28 minute read
Research, Awards, Projects, Conferences
Modern Maypole International Design Competition
Senior lecturer Alex Scott-Whitby has won a prestigious international design competition to create a ‘Modern Maypole’ in central London.
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His firm, ScottWhitbystudio, shared the accolade with engineering company WhitbyWood, founded by his father, Mark.
The two companies will construct the ‘Modern Maypole’ – a complex tower of 32 golden maypoles representing the 32 London boroughs – for the 2019 London Festival of Architecture from 1-30 June.
The structure will form a contemporary focus for public events and activity outside the church of St Mary-le-Strand – the site of London’s largest and long-lost maypole, which was erected after the restoration of the monarchy in 1660 and towered over the 17th century city.
Alex said, “We are delighted, humbled and tremendously excited to have won the ‘Modern Maypole’ competition. As a team it means a great deal to all of us to have been tasked with the honour of creating a new structure on this hugely important London site.
“We hope that what we create will become a place for Londoners to meet, visitors to explore and a marker point that will help London forge its new identity.” Each of the golden poles is held in place by ‘tensegrity’ – a term coined in the 1960s by Kenneth Snelson and Buckminster Fuller whereby the structure stands thanks to the compressive strengths of the anodized aluminium poles and the tensile strengths of coloured steel wires acting in unison.
After the 2019 Festival, the poles will be donated to schools and community organisations across the capital, forming a legacy of civic beacons in London for years to come.
The international design contest was launched in June 2017 and was open to architects, artists, designers and engineers. ScottWhitbystudio and WhitbyWood saw off competition from a field of 32 entries to win the commission.
For this years festival Alex’s Studio is working alongside world renowned engineers Arup to create an innovative reflective gateway structure outside St Paul’s Cathedral (Pictured) which will be in place for the duration of the summer. The structure is made up of over 300 highly reflective aluminium poles that will hopefully reflect an image of St Pauls back at pedestrians as they arrive out of St Paul’s Underground station.
St Pancras Church
The Portico project: John Betjeman Conservation Award 2017
Alan Chandler’s practice won the Society for the Protection of Ancient buildings John Betjeman award for conservation repair, working ion the Grade 1 listed Inwood designed Greek revival church of St Pancras in Euston.
The approach responded to William Morris’s key proposition: ‘The building is a document of its time and of its making’ – here he asks us to respect the legibility of a buildings life for all to read and understand. How we do this requires us to ‘repair not restore’, and when we do repair we need to be sensitive to how that repair is made and how it influences our comprehension of the whole – to ‘straighten out’ or leave ‘as found’? SPAB’s Betjeman Award judge Rachel Morley said: “We were incredibly impressed by the time and effort which was given to understanding the construction of the Portico – the development, alterations, inefficiencies and unique details, as well as the materials used. This informed and justified every step of this complex suite of repair and re-engineering works. The detail of the work throughout was exquisite. We were especially pleased with the team’s forward-looking approach – not only developing a recipe for this rare form of terracotta to inform future repairs, but also supporting the craftspeople that possess these skills. Overall, we found this to be an exceptionally thorough and thoughtful project”.
The project was also shortlisted for the King of Prussia Gold Medal 2017
At a ceremony in April Studio Bark were announced as Sustainability Architect of the Year 2018. “We were honoured to be up against such prestigious practices at the Architect of the Year Awards last night. It feels great to have our efforts recognised alongside other designers who are also passionate about the environment”. Studio Bark’s founding Director, Wilf Meynell, teaches Technical & Environmental Studies to both degree and masters students in Architecture.
www.studiobark.co.uk
AJ Small Projects Award 2018 shortlist
Holloway Lightbox is a photography studio, a screenwriter’s retreat and a flexible family space located in the rear garden of the client’s Victorian terrace home. In a nod to the couple’s respective professions (photography and film), a series of handmade coloured tiles create a playful ‘pixelated’ façade. The series of final photographs, showing the transition from day to night have been taken by the client. The Lightbox was built by architecture students from UEL as part of Bark Live Build and UEL’s annual Construction Week. A huge thank you to to all those who contributed, including Lauretta, Athena, Alvin, Moiz, Sahand, Zi Xin, Nor Amirah, Mohamed, Mary, Thomas, Madihah and Afiqah.
Live workshops: a philosophy of engagement
Technical Workshops are in themselves architecturally ambiguous events. Real events in real time, they are constructed situations. The line, and the drawing, which marshals it into order, normally precedes the making of structures with material. Within the Workshop, this is not so, and the line loses its pre-eminence, drawings become simply notations of actions, explorative tools to investigate how it fits, where it is placed, the sequence of actions. Workshops rely on both verbal and malleable strategies to generate the constructed situation between the participants and their task. What advantage does this give?
Primarily, the development of material resolution through making confronts the student with the inertia and sloth of material substance. The student cannot assume that the mastery of matter is the responsibility of others. In the very conception of a design the qualities and properties of materials must be grasped and understood in order to make. Lines are the intermediaries between ‘thought’ and ‘make’, and their significance as substitute matter needs to be understood. An Architect seldom builds their own work, but to begin an immersion into the act of building is the only means by which the line can become relevant and purposeful. With thanks to those who made the Construction week 2017 happen: Studio Bark Wilf Meynell, Nick Newman and Steph Chadwick (www.studiobark.co.uk) London Play and West Green Primary School Nic McEwan and Max Muller (www.londonplay.org. uk) Thames View Infants Academy and SRI Sam Jelliman (www.uel.ac.uk/sri) Engineers HRW Chris Stobbart (www.ehrw.co.uk) Matter Architecture and Greenleaf School Roland Karthaus (www.matterarchitecture.uk) Matter Architecture and The Limes Roland Karthaus (www.thelimes.org.uk) Stratis Georgiou UEL Robotics lecturer Dr Aurore Julien Environmental lecturer Philippa Battye Witherford Watson Mann Beats learning and MUF Architecture/Art Katherine Clarke and Mark Lemanski (www.muf. co.uk)
Capital Architecture
On the occasion of the 200th birthday of Karl Marx, Harald Trapp (UEL) and Robert Thum (Hochschule Trier, Germany), initiated and organised the researchproject “capital architecture”. This international and multidisciplinary cooperation includes the research of MArch unit 9 (Harald Trapp, Brian Hoy) and will be documented in various publications and exhibitions. Using London as a starting point, the first exhibition in the European Academy of Art Trier investigates the relevance of Marx for the analysis of architecture today. Video-interviews with experts (Massimo De Angelis (UEL), Mario Carpo (Bartlett), Alois Hahn (University Trier), Anna Minton (UEL), Patrik Schumacher (Hadid Architects), Douglas Spencer (AA)), a series of photographies (Immo Klink) and architectural diagrams (unit 9, UEL) on London´s Workingmen´s Clubs and the spatial installation „Akkumulator“ (Harald Trapp, Robert Thum) comment on the contemporary production of space. “capital architecture” is scheduled to be shown in the LUCA (Luxembourg Center for Architecture) and the new gallery of the architectural magazine arch+ in Berlin. The research on London´s Workingmen´s Clubs, including some of unit 9-students´ drawings, has been invited to be part of the international exhibition “An Atlas of Commoning”, which will start in the Kunstraum Kreuzberg/Bethanien Berlin this June, continues 2018/2019 in the USA (Pittsburgh, Detroit, New Orleans, San Diego) and concludes in South America in 2020/2021 (Buenos Aires, Sao Paulo, Montevideo, La Paz, Lima).
Student Competition Broadgate
UEL Architecture students take centre stage in innovative paid project to design a £300,000 Welfare space in Central London.
Architecture students at the University of East London (UEL) have played an important, behind-the-scenes role in the rapid and impressive transformation of Broadgate, a 32-acre office and retail estate in the City of London.
Located near the high-speed Crossrail’s Elizabeth line, set to open in December 2018, Broadgate, at 100 Liverpool Street, will offer office space, shops, rooftop dining and public spaces – all designed and built according to the highest ecological standards.
But what about the countless engineers, builders, plumbers, carpenters, labourers and other trade professionals who are turning this exciting vision into a reality? UEL’s Architecture students helped create an inspiring environment for these essential workers.
It all started in 2017, when Sir Robert McAlpine, a leading UK construction and engineering company, approached UEL Senior Lecture Alex Scott-Whitby with an invitation for students to participate in a competition to design and build welfare facilities for workers to use during the construction phase of redevelopment at Broadgate.
The brief required students to look at ways to provide welfare provision such as toilets, hot and cold water for washing, changing facilities, drinking water and somewhere to eat and rest. They were asked to come up with ideas which would exceed expectations while also safeguarding the health and well-being of workers.
Sir Robert McAlpine worked with UEL and British Land, which owns the Broadgate site, to select a winning design from three shortlisted teams of UEL students.
There were good ideas from each of the teams, so the decision was made to interview and appoint five students from across the three teams to deliver the project. The UEL undergraduate and postgraduate students selected – Kirk Slankard, Robin Philpot, Darlyn Norlay, Nuno Lopes and John Francis Benedicto – worked closely with Sir Robert McAlpine’s framework design manager Jeff Tidmarsh, and contractor Avondale. Avondale sponsored the students’ employment for six months effectively paying off their final years study.
The welfare facilities, at 1 Finsbury Avenue, opened in October 2017. The space featured a canteen, kitchen, secure storage, showers, toilets and washing facilities for men and women, offices for supervisors, a multi-faith room and an auditorium for daily safety inductions, training and meetings.
One of the quirkier ideas from students was to repurpose fire doors to create walls, dining tables, benches and the auditorium.
The students even utilised an unused Italian restaurant on the ground floor of 1 Finsbury Avenue to set-up a one week public exhibition in June under the aegis of the London Festival of Architecture.
‘Reflections on Broadgate - past, present and future’ showcased the students’ experience, the work of architects employed on the redevelopment of Broadgate, and the site’s history, including photographs of the original construction of Broadgate.
The exhibition culminated in an open evening which celebrated the achievements and opportunities of the project, with content put in a catalogue that drew together reflections from a divergent group of people involved with the estate over the past forty years.
UEL students described the experience as “an assault course in architecture and construction” and said they valued the opportunity to grow in professional and personal confidence by tackling real-life challenges, deadlines and collaboration under pressure. And cooperation between UEL and the Broadgate partners continues, with a new competition, announced earlier this year, offering architecture students paid three-month placements to work as part of a small team in Broadgate which is finding ways to enhance public and private space within the area’s buildings.
This Broadgate student team project will be unveiled in June, to again coincide with the London Festival of Architecture, and is currently employing an exUEL graduate student Abdul Elmi to design a new exhibition which will open as part of the London Festival of Architecture in June this year.
The new opportunity is offered in partnership with Allford Hall Monaghan Morris architects, ScotttWhitbyStudio, British Land, and Sir Robert McAlpine.
Cities in Transition
A research collaboration between UEL and the Middle Eastern Technical University, Ankara October 2017 and beyond.
With over 3 million Syrian refugees in, this newly added population is roughly equal to the total population of 17 different cities in Turkey. Many of the newcomers do not have access to public services and basic comfort conditions, and language is a major barrier to finding common ground between new and existing populations and opportunities.
The wider context of rapidly changing demographics in Europe and concerns over cohesion impacts on how we propose architectural and urban strategies that will bridge perspectives of the new comers and residents of the cities. Urban spaces can be produced regarding the needs and habitual practices of the new comers’ using the approach of participatory design. The key achievement of the workshop was to bring together researchers from a wide range of disciplines and fields to consider a common issue. The selection process achieved a mix of researchers that provided a stimulating collaboration enabled by the workshop.
In order to formulate adequate research projects around this target, our workshop focussed on two key questions: 1. Can spatial interventions support social cohesion? 2. How can fragile neighbourhoods be helped to feel invigorated by new populations, rather than feel threatened or overwhelmed?
Three engagement strategies were developed by the research collaborators with NGO’s and Syrian refugee groups to explore ways of engaging local Syrian voices and perspectives within the framework of how NGO’s are currently supporting people to first feel secure, then to find ways to work and play within a new urban context.:
The ‘On proverbs’ project explores everyday activity and social habits of sharing coffee to establish a way to open opportunities for conversation and exchange that moves away from formal ‘question and answer’- using the sharing and translation of Turkish and Arabic proverbs, the differences and similarities of shared cultural knowledge establishes a starting point for common ground, and the collection of these shared proverbs provides the material for a publication that belongs to both communities. The use of proverbs is a verbal heritage – this became profound as there were real issues of illiteracy among refugee women, the ability for literate participants to support those without reading or writing skills becomes a new and unexpected aspect of this ongoing project.
‘Drawing as communication’ engages with the children of the incoming and existing community to develop drawing as a vehicle for exploring what is of value to refugees who hold a strong sense of their homeland (even though some of them were just born before they left Syria), and local children who have a different perspective on their common surroundings. Drawing provides an articulation of ideas that are difficult to verbalise, and the results have a beauty that transcends written language and provides the basis for understanding how the provision of physical spaces or resources can be prioritised and communicated to all the people sharing a neighbourhood.
The ‘Daily life’ research involving interviews with female refugees in collaboration with a local NGO (ASAM) will build a strong body of information that will support direct physical interventions that can be achieved by architecture students or NGO’s to create small scale but effective and useful physical change in the community of Onder-Ulubey.
Ongoing projects between METU and UEL are in progress, with Tate Modern hosting the first research collaboration in May 2018
www.citiesintransition.agency
Migrating Proverbs
‘Migrating Proverbs’ is an interdisciplinary action research project that investigates the use of social and cultural practices as tools for the engagement, cultural exchange, and development of social integration processes between Syrian refugees and local communities in Ankara and Istanbul in Turkey.
Social and cultural practices are at the heart of our cultural identity, especially those that are articulated through language, both written and spoken. These practices shape and reflect the way we think, understand the world and communicate. This is especially relevant to refugees, where their social practices enable the continuity of their journey and the sustainability of their stay. It reminds them of their past; but it is also the way in which they claim the future.
The research explores ways in which language can act as a tool for revealing the refugees experience of place, and their articulation of identity and locality towards the new host territory. More specifically, it makes use of proverbs, as a dense cultural artefact that can be exchanged, translated, represented and put into circulation, to explore the way in which new participatory strategies of engagement can: i) improve the understanding of the refugee’s condition of place; ii) generate spaces of exchange in order to build community capacity; and, iii) enable spaces of empathy by building ‘common ground’ interaction between local and refugee communities.
‘Migrating Proverbs’ is an on-going research developed by Catalina Pollak Williamson and Reem Charif in collaboration with Ela Aral (METU) and Deniz Altay (Cankaya University) – a collaboration that resulted from the Newton Funded International Conference Cities in Transition organised by UEL and METU in Ankara in October 2017.
The work-in-progress of this research was presented at the TATE Exchange as part of the ´Who are we? Art, Migration and the production of Democracy´; and will take part of the 4th Istanbul Design Biennial ´School of Schools` as part of its public program.
Drawing as Communication
Cities demographics change rapidly. Different ethnic groups, refugees, migrants move between places. Apart from wars and other crises, urban planning and development processes sometimes also force people to leave their neighbourhoods and homes and move to new locations. Within this broader context, a number of conversations took place in the Cities in Transition workshop, in Ankara.
Through the ‘Drawing as communication’ workshop we attempted to develop some communication methods for understanding of the local conditions and the everyday living of the Syrian refugees in Ankara. The workshop was led by a team of researchers from the UK and Turkey, including the UEL colleagues: Dr Anastasia Karandinou, Dr Bridget Snaith, Israel Hurtado and Kyriaki Nasioula, coordinated by Dr Gul Kacmaz.
The workshop was a drawing and playing activity with Syrian children 8-11 years old. The workshop took place in the ASSAM centre, in collaboration with representatives from ASSAM, from METU, a psychologist who works with ASSAM and translators. The aim was to engage in a conversation with the children; by conversation we mean a verbal and nonverbal interaction, through drawing and playing. We refrained from asking the children questions that could relate to traumatic experiences, hence we did not ask them where they live, or where home is, or to draw us their family. Our aim was to start with very open questions, which would allow the children to gradually let us understand fragments of their everyday lives. One of the questions we asked, was, for example, to draw us their favourite food. This then allowed us to discuss with them follow up questions, such as who prepares this food, where, with whom they usually eat together, what other foods are typical in their family/ environment (if the child mentioned family), etc. Another question we asked the children was to draw their favourite place; real or imaginary. Some children drew a playground with swings, flowers, trees. Other children drew boats and fish. They said they like the sea and they mentioned the seafront places they used to visit with their families in Syria. One very young boy drew an abstract shape very passionately and then stopped. When asked what this is, he said that he wanted to draw Europe – where he wants to go – but that he doesn’t know how to draw it/ what it looks like.
Some of the drawings led to conversations such as where they most like to play, with whom, what kind of games, etc. This started gradually revealing to us the relationships with the neighbours, the way in which public space is used, differences and similarities with regards to where and how children are allowed to play in different families and cultures. Other discussions over the drawings revealed to us how different children perceive their life in Turkey. Even though some children moved to Turkey when they were very little, or even unborn, some of them perceive Syria as home – even if some of them remember very little of it. They may be familiar with Syria through photos and their families’ discussions. The notion of home and belonging, although not addressed in a direct way, emerged through the discussion with the children. Similarly the theme of different cultures living close together and the issue of language as both a barrier and an opportunity for communication.
British Council Newton Institutional Links Fund
A UEL research team led by Dr Heba Elsharkawy, Senior Lecturer in Architecture and Programme Leader for BSc (Hons) Architectural Design Technology, with Dr Sahar Zahiri, Research Associate, and Mr Jack Clough, Research Associate are aiming to develop education for sustainability in Egypt. Together with partners from Ain Shams University’s Faculty of Engineering in Cairo are running a British Council Newton Institutional Links funded project titled ‘Building Capacity for Sustainable Development of the Built Environment’ (BC-SDBE), which has been running since 2016 and has gone from strength to strength.
The significance of this project is that sustainable development is a key pillar for the socio –economic welfare of Egypt. The country is growing rapidly, and the demand for building in the civil and residential sectors has left a clear gap in terms of the professionals available to deliver sustainable development in the built environment. The education sector needs to modernise to ensure that sustainability principles and theory are solidly embedded in their curricula, which in turn will embed sustainable design in practice.
The project aims to build capacity for education and research in Egypt, by ‘training the trainers’ and enhancing their knowledge and skills surrounding key sustainability themes through three UEL designed training courses. In March 2018, the research team hosted 10 academic researchers from Ain Shams University at UEL’s Docklands campus for an intensive two week training programme. This programme focussed on Low Carbon Design Strategies. A combination of problem based learning workshops, guest lectures, fieldtrips and environmental design software training provided the academics from Egypt with new ideas and examples of the best practice in sustainability; from urban scale developments to building scale projects.
By equipping the academics from Ain Shams University with new found knowledge and skills the project will eventually improve sustainability education in Egypt as these academics take these ideas, disseminate them onto colleagues and their students and eventually embed these ideas in their curricula and training. The total number of academic staff from Egypt trained now stands at 17, with a further aim of having 30 trained in total!
The great success of this programme has been due to stakeholder engagement – The UEL researchers run a series of stakeholder events in Cairo before each training event, which allows detailed discussion surrounding the barriers and requirements of education for the built environment in Egypt, and involves Academics, Industry and Students to develop a balanced idea of what is missing in Architecture and Engineering education currently. These ideas are then used to tailor the researcher training programmes to maximise their impact.
The project also encourages a global outlook, the UEL research team successfully delivered their first International Conference for Sustainable Design of the Built Environment in December 2017, which showcased the latest developments in themes such as Sustainable construction and design, Energy efficiency, Education for sustainability. The conference attracted a large international audience from Europe, Africa, Asia and the Middle East with 112 papers published in the proceedings. The conference provided an incredible opportunity for knowledge exchange, partnerships to be made and the dissemination of research results.
Closer to home; The UEL project team are also working with the London Borough of Newham. The research team have monitored the building performance of social housing blocks in Newham that have experienced problems relating to thermal comfort, damp and energy efficiency. This data has then been used to develop a building model using the industry standard DesignBuilder software to investigate the retrofit solutions available to alleviate the problems. As a result of the research efforts, Newham Council can now take an informed retrofit approach to improve the quality of life of the residents and improve the overall energy efficiency and sustainability of these social housing blocks and similar residential blocks across the borough.
Edited by Anna Minton, Programme Leader of UEL’s MRes Architecture programme, together with Alberto Duman, Dan Hancox and Malcolm James, Regeneration Songs: Sounds of Investment and Loss from East London’, will be published by Repeater Books in September 2018.
The impact of global capital and foreign investment on local communities is being felt in major cities across the world. Since the 2012 Olympics was awarded to the British capital, East London has been at the heart of the largest and most all-encompassing top-down urban regeneration strategy in civic history. At the centre of this has been the local government, Newham Council, and their daring proposal: an “Arc of Opportunity” for developers to transform 1,412 hectares of Newham. The proposal was outlined in a short film, London’s Regeneration Supernova which was shown to foreign developers and businesses at the 2010 Shanghai World Expo.
The book brings together twenty-seven leading artists, writers and academics whose contributions address the “Regeneration Supernova” of East London.
While the sweeping changes to East London have been keenly felt by locals, the symbolism and practicalities of these changes - for the local area, and the world alike - are overdue serious investigation. Regeneration Songs is about how places are turned into simple stories for packaged investment opportunities, how people living in those places relate to those stories, and how music and art can render those stories in many different ways.
The idea for the book originated in 2015 when Alberto Duman and Anna Minton secured a grant for Alberto to work as Leverhulme artist-in-residence at UEL’s MRes Architecture Programme, subtitled ‘Reading the Neoliberal City’. Following a Freedom of Information request, Alberto had obtained a copy of the Regeneration Supernova film shown in Shanghai, but the film was silent. The aim of the Leverhulme project was for Alberto to work with artists and musicians across the ‘Arc of Opportunity’ area to record an album’s worth music tracks to go with the film, which was produced in collaboration with UEL’s Department of Sound Engineering. The album, entitled Music for Masterplanning was the first output of the Leverhulme award and Regnereration Songs is the second.
The book will also include a download code for Music for Masterplanning and a 32-page glossy insert detailing the artists involved.
Community definitions of nature, and the use of urban greenspace for health & wellbeing
Dr Bridget Snaith CMLI, course leader for Landscape Architecture, will be working this summer with UEL research internship winner, Anna Peters, a student on the MA Professional Landscape Architecture (Conversion), to develop a joint paper for publication and conference presentation, exploring ethnicity and the use of parks for health & wellbeing.
Advocates of the biophilia hypothesis assert that people have an instinctive need and love for nature, (Kellert, 1993; Wilson, 1984) and so the presence of nature in cities is fundamental to human health and wellbeing. Since 2008 over half the world’s population have been living in cities, reflecting a trend toward increased urbanisation. As global biodiversity continues to decline, incorporating nature in the design of urban space is becoming increasingly important.
The idea of ‘nature’ in biophilic arguments is, however, extremely broad. This paper argues that assuming universal appeal, of ‘nature’ in any form, while failing to interrogate what ‘nature’ means to different people can be unhelpful, and at worst could be harmful. For example, access to parks and green space in the city has been linked to reductions in chronic stress, to improved health, and to longer life expectancy overall, (Van den Berg, et al., 2007; Mitchell & Popham, 2008), yet people from ethnic minorities, who often suffer greatest health inequality, are typically under-represented as users of parks and other green spaces in the UK, and may well not be gaining health benefits claimed for parks as a result (CABE 2010, Snaith 2015).
Through case study research, the team will show how values and beliefs about urban greenspace in different ethnic groups can mean some spatial configurations of ‘nature’ will have greater benefits for some than for others. While designers and managers are seeking inclusion, exclusionary values are unintentionally embedded in production and management of UK greenspaces.
This work will argue for a more complex and nuanced understanding of nature and biophilia in inclusive spatial design.
Ventri Architectus
Renée Tobe was Paul Mellon Centre Rome Fellow at the British School at Rome January to March 2018. Her research was entitled Ventri Architectus, reproducing classical idioms of power and culture in film. It will be published as a chapter in the book The Oxford Handbook on the Reception and Dissemination of Classical Architecture, (OUP, 2018). She presented this work at the BSR, the American Academy in Rome, and the Architectural Association in a one-day symposium on Architecture and Film.
16th Venice Architecture Biennalle
Armor Gutierrez Rivas and Rosa Rogina, UEL invited to represent Montenegro at the 16th Venice Architecture Biennale
MArch Unit 8 leaders Armor Gutierrez Rivas and Rosa Rogina have been recently appointed to deliver the concept and content for the Montenegrin Pavilion at the 2018 Venice Architecture Biennale. Armor and Rosa will be part of an interdisciplinary team - three architects, a landscape architect and a sculptor - who won the brief following an international call. Their chosen theme is ‘emerging resilience’.
Montenegro’s exhibition for the 16th International Architecture Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia strives for multidisciplinary integration of results of contemporary ecological research and collaborative practices in urban design and spatial planning. The exhibition will critically analyse the idea of architecture as an expanded practice through simple and understandable messages, overwhelming branding power of the site-specific installation and tactility of specifically in-situ crafted models as an identification tool, accompanied by a publication and networking, engaging not only famous architects as guests but also the general public. There are three interrelated parts of the Montenegro presentation at the 16th International Architecture Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia: THE BOOK, THE EXHIBITION and THE NETWORKING, each one taking a specific angle in approaching the overarching theme of emerging resilience. All three elements vary in scale, materiality, duration and methods of dissemination. Together, they act as a vibrant framework underpinning an open-ended discussion on the theme within and beyond the actual pavilion. The exhibition will culminate in a publication of a glossary that acts as a handbook or a survival kit for the era of new spatial realities.
The Venice Architecture Biennale opens on 26 May.
Project Cerussite
Project ‘Cerussite’ is inspired by the formation of the homonymous crystal. The emerging forms are highly intricate and ordered at the same time. Light is refracted through the crystal differently, from opaque to translusent, depending on the concentration of the consisting elements. These qualities, namely the complex order and variations of translucency, were the elements that gave rise to the pavilion. On top of a wooden base, robotically 3d printed elements made out of PLA plastic form a ‘crystal’ growth, aiming to create a large-scale assembly in space. This assembly is used as a 3d ‘deep screen’ on which videos for Manchester’s industrial history were projected. ‘Cerussite’ was part of the work ‘Alive’ at Raqs Media Collective ‘Twilight Language’ exhibition at The Whitworth, from September 2017 till February 2018. It was designed and made by Stratis Georgiou, Senior Technician at UEL, in collaboration with Palak Jhunjhunwala. The School of Architecture, Computing and Engineering of UEL provided design, consultation and robotic fabrication services. Architectural advisors, Rupali Gupte and Prasad Shetty. Photo credits, Fabio Galicia.
