f

f

u t

AA rchitecture Y I the as questions a i wor eBa the sho an an 6. M S contrasts b s p as the school over man a Kate Davies’ U s offerin life from man life as AA d OF AY THIS ISSUE CONTINUES TO TRAC ISSUE THE LAST ‘ AFTER ON ‘ nterme hin Eghin s p STU EAR pp ifferent meanin ifferent ectrum of p d g d commentar y earances in Peter C in Peter earances STUFF eanwhile, a k a eanwhile, ossi k in I ’s mar nclu tuff, awor ra OF THE IN school THE LIFE BY FOCUSINEAR y d RESEARCH ashira’s teachin g ad ddy d duates p often b D ’ IN OR nterme iate 11’s Ibiza- o answers. le, with tutors,le, stu de Juliet H ENT Juliet k , hi b d et stallet hol etween Di etween ifferent p out the ‘stuff’out of the school in that in focus star are n . W g ro k D hl y showcase of the helmets ’ –THE TO nown F d ER TO ESTA duction in L d that enj has e continue to reflect on g d alei y tellin iate U for ALTO him y d y a p ers y oscop ro ifferin loma units –from b nit 5. iel oo g som d ears, tooears, d ase p P g p ers as p ers as p p k d IC E B hilosop osin ective to the wi ’s at lectures s d LISH WHAT COMES d unit. AN hoto K THE P iam Youniam ic p d eals with eals X g view ivision, Di ents, mem as man g as o AMINE GETHER hoto essa y g e art of herart k on a h ra d frequent RO y k p in U in D IN p D THIR g an

oints G h WHEN RESS y of y new

p b

nit 11nit loma

ers d y

d

D

e

G 19 news from the architectural association AArchitecture 19 / Term 2 2012/13 www.aaschool.ac.uk

©2013 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]

Student Editorial Team Eleanor Dodman (Fourth Year) Radu Remus Macovei (Third Year) Roland Shaw (Fourth Year)

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

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

Cover: Wax rubbing of coal hole cover outside 33 Bedford Square by Mark Simmonds, London, May 2013, www.marksimmonds.info AA rchitecture Y I the as questions a i wor eBa the sho an an 6. M S contrasts b s p as the school over man a Kate Davies’ U s offerin life from man life as AA d OF AY THIS ISSUE CONTINUES TO TRAC ISSUE THE LAST ‘ AFTER ON ‘ nterme hin Eghin p STU EAR pp ifferent meanin ifferent ectrum of p d g d commentar y earances in Peter C in Peter earances STUFF eanwhile, a k a eanwhile, ossi k in I ’s mar nclu tuff, awor ra OF THE IN school THE LIFE BY FOCUSINEAR y d RESEARCH ashira’s teachin g ad ddy d duates p often b D ’ IN OR nterme iate 11’s Ibiza- o answers. le, with tutors,le, stu de Juliet H ENT Juliet k , hi b d et stallet hol etween Di etween ifferent p out the ‘stuff’out of the school in that in focus star are n . W g ro k D hl y showcase of the helmets ’ –THE TO nown F d ER TO ESTA duction in L d that enj has e continue to reflect on g d alei y tellin iate U for ALTO him y d y a p ers y oscop ro ifferin loma units –from b nit 5. iel oo g som d ears, tooears, d ase p P g p ers as p ers as p p k d IC E B hilosop osin ective to the wi ’s at lectures s d LISH WHAT COMES d unit. AN hoto K THE P iam Youniam ic p d eals with eals X g view ivision, Di ents, mem as man g as o AMINE GETHER hoto essa y g e art of herart k on a h ra d frequent RO y k p in U in D IN p D THIR g an

oints G h WHEN RESS y of y new

p b

nit 11nit loma

ers d y

d

D

e

G 19 news from the architectural association he started to build his projects. His lively commentary about his own recent progress in architecture expands upon the views of tutors and students. happily, it seems impossible to come to an agreed definition of this issue’s theme of stuff, and so we are pleased to demonstrate, with AArchitecure 19, that the possibilities of production at the AA continue to expand, grow and diversify, in no small way owing to their own detailed unknowability.

student Editors: Eleanor Dodman Radu Remus Macovei Roland Shaw contents

2 sYSTEMS, STORIES and the STUFF INBETWEEN 3 the unit space as model city 4 Blueprints for the future 6 space HELMETS 9 a collection of things found on a detouR 12 steele on Stuff 14 aRchitecture as Exhibition Space 16 stuff 18 the exhibition as a project 20 aRtists’ Talks at the AA 23 Meta-Realities 24 a visit to the Archive

aa CONVERSATIONS

25 Introduction to Fabrication of Kaleidoscopes 26 too much is never enough! 28 let’s get Stuffed! 30 ‘We Have a Lot of Stuff in the Photo Library’ 34 eBay Still LiFes 36 the internet is stuff 38 Membership events 40 Remembering Alan Colquhoun, the friend 41 Recommended reading 42 new from aa publicationS 44 new from BEdford Press

46 News

next issue’s theme school announcement student announcement 2 SYSTEMS, STORIES and the STUFF INBETWEEN

Kate Davies and Liam Young, unit masters from Diploma Unit 6, explain the unit’s work through networks and narratives.

Cities like London are networked objects that condition and are conditioned by distant landscapes. Those landscapes – the iconic and the ignored, the excavated, irradiated and the pristine – are embedded in global systems that connect them in surprising and complicated ways to our everyday lives. Each year the Unknown Fields Division navigates a different global trajectory, setting out on expeditions through alien landscapes, industrial ecologies and precarious wilderness to bear witness to alternative worlds. We do this as a means of understanding our familiar world in new ways. The Division is concerned with complex global systems, supply chains and infrastructure – those elusive tendrils, twisting threadlike over everything around us, crisscrossing the The Division is interested in the planet, connecting the mundane to the spaces between things. Here architectural extraordinary. Our physical environment is interventions can exist between a logic shaped by this stuff, buffeted by economic board in a supercomputer and the frozen winds, stitched and stretched into place Arctic Ocean it is modelling, or in the through global demand. We view infrastruc- millisecond time-lag of a stock market trade. ivision, ture as a series of interwoven narratives, They can exist between your gold-plated a network of hidden stories that connect us headphone jack and a hole in the Australian to each other, and to remote locations. Outback two miles wide, between where Stories are a useful connective tissue a satellite thinks you are and where you with which to make sense of messy and really are. They can exist in the 60-second complex systems. Through storytelling warning before an earthquake in Mexico we can relate to some of this complexity City or along the 30,000-mile journey your in meaningful ways, chronicling existing pair of Levis 501 takes before you get to conditions and constructing a series of wear them. parallel narratives and partial fabrications. In this way projects emerge as a We use speculative scenarios as critical constellation of stories and strategies, instruments for exploring the conse- fragments and fables that stitch together quences of emerging conditions, often dislocated places, unravelling complicated deploying time-based media – film, systems and interrogating contemporary animation, gaming – to articulate dynamic relationships between culture, technology For more information on Unknown Fields D information more For spaces, ebbs and flows, cycles and shifts. and nature. www.unknownfieldsdivision.com please visit 3 The unit space as model city

Shin Egashira, unit master of Diploma Unit 11, describes his approach through the accumulation of models in his unit space.

The first people to open the door of Dip 11’s What if we draw an analogy to the Unit space are cleaners who come around notion of ‘Transitional Object’ used in child at 7am every morning. The challenge for psychology? A series of comfort objects them is that they have to guess what to that not only babies and toddlers but also leave and what to trash. Somehow, their grown-ups use and leave behind them as guess is always right. they help us make associations between There are different cycles. For instance objects and symbolise a bridge between objects that come and go weekly and daily the imaginary and the real that is unknown are usually on the table and floor. Monthly to collective. Mark Cousins suggests that objects usually reside on the wall and side when toddlers discharge by themselves table. Ours is a space for both the accumu- for the first time, they consider their smelly lation and production of objects, tools and shit as the most fascinating piece of architectural things, which are produced artwork. I am not at all suggesting the yearly with different teams of students and Dip 11 unit space is full of shit; perhaps it’s

briefs. The academic year usually starts analogous to something like an attic of an with the making and unmaking of collage old house (or a mad house) where ambi- cities. The aim is partly to recycle leftover tious young architects imagine their cities pieces of models from previous years, by playing with their toys; reinventing them giving new concepts by re-organising them by cutting, dropping, juxtaposing, piling, within a set of new contexts. A new London adjoining, extruding, drawing and re- emerges from the clusters of old objects arranging, playing games selecting and in the unit space every year. There are deselecting. Objects that we often end up 32 building models today as I counted. not throwing away because of their singular About half of them are designs in values often end up in the attic. iploma Unit 11 please visit please visit 11 Unit iploma progress from current students. Some Dip 11’s objects fill the gaps between of the models are incomplete as they are ideas and procedures: zooming in and dissected through acts of design explora- out, making and looking, representing tions or destroyed or improved by partial and designing. The type of model we don’t removals. There are more than 150 detail make is a complete illustration of how the fragments and over 600 pieces of material proposals may look. samples. There is a taxonomy of material Architectural objects that we end up studies. There are pieces as old as eight creating have no name apart from ‘Stuff’. years surviving on our shelf, which have That, perhaps, makes our unit space a been parts of several different models model of a city that was never intended For more information on D information more For www.aaschool.ac.uk/study/dip11 in the past. to be completed. 4 Blueprints for the future

Sam Jacobs, director of AA Night School, discusses the prolific amount of stuff that makes up our cities, and the role that these objects will play in the way we are understood by future generations.

Walking through London it’s easy to forget million things – a number not counting, that a city is just a particular arrangement I suppose, inventories of the gift shop, of stuff. It’s just hundreds of billions of cafes, display cases, pencils, maps, pieces, innumerable objects and things, uniforms, and one guesses, a tonne of some static, some in motion, some fixed, archaeological and conservation tools). others loosely assembled into a London- I’m here to try and kick Stuff Syndrome. shaped super-thing. Cataloguing every In an unprepossessing corner of the object would require noting every building museum is the oldest object in London: as well as every brick, screw and plank a stone tool found in the bottom layer of that makes up that building. It would mean deposits in Olduvai Gorge, Tanzania where counting every chair, plate and book, every the remains of an early human camp had shoe and shoelace, every single thing in been preserved. Potassium-argon dates every supermarket . And most things are the stone to about 1.8 million years ago. assemblages themselves that atomise into It now lives in a freestanding glass countless other things. It’s mind boggling case tucked into the southeast corner to even imagine a formula we could use to of the museum. The stone is held in the estimate how many centillion things make middle of its case by a metallic retort stand up London. as through it were floating in space. As There’s apparently 170,000kg of we orbit around the stone, metamorphic man-made stuff we’ve left on the Moon crystals glint under a grid of lights above. and 300 million pieces of man-made space Though the size of a fist, it could well be debris orbiting the earth. Imagine then a gigantic asteroid. And in some ways, the number of things accumulated in a city though an object of the earth, it comes ranged over two millennia and 1,570km2 from another world, a world before objects. of administrative area. To this already It takes a while to perceive the human countless number of things we’re adding intervention that transformed it from a more and more, faster and faster. geological artefact into a human ‘thing’. Overwhelmed by the quantity and But there it is, a craggy sharp ridge running beauty of its renaissance artefacts, tourists along one side. Formed, they tell us, by School ight please visit who visit Florence sometimes suffer from flaking chunks off this stone with another. Stendhal Syndrome. But if you think too As the edge emerged the stone metamor- long about the quantities of even the most phosed. First, it became a tool: a thing to unremarkable stuff that surrounds us, slice, dice and shred other matter. But it it too can bring on the same psychosomatic also conceptually transformed. As flakes of symptoms of rapid heartbeat, dizziness, stone were cut away, the idea of a thing fainting, confusion and hallucinations. emerged. From this moment, or moments And that’s why I’m heading through the very similar in other early human camps, giant Doric portals of the British Museum the concept of stuff is handed down to us. night.aaschool.ac.uk. To hear more from Sam from Sam more hear night.aaschool.ac.uk. To twitter.com/_samjacob please visit (an institution that itself holds around six All those things out there in London are on N information more For 5

The Olduvai stone is from Olduvai Gorge, Tanzania, and is between 1.8–2 million years old.

distant descendants of this stone thing. fashioned them. And if objects make us Every other thing flows from here, from human, imagine the varieties of humanity this originating thing. that objects could manufacture in us. It seems impossible to imagine a world We leave the hallowed halls of the before objects, to picture life before things British Museum with their carefully curated began to litter the surface of the earth. and scholarly inventory. Back in London All the material substance of the world it seems futile to resist the imperative of was, before the idea of things emerged, still stuff. More! Faster! Brighter! Better! A few arranged by cosmology, geography, climate, steps from the museum we find souvenirs, chemistry and biology. Unharvested, they electronics, gift shops stuffed with gifts were not yet transformed by human that no one could possibly want. But the imagination into other conceptual states. distinction between museum, poundshop, A tree was just a tree, a rock simply a rock. supermarket and the Argos catalogue are Even animals and humans were all just what in some ways arbitrary. They are all equally they are – constituent parts of an ecosystem. significant narratives of humanity. Perhaps it is objects themselves that The endless glut of the stuff that leveraged humans out of this circumstance. surrounds us might be good or bad, useful The invention of things re-drew the or not, necessary or ridiculous (and, sure, relationship between humanity and nature it is mostly bad, not useless and ridiculous). and transformed humans-as-creatures But these are the things we construct our into cultural beings. We might even suggest world and ourselves out of. Encoded within then that it was objects that made us even the cheapest and most frivolous are human just as much as we made them clues about who we are and blueprints for objects; things fashioned as much as we the future of being human. 6 SPACE HELMETS

Manuel Collado and Nacho Martín, unit masters from Intermediate Unit 11, on why their unit produced helmets to recreate an experience of Ibiza. 7

Left: Luca Allievi My project is about the concept of the trip defined by the experience of wind and invisible boundaries. The helmet uses sensorial devices to recreate the experience of my trip to Ibiza. Each wind direction has a different perfume so that the helmet can be a wayfinding device that allows us to smell different areas according to the wind direction.

Ground control to Major Tom Ready-to-Wear Architecture Ground control to Major Tom Nomadic, lightweight and portable systems, Take your protein pills and the helmets are constructions of small put your helmet on. interiors where the owner shifts between – ‘Space Oddity’, David Bowie the roles of occupant and wearer. Architecture is an explicit body envelope.

When explaining the concept of an island, Experience Gilles Deleuze expresses it as a construct The helmets are intimate capsules that that is defined by the separation from extend our perception by combining vision, the mainland in order to create or rather sound, smell and flavour in a synthesised re-create an alternative reality. Philosophers format. They create a transplanted also offer us similar images of the experience and transport the wearer to any space station. The Space helmet, in turn, time or place. They are de-territorialisation would be a replica that reduced these devices that alter the perception of images to their minimum. For us, the helmet our environment or developing it elsewhere. is a device that allows for the creation of architecture within a different format. Identity It aims to build spaces, worlds and environ- The helmet provides an architecture that ments using another scale, tectonic system doesn’t just transform our context but and strategy of locating ourselves within transforms its wearer. They are architec- a territory. It expands the conventional tural accessories of self-expression and properties of architecture by developing creation. DJs were the first to recognise three main guidelines: their properties of enabling codes, rules and rituals of the user’s choice.

The project, taught alongside Manijeh Verghese, aimed to recreate the context of the island of Ibiza – islands generated from islands. Certain inhabitants of its geography – the so-called expressive expatriates – serve as the perfect subjects for this

To see helmets conversations.aaschool.ac.uk more visit To experiment of spatial and identity mobility. 8

Agata Pilarska My interest is in visual distortion and sound, and how they could be represented in one form. Creating a helmet from layers of perspex (each with a profile of a type of sound wave, stacked together) forms an object with different distortion effects, similar to the technology of a slit scan. 9 A collection of things found on a detour

AA PhD candidate Gabriela García de Cortázar writes about collections as attempts to capture a moment in time.

For the past two centuries, life has primarily and one day, the narrative can fully describe been about things. The nineteenth century the complexities of life, work, love and lust. inaugurates the ‘age of property’: things fill Most interestingly, however, is the sup- up novels, paintings and houses, and they porting structure of the novel: underneath demand to be accumulated, catalogued, the story of Bloom’s modern Odyssey lies and exhibited (Brooks, 2005). The clutter Joyce’s own collection of things. As the helps to define characters, worlds, lives, Gilbert and Linati schemata show, it not and, in consequence, things offer them- only holds a pool of writing styles, but also selves as material evidence for the life they places, moods, words, colours, sciences, hold up. The portrayal of modern life is then arts, parts of the body, and more. For Joyce, an exercise of describing the things that writing the Ulysses allowed him to combine sustain and fill the everyday. Description, the things he wanted to write about, much however, is evidently not exclusive to the as Perec would do later in La Vie Mode modern novel. Xenophon’s Oeconomicus d’Emploi, or as Cervantes did with his is roughly about inventorying the contents fictions within fictions in El Quijote, much of Ischomachus’ house, in what has been earlier on. characterised as one of the most perfect This excursus into narrative introduces attempts to correctly identify and represent another collection of things. The research things in space (Purves, 2010). The I am currently working on deals, in its own Oeconomicus is just as much about the modest way, with things that have been training of Ischomachus’s wife in the generated by the modern city, in this case management of the household as it is about nineteenth-century London. The common producing a perfect inventory of the house’s aspect between them is that they are all contents; in a way, the inventory becomes devices for orientation: roughly, maps. the plan of the house. This experiment As the city expands and gets more complex, has an even more ancient precedent: the walking (and other forms of direct experi- Illiad’s Catalogue of Ships, by suspending ence) can no longer be the only source the course of narrative, offers an accurate for the knowledge of the city. In turn, it must description of ships and geography at the rely on a series of devices that complement same time. This protocartographic narrative, the insufficient knowledge that bodily which Xenophon will take to its limits by experience provides. These devices, writing it down into an inventory, functions which function as a sort of prostheses, are as an arrest in time. here displayed over an area that extends For example, Joyce’s Ulysses, the between two poles. The two poles are paramount modern novel, resonates perfect acts of knowledge: on one side, in many ways with this combination of perfect acts of representation, where the inventory and suspended time. By limiting map is so complete that it doubles life; on the extents of time and space to one city the other, perfect acts of orientation, where 10 experience informs an ideal and complete Opposite: 1. Perfect Acts of Representation knowledge of the territory. In their perfec- 1A Achilles’ Shield tion, they belong to a realm of semi-fiction. 1B Jorge Luis Borges’ The stretch amid the two poles is where ‘On Exactitude in Science’ the objects that constitute the focus of and ‘The Aleph’ 1C Alain-René Le Sage: this research are. Le Diable Boîteux I won’t enumerate them all, but will 1D Georges Perec: La Vie mention how they have been organised, Mode d’Emploi within the surface that links the two poles. 1E James Joyce: Ulysses 2. Detour 1 If the immediate approach to the city is 2A Harry Beck’s Tube map given by experience, by walking in the city 2B The strip map (which, as de Certau says cannot be pinned 3. Detour 2 3A Wonderground tube map down, as it always happens ‘in the present’), 3B George Augustus Sala’s its translation into a trajectory is the first literary tours of London detour. The second one is a translation 3C Victorian novels that adopts tools from narrative, such as 3D Charles Marville’s photographic record of Paris description, and ventures into integrating 4. Detour 3 history – an attempt to capture a place 4A Views from hot-air balloon through time by looking at its past. A third 4B City panoramas 4C Outlook towers detour leaves the attempts to capture 5. Detour 4 time-as-history and starts being concerned 5A The OS maps with capturing places as spaces, only 5B The A to Z not geometrically yet, but in their superficial, 6. Detour 5 6A Street name chorographic, appearances. A fourth detour systematisation dismisses surfaces and tries to delve into 6B Postcodes structure, entering the domains of graphi- 7. Perfect Acts of Knowledge cally correct accuracy: the proper maps. A by Experience 7A Eskimos’ maps fifth detour, which gets closer to the perfect 7B South Sea navigators’ acts of representation, is that where the maps correction, faithfulness, and accuracy of the 7C The Knowledge territory is adjusted to that of the abstract model. These are the cases where the built is the map, just like Ischomachus’ house. However, these detours and the objects in them are not only casually related to what the initial excursus presents: all of these objects investigate the territory defined by description, the subsequent arrest in time, the ordering of things into catalogues or inventories, and the need to keep records. Maps, as tools that comple- ment an otherwise insufficient knowledge, belong to the same family of things. D programme h For example take property records: they all make use of the graphein, a recording tool that can be either writing or drawing. The expansion of (and the amount of things in) the territory to be recorded is what gets out of proportion in the modern city. I would challenge any storyteller to narrate the contemporary landscape of today’s Ulysses. For more information on the P information more For phd.aaschool.ac.uk.please visit 11 12 Steele on Stuff

Brett Steele, director of the AA, discusses the relationship between architects, architecture schools and stuff.

Some architects think architecture Walking through an end-of-year AA is the stuff that matters. It is not; I do unit space, or studio, proves Wittgenstein’s not want to talk about architecture. point. Such a tourist usually feels like a What matters more is the time we vampire visiting a late-night graveyard of find ourselves living in. That’s the only discarded architectural labour. By July every place architecture ever really lives. year room after room of the AA is filled up – Le Corbusier with litter, the detritus, the discarded piles of materials recording a hard year’s work, To paraphrase Robin Evans, architects are and learning. Forgotten sketches and masters of stuff-making. They dedicate studies, broken models, wrinkled prints, their lives not to just the making of stuff, but abandoned binders, water-stained photo- to the making of a very particular kind of copies and books, all the stuff confirming stuff – the stuff (like models and drawings) that a building full of architects have been that in turn tells other people (like builders hard at work doing what they do: inventing or clients) how to make yet other kinds of architecture’s future, through the relentless stuff (like, for example, buildings, spaces making of more and more stuff. (To a or structures). Architects don’t just worship remarkable extent an architectural school is this stuff: they love its very idea; its an institutional form whose primary purpose invention, its messy reality, its heavy, as a memory structure is to capture, record, material inevitability. When not otherwise redistribute and retain architectural work, occupied by the making, sorting, presenting thought and life: all the stuff, records of and documenting of their stuff, what else presentations, personalities, discussions do they do? They stay up late writing that fill its hallways, stairways, unit spaces, theories and histories of its making. Which lecture halls.) they arrange, compose, publish, thus What we now think of as architectural passing on to future generations (like next schools were invented for precisely this year’s AA students) how and why they purpose: for accelerating how new kinds made the stuff that they did. of stuff could be made, making possible No wonder it was architects that new kinds of architectural projects (recall invented a concept like the ‘room’ – where what effect the basement workshops of the else to put all the stuff of architectural Bauhaus had, now nearly a century ago). worlds, all the stuff that fills an architect’s Alongside schools yet other, new kinds of studio? Stuff, after all, needs one thing modern institutions appeared, with weird above all else: Space. And to paraphrase a names like RIBA or MoMA. Their primary couple of thousand years of wrestling with purpose remains in place today: the the consequence of this reality, a discipline retention of architecture’s most valuable is born. We call it Architecture. It took a ‘stuff’; now kept safe in libraries, galleries philosopher like Wittgenstein to distil this and storage spaces awaiting the use of condition to its most reasoned (human) future generations. Today one of the AA’s observation, of something architects have (and the last century’s) most original long known to be crucial to their world: ‘the architectural minds lives on in a concrete stuff of the world weighs upon our minds bunker located deep below the frozen far more than the other way around’. ground of Montreal, at yet another 13

AA Archive at Tufton Street c 1901

cryogenic architectural repository (called their efforts. All buildings, after all, eventu- the CCA) where, in a light-, temperature- ally fade away (Cedric nearing the end of and humidity-controlled vault Cedric Price’s his career proudly proclaimed his willing- ideas await their rediscovery in a century far ness – his desire even – to see some of his more attuned to his intellect than that of earliest work torn down: ‘past its sell-by their origin. (PS Regarding the paradoxes of date’, he quipped self-knowingly, to any architectural stuff and its conservation, architectural journalist who would listen). what would Cedric think of Gertrude Stein’s However the stuff that results from observation that ‘you can be a museum, or architects thinking and working and

you can be modern – but you can’t be both’?) inventing and changing architecture – the Today the architectural world is living ideas, the texts, the books, the drawings, through an explosion of new memory models and everything else – that’s the infrastructures over-running nearly all forms stuff where architecture really lives, and of architectural thought and action. regularly dies. What’s different about that Software systems record every click of a stuff today is simply how much harder it is mouse while a designer develops an idea. to get rid of than ever before (if you don’t Smartphones record every neglected believe me, log onto ebay for a tour of the corner of buildings – architectural photog- world’s new sorting capacity, or try and do raphers are no longer the master record- the opposite — try deleting yourself from keepers. Videos can instantly convert any Google). The stuff architects make (their architectural presentation into a Youtube drawings, models, manifestos, documents, channel. Back journals once the province of records; their everything) now lives in a obsessive book collectors are now world of not only its relentless production downloadable as PDFs found on servers in or amplified distribution, but its accelerated Shanghai. accumulation as well. As Leonardo da Vinci Architectural stuff – that stuff archi- once said, ‘life is pretty simple: you do some tects produce over the course of a lifetime stuff. Most fails, some works. You do more of mental and manual labour thinking about of what works. If it works big, others quickly and working on architecture – will forever copy it. Then you do something else. The

For more please visit the directors office website on on officewebsite pleasethe directors more visit For directorsoffice.aaschool.ac.uk matter more than the stuff that results from trick is the doing of something else.’ 14 Architecture as Exhibition Space

Melissa Justine Gourley, AA Second Year student, provides a critique of Stefano Boeri’s ‘Pietas: Variations on a Theme’.

Rondanini Pietà, marble sculpture by Michelangelo Buonarroti, 1564, Courtesy of lauramarchionni- discourse.blogspot.co.uk 15

Are mercy, empathy and reciprocity really through (let alone the position of the work necessary to discuss in relation to within the central space), makes it difficult pietas? Stefano Boeri first defines the to understand why it must be this sculpture, reciprocity of pietas as the absolute desire that projects reciprocity as an afterthought to leave the mark of the ego, which he through which this transition may be justified. claims prevails itself through architecture, Highlighting the importance of the work and as such justifies the move of of studio BPR in the design of its first Michelangelo’s third attempt at the home within the Castello Sforzesco, where sculpture of the Virgin Mary and her son it stood for the past sixty years, Boeri into a space he argues to share the same describes how the duality expressed by reciprocal conditions. La Pietà Rondanini Michelangelo – through the mother holding was one of the artist’s last works, which her son, and the son carrying his mother he began around 1552 and worked on – is observed through an experience of until his death in 1564. It has been housed the sculpture from various angles. It is in the Castello Sforzesco since 1954. here where Boeri’s interest in achieving However, as Milan’s culture commissioner, a fulfilment of reciprocity, not for the visitor, Boeri, with the city’s government has but rather for the prisoners may be approved its temporary relocation to the understood. However, the argument of Carcere di San Vittore while the castle the panopticon’s potential in fully realising undergoes renovations. the meaning of the sculpture is only valid The political agenda of temporarily if acknowledged with no less than a critical moving Michelangelo’s Pietas into the outcry at its misuse as an instrument to San Vittore panopticon comes with the duty bring visitors to the prison. of raising an awareness of the poor living Although, perhaps one might just conditions prisoners in Italy face, yet with consider the prison to be the only appli- Boeri placing more emphasis on the cable space through which the sculpture exhibition experience of the sculpture may be fully deciphered, in a manner similar than on the politics, need they even be to how it is indecipherable in its current discussed? And further, need La Pietà home. Effectively Boeri shows a video Rondanini even be discussed? At the end experience of how one stands in relation to of the day, if it is really just about raising La Pietà Rondanini and where its closeness awareness why not just open the prison is almost that which disallows it to be fully up to visitors three days a week? Boeri understood. This lack of clarity of the projects a level of value people would be sculpture would also be achieved in the willing to place on going to visit a sculpture defined view the prisoners in the various within a canonical space as less than wings would have, and it would use the going to visit the actual architecture itself. architectural condition of the panopticon Or perhaps, this is where he is right to to amplify a similar experience of how the argue for the idea of reciprocity in relation sculpture has, up until now, been displayed;

to placing a high work of art, into such where its power lies in its inability to be fully a monumental prison. interpreted. It would only make sense that Understanding the relationship the sculpture be placed in the Milanese jail, between moving an artwork into a canon- not for reasons of politic, but as the history ical architectural space becomes of great of its display has shown, La Pietà Rondanini interest when considering the potential should remain a presence that is hidden. of the architecture to act as exhibition Yet, the question of who fully grasps this space. Boeri is adamant to describe the experience of reciprocity still remains achievements of the space in which one relevant. Is it enough to argue for the prison of Michelangelo’s last works was first as the best exhibition space for such a work showcased. He gives a glimpse at its future of art if it will only be the prisoners who act home, yet he is brief in suggesting how the as gallery visitors? And further, does the panopticon might work in its favour. Without prison need to remain open to the public? describing the ritual experience of La Pietà Rondanini in San Vittore’s prison and how

To watch Stefano Boeri’s lecture delivered Boeri’s watch Stefano To the link: please follow 2013, February in www.aaschool.ac.uk/video/stefanoboeri2013 visitors will be expected to enter and pass 16 a gravelly and grey-blue cement-and- architect who builds as well as draws draws as well as builds who architect actually suggested. Three buildings (Berlin, (Berlin, buildings Three suggested. actually more become necessarily Ihave talks, and clever, clever, clever teachers at the the at teachers clever clever, clever, last, and last will that compound chippings becoming blue the to led cash of spare only just begins: if Berlin is a profile and a and aprofile is Berlin if begins: just only designer? The brilliance of the brief or an an or brief of the brilliance The designer? eye of the the in light –the of abuilding?’ moment creative actual the is of ‘what dismissed by the great unwashed hordes of of hordes unwashed great bythe dismissed of references, the armatures, the consis the armatures, the of references, number the shape, the statement, cultural conversation: the enter can me in cator when the concrete frame starts to sing? sing? to starts frame concrete the when what, if anything is fundamental to the the to fundamental is anything if what, Or when the glass panels almost tinkle? almost panels glass the when Or shape with a glossy illuminated skin that that skin illuminated aglossy with shape shapely and each the subject of endless of endless subject the each and shapely way its in each blue, are Madrid) and Graz have chit-chat and drawings our that stuff setup? Or is the magic moment revealed revealed moment magic the is Or setup? 3D or digitalised section plan, succinct of a brilliantly creation The scribble? of scribble-over- layering the or scribble, theorising, if you wish. Yet there the story Yet story wish. you the if there theorising, tency? As a person who was often often was who aperson As tency? pale blue cement render, Graz is abubble- is Graz render, cement blue pale mainstream architects as a ‘draw-er’ I have Ihave a‘draw-er’ as architects mainstream inculcated upon their followers that it is is it that followers their upon inculcated but unglamorously. paucity the Madrid, In sheet. steel welded is which skin, real the over askin actually is interested in a certain type of stuff: the the of stuff: type acertain in interested insight into the potential content? The first first The content? potential the into insight question bythe interested genuinely been hothouse schools of architecture have have of architecture schools hothouse idea of any of these built objects? Is it the the it Is objects? built of these of any idea In the past 10 years since becoming an an becoming since years 10 past the In In recent years far too many of the of the many too far years recent In Of course the teacher, writer, pontifi writer, teacher, the course Of around meaning the of Stuff. practitioner,and of architecture progress the questions P STUFF eter C graduate, prominent AA educatorook,

- -

– far from being tailored by chaps with with bychaps tailored being from – far This is now being thrown up into the front front the into up thrown being now is This

Such influences have become so omni so become have influences Such architecture: metaphorically taking the the taking metaphorically architecture: architects have realised that fretted glass glass fretted that realised have architects philosophies,abstracted applied philoso as opposed to the industrialised product. product. industrialised to the opposed as stuff. in interested not are they therefore and athing, is that anything bath. their in aloofah from stone a pumice are to be the generators of architectural or translucent corian or cutely distributed distributed cutely or corian translucent or In nineteenth-century of glass. floating delight. More recently, there have been been have there recently, More delight. through milled and cut being –are chisels chunks solid ofof since stone discussion character of a piece of material itself – its –its itself of material of apiece character characteristics the all with seen –as object stuffing out of stuff. of out stuffing substitute for stone – took on its own own its on –took stone for substitute the direct instruction of a computer of acomputer instruction direct the interested not basically are they that that it might display. Alternatively, it is the the is it Alternatively, display. might it that revival once the robotised sequence sequence robotised the once revival mathematics, morality, procedure, programme via a form of robotry. aform via programme suspicious highly becomes one that present know wouldn’t guys of these Many practice. symbolism,phies, gender and language that moments of sheer delight when clever LEDs play a tantalising game with solid solid with game atantalising play LEDs apoor as started –which stucco England, becomes as unselfconscious as the process process the as unselfconscious as becomes its sophisticationits or hand-made its nature of departure; points acceptable be in interested less much architecture, in hairiness, its overtones of a rustic quality, quality, of arustic overtones its hairiness, Two interpretations of stuff seem to to seem of stuff Two interpretations Stuff is due for a creative or generative generative or acreative for due is Stuff Either stuff as the presence of the of the presence the as stuff Either

-

-

In January 2012 Peter Cook delivered a lecture at the AA entitled ‘Stuff and Nonsense for Architecture’. See the lecture online at: www.aaschool.ac.uk/video/petercook2012 17

Lützowplatz Berlin (1992) (Source: Hongdi Li, Peter Cook Monograph)

Kunsthaus, Graz (2003) (Source: transform-mag.com) 18 The Exhibition as a project

Graham Baldwin, Fifth Year student from Diploma 14, reviews ‘11 Projects’, a retrospective of Dogma’s work, held in the AA Gallery.

Dogma exhibition Photo Tommaso Franzolini

2 Walls 11 Rectangular Boxes 19

Below opposite is a brief description of the By presenting Dogma’s projects objects present in the ‘11 Projects’ exhibition, over three mediums, the work becomes which opened in late-February this year. immediately visible – providing the observer The exhibition presented a catalogue of with exactly what he wants to see. Dogma’s oeuvre and showcased eleven The large drawings or tableaus produce projects produced since 2002. Each one adequate distance for understanding possessed an archetype with a decisive each project, but the book collapses this form for confronting the city. The projects distance into catalogue form, standardising on display expanded upon a historical and its reading, and accommodating any theoretical framework, providing knowledge possibility of question. If this symmetrical for understanding the exhibition as a whole. structure is what the exhibition is meant The programmatic interventions span from to facilitate, then the exhibition remains an large-scale urban planning and infrastruc- illustrative representation of Dogma’s work tural projects, to spaces of production and instead of a productive one. But if this housing, and to speculative research exacting accommodation is intentional on projects. To coincide with the exhibition, a productive level, then the visible urgency Dogma co-founder Pier Vittorio Aureli held critiques the observer by reducing him a lecture on the studio. A book was also to the uniform mediums of distraction produced to accompany the material of the and appearance, which Dogma’s ethos so exhibition, and to provide a writing platform decisively challenges. In this reading, the for a selection of essays by Pier Vittorio exhibition becomes a productive form Aureli and Dogma’s other co-founder, of representation – through what is not Martino Tattara. Brett Steele, and Gabriele presented, through the bare, primitive Mastrigli also contributed texts. forms that construct the exhibition itself. My sober description of the exhibition’s contents through both quantitative Dogma: 11 Projects (London, 2013), 120pp, and qualitative means looks beyond the paperback, £25 is available to buy from collection of work presented and instead the AA Bookshop and online from questions the exhibition as a project of AA Publications at itself. On the southern wall are eleven large www.aaschool.ac.uk/publications. drawings that encapsulate the essence of each project through the plan, as a productive tour-de-force. Each drawing is composed with the utmost precision, rendering the absolute, and forcing the

observer to contemplate the composition in its entirety. Running parallel to these drawings sit eleven platforms in linear array, supplementing the content of the tableaus in comprehensive indexes. These flatten the suspense produced in the larger drawings into immediately accessible, visually assuring and theoretically complete, printed books. On the northern wall hangs a constellation of beautiful hand drawings that documents further evidence of formal investigation. These three bands provide different mediums for reading the work, which can be read in parts or together as a whole. please visit please visit on the exhibition information more For www.aaschool.ac.uk/exhibitions/dogma 20 Artists’ Talks at the AA

Parveen Adams recounts the past nine years of artists talks at the AA, the numerous artists who have lectured and her role in curating the series.

I have been organising the Artists’ Talks whom I had written a long essay. So I series at the AA for nine years. It started added to them the French philosopher and in 2004 when I was teaching at the critic Didi-Huberman, a man who is much London Consortium, a Humanities PhD admired but usually keeps a low profile. programme whose members were Tate I also added myself because I had thought Gallery, Birkbeck College, the Institute for about Cronenberg’s Crash for years and Contemporary Art and the AA. The Science I delivered a paper on the film. Museum was to join later. The series was The thought of the series was always funded from the London Consortium’s small with me, and I semi-consciously sifted annual contribution to the AA. through the work of artists whom I saw The first year was organised around the or read about as possibilities for the idea of scale and the very first lecture was coming year’s programme. I remembered given by James Casebere whose photo- the impact that Stan Douglas’ work at graphs of models of prisons and flooded Documenta had on me. I remembered the corridors had been shown at the Lisson work of the Atlas Group and my amazement gallery in London. Jonas Dahlberg, a young when I realised that the group was one artist from Stockholm, was a great success person – Walid Raad. I remembered the with his videos based on miniaturised extraordinary video work of Jane and architectural sets. Mariela Neudecker Louise Wilson on the Stasi offices. The showed her Caspar Friedrich scenes in series also had staunch supporters 3D models set inside vitrines of fluid. including – Francesco Manacorda, now The audience is always a challenge. Artistic Director of Tate Liverpool; Simon What AA students will find interesting is Baker, now Curator of Photography at Tate difficult, and in any case I didn’t want to Modern and Robb Leigh, who was then at invite only artists who were known for their Thomas Dane. It was Robb who suggested co-operation with architects. Fame does that I invite Michael Landy, the artist known not guarantee a good talk, and as the talks for having publicly destroyed every last progressed I learned that what seemed thing he owned. Here was a challenge! important was the openness of artists to Landy said he was not used to speaking questions about how they worked. Where and seemed not to have realised that he some felt relieved that they had ‘fielded needed to show his work to the audience. the questions’, others were delighted to try With Robb’s help all was prepared and to answer what the questioner wanted to having circled the park all morning, Landy know. Rarely, but importantly, did an artist arrived at the AA to face the packed lay bare the way in which the work was Lecture Hall and North Jury Room. There conceived and developed – Becky Beasley wasn’t a spare seat. This was outdone only did this with intensity and honesty. by Christopher Marclay, yet to be famous In the second year of the talks I could for The Clock. He had been invited to speak think of no artists other than Gavin Turk of at the last minute and it turned out that it RCA notoriety and Thomas Demand about was the only evening he was free. There 21

Anri Sala, Cactus Score, 2011. Lithograph on BFK rives vellum paper, 45 cm x 60 cm, edition of 110, with certificate of authenticity signed by the artist, realised by Atelier Idem Paris 22

Parveen Adams with Michael Landy, March 2008 Photo Valerie Bennett

was a queue in the street and he com- experience of space and time – Matt manded not only the Lecture Hall but an Saunders who showed his works of overflow room. Marclay was something painting, photographs and film; David of a cult figure already, and Joel Newman, Claerbout, whose work we experience knowing more than I did, made the as photographs in the present, no longer necessary accommodations. static; Ann Lislegaard, who re-works the The talks in the spring of 2012 were genre of science fiction; and Jonas satisfying – to those AA students who Dahlberg – an artist who came to speak have kindly told me so. To the very mixed in the first year of the series and who may and grateful public who enjoyed them. And well be the last. to myself because of my involvement with Sadly, the London Consortium is now the work and its connections to my writing. dissolved. Sad, because there has been

I had written my very first piece on art for much to interest architecture students in and about Mary Kelly on the occasion of the talks over the past nine years. Sad for the completed Interim at the New Museum me as it has been a pleasure to find the in New York in 1990. I had supervised a artists, come to know the work, and have Consortium dissertation on Sosnowska the it seen at the AA. I have not had any rules year before. I had been impressed by Anri about those I invite. I have chosen them Sala’s ‘1392 Days Without Red’ (commis- because they interested me. That has been sioned by Artangel) the previous autumn. enough to power this series for a long time. I had followed Becky Beasley’s work for The fact that we have been able to present some years with a growing admiration, such a list of artists at the AA relates of and I intended to write about it. course to the help I have had from Joel This spring the work of the four invited Newman and his student technicians, and speakers involved digital and computer Belinda Flaherty.

animation techniques that altered our watch the lecturesTo please visit www.aaschool.ac.uk/lectures 23 Meta-Realities

Meghan Dorrian and Glen Stellmacher, AA Design & Make masters students, reflect on the materialisation of the relationship between site and scale in Hooke Park.

Roundwood timber framing workshop in the Big Shed with Charlie Brentnall

pithy meta-realities of material production and its relationship to our well-being. The Design & Make brief is to construct at 1:1. Access and an intrinsic rela­tionship to material issues at Hooke Park allow for the conception of architecture which gains depth and sa­lience by responding to the meta facets of material production. We

are backpedalling from the starting line. Allowing Meta Scale Addressing this as a project parameter, Issues to Drive the 1 Scale the design approach comes from a greater of Architecture magnitude; one power exponential to the What does it mean to allow meta scale 1:1 realm. We begin by looking at the scale issues directly related to social, economic, of the greater whole, the scale of materials ecological, humanistic, and material in their raw form; the single tree amongst imperatives to drive the design of full scale the greater forest. Our sense of materiality architecture? is diametrically opposed to the material Building materials are locked within modularity and dimensionality within which

esign & Make programme programme esign & Make the composition of our surrounding architects design. environment. As we extract these materials Working from meta scale forward we alter their scale from the greater whole. allows for control over material in its virgin As our relationship to the original scale form which is otherwise over­looked. This of material reduces and becomes distant, is the direct power of the Design & Make our design process is reduced as well, away agenda, where the realization of 1:1 from the real, distant from the higher level architecture is driven by a meta:1 mentality realities of material cultivation, production, and its tangible relationships felt every day. and consumption, toward the dimensional. Design & Make directly ad­dresses meta The loss of understanding of meta issues scale imperatives surrounding material at is leading toward an architecture which Hooke Park, and as a consequence affects is driven by sheet material and geometric design which becomes informed and The work and progress theThe D of work at the AAat link: can the be found following at designandmake.aaschool.ac.uk. aspiration, imbued with disregard for the strengthened by the meta imperative. 24 A visit to the Archive

AA archivist Ed Bottoms invites us to look at two mementos from a turning point in the school.

The menu cover from only two years later announces an annual reception at which the President would have enter- tained guests and held small exhibitions for the occasion. This cover was designed by Stephen Rowland Pierce, an alumnus The first of the items here is a badge of the school whose diverse career would from 1929 that would have been worn include designing the City Halls of Norwich pleaserchives visit by the President to special occasions. and Slough, as well as consulting on the The medal was designed by one Cecil town planning of Malta. Walter Thomas, a celebrated sculptor What makes these pieces particularly and medalist of the period whose clients interesting is the fact that they represent a also included the Royal Mint. A closer key turning point at the school, namely the look at the architecture represented on advent of the debate about modernism. The the medal reveals a ‘greatest hits’ of styles, contrast of Cecil Thomas’ arts and crafts from gothic to moorish, including a badge with Rowland Pierce’ bold menu depiction of St Paul’s Cathedral and the cover is surely a testament to this shift. City of London walls. Behind this rises Everyone is welcome to visit the AA an art deco sunburst, and the piece as Archives, which is open all week and a whole is very much a celebration of always has interesting theses, drawings www.aaschool.ac.uk/librariesarchives the arts and crafts movement. and artefacts on display. on the AA information more A For AA CONVERSATIONS

AA Conversations is a website that collects and communicates the numerous conversations occurring in and around the AA. Since its launch in late 2012, it has featured contributions from students, staff and members alike. The site contains a variety of content that is updated several times a week – from profiles that dissect different organisations and groups, to opinion pieces that reveal personal positions on contemporary issues, to interviews about upcoming projects, to reviews of local and global events, to, most popularly, brief excerpts from research currently being undertaken. The homepage is a constantly shifting landscape of different stories that appear in different formats and rearrange to reflect the passage of time. Articles are interspersed with observational comments via Twitter to create the format for an online conversation, which is accessible to all. Scrolling through the homepage, which is archived annually, reveals every story written during the current academic year. This assemblage of content is an interpretation of the AA’s own floor plan – an aggregation of strangely shaped spaces that somehow fit together to form a coherent whole. The website has been an opportunity to create links within the web-based world that the AA currently inhabits. At the end of each article are links to lecture videos, programme sites, practice websites and blogs that allow the reader to find more information about a topic and continue reading. The medium through which stories are communicated is also being tested with more textual articles and shorter pieces accompanied by bold imagery. The introduction of videos to the site saw a steady increase in visits. In the coming months, the website will include a comments feature to cultivate more of a discussion around each article. This is an example of how AA Conversations is a continually evolving platform for the student community, staff and wider membership to engage. The online articles are catalysts for longer discussions offline and can facilitate collaborations both locally and globally. By collecting these discrete compositions, whether they be brief anecdotes, fantastic tales, news reportage or overheard rumours, the hope is that by navigating them and finding connections, they might become an engaging conversation. As Mark Twain once said, ‘Let us make a special effort to stop communicating with each other, so we can have some conversation.’

Photo Valerie Bennett the conversation: join To @AAConverse AAConversations W conversations.aaschool.ac.uk E [email protected] 25 Introduction to Fabrication of Kaleidoscopes

Cody Kitchen, Tien Chen and Samantha Gebb, visiting students from Princeton University, reconcile architectural education in America and at the AA with regards to their immersion in AA Stuff.

Cody: When I began my visiting term, I was so unclear? If quantity of effort exerted most impressed with the stuff that I saw.1 is being measured as an informant of The AA makes beautiful stuff. But my richness of meaning, then I veritably honest opinion, shaped as it was by the exclaim that I tried quite hard to understand place from which I came – a place where ‘stuff’ in the way that I thought my studio the worth of one thousand words is director and tutors expected. However, superseded only by one thousand more as a final product, the ability of my stuff to – could see only minimal value in that stuff. actually say something meaningful seems What good is stuff when words can take tenuous. But this is not a battle I am willing its value away as quickly as it is bestowed? to lose. In my confrontation with stuff, I have In the arena of words versus stuff, the realised that the problem is not in my object, former is armed with tried-and-true but in my approach. I have not been trying weapons, while the latter utilises anything to understand stuff in a ‘product-ive’ way. and everything it might find useful with no This is what I am beginning to glean from

established success rate. Words, if one so my tutors’ urgings to ‘just make something’: chooses, have the advantage of asserting Samantha: I am starting to see stuff as themselves with an arsenal of universally an agent of process. Stuff is hard to make recognised grammatical structures when it is assumed to require intensive

and understood meanings. Stuff has the effort in the form of extensive thought. But disadvantage – or the liberty – of much less what if stuff could be thought itself? Like protocol to follow. While this guerilla-like a hastily jotted-down sentence fragment, experimentation is exciting in its potential a list of ingredients, or a flicker of a dream, for fresh ideas, it is also daunting in its stuff amounts to the uncensored sketches equivalent potential for failure. that become building blocks for structured, Tien: Yes, stuff was not the easiest to intellectually demanding syntheses. These grapple with. First, I realised that, compared objects of generation – sometimes rapid, to what surrounded me, my stuff was pretty sometimes laborious – assert their value pale. The incredibly detailed kaleidoscope in their tangibility. The presence of stuff with ten layers of coloured ornaments my vaporises the fear of the blank page. classmate produced beat my kaleidoscope by at least seven layers. And I’m still not 1 Included in this statement is my completely sure about why we had to make working definition of ‘stuff’ – that kaleidoscopes. which I can physically see. Why should I put so much energy into

If you would like to find out more about the about the find to out more like would you If AA School, link: please Visiting access the following www.aaschool.ac.uk/visitingschool crafting an object when its significance is 26 Too much is never enough!

Tyen Masten, tutor in AA Diploma Unit 5, playfully extrapolates on the relevance of Stuff for architecture and implicitly questions the role of the contemporary architect.

Elephant LP by Mat Maitland 27

All we hear is radio ga ga Not only has this process become Radio goo goo more significant, but it is something which Radio ga ga constantly challenges us as designers, All we hear is radio ga ga due to an accelerated rate of change. Radio goo goo The goal is to be aware of what is being Radio ga ga delivered, what is useful, and what is being All we hear is radio ga ga re-distributed by the architect. Only then Radio blah blah can architecture actively engage in the – Freddy Mercury inevitable process of transculturation, which is taking place at hyper speed, with Every day we are confronted with a an understanding that the aim is not to multitude of choice; if we remain uncon- produce universality or singularity. The scious in this wealth of information, it can so-called difference and complexity which easily become just background visual noise has been pursued during the past 15 years, that loses meaning and internet goo goo mixed with fetishising digital tools, has or ga ga (or just google). only resulted in shiny metal sameness. Due to the onslaught and almost These universal approaches to architecture, nauseating amount of flattened visual and the technophiles propose, have become cultural input available to the contemporary outdated self-referential systems that architect, it is ever more crucial that we actually resist cultural complexity and become adept at analysing this stuff. For only produce singular design visions. If architects, this stuff extends into various we now understand that complexity has aspects of the field, but for the purposes been confused with what was actually of this article I would like to focus mainly on just difficulty, then we can move towards visual and cultural stuff, and how it impacts an engaged complexity that requires the way we produce architecture. inclusive diligence. But how can we be more accepting and By mastering this flow of information at once remain critical of all this information, the architect can assume a more compre- so that it does not become simply goo goo hensive and directed role as a composer or ga ga? If we are resistant to stuff during of information. Thus, if we understand our this current tidal wave of information, we role of architect as a compiler or composer, may somehow be missing out. Therefore it rather than that of an artistic authoritarian, is important that we not only learn how to then we see this dynamic universe of manage the amount and quality of informa- STUFF as an opportunity for developing a tion that we take in, but also actively multitude off messy difference. This aligns participate in that process; that we should with Robert Venturi’s statements in be constantly collecting information in an Nonstraightforward Architecture: A Gentle active rather than passive way. As a Manifesto ‘By embracing contradiction as participant-observer amid this vast well as complexity, I am for vitality as well sea of goo goo and gaga the architect must as validity.’ And again later ‘I am for messy constantly be aware of making it a useful vitality, over obvious unity.’ By harnessing tool in the process of creation. If achieved, the visual and cultural information that this stuff can be given significant value surrounds us, we are hopefully liberated as a tool for transforming visual and cultural from the self-imposed rules implied by aspects of architecture in a positive way. unification and can begin to actively In the 1940s Fernando Ortiz coined engage with the process of transculturation. iploma Unit Five. Follow the link to see to the link Follow Five. Unit iploma the term ‘transculturation’, which describes With a tuned ability to orchestrate the the process of multiple cultures fusing wealth of visual data available to us, with one another to create new common architects can then become less ‘Moses cultures. This process became more on the Mountaintop’, delivering the laws of relevant during colonialism, but one architecture, and be more like a DJ, could argue that the topic has become delivering an exquisite track. more relevant with increased access to a multitude of cultures through global

Tyen Masten teaches Masten D Tyen and composes’ Stuff: ‘compiles the unit how of more www.aaschool.ac.uk/study/dip5 networks and the internet. 28 Let’s get Stuffed!

Antoine Vaxelaire, a Fifth Year student in Diploma 9, reveals his views on the ways in which we consume stuff.

‘Les chats en force.’ What if this was our end? 29

It has become accepted and more strangely This implies two things: on the one overlooked; the world is ‘flat’. From hand, that we should stop assuming, economists to sociologists arguments of especially in the architectural world, that globalisation, mass-media, high speed fibre everything and anything is interesting. This optic cables or even the ‘Y-generation’ are is not the case, and more importantly, such all we hear, yet (almost) no architect speaks words have lost their relevance within our of this flatness, nor do they build anything discipline. A subject matter (just like a tool) that closely relates to it. There is a reason has no interest as such; it only gains value for that: the world isn’t flat, it’s levelled. when theorised, linked, broken, assembled While flatness removes intrinsic singulari- and reversed; its relevance imposes its ties and imposes a common language, positioning, both physically, through the levelling drowns specificity into an ocean of architect’s proposal and conceptually, stuff that tends to average it all. Accepting through its historical baggage. On the this new state of information is surely not other hand and this is a consequence enough. We need to learn how to digest it, of ‘interesting syndrome’ – we are falling walk through it, and ultimately, we need to in the levelling trap when we agree that properly get stuffed by it! everyone’s opinion is valid in any field. The Our past informs us that the nineteenth- startup world today (the architect of social century flâneur struggled through the media) follows a new dogma: that of crowds of Parisian arcades; that the collaborative consumption, which simply twentieth-century voyeur fought against means that rather than studying art history the American high-rises, and our present in school, you pay your neighbour to give screams at us: we need to extract ourselves you evening lessons and foolishly assume from the mediatic swamp and define our that he is suited for the job. If there are new paradigmatic individual. What is the obvious domains where collaborative twenty-first-century mindset, or how can consumption offers great value (ie, food, its tool (media) help us define it? A tool has services), there are others where it needs no strength without a technique. To use an to stop urgently. Architecture is one of them. iPhone as if it were an ordinary telephone Architectural expertise does not reside in is simply as worthless as those who find images or their production and therefore refuge in the naïve critique of our new doesn’t belong to everyone, for that would digitalised era, arguing that we have lost be us shooting ourselves in the foot and all sense of the ability to communicate reducing our fundamental doing into a via so-called ‘real’ human relations. That merely averaged showing. Therefore this is nostalgic and counterproductive since crucial ‘doing’ asks us to intellectually follow it is obvious that the value and potential what was digitally launched, rather than of our mediatic world is purely dependent digging through information (as it is usually

on the way we use it. Furthermore, we have done). The new figure of the twenty-first a responsibility to be critically constructive century wants to pan over the information, every time we launch Google. and he would find in the topsoil of media To use the internet’s endless database what was once hidden in the bedrock of as if it were a library is both a mistake libraries. He should embrace the open and a break in the construction of that contiguity of the atlas (levelled knowledge) tool, a tool whose strength resides in its over the close continuity of the book openness, its acceptance of weakness (hierarchic information). Basically the ntoine please visit please visit ntoine and its levelling. Every figure, be it human ‘panneur’ wants to be the turkey rather than or artificial, shares the same value as its the stuffing. projected image, which is the reason LOLcats and social revolutions share the Let’s get Stuffed! same number of views on our computing devices. It is the reason we all care to know but have stopped knowing learning. This is potentially dramatic; let us refuse to be averaged, let us not respect knowledge

To see more work from A see work more To http://dip9.aaschool.ac.uk but urgently build a knowledgeable mind. 30 We Have a Lot of Stuff in the Photo Library

Andrew Higgott, the AA’s slide (photo) librarian from 1975 to 1989, and in 1986 awarded the AA Grad Dip in History and Theory, documents the history of the Photo Library since it was first set up more than a century ago.

The Photo Library has been built up as thousands of original images of architec- a co-operative venture over more than a ture that are not taken from books and not century: initially, AA members travelling duplicates, but photographs taken in situ around Britain and abroad searching for of innumerable buildings from the Glasgow buildings of interest gave photographs School of Art to the Taj Mahal, from to the collection. Hugh Stannus provided Palladian villas to the Sunset Strip. a huge number of pictures of the ancient During the early 1950s, Kodachrome sites in the Middle East and John Loftus made its appearance, and the 35mm colour Robinson of English country houses, slide became the standard way of photo- among much else. graphing architecture. A second collection, The first Photo Librarians were Rachel superseding that of lantern slides – 35mm Morrison and then Marjorie Morrison, who slides – were added to many thousands was librarian from 1935–75. The collection of large-format slides which were re- they built was of the three-and-a-quarter photographed to provide the core of the inch (825mm) square ‘lantern slide’. From new smaller-format collection. Many that, an impressive and well-edited survey exceptional photographs may be found in of Western architecture was built up, this collection: the short-lived buildings of comprising some 40,000 images, which is the World Fairs in Brussels (1958), Montreal still held as a unique and valuable archive. (1967) and Osaka (1970); Canon Parsons’ A classification system, unique to the AA, photographs of Italian churches; and Alec was developed to address teaching needs. Bellamy’s of the USA in the 1960s. F R Yerbury is of the greatest impor- The changes of the 1960s and 70s in tance as an individual photographer. This architectural education required a broader gifted amateur was, alongside his otherwise approach to building the collection. The very demanding job of running the AA design teaching staff, rather than historical School’s administration, one of the most or technical lecturers, developed increas- significant architectural photographers ingly speculative projects and used the of the 1920s and 30s, during which time he resources of the library to develop their brought the imagery of modern architecture pedagogy, while students (who were in Europe and the USA to Britain: his allowed to use the collection from 1971) photographs were exhibited, and published became, at times, demanding borrowers. in a series of a dozen books as well as over Bernard Tschumi, Peter Cook, Dalibor a hundred journal articles. Vesely, Charles Jencks and Reyner What makes the AA’s library unique Banham were among the frequent users is its role as the repository of tens of of the collection during this period. A more 31

150,000 slides of buildings and places. Photo Valerie Bennett 32

Below The Robin Evans Collection Right Lantern slides Photos Valerie Bennett 33

inclusive understanding of architecture was revived; and a far more ambitious and history – including the anonymous programme of exhibitions was initiated. In architecture of the city, vernacular architec- recent years, valuable collections of slides ture of many different cultures, examples by Reyner Banham, Robin Evans, and Ernö of technical inventions and even pictures Goldfinger have been donated to augment of people, shaped radical changes in the the Photo Library’s collection. collection. I became librarian in 1975 and The Photo Library also expanded in oversaw this development in order to form terms of developing a video collection, a more proactive role for the library. which includes an archive spanning several Staff of the library, including Marjorie decades and incorporates lectures by most Morrison and long-time part-timer Hazel of the major figures in architecture. And Cook, had already set up a tradition of the collection’s move in 2008 to the ground

taking photographs for the collection, rather floor of 37 Bedford Square allowed for than depending on others to bring them in. the establishment of the AA Cinema. But This was further developed during my Valerie Bennett’s role has gone beyond period as librarian, and continues with my that of curator, and her photography of the successor, Valerie Bennett, who extensively events at the AA has become an intrinsic contributes to the collection. The period part of School life. Lectures, workshops, of the later 1970s and 1980s, under the juries and events are photographed by

hoto Library has to offer has Library to hoto chairmanship of Alvin Boyarsky, also saw her and added to the School’s blog and the start of the consistent photography digital archive. of student work in the School, as well as Its current total of something like half a collection of images of School life. a million images extends beyond what its The 1990s saw more radical changes, early history might have suggested: the and Valerie Bennett who had become role of the camera in the development and Librarian in 1989 took the work of the library documentation of architectural processes in new and different directions. A very have become absolutely fundamental. And successful series of cards of images from the far wider access and use opened up the collection were published; the early by digital media has enormous potential for

To see what else see what the AATo P www.aaschool.ac.uk/photolibrary please visit and conversations.aaschool.ac.uk twentieth century idea of the Camera Club its further use and growth. 34 eBay Still LiFes

Juliet Haysom, Third Year student in Intermediate Unit Five, stumbles upon an evocative observation.

It is particularly difficult to take a picture and fabrics, mounting structures, lighting of a mirror, as it is always trying to make a rigs and polarising filters, all of which picture of something else. These incon- require the photographer to remain oblique. gruous images, taken from listings on eBay, The most comprehensive approach is to use demonstrate exactly that. Walls, windows, these in combination with a photographer’s floors and ceilings are crisply reflected in tent, within which the mirror is positioned their flawless surfaces, producing a collage and lit. A perpendicular photograph is of extraneous visual information that pulls taken through a tiny hole in the tent’s fabric, focus from the mirrors themselves. leaving the smallest possible trace of the These are profoundly unprofessional camera in the resulting image. photographs but, as eBay is full of them, These photographs reveal irrelevant is it true to conclude that their value is not details about the sitting rooms, bedrooms, affected by their unconventional represen- sheds, gardens and conservatories from tation? Or do their owners have neither which the mirrors are being removed. the time nor inclination to do a better job? It turns out that to completely remove It might in fact be the case that in order these rooms from the mirrors first requires to take a decent picture of stuff you no the construction of another kind of room

longer want, you have to buy more stuff altogether – a visual vacuum outside of to is tangential eBay on mirrors of exploration aysom’s first. Scouring online forums for advice on which the owner and his home recede how to photograph a mirror reveals from view.

recommendations for translucent papers H Juliet can which the be found 5, at Unit Intermediate in project her following link: www.aaschool.ac.uk/study/inter5 35

The mirrors of eBay 36 The internet is stuff

Tommaso Franzolini, director of Factory Futures Summer School, discusses architecture’s need to address the role that datacentres will play in the future of the profession.

If garbage is the forgotten by-product customised modularity that shifts away of mass production, today’s information from the traditional image of a monolithic, economy finds its physical doppelgänger raised floor factory shed full of servers in the infrastructure supporting our growing towards modular, pre-manufactured need for data storage and distribution. components, which help reduce costs, Stuff – understood here as the material- increase scalability, and improve energy without-qualities of data production – takes efficiency. Microsoft ITPAC’s (IT Pre- the form of highly generic boxes arrayed Assembled Component)3 combines around the complex security, energetic and compute, power, cooling and networking spatial requirements of the datacentre. As in self-contained modules, which allow for the amount of digital information increases the right-size of the initial build, respond tenfold every five years, and Moore’s law – just in time to business fluctuations and which the computer industry now takes for operate in potentially unmanned, lights-off granted – says that the storage capacity conditions. The latest developments in of computer chips doubles roughly every open-air components technology enable 18 months, it is evident that the physical the broader use of free air cooling instead reality of data production will become a key of a constant flow of conditioned air. driver of future industrial and urban politics.1 This drastically reduces both energy and While we could dismiss this scenario as water consumption to nearly domestic essentially anti-architecture, or celebrate it levels. These new modules supersede the as a sci-fi dystopia, it may now be the time traditional idea of servers in container-like to discuss the ways in which this phenom- boxes: today, it’s the container itself to enon is shaping our productive landscapes. become a computer. Information becomes By focusing on the physicality of data matter at an architectural scale. production rather than on the overrated AOL’s Micro-datacentres are leading discourse of ‘virtual architectures’, the aim the way towards the miniaturisation, is to provide both technical insight and a autonomy and distribution of the storage critical understanding of the built world’s facilities, thus opening to a conceivable increasingly pervasive reality. near future in which the datacentre for Browsing the web in search of informa- the post-cloud era could be small, power- tion on how data is stored and secured one efficient and clustered to enable an discovers a rapidly evolving ecosystem of incredible amount of geo-distributed users, suppliers, building technologies, capacity at a very low cost.4 This approach software, platforms, content creators, data creates the potential for networks of (big and small), regulatory forces, utilities, micro-datacentres, each supported by solar governments, energy consumption, politics power, that can operate together to enable and company operating tenets.2 Key players a follow-the-sun strategy in which IT such as Microsoft, Google, and HP are workloads shift across regions throughout driving the evolution of datacentres as the day. Cloud-based companies will soon 37

Image of a Google server, located all over the world from Iowa to Finland

start to populate their own in each city increasingly abstract character of our because it is more efficient than current productive relationships, it may also offer a ‘mega datacentres’ and creates a more new disciplinary opportunity to rethink the efficient network by distributing data to production of contemporary aspects of the edge: without the need of a physical space: the problematisation of dynamic building, the philosophy behind these processes, the spatialisation of information Generation 4 datacentres are opening and the incorporation of information realistic scenarios of fully distributed, highly technologies into matter may become the delocalised conditions of production and necessary resources for the re-empower- capitalising on the exponential powers ment of the discipline within contemporary

of grid computing. Current technological conditions of production.

advancements in the industry of data storage and distribution are enabling the 1 ‘This is our first time in the situation gradual transformation from an economy where we couldn’t store all the based on the networking of human information we create even if we

intelligence towards a new economy based wanted to.’ John F. Gantz, ‘The Diverse on the networking of machine intelligence 5: and Exploding Digital Universe’. the architecture of the factory loses any An IDC White Paper. March 2008. traditional spatial quality and reappears as 2 datacenterknowledge.com – A useful highly generic stuff devoid of any represen- repository on datacentre related news tational content – ie, black boxes of circuitry 3 globalfoundationservices.com – GFS and silicon distributed in what remains of is the engine that powers Microsoft’s the old concept of the city. cloud services In actualising the theories of a legacy 4 loosebolts.wordpress.com – Michael that span from Hilberseimer, to Branzi and Manos CTO of AOL Services Natalini, this radical integration of building 5 For greater details see: Philippe Morel, and information technology seems to ‘n extensions à Extensions de la grille. question once again the very foundation Sur la production contemporaine et la of architecture and urban design. As the notation à partir de Le Corbusier et technomorphic, non-spatial, non-figurative Ludwig Hilberseimer’, in Multitudes 20, distributed character of this stuff repre- printemps 2005, Paris, March 2005. From 1–12 July 2013 Tommaso Franzolini Franzolini Tommaso 2013 July 1–12 From – the Futures Factory of the second direct edition will Visting School in Ivrea, Italy. For more information information more AA For School Italy. Ivrea, Visting in please visit http://factoryfutures.tumblr.com. sents the last material expression of the 38 AA Membership: Events, Visits and Trips

Photographs of the latest events organised by the Membership Office. 39

Top left: Honorary Members’ Evening, 5 March 2013, photo Valerie Bennett; Bottom left: Canada Water with Piers Gough, 3 May 2013, photo Valerie Bennett; Top right: ScanLAB Gallery Talk, 19 January 2013, photo Sue Barr; Bottom right: La Maison de Verre Day Trip to Paris for members, 18 April 2013, photo Sue Barr For more information on up and coming membership events membership on up events and coming information more For www.aaschool.ac.uk/membership/events please visit 40 Remembering Alan Colquhoun, the friend

Barbara Weiss, AA graduate and a close friend of Alan Colquhoun, commemoratively reflects on the life of the great theorist, educator, practitioner and friend.

The perfect embodiment of the elegant, highly cultured, Anglo-Saxon bachelor, Alan was always admired and respected by all who knew him for his exceptional intellect and charm. His great need for personal independence endowed him with what always seemed to me an enviable ability to create for himself a unique and ever-evolving lifestyle, one that perfectly reflected his current interests, curiosities, and professional ambitions. When I first met Alan in the 1980s, he was at the peak of his international academic career at Princeton, spending term time in the US and ‘holidays’ in Europe. During the long summers he would catch up with projects at his greatly respected whether just to enjoy his unique company practice, Colquhoun and Miller, revive his and humour, or to seek out someone whose many life-long local friendships and opinion we cherished, or, if we felt strong, generally re-stoke his Englishness, before to engage with in one of the exhilarating heading back to New Jersey in September. and exhausting debates about architecture life olquhoun’s These very active and successful years – or anything else in life – that were Alan’s were followed by his retirement from favourite form of sport. C lan Princeton to London, from where he Alan’s last years were marked by his continued, until the very end, to read intense determination to live on, making the voraciously and eclectically, write, travel, most of every day and every hour, enjoying teach and discuss. Classical music, and long walks in the park, while also methodi- particularly that of Haydn and Schubert, cally preparing his legacy, sorting his supported him through life until his very fascinating archive, and, despite failing last hours. eye-sight, continuing to read new and Despite this somewhat solitary cherished old books. He basked in the existence, and the many fruitful hours spent warmth of the celebrations for his 90th working at his desk, delighting in the gentle birthday, both privately and at the AA. views of the green slopes of Primrose Hill, An exceptional and wonderful man, an Alan was surrounded by friends of all types, exceptional scholar, of a magical generation students and colleagues. We all loved – and that is disappearing, he will never be www.aaschool.ac.uk/video/alancolquhoun2011. in a sequence of lectures delivered by his close his by a sequence friends lecturesin and of delivered and Kenneth Frampton of the likes including collaborators, Bob Maxwell. link: A lecture can the be found following at now very much miss – our impromptu visits, replaced. the AA A celebrated 2011 In October 41 recommended reading

Books on ‘stuff’ available from the AA Bookshop

Junkspace with Running Room Contraband Rem Koolhaas/ Hal Foster Taryn Simon London 2013, 19 x 12cm, Gottinghen 2010, 23.8 x 17.8cm, 78pp. Hardback 200 colour illustrations, 224pp. £12.00 (Members receive a 20% Paperback

discount until 31 May 2013) £40.00 In ‘Junkspace’ (2001), architect Rem Taryn Simon lived in John F Kennedy Koolhaas itemised in delirious detail International Airport from 16–20 November, how our cities are being overwhelmed. 2009. JFK processes more international His celebrated jeremiad is here updated passengers than any other airport in the and twinned with ‘Running Room’, a fresh United States. Contraband is comprised response from architectural critic Hal of photographs taken 24 hours a day of Foster, who writes: ‘The manifesto is a more than 1000 items detained or seized modernist mode, one that looks to the from passengers and express mail entering future – Junkspace makes no such claim: the US from abroad. At the US Customs “Architecture disappeared in the twentieth and Border Protection Federal Inspection century,” states Koolhaas matter-of-factly. Site and the US Postal Service International Junkspace does a harder thing: it “foretells” Mail Facility, Simon documented items the present, which is to say that it calls on including counterfeit American Express us to recognise what is already everywhere travellers cheques, heroin, a dead hawk, around us.’ an illegal Mexican passport, deer penis, Cuban cigars, counterfeit Disney DVDs, GHB concealed as house cleaner, counter- feit Louis Vuitton bags, undeclared

Order these titles online at aabookshop.net where where aabookshop.net these at Order online titles books, new a selection of special offers and some backlist titles is available. jewellery, steroids and an ostrich egg. 42 new from aa publications

Dogma: 11 Projects AA Agendas 12 Pier Vittorio Aureli and Martino Tattara Drawings that Count With an introduction by Brett Steele Edited by Francesca Hughes and afterword by Gabriele Mastrigli With an interview with Mary Beard 120 pp, extensive b/w ills and essays by Noam Andrews and 280 x 232 mm, paperback David Edgerton March 2013 192 pp, extensive col. & b/w ills 978-1-907896-30-9 245 x 225 mm, paperback £25 April 2013 978-1-907896-26-2 Over the past ten years the Brussels-based £20 architectural studio Dogma, founded and led by Pier Vittorio Aureli and Martino No architectural category is more fickle or Tattara, has focused almost exclusively on more artificial than ‘context’. This collection large-scale projects and citywide interven- of 60 large drawings produced over five tions that look beyond mere physical size to years by AA Diploma 15 addresses the expand conceptual frameworks and construction of context by architecture for radically rethink what it is to produce an its own particular purposes. A self-declared architectural project. This book explores 11 ‘render-free zone’, the unit’s interrogations works developed since 2002 that collec- of architecture’s seminal sites (antiquity, tively present the Dogma ethos: to see the technology, the future and its proxies) urban project as a comprehensive domain examine the role of figuration and the in which architectural form, the political and exclusion of indeterminacy in the always the city are reclaimed as one ‘field’. already mediated question of context. Mobilising and reinvigorating both drawing These line drawings – against the ascen- and text these 11 projects range from dancy of parametricisation and the glossy speculative and theoretical proposals to rendered perspective – question architec- investigations that question today’s modes ture’s ambivalence to the artifice it installs of housing. between itself and the outside world. 43

Adaptive Ecologies: Bricoleur Bricolage Correlated Systems of Living Frank Barkow Edited by Theodore Spyropoulos 297 x 210 mm With essays by Patrik Schumacher, June 2013 Mark Burry, Brett Steele and John Frazer 978-1-907896-29-3 336 pp, 240 x 184 mm, hardcover £ tbc May 2013 978-1-907896-13-2 Prompted by the art historian Hal Foster’s £30 recent description of Barkow Leibinger as ‘bricoleurs as much as they are engineers’, Recent architecture must now cope with Bricoleur Bricolage presents an overview

new social and cultural complexities that of Barkow Leibinger’s recent work, largely demand networked systems which are through the recently completed Tour Total timebased, reconfigurable and evolutionary, building in Berlin. and a corresponding model of urbanism defined as an adaptive ecology. In this ublications or or ublications context the AA’s graduate Design Research Lab (DRL) has pursued its recent studio agenda through project-based research, focusing on alternative models of housing. Integral to this research is a notion of architecture that looks towards designing systems that seek an intimate correlation of material and computational interaction. This book presents the results of this research while constructing a generative view of space, structure and the exploration of behaviour based models of living through

For furtheron AAFor information P www.aaschool.ac.uk/publications visit order, to patterns found in nature. 44 and on the iBookstore for A iBookstore onthe and are distributedbooks worldwide A through editions 2by 1and Margit Mayer G and available format, beginning in ebook with out-of-print the published by AA the Bedford P n ew ress is pleased to release the first ebooks ebooks first the to release pleased is ress from . The C . The ivic C pple devices. be ity C ity ahier now is series dfor p d ui Bonsiepe. The ui Bonsiepe. mazon formazon Kindle ress

Bedford Press is an imprint of AA Publications. The Civic City Cahier series can be ordered at: www.bedfordpress.org/ebooks 45 46 news

Council and former Tutor) and Dalibor Vesely On 9 March Takako Hasegawa (AADipl (former AA Tutor and former Councillor). 2001 GradDipl(AAIS) 2009, AA The results of this year’s Election of This highest classification of AA Foundation Master) organised ‘Positive Officers and Council for the 2013/14 membership is reserved as a special Failure’, an event exploring the spatial session are as follows: honour granted to individuals whose possibility of ‘Black Maria’, a temporary contributions to the work and develop- timber structure created by artist Richard President Sadie Morgan ment of the Architectural Association, Wentworth and the Swiss practice, (former AA Tutor) * or to the education or profession of Gruppe, in King’s Cross. Vice President Diana Periton architects in general, is particularly www.kingscross.co.uk/blackmaria (former AA Tutor) * noteworthy. This year’s six new Honorary Vice President Frank Duffy CBE Members join a select group of 11 Vikrant Tike (GradDipl(AAIS) 2010) (AADipl(Hons) 1964) * existing Members. Nominations for and Nilufer Kocabas from Studio Amita Hon Secretary Yasmin Shariff Honorary Membership are welcome, and Vikrant participated in the Vernal (former AA student) * will be considered by AA Council later Workshops, a collaboration between Hon Treasurer Paul Warner * this year – please use the following form: Cardiff University and Bigli University Past President Keith Priest www.aaschool.ac.uk/downloads/ hosted in Istanbul 20–24 April. (AADipl 1975) hon_membership_nomination_form.pdf. http://vernal.bilgi.edu.tr/?page_id=2 To read more about this event please visit Ordinary Members conversations.aaschool.ac.uk Joanna Chambers Eleanor Dodman (AA Dip 9 student) Published & Exhibited Oliver Domeisen (AADipl 1996 and former Unit Master) * LECTURES & SYMPOSIA The Venice Biennale 2012 exhibition Lionel Eid (AA Dip 10 student) ‘Venice Takeaway: Ideas to Change Summer Islam (AA Dip 11 student) ‘Material Formations’, a workshop led by British Architecture’ co-curated by David Jenkins Tomas Pohnetal (AADipl 2011), is to Vanessa Norwood (AA Head of (former AA Vice President) * be held at the Architectural Institute in Exhibitions) was shown at RIBA London Alex Laing (AADipl 2012) Prague 18–25 August. Deadline for 26 February – 27 April. It launched in Aram Mooradian (AADipl 2011) * applications is 31 May. conjunction with a season of debates Hugh Pearman www.aaschool.ac.uk/public/newsno- and events featuring Sadie Morgan (AA Rory Sherlock (AA Inter 10 student) * tices/schoolnews.php?item=740 President elect), Alex de Rijke (former Rebecca Spencer (AA Dip 16 student, AA Tutor) Daryl Chen (AA MA(Dist) former AA Councillor) * Ioanna Symeonidou (AA EmTech MSc H&U 2003), Alex Warnock-Smith Jane Wernick (former AA Tutor 2009) in collaboration with Dr Yannis (AADipl 2006, H&U Course Master) and and former AA Councillor) * Zavoleas from Patras University taught a Takero Shimazaki (AA Inter 2 Unit computational design workshop entitled Master). * Elected on the 2013/14 ballot. ‘AB-USE Computation in Architecture’ as www.architecture.com/whatson/ part of the eCAADe 2013 conference, in exhibitions/at66portlandplace/2013/ The period of election opened at 10:00 Porto, Portugal. Sushant Verma and spring/venicetakeawayideastochangeb- am on Monday 25 March and closed at Pradeep Devadass (both AA EmTech ritisharchitecture.aspx 5:00 pm on Friday 26 April. MArch 2013) also presented at the This year’s ballot included a total of conference a paper based on their thesis AA exhibition ‘Frozen Relic’ by ScanLab twelve very strong candidates running for project ‘adaptive[skins]’. which ran 12 January – 9 February was six vacancies on the Ordinary featured on the BBC’s website. Membership of Council. Koichi Takada (AADipl 1996) spoke at a www.bbc.co.uk/news/ The scrutineers were Mi-Voice panel discussion of leading Australian science-environment-21125177 Electoral Services, and their official and Japanese Architects on 13 April with report can be viewed at: fellow speakers Andrew Burns, Peter Arthur Mamou-Mani (AADipl 2008) www.aaschool.ac.uk/downloads/ Stutchbury and Yoshihito Kashiwagi. completed a window display installation result-of-the-election-of-officers-and- They discussed ‘Parallel Nippon’, an for the Karen Millen store on Regent council-2013-2014.pdf exhibition exploring Japanese architec- Street this spring. The installation was ture at the Japan Foundation Gallery part of the Regent Street Windows The AA Council and a great number of in Sydney. Project, organised by RIBA. long-standing friends of the AA came http://architectureau.com/calendar/ http://mamou-mani.com/karenmillen together on the evening of 5 March 2013 exhibitions/parallel-nippon to celebrate the presentation of The AA Sustainable Environmental Honorary AA Membership to David Gray Ricardo de Ostos (AA Inter 3 Unit Design programme was featured in The (AADipl 1955, former AA Tutor, former Master) spoke at Columbia University’s Architects’ Journal, 8 February 2013. Academic Deputy and former AA Graduate School of Architecture, www.architectsjournal.co.uk/sustain- Councillor), Herman Herzberger, Planning and Preservation annual ability/architectural-association-march- Charles Jencks (former AA Tutor), symposium on 20 April. sustainable-design-graduate- Eva Jiricna CBE (AA Past President), http://events.gsapp.org/event/ show-2013/8642356.article Joseph Rykwert (former AA student interpretations-discerning-fictions 47

Pedro Alonso (AA H&CT MA Tutor) Paula Velasco (AA EmTech MSc 2011) The Study Center in Tacloban, and Hugo Palmarola exhibited their work and Alberto Moletto (AA SED MSc Philippines, designed and built by current at the Pratt Institute in New York, 19 2009, former AA Tutor), with Cecilia AA School students with the local February – 20 March. Curated by Puga, won the International Competition community, was one of five finalists of Catherine Ingraham (AA Visiting for the renovation and new building for the Architizer A+ awards in the Lecturer), the exhibition ‘Cold War Cool the Palacio Pereira in Santiago, Chile, categories of Student Design & Build Digital: Variable, Pre-constructed, which will host the Museum and Libraries projects and Architecture & Consequential’ presented 40 scaled Council of the Chilean Government. Collaboration. Enrique Limon (AA DRL prototypes of modernist, prefabricated, Alan Chandler (AADipl 1996) was the MArch 1997) was also selected as a and globally distributed Cold War-era conservation consultant. The project is finalist in the category of Architecture housing systems produced using expected to be completed in 2014. and Aging for Woven Terrain, with the contemporary 3D printing technologies. competition entry for senior housing in www.pratt.edu/news/view/ Alexander Laing (AA Dipl 2012 and AA Novato, California, and he received a school_of_architecture_to_present_ Councillor) and Francesco Belfiore special mention in the Architecture and exhibition_and_symposium_on_cold_ (AADipl 2012) were awarded first place Modelling category for his entry for a war_era with their proposals to transform the civic centre in Bodo, Norway. sunken cruise ship Costa Concordia into The first Beverly Bernstein Prize has Elif Erdine (AA DRL MArch 2006, a memorial garden, in a competition been awarded this year to Carlos Nunez current PhD in Design student and commissioned by research platform (AA H&U MA 2012). The award was DLAB Director), Alexandros Kallegias ICSplat. established to commemorate former AA (AA DRL MArch 2011, DLAB Tutor) and www.dezeen.com/2012/12/19/ Registrar Beverly Bernstein, in Daghan Cam (AA DRL MArch 12, DLAB new-concordia-island-by-alex- recognition of her lifelong interest and Tutor) showcased the final prototype of ander-laing-and-francesco-matteo- specialisation in housing and develop- AA DLAB 2012, Fallen Star, during the belfiore ment planning. It will be awarded annually Kinetica Art Fair 2013 in London, 27 to the best submission within the AA’s February – 3 March. Bolles & Wilson director Professor Peter Housing & Urbanism MA and MArch www.kinetica-artfair.com Wilson (AADipl 1974, former AA Tutor) courses to help disseminate the ideas has won the 2013 Australian Institute of and conclusions contained in it that can Kathryn Findlay (AADipl 1979) was Architects Gold Medal. The award be of relevance to address housing and featured in The Guardian’s ‘Portrait of acknowledges his outstanding body of urban development issues in the the Artist’ series. work across more than thirty years, citing developing world. www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2013/ Wilson’s long standing contribution to the apr/02/kathryn-findlay-architect- development of architectural drawing, The deadline for applications for this portrait-artist intellectual contribution to thinking on year’s Independents’ Group Research architecture and dedication to teaching, Fellowship, in joint collaboration with Nomadic design studio Unknown Fields, at the Architectural Association and RMIT and the AA, is 28 June 2013. The directed by Liam Young and Kate more recently at the Accademia de grant is open to young architects seeking Davies (AA Dip 6 Unit Masters), has Architettura in Mendrisio. an opportunity to develop research been profiled in the current issue of www.bdonline.co.uk/news/peter-wilson- projects and experimental prototypes for ‘Thinking in Practice’. awarded-aia-gold-medal-2013/5052983. public presentation, exhibition and http://thinking-in-practice.com/ article publication in collaboration with unknown-fields-division consultants and manufacturing partners Suha Bekki (AADipl 1994) has won a under the guidance of the IG team. competition to design the logo and Candidates are asked to submit a project branding identity for the new proposal and work plan, responding to Careers & Prizes International Training Academy of the themes, topics and collaborations Projacs International in London. offered by the Group. Projects will run The winners of the 2012–13 AA Writing once per year over a period of four to six Prizes are: First Year, Sandra Kolacz; Atmos Studio, the practice of former AA months. Second Year, Radu R Macovei; Third Unit Master Alex Haw, is creating www.independentsgroup.net Year, Lili Carr. ‘a Mobile Orchard’ for this year’s City of London Festival. Devised as an edible, The winner of the Dennis Sharp Writing climbable, inhabitable series of urban Prize for Diploma School is Christopher trees, the installation opens to press on C Bisset. 21 June and will rove through five of the City’s squares over the course of five Sho Ito, Intermediate 5, won best weeks. Technical Studies Project in the 3rd Year www.atmosstudio.com and Mond Qu, Diploma 6, won best Technical Studies Thesis in the 5th Year. Toyo Ito (HonAADipl 2003) was awarded the 2013 Pritzker Architecture White Cube Bermondsey, designed Prize Laureate in March. by Casper Mueller Kneer Architects, the firm of former AA tutors and current AA Satpal Kaur Panesar (AADipl 2006) is Visiting School Co-Directors Marianne pleased to announce the construction of Mueller (AADipl 1995) and Olaf Kneer two multifamily passive houses in (AADipl 1993), has received a Brooklyn NY, which she has been Commendation by the Civic Trust. working on with Building Science www.cmk-architects.com architect Chris Benedict.

48

OBITUARIES Chemical Weapons HQ in The Hague, Hooke Park since. His energetic and the US embassy in Bangkok and positive outlook on life allowed him to AA Member Eric Charles Browning campuses for the University of California develop strong collaborations such as (AADipl 1950) passed away earlier this and Ohio State University. the one with former AA Tutors Marco year at the age of 86. Poletto and Claudia Pasquero with whom Leading Israeli Architect Ram Karmi he co-ran a design studio in Cornell’s Architect Charles Cullum died on 04 died on 11 April 2013 aged 82. Karmi, who Diploma school in 2012. He shared his March aged 86. Born in North won the Israel Prize for Architecture in passion for architecture with his wife Lincolnshire and a 1953 graduate of the 2002, was both celebrated and Dana Cupkova and had three wonderful AA, he emigrated to Canada and became controversial for his brutalist design for kids: Talullah, Alexander and Gwendolyn, a prominent figure in Newfoundland. He buildings such as the Supreme Court in his youngest, now two years old. Simos founded his own firms, first The Jerusalem, Tel Aviv’s new Central Bus Yannas (AA SED Programme Director) Architect’s Guild, then Cullum and Cullum Station, the renewed Ben Gurion Airport writes: ‘Kevin was an exceptionally Ltd and served as president of the Royal and the Holyland Project. Born in talented individual whose drive, vision, Architectural Institute of Canada and the Jerusalem in 1931, Karmi studied at the initiative and leadership qualities were Newfoundland Association of Architects. Technion in Haifa, Israel, before unique and irreplaceable. His death at attending the AA in 1951 where he such a young age, and at such a Architect George Finch died of a heart graduated in 1954. He returned to the promising moment in his career, is an attack 13 February aged 82. Finch, who Technion to teach from 1964–94 and was immeasurable loss for our field of graduated from the AA in 1955, designed later appointed Full Professor of the Ariel sustainable design in architecture.’ for an egalitarian post-war London and University Center of Samaria. He www.news.cornell.edu/stories/2013/02/ his buildings were constantly underlined lectured at MIT, Columbia University and architecture-professor-kevin-pratt- by a social approach to urbanism. the University of Houston. dies-43 Working at first with London County Council, Finch went on to work Richard Martin (Rick) Mather died in The family of Samuel (Mookey) extensively with Lambeth Borough April after a short illness. Graduate of the Rathouse (AAPlanDipl 1970), who died Architects Department under Ted AA urban design course (1966), Rick unexpectedly last September following a Hollamby, creating Lambeth Towers in taught a first year unit with fellow stroke, have sent a wonderful recount of Kennington and the iconic Brixton American Dale Benedict 1974–77. He set the life of the urban designer, architect Recreation Centre, a well-loved feature up Rick Mather Architects in 1973, and founder of Moross Rathouse of the area, which was recently saved specialising on design and master Partnership. The article tracks Mookey’s from demolition. His Weston Adventure planning for cultural and academic career, starting with his arrival from Playground Southampton, designed in institutions. In 1980 he was commis- South Africa in the swinging London of collaboration with his life partner and sioned to design a phased restructuring 1966, with wife Rosalind, to study Urban architect Kate Macintosh, won a RIBA of various AA spaces, including the Design under Leslie Ginsburg at the AA. award in 2005. existing bar, kitchen, exhibition gallery It describes Mookey’s awakening to www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2013/ and toilets, and the former photo library, urban design ideas of the time, about feb/27/george-finch drawing materials shop, triangle which he would argue with a cohesive bookshop and crèche. Amongst many group of fellow AA students into the Former AA Intermediate Unit 6 student celebrated projects, the refurbishment of early hours of the morning, in their Leonardo (Leo) Garcia Alarcon Dulwich Picture Gallery, an extension to Bloomsbury Square studio. The work of Estrada passed away on 28 March aged the National Maritime Museum in the practice, all centred in London’s West 30. Leo was a keen photographer and Greenwich and a masterplan for the End, goes from early work on Carnaby contributed numerous images to the AA South Bank Centre, all from 1999, helped Street in the 1960’s (to which the practice Photo Library, which were exhibited at place his practice in the international would return in the 1990’s) to strategic the AA and featured in various AA media. architectural scene. The firm’s work on planning for the recently completed St the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford was Martin’s Courtyard in Covent Garden. We belatedly report the death of nominated for the Stirling Prize in 2010. You can read the full article on: American architect and AA Life Member Mather served as AA Councillor from www.aaschool.ac.uk/public/newsno- Gerhard Kallmann, who died last year. 1992–96 and remained an active AA tices/obituaries.php Born in Berlin in 1915, Kallmann came to Member. London with his family in 1937 where he www.ft.com/cms/s/0/817665a0-acda- AA Life Member George Unwin died on enrolled at the AA and graduated with an 11e2-b27f-00144feabdc0. 17 January in Papworth Hospital, AA Diploma in 1941. Moving to the United html#axzz2RwOnspYS Cambridgeshire, at the age of 91. After States in 1948 he went on to teach at serving in the Navy the Second World Chicago Institute of Design and was Kevin Pratt (AA E&E MA 2004) passed War, he completed his architectural appointed Associate Professor of away on 19 February 2013 aged 43. Kevin studies at AA, where he graduated in Architecture at Columbia University. He was assistant professor at Cornell 1950. He worked in Coventry for WS formed Kallmann, McKinnell & Knowles University, where he was conducting Hattrell, was made a partner in the firm in 1962, after winning an international transdisciplinary research in architecture in 1961, and set up their Manchester competition to design a new City Hall for and computer science to design and office where he worked until his Boston, with Columbia graduate student simulate the ecological behaviour of retirement. He leaves a legacy of many Michael McKinnell. Their brutalist buildings. His MA dissertation at the AA fine, well-made public buildings. building became the firm’s most iconic focused on Hooke Park, at a time when commission that unfortunately, like so the Dorset Campus had only recently many buildings of that era, was dismissed been acquired by the School, thus by the public it was created to serve. making a positive early contribution to Other prominent projects included the the thread of conversations and Organisation for the Prohibition of developments that have followed at next issue’s theme

time

contributions to [email protected] school announcement

Agendas

AA Agendas series will soon begin accepting proposals from individual students, teams and recent graduates

The Director’s Office is pleased to announce that in 2013 the AA Agendas series will begin accepting proposals from individual students, teams and recent graduates alongside the units and programmes of the school. Agendas seeks to expand as a More details on how to apply will be available platform for selected research and ideas at aaschool.ac.uk in June with the aim to from across the portfolios of the school, accept proposals by mid-summer for a first increasing both the breadth and variety of selection of titles planned for release in the publications featuring the work of the school. first half of 2014. STUDENT announcement

wanted

ACQUIESCENT PROPERTY MAGNATE FOR LONDON-BASED ARCHITECTURE CANNIBALISM WITH SOCIAL ENTERPRISE MANOEUVRE WITH RESIDENCY COMMUNITY SYMBIOSIS WITH HUNGRY LONDON CRITICS WITH INTERNATIONAL ARCHI-ART BONANZA!

What if we imagine a radical commitment between architects, developers and users?

London’s spaces are owned by an assortment of disconnected interests: corporate, Anthropophagic Architecture is run by government and private developers. Lili and Albane, two AA students attempting This creates holes in the city’s fabric to fill the holes. and divisions among the users. Rather than these holes remaining stagnant, we suggest Applications to seeking the opportunities they offer. [email protected] school announcement

Agendas u s t f AA Agendf as series will soon begin accepting proposals from individual students, teams and recent graduates

The Director’s Office is pleased to announce that in 2013 the AA Agendas series will begin accepting proposals from individual students, teams and recent graduates alongside the units and programmes of the school. Agendas seeks to expand as a More details on how to apply will be available platform for selected research and ideas at aaschool.ac.uk in June with the aim to from across the portfolios of the school, accept proposals by mid-summer for a first increasing both the breadth and variety of selection of titles planned for release in the publications featuring the work of the school. first half of 2014.

f

f

u t

AA rchitecture Y I the as questions a i wor eBa the sho an an 6. M S contrasts b s p as the school over man a Kate Davies’ U s offerin life from man life as AA d OF AY THIS ISSUE CONTINUES TO TRAC ISSUE THE LAST ‘ AFTER ON ‘ nterme hin Eghin s p STU EAR pp ifferent meanin ifferent ectrum of p d g d commentar y earances in Peter C in Peter earances STUFF eanwhile, a k a eanwhile, ossi k in I ’s mar nclu tuff, awor ra OF THE IN school THE LIFE BY FOCUSINEAR y d RESEARCH ashira’s teachin g ad ddy d duates p often b D ’ IN OR nterme iate 11’s Ibiza- o answers. le, with tutors,le, stu de Juliet H ENT Juliet k , hi b d et stallet hol etween Di etween ifferent p out the ‘stuff’out of the school in that in focus star are n . W g ro k D hl y showcase of the helmets ’ –THE TO nown F d ER TO ESTA duction in L d that enj has e continue to reflect on g d alei y tellin iate U for ALTO him y d y a p ers y oscop ro ifferin loma units –from b nit 5. iel oo g som d ears, tooears, d ase p P g p ers as p ers as p p k d IC E B hilosop osin ective to the wi ’s at lectures s d LISH WHAT COMES d unit. AN hoto K THE P iam Youniam ic p d eals with eals X g view ivision, Di ents, mem as man g as o AMINE GETHER hoto essa y g e art of herart k on a h ra d frequent RO y k p in U in D IN p D THIR g an

oints G h WHEN RESS y of y new

p b

nit 11nit loma

ers d y

d

D

e

G 19 news from the architectural association