Bartlett Design Research Folios

Urban Collage

by Christine Hawley

Bartlett Design Research Folios

Project Details

Designer: Christine Hawley

Title: Urban Collage

Output type: Design

Exhibition title: Drawing by Drawing

Venue: Danish Architecture Centre, Copenhagen

Curator: Annette Brunsvig Sørensen, Aarhus School of Architecture

Dates: 13 January – 18 March 2012

Sponsors: Realdania, Aarhus School of Architecture, Dreyers Foundation

Co-exhibitors include: Wiel Arets, Neil Denari, Diller Scofidio + Renfro, Zaha Hadid, John Hejduk, Steven Holl, Henning Larsen, Thom Mayne, Micheal Sorkin, Michael Webb and Lebbeus Woods

Catalogue contributors Alberto Pérez-Gómez and Juhani Pallasmaa include:

4 Urban Collage

Statement about the Research Content and Process

Description Urban Collage explores an impoverished area of South East London, analysing the urban setting at two distinct times: in 1986 and 2012. The initial analysis was based on collage and informed the design of a house; the current project asks if this drawing approach is still valid, re-examines the site, and proposes a new architectural lexicon through a revised set of techniques.

Questions 1. How can one uncover physical evidence that illustrates the architectural and social history of an urban site and contributes to contemporary understandings of neighbourhood conservation and regeneration? 2. How can wall surface materials (e.g. commercial and guerrilla advertising, urban graphics and material decay) be used in urban analysis and as reference tools for design? 3. How can revisiting past projects help capture the continuously evolving history of architectural and urban thinking, and how can aspects of these projects be adapted for new critical and creative design production?

1 (previous page) Screens, fragment of the interior, 2012 Statements 5

Methods 1. Examining critically the original project and site interpretation, undertaken 25 years ago, to develop techniques for reading the contemporary site. 2. Making a new photographic survey of the area and collecting discarded materials that are traces of today’s human activity. 3. Transforming photographic records into a series of exploratory tools to help determine new design outcomes. 4. Iterative processes of collage, assemblage, time-related translations and diagramming to generate new urban and design information.

Dissemination Exhibited in Copenhagen and published in the accompanying catalogue; the exhibition was widely discussed in the architectural and popular Danish press. Presented in lectures in Aarhus and Sheffield.

Statement of Significance

Selected for international group exhibition on the transformation of architectural drawing, with co-exhibitors including Wiel Arets, Neil Denari, Diller Scofidio + Renfro, Zaha Hadid, John Hejduk, Steven Holl, Henning Larsen, Thom Mayne, Micheal Sorkin, Michael Webb and Lebbeus Woods. 6 Urban Collage

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2 Political rhetoric as a historic trace and social memory, 1986 Introduction / Aims and Objectives 7

Introduction

Urban Collage uses references taken from history: a form of developmental visual material found in Peckham, London, commentary not normally used within in an attempt to challenge common the field of architectural design. assumptions about how contemporary The project was selected for an urban situations should inform design. international group exhibition on the Situated within the field of urban analysis transformation of architectural drawing, and architectural design, the drawing commissioned by the Danish Architecture techniques aim to reveal organic urban Centre and shown in Copenhagen, change together with the historic traces featuring work by over 30 architects of human intervention. The design narrative associated with Norwegian architect becomes a reading of the city as a place Svein Tønsager. determined by social and economic

Aims and Objectives

1. The project aimed to engage a site’s 2. The project further aimed to use the visual subculture, particularly in terms site’s residual material decay and urban of wall surface materials (e.g. graphics as evidence with which to commercial and guerrilla advertising, challenge the orthodoxies of urban urban graphics and material decay), design and to build an architectural as vibrant expressions of identity, lexicon. The neighbourhood had little which combined political commentary commercial investment and very little with visceral presence. Peckham, technically sophisticated advertising. in South East London, was chosen The writing and marks of this area as a site because it is a multicultural were evidence of the energy and the neighbourhood that has endured anxieties of a disenfranchised yet economic deprivation and also culturally vocal community. The maintained a vivid subculture. evidence, often fragmentary, overwritten, pasted and sprayed over, competed with the disintegrating surfaces of the city for legibility. 8 Urban Collage

3. The project sought to define a design moments in time. This was largely methodology that incorporates two done by means of comparative collage distinct studies of material surfaces through photography, drawing and from the same site at two different making. [fig. 2]

Questions

1. How can one uncover physical 3. How can revisiting past projects help evidence that illustrates the capture the continuously evolving architectural and social history of an history of architectural and urban urban site and contributes to thinking, and how can aspects of these contemporary understandings of projects be adapted for new critical neighbourhood conservation and and creative design production? regeneration?

2. How can wall surface materials (e.g. commercial and guerrilla advertising, urban graphics and material decay) be used in urban analysis and as reference tools for design?

3 Location plan 3 Aims and Objectives / Questions / Context 9

Context

Urban Collage considers the impact of emerged early Victorian bourgeois time on neighbourhoods and exposes the housing and later isolated examples of value of historical layering in architecture neo-modernist commercial buildings. and urbanism. It contributes to The impact of the First and Second World understandings of urban conservation Wars arrested any burgeoning prosperity and processes of retention and restoration. and the area fell into what many would It attempts to create a method for consider irredeemable decline. The socio- scrutinising the surface of the city, and economic history of the urban community the information it produces can contribute left behind material traces that are a to the development of both analytical testimony to human activity and endeavour. narratives and an architectural language. The site was interpreted as a kind of The project questions non-temporal blackboard where messages are written approaches to regeneration and static and erased, and leave evidence that readings of sites. It contributes a site- conjure memories of the people who have specific and time-based take on the been there, including activists and the evolution of collage and assemblage as dissolute. The site offered an opportunity cross-disciplinary techniques of research to use this information to construct a and design across urban studies. memory of the city through these traces Peckham is an area of South East of human activity. The legacy of these London that was originally established visual references was abstracted in order as an 18th-century village, a community to create a framework of architectural of tradespeople and craft workers who context that referred to a visual supplemented their existence through contemporary reality. The process was small-scale arable allotments. The area empirical, producing dynamic and often underwent rapid redevelopment during unexpected results. The 2012 project the 19th century, and while it still remained revisited the site 25 years later to examine an artisan community, there were now whether the original observations had pockets of comparative affluence on the contemporary legitimacy. southern boundaries. Within this area 10 Urban Collage

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4 Burnt metal wall surface as an architectural fac¸ade substitute, 1986 Methods 11

Methods

The project followed a variety of research the effect of time and physical action methodologies: on the surface of the city. Some images show the effect of weather while others 1. Examining critically the original project show how the surface was used as a and site interpretation, undertaken 25 vehicle of expression and communication. years ago, to develop techniques for As an area of economic neglect it was, in reading the contemporary site. many ways, a perfect destination to show 2. Making a new photographic survey the unrepaired ravages of time. of the area and collecting discarded Within this area there was originally materials that are traces of today’s a small piece of land that encapsulated human activity. the local character, the site of an abandoned Victorian school which had 3. Transforming photographic records served its purpose and had been empty into a series of exploratory tools to help for over 50 years. Corrugated sheet that determine new design outcomes. used to protect the site had also become 4. Iterative processes of collage, the victim of time. The surface was both assemblage, time-related translations rusted and burnt, displaying a potent and diagramming to generate new burst of colour yet also revealing a urban and design information. more ominous tale of accident and decomposition. Other building elements Detailed observation of site, from had been gradually eroded, and all these 1986 to 2012 crumbling forms were now defined by Throughout this research and design nature. A rectangle indicated a door process, the project sought to develop opening, and nearby the frame lay an alternative form of visual and cultural discarded. There were sweeping gestures referencing. The references observed the of wall-writing, some dynamic, others nature of urban surface with its intrinsic uncomfortably geometric. There were historic narrative, and recorded how time also torn layers of printed papers pasted and human activity affected its material over one another, creating a collage of composition. indiscriminately broken words that both Navigating an area half a mile in demonstrated opportunism and circumference, a site was defined where a circumstance. The metamorphosis was photographic survey would be undertaken. not entirely negative: there was a visual [fig. 3] Initially the subjects of the images appeal in the patina as well as in the were intuitively selected, but during the objects of deformation. Here was evidence process a thematic thread emerged. The that time created new colours, new photographic survey focused on showing textures and new geometries. There was 12 Urban Collage

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5 & 6 Site location, 2012 Methods 13

also a philosophical appeal that within the Photographic survey idea of cyclical change there is the Photographs of contemporary writing possibility of reinterpretation or and imagery on the surfaces of walls were transformation. juxtaposed against close-up shots of In 2012 many of the walls still bore material texture that displayed the effect of marks: whether statements or damage, time. The full survey included: much was indecipherable but these graphic marks were nonetheless evidence of a — urban graphics; rolling tide of social events. The surface — commercial posters; collages were evocative in that they developed opportunistically through a — amateur fly-posters; number of anarchic acts of writing to — surface material, timber, concrete, register a form of communication that corrugated steel, cast iron; and failed to survive in conventional heritage approaches. These images displayed a — surface damage and evidence of different lexicon: unfettered by classic human activity. composition, the marks were gymnastic The new design intervention would not only arcs. The street writing was direct, occupy the same site as the fragments, but immediate, sinuous and aggressive. Other also borrow from them in both an aesthetic traces on handbills and posters were and material sense, incorporating actual passive reminders of events, constructed pieces of material found on-site. The through crude typography, torn and ambition was to create a form of spatial overlaid, fractured images that needed enclosure that had at least a symbiotic, if memory to reconstruct. not a parasitic, relationship with the derelict structure. By incorporating non-standard urban references the challenge was to create a lexicon that could deviate from the familiar. The 1986 visual technique and criteria were reapplied in 2012 in order to make as close a comparison as possible. The process involved carefully photographing a selection of surfaces, then abstracting each photograph by diluting its colour and by fragmenting the original picture plane. The exercise utilised a physical assemblage approach where material and technique were used as empirical research tools. Each new assemblage consciously used a range of materials not normally used in two-dimensional paper drawing. [fig. 4–6] 6 14 Urban Collage

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8 9

8 7 Sketch panels showing Material abstraction linguistic association 9 through black and with material and Material decay and white photography, written traces on the impact of time, 1986 the site, 1986 1986 Methods 15

The photographic surveys were Transformational design process subjected to a series of transformations The black and white photographs were through drawing. The drawing methodology then re-interpreted as hand-drawn sketches was structured similarly in both exercises introducing mimetic texture and shape in 1986 and 2011–12 and aimed to: that maintained some visible relationship — develop an architectural language to the original materials. The process that reflects the reality of the of pencil sketching was used as a city’s surface; developmental tool to extract as much formal and textual potential as possible. — use the process of photography as The synoptic language was producing a library of urban objets trouvé and an abstracted geometry that could construct bas-relief drawings to reflect be combined with surfaces of infinite the evidence of human activity; variability. [fig. 10] — understand the impact of time and The initial challenge was how how traces of material, the scarring to interpret this information and use it to of surface and building degradation create spatial propositions. The information become significant indicators was drawn as a series of flat planes of history. together with frames enabling them to be interconnected. The combination of The process was used as an exploratory panels followed the sequential evidence tool, not just a method of representation. found geographically, acknowledging both The act of taking a pictorial image and location and time. This process also removing all colour abstracted the images. included a more direct referencing system The process was iterative and each stage that incorporated many ‘as found’ objects involved making hierarchical decisions from the site. about content. Critical forms of visual editing were necessary at each level of the process. [fig. 7–9] 16 Urban Collage Methods 17

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10 Combining black and white photography and drawing, 1986 18 Urban Collage

An analysis of the site suggested ‘guerrilla tactics’ to communicate choose that, if any boundary could be drawn, their locations carefully but their messages it would have to have a close structural are still there if you look for them carefully. relationship with the original frame of Contemporary architectural drawings the school. The process was now being have often been referred to as displaying developed to utilise a direct form of a ‘crisis of reduction’ where the tyranny referencing into a unitised panel system of the line is used as a ubiquitous form of and this in turn formed the enclosure. communication. Instead, this project Any direct association with function would deliberately uses objects and techniques compromise the concept; at this point that are able to develop rich layers of it was still seen as a simple process information and suggestion. Site-specific of translation. The pursuit of the idea research was conducted in order to: continued: (a) first as a systematic — establish the validity of the recording of surface onto each panel of fundamental concepts and examine the screen where each panel recorded whether time would demand an script, commercial typography and adjustment of intellectual position; materiality; (b) second by ingraining the images with material found on-site. It was — determine how the process of time important that there was some form of impacted on the site, materials and material evidence that could be clearly the evidence of occupation and read. There were, of course, issues of scale human activity; and these were adapted wherever possible. — ask how historic and contemporary Sand, burnt wood, metal, newsprint and site evidence can be re-interpreted; discarded objects were incorporated in the mode of Dadaist assemblages. [fig. 11–15] — translate what was illustrated on-site The school no longer exists and into a visual metaphor and spatial the area has been somewhat gentrified. proposition; Residual traces exist in hidden corners — translate the evidence of the social but the overwhelming nature of surfaces context and examine how expressions covered with opportunistic graphics has of values had adjusted accordingly. been replaced with a more orderly and [fig. 16–23] restrained display. Groups that need

11 12 Methods 19

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11 & 12 The site, 2012

13 Interpretation of interior, 1986

14 Contemporary messages, 2012 20 Urban Collage

15a

15b Methods 21

15c

15d

15 Plans of enclosure built around the site at Peckham, 1986. 22 Urban Collage

16 17 18

16–19 Material references, 2012 Methods 23

19 20

20 Contemporary gloss, 2012. 24 Urban Collage

21 22 Methods 25

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21–23 Contemporary identity and materiality, 2012 26 Urban Collage

The process of empirical analysis and Following the architectural language translation of the passage of time became established in the original project, the a credible exploratory tool and one that new screens produced in 2012 became could echo some of the readings of the more articulated to carry the graphic past. The site now displays a variety of images that were evident 25 years later. synthetic surfaces, a product of economic There are suggested armatures that improvement that provides a veneer of support the screens. Its lighting systems respectability. One question was how constructed from wire and metal situated to incorporate the ‘ghosts’ of the project above and behind the image plane (the abstracted photographic survey) into augment the illusion of three-dimensionality. a contemporary drawing, in a manner that An interstitial light source deliberately allowed an organic and new expression of dramatises these armatures, where the ideas that could not have emerged through extended shadows suggest a spatial a pre-meditated process. [fig. 24–28] temporality that might exist only in a moment in time. One of the primary Diagramming, drawing, model-making intentions is to experiment with (analogue and digital) representations of memory and The final drawings show the interior space imagination: the construction deliberately in the form of a bas-relief; the panel pieces uses light and shadow to suggest the are now constructed with laser print ephemeral quality of thought and technology with greater precision. There perception. is an interesting symmetry: by using this The project is ongoing. The area and technology the line ‘as memory’ is created the site will be revisited and a different through a non-material process. proposal will be made. This will notionally Contemporary digital technology liberates refer to the phases of 1986 and 2012, but the draughtsperson from the omnipresence will need to be developed further to evolve of the line and the ‘crisis of reduction’, the architectural language in a manner but also introduces the limitations of that echoes the evolution of the physical generic grammar that can be exacerbated site. [fig. 1, 29–31] if drawn by secondary mediators. The digital process demands instruction that is precise and only by using the cut forms, like a scrambled jigsaw, can the process of exploration can be maintained. Methods 27

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24 The memory of level 1, 2012 28 Urban Collage Methods 29

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25 The framework for suggestion, 2012 30 Urban Collage

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26 The memory of level 2, 2012 Methods 31

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27 The memory of level 3, 2012 32 Urban Collage Methods 33

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28 Total assembly, 2012 34 Urban Collage

29 Methods 35

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29 30 Screens, fragment of Re-interpreted plan, the interior, 2012 2012

38 Urban Collage

Dissemination

Urban Collage was exhibited in Drawing by Drawing, a major show of architectural drawings at the Danish Architecture Centre, Copenhagen (13 January – 18 March 2012). Co-exhibitors included Wiel Arets, Neil Denari, Diller Scofidio + Renfro, Zaha Hadid, John Hejduk, Steven Holl, Henning Larsen, Thom Mayne, Micheal Sorkin, Michael Webb and Lebbeus Woods.

Hawley’s work was published in the exhibition catalogue, Dirty Dedicated Daring Delicate Drawings, which included introductions by Kent Martinussen and Annette Brunsvig Sørensen, and essays by Sue Fergusson Gussow, Alberto Pérez-Gómez, Carsten Thau, Henrik Oxvig and Juhani Pallasmaa.

The exhibition was widely discussed in the architectural and popular press in Denmark, including in Berlingske, Ark Byg Amager Bladet, Politiken, Arkitekten, RUM, Ingeniøren and AOK: Alt Om København.

Urban Collage was also the subject of two lectures, at the Aarhus School of Architecture (2012) and Sheffield University (2012).

31 (previous page) Re-interpreted view of interior, 2012 Appendix 39

Related publications by the researcher pp. 41–45 Christine Hawley, ‘Urban Collage’. Dirty Dedicated Daring Delicate Drawings (ed. Annette Sørensen). Copenhagen: Danish Architecture Centre, 2012. 10–11, 15–16.

Related writings by others

Print reviews p. 48 Karine Kirkebæk, ‘100 forskellige streger [100 different strokes]’, Berlingske (12 Jan 2012). p. 49 Peter Kargaard, ‘Arkitekttegninger i opbrud [Architectural plans in flux]’,Ark Byg (13 Jan 2012): 4. p. 50 Hanne Bjørton, ‘Blyanten må vige for digital tegning [Pencil may give way to digital drawing]’, Amager Bladet (17 Jan 2012): 65. p. 51 Karsten R.S. Ifversen, ‘Arkitekters drømme på papiret’ [Architects dream on paper], Politiken (19 Jan 2012): 6. p. 52 Christian Bundegaard, ‘Workshoppens metode: Tegningens mystic [Workshop method: Drawing mystery]’, Arkitekten (Mar 2012): 24.

Online reviews pp. 53–55 Stine Daugaard, ‘Arkitekturens grundsubstans - set på nye måder [Architecture’s basic substance, seen in new ways]’, Ingeniøren (3 Feb 2012): http://ing.dk/artikel/arkitekturens- grundsubstans-set-pa-nye-mader-126355 pp. 56–57 ‘DAC sætter fokus på arkitektens tegninger [DAC focuses on architect’s drawings]’, RUM (9 Jan 2012): www.rumid.dk/nyheder/dac-satter-fokus-pa-arkitektens-tegninger

pp. 58–59 Torben Weirup, ‘Arkitektens trøst [Architect’s comfort]’, AOK: Alt Om København (22 Feb 2012): www.aok.dk/udstilling/arkitektens-troest 40 Urban Collage

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