Issue 13 News from the Architectural Association AARCHITECTURE Beyond Entropy in Venice PG 20 Architectural Association Foster + Partners Prize PG 25 Other Babel PG 23 The publishing activities of the AA offer a timeline of the provocative and irreverent, often satirical and imaginative, and AA Visting Schools PG 12 occasionally bewildering and ridiculous. Publish on Demand or Demand to be Published PG 28 VERSO AARCHITECTURE CONTRIBUTORS Anne Save de Beaurecueil News from the Pedro Ignacio Alonso [email protected] Architectural Association [email protected] Issue 12 / Spring 2010 Jack Self www.aaschool.ac.uk Valentin Bontjes van Beek www.millenniumpeople.co.uk [email protected] ©2010 Emanuel Sousa All rights reserved Mollie Claypool [email protected] Published by the [email protected] Architectural Association, Yvonne Tan 36 Bedford Square, Elif Erdine [email protected] London WC1B 3ES [email protected] Tom Verebes Contact: Peter Ferretto [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] Nicola Quinn +44 (0)20 7887 4033 Brendan Woods Yan Gao [email protected] Please send your news items for the next [email protected] issue to [email protected] DENNIS SHARP TRIBUTE Evan Greenberg Guest edited by Mollie Claypool EDITORIAL BOARD [email protected] [email protected] Alex Lorente, Membership Brett Steele, AA School Director Samantha Hardingham Contributors: Zak Kyes, AA Art Director [email protected] Ed Bottoms [email protected] EDITORIAL TEAM Roz Jackson Nicola Quinn, Managing Editor [email protected] Paul Oliver Wayne Daly and Claire McManus, Graphic Designers Omid Kamvari Yasmin Shariff Scrap Marshall and Manijeh Verghese, [email protected] [email protected] Student Editors Olaf Kneer Simon Whittle ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS [email protected] [email protected] Valerie Bennett Aimee O’Carroll Franklin Lee Alex de Rijke [email protected] Architectural Association (Inc.) Satoshi Isono Registered Charity No. 311083 Jan Nauta Arthur Mamou-Mani Company limited by guarantee Charlotte Newman www.arthurmani.com Registered in England No. 171402 Christopher Pierce Registered office as above Sandra Sanna Marianne Mueller Charles Tashima [email protected] Thomas Weaver Luke Olsen Printed by Cassochrome, Belgium [email protected] Lisa Pasquale [email protected] Stefano Rabolli Pansera [email protected] AARCHITECTURE Issue 13 2 Post Occupancy Research 4 Klein’s Ecclesiastic Chrome 6 Modern Art Oxford ‘The Yard’ 7 Honourary Life Members’ Tea 8 A Review of a [Projects] Review: Animals, Predators and Vultures 10 Educating Architects, Reinventing Architecture 12 AA Visiting Schools 19 Venic Venic: Cedric Price at the Venice Biennale 2010 20 Beyond Entropy in Venice 22 Architecture on Display Book Launch 23 Other Babel 24 AA Bookshop and Bedford Press 25 The Architectural Association Foster + Partners Prize 26 New from AA Publications 27 New from Bedford Press 28 Publish on Demand or Demand to be Published 29 News 1 Projects Post Occupancy Research By Lisa Pasquale Cutting Edge Research into Environment ‘Buildings in Use’ The quality of the internal environment is being In the field of sustainable building design, topical measured using several methods. Air quality, for research is focused around qualitative and quantitative example, is monitored during the winter season to ‘buildings in use’ research. Commonly called post- determine the as-operational ventilation rates in the occupancy evaluation, the thread of enquiry is to classrooms. This aids in verifying if the designed rates determine how well the built environment suits the are achievable and also informs whether typical rates needs of the end users and to verify design are creating the environment standards set out in assumptions during the post-construction phase. design guidance. Where shortfalls are found, this Architype, an architectural practice managed helps the designers improve the handover of this and by Bob Hayes (AADipl 1974) and Jonathan Hines, future buildings, and to better train users as to when has been advancing this agenda of in-use research by and how often natural ventilation devices should be conducting extensive post-occupancy evaluations of in operation. This also helps verify and adapt design their buildings as part of a TSB-funded project with assumptions to take into account observed variations myself working out of Oxford Brookes University’s in behaviour, along with events not otherwise Low Carbon Building Unit. The goal of the research accounted for during design. is to develop guidance and design methods to aid Architype in delivering buildings that are reliably Feedback to the Design Team more usable, comfortable, healthy and energy efficient. The results from these studies are informing Architype’s discourse with their consultants, aiding in St Luke’s Primary School: understanding appropriate levels of design robustness, A Case Study identifying knowledge gaps in standard practice and St Luke’s C of E Aided Primary School in in being able to offer performance-verified solutions Wolverhampton, recent winner of the RIBA Sorrell to clients’ requirements. The research findings are Foundation Schools Award, is one of the primary case currently being collated and we hope to report them studies for the research project. By observing how the in a future issue of AArchitecture. With its practical building is performing and being used, and combining approach to understanding the built environment, this with the handover and post-occupancy evaluation post occupancy research is one of the most techniques, the research has aided the occupants to fundamental research practices offering clear paths settle into the building and has brought feedback to to higher quality, lower energy buildings. the design team. Lisa Pasquale is an alumnus of the AA Graduate Energy School’s MSc in Sustainable Environmental Design The building’s energy use is monitored using a website that helps users track their meter readings, giving immediate, graphical feedback on energy performance. The website utilises algorithms which predict annual usage from just a few weeks data, amending the analysis of the data to compensate for local weather conditions (called heating degree day analysis) thereby ensuring that colder weeks, when the building would naturally demand more heat, aren’t reported as having poorer performance than warmer periods. This has been integrated into the pupils’ routine by training the student council to input the meter readings as part of their other green school initiatives, and allows designers to remotely monitor the buildings performance. 2 Exterior: west elevation with horizontal timber cladding View down to the Key Stage 1 multi-purpose activity space. Photos George Mikurcik 3 Projects Klein’s Ecclesiastic Chrome By Jack Self Detail of church’s chrome façade 4 Tobias Klein had several models in this year’s Royal properties, light filtering and scattering effects as the Academy Summer Show. One of the rules for the Italian marble. ‘The original print was stimulated by entry is that no work shall be exhibited twice. the idea that digital manufacturing processes might Although these particular 3D prints have never been actually bring something to the project, express accepted, the same 3D model was previously exhibited. certain qualities that could not be expressed in any This raises the question: is Tobias Klein responsible other way.’ for the virtual model, or the actual print? In an era of ‘When I first saw the chrome, I was really digital duplication, what (and where) are we designing? considering whether to smash it against the next wall.’ The significance of the plating, and its ‘Tell me about the chrome model’ I said. relationship to the original intents of the project, Tobias Klein, AA pedagogue and co-founder becomes clear: although chrome has certain qualities of the experimental architectural studio Horhizon, sat in itself, this material has nothing to do with the back in the large wooden chair and gazed thoughtfully meaning of the project – it transforms the model up at his East London office building. ‘That model is and strips out the history of the design process. What an anomaly — a highly fetishised oddity.’ remains is a fetishised version of what was once an Several months before I had followed Klein to architectural model. where a small group of technicians and students were ‘It asks the question, “if I have to look at it as examining a new product of the Bartlett’s digital an object, what has it become?” – a scale jump that prototyping lab. They all turned, somewhat guiltily architects find quite scary and uncomfortable. It is I thought, and made space so Klein could see the focus no longer a model, but an object.’ Whereas previous of their attention. versions of the model were unquestionably Glowing beneath the white neon was a shard representational, the chrome model represents only of glistening silver about two feet long. A crystalline itself. The electrolytic process has transformed it from lattice of bone-like spikes hatched the surface, a recognisable architectural facade into a metallic fracturing and exploding into complex geometries. statue. There was something vaguely sinister about the dark Earlier versions oscillated between the virtual sheen emanating from the delicate lace star shells and and the real, between digital design methodologies crucified skeletons. I peered into the