a ramble (weather permitting) through through permitting) (weather a ramble on led be will group the Corry-Wright, by Georgie catered alunch After programme. &Make Design graduate ofthe students and 19 by Diploma designed Shed Big completed recently the as well as Cullinan, Edward and Happold Buro Frei Otto, ABK, between by collaborations designed buildings existing incorporate will that estate of the to atour invited are members 2012 April 28 On technologies. timber sustainable and ofconstruction crafts the architectures, rural to learn students for aspace as acts which England southwest in Dorset, forest working is a350-acre AA’s Park The Hooke AA

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AARCHITECTURE LIFE LIFE AARCHITECTURE REDESIGNED THE OF ISSUE FIRST THE ROOM – AN ENIGMATIC SPACE APPEARED THAT ENIGMATIC AN – ROOM SOFT NEW THE FOR CHAIRS CREATING BE WILL SHE THAT ARTICLE HER OF END AT THE MENTIONS SPATIAL SCALE, MORE A TO KNOT-TYING OF ART AGE-OLD THE EXTRAPOLATED HAS WHO GRADUATE RECENT ANOTHER WESTERLIND, HELENA ISSUE. THIS IN FEATURED ALSO ARE WHO MANSIKKAMAKI, TANELI AND JOYSRIYUKSIRI GRADUATES AA BY DESIGNED RESTAURANT THE GRAB, STALLFOR STREET-FOOD A WAS INSTALLATIONS THESE OF ONE ROOMS. BLOOMSBURY ARTICLE, THEIR IN DISCUSS THEY WHICH YEAR, THIS FESTIVAL BLOOMSBURY THE FOR INSTALLATIONS SEVERAL CREATED STUDIO YEAR FIRST THE CONTRIBUTORS: OUR BETWEEN COLLABORATIONS INTERESTING SOME UNCOVERED ALSO WE DIVERSE. IS INDIVIDUALS THESE BY UNDERTAKEN BEEN HAVE THAT PROJECTS OF RANGE THE – AGENCY OF IDEA THE TO FOG TODAY. IN ENGAGED SIMULATING FROM ARE THEY PRACTICE THE OF FOUNDATIONS THE FORMED AA AT THE WHILE CONCEIVED INTERESTS HOW ABOUT SPEAK EACH THEY ARCHITECTURE. PRACTISE WAYS TO NEW WHICH IN INVENTING ARE WHO GRADUATES RECENT WITH INTERVIEWS AND ACCOUNTS INSPIRING WITH AA THE AFTER FOCUSES ON THE THEME OF LIFE LIFE OF THEME THE ON FOCUSES 16 NEWS FROM THE ARCHITECTURAL ASSOCIATION AARCHITECTURE AARCHITECTURE REDESIGNED THE OF ISSUE FIRST THE ROOM – AN ENIGMATIC SPACE APPEARED THAT ENIGMATIC AN – ROOM SOFT NEW THE FOR CHAIRS CREATING BE WILL SHE THAT ARTICLE HER OF END AT THE MENTIONS SPATIAL SCALE, MORE A TO KNOT-TYING OF ART AGE-OLD THE EXTRAPOLATED HAS WHO GRADUATE RECENT ANOTHER WESTERLIND, HELENA ISSUE. THIS IN FEATURED ALSO ARE WHO MANSIKKAMAKI, TANELI AND JOYSRIYUKSIRI GRADUATES AA BY DESIGNED RESTAURANT THE GRAB, STALLFOR STREET-FOOD A WAS INSTALLATIONS THESE OF ONE ROOMS. BLOOMSBURY ARTICLE, THEIR IN DISCUSS THEY WHICH YEAR, THIS FESTIVAL BLOOMSBURY THE FOR INSTALLATIONS SEVERAL CREATED STUDIO YEAR FIRST THE CONTRIBUTORS: OUR BETWEEN COLLABORATIONS INTERESTING SOME UNCOVERED ALSO WE DIVERSE. IS INDIVIDUALS THESE BY UNDERTAKEN BEEN HAVE THAT PROJECTS OF RANGE THE – AGENCY OF IDEA THE TO FOG TODAY. IN ENGAGED SIMULATING FROM ARE THEY PRACTICE THE OF FOUNDATIONS THE FORMED AA AT THE WHILE CONCEIVED INTERESTS HOW ABOUT SPEAK EACH THEY ARCHITECTURE. PRACTISE WAYS TO NEW WHICH IN INVENTING ARE WHO GRADUATES RECENT WITH INTERVIEWS AND ACCOUNTS INSPIRING WITH AA THE AFTER FOCUSES ON THE THEME OF LIFE LIFE OF THEME THE ON FOCUSES 16 NEWS FROM THE ARCHITECTURAL ASSOCIATION WITHIN THE AA EARLIER THIS ACADEMIC YEAR AND IS FINALLY EXPLAINED IN ANOTHER ARTICLE AUTHORED BY ITS DESIGNERS, LUKE CURRALL AND LEE REGAN FROM AA EXHIBITIONS. THIS ISSUE GIVES US A SNEAK PEEK INTO THE EVER-EXPANDING VISITING SCHOOL AS WELL AS RECOUNTING THE FUN-FILLED MEMBERSHIP TRIP TO COPENHAGEN IN SEPTEMBER LAST YEAR. ALSO, IN EVERY ISSUE, OUR NEW GLOSSY MIDDLE SECTION WILL NOW FEATURE A STAND-OUT PHOTOGRAPH OF A PARTICULAR AA SPACE THAT IS BEING REDESIGNED OR CONSTRUCTED ANEW TO SHARE IT WITH THE LARGER AA COMMUNITY. THIS ISSUE SHOWCASES THE RECENTLY COMPLETED BIG SHED THAT WAS DESIGNED BY DIPLOMA 19 AND THE DESIGN & MAKE MARCH PROGRAMME AT HOOKE PARK, THE AA’S CAMPUS IN DORSET. TO LEARN MORE ABOUT WHAT’S NEW IN THIS ISSUE AND THE SHIFT TO THE NEWSLETTER BECOMING ENTIRELY STUDENT-EDITED, PLEASE READ THE ARTICLE ON PAGE 44. WE HOPE YOU ENJOY THE NEW AND IMPROVED AARCHITECTURE!

EDITORS MANIJEH VERGHESE EMMA LETIZIA JONES PATRICIA MATO-MORA AArchitecture 16 / Winter 2012 www.aaschool.ac.uk

©2012 All rights reserved Published by the Architectural Association 36 Bedford Square, London WC1B 3ES

Please send your news items for the next issue to [email protected]

Editorial Board Alex Lorente, Membership Brett Steele, AA School Director Zak Kyes, AA Art Director

Editorial Team Manijeh Verghese Emma Letizia Jones Patricia Mato-Mora

Graphic Design Claire McManus

AA Photography Valerie Bennett and Sue Barr

Printed by Blackmore, England

Architectural Association (Inc) Registered Charity No 311083 Company limited by guarantee Registered in England No 171402 Registered office as above CONTENTS

2 A SPACE FROM MYTHS AND LEGENDS 4 URBAN FOG 6 A PRACTICE THAT SERVES OTHER PRACTICES 9 ARCHITECTURE AS DISCOURSE 10 KNOTTED 12 GRAB ‘N’ GO 14 (UN)COMMON PEOPLE 17 BLOOMSBURY ROOMS 20 INEVITABLE LYRICAL IMPROBABILITY 22 VISITING THE VISITING SCHOOL: FROM BEDFORD SQUARE TO BEYOND ENTROPY

THE BIG SHED

25 THE GRAND TOUR OF COPENHAGEN 28 MEMBERS’ EVENTS: A SNAPSHOT 30 MAKE THEM BEAUTIFULLY WITHOUT MAKING THEM COMPLICATED 32 THRILLING WONDER STORIES: A TOOL FOR UNDERSTANDING THESE STRANGE TIMES 34 THE GONG SHOW 36 FORTHCOMING FROM AA PUBLICATIONS 39 FORTHCOMING FROM BEDFORD PRESS 40 BEVERLY BERNSTEIN 41 NEW AWARDS 42 PARTING STATEMENT 44 THE CONTINUING EVOLUTION OF AARCHITECTURE

45 AA NEWS

NEXT ISSUE’S THEME SCHOOL ANNOUNCEMENT STUDENT ANNOUNCEMENT 2 A SPACE FROM MYTHS AND LEGENDS

A revisit from AA Exhibitions’ Luke Currall and Lee Regan, who designed the New Soft Room

In April last year we were tasked with editing ‘Beyond Entropy’ – an exhibition previously shown at expansive spaces in Venice and Milan – to fit the AA Gallery. In addition an events space was required ‘It was important to us that the to host the ongoing cluster’s public seating alowed light to penetrate and that there was an economy programme. of material.’ Our solution was to refer to bleacher Photo Valerie Bennett style seating, named for the way timber used to make outdoor sports seating is bleached by exposure to the sun. It was important to us that the seating allowed light to penetrate and that there was an economy of material. Using a timber scaffold structure of latitudinal ribs, the structure gained rigidity and form by 1"x1" longitudinal slats. The result was a lightweight structure which accommodated up to 30 people at a time. The structure had an extended life during Projects Review as AACP’s audience seating for magic shows and talks. It was as a result of the gallery’s success that we were asked to design and install a semi-permanent space at the back of the school. The space had defined boundaries and there was a limited budget. Flexibility was the key and we began to design a reconfigurable, modular space that could accommodate music, lectures, teaching and anything else the school should care to imagine. Our first challenge was to achieve a allow for the tight joining of internal corners flat floor, an ongoing pursuit at the AA. without manual labour – we were reassured The modular units that had been agreed of the precision of this process by the were interlocking cubes with removable lids. official terminology of ‘Mickey Mouse ears’. The cubes were a development from the Once drawn and tested the Wisa Twin gallery installation, referencing the timber (a new sustainable and economical spruce scaffold construction. The CNC fabricators core and birch face ply) CNC modular units we opted to work with made us aware of arrived and were quickly pinned, glued and the technique of overcutting material to varnished. We then began assembling the 3

The CNC modular units were units in a pre planned formation allowing quickly arranged in their the audience to enter in an elevated pre- planned formation. Photo Sue Barr position to give an impression of theatre whilst also maximising capacity for 60 people. The glass façade and door through which you enter provides onlookers with a viewing platform and creates a calm, isolated, light-filled space inside. We used an ‘off the shelf’ industrial scaffold system to provide handrailing throughout the space. From start to finish the design and installation process was completed within two months. The room is currently in an L- shaped formation and is due for a reorganisation. On its completion the room needed to be named and the suggestion of the Hard Room was considered but deemed too risqué. The space became the New Soft Room, a resurrection of a space within the AA that now largely exists in myth and legend and derives its name from a brief spell in the 1970s when bean bags and cushions were substituted for chairs. We hope the room can continue to live up to its predecessor’s reputation as an active In the formation below the New Soft Room offers seating for 60 forum for debate, discourse and recreation. people; it has hosted lectures by Visit the New Soft Room to see Helena Momus and Owen Hatherley Westerlind’s recently installed ‘Spill’ chairs among others (see page 14). (see page 10). Photo Sue Barr On 3/4/5 May, The Library is on Fire occupies the New Soft Room in three-parts: Creature / Constellation / Tracking Shot. knowWe books that contain libraries. What if a library was to function like a book or a film ? Programmed by Charles Arsène-Henry and Shumon Basar. 4 URBAN FOG

Life after the AA for recent graduate Zoe Chan (AADipl 2010) becomes an urban installation, described here by editor Patricia Mato-Mora (AA 3rd Year)

How AA projects can – and whether they should – engage more with the architec- tural fabric of London, rather than with remote and exotic-sounding sites throughout the globe, seems to have been a debate at the school in the past couple of years. A discussion formalised in a particular brief or unit agenda? A reaction to the Boyarsky-initiated global schools? Perhaps a mere flow of ideas that everyone seemed to be concerned about, as present in everyone’s conversation as the word ‘literally’, which was a very fashionable word until not so long ago. The present issue of AArchitecture is looking out at London and discovering that, in fact, some AA Alumni have taken those concerns out of Bedford Square, into what I just called ‘the architectural fabric of London’, whatever that phrase might shelter under its umbrella. Urban Fog is an example of a cross- over between art and architecture that builds on the discourse of architectural engagement with London. Designed by AA alumna Zoe Chan (AADipl ‘10), in collaboration with designers Sarah Khan, Mickey Kloihofer (AADipl ‘10) and Mariana Pestana, Urban Fog is an urban installation that responds to a derelict, walled and hidden pocket of space in Dalston. For thresholds of occupation, a series of some obscure reason, most of the ‘interven- translucent screens that the team con- tions within London’s architectural tissue ceived and built last spring. However, its seem to be happening in EC1 and beyond. scope of interaction with the space did The site where the team decided to not end there, as it also aimed at creating intervene was a bare trapezial space in a momentary community event, by oper- St Jude Street, close to where it crosses ating as a tea house Thursdays to Sundays. Henry’s Walk, in East London. The To do so, Urban Fog teamed up with response to such a space was one that TinaWeSaluteYou, a local café just around could create a backdrop for events by the corner that would provide the cakes to articulating the volume in an unexpected go with the tea. The space was also used way. Urban Fog utilised the depth of the as a stage for a selection of performances long enclosed site to create a series of that took place throughout the event. 5

View through transluscent fabric fog Photo Zoe Yee Chan

The visitor to the installation had the (a result largely of coal-burning) having opportunity to enjoy his or her afternoon defined an image of the city since the tea and cake in what could be described nineteenth century. Urban Fog orchestrates as an urban cloud which had temporarily that inherent condition of London within come to rest in this forgotten urban void the boundary of a space found in the city, of Dalston. Your regular afternoon conver- and by doing so, it makes me wonder, sation over Earl Grey and Victoria sponge what further architectural discussions became the experience of figures can the AA and its alumni stir up in and appearing and disappearing within the about London. depth of the space, being distorted through light and shadow. Of course, fog itself is not an unknown London phenomenon – the

Learn more about Zoe Chan’s practice: Atelier ChanChan by visitng their website: www.atelierchanchan.com ‘pea-soup’ of the city’s murky atmosphere 6 A PRACTICE THAT SERVES OTHER PRACTICES

Recent graduate Jan Nauta (AADipl 2011) talks about life after the AA and the idea of agency with editor Manijeh Verghese (AA Fifth Year)

Jan Nauta graduated from the AA in 2011 as part of Diploma 10, a unit focusing on Direct Urbanism. In 2009, while a student at the AA, Jan along with fellow student, Scrap Marshall, set up the Public Occasion Agency (POA), a framework for a self-determining public programme at the AA. On 3 November last year, POA organised a salon at the Barbican Art Gallery as part of the OMA/Progress exhibition. Inviting a range of former employees and friends of world-renowned architecture firm, Office of Metropolitan Architecture, each speaker brought with them an artefact to speak about how the firm played an influential role as an educator in their lives. Interested to learn more about POA, why it was set-up, how it has influenced his life after the AA and what it meant to collaborate with the Barbican, we caught up with Jan one weekend to ask him some questions:

Manijeh Verghese: What made you and Scrap set up the POA while studying at the AA? Jan Nauta: Firstly, I think it was true disappointment with the way in which many architects choose to present themselves and their work in public. A multitude of client-oriented PowerPoint presentations created an urge to engage with the formation of public discourse and architecture. At first we set out to develop a sort of system that would allow the student community to decide who to invite, it was called ‘Students Invite.’ This was terribly naïve… In this ‘nightmare of participation’ we received over 100 requests for yet another lecture by Zaha Hadid… It was clear that things were not going to change through democracy. We scrapped the idea of ‘Students Invite’ and decided that we needed to take editorial control for the project to have any chance of becoming relevant. We then developed the idea of the ‘Public Occasion Agency.’

Was this something you saw yourself continuing to be involved with after graduating? Well, this is tricky. Many people ask us this question. I don’t think we are very interested in literally transforming it into a profession… But we are fascinated by the idea of agency, i.e. a practice that serves other practices. I would like to see the POA continue as a sort of modus operandi.

Do you feel that the agenda you have set out for POA relates to your own agenda while at the AA and now, while in practice? Though we have always focused on things that we believe to be of relevance to the larger community, POA is of course partly informed by our own personal interests. Some of the events have indeed been influential for our projects, both inside and outside the school. 7

How did you get in touch with the Barbican and get involved with the public programme for the OMA/Progress exhibition? Actually they got in touch with us. We were of course thrilled…

How did you choose the theme of OMA as Educator and select the speakers? We were very much interested in learning more about the pedagogical role of the institution of OMA… beyond just studying the work. There is no office that I can think of whose traces you can find within so many different places and people...

Natasha Sandmeier (AA DRL 1999) leading the conversation at the POA event at the Barbican in November 2012. Photo Valerie Bennett

Were you pleased with how the event went? The attendance was overwhelming. It was also great to see so many of our regular audience in a completely different setting… I was very happy with the combination of the guests and overwhelmed by their generosity… We hoped to explore a variety of experiences and ‘lessons.’ I think this is what we got, so yes, I was pleased.

What did it mean to extend POA beyond the AA into another institution as established as the Barbican? In the past we have done events at the ICA and at the Venice Biennale, so we were very happy to continue our excursion into the established world. It is a great experience to work with such dedicated organisations, you learn a lot! 8

What’s next for POA? We are currently finishing the POA 1–22 book with the Bedford Press. This book brings together the preview and the commissioned review material of the first 22 events. I don’t want to say too much about this yet, but it is very exciting… We aim to launch the book in March/April. Then… we’ll see!

How has your involvement with POA impacted your life since graduating? As I mentioned earlier, I am taking along the idea of agency. My ambition of pursuing a widely oriented practice is definitely something that has been enforced by the diversity of the POA. And yes, there are currently various collaborations…

The collection of POA leaflets 01–22 book, published

POA 1–22 POA

What else have you been working on since graduation? A number of things… With Tom Fox (formerly in Diploma 4), I have recently started ‘Operative Agency,’ a design practice in which we have been working on projects that investigate the relationship between institutions, policy and the transformation of physical space. We are currently working on a project for a temporary public space in London, a building on top of an existing art studio in Rotterdam and a consultancy job for an institution. Over the last few months I have also been coordi- nating the European Activities of Stefano Rabolli’s Beyond Entropy. Aside from this I am assisting Samantha Hardingham with research work for the To learnTo more about POA visit their website: The www.publicoccasionagency.com. Complete Works of Cedric Price. by Bedford Press, is scheduled to launch later in 2012 9 ARCHITECTURE AS DISCOURSE

Life after the AA has taken Danielle Rago (AA HCT 2011) to New York for the launch of the Archive of Spatial Aesthetics and Praxis in New York

ASAP officially launched on 12 December Inspired by di Carlo’s first 2002 project 2011 at the top of The Standard in New York, at MoMA, The Changing of the Avant overlooking the High Line. Founded in 2010 Garde, the archive is conceived as a rapid by Tina di Carlo, former curator of architec- distillation of work in which architecture is ture and design at the Museum of Modern produced through the accumulation and Art, New York and led in partnership with relation of things in space. The collection Danielle Rago, former graduate student of to date includes work by Andrea Zittel, the AA, ASAP collects, exhibits and Andreas Angelidakis, An Te Liu, Caitlin circulates spatial practices via objects, texts, Berrigan, Didier Faustino, Diller Scofidio + ephemera and virtual media. The event Renfro, Emanuel Licha, Karen Mirza and featured three protagonists from the Brad Butler, Luca Pozzi, Markus Miessen, archive’s collection – Jerszy Seymour, Alex Alison Moffett, Patricia Reed, Philippe Schweder La and Bjarke Ingels. Each artist Rahm, Ralf Pflugfelder, Raumlabor, staged a work within the room while Salottobuono, Sissel Toolas, Teddy Cruz conveying the mission of the archive: to and Zak Kyes, among others. More advocate ‘the value of architecture as part information about the project, participants, of a broader, social, political, technological and collection can be viewed online at and aesthetic discourse’. www.a--s--a--p.com until future program- Seymour’s ‘Some Notes to Myself…A ming is announced. The archive will not General Theory of Design’ was specifically only be virtual; there are also plans to open produced for the launch. The piece – notes a physical space in New York City in 2012. that Seymour continually and periodically The assembling of such a collection sends to himself via email – forms a design as part of a larger aesthetic is critical to manifesto that begins to be emblematic raise the value of architecture. Yet ASAP of that of ASAP. The manifesto will circulate repositions the archive as a productive with the archive, and write its future history entity that no longer merely stores and as Seymour continues to send notes to collects but instead, and like the work it himself. Schweder La presented his collects, produces and is produced, by ‘Evaporating Building’, originally created at the spatial environment. ASAP claims it is the Chinati Foundation in Marfa, Texas. nomadic. It travels. It is here where its future A projection onto water mist, he describes it success lies. For it is the ways in which as performative architecture. Here, installed the archive transmits and circulates itself atop The Standard and at a 1:1 scale, the and information via the media (social media pieces became part of the cityscape. Ingels and traditional presses alike) in addition concluded the evening, presenting a series to the ways in which it mediates between of strategies for building contemporary mediums and publics – ie, positions that architecture through ‘public participation’ are polemical and open for debate – that and the re-appropriation of traditional will ultimately help expand the under-

Visit ASAP’s website to stay up to date on their curatorial events around the world: www..a--s--a--p.com language to inform his practice. standing, agency and value of architecture. 10 KNOTTED

Alumna Helena Westerlind (AADipl 2011) describes the new form of practice that is taking shape in her life after the AA

After graduation I felt the need to get as far away from my computer as I possibly could, so I decided to travel from Moscow to Beijing by train. This took more than 140 hours and gave me time to think. In the end I knew I wanted to find an alternative way to practise as an architect but I did not have Helena’s ‘Spill’ chairs in the a clear idea what this was. Since working New Soft Room at the AA Photos Helena Westerlind during my year out in India, where I was introduced to a much simpler and more hands-on approach to building design, I had come to really value that kind of directness and responsiveness in architecture. I chose to pursue this further in Diploma 7 where I had the chance to develop projects for socially critical contexts and work closely with material processes. In my Fourth Year I worked in a Palestinian refugee camp outside Beirut using concrete – a material that since the establishment of the settlement had been extremely politically charged because it implied a permanence that did not tally with the official political standpoint of not recognising the camp’s existence. As there was no obvious way for me to turn my main interest in architecture into a professional practice, I felt a strange mix of confusion and growing creative energy. organised complexity. The beauty of the So while I was trying to formulate a new knot is that it can turn the continuous direction for myself, I started making knots, nature of the material, with no form of its lots of knots, and this therapeutic interest own, into a structure through repeated developed into an ongoing project that took movements that become captured in the on a life of its own. surface and are forever visible. The knot is Rope is a material that I had wanted the building block that through its variation to work with for a long time. It could be makes the shape. thought of as just a commonplace material While spending time exploring this but its origins from tiny fragile threads new world and talking to skilled knot- twined together to become something so makers it became clear that these amazing strong and physical belie this. Its uses vary techniques were usually applied in a very from prosaic maritime knot-making to restricted way, i.e. for ships or as decoration, Japanese bondage and its special appeal but I became increasingly interested in the comes from being so easily transformed potential for these methods to be used in from something as simple as a line into a new context and transformed into a larger 11

scale. Creating knotted fabrics seemed to the AA’s New Soft Room later this spring. be a way to build larger complicated shapes My aim is to keep developing the skills and surfaces so I set out to adapt existing and techniques necessary to advance knitting techniques to the scale of the onto larger and more complex installations rope which for me was the key to unlocking relating to the architectural scale. a new spatial language. Alongside this project I have started The project I have developed over work at Factum Arte, a Madrid-based art the past few months explores these spatial workshop specialising in contemporary manifestations of the rope in relation to art development and conservation. the body, object and space. I’m interested Shared between these two disciplines is an obsession with developing and refining material technologies and manufacturing This knotted body piece shows off techniques. The work is often based on the intricacy of the rope work as it a material mediation from the physical to highlights the design of the human the digital and back to the material again spine as a spatial entity.

in the various forms the material can take with the emphasis on understanding the by responding to the different characteris- physical reality of objects and their making. tics and needs at these different scales. This makes for a great interdisciplinary Initially I made a series of neck pieces that environment where I find myself surrounded were exclusively about expressing the by artists, craftsmen and technologists and aesthetic qualities of the material. These am constantly challenged by new ways of were part of the Dezeen pop-up shop in working and thinking. In short, it is a place Covent Garden in December. At present of wonderful creative chaos in which I have I’m occupied by the potential of knotted found my ideal alternative form of practice. surfaces to convert old broken furniture Helena Westerlind is working for for new uses and I’m currently working on Factum Arte in London and has just joined

To seeTo the full range of Knotted pieces visit Helena’s website: www.knotted.me. Also check out the ‘Spill’ knotted chairs, in the New Soft Room. a series of chairs that will be installed in the International Guild of Knot Tyers. 12 GRAB ‘N’ GO

Recent graduates Joy Sriyuksiri and Taneli Mansikkamaki (both AADipl 2011) discuss their alternative experience of life after the AA with Shaelena Morley (AA Fifth Year)

The AA takes pride in being a unique team has considered in opening more architecture school and institution. The branches around London, but always traits which make the AA unique, however, developing the company itself first as Taneli aren’t limited to what happens within the explains, ‘...we’re trying to develop the walls of the school, but also what happens identity of the company as a whole through after graduation. In a school that can be the main branch, trying to make it better, described as a ‘beat your own path’ kind in a way make it more of a brand’. of environment, many graduates from the Starting up a company is challenging AA have done the same with their budding enough, but to do so in the midst of fifth careers. Joy Natapa Sriyuksiri and Taneli year unit work and technical studies Mansikkamaki, graduates of the class tutorials is almost mind-boggling. For these of 2011, started their trail blazing while two, though, designing GRAB and bringing finishing fifth year. The two are the it to fruition served as a helpful outlet designers and co-founders of GRAB Thai independent of school. Taneli speaks of Street Kitchen near Old Street in London, the added responsibility as a stabiliser which they describe as a casual grab ‘n’ go rather than a hindrance: ‘It helped keep us restaurant. With four other partners in the sane. Outside of school, you’re not often in company, Joy explains the inspiration for a situation where you’re completely focused the team came from their own experiences on just one thing – it’s easy to become of working in the area and the need for consumed with unit work.’ When asked how informal and quick restaurants, ‘The idea the project compared to other experiences, is that the menu is Thai street food so it’s Joy adds ‘For me it felt completely new, already more casual. It’s hard to find a place it was much more real than other stuff that you can go to every day for good food I’ve worked on. In school you don’t have to that isn’t a sit-down Thai restaurant.’ think about the reality of having to sell this Each of the partners of GRAB handles product or think about customers. Even a different role based on their own varied when working in an office as a Part 1, you backgrounds. Joy and Taneli, aside from don’t get to dabble in that part.’ designing the interior, act as creative With academic life behind them, the directors for the company handling the nature of a day-to-day routine shifts both visual identity and branding as well as in relation to GRAB and their architectural helping to create the overall concept for work. Joy confirms this point: ‘In reality it’s the company. Joy speaks of the learning so different to what we do in school and process of both designing the company what we do in an office. GRAB helped itself as well as the space, ‘It’s a continual me to understand how to work with other process. Now we’re working with the other people who don’t know as much about partners who are there all the time: one architecture...’ Joy is now working at Caruso deals with the finances, another does the St John, restricting her work at GRAB marketing, and so forth; we’re working mostly to Saturdays while Taneli juggles his with them to find to out what else we need, contribution to GRAB with freelancing work. what works and what doesn’t, what needs With previous experience in media and to change.’ Part of this process is also graphic design, Taneli found his experience thinking about future growth, which the helpful in developing the business, in 13 For the interior of Grab, the use of appropriated wooden pallets coupled with bright red plastic stools generates the ambience of a street food stall in Thailand. Photo Valerie Bennett

‘understanding quickly what the project convincing and self-critical. Joy says, needed and how to create the identity ‘The AA helps to be self-evaluating and of the company.’ when people do give comments about As a Fifth Year who will (hopefully) be what you’ve done, you become more open graduating soon, I asked about what they to change, balancing where you can found most useful in how the AA prepared improve and where to stand your ground.’ them for the professional world. Joy Finally, and perhaps most importantly, laughed, ‘Well, we’ve only been in the I quizzed the two on their favourite dishes professional world for about six months!’ at GRAB, to which Joy immediately with Taneli chiming in, ‘It’s really hard to answered Green Curry with Rice, and Taneli, be scared of feedback after becoming thinking it over for a moment, decided accustomed to AA juries.’ Even so, both on Congee (a kind of Thai porridge).

GRAB Thai Street Kitchen is located near Old Street Station at 5 Leonard Street; you can also visit their website at www.grabfood.co.uk spoke about how they’ve learned to be both Now, who’s hungry? 14 (UN)COMMON PEOPLE

A conversation between Shumon Basar (AACP) and Owen Hatherley transcribed by Emma Letizia Jones (AA HCT 2011)

In Uncommon (Zero Books 2011), author and super-fan Owen Hatherley argues that the Sheffield pop group Pulp ‘should be taken very seriously indeed.’ The eminent publishing house, Faber and Faber share this hunch, evidenced by their release, in late 2011, of a lyric collection by Jarvis Cocker: Mother, Brother, Lover. Shumon Basar asked Owen Hatherley about the torrid and tender relationships between sex, class and the city of Sheffield in the 90s that lurk like amateur stalkers in Pulp’s back catalogue. Hatherley replied with the aid of Pulp’s most iconic music videos as well as his own tentative teenage encounters with the opposite sex. Corduroy, chipboard and seething sexuality seeping from the sidewalks: Sing along with the common people. What else can you do? – Shumon Basar

Shumon Basar: If it’s alright with you I’d like to go back to where you began (and also to where Jarvis Cocker says the band began), which is discovering girls – and that fine line between discovering them and not being able to quite access them, as it were. [To the audience] I’m also going to play this song in the background – it’s the song that Owen began his talk with [Pulp’s Sheffield Sex City]. Owen, in your book you said that an articulation of sexual obsession, sexual anticipation, sex as an instrument in the class war and finally sexual disgust is absolutely unique in Pulp. In fact I think it’s this very song that builds up to this incredible crescendo of collective orgasms in Sheffield tower blocks. And he [the narrator in the song] is even I think at some point ‘making love to the pavement’? It seems to me that there are a number of themes running through this book – class, sex and the city. So perhaps you could say something about the Pulp songs of this era in particular, which are just dripping with, as you say, all of these modalities of sex. And particularly this line, where you say that what’s running through the book is this relationship between sexuality and space. Owen Hatherley: Well, that’s absolutely the thing I have avoided talking about – there’s a bit about it in the book and there’s a reason why it’s written (and not spoken). There’s a part in the book where I was explaining that I had most of my formative sexual experiences in Sheffield, so for me Sheffield was sexy, and in a way it was that straightforward: if you’re engaged in an assignation then the space you are moving through is necessarily suffused by that assignation. But at the same time I don’t know if it is that simple. Lots of it has to do with… decay. And seediness. There is that link that Graham Greene makes between seediness and nostalgia and longing for the past, which seems really counterintuitive, but actually I think it’s very astute. You can’t explain why they’re connected but they are. For example, somewhere like Castle Market in Sheffield is a very, very sexy place, despite the fact that it’s a decaying 60s market hall 15

with bits falling off it and weird stalls selling god knows what. It has that sense of somewhere that’s been kind of left to go a bit strange and a bit odd, and so it becomes quite a sexual space. But it’s very difficult to explain why. In many ways in the book I don’t really try to explain why. It’s very hard to do that.

Owen Hatherley and Shuman Basar discusses the pop band Pulp in the New Soft Room. Photos Sue Barr

The other major character in the book is that of Sheffield itself. You say it’s the city where the steel-making process was initiated, more or less. It’s one of the great steel cities in the world, in fact. You say it’s a provincial city that perhaps more than any other in the UK attempted to create a viable modernist landscape between the 1950s and the 70s, before the money ran out. Its wildly overambitious brutalist buildings provide a landscape where there’s space to dream on ‘what could have been’. In Jarvis’s lyrics and in your book it’s a formidable character right from the beginning. As well as that, there’s a whole chapter in your book A Guide to the New Ruins of Great Britain that’s dedicated to Sheffield, so perhaps you could say something about the city? Sure, yeah, why Sheffield? Well, I know many people who went to university in Sheffield because of Pulp. They partly found the place they were looking for and they partly didn’t, but either way they certainly found it to be an extraordinarily seedy place. In The New Ruins there’s a section 16

about Attercliffe, an area of disused steelworks which is now largely made up of weekend warehouse parties and sex shops, in this decaying industrial landscape that’s been quite forgotten. That conjunction of uses is quite interesting.

Could you say something to give us some background on why exactly Sheffield was this incredible locus of late modernism? That’s another question that is very difficult to answer. Sheffield had a very militant Labour movement and it was largely homogenously working class. Lots of it comes from the fact that the steel industry in Sheffield died later than in other places, as Sheffield was a boomtown in the 50s, 60s and 70s. The steelworks were nationalised at that time and running full pelt, and it was one of those coincidences of having a good planning department and a good city architects’ department. Also, I think to be fair it was the fact of having a very enlightened university: Sheffield University held one of the first postwar architecture competitions – for three new

university buildings. But then again these factors could be applied to many places. I think maybe the thing that it really boils down to is topography, in that Sheffield has some incredibly strange topography. It’s basically an industrial town built in the midst of the Peak District, so Sheffield is all about the hills. And the building sites on those hills were usually made up of council estates, over half of which have now been demolished. And that runs all the way though the lyrics of this song [Sheffield Sex City]. In Sheffield you get a strong sense of urbanism because you’re surrounded by the Peak District and you can see it most of the time, so you’re much more conscious of your city as ‘city’. You can see what is not part of the city just outside of it, because the city provides views. Wherever you are in Sheffield you get a view

of a modernist city on one hand, and of rolling hills on the other. Hatherley also blogs on architecture, urbanism, politics, design, music and critical theory at Sit Down Man,a You’re Bloody see Tragedy, www.nastybrutalistandshort.blogspot.com 17 BLOOMSBURY ROOMS

Guy Sinclair and Radu Remus Macovei (both AA First Year) explain the First-Year brief and installation for the Bloomsbury Festival 2011

The temporary café served coffee To familiarise ourselves with processes of and cookies for the Bloomsbury architectural inquiry, proposal and imple- Festival in Bedford Square. Photos Sue Barr mentation, we began a tripartite investiga- tion with the goal of defining the essence of a room and expressing these essences through an interactive installation:

Stage 1: What is a Room? In conjunction with exploring the theoretical aspects of what constitutes a room, we undertook quantitative research of notable rooms in the vicinity. Measuring, drawing, model-making, diagramming and comparing were the tools we used to make sense of the innate attributes of a room: boundary, skeleton, light, function, infrastructure and props. Each group manipulated these elements to play against each other, formulating the conceptual basis for a design proposal.

Stage 2: Iterations Bloomsbury has at various times been We began a procedure of design proposals an epicentre for architects, philosophers, based on the foundations developed in authors and artists: a nexus that has long the first stage and adapted them to group facilitated interdisciplinary conversations. functions. While one group transformed As new students to the AA and London the infrastructural aspect of a room into a we were initiated into both the spatial suspended bar where electrical wires, bulbs qualities and the historical context of the and structural chains are kept highly visible Bloomsbury area through our First Year while serving the function of a noodle-bar, brief. In order to develop an installation another group reduced the room to its for the Bloomsbury Festival in October ground floor and deformed it to modify we identified rooms in the city and reacted the experience of playing badminton to them by questioning their architectural in it. We explored the correlation between components: light, circulation, content, use, function and form through a series redundancy, illusions, infrastructure, sound of reductive models while continuing to and materiality. By interpreting ‘rooms’ ground our design decisions in the initially in the Bloomsbury area through the lens identified rooms. of these qualities we designed and constructed a number of installations that Stage 3: Implementation engaged with the public at the Bloomsbury Through developing a series of exploratory Festival and articulated many of the drawings and models we identified the

To learnTo more about the Bloomsbury Festival and to see more photos of the event please visit: www.bloomsburyfestival.org.uk narratives that occur in the AA’s locality. construction materials and planned the 18 A colourful badminton court encouraged play and entertained visitors in the usually tranquil Bedford Square garden 19 crafting of the joints. The setting of Bedford The Badminton Court Square played host to our architectural fair: A less typical institution in Bloomsbury is a café-stand, a noodle-stall, a badminton the YMCA. Nonetheless, it is an important court, a labyrinth of optical illusions, centre of activity, a space that emanates a meditation space, a quotidian diorama, a certain dynamism. Stemming from this a spatial wandering and a welcoming area. reading we began an iterative process These installations were animated by music, examining, designing and finally imple- dancing, sports, food and drinks. During menting an installation that encouraged the weekend, the fair attracted the public play through a subtle manipulation of to participate in both its visual and its tectonic values. Through a progression experiential curiosities. From the spectacle from abstract to more detailed model of Swedish dancers to Gothic tiles cast in making and research the decision to jelly, the folly of the fair entertained visitors subvert the form of the badminton court of all ages. This first project of the aca- to create an event for the festival occurred. demic year introduced First Year to the To transcend the strictures and rules, such multifaceted nature of architecture: analysis, as the dividing lines of a badminton court, design, construction, business and which define movement in sports we entertainment. Installations such as the deconstructed and altered their layout. following two, entertained and intrigued The angular shifts created may be seen many visitors, whilst opening up the usually to orient or disorient players on the court, private space of Bedford Square Gardens shifting advantage and disadvantage to the public: through architectural intervention.

Group Light To question the definition of a room as space limited by some kind of material Visitors to Bloomsbury Festival boundary, we reduced the PhD common wander through a tunnel room at the AA to its essential elements: constructed by First Year students, its structural frame. Several dimensions punctuated by optical illusions were created: as the sun moves around the framing the park beyond. frame, a shifting shadow defines the planar limit and the vaulted material elements shape a vertical limit while framing the sky – the firmament becomes the overhead in the room. To enhance the contour of the last standing beams of the room, we adjoined elements of detail that we captured on hexagonal tiles. Each tile displayed Gothic motifs carefully crafted by masons as well as marks spontaneously and accidentally made due to daily living. Collectively, the textures reveal the story of a room over centuries and are a testament to the beauty of decay. The effect is sudden – a room stripped of its walls, where the dichotomies of light and shadow and void and solid play against each other to form a bizarre space with changing boundaries. To functionalise and to familiarise visitors with this unusual space, a café served coffee and cookies over the course of the weekend. 20 INEVITABLE LYRICAL IMPROBABILITY

Nannette Jackowski and Ricardo de Ostos (Intermediate 3 Tutors) celebrate the work of their student, Basmah Kaki (AA Year Out), winner of the RIBA Bronze Medal

In his new book What Technology Wants, mind, we are still architects amid our Kevin Kelly establishes parallels between curiosity for interdisciplinary technology), biological evolution principles and techno- the improbability of her creatures to logical developments. In a brief passage he generate energy was high. After a series mentions a very telling connection between of attempts she turned the improbable into self-organising systems in biology and the the possible. At some point the prototype ways in which open-ended ingenuity of did generate energy and produced sounds, natural forms become ‘highly probable’ something she had not expected among a chain of almost impossible factors. beforehand. Looking back at Basmah Kaki’s The final project is sited in a granite tenacious Third Year project in Intermediate quarry at the edge of Bangalore city, a 3 2010/11, we realised that there was some high-tech powerhouse in India. It deals with of the inevitable, a lot of the improbable the migrant cast of workers – among them and a dash of an additional regulatory many women and children – ‘whose hearing ingredient: the lyrical. is progressively damaged by the noise Basmah Kaki’s project ‘An Acoustic pollution endemic to their work condition’, Lyrical Mechanism’ received a high pass as Basmah describes: ‘An Acoustic Lyrical in Technical Studies, a high pass from the Mechanism creates a long-term strategy External Examiners and was also awarded where sound and religious spaces offer the RIBA Bronze Medal 2011 for the Best relief, treatment and hope for the commu- Design Project at Part 1, out of more than nity of workers.’ 100 entries from 56 schools in 15 countries. The choice of a social programme Prizes are a positive public reward for great placed the project under new demands and achievements. The prizes mentioned above complexities beyond the mere generation are indeed recognition of Basmah’s hard of energy. The current architecture work and talent. However, what prizes can discourse regarding social design tends hardly encompass is the inner struggle of to equal ‘minimum architecture for survival’, the work and its deep connections with the that is to say, cheap, fast and mindless personal path of the author. Great work is constructions. Playing with the infrastruc- so, not so much for the prizes it collects, but tural qualities of the site – rock noise, rather for the personal edge and its creative dynamite explosions, and wind force – as tension. ‘An Acoustic Lyrical Mechanism’ well as the fragile presence of an existing presented a process of design with the temple, the tension of the urgent social right challenges for Basmah as a third year scenario blends with the cultural narrative student in Inter 3. She reinvented the unit of sacred symbols. The project was partly brief of ‘Energy’ and articulated a clear path documentary – the necessity to tell a tale to prototype artefacts that would generate of human struggle – but not only that: it energy from wind. These prototypes built up was an opportunity to speculate based on a series of small success stories. Based on its peculiar cultural fragments of persisting her initial technical understanding (bear in religion. This mixture between the 21

Axonometric drawing of an Acoustical Lyrical Mechanism

inevitability of addressing the social issues interactive aspects of the environment. In present at the site and the awkwardness a design unit like Intermediate 3 the design of doing so by telling the story through synthesis of the highly unlikely has become sound, enabled the project to be precise a key feature. Basmah Kaki not only and expressive in equal measures. learned the inevitable intuitions of a Lyrical mechanisms tested how the designer but also developed her own building could be played by the wind, repertoire of creativity, desire and discipline. like an Aeolian harp transforming the In this sense her lyric mechanisms are a abrasive sounds of quarrying into sensorial mirror of her own balanced personality and stimulus inside the retreat spaces of the sensible attitude. proposed building. With regards to the improbable, nothing The final design explores the potential better than remembering Jorge Luis of infrastructure-cum-building, placed Borges and his take on prizes: ‘Not granting within the left rock of the quarry. It utilises me the Nobel Prize has become a wind updraft to buffer the noise pollution, Scandinavian tradition; since I was born transforming the abrasive sound into they have not been granting it to me.’ acoustic ambience, offering educational Congratulations, Basmah! programmes via lyrical mechanisms, tuning tools and sonic workshops. Nevertheless, in our view, the project succeeds when it challenges convention. The project achieves an unexpected yet absolutely mesmerising end product thanks to a narrative that merges the social and the See more drawings and a description of Basmah’s project on the RIBA President’s Medals website, www.presidentsmedals.com 22 VISITING THE VISITING SCHOOL: FROM BEDFORD SQUARE TO BEYOND ENTROPY

Karina Monteith-Joseph, coordinator of the Visiting School, visits Venice and describes the diverse schools taking place around the world

I started my role as the Visiting School prestigious Fondazione Giorgio Cini Coordinator last summer, and prior to my residence where the programme is held interview I had little idea of what it entailed. each year. The Palladian architecture was I quickly learnt that there was a diverse magnificent, and I felt privileged to have range of short architecture-based pro- access to the facilities, including the grammes on offer in various locations historic library, usually accessible only to worldwide. I was impressed by the long list scholars of Italian architecture and history. of cities in the prospectus including Berlin, The group consisted of international Shanghai, Tokyo, Singapore and Venice. students, mostly around the ages of 20–25, June is the busiest time for the Visiting with mature students too. School, with up to six programmes taking The premise of the Venice workshop place. The AA-based Summer School was to spend time ‘visiting’ in the Grand programme was about to begin, directed Tour sense of the word. The highlight for me by Natasha Sandmeier and assisted by was a private guided boat trip along the Manijeh Verghese, and it was fun to have Brenta River to Stra, observing the them join the office during that period! changing water levels, agriculture and I caught glimpses of some of the fantastic facades of the Palladian villas along the work being produced across the terrace, way. We stopped at the famous Villa Pisani and witnessed their final champagne and Villa Foscari or ‘Malcontenta’, where we ceremony in Bedford Square on a glorious were given in depth tours of the beautiful summer’s day. I also took a peek at the frescoed interiors. We walked around DLAB student presentations, a programme stunning landscaped gardens and a maze directed by Elif Erdine, in the AA Lecture whilst taking notes and doing sketches, Hall, impressed by how the groups had and were asked to consider how Palladian worked so productively on their projects symmetry could be applied to solve the during the ten days. problem of the urban sprawl of recently In August 2011, I had the opportunity to built houses, shops and roads over the join the Venice Beyond Entropy programme, original Palladian Villas. We took a not so directed by Stefano Rabolli Pansera, my glamorous public bus home so that we first experience of attending a workshop. could take pictures of our site and observe I was intrigued to discover the processes the chaos at close range. and outcomes of a Visiting School. I arrived It became clear on the second day that late at night, onto the magical island of there was so much on the agenda, with San Giorgio Maggiore, the location of the rarely a moment to stop. We convened at 23 ‘The premise of the Venice workshop was to spend time visiting in the Grand Tour sense of the word.’ Photos Karina Monteith-Joseph 24 the Fondazione Giorgio Cini for presenta- Chris Pierce, myself and Lucy Moroney our tions of student research, and to hear talks student assistant, yet from this base we by leading guest speakers and critics on liaise with AA tutors and staff in both the the topic of Beyond Entropy, which really UK and abroad, and hundreds of applicants opened up a new way of seeing and from around the world. AA Programme presented a strong research agenda. We Directors also invite tutors and other attended a tour of the Venice Biennale practitioners to contribute to the workshops. where the highlight for most was Christian A benefit of working at the Visiting School Marclay’s ‘The Clock’, which combines is being able to gain an insight into thousands of short film extracts that show contemporary architectural and theoretical the time, as a continuous 24-hour film in discourse, and seeing the results of the real time. Stefano pointed out its connec- experimentation and work generated by tion to our discussions on film and space each programme. Most of the content in relation to Beyond Entropy, such as the from past workshops including photos can music videos of Michel Gondry. At the end be viewed on the programme sites on the of my visit I felt enriched, enlivened and AA website. inspired. What makes the Visiting School so unique is that all the workshops are completely different in content, so for potential applicants there is plenty to choose from. Our office at 38 Bedford Square is small and quiet, consisting of

‘The Palladian architecture was magnificent, and I felt priviledged to have access to the facilities, including the historic library.’ The AA Visiting School is a worldwide programme of short courses, design and research workshops. learn To more about the different global schools and download the prospectus visit the website: www.aaschool.ac.uk/visitingschool THE BIG SHED

Big Shed is the vehicle for a collaboration between AA Masters course, Design & Make and last year’s Diploma 19 (Director: Martin Self, Programme Staff: Piers Taylor and Kate Darby). By working collaboratively on a real project, the unit and the programme developed individual theses that are derived from a passionate integration of making within design. The ‘Big Shed’ is a 500m2 assembly workshop, the first of the new campus buildings at AA’s campus in Dorset – Hooke Park. While the exploratory mechanism for this building has been a series of constructed ‘primers’ or small inhabitable structures and prototypes: the students of Diploma 19 were responsible for extracting from the unit brief for the Big Shed a personal design agenda that would ultimately manifest itself in the building design. Students’ interests ranged from envelope performance or using wind to dictate the shape of the building to integrating the surrounding landscape into the materiality of the shed to researching ad-hoc construction processes as an argument for a non-deterministic approach to design and structure. The early experiments of one student, Elena Gaidar, explored articulated structures leading to a proposition that the Big Shed should be adaptable in its configuration, allowing the building to maximise its seasonal and functional flexibility. This principle – that the Shed adapts to environmental and programmatic requirements – was identified collectively as the driving concept for the project. The final shed was recently completed by the Design & Make programme. It has large moveable sections that future users will be able reconfigure to form walls (in winter, for wind and rain shelter), doors, or canopies (in summer, for shading, and to allow large components and equipment in and out of the Shed. The building has been constructed from larch, sourced from Hooke Park and local woodlands. For the primary structure, tree-trunks were used ‘in-the-round’, thereby retaining their full structural integrity. An ‘ad-hoc’ infill of smaller secondary members will carry the cladding.

Photo Valerie Bennett For more information on the Big Shed please see http://summerbuild.aaschool.ac.uk 25 THE GRAND TOUR OF COPENHAGEN

Two contrasting accounts of the Members’ trip to Copenhagen by First Year students Stratis Mortakis and Oliver Chiu

Stratis Mortakis: Oli and I were heading unlocked bikes left outside. Walking around, to Gatwick Airport to get the plane. Sitting we got a sense of what it is to live in on our luggage in the Tube, we were talking Copenhagen. Peaceful. In addition, we about our experience at the AA as First were learning about its culture day after Year students. I had applied for the trip long day, through exhibitions, buildings and even before I got into the school, and that was dinners together. In the majority of areas the reason I was so excited about it. We that we visited, the architecture was free both wanted to meet more people. After a of commercial buildings. Copenhagen’s while, we reached the airport, got the plane, character and cultural identity were present and before we knew it we landed in almost everywhere, and that created an Copenhagen. One thing that struck us and intriging edge that made us want to explore still makes us laugh is the pronunciation it. When we visited buildings by contempo- of the word Copenhagen, which seemed to rary Danish practices, we were taking be a completely different place when read pictures of something we had only seen Kopenhavn. This first experience is a small online, and that was quite refreshing. memory of the trip, and it was the best Now, back into the school routine, introduction to what would follow. I remember the discussions on the train Meneesha and Joanne (Membership) to the Museum of Modern Art, or walking were at the hotel when we arrived, ready back to the hotel talking about how nice to welcome us. From that moment, we the dinner was. It makes me jealous of my had Denmark ahead of us to explore. As former self for having had such an amazing a country that continuously evolves in the and interesting break! field of design and architecture, we visited plenty of impressive, modern buildings Oliver Chiu: The trip to Copenhagen for such as the Museum of Modern Art. At the me as a new member of the Architectural same time, we were starting to get to know Association was one of extreme excitement each other: not only students, but also and a more than appropriate way to start members and AA Alumni. Because most my First Year. This trip conveyed to me of them were older than us and had studied the fresh and enthusiastic connection in the school for longer than us, listening to the school has with its students and its them gave us the chance to get to know the inseparable relationship with architecture. school better. Rather than a community which keeps The days started promptly with a within their own years, the AA encourages home-cooked breakfast. We chatted about collaboration between the groups and the previous day while planning the day explores many different opinions from ahead. Copenhagen was more than just varied experiences. This gave me, in par- ‘fascinating’. We saw hundreds, thousands ticular, a great foundation to see how much of bikes, more than cars or even pedes- I could learn from my seniors within the AA. trians. Each time we entered a café or a The three days spent in Copenhagen were

Forthcoming Membership Abroad: Trip 3 Days in Madrid with AAIS 19–21/5/2012 For further information see www.aaschool.ac.uk or email [email protected] shop, we were amazed by the amount of exceptionally carefree, in the sense of 26

Installation by Arne Quinze, ‘My Home My House My Stilt House’, at Louisiana Moma LIVING Frontiers of Architecture III–IV Photo Stratis Mortakis

scope and freedom for visiting the nation’s Wooden House by Sou Fujimoto Architects architecture, just like school life, the trip and Le Cabanon by Le Corbusier. was independent. After visiting Louisiana MOMA we were The grand tour of Copenhagen was given time to freely explore Copenhagen wonderful as students who lived in which again emphasised the independence Copenhagen gave us their personal view within the life of the AA. After looking at on what they considered worth seeing various cultural exhibitions we were treated and introduced to me the fundamentals of to the more architectural aspects of the trip, architecture within the social context of the visiting urban landmarks such as Örestad city. Mike Taylor, a Canadian AA Member projects: (ranging from apartments to the interning at a Danish architectural practice, Masterplan) Tietgan Dormitory by and local student of architecture, Oskar Lundgaard & Tranberg Architects and BIG’s Jönsson, both provided invaluable insights VM Housing and 8 House. We also looked and were a welcome addition to the group. at other forms of architectural delight such A day trip to Louisiana Museum of as Peder Vilhelm Jensen-Klint’s expres- Modern Art was a significant focus of the sionist Grundtvig’s Church, with its weekend. We were taken on a guided tour meticulous and wonderful use of material, of LIVING Frontiers of Architecture III–IV true to Copenhagen’s architectural nature. which exhibited recent architectural Its already monolithic appearance was projects, art installations and case studies, accentuated by clever masterplanning including a great many 1:1 scale models. whereby houses along the road leading Notable works included: My Home My to the church tapered to exaggerate the House My Stilt House by Arne Quinze; Final viewer’s perspective. 27

The lifestyle of Copenhagen was hotel, the only hotel room with the original conveyed strongly to me as the trip not only Arne Jacobsen décor from July 1960 broadened my relationship and under- preserved in its entirety. The trip was standing towards the city’s architecture concluded with a three-course meal at but gave me a greater appreciation towards Restaurant Cofoco, a fantastic and a its way of life, from the ubiquitous bicycles wonderful way to round off an extremely to pleasant night life. worthwhile trip which was balanced with What I registered was the enthusiasm enough passion and charisma for me to everyone contributed to the experience and sign up for the next trip without a moment’s atmosphere of the trip. I was also aston- hesitation. ished by the level of diversity within the group, there were people who were not from the AA but were associated with different architectural backgrounds. The careful planning of the trip was astounding on many levels. We even managed to fit in a visit to the famous Room 606 in the SAS Royal Copenhagen

The group outside the 8 House by Bjarke Ingels Group in Ørestad Photo Joanne McCluskey AA Membership Events are open to all members including students and staff and range from AA-based curatorial talks, external gallery talks, lectures, brunches, site visits and international trips. Please check www.aaschool.ac.uk for information and updates or feel free to visit us at 33 Bedford Square Ground Floor Front. 28 MEMBERS’ EVENTS: A SNAPSHOT

A selection of the varied Membership events that have taken place since November 2011

Building visit to One New Change led by Sidell Gibson Architects’ Sanya Tomic in November 2011 Photo Joanne McCluskey The AA’s Thomas Weaver listens to François Dallegret describe his 1967 Palais Metro project during a gallery talk in tandem with Dallegret’s recent AA show, ‘GOD & CO: François Dallegret Beyond the Bubble’, November 2011 Photo Meneesha Kellay

H·O·R·T·U·S exhibition talk by ecoLogicStudio, January 2012 Photo Joanne McCluskey See our new photo album of recent Members’ events at www.aaschool.ac.uk/ membership/events Members’ Trip: Haroon Mirza light installation, Venice Art Biennale, November 2011 Photo Joanne McCluskey 30 MAKE THEM BEAUTIFULLY WITHOUT MAKING THEM COMPLICATED

Alison Moffett (AA HCT 2011) profiles architec, John Winter MBE (AADipl 1953, former AA tutor and Trustee of the AA Foundation since 1991) through the recent Docomomo lecture, ‘John Winter in conversation with Adrian Forty’

John Winter is one of the most important America – the land of empty potentiality British architects you have never heard of. – simply could not deliver. Winter returned to Naturally, this statement is not completely England, taking with him an enhanced true. As evidenced by the remarkably knowledge of advanced construction distinguished audience that turned out for systems and practical design solutions. His the recent Docomomo lecture, ‘John Winter statement ‘keep it simple’, a phrase often in conversation with Adrian Forty’, many repeated, serves well to define the practical have heard of him, and indeed value him methodology he gained regarding materials highly. However, his relative obscurity, and construction techniques. sandwiched among a list of big name ‘One of the things you learn in America architects such as the Smithsons (who is that building is not some sort of esoteric came directly before) and Richard Rogers science… anyone can do it’ – this state- and Norman Foster (who come directly ment resonates throughout the conversa- after), can be put down to his humble tion, merging nicely with Winter’s motto of design approach and practice. His career simplicity. Prefiguring the popularity of was characterised mostly by the building of movements like Rural Studio, Winter utilised housing on a modest scale and within a this hands-on approach, combined with a tight budget. Miesian attention to the detail of steel The lecture was timed to coincide with construction, to create elegant and the latest issue of AA Files, in which Forty, economical structures which employ along wiht Files editor Thomas Weaver, site- and climate-specific logic. Though interview Winter about his formative years. exposed steel beams and factory-made Here, we learn that after an apprenticeship materials tend to elicit obvious comparisons based in the Arts and Crafts tradition, to High-Tech architecture, Winter brushes Winter embarked on a remarkable architec- aside the resemblance, declaring High-Tech tural quest, working for historically impor- a movement which ‘makes simple things tant architects and travelling across the very complicated… then solves them United States. This adventure, we heard, beautifully.’ He qualifies that his aim is was the 1950s version of the grand tour. rather ‘to make them beautifully without Rather than the traditional visit to the making them complicated’. Continent, ambitious yu architects flocked Watching this conversation, it was easy to the United States, then a postwar world to lose track of the Docomomo connection of maximum possibility. However, Winter felt (Docomomo is an organisation whose aim something was lacking in his experience of is to preserve and restore Modern the US. He was searching for an architec- Movement buildings). Remembering that it

ture of place, a dialogue with the past, and was precisely the desire for a historical John Winter was elected Honorary Member of the AA in Future nominations2011. for Honorary Membership can be made to the AA Secretary by downloading the form: www.aaschool.ac.uk/downloads/hmnom.pdf 31

richness and layering that returned Winter practical, economical design solutions as to his homeland, his active collaboration well as a sense that buildings should last with a preservation society makes sense. and be cared for along the way: a commit- This importance was beautifully outlined in ment to reuse and restoration. Though a set of slides, chosen from Winter’s own heartwarming to see so many longstanding collection, showing examples of the additive colleagues of Winter’s return to the AA in support, it would also have been encour- aging to see a larger percentage of young Amongst the crowd at John Winter’s lecture were several faces in the audience. Rare, indeed, is the AA graduates who helped build opportunity to hear someone speak who his first house. has worked for and with Erno Goldfinger, Photo Alexander Furunes

process that is possible only in the Old Louis Kahn, SOM, and Charles and Ray World, where one age builds directly onto Eames, and who, from an explorer’s the fabric of the previous age, constructing experience, learned to value the not a patchwork of architectural interventions. necessarily opposing practices of quality ‘The whole history of architecture’, declared precision construction and self-build Winter when contemplating the walled economy – and, choosing to remain true fortress of Carcassonne, ‘in one tower!’ to home, brought these ideas back to Through Docomomo, this additive historical the UK in order to improve a country in process is not too far from Winter’s current dire need of rebuilding. Remarkably, this restoration quest. Here, just as Viollet- utilisation of foreign discovery is precisely le-Duc ‘restored’ the roof of Carcassonne, what the British Council is asking of the he is often forced to use an informed current generation for the next British creative licence to return dilapidated pavilion at the 2012 Venice Biennale, with Modernist buildings to life, adding his own the concept of ‘Venice Takeaway’. Winter’s details where they ‘should be’. is a story of the past shown to be remark- In the current climate of cutbacks and ably applicable to the present. But, perhaps austerity, bringing with it a growing distaste the most enduring sentiment expressed by for lavish iconic buildings and a new interest Winter looking back on a life’s work, is one in modest, well-made solutions, it now of a passionate enthusiasm: As he puts it, seems even more important to look to succinctly, ‘you won’t get very good

If you missed the DOCOMOMO lecture at the AA, watch it online here: www.aaschool.ac.uk/video/johnwinter examples of Winter’s work for beautifully buildings if you don’t give a damn.’ 32 THRILLING WONDER STORIES: A TOOL FOR UNDERSTANDING THESE STRANGE TIMES

Diploma 6 student, Hannah Durham (AA Fifth Year) encapsulates the third installation of Thrilling Wonder Stories into an acronym

The third annual instalment of Thrilling millennia, but to actually conjure all other Wonder Stories landed as scheduled at activities which we think of as technology’. the AA in October. Now in its third session Steele also noted the ‘capacity of story- this event was twinned to an equally telling to try and imagine this thing called thrilling event occurring five hours behind the future’. While listening to the tales spun Greenwich Mean Time, in New York. by the fantastic array of experts gathered Morphed into two simultaneous events, in London and New York, it became easy they were connected via Skype screens to understand the power of ‘story-telling’. for a spectacle described as a ‘two-day It is a tool for escape but equally, as Liam transatlantic story-telling jam session’ Young says, a tool which highlights ‘the by Liam Young, Diploma 6 Unit Master flaws and frailties of the everyday’ and and director of the futurist think-tank, offers ‘a distanced view from which to Tomorrow’s Thought’s Today. survey the consequences of various social, Hosting the event in London were Liam environmental and technological scenarios’. Young and Matt Jones from BERG London. This is, Liam Young suggests, due to They were our ‘ushers’ for the day, weaving ‘fiction’s ability to simultaneously reflects us through the fantastical worlds of the the current condition while suggesting the futurist experts that were invited as guests possibility of what’s to come’. to this ‘weird wedding of machines and In London the speakers noted architects’, as Matt Jones described. story-telling’s ability to ‘slip between the Thrilling Wonder Stories was organised, real and the imagined’. The day followed as in previous years, by Liam and Geoff a trajectory from science fiction to science Manaugh of BLDG BLOG. Geoff and his fact, under three main themes: ‘Worlds partner Nicola Twilley were the hosts of of Wonder; Far from Home’, ‘Blood, Guts & the New York Thrilling Wonder Stories Hydraulic Fluid’ and ‘Strange but True; event. For the first time this year Popular When Robots Rule the World’. The brilliant Science and Studio X NYC helped guest list stretched (to name just three) coordinate the event, along with the AA. from the written worlds communicated with Robustly, the day began with an strings of wondrous words from science- introduction by Brett Steele, who remarked fiction author Bruce Sterling, to the creator ‘story-telling is a technology’; in fact it may of the robotic squirrel, frog and human head be ‘humanity’s greatest, deepest form seated proudly centre stage in the AA of technology for its ability not just to com- lecture hall by animatronics engineer municate ideas which it has been doing for Gustav Hoegen, and fantastically to the 33

Leading onto the ‘Blood, Guts & Hydraulic Fluid’ chapter, animatronics engineer Gustav Hoegen ran the audience A very ‘real’ demonstration through the process of designing an by taxidermy artist and sculptor Charlie Tuesday Gates animatronics shot in a film. He powered up Photo Valerie Bennett the frog on display, designed from studying a real frog’s skeleton and movements. Mid-way through the day, the artist and sculptor Charlie Tuesday Gates took to the stage and, let’s face it, did slightly shock the AA audience with a live taxidermy demon- stration, complete with the smell of the decomposing ‘fox in a box’. But the audience remained keen and transfixed by the ‘realness’ of this reality compared to the science fiction paintings our eyes had grown accustomed to in the morning’s presentations. From seeing the insides of a hare, we then side-stepped into the film Splice (2009), about modifying human DNA, with a Skype-linked presentation from the film director Vincenzo Natali. In ‘Strange but True: When Robots Rule the World’, we were treated to the spectacle of an army of small circular robots which spun and shuffled themselves in a dance to get into a programmed position, thanks to the ‘Natural Robotics Lab’ at Sheffield University. Then we were transported into the magical landscape of a synthetic forest by Philip Beesley. This forest seemed very ‘real’ demonstration by taxidermy artist plausible somehow, after seeing what and sculptor Charlie Tuesday Gates. robots are apparently capable of. Leading the day the first guest to take New experts continued to take to the to the screen in the ‘Worlds of Wonder; Far screen as it became increasingly clear, with from Home’ chapter was Christian Lorenz the constant flipping from science fiction Scheurer, a concept artist and illustrator to science fact, that we are already living for video games and films. He told us of in a world where this distinction is blurred. the ‘catalogue of questions’ he asks himself Saturated by Thrilling Wonder Stories, with whenever he starts a new concept image, the fantastical and brilliantly bizarre stories such as: who lives here? what is the of other imaginary worlds that nevertheless temperature? are they poor or rich? With each contain an element of everyday reality, every digital brush stroke he paints into our minds were opened to imagining what the texture of his digital paintings, his the alternative roles of the ‘architect’ might questions are answered and the stories be. It seems story-telling is a technology of the image are unlocked. This moved and a tool used to reframe and renew our through to a motion graphics artist from perception of the present as well as the SPOV, who showed trailers of a world prospective future. So... where bombs were filled with tree saplings, Go forth with Thrilling Wonder Stories transferring to Gavin Rothery, a concept as your tool for understanding these artist from the film Moon (2009). These Strange Times. discussions led to the idea that what makes a brilliant science-fiction film is when a set of rules for the imaginary world is fixed

Visit the Thrilling Wonder Stories website to see videos of the past three events as well as written and visual www.thrillingwonderstories.co.uk commentary, and strictly followed. 34 THE GONG SHOW

Thomas Weaver (managing editor of the AA’s books and journals) responds to the troika of prizes recently awarded to a number of AA titles

There is a general rule to prize-winning that I immediately called Jason and relayed the seems to suggest that the more competi- news. ‘What god damn award?’, he replied. tions you enter the more prizes you will win. The prize itself was for one of the ten best Norman Foster’s office has long adopted books on architecture published in 2011. this strategy, developing it more recently The organisers told me that for the other into a fine art, with one full-time position in nine award winners they had long disagree- his office dedicated only to entering Foster ments and battles; but all of them agreed and Partners’ projects for prizes. As a result that Manifest Destiny had to win (again, his practice regularly picks up gongs for once you start winning awards, even the prizes that no one else had the persever- sycophantic, clearly embellished stories ance to realise existed – things like surrounding their winning start to become Kazakhstan’s Best Mechanical Ventilation something you cherish). The next prize prize, and other such vital awards. You can came a few weeks later, and was for a see these all listed at the end of his books. British Design and Production Award for There are literally thousands of them, even Double or Nothing, a catalogue of a recent for buildings as magnificent as London’s AA exhibition by the young Belgian firm City Hall. My own relationship to prizes and 51N4E. The prize came with a large awards follows the Woody Allen model – in laser-cut Perspex trophy and was handed Annie Hall his character Alvy Singer offers out at an awards dinner in a west London his opinion on Hollywood’s award-centric hotel. The third and most recent award is society: ‘More awards? What’s with all for something close to my own heart – a these awards? All they do is give out nomination for John Morgan, the amazing awards here. Best Fascist Dictator: Adolf graphic designer of AA Files, for one of the Hitler.’ I have long used this line when Design Museum’s 2012 Designs of the Year anyone close to me announces some (‘the Oscars of the design world’, as the recent honour. But then, out of the blue, Design Museum’s own gushing PR tells someone actually gives you an award, me). All of the nominations, in lots of and you immediately feel deliriously happy. different design categories, are currently Or rather it is an award given to the AA’s on display at the Design Museum, before terrific Print Studio and publications team. a final winner is announced at the end Over the last few months we have won of April. AA Files is up against Alexander three of these awards, and in each instance McQueen’s wedding dress for Kate I have been overjoyed. This is largely down Middleton, a wind-powered device for to the fact that the books and publications clearing land mines in war zones and Zaha that these awards are celebrating are all, Hadid’s Guangzhou Opera House. If it wins actually, great. I will be amazed. The first of these was for Jason Griffiths’ recent book, Manifest Destiny, and was awarded by the Deutsches Architekturmuseum (or DAM). I heard the news through a rather earnest email from a German publisher: ‘Congratulations Herr

Weaver, you have won the DAM award.’ All of the books AA’s and journals are available via www.aaschool.ac.uk/publications; and more information on the Design Museum’s Designs of the can Year be found at www.designmuseum.org 35 Three recent award-winning AA publications Photo Sue Barr 36 FORTHCOMING FROM AA PUBLICATIONS

Architecture Words 9 Tectonic Acts of Desire and Doubt Mark Rakatansky 288 pp, 180 x 110 mm, paperback May 2012 Architecture Words 10 978-1-907896-15-6 Utopia £15 Anthony Vidler c 160 pp, 180 x 110 mm, paperback This latest instalment in the Architecture Autumn 2012 Words series collects together for the first 978-1-907896-16-3 time a number of key essays by the New £15 York-based architect and critic Mark Rakatansky. Following its title, the book is This book is based on five MA presenta- broken down into three sections: Tectonic, tions at the AA School all on the subject Acts, Desires and Doubts. In each, of utopia by Anthony Vidler, dean and Rakatansky covers a series of subjects, professor at the School of Architecture at from Louis Kahn’s relationship to the brick The Cooper Union, New York City. In these to a more general polemic involving identity five resulting essays, Vidler presents not and politics in contemporary architecture, a descriptive history of utopias, but a series and in a writerly voice that varies from the of questions and problematics that have third-person narrative of the scholarly essay emerged throughout history when utopian to the transcript of an email exchange with thought, as derived from literary and fellow academic Sarah Whiting, discussing philosophical genres, has been spatialised two recent books by architect Greg Lynn. by architects and urbanists. 37

Architecture Words 12 Stones against Diamonds Lina Bo Bardi With an introduction by Silvana Rubino Architecture Words 11 c 160 pp, 180 x 110 mm, paperback Maps & Territories June 2012 Alessandra Ponte 978-1-907896-17-0 c 160 pp, 180 x 110 mm, paperback £15 Autumn 2012 978-1-907896-17-0 Lina Bo Bardi (1914–1992) was a prolific £15 architect, designer and thinker, whose work, absorbing her native Italy and then after Written by landscape historian Alessandra 1946 her adopted homeland, Brazil, spans Ponte, this collection of essays begins with across architecture, furniture, stage and an investigation of the American obsession costume design, urban planning, curatorial with lawns and then continues to collec- work, teaching and writing. This collection tively map the aesthetic, scientific and of essays is the first-ever English anthology technological production of past of her writings. It includes texts written and present North American landscapes. when she was still living in Italy as well as These include the American desert as a later contributions to a number of Brazilian privileged site of scientific and artistic newspapers, journals and magazines. An testing; the faraway projects of electrifica- acute critic and a creative thinker, Bo Bardi tion of the Canadian North; the transforma- proposes a series of new parameters for tion of the notion and perception of waste design thinking and practice, such as the and wasteland during the twentieth century; notions of ‘historical present’, ‘roughness’ the photographic medium and its encoun- and ‘tolerance of imperfection’. Presented ters with Native Americans; as well as an collectively, her texts present a wealth of introductory essay, ‘The Map and the inspirational thoughts articulated in a Territory’, written specifically for this volume. refreshingly simple, straightforward fashion. 38

Sharp Words: Selected Essays of Dennis Sharp With an introduction by Paul Finch 160 pp, 310 x 240 mm paperback April 2012 978-1-907896-07-1 c £25

To commemorate the life and work of Dennis Sharp (1933–2010), Sharp Words brings together a variety of essays that touch upon each of his architectural fascinations – among them, glass architec- ture, picture palaces, masters of concrete and English modernism. Punctuating these texts are a number of editorials from his days as editor of AAQ, which graphically as much as intellectually offer emblems

of his time at the AA. For further information on AA Publications visit www.aaschool.ac.uk/publications 39 FORTHCOMING FROM BEDFORD PRESS

Civic City Cahier 4: Afterlives of Neoliberalism Neil Brenner, Jamie Peck and Nik Theodore c 120 pp, 190 x 115 mm, paperback Summer 2012 978-1-907414-18-3 £8

The global financial collapse of 2008 was widely interpreted as discrediting the neoliberal project and its false utopia of market rule, though it remains to be seen whether the death of neoliberalism has in fact been greatly exaggerated. Brenner, Peck and Theodore raise the question: will late-neo-liberal regulatory reforms and modes of crisis management usher in a truly post-neoliberal political settlement, or will the neoliberal project continue to stagger on in the form of a leaner and meaner politics of austerity, a politics that fails to fundamentally disrupt prevailing neoliberalised regulatory settlements and sociospatial relations? And finally, how can a rejuvenated ‘civic city’ emerge from within the interstices of the fractured, polarised

Bedford Press is an imprint of AA Publications of imprint an is Press Bedford www.bedfordpress.org urban spaces of late neoliberalism? 40 BEVERLY BERNSTEIN

Reforming Registrar at the AA, co-founder of Circle 33 Housing Trust and ‘Queen of the Islands’ development planner, who died 22 December 2011; profile by Bob Garratt (AADipl 1974, former AA tutor)

Faculty of the University of Kumasi. He was determined to develop at the AA the effective multi-disciplinary educational processes they had pioneered. These were eagerly accepted by the AA students and faculty but less so by the architectural educational establishment elsewhere. The reforms of the AA’s organisation were tested both when negotiations continued for two years on the merger of the AA School with Imperial College, and when they failed and the AA continued its independent path. In 1970 Beverly left the AA to follow her development planning interests working with both Colin Buchanan and Partners and Land Use Consultants. By chance rather than design, she specialised in the development planning of islands and had Beverly Bernstein came to London from success in the Seychelles, Malta and the New York with her husband, David, in 1964 Channel Islands and, curiously, Saudi intending to spend a year or so here. Arabia. She edited Habitat International , Instead they stayed and made significant Housing Review and The Works of Charles contributions to architectural education, Abrams. Together with David Bernstein social housing and development planning and David Levitt, she had a significant in both the UK and overseas. effect on social housing, helping to create Her appointment in her early twenties the modern housing association movement to the role of Senior Registrar at the and, in 1968, the Circle 33 Housing Trust, Architectural Association School coincided which has become the very successful with the end of a turbulent period in the Circle Anglia Housing Association. AA’s history which stabilised during the interim Principalship of Professor Otto Koenigsberger of the AA’s Tropical School. She became part of the selection process for the new principal, John Lloyd, and a lifelong friend of Otto. John Lloyd joined the AA from Ghana and the radical and massive rehousing project recreating communities displaced by the Volta dam, which he oversaw as the Dean of the Architecture and Engineering 41 NEW AWARDS

New scholarships, bursaries and prizes for AA students

Student prizes and distinctions awarded in 2011 were showcased The Jane Chu Travel Scholarship has in an exhibition spanning the Front Members’ Room and AA Bar, been set up by a donation from Margaret October 2011 Chow (AADipl 1984). The award is in the Photo Sue Barr name of her mother, and will facilitate travel for students working in the field of sustain- ability. This will be an annual award. Well-known author Marian Keyes (former AA Accounts Office staff) has made a donation to set up the Charlotte Coudrille Bursary. The bursary is to be awarded annually to a student who is in financial need. Charlotte Coudrille, who died in 2001, worked at the AA for many years, most notably as manager of the Accounts Office. Andrew Szmidla (former AA tutor), who sadly died last year, has left a substantial bequest to the AA. The money from the bequest is to be used to establish scholar- ships for undergraduate and postgraduate students from Eastern Europe. Professor Szmidla taught at the AA in the early 1970s The Beverly Bernstein Prize is an annual and ran its Future Environment Research award in support of student work in housing Unit in conjunction with the newly estab- and/or urbanism in the developing world. It lished Graduate School. has been set up through the generous The above awards are administered by support of Beverly’s friends and family to the AA Foundation, Registered Charity No commemorate her involvement with the AA 328455 under the Charities Act 1960. as Senior Registrar in the 1960s, as well as Contributions of any amount are welcome in recognition of her life-long interest and to help the Foundation continue its specialisation in housing and development important work in support of AA students. planning. The prize will be run by the AA Cheques made out to the AA Foundation through its postgraduate programme in can be sent to Alex Lorente, Architectural Housing and Urbanism, who will promote it Association, 36 Bedford Square, London within the School and manage the selection WC1B 3ES, or for more information please process. The first award is expected this call Alex on +44(0)20 7887 4074. academic year. Students wishing to apply for AA Scholarships or Bursaries can find more information on the AA website, Financial Aid section. Submission deadlines and criteria for AA Prizes are advertised during the year in the weekly AA Events List. A full list of student prizes awarded is inavailable 2011 at www.aaschool.ac.uk/portfolio/awards. For more information on student scholarships and bursaries please visit www.aaschool.ac.uk/financial_aid 42 PARTING STATEMENT

Farewell from the former managing editor of AArchitecture, Nicola Quinn, who is Research and Proposal Development Manager in the AA’s Development Office

It only seems like yesterday when we had our Ideas Party launch, where people scrawled their ideas for the new newsletter on the Bar mirror, in pens that weren’t quite as impermanent as advertised. Suggestions that ranged from the common- place, such as Horoscopes and a Gossip Column, to the plaintive ‘The Lonely Life of New Students’ and ‘What do I do after I leave the AA’, to the slightly misplaced ‘Some Stuff about Horses’ and ‘Can we have Artichoke on the Menu’, to the downright bizarre ‘Hair Club for Men’ and ‘Super Interesting Totally Bottom Up’. One suspects not all suggestions were meant to be taken seriously. Somehow we were still able to launch AArchitecture in the summer of 2006. Over the years we’ve seen regular features come, such as trips to the AA Archive aka Ed’s Basement, and go, such as the ill-fated Guess the Building Competition. We have taken a good look at the literary heritage of the AA. And we’ve taken in many an interesting story along the way, of AA life and beyond. AArchitecture has evolved from uncertain beginnings into the format of the last few issues. But nothing stands still (as evidenced by our recent article featuring contributions from Twitter), and now over five years and 15 issues later AArchitecture is to evolve again, as this issue features a new design by Claire McManus (AA Print Studio), and I bow out as Managing Editor and overseer. I have very much enjoyed my time working on the publication and would like to thank all our contributors over the years and urge them to keep writing, as I intend to myself. The student editors have taken over, led by long-time contributor and editor Manijeh Verghese, and they will no doubt stamp their own style and ideas on the publication with I am sure exciting results. I wish them well in their endeavours and look forward to reading AArchitecture for many years to come. 43 44 THE CONTINUING EVOLUTION OF AARCHITECTURE

Diploma 9 student and editor Manijeh Verghese compares the publication’s earlier format to its new thematic redesign

This issue marks a new chapter in the history of AArchitecture, the AA’s triannual newsletter. The new AArchitecture picks up on threads present within the previous issues. Themes focusing on writing, research, curating and practising architecture have emerged through the variety of pieces contributed over the years. What we’ve aimed to do by rethinking the structure and design of AArchitecture is to articulate these themes more clearly and focus the publication to address topics specifically with each issue in order to make them more apparent to our readership both within the school and throughout the larger membership. Now entirely student-edited, the newsletter hopes to encourage an annually evolving editorship that would invite interested students and members to curate the content communicated to the AA community. Rather than summarising the events occurring in and around the school, the new format encourages speculation and criticism by providing a platform for the AA community to share their research, projects and ideas. Additionally the redesign introduces the use of colour and higher quality images, which we hope will invite more visual (in addition to written) contributions from students and members alike. The thematic format was chosen by keeping in mind the need for the publication to remain relevant from when we commission content to when it is mailed to the membership and student body. Each topic can now contribute to a broader discussion that relates to both the microcosm of the AA and the macrocosm of the AA’s global community, thereby engaging with a wider audience. The theme for each issue will be announced through the call for submissions which will now allow contributors to respond to the overarching topic with their ideas/projects. We hope you will find this change refreshing in the continuous evolution of AArchitecture and we look forward to receiving your ideas and contributions for future issues. 45 AA NEWS

PUBLISHED Steffen Lehmann (AADipl 1991) and held the 6–8 July 2012 Robert Crocker have published a book on in the Welsh School of Architecture, Kirk Wooller (AA MA H&T 2006 and material efficiency, sustainable Cardiff University. AA PhD 2010) published an article, consumption and resource recovery; www.cardiff.ac.uk/archi/economy ‘Media Matters’, in Architecture Today Designing for Zero Waste. Consumption, #219 (June 2011), after being invited Technologies and the Built Environment. Ludovico Lombardi (AADRL March by the editor to comment on the role It presents international and local 2010) was invited to present a 2-day of the journal in contemporary design case studies and strategies for material lecture at the Istituto Marangoni visiting culture. Kirk Wooller is Adjunct Assistant efficiency, resource recovery and school in London in August 2011. He also Professor at the University of Illinois its relation to the built environment. lectured at the AA Singapore Summer at Chicago, where he will be teaching Copies can be ordered at: School in July 2011. architectural history and theory. www.routledge.com/sustainability www.ldvc.net

Eric Parry Architects, the practice of Eleftherios Ambatzis (AADipl 2009) Douglas Spencer (AA LU Course Tutor) Eric Parry (AADipl 1979 and Former has designed the front cover for HOME has co-organised a symposium on President of the AA) were featured in magazine (December issue) based on his Landscape and Critical Agency held the 30 June issue of the AJ. The issue Fourth Year project at the AA, developed at UCL, February 2012. had an article on their spa on the roof with Natasha Sandmeier and Monia landscapeandagency.wordpress.com of the Four Seasons hotel in London. de Marchi. ‘I transformed the drawing, The spa opened in March 2011. in order to look like a gothic rose window Siamak G. Shahneshin (AA E&E MA and matched it with a limited edition table 2000) was a keynote speaker at the Architectural Review published Drawing which I have designed.’ An interview with ‘Knowledge City World Summit’, where on the Soane Media Studies Project him on his work was also presented in five-hundred key academics from around by Patricia Mato-Mora (AA Third Year). the same issue. In that section, part of his the world met. Siamak also delivered The July 2011 issue of the magazine Fifth Year project two distinct lectures, in November 2011, at published the project in the Delight was also presented. the two main Israeli schools of design, section. www.athensvoice.gr/article/ Technion the Israel Institute of design-home Technology, and the Azrieli School Allford Hall Monaghan Morris, the www.eleftherios-art.com of Architecture and Urbanism at Aviv practice of Simon Allford (Former University. Vice President of the AA) and Paul A Holistic Approach to Architecture Monaghan (GradDiplCons AA 1989) – The Felicja Blumenthal Music Center A Processing Workshop with Karsten were featured in an article in the and Library is a book recently written Schmidt (creator of the Toxiclibs libraries) 15 September 2011 issue of the AJ in by Nili Portugali (AADipl 1973) and was organised by Arthur Mamou-Mani an article entitled White Collar Factory published by AM OVED Publishers Ltd, (AADipl 2008) and took place at London by Rory Olcayto. The article focused Tel-Aviv. Metropolitan Works, on buildings they have designed for 3 and 10 December 2011. Derwent London. Phillipe Rahm (Former AA Diploma Unit Margot Krasojevic (AADipl 1996) has LECTURES & SYMPOSIA Master) has given a series of lectures recently had a new book published. The during Autumn 2011 in Japan, the US, book entitled Dynamics & De-Realisation Christina Doumpioti (AA MArch Spain, Austria, France and Belgium. published by Springer, edited by EmTech 2008, AA EmTech Course In addition, he has held two exhibitions, Professor Lebbeus Woods and Jonathan Master and AA San Francisco Visiting ‘Imperfect Health’ at the Canadian Center D.Solomon, explores technology’s School Coordinator) was an invited for Architecture (Montreal, Canada), influence on society, underlining the speaker at the ‘SURVIVAL 9. Art Review open until 1 April 2012, and New energy in relationship between psychology, in Wrocław, Poland, which took place design and art at the Museum Boijmans, neurology, phobia, the experience of 20–26 June, 2001. The theme of the in Rotterdam between November 2011 space and the built environment affecting 9th edition of SURVIVAL was: ‘When and February 2012. our perceptions and, in the process, a park becomes an arena.’ She also defining architectural design criteria. presented at the Acadia 2011 conference: Politics of Fabrication (Nuria Alvarez- www.springerarchitektur.at/ integration through computation at Lombardero & Francisco Gonzalez- en/margot-krasojevic-im-portrat Calgary/Banff, October 11–16, 2011. The Canales both Unit Masters, AA paper presented was Responsive and Intermediate Unit 8) exhibited their work The church of St Patrick’s in Soho Square Autonomous Material Interfaces. Finally, from the 2 February to 3 March in the was featured in the Technical and her paper ‘Variable-modulus and Acitve Miami Beach Urban Studio (420 Lincoln Practice section of the 20 October 2011 Material Systems’ was presented at Rd, Suite 440, Miami Beach) of the issue of the AJ. Castanon Associates, the Ambience 2011 conference in Boras, School of Architecture of Florida the practice of Javier Castañón Sweden. International University, Miami, Florida, (AA Technical Studies Course Master under the title ‘Politics of Fabrication: and AA Professional Practice, Part 1 Alejandra Celedon (AA PhD Candidate) Challenging Political Expression in Course Master) renovated the church. presented the paper ‘The Plan of Little Havana’. Oikonomia’ in the ‘Economy Conference’ 46

Sevil Yazici (AA DRL 2006), Founder Andrea Di Stefano and Aleksandra have seen two of their projects win in & Principal at ParaMaterial, presented Jaeschke (both AADipl 2005) from the British Construction Industry Awards on 1 March 2012 in Digital Aptitudes studio AION have been awarded the 2011. Anne Mews, King William Street Conference, ACSA 100th Annual Meeting prestigious Europe 40 Under 40 for 2011, Quarter, Barking has won the which will be hosted by confered by the European Centre for Regeneration Award while the Angel MIT/Boston Architecture Art Design and Urban Building London was a joint winner Studies & the Chicago Athenaeum. of the Judges’ Special Award. The The prize ‘recognizes the best emerging Hopkins Architects, the practice of European design talent in the fields Michael Hopkins (AADipl 1963 and CAREERS & PRIZES of architecture, landscape architecture, former President of the AA) and Patty urban planning, and industrial design Hopkins (AADipl 1968) won the Prime Alex de Rijke (Former AA Unit Master and their exceptional leadership Minister’s Better Public Building Award and AA External Examiner) took up contributions and achievements early for the Velodrome, Olympic Park, London. in January 2012 his new post as Dean in their professional careers.’ of the School of Architecture at the Helena Marconnell (AA Member) had Royal College of Art. Martine de Maeseneer (former AA her solo exhibition ‘Painting to the sound tutor)was one of the finalists for the of music’ at Chelsea and Westminster David Adjaye (Former AA Diploma Unit Mies van der Rohe Award for her project Hospital, in Summer 2011. Second year Master and Former AA Council Member) The Bronks Youth Theatre (Brussels, in a row and this time she displayed her was named Design Miami Designer of Belgium). An exhibition about the 2011 latest work inspired by Vivaldi’s Four the Year. The 2011 focus was on European Union Prize for Contemporary Seasons, Liszt’s Rhapsodies and Bolero Buckminster Fuller and David’s structure, Architecture – Mies van der Rohe Award by Ravel. which he was commissioned to build as was held in Paris at the ‘Cité de a result of winning the award, featured l’architecture & du patrimoine, Palais de Matthias Sauerbruch and Louisa a triangular plan, hollowed out to create Chaillot / Institut français d’architecture’ Hutton (both former Academic staff) a space pierced with ovoid holes from 8 February to 4 March 2012. The Sauerbruch Hutton’s KfW-building in reminiscent of Fuller’s dome. David and winning project, the Neues Museum Frankfurt has been awarded ‘Best Tall Design Miami, which ran alongside Art (Berlin, Germany) by David Chipperfield Building in the World 2011’ by Chicago- Basel Miami from 1–4 December 2011, Architects, and the five finalists were based Council on Tall Building and were featured in the 26/27 November shown in model, drawings and images, Urban Habitat, CTBUH. issue of the Financial Times. together with another 39 selected www.sauerbruchhutton.com projects for catalogue and exhibition. Jorge Ayala (AA LU MA 2008) www.citechaillot.fr Povilas Cepaitis, Lluis Enrique, Diego was appointed to be part of the RIBA www.miesarch.com Ordonez and Carlos Piles (AA DRL President’s Medal Award Jury in MArch 2011)’s thesis project ‘Cast on October 2011. Andrew Bardzik (AA Third Year Cast’ (2009–11, tutors Yusuke Obuchi Student) entered the 13th Shelter & Rob Stuart-Smith) has recently won Toby Burgess and Arthur Mamou- International Design Competition based Holcim Awards ‘Next Generation’ first Mani (both AADipl 2008) have been in Japan with this year’s theme being prize in Europe. The ceremony took appointed the new unit masters of ‘A House in the Wilderness’. His design place in Milan on 15 September 2011. Diploma Studio 10 at the Westminster proposal (De-Generate House) received www.holcimfoundation.org/t1335/ University School of Architecture an honourable mention out of some a11eung1uk.htm and the Built environment. 1100+ applicants. The head juror was www.castoncast.com www.wewanttolearn.net Ryue Nishizawa (2011 Pritzker Laureate). Superfusionlab – Nate Kolbe (AA DRL Ioanna Symeonidou (AA EmTech MSc Immanuel Koh (AADRL MArch 2010 MArch 2000 and former Intermediate 2009) is recipient of the eCAADe grant & AA Shanghai Visiting School 2010 Unit Unit Master) and Lida Charsouli (AA for young researchers in 2011. Selection Master) was featured and exhibited at DRL MArch 2000) – was long-listed for was based on a research proposal the ‘DigitalFUTURE’ Exhibition at Tongji the Young Architect of the Year Award presented as part of her ongoing PhD University (in collaboration with and exhibited with the other long-listed at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, University of Southern California) in practices at the Architecture Foundation, in the thematic area of digital design Shanghai, curated by Neil Leach & Philip 4–26 November 2011 and digital fabrication. This research line Yuan. He has also been interviewed and www.architecturefoundation.org.uk/ was initiated during her MSc thesis for featured by Zhulong (China’s largest programme/2011/autodesk-young- Emergent Technologies and Design architecture website) as part of the architect-of-the-year-award-2011 programme at the AA and is further Tsinghua Parametric Design Workshop in investigated through her ongoing PhD Beijing where he taught as a Unit Master Darrick Borowski, Jeroen Janssen (AA research at the Aristotle University, in July/August. Finally his Students at EmTech MArch students) and Nicoletta supervised by professors Nikolaos Dessau Institute of Architecture Poulimeni (AA EmTech MSc student) Tsinikas, Vassilis Bourdakis and Dimitris (DIA|Bauhaus) won the Lars Lerup Place Second in International Papalexopoulos. Prize 2011 for best student project for Competition, October 2011. Their Center the academic year 2010/11. for Urban Farming in Brooklyn, New York, Ioanna and Anastasia Tzaka (AA http://news.zhulong.com proposes a systems-based approach to Visiting Teachers 2009) won Honorable http://arch.usc.edu food production, distribution, and waste Mention in architectural competition in http://lehre.afg.hs-anhalt.de/dia cycles within a new type of urban ecology. Thessaloniki, Greece. The design team www.suckerpunchdaily.com/tag/ included Ioanna Symeonidou, Anastasia Allford Hall Monaghan Morris, the center-for-urban-farming Tzaka, Konstantinos Nastou, Eleni practice of Simon Allford (former http://edibleinfrastructures.net Georgiadi, and Andreas Goumas. Vice President of the AA) and Paul Monaghan (GradDiplCons AA 1989), 47

Manijeh Verghese (AA Fifth Year) is Monaco. A third project, the House OBITUARIES the Online Editor of Disegno, a start-up of Justice Lazika, Georgia, will be magazine that aims to generate completed in September 2012. For more Since the last issue of AArchitecture, conversation between the disciplines information and images of these projects, the AA has lost a number of close friends, of Fashion, Design and Architecture. please see their website: alumni and members. The magazine is comprised of a weekly www.architectsofinvention.com updated website as well as a biannual John Bancroft, AA member since 1981 print magazine. The magazine is available Alejandro Villarreal (AA Member), passed away in August 2011. Obituaries in the AA Bookshop or can be accessed principal of Hierve – a small multidiscipli- were published in various national papers online at www.disegnomagazine.com nary design firm based in Mexico City including the Guardian on 20 September and London, has recently designed a new 2011. At his funeral his daughter Sarah Danielle Rago, (AA HCT MA 2011) is product entitled ‘Wardrobe System.’ This spoke of an obstinate man who fought now the Co-Director and Curator of the furniture system combines the traditional passionately for what he believed in, Archive of Spatial Aesthetics and Praxis wardrobe and the glass cabinet to create championing a varied range of causes (ASAP). ASAP is an archive of practices. a playful yet practical and flexible solution throughout his life including the failed It advocates architecture and its value to how we store our clothes. campaign to save his own Pimlico School, as part of a broader social, political, a seminal project sadly demolished in and aesthetic discourse through the The exhibition about the 2011 European 2010. collection, exhibition, writing and Union Prize for Contemporary Architeture circulation of media. – Mies van der Rohe Award was held in Phil Gusack (AADipl 1974) passed www.a--s--a--p.com the new Roca London Gallery designed away peacefully in November after a by Zaha Hadid (AADipl 1977 and former courageous battle with a brain tumour. Academic staff) Architects, from He was described by friends as ‘a real November 28 2011 till January 27, 2012. maverick and quite elusive, but DESIGN The winning project, the Neues Museum architecture (as well as attractive women (Berlin, Germany) by David Chipperfield and martinis) remained his passion and Alex Haw (Former AA First Year (AADipl 1980) Architects, and the 5 on his return to the UK in the last few and Diploma Unit Master), Friedrich finalists: Bronks Youth Theatre (Brussels, years he reconnected with AA friends Vitzthum (AA Member)and Pablo Milara Belgium) by MDMA – Martine De such as Doug Patterson, Peter Cook, of the practice atmos have designed the Maeseneer (former AA Diploma Unit Michael Sorkin and Sally Mackereth’. Floating Forest, a leisurely drift through Master) Architects, MAXXI: Museum of the canals of East London on a unique XXI Century Arts (Rome, Italy) by Zaha Beverly Bernstein, AA registrar from floating landscape. Hadid Architects, Concert House Danish 1964 to 1970 died in December 2011 and Radio (Copenhagen, Denmark) by a memorial event was held at the AA in Alison Brooks (Former AA Diploma Unit Ateliers Jean Nouvel, Acropolis Museum her honour in February. A prize fund has Master) won the competition to design a (Athens, Greece) by Bernard Tschumi been set up in her memory by friends ‘third quad’ for Exeter College, University (former AA Academic staff) Architects, and family, which will support student of Oxford. The project on the new Walton Rehabilitation Centre Groot Klimmendaal work in the AA’s Housing and Urbanism Street site will include 100 study- (Arnhem, The Netherlands) programme – see full article on page 40. bedrooms, fellows’ study rooms, theatres Architectenbureau Koen van Velsen, and public areas. It was featured in the and the Collage House (Girona, Spain) The legendary Isi Metzstein, who 10 November 2011 issue of AJ. by Ramon Bosch and Bet Capdeferro taught at the AA in the 1970s and (Emerging Architect Special Mention) will became one of Scotland’s most inventive Paolo Cascone (AA MA E&E 2003) and be shown in model, drawings and images. and prestigious modern architects, died COdesignLab presented the Grid(h)ome www.rocalondongallery.com in January 2012. Obituaries can be found pavilion at ‘Casa dell’ Architettura’ in in numerous national papers and Rome in collaboration with Inarch. This Bolles+Wilson, the firm headed by architectural journals. An event is being project is part of th Eco_logic Habitat Julia Bolles Wilson and Peter Wilson planned at the AA in the Spring, which cycle of design workshops directed (AADipl 1974 and former AA tutor) have will be featured in AArchitecture 17. by Paolo on high-tech design low-tech designed the new ‘Raakspoort – City Hall construction. Paolo Cascone/ and Bioscoop’ in Haarlem (NL), which Adrian Cave (AADipl 1967 and former COdesignLab presents the ‘khaima’ opened in November 2011. Additionally, a AA honorary secretary) died of cancer urban installation in Salè (Morocco) in new series of Moleskine’s ‘legendary’ aged 76. He was celebrated for his collaboration with the CISS and Quartiers sketchbooks complete with marks, notes outstanding contribution to the field of du Monde. This project is part of the and sketches by Bolles+Wilson, Zaha accessibility, with work at sites such as Eco_logic Habitat cycle of self-construc- Hadid, Giancarlo De Carlo and Alberto the Tate Modern, Royal Festival Hall, tion workshops directed by Paolo Kalach were released in December 2011. Royal Hospital Chelsea and Oxford Cascone. The Bolles+Wilson monograph Circus. He was awarded an OBE in 2009. http://codesignlab-ecologichabitat. documents evolutionary snapshots from An obituary appeared in the Guardian blogspot.com projects such as the Suzuki House in on 26 January 2012. http://codesignlab-khaima.blogspot.com Tokyo or the BEIC Library in Milan alongside characteristic insights into Roman Halter (AADipl 1959) passed Architects of Invention, the firm of Niko Peter Wilson’s sketchbooks – minute, away on 30 January 2012. A survivor Japaridize (AA Member), has completed highly detailed and atmospheric records of Auschwitz and Stutthof concentration several new buildings recently including of places, readings and architectural camps and slave labourer in Dresden, the Tbilisi Prosecutor’s Office in Georgia, reference. Roman moved to the UK with dozens which opened on 25 January 2012 and of orphaned children after the war. He the National Olympic Committee House studied at the AA and went on to run in Georgia, which was opened on 19 a successful practice. After retirement September 2011 by Prince Albert of in 1974 he devoted time to writing and 48

painting about his Holocaust experiences, working in stained glass and making royal coats of arms. In 2007 he published Roman’s Journey to critical acclaim. A review of the book can be read in the Guardian, 14 January 2007. A full obituary was published in The Times on 18 February 2012, available online to subscribers.

Geoffrey Edward Bowles (AADipl 1950) died on 15 February 2012. He has been remembered as an architect and artist of great sensitivity and vision, an inspirational teacher and devoted family man. He lectured for 40 years at Brighton College of Art and Architecture, now Brighton University, and for the Open University. In his own practice he concentrated on domestic architecture, building strong and trusted relationships with clients and planners. A full obituary is available in the AA website’s News section.

Graham Parsey, former associate director at DEGW who graduated from the AA in 1963, died in July 2011.

Arthur Lewis MBE (AADipl 1949), Robert Watts (AADipl 1959) and John Williams (AADipl 1958) have also sadly passed away.

Obituary notices now also appear in the News section of the AA website, with further links where possible. NEXT ISSUE’S THEME

CURATING ARCHITECTURE

CONTRIBUTIONS TO [email protected] SCHOOL ANNOUNCEMENT

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The AA’s Hooke Park is a 350-acre working forest in Dorset, southwest England which the surrounding woodland, adorned with acts as a space for students to learn rural bluebells. For more information and ticket architectures, the crafts of construction prices see the Membership Events page and sustainable timber technologies. On on the AA website. 28 April 2012 members are invited to a tour www.aaschool.ac.uk/membership/events of the estate that will incorporate existing buildings designed by collaborations In addition to this trip, two ‘Open Saturdays’ between ABK, Frei Otto, Buro Happold and for those living locally will take place Edward Cullinan, as well as the recently at Hooke Park during bluebell season completed Big Shed designed by Diploma 19 (dates tbc – dependent on the bluebells’ and students of the graduate Design & Make appearance). programme. After a lunch catered by Georgie Corry-Wright, the group will be led on For updates, see Bluebell Watch at a ramble (weather permitting) through www.aaschool.ac.uk/hookepark STUDENT ANNOUNCEMENT

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The Caravanserai team are working on The Canning Town Caravanserai is a playful creating an exciting community through response to a winning Meanwhile London a series of events, launching on the scheme, made possible by Ash Sakula weekend of 31st March. They are looking architects. for enthusiastic volunteers to help with the build between Monday 26th and Friday 30th The aim was to find ‘meanwhile’ uses for March. three prominent brownfield sites (and the adjacent water) in the Royal Docks and For more information please get in touch Canning Town, as part of the regeneration of with Harriet on: East London. [email protected]