to combat climate change, but the earlier they are learnt, the more they become second nature and a design tool, rather than a constraint.

MM: Do you think digital tools are the most effective medium to support and evolve environmental design? 96

LB: It is an interesting question about whether digital tools can inform design. At Hawkins\Brown we have spent a lot of time developing our digital tools for a number of reasons. Firstly, we can save precious time on menial, repetitive tasks. Secondly, our models hold such valuable design information that can be harvested, analysed and benchmarked on a number of levels to enable us to improve. Architects, by their nature are a service provider (whether we like it or not). Our clients need to rely on the information we give them to make decisions so the faster and more accurate that information can be whether it is an area, carbon emission or material rendering the better for all parties. When used correctly digital tools can ensure better quality and less time wasted in design. We have found that quantifying and visualising environmental data makes it much more likely that a client will understand the decision we are asking them to make. MM: Thanks Louisa.

For more information please visit: www.hawkinsbrown.com/services/hbert

Header text

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Friday Lecture Series Emily Cronin Dilara Kuran Friday Lecture Curators & Stage 4 Students

Open to the wider school and beyond, the Friday Lecture Series are an important part of the Mackintosh School Of Architecture, inviting respected professionals to speak at the school. Each semester covers a different theme, inspiring students through architectural discourse and on-going research. Fourth year students Dilara Kuran and Emily Cronin explain this year’s second semester lecture series, On Thresholds/In Transition.

For the second semester’s Friday Lecture Series, we investigated architectural practices that critically engage with other fields through research and collaboration. This was an opportunity to revisit the school’s character as a cross-disciplinary institution. Aimed at generating a familiarity between the student body and the speakers, the lectures were complemented with a variety of events accessible to the wider school community. The first took place as a film screening, prior to a lecture, by the research agency Forensic Architecture, documenting their collaboration with ex-prisoners in the 3D modeling of Saydnaya Prison. This case-study emphasized the agency’s use of architecture as an investigative apparatus, which Nicholas Zembashi explored further in his lecture. Another event took the form of a collective reading session, with DPR-Barcelona founding partner, Cesar Reyes. Referred to as a Parasitic Reading Room, the session complemented Cesar’s lecture on temporary occupation of urban spaces and ways of storytelling in architectural publications. Had it not been for the COVID-19 outbreak, our final event would have been a panel between Ross Birrell, a lecturer from the fine art department, and Christine Binswanger, a partner at Herzog & de Meuron, discussing the relationship between art and architecture. Teaching architects Martino Tattara of Dogma, Andrew Clancy and Colm Moore of Clancy Moore Architects, Susannah Hagan, founding Director of R_E_D (Research into Environment + Design), and Andrew

On Thresholds/In Transition

Campbell of Dress for the Weather all gave valuable insights on how research and practice can be reconciled to generate fresh responses to emerging spatial and environmental issues, such as flexible social housing, adaptive reuse and ecological destruction. The lecture series aimed to maintain a continuous thread between the lectures, events and studio experience. The Friday Lecture Series has evolved to an interactive and critical platform that can be sustained as a vehicle to widen student perspectives, moving between education and practice. Thank you to all the speakers who accepted our invitation, some of whom could not make it due to the COVID-19 outbreak, and all the members of staff who helped us throughout, especially Miranda Webster and Florian Urban.

Lecture Poster Oct 2019

The Invisible Architecture Of Society The architectâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s role: social structures and conventions in the public realm Alex Holding Stage 3

The onset of modernism was an exciting time in Europe both for designers and the general public; new dialogues were forged between the two and the latter would play an integral role in shaping the formers agenda. This was because the modernist agenda was largely concerned with how people live, or at least how they thought people should live.

The Invisible Architecture Of Society

German architect Walter Gropius was a prominent figure of this early modernist movement, and in 1919 founded the Bauhaus school in Weimar, Germany. Diverging from traditional educational convention, the Bauhaus taught the unification of art and design disciplines; they disputed the exclusive veneration of the ‘fine arts’ and instead sought to integrate technology and craft, with art and design. Whilst the school indeed constituted a shift in architecture – the eradication of unnecessary ornamentation for a new type of pure, functional and technological design – it also constituted a shift in architectural ethos and it changed our perception of design in a societal context. Designers began to think about architecture in a civic and social regard rather than in and of itself, and new efforts were made to influence social convention by way of the built environment. It was thought that civic betterment and social regeneration could be achieved through design, or that architecture was a means to improve our quality of life - an instrument of social reform. Auspicious as this ambition might sound, it does then of course mean that ‘civic betterment’ is predisposed to what the modernist may deem as ‘better’.

Designers began to think about architecture in a civic and social regard rather than in and of itself, and new efforts were made to influence social convention by way of the built environment. When considering what this meant for citizens, one might feel rather perturbed; a legion of turtleneckclad, pencil-wielding adolescents descending from the Bauhaus to impart to the world that which only they, the architecturally enlightened, could conceivably grasp - that society was to be freed from the chains of revivalist, neoclassicism and thereafter hurtled into the new age of modernist doctrine. Our current urban convictions and familiarities, now branded encumbering, would be subject to reform and manipulation where is seen fit. But fear not, such decisions are reserved for the architecturally enlightened and, snubbing any preexistent societal nuances or complexity of course, all can be remedied with excellent design...

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Brasilia - the modernist capital of Brazil, built and planned entirely from scratch - is perhaps the most prominent example when deliberating these utopian, modernist intentions, and the subsequent dichotomy that arises between plan and reality. Kubitschek, Brazil’s president at the time, took motivation for Brasilia from political aspiration and from the commercial assurances of a global economic presence afforded by modernisation, or westernisation. Somewhat dissociated from these aspirations were the planner’s own prerogatives; Lúcio Costa’s master plan was largely informed by Marxist ideals and commendations to revise feudal norms and establish a new social order. This was a conflation of capitalist administration with communist ideals, which, in this case, was only necessitated by the assumption that ‘modernism’ also meant ‘modernisation’. In Brasilia, and arguably modernism more broadly, there arises a paradox in theoretical intention and physical reality. So much is contingent on the tenuous presumption that the user themselves will in fact conform and adapt to these newly ordained, modernist social structures, and that the long entrenched human relationship with the built environment will quietly subside for them.

So, an architectural intention that is thought to follow a certain set of ideals has actually in itself engendered a series of social processes and structures that, in their very nature, subvert the initial basis for their founding. The specific nature of Costa’s urban intentions naturally also creates an overt specificity of spatial quality; detached sectors for each urban function were intended to prescribe and designate usage rather than letting a sense of use or function evolve, in line with the fluctuating needs of a city’s inhabitants. Despite these highly prescriptive systems, Brasilia still has experienced the reassertion of social structures and cultural values that the planners had so expected to eradicate. So, an architectural intention that is thought to follow a certain set of ideals has actually in itself engendered a series of social processes and structures that, in their very nature, subvert the initial basis for

The Invisible Architecture Of Society

Holston, James – The Modernist City: An Anthropological Critique of Brasília,Pg. 105

David Bravo – The Flâneur’s Surprise: Lessons from the European Prize for Urban Public Space 2000-2010, ia de Barcelona and ACTAR, Pg. 54

their founding. James Holston suggests that the blame for the creation of these social processes was in part due to ‘The Death of the Street’, or the tendency of urban modernism to inadvertently undermine patterns of public interaction, and by extension the public realm itself. The street corner, perhaps lurking adjacent to the civic square, constitutes a point of interminable societal exchange. The brash concessions of street vendor and punter can be heard amid the arbitrary pauses in impromptu, chance encounter conversations – all punctuated by the perpetual coming and going of a city’s inhabitants. Street corners are, as put by an individual who moved from a traditional Brazilian city to Brasilia, “points of sociality” 1; they facilitate human interaction and co-existence, and are indifferent in their functional designation. One could say that it is both the overlapping of function or use, and the enactment of social agency within these spaces that defines the public realm. Historically, the street also constituted a programme of organization for which public space could evolve from, or that “squares develop in relation to streets in several distinct architectural morphologies...” 2 This was a practice modernists hoped to stamp out as for them it represented an arbitrary or unregulated methodology, and thus an outcome that was beyond their control. As well as the street acting as this contingent basis for all that was public to evolve from, it also represented a dialogue between public and private life that was obstructive to the modernist, utopian ambition; the street is an intimate mediation of any rapport between the public and private realm, if only by the nature of its proximity to both, and it engenders a dialogue that is socially unpredictable and largely determined by social convention, not by any centralized strategy enacted by the modernist planners. So instead Costa proposed high-speed motorways to provide circulation, eliminating both the pedestrian and the street and thus the unpredictability thereof. If to consider the traditional function of public squares as another dominion of social interaction - the square shares the same architectural configuration as the street, in the sense that they are both enclosed and both defined by the facades that they capture, but are nonetheless different in spatial quality. To this end, we can surmise that private property also plays a significant

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role in constituting the public realm; the façade of private property, marking the boundary between street and residence, is the sole interface responsible for mediating any relationship between the public and private realm – or as put powerfully by Holston: “As a liminal zone, the street façade is on the one hand the exterior wall of the private domain and on the other the interior wall of the public.” 3 As a result of this, a very intimate relationship is forged between public and private life, and is one that is continually negotiated along the private façade, throughout the entire city.

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Nollis Figure Ground Map, Rome 1748

Holston, James – The Modernist City: An Anthropological Critique of Brasília, Pg. 162

Holston, James – The Modernist City: An Anthropological Critique of Brasília, Pg. NA

However, all of these elements that encourage life and vivacity in public space are entirely absent in Brasilia. This can be seen when Brasilia, a planned city, is compared to a pre-industrial city where urban fabric is permitted to evolve naturally – the contrast is most strikingly highlighted by the figure-ground diagrams in Figs. 1 & 2. In Rome (Fig. 1), public space is characterized by the contiguous mass of buildings that shape and enfold it, and that create this ‘liminal zone’, whereas in Brasilia (Fig. 2) buildings stand alone, with enormous distances between them. Each building is therefore monumentalised – they become a spectacle in themselves and struggle with each other for attention, and at the same time do not give boundary or threshold to any specific public realm. This blurring of thresholds produces a sense of displacement among inhabitants and, despite the vast empty spaces, the subsequent isolation and ‘interiorisation’4 of social life.

The Invisible Architecture Of Society

Figure Ground Plan of Brasilia South Wing, 1960

The geographically compartmentalised nature of Brasiliaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s layout, and the subsequent segregation of commercial, residential and administrative functions, when coupled with this lack of civic ownership of any real public realm, prompts a broader inquiry into modernism, and further, into the futility of overly prescriptive architecture in the public domain. Intrinsic to Bauhaus ideology is this aspiration to change society, or to manipulate social convention by way of design. And the influence this ethos has had cannot be understated; the Bauhaus legacy exists more as a movement than as a school, and indeed still remains the most seminal and definitive movement of the 20th century. However, when implemented on an urban scale these aspirations are in the end, as is exhibited compellingly in Brasilia, often ineffectual; it could be said that they are beyond the reach of the architect. Ineffectuality as a consequence of an intention is, in itself, arguably innocuous. It is only once ineffectuality starts to trigger new social processes as a byproduct, as seen in Brasilia, that it becomes detrimental, and thus uncontrollable. Modernism and public space, you could argue, are polarised by nature; the former is highly prescriptive and the latter indifferent and ambivalent. It is this polarity that generates contention in the public realm. Prescriptivism can be thought of as control, and control in the public realm must always belong to citizens and the masses. Society cannot be coordinated to the will of an urban programme or intention; it would be an

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oversimplification of the human condition to think so. So, if society will not necessarily adhere to an intention - where does this leave the urbanist? What is their role? I would suggest that it is one of facilitation. The propensity for variety in the public domain is what makes it so interesting – the social patterns and structures that organically evolve in public spaces are where we should look first for evidence to contextualise any urban plan. Perhaps it is prudent to let a sense of spatial function evolve - rather than assigning or prescribing, it may grow in accordance with the silent consensus of the public. This way, the term ‘function’ is malleable rather than constant; its definition is informed by society and not by planner, therefore permitting the perceived function to evolve in unity with, and on account of, the ever fluctuating needs of society. In accepting this variability of function we are also, as a result, relinquishing control as planner and instead redistributing it to the citizen – endowing society with complete autonomy. What we are left with is not ‘the square’ or ‘the street’, but rather a realm that is rendered ‘public’, not by its architectural framework, but by the very nature of the activity that takes place within it. It is only within this activity, or commotion, that we are able to learn of the requisites and provisos of a thriving public realm.

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Bibliography

David Bravo – The Flâneur’s Surprise: Lessons from the European Prize for Urban Public Space 20002010, Centre de Cultura Contemporània de Barcelona and ACTAR, Barcelona, 2010. Holston, James – The Modernist City: An Anthropological Critique of Brasília, The University of Chicago Press, London, 1989.

List of figures

Figure 1 Nollis Figure Ground Map, Rome 1748. Accessed via https://morphocode.com/figure-ground-diagram/ Figure 2 Figure Ground Plan of Brasilia South Wing, 1960

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Where have students worked?

Taking the minimum of 2 years in practice under a supervision of architectural practice is the essential requirement by Architects Registration Board in order to complete the path to becoming an Architect. However, only one of these â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;yearsoutâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; has to be completed locally in the UK. And thus the students of MSA have been taking this opportunity with a wide range of diverse experiences that students bring to the table at the beginning of the academic year.

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Introduction Robert Mantho

As in the past, the city of Glasgow is the laboratory for the design research of Stage 4. The MSAâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s extensive knowledge of Glasgow is used as the basis for exploring contemporary social, economic and cultural issues relevant to the discipline of architecture. In semester 1 Stage 4 focuses on Urban Housing, exploring the relationship between domesticity and labour, particularly as it relates to the changes in urban life and consequently urban housing, neighbourhoods and the city. The semester is structured with 3 briefs, each requiring the consideration of specific scales, starting with scale of the individual living unit, moving to the macro scale of the masterplan, and finishing with the intermediate scale of the urban block, in the Candleriggs district of central Glasgow. These briefs were used to explicitly require students to identify an architectural position and to develop a thesis to be investigated across the 3 scales. Semester 2 for Stage 4 is centred on the exploration of a public building within the context of central Glasgow, carrying on the MSAâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s tradition of the Urban Building. The students work on expanding the theme of semester 1, considering those aspects of civic life which are not directly tied to economic exchange, but which are critical to social coherence. The students work adjacent to the site of the semester 1 Urban Housing project in Candleriggs, relating their Urban Building design work to the investigations undertaken in semester 1. Semester 2 is designed to help students build on the skills and knowledge acquired in semester 1, to reinforce their ability to identify research topics and clarify their design thinking in articulated theses in preparation for Stage 5 and the task of the Final Design Thesis.

Stage Four Stage leader

Robert Mantho Co Pilot

Stuart Dickson Studio Tutors

Sonia Browse Andrew Campbell Colin Glover Chris Platt Nick Walker

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Domesticy & Labour Urban Housing Forum

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Urban Housing Forum

Text and photography by Sophie Curran Rihards Saknitis Stage 4 students

In January, Stage 4 students and tutors held a forum with field professionals to debate the issues related to the ongoing project theme for the year: the relationship between domesticity and labour (D&L). Discussions concluded with an exhibition showcasing work from the studentsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; recent housing project. The relationship between domesticity and labour shifts in strength and compatibility, yet both are important aspects in our daily life. Through discussion, Stage 4 agreed that future housing must respond to the varying needs of individuals and therefore their relationship with both aspects of life would differ. How we addressed housing was personal to each student, with each exploring the issues we face in a modern city and growing problems in urbanism. The concept of a single living cell formulated the thesis for the project continuing. The exploration of a unit without context that explicitly engaged with contemporary issues resulting from the relationship between domesticity and labour. The output, a vast range of thought-provoking architecture which raised discussion, agreement and debate within the year. From cell grows district. Analysis of Glasgowâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Merchant City was undertaken penetrating the city on a larger scale. Historical, environmental and socio-economic characteristics that surround the site and impact the city were detailed by teams of students. Research led to formulated proposals for a mixed-use masterplan focused on its domestic and productive activities. District was then developed to housing. Each student took an aspect of the masterplan and developed their urban housing response. The personal definition of domestic and productive spaces devised by the students were paramount to question current relationships and issues we face in the contemporary city and continued the ongoing conversation. The final submission concluded in a weeklong forum and final exhibition held by all students. Professionals from the industry were invited to debate and discuss the provocative work produced.

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Urban Housing Forum

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Tarn Zaidi

Artists in Residence

Stage Four

Left: 1. A collective library. 2. Long section. Below: 1. The domestic space.

Bridging the fragmented gap between social divisions and the young and old within Merchant City is crucial. Spaces for education and cultural exchanges form relationships between various generations and strengthening the social and civic infrastructure maintains a cultural link to the existing urban context. The idea of combining education as a form of public and private labour with domesticity arose from a study of the urban demographic, where the lack of familyorientated activities maintains a transient and inactive nature within this district. Many artistsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; studios exist in the east end and south side of Glasgow, but not in the heart of the city. Proposing a building with significance and of a permanent stature, carefully balanced with an ephemeral interior best describes Merchant City as a whole. The proposed building with its brick and arched faĂ§ade sits well within its context, even with a seemingly institutional appearance at first, it is intended to be a permanent structure, changing periodically internally, reclaiming the aesthetic of a building which is otherwise formal and controlled and giving it back to the people of Glasgow. 117

A culinary education.

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Matt Smith & Ben Scragg

A Model of the City

Stage Four

Left: 1. Plans developed for each housing typology. 2. Perspective section through the units.

Our proposal aims to reclaim the Candleriggs site from development limbo â&#x20AC;&#x201C; from portfolios back to the people. Our affectionate model city offers a home, training, work and leisure spaces for the disenfranchised and the disillusioned: people for whom the system is failing. The two demographics here enjoy a mutually beneficial relationship. While meant as a stepping-stone, a halfway house, for some it might not be temporary. People leaving would be encouraged to return to the site to work or train others, creating a potentially sustainable circular model for the future of the siteâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s operation.

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Perspective view.

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Sandy Vile

The Anisotropic Grid

Stage Four

Left: 1. 1:20 cell model. Plaster, plywood, walnut. Flexible space weaves around more ‘concrete’ servant cores. 2. Section through a block.

Today the digital world gives everyone access to a vast network of resources and connectivity, which has brought about new modes of labour. Primarily Labour was a Fordist approach, where workers and resources would arrive at the place of work, and revolve around a rigid framework. New formations of labour are arising such as the ‘gig economy’, where free-lancers, homeworkers and temporary jobs are more common. The industrial city was built around places of labour and at the heart of the civic realm. The section tries to explore the relation between a more interwoven relationship between domesticity and labour. Small open courtyards and changes in levels help distinguish changes in use and privacy. Social and private space is defined by servant spaces, changes in level and axis. A ‘Duchamp’ door creates an extended space either belonging to the private domain or the more social.

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1:20 interior view An ambiguous use of levels, floors becoming seats, becoming tables.

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Tess Hillan

Live-In Workers Cooperative

Stage Four

Left: 1. Interior view of the communal courtyard.

The proposed project is a multi-generational live-in workersâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; cooperative for those who are most at risk in the current capitalist housing model. Residents act as custodians of the building, allowing them to live there in exchange for the labour required to run the cooperative. The flexible scheme emphasises residentsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; growth, which is achieved through gaining diverse skills from a variety of responsibilities. The flats are designed for short-term residency - a few months up to a couple of years - with a simple grid design to keep them cost-effective. Shared social spaces and a diverse community foster a friendly, communal atmosphere.

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Interior view of the deck access.

The Egg The Empowering effect of a self build project Freya Bruce Stage 4

Creating and subsequently occupying space is the physical manifestation of socialist housing agendas. As well as this, it satisfies the real need for safe, secure and affordable housing. In the past decade, housing has been described as the â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;wobbly pillar under the welfare stateâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;. People and communities are facing an epidemic of temporary housing, homelessness and crippling rent costs. Furthermore, a dynamic, flexible generation is leading the pressure for highly adaptable space to keep up with their modern, rapidly evolving lives; especially as many chase to advance their careers by moving to dense and expensive urban areas.

The Egg

It becomes increasingly important to establish and maintain autonomy over spaces in times of economic, or political uncertainty and instability. The future of our housing remains uncertain and it seems that whilst the â&#x20AC;&#x153;stateâ&#x20AC;? is unable, or unwilling, to cope with the cost of providing housing for everyone, the solution may have to be taken into our own hands. An optimistic future of housing should encompass a sense of almost primitive minimalism, with a sustainable mindset and overarching ideas of ownership, community and empowerment. Access to knowledge, skillset and tools become weapons of achieving autonomy over the creation and use of space. Stemming from these concepts, the van project emerged from a passion to find alternative modes of living, but also as a personal challenge. The build was considerably more difficult and time-consuming than expected and the importance of the project became more about a learning experience (in terms of working with tools, processes and materials) than

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Constructing interior plywood panels and wood fibre insulation walls

a final product. Whilst having no official building qualifications, my dad has years of building and repairing experience and I am very privileged to have had the opportunity to learn from him. As architecture students, we spend hours poring over details, drawings and screens, perfecting conceptual ideas while the realities of various crises of living within the 21st century are rarely incorporated

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Mid-way through demolition.

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Continued demolition - the base of the caravan is exposed.

Beginning to construct the â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;shellâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; shape

The Egg

within our work with thorough consideration. The physical reality of this project was something we should perhaps face more often. The rewards of perfecting something physical is far more satisfying and worthwhile. From the outset, despite being on a very limited budget (working at a bar on evenings and weekends to fund the project), sustainability was a major drive towards the curation of the design. Combining FCS approved plywood, recycled and recyclable plastic flooring, aluminium sheet (provided generously by our sponsors at Birchfield Metal Engineering in Hyde) and wood fibre wall insulation, the van could potentially be separated into constituent parts for recycling at the end of its life. After purchasing a second-hand caravan, the original structure was demolished, materials separated and recycled and the original chassis repaired. The windows and kitchen facilities within the van have been reused as much as possible and the new small space is efficient in layout and affordable to heat.

With such a unique shape, problem solving skills learnt as an Architecture student had to be applied, in duality with an everincreasing tool and process knowledge base to create through trial and error. Another major ambition for the project was to maintain the hand-built element. Firstly, a frame had to be built to test the overall curved ‘egg’ shape in real space, whereby each point was adjusted by hand and by eye to achieve different curved profiles on each side. Every detail was painstakingly done by hand, including over 200 individually marked, cut and sanded triangular panels to form both the interior and exterior shape. The only part of the project that was completed off-site was the waterproof lacquer, where at the metalworkers, the van received a warm, if slightly confused reception when we arrived (see photos left). The fact that the project does not take itself too seriously means that the response to the van overall is very human. After being nicknamed ‘the boat’ and ‘the spaceship’, it is important not to be too precious about the feedback. Even our postman came inside to check progress every time he delivered mail and even brought his son to see the van.

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On reflection, the project definitely taught me patience above anything else. With such a unique shape, problem solving skills learnt as an Architecture student had to be applied, in duality with an ever-increasing tool and process knowledge base to create through trial and error. Can architecture drive change? Yes, but perhaps it should now be the duty of architects to drop their pens in a crisis and don their tools. Architecture students, with both an optimistic view of the future and the skills to create spaces, also have a notorious ability to ‘rough it’. They should be a major port of call in a housing crisis. Not just prioritising the glamour of selfbuild reserved for the privileged few, but adopting a mucky and hands-on built future. It might not be a faultless project, but I would argue it has a lot of heart. I hope it can act as a springboard for future projects, giving me the confidence to take risks and live on site. Although perhaps next time, it might be something square...

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Getting closer to completion

With special thanks to Birchfield Sheet Metal Engineering in Hyde. Follow Freya’s caravan conversion project on instagram.com/studio_occupy

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Introduction Miranda Webster

The Stage 5 leader Mark Baines died on 6th April 2020, whilst in Covid -19 lockdown and after a short ferocious battle with cancer. Staff and students miss his leadership. As a tutor, Mark was supportive, considerate, logical and patient. As a stage leader, he understood the need for transparency and clarity in teaching and documentation. As a school, he was part of the fabric and shall be greatly missed as he leaves a legacy with us all and a wealth of knowledge of architecture, teaching, the city of Glasgow and his passion for Alexander ‘Greek’ Thomson. This text has been extracted from the Stage 5 programme document written by Stage Leader Mark Baines and edited by Miranda Webster.

A Tale of Two Cities

The Diploma School at the Mackintosh School of Architecture has, for many years, been intimately concerned with the reciprocal relationships between architecture and the city in both their generic and specific manifestations. The resulting investigative studies, urban design strategies and comprehensive design projects now lay the foundations for the exploration and study of a European city by way of a Design Thesis. This current academic session the selected setting is the major port city of Antwerp in Flanders, Belgium. The Final Design Thesis is the culmination of architectural academic learning, design work and professional experience in architecture to date. Stage 5 requires the design of architecturally related artifacts within the context of the city. More than a design project, the Design Thesis requires the elicitation, framing and articulation of an explicit idea or question relating to architecture and urbanism which is clearly identified, carefully considered and simply described in ways that inform the trajectory of the design process. A Design Thesis is a self-directed piece of work and therefore provides an opportunity to pursue and find expression for personal architectural interests and preoccupations. Implicit in the Design Thesis lies the evidencing of its impact on the urban environment. The form it takes, the spaces it creates and the character it assumes are to be critically informed by the geographic, topographic and climatic situations as well as the prevailing cultural, political, economic and social circumstances. In this year’s thesis projects there is a greater awareness of global issues concerning climate change, sustainability and the increasing need for ethical approaches to building which all necessitate widening the scope of our basic sense, understanding, or interpretation of ‘function’ and ‘technique‘. The thesis investigations provoke new design challenges in the world of practice, architectural or otherwise.

Stage Five Stage leader

Mark Baines Co Pilot

Miranda Webster Studio Tutors

Nick Domminey Charlie Sutherland Stacey Phillips Graeme Massie Neil Simpson

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Investigating Antwerp

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Investigating Antwerp

Lida O’Shea Stage 5 Student

Each year the stage five architecture students from the Mackintosh School of Architecture investigate and base their thesis project within a different European city. This year’s city was Antwerp, Belgium. Following a thorough investigation during the site visit in September, a team of twelve student editors identified key reoccurring themes which they felt best described the work produced throughout the year group. All students contributed work relevant to the ‘umbrella’ title of the themes. The editors curated the work into a comprehensive set of panels representing the themes: Typology and Morphology; Transitions and Edges; Monuments and Landmarks; History and Future; Environment, Green Space and Public Space; Textures and Tectonics. The exhibition was first held within the architecture studio, at GSA. All the work produced was parallel to the students’ individual thesis projects and it served as a way to start sharing the research amongst each other. After a successful exhibition of the work within our studio space, the panels and models and booklets were rearranged to be exhibited within the Lighthouse, Scotland’s national centre for design and architecture.

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“Textural ground studies mapping differences in floor treatment in the public realm. Textures define zones for these on foot, bike and vehicular transport.” -Ben Tipson

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“An investigation into the future of Antwerp’s heritage 4. Shiftthrough by Marco Di Martino the automation of its port and shipping industry.” -Marco Di Martino

Investigating Antwerp

1. Corner Bar by James Faulds and Tom Stark (D,8)

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Despite the homogenei Antwerp serves as the sett backdrop remains constant expression at the scale of a s of this universal unit within

“Despite the homogeneity of it’s architectural expression, the Amandus-Antheneum neighborhood of Antwerp serves as the setting for diverse assemblage of ethnic groups. From street to street, the common backdrop remains constant yet the inhabitants and their customs are continually changing. Representing this expression at the scale of a single unit, the corner bar, conveys within the unique and nuanced cultural occupation of this universal unit within the neighborhood.” -James Faulds & Tom Stark

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4. Transition Across Infrastructure by Ciara Durkin

â&#x20AC;&#x153;A comparison between the vast scale and density of the transition across the boulevard and the intimacy and quaint transition within the Medieval City Centre.â&#x20AC;? -Ciara Durkin

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A compariso the boulevard a Centre.

108.

Investigating Antwerp

“The public realm extends into the dense urban blocks of the medieval city. The Vlaaikensgang is experienced as a rich sequence of passageways and courtyards.” -Alexander Kingsland

5. Study of the Rising Sea by Derrie Pearson

“Mapping an incremental rise in sea level in order to study the impact this will have on Antwerp, illuminating the landscape of the city and the connotations of being a coastal city in times of climate crisis.”

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13 metres

9 metres

-Derrie Pearson

5 metres

4 metres

3 metres

2 metres

Mapping an incremental rise in sea level in order to study the impact this will have on Antwerp, illuminating the landscape of the city and the connotations of being a coastal city in times of climate crisis.

1 metre

30.

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Michael Egan

Antwerp: A Steel Inventory

Stage Five

Left: 1. Diagram illustrating the process involved with reusing the steel. 2. Visual showing gallery addition. Constructed from reclaimed pipeline infrastructure. Below: 1. Exploded axonometric diagram, shows build up and arrangement of depot + site context. 2. View of the process in the container.

Deconstruction is the process of selectively and systematically disassembling buildings that would otherwise be demolished and landfilled... It generates a supply of materials suitable for reuse to construct or rehabilitate other structures.â&#x20AC;&#x2122; The environmental benefits of reusing steel far surpass those of recycling it and therefore should incentivise the collection and reuse of local steel materials and resources. The thesis aims to better integrate the port and the city by creating a local resource stream, whereby steel components and materials from decommissioned industrial infrastructure are recirculated for use in central Antwerp. This is done by using infill/ vacant sites as a platform and as hosts for a series of structures that celebrate and advertise the reuse of steel, whilst also giving back to the immediate neighborhoods.

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James Faulds Tom Stark

An Architecture of Emotion

Stage 5

Left: 1. Joy 2. Melancholia 3. Gatehouse East Below: 1. Dependence

An Architecture of Emotion acts as a critical reappraisal of the value and necessity of collective and solitary emotional space, proposing a revised typology that considers the future of emotion, contemplation and memory within the contemporary city. Seven chapels form a constellation at the heart of the block, fed into by four gardens, screened from the street by a series of modest gatehouses that address the immediate context. Each chapel serves to offer a space in which one may seek comfort, solace or celebration: spaces that aim in atmosphere, scale and material expression to elicit and sustain an emotional and spiritual need.

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Karina Kuznecova

Hypothetical narrative of living structures

Stage 5

Left: 1. Community garden and bee keeping station. 2. Reinterpretation of Machiya facade. Memory collection.

The thesis sought to investigate method where skills and knowledge of professionals and users come together; those are exchanged, shared and evolved by any participant of the mechanism. This mechanism would also include a library of recycled materials and underused/odd/shallow sites of Kyoto for projects to be constructed. The project started as a personal observation of the architectural profession and its separation from the making processes, also the extinction of ‘problem-solving’ and participation factor by the user. Tremendously influenced by R.Sennet ’s ‘Craftsmen’, J.Pallasmaas’s ‘Thinking hands’ and C. Alexander’s ‘Pattern language’ to name the few. While in Kyoto, I started the research by observing user design patterns in order to understand, estimate and speculate the participation factor for the mechanism. In Japan, those observations are particularly interesting due to the nature of its DIY approach and strong respect for traditions.

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Transportable laundry, constructed from observed components.

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Above: 1.Landscape plan showing anaerobic digesters as human-scale undulating parkland. 3. View from window of neighbouring street towards the new anaerobic digestion park.

Nick Cherry

Juxtaposition Field

Stage Five

How can we expose, manipulate and utilise grain elevators and their industrial journey to integrate and welcome surrounding residential streets and activate community?

Thesis identifies the area of T’Dokske, Merksem, as an area of vast juxtaposition of form, scale, function, purpose, class, materiality, infrastructure, density and permeability. The neighbourhood consists of industrial and residential terrain. Mixed neighbourhoods are generally a positive thing, but in the case of T’Dokske they behave as numerous mono-functional areas, with a lack of integration. The residential / industrial clash is further enhanced by the lack of boundaries – there is no definition between residential and industrial, thus creating contested terrain. Due to the industrial / residential permeability, residents, pedestrians, cyclists, HGV’s, vans, cars, children, boats, commuters, workers all share the same spaces. Historically, industrial T’Dokske had a strong relationship with the residential core of Merksem, but now this no longer exists. The thesis aims to re-establish this.

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Grain elevators provide a large blank screen for outdoor movies in the summer months.

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Ariane Porter

The Anti Babel

Ariane Porter

Left: Collage model exploring how the interior is occupied through the personal and specific use of permanent and temporary elements. Below: Inside and Outside

Antwerp, through its many iterations and developments, has predominantly accommodated its population in the terraced house. Though similar in typology, each plot-ed home varies in character, dimension, function, use and ownership. No single plot is the same. So if a significant portion of Antwerpâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s built context is formed by its residents, what future does a city have if instead generic architectures of dwelling begin to fill urban voids? The new developments being introduced are dwellings of suffocating restriction, what resilience do these newer structures offer? To question the current, pan-European, â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;blockâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; development of Antwerp, the thesis poses the question: in a city actively densifying its centre, can a housing model be proposed that allows the population the (same [existing]) ability to adopt and adapt their properties.

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Populism, Pluralism and the Post-Political city Joshua Page Stage 5 student

Populism is perhaps the defining phenomenon of contemporary politics. The Brexit referendum and the election of President Trump have shown the divisive power of a populist rhetoric, and how quickly it can divide a nation. The term is applied across the political spectrum; from the left-wing â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;pink tideâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; presidents of Latin America to the disruptive rightwing parties of Europe. Our challenging economic, environmental and political climate has become the perfect catalyst for its prolific growth, with support for populist parties tripling since 1998. But what does populism mean, how is it affecting our liberal democracies, and what does architecture have to do with it?

Populism, Pluralism & the Post-Political City

Manichean A dualistic theory, where a powerful force of good (God) is opposed by an eternal evil power (the devil).

The Dutch political scientist Cas Muddle defines populism as, “a thin-centred ideology that considers society to be ultimately separated into two homogeneous and antagonistic camps, ‘the pure people’ versus ‘the corrupt elite’, and which argues that politics should be an expression of the general will of the people.” This theory subscribes to a good/ evil Manichean view of society, where ‘the people’ may become a homogeneous entity with a common interest, in pursuit of what Carl Schmitt would call, collective action. Populist leaders, often legitimately, criticise the ‘elites’ in power, by asserting that the government no longer acts in the interest of the people. They claim to represent the ‘silent majority’, whose voices are not addressed in the current political hegemony, which in turn personalises and moralises the political debate. It eliminates any productive disagreement from the democratic discourse and facilitates the delegitimization of any citizen or political contemporary who does not conform to the idea of the ‘real people’ (as demonstrated by Donald Trump’s innumerable ‘twitter storms’).

“The people only appear in the plural, and as a people, it is capable of neither decision nor action as a whole.” - Jürgen Habermas Depending on the political context, populism can act either as a threat or a corrective to democracy. It can be constructive when it acts towards a predetermined goal or social movement, where all the participating parties are in agreement with the cause. Ernesto Laclau suggests populism is the essence of democracy in its capacity to act as an emancipatory force. It can facilitate a shift across the political spectrum from an authoritarian to a democratic model, when the public gains critical mass and acts collectively. Populism can act as a positive force in liberal democracies and to be used as a device to voice the concerns of the unheard population. Populism is fundamentally pro-democratic. However, whilst a traditional party leader seeks to stand as a fallible representative of some people, the populist claims to represent the absolute popular will of all people. This extreme majoritarian model refutes the authority of any unelected bodies, such as the UN or

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Pluralism An ideology that recognises the diversity of views, interests and convictions between two or more actors within a political body.

EU, who may seek to limit the powers of any individual. With no means of control, a populist leader is free to make significant constitutional changes to prevent any future legitimate political contestation. These independent institutions were founded specifically to prevent this from happening, and to protect the freedom and fundamental rights to minorities within our pluralist society.

150 Rise of Anti-Pluralism in Europe - Filip Dewinter, from the Belgian popularist party Vlaams Belaang

Liberal Democracy A form of representative democracy, operating under the principles of liberalism where equality and the rights of individuals are protected. It is the type of democracy used by much of the Western world.

Liberal democracy is founded on pluralism, where society is divided into a heterogeneous collection of overlapping social groups, each with their own irreducibly different identities and interests. The acceptance of pluralism means the commitment to sharing political space with others whom we accept as free and equal. A failure to welcome pluralism presents a threat to individuality, equality and minority rights and, in some instances, has been the crucial reason for the rise of many far-right parties in Europe, such as Austria’s ‘Freedom Party’ and Belgium’s ‘Vlaams Belang’. Whilst populism supports democracy, it opposes liberal democracy. By proposing to represent the singular voice of the people, and refuting any contention, it is inherently anti-pluralist. The real danger in populism is its ability to act as a force that discredits/undermines opposing beliefs, denies diversity and rejects citizens as free and equal. Politics may be defined as the struggle between opposing forces to which there is no rational consensus. By

Populism, Pluralism & the Post-Political City

Agonism A productive we/they relationship where the conflicting parties, although acknowledging that there is no rational solution to their conflict, nevertheless recognize the legitimacy of their opponents.

going against pluralism, populism eliminates the conflict between the different beliefs within society and fails to recognise the agonism that is constitutive of the political. The political theorist Chantal Mouffe, states “that the task of modern democracy is to turn antagonism into agonism” – a conflictual relationship of adversaries not enemies. Therefore, populism presents a critical threat in entirely dissolving political conflict, as well as the liberal democracies and independent institutions that support it.

“The key feature of consensus is the annulment of dissensus…the end of politics” - Jacques Rancière, 2001. Antagonism A hostile we/they relationship between two enemies who do not share any common ground.

Neo-Liberal A policy model that seeks to transfer economic control from the public to the private sector. It tends towards freemarket capitalism and away from government spending, regulation and ownership. It is characterised by the belief that economic growth will lead to human progress. This model was widely adopted by Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan in the 1980’s.

Laissez-Faire Translated as ‘let go’, it is an economic system where private transactions are independent from any governmental regulation or intervention. It founded on the belief that the individual is the basic unit of society.

Third Way A middle ground between ideologies of the left and right.

Rancière argues that the elimination of conflict from politics, and the proliferation of the neo-liberal laissez-faire model, has caused a shift to a politics of consensus, where any act of dispute is deemed extreme and illegitimate. Thatcherism, Reaganomics, and Blair’s third way have caused the centralisation of politics, and the prioritisation of unfettered economic growth. Since then, both the left and right have been governed under fundamentally the same model, leaving many citizens feeling like they no longer have a real political choice. The professor Eric Swyngedouw states this has resulted in the ‘Post-Political city’, a contemporary space that is in direct opposition to its historic conception. Originally the city could be read as an archipelago, a collection of individual entities (oikos/ house), that coincided in the collective (polis/political). Swyngedouw defines the later as “the site for public encounter, democratic negotiation and the spacing of radical dissent and disagreement.” The Romans developed the city to an empire, which required a network of infrastructure to conquer and expand their land (urbs/urbanisation). This growth enabled a new condition of cohabitation for diverse groups of people (civitas/citizens). It was the agonistic relationship between urbs and civitas that constituted the idea of the city. However, the privatisation of land fundamentally altered this condition, as urbanisation became the only device to integrate the increasingly fragmented urban territories.

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Populism’s Manichean Struggle - The Pure People vs The Corrupt Elites by Joshua Page.

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Architecture must reinstate the conflict between urbs and civitas, to re-politicise the city. From the global urban riots of 2011, it is clear that public space has the power to facilitate real political action. However, buildings themselves have the potential to radically intensify this conflict beyond open space. Office KGDVS and Dogma, in their theoretical city plan for Daejeon, South Korea, sought to define new limits to the city by creating a sequence of monumental urban rooms. The inhabited walls that enclosed these rooms drew the necessary frontiers to become the genesis of the city. Upon future development, each room would gain a specific character within a pre-determined boundary. The heterogeneous collection of unique rooms created a pluralist condition, where each space facilitated encounter, negotiation and conflict. Whilst not every project can be as radical as this, architecture must respond to the post-political condition. With globalisation and the continuing cultural osmosis between international borders, it has become increasingly pertinent to express the pluralism inherent in society. Architecture can facilitate the re-politicisation of the city by creating civic spaces that express difference and enable a conflictual relationship to manifest. As Mouffe states, “It is not in our power to eliminate conflicts and escape our human condition, but it is in our power to create the practices, discourses and institutions that would allow for these conflicts to take an agonistic form.”

Scotlandâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Anthropocene: Our Manipulated Landscape Sam Courtney Masters by converstion

This Masters project aims to highlight and understand the ways in which humanity has sought to overcome obstacles posed by the terrain and climate of our country, and to readdress the question of what is perceived as a natural landscape; exploring the interface of the artificial and the natural, along with infrastructure that supports life in 21st Century Scotland through photography, drawings and paintings.

Scotlands Anthropocene

Atop Arbory Hill in Lanarkshire, a ruined Roman fort of strategic importance has watched over this key passage South for centuries. The same spot now guards the M74 motorway as it twists its way through the Southern Uplands towards the English border. An impenetrable barrier winding between hills; it acts as the unofficial border between the Borders and Lanarkshire to the East and Dumfriesshire and Ayrshire to the West. It is only when viewed from this vantage point that the scale of its construction can be realised; appearing to have been placed upon the landscape in one singular piece stretching for an unfathomable distance. 155

Dalfad Opencast Mine, by Sam Courtney.

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Monar Valve House, by Sam Courtney.

An imposing sight, this valve house controls the intake to an underground hydro electric power station. Usually two thirds of the structure are submerged beneath Loch Monar, however with the reservoir lowered to allow for maintenance work the full peculiar form is visible across a wide distance; a futuristic fortress cast from molten rock.

Scotlands Anthropocene

A familiar sight on the Cromarty Firth, oil platforms have been constructed, serviced and decommissioned here for our 40 years, bringing extensive employment to the local area. The gigantic structures dominate views from the coastal communities but are accepted; symbols of past prosperity and future opportunity as many oil and gas fields near exhaustion and the lengthly process of decommissioning looms. 157

Cromarty Firth, by Sam Courtney.

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Glen Strathfarrar, by Sam Courtney.

Observing these foundations up close, it becomes hard to ascertain whether molten rock has flowed between stepped concrete or the concrete has been cast into rock.

Scotlands Anthropocene

Opencast mining is perhaps one of the most destructive and damaging industrialisations of our landscape. A hill here at Dalfad in Lanarkshire has been completely removed, machinery digging down deep beneath the earth to uncover meagre coal deposits. Seen here in the process of remediation, topsoil is bulldozed into the the now closed digging section, â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;softeningâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; its impact. The water flooding the mine is up to 40 metres deep and is beyond reclamation.

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Arbory Hill, by Sam Courtney.

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â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Nigg Sandsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; by Sam Courtney [Pencil and Gouache on paper, 900x600mm]

Stopping briefly by the side of the road at Nigg in Ross-shire to photograph a passing boat I turned back to observe an entirely controlled landscape. Only a hint of the natural shoreline remained; a few red sandstone boulders now enveloped entirety by a bed of glaciated, round pebbles of blonde sandstone, themselves wrapped in wire baskets. Sitting above were roughly cut basalt blocks, forming protection and a foundation for the road structure above. Beyond that, a sand embankment has been planted with gorse to control natural shifting. This photograph in one simple view highlights the efforts and control we seek to tame the landscape, yet sits hiding in plain sight, unnoticed and accepted by all who see it.

Interview with Colin Porteous At the forefront of environmental architecture for three decades Interview by Annie Higham Fredrik Frendin

Colin Porteous is co-director and co-founder of MEARU*. Since 1986, he has been researching solar energy for housing, initially in relation to fuel poverty but more recently with a focus on its potential for carbon neutral design. MacMag sat down for a conversation with Colin, who is soon to retire from his role as researcher, about attitude changes in the profession regarding sustainability as well as reflections on his own practice throughout his career.

*Mackintosh Environmental Architecture Research Unit, inaugurated 1993

Colin Porteous

MM: You have worked at the Mackintosh School of Architecure for three decades. What do you think are the most significant changes that have taken place in the school since you started?

CP: I think that it divides into internal influences and external influences. In the first two decades of me working here, the Mac had a higher reputation. Part of that was its history. When I arrived in 1986, Andy Macmillan had been here for roughly a decade and had a very strong relationship with the AA [Architectural Association], as did a lot of the staff as well. There was previously a joint governance board that only affected the of MSA; it didn’t affect Fine Art or Design. We met annually or twice a year at Glasgow University just to check that everything was ticketyboo, and that was, in terms of overall governance, quite light touch, which basically allowed the Mac to run on its own within GSA , which it did very successfully. There wasn’t much bureaucracy in the way of teaching. There was more doing time for academic staff, which meant better contact with students and more space to pursue separate interests like research. Since the beginning of the 21st century, the governance shifted to include The Mac with the other schools at GSA, which took away that light touch. Today, I would say, being critical, we are over managed for being such a small Higher Education Institution. The result of that is less doing time and more bureaucracy.

“Fuel became more expensive, and so people realised that you need much more building insulation to keep warm, which made the regulations change accordingly.” MM: Has there been a shift in the way people in the industry talk about climate change over the course of your career?

CP: Incrementally. The big shift occurred in the early ‘70s because fuel prices went roaring up because of the oil crisis. Fuel became more expensive, and so people realised that you need much more building insulation to keep warm, which made the regulations change accordingly. The range of building materials has changed a bit since then, but not hugely. I suppose most practices have responded, to some extent, to the issue of global warming and climate change, but there is a tendency for it to be a greenwash issue. How effective are shifts in practice in reality? Some better than others. Solar is interesting because the industry uses the technology like a clip on, and always has. Hopefully, architects view it in a more integrated fashion. The

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industry is still lagging way behind and will only do what regulation states as the minimum - the absolute lowest common denominator. You do need an architectural design input to improve its use and efficiency.

164 Colin Porteous 2018

MM: Since starting MEARU have your goals with the research unit changed?

CP: The thing about research units such as MEARU is that you have to be doing something specific. It was Dr Raid Hanna that suggested the words Environmental Architecture to represent MSA’s research unit, and they have actually stood the test of time. With sustainability you need at least one more adjective to define what you’re talking about. It doesn’t mean anything in itself, whereas environmental architecture paired does start to mean something. Every Higher Education Institution that has an architecture school attached to it probably has a research unit, and a lot of them have something to do with the environment, something to do with global warming…they all have their own slant. We started off with three main interests which have boiled down to one main focus area - ventilation systems and air quality, which is still not coped with adequately in building regulations. It’s taken as an assumption that people will ventilate properly, but ventilation design is sorely lacking, and so air quality tends to be less than ideal. Buildings have become much more airtight, which just increases the need for a proper ventilation system.

Colin Porteous

MM: What is your view on the relationship between theory and practice regarding environmentally sustainable architecture?

CP: Practice involves theory whether you like it or not. Sometimes you don’t even realise you’re doing it. Whatever you are working on: a fairly major project or something much more minimal, theory comes into it. The Mac has been criticised for being weak in theory, but I think that’s been addressed. I was reading all the final year students’ work at last years degree show and they’re all up there. The stuff that they need to have to support their drawing work is theoretically very strong. So I don’t think we can be accused, as a school, of being weak in theory at the moment, but it’s a continually evolving thing. Theory evolves, and so practice evolves. I have no doubt climate change is pushing theory ahead.

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Precedented Environmental Futures, Cambridge Scholar publishing, 2019

MM: How do you think your teaching and research have benefited each other?

CP: Your research angles do feed into your teaching and practice. It’s a nice symbiotic relationship. I’m still learning, and learning is an interesting process because you guys learn off each other. You learn to some extent off members of staff but then members of staff learn to some extent off you guys. So there’s a crossover of learning happening. I’m only on a 0.2 contract in terms of what I do here, which in turn has given me a huge amount of scope to fill gaps which is actually quite hard to fill in real life. You never have enough time for reading as students. You certainly never have time to do enough reading in practice and you don’t really have enough time if you’re a full-time academic either. It’s hard to keep up with the reading level you want to be keeping up with.

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MM: What advice would you give to students who are interested in environmental architecture and how do you think they can build upon their practice?

CP: Keep good architectural design to the forefront. Don’t get seduced by clip-on elements unless you can keep them under control and make them contribute. A typical active photovoltaic panel or solar thermal panel just stuck on can’t really do anything other than detract. Environmental design is all about people. Buildings should make people feel good at the end of the day. It’s not the simplest thing in the world to design a building that makes you feel good. You’ve got to be careful about things which might be invisible internally. It takes a lot of knowledge and sense to specify a building in a way that is healthy but not visible. What you do spatially: the way the building appears from both inside and outside, not just in an architectural sense but more generally, is very important.

MM: Your whole career at GSA has taken place in the Bourdon Building. What are your reflections on its qualities, now it has stood here for 40 years?

CP: I wouldn’t be too harsh on The Bourdon. It is useful in certain ways. I never thought it was fantastic architecture. I used it regularly in lectures because it didn’t perform very well thermally since It’s all solid concrete. But it has extensive floor plates which have proved very flexible. The way the studios have been organised has changed and changed over the years’. It’s been very able to adapt. MM: Thank you for your time Colin.

Three books about Environmental Architecture Colin recommends: 1. ‘ALVAR AALTO In his own words’, 1998, by Goran Schildt, Rizzoli. 2. ‘Aldo van Eyck Writings’, 2008, Eds Vincent Ligtelijn and Francis Strauven, (double volume: ‘Collected Articles and Other Writings 1947-1998’ and ‘The Child, the City and the Artist’, Sun. Van Eyck was a hero for me, he died in 1958, with a wealth of wise words with socio environmental significance 3. ‘The Recovery of Natural Environments in Architecture: Air, Comfort and Climate’, 2017, by C Alan Short, Earthscan from Routledge. An unusual monograph, equating research/theory and practice, with a broad sweep of architectural tectonics, including past/present culture; in terms of Short’s science and the performance of buildings, he narrates in great detail, warts and all.

1980-2020 The Bourdon at forty

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Photographs by Fredrik Frendin

Since its opening in 1980, the Bourdon building has been the home of the Mackintosh School of Architecture. 2020 marks its 40th anniversary. MacMag documented this brutalist sibling of GSAâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s campus during the Christmas Break, to look beyond the veil of student life which normally animates it. Regardless of what one might think of its architectural qualities or lack there of, the mere fact that the Bourdon has served the school for four decades in its most dire times of need is worthy of recognition. On the following pages, we have given the home of MSA the often overlooked, photographic attention it has always deserved.