AARCHITECTURE 17 TECTURE ARCHI THE ARCHITECTURALCURAT ASSOCIATION HAS ALWAYS EMBRACED CURATION AS AN IMPORTANT ASPECT WITHIN THE SCHOOL, FROM ITS ACADEMIC ORGANISATION AND STUDENT PORTFOLIOS TO THE EVER-EVOLVING EXHIBITIONS THAT TAKE PLACE EACH YEAR, WHAT BETTER SUBJECT TO FOCUS ON FOR AARCHITECTURE 17? THE NEW ING THEMATIC FORMAT OF THE NEWSLETTER, LAUNCHED WITH THE REDESIGN OF ISSUE 16, LENDS ITSELF TO FOCUSING ON RELEVANT SUBJECTS FOR EACH ISSUE. CURATION SEEMED A NATURAL FIT FOR THIS TIME OF YEAR, WITH ARCHITECTURE EXHIBITIONS BEING HELD AT A VARIETY OF GLOBAL LOCATIONS. FROM OUR VERY OWN EXHIBITION OF STUDENT WORK AT PROJECTS REVIEW, THE ROYAL ACADEMY SUMMER EXHIBITION TO THE 13TH INTERNATIONAL ARCHITECTURE BIENNALE IN VENICE, EACH PRESENT DIFFERENT WAYS OF CURATING ARCHITECTURE. IN ADDITION TO THE TRADITIONAL EXHIBITION, NEWS FROM THE ARCHITECTURAL ASSOCIATION EVENTS ORGANISED BY THE MEMBERSHIP OFFICE THIS SUMMER INCLUDED A PANEL DISCUSSION AT THE SOUTHBANK AND A TALK BY EMERGING ARCHITECTS AT A POP-UP SPACE IN EAST LONDON, - EACH ANALYSING THE TOPIC OF THE OLYMPICS - AS A CURATION OF PEOPLE, EVENTS AND ICONIC PLACES, AT AN URBAN SCALE. AT A SMALLER SCALE, WE LOOK AT STUDENT PORTFOLIOS AS AN AArchitecture 17 / Spring 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 Eleanor Dodman Manijeh Verghese Patricia Mato Mora Radu Macovei 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 AARCHITECTURE 17 THE ARCHITECTURAL ASSOCIATION HAS ALWAYS EMBRACED CURATION AS AN IMPORTANT ASPECT WITHIN THE SCHOOL, FROM ITS ACADEMIC ORGANISATION AND STUDENT PORTFOLIOS TO THE EVER-EVOLVING EXHIBITIONS THAT TAKE PLACE EACH YEAR, WHAT BETTER SUBJECT TO FOCUS ON FOR AARCHITECTURE 17? THE NEW THEMATIC FORMAT OF THE NEWSLETTER, LAUNCHED WITH THE REDESIGN OF ISSUE 16, LENDS ITSELF TO FOCUSING ON RELEVANT SUBJECTS FOR EACH ISSUE. CURATION SEEMED A NATURAL FIT FOR THIS TIME OF YEAR, WITH ARCHITECTURE EXHIBITIONS BEING HELD AT A VARIETY OF GLOBAL LOCATIONS. FROM OUR VERY OWN EXHIBITION OF STUDENT WORK AT PROJECTS REVIEW, THE ROYAL ACADEMY SUMMER EXHIBITION TO THE 13TH INTERNATIONAL ARCHITECTURE BIENNALE IN VENICE, EACH PRESENT DIFFERENT WAYS OF CURATING ARCHITECTURE. IN ADDITION TO THE TRADITIONAL EXHIBITION, NEWS FROM THE ARCHITECTURAL ASSOCIATION EVENTS ORGANISED BY THE MEMBERSHIP OFFICE THIS SUMMER INCLUDED A PANEL DISCUSSION AT THE SOUTHBANK AND A TALK BY EMERGING ARCHITECTS AT A POP-UP SPACE IN EAST LONDON, EACH ANALYSING THE TOPIC OF THE OLYMPICS AS A CURATION OF PEOPLE, EVENTS AND ICONIC PLACES, AT AN URBAN SCALE. AT A SMALLER SCALE, WE LOOK AT STUDENT PORTFOLIOS AS AN EXAMPLE OF CURATING A BODY OF WORK AND THE NOTION OF CURATING PERSONALITIES FROM THE PERSPECTIVE OF ASAP’S DANIELLE RAGO AS WELL AS EDUCATIONAL CURATION, AS SEEN THROUGH THE FIRST YEAR STUDIO. COVERING THE SCOPE OF LECTURES AND EXHIBITIONS THAT COMPRISE THE AA’S PUBLIC PROGRAMME, THIS ISSUE ALSO FOCUSES ON THE CURATION OF THE PAST, WITH A CATALOGUE OF THE AA ARCHIVE NOW AVAILABLE TO THE PUBLIC. ARCHIVIST ED BOTTOMS TRACES THE HISTORY OF THE TRADITION OF CURATING ARCHITECTURE AT THE AA FROM ITS EARLIER PREMISES ON TUFTON STREET. THIS ISSUE’S CENTREFOLD FEATURES A ‘CHANGING SPACE’ WITHIN THE SCHOOL, THE AA BOOKSHOP, NOW FOUND IN 32 BEDFORD SQUARE, THE IDEAL CHOICE AS A SPACE FOR THE CURATION AND CONSUMPTION OF KNOWLEDGE. HOST TO THE REDESIGN LAUNCH OF AARCHITECTURE, ITS NEW AND IMPROVED SPACE HOUSES A WEALTH OF BOOKS AND MAGAZINES RELATING TO THE TOPICS DISCUSSED WITHIN THIS ISSUE AND BEYOND! EDITORS ELEANOR DODMAN PATRICIA MATO MORA MANIJEH VERGHESE RADU MACOVEI CONTENTS 2 ‘PERSONAL NARRATIVES OF COUNTER CULTURE’ 5 A COMPLEX EQUATION OF PARTS 8 FIRST YEAR A­­T THE AA 11 COLLECTING AND CUSTODIANSHIP WITHIN THE AA 14 PROJECTS REVIEW: AN EXHIBITION THAT CURATES ITSELF 16 STRANGE BLACK CUBES IN THE DESERT 18 A FACILITATOR OF DESIGN 19 DEFYING CATEGORISATION 20 COLLUSION OR EXPERIMENTATION? 22 POETRY? NOBODY UNDERSTOOD WE ACTUALLY MEANT IT AA BOOKSHOP 25 RECOMMENDED READING 26 WRITING AS A FORM OF ARCHITECTURE 28 CHOREOGRAPHING THE INVISIBLE 30 A BOOK, A SYMPOSIUM, AN EXHIBITION 32 ‘CAPTURING A MOMENT IN TIME’ 34 MADRID GENEALOGIES 36 AA TALKS LONDON 2012 39 THE PARADIGM OF AN URBAN TRANSFORMATION 40 VENICE TAKEAWAY 43 NEW FROM AA PUBLICATIONS AND BEDFORD PRESS 44 COUNCIL NOTES 45 NEWS NEXT ISSUE’S THEME SCHOOL ANNOUNCEMENT STUDENT ANNOUNCEMENT 2 ‘PERSONAL NARRATIVES OF COUNTER CULTURE’ Ja Kyung Kim (AA 4th Year) unravels her year-long exploration into the social customs and sensory experiences of the San Francisco hippies, that generated a narrative architecture to perpetuate their legacy. Diploma 5 builds collective research as a public and cultural manifestation of social groups, using them to create context. In my view, modern hippies (Slab City, California; Rainbow Gathering, USA & Christiania, Denmark) are the most intense and genuine counterculture. They emerged as a critique of our society and made real attempts to build alternative life styles with their unique customs their histories have been recorded solely through oral transmis- sion so have been gradually disappearing. The self-constructed space of the project is generated by slowly accumulating cultural materials and personal narratives of counterculture in San Francisco, which is squatted by an alternative community. The collection of objects and imprint of stories are organised through a skeptical use of technology. Using social groups to generate context is an essential part of the process and a crucial moment during the design develop- ment. Each 4th year student is required to generate their own methods and thoughts within the Diploma unit in order to formulate their project. Through this process, using the contexts of social groups with deeper ideas produced an interesting story. However, this project needed a more considered structure, dealing with objects and how their history or knowledge could be imprinted on the structure through the social groups. During this project, the main challenge was the develop my own logic to deal with the social groups and thereby control my design strategies through the social groups. 3 The rule set for how social groups can be analysed and appropriated to form the design project. Overleaf: Examples of counterculture – Rainbow Gathering, Slab City and Christiania 4 In the first term, we researched social groups and chose a few to develop further. At first, we did not know how these collections were going to be used as an architectural inspiration. The next step was to understand how to create a design concept around these people. Furthermore, we had to design a building, so we needed to think about programme, scale, use and detail. These steps provided us with a new way of thinking about social groups architecturally. The narration of a story to accompany the project was extremely important to allow the audience to engage with the objects and their embedded qualities. The storytelling process was a strange and slow step in terms of quantity and quality. Hesitating to make decisions was the main difficulty in applying material to create the context of a building. Ideally the design needed to connect all the different constituent elements together to form a seamless story and in turn, a solid project. Finally, as a unit, we believe that space can be for social groups or personified as a human itself. It was eye-opening to experience these different ways of thinking about architecture. The cultural hippie’s public space and living archive are now not only a building but additionally became a historical and physical description of social groups. It is the story of hippies themselves. 5 A COMPLEX EQUATION OF PARTS Curating a year-long body of work into an intermediate portfolio, Cliff Tan (AA Third Year) delineates an architecture that determines how it should be read. The view of the project from Arbat Square in a 180-degree perspectival drawing. Intermediate 7 acknowledge the rich appreciation. It is hence about how theories in existence, with the aim of architecture can be read. The objective exploiting them as a means to architectural is to address and respond to this issue formulation. The processes themselves, architecturally – the most susceptible of extracting and distilling information victim of this phenomenon. to become applied devices are hence vital In order to respond with the greatest to the eventual delivery of the project. In level of rationality and discipline, the Moscow, a city where appearance matters project can be seen as both a study of its more than substance, where image truly addressing issue and as a study in progress grants architecture a purpose, the project of that adopted systematic methodology. decided to adopt the ominously present, yet This chosen process was a derivative from evidently ignored discourse of architecture’s the typical nature of architectural design, legibility; the very curation and presentation of rationalising through two dimensions. To see finalprojects the full and Cliff’s extent Ja of To website: Review please the Project’s visit http://pr2012.aaschool.ac.uk of architecture as an artefact for visual By adopting the logic behind the formulation 6 of such drawings and subverting their This alone presents a challenge as compositions and rules through such drawings are seldom endowed with such devices, hybrid and rationalised diagrams, responsibilities. Hence, the topic was meticulous enough to catalyse this project distilled into its main contributing factors, physically, are created. Inevitably, the such as facades and infrastructures, which drawings are central to the project in its would undergo the rationalising process development and outcome, and every line separately in the form of theoretical and extension that exists within them had junctures.