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Diploma 7 – 2015/16

The Department of Not-Usually-Valued-Knowledge ♯3: The Secret Hospital

‘Health is a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being, not merely an absence of disease and infirmity.’ World Health Organisation – with thanks to Cedric Price, McAppy. (1973) We continue to pursue our central interest in an architecture that is influenced by the processes and technologies of search and retrieval. As the Department of Not-Usually-Valued-Knowledge we search into the architecture of our culture and its extreme tendencies to smaller, lighter, faster and fuzzier. The zone speculates on the architectural consequences of these technical trajectories, but importantly also on the effects of today's environment of the continuous ventilation and circulation of information on creative design action. We call this territory New Nature. This year, with the above quote from the WHO in mind, we will search into an architecture of prevention rather than cure - searching the vital and picturesque New Nature properties of the mis-used, dis-used, under-used, congested, overloaded and inappropriate sites of Greater London.

…..imagine yourself with a laptop on a lawn by a shed. The screen is your doctor, the lawn is your bed….so what is the shed for?..... We see Architecture as rolling compositions of discreet adaptions rather than seismic impositions, deploying strategies of enabling systems with precise life expectancies. Speed, Time and Interval are the principal components for designing to specific life-spans. We encourage a multiple aesthetic, individual interest and invention, and collective action across the school. We use Film-as-a-sketch-book as the means of both documentation and searching an idea, which in turn informs the making of Moving Drawings – the precise means for re-defining and re-presenting the on-going systems of an idea. We are not interested in solutions but in responses. The Prospectus for the Secret Hospital needs to be made NOW. Zone Caretakers: David Greene, Samantha Hardingham, We will continue our ongoing collaborations with artist John Walter, digital anthropologist Stefana Broadbent (Head of Collective Intelligence at NESTA) and sailor/filmmaker Giulio Bertelli, alongside a host of other special guests particularly from the healthcare professions. Image caption: Everything is connected and interconnected - Moad Musbahi and Konstantina Kouloluri

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Zoom into Zone 7……

• We are well-serviced primitives, exploring the architecture of New Nature. The zone has been operational for four years now, wading through digital dirt, and has already begun to picture an out-in-the-open spatial ambience; super-foreground and super-background has been added to our field of vision courtesy of Sir Humphrey Repton. A state of permanent mutual awareness is pronounced. Spaces of collective attention have been scoped. Steps taken into the New Nature Noosphere.

• The architecture of the New Nature evolves from a culture whose dominant raw materials exist outside the visible spectrum. Its emerging characteristics include the observation of landscape (in its broadest sense from political to environmental to domestic), of human behaviours (domestic life and its adaptions in relation to new communications technologies) and of technologies of approximation, (adaptive and responsive – learning, new uses for old, unlikely uses for new).  

• We are interested in architecture as the by-product of a continuum of design paradoxes. We look for time-based design responses that work with a collision between the subsurface components and systems of land/earth/environment and the ultra-surface of smaller-lighter-faster technologies of information and construction, aiming at the precise design of approximation.  

• We ask students to invent relevant forms of dynamic response and representation (film, animation and moving drawing) to search and describe a project. Studies of essential characteristics will be undertaken, namely the transformation, compression, abbreviation and invention of visual materials to be actively deployed as design tools.

• Our site is Greater London and all of its many feeds both physical and digital – specifically its mis-used, dis-used, under-used, congested, overloaded and inappropriate sites. Students will be charged with finding a pertinent location for their works. We will make a unit trip to Liverpool in Term 1 in order to visit, meet and participate in a jamboree of related live projects.

continued overleaf…

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• The zone operates as a live studio, and this year will pursue a new mode of discourse that favours collective production over individual consultation. Work-ins, not work-outs.    

• Architectural scale and order can only be derived from space in time. In 2006 The Prospectus for the Invisible University imagined new relationships between technology and nature with regard to learning environments. In 2015/16 The Prospectus for the Secret Hospital asks a similar question with relation to health and human comfort.

• In Zone 7 we think one of Cedric Price's special talents was in making design observations - which might also mean spotting a design opportunity. His design proposals were then in line with his own preferences (what are yours?) for: - relevant life-span - available technologies - ability to adapt and change That is the model of CP we hope to adopt in Zone 7. Key words: New Nature Film-as-Sketchbook Moving Drawing Search not research By-product Approximation Multiple Aesthetic Multiple Tutoring Pirates not the navy

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TO DO: over the course of 32 weeks. In general the unit will meet twice each week – once for work-in/discussions, once for seminar and/or presentation and review of new work. The unit space will be used as a studio not an office. TERM 1 Search One: To encourage multiple confusion, individual interests and be aware of: the unexpected response. An invitation to design a new department for the Secret Hospital - are you feeling OK right now? Develop your search skills to design and build a bill of quantities, qualities and intent for your department - a thorough investigation of your area of concern/interest. By thorough we mean to achieve an understanding of Form, Time and Behaviour: the expression of an idea on paper, material/fabrication/assembly investigations, conditions of context; site, social, political or otherwise and full immersion of the imagination in how to communicate the findings effectively. A minimum of 8 film-sketches will be produced over 11 weeks.

Medium for presentation – Film-as-sketchbook. Moving drawing.

Supporting material – Bill of Quantities on paper.

Workshops/seminars will include: Samantha Hardingham – Cedric Price and an Architecture of Approximation/

Magnet and McAppy David Greene – L.A.W.u.N and New Nature. John Walter – Authorship and Owning imagery + Alien Sex Club Giulio Bertelli – Searchology Stefana Broadbent – eHealth: a collective cultural transformation. Roger Zogolovich – backlands and badlands: the territory of the forgotten.

Unit trip to Liverpool.

. Search Two: Sufficiently incomplete – solve unrelated problems by relating them. Stefana Broadbent will set a four-week brief. Students will respond by rethinking and re-editing all accumulated material in order to set out the design principles for an architecture for the continuous circulation and ventilation of information that engages the simultaneous search, storage, retrieval and deployment information at a designated time and location. Consideration of all altered factors required: the idea, the expression of that idea on paper, material/fabrication/assembly investigations, conditions of context site; social, political or otherwise.

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Medium for presentation – Film-as-sketchbook + Moving Drawing series 1

Supporting material – Bill of Quantities on paper 1 X double page spread layout – text and artwork ready for

printing – for the Prospectus for the Secret Hospital TS5 – Proposal will be discussed with design tutors then put to TS tutors - investigation & evaluation of subject matter – plan organization and testing. Apply agreed proposal to design project: outlining several aspects but focus on one.

INTERVAL

TERM 2 Search Three: Acceptance of the truth should be considered and most likely questioned. Drawing on the principles set out in each new department, students will undertake site searches and develop their design proposal. Site investigations – document in model and/or drawings to scale, thoroughly and beautifully. Re-visit possibilities for materials technologies in relation to the site and articulate through design proposal. All projects are precise in their approximation of Location, Form, Time and Behaviour. Individual/small group site excursions and engagement with specialist consultants to be undertaken in Term 2 – to be discussed with design tutors.

Medium for presentation – Moving Drawing series 2 Supporting material – Bill of Quantities on paper

INTERVAL TS5 – submission

TERM 3 Search Four: No artefact is a work of art unless is humanizes us. All technical solutions are aesthetic solutions Design refinement and representation. Preparation of project/portfolio for final review. Construction of exhibition.

Medium for presentation – MOVING DRAWING + BOOK

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HTS statement: Diploma 7 will actively engage in the HTS course materials, serving as a worthwhile analytical tool for the enhancement of design work. TS 5 brief – Take Care: Diploma 7 presumes that all design questions generate a technical response and therefore the technical study forms an intrinsic part of the design project and is integrated into the portfolio. We will ask students to make use of Will McLean’s provisional ‘A-Z of Health and Architecture’ as a basis to develop an agile architecture that is responsive to changes in form, location and behavior. The A-Z is a working document that identifies, in more or less degrees of detail, everything from antiseptic materials to architectural placebo effects. With this in mind we are specifically interested in by-products, both technical processes and operations and new socio-cultural patterns. We look for new uses for old technologies and possible uses for new technologies, specifically in relation to materials and structures. Questions of life-span, size, movement, intended and unintended use, and planned obsolescence are all critical for understanding an architecture of approximation. The appropriate means of deployment of each line of technical investigation will vary from project to project, but the unit expects that every study be tested by way of physical and /or digital modeling to scale, acquisition of sample materials from manufacturers and analysis through moving drawing of possible applications or misappropriations. Each student will identify an area of technical investigation in the first and second film sketchbooks that focuses on a technical process or approach: one traditional and one innovative. During Term 1 they will refine their knowledge of their chosen area through in-depth searches and observing and recording primary sources. Areas to study will include components, fabrication processes and applications – all to be documented in a Bill of Quantities. In Term 2 this specialist knowledge will be applied and tested within the environment of the design project – documented in the Bill of Quantities and demonstrated in models and drawings at relevant scales. Medium for presentation – Moving Drawing + Book

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Sufficiently provisional and temporary resources for searching the post-digital construction site…… Book/Paper Things: Greene, D. & Hardingham. S. , L.A.W.u.N Project 19 (2008) Hardingham, S. Cedric Price Opera (2003) Murch, Walter, In the Blink of an Eye: A Perspective on Film Editing (Sliman-James Press, 2001). Eds. Cousins, Mark & MacDonald, Kevin, Imagining Reality: The Faber Book of Documentary (Faber & Faber, 2006) Fuller, R.B., Anthology for a New Millennium, ‘Comprehensive Designing’, from Ideas and Integrities, 1963, pp.69-76. Gideon, S. Mechanization Takes Command (1948) Marx, L. The Machine in the Garden (2000) Illich, I. Limits to Medicine – Medical Nemesis: the Expropriation of Health (1976) Ed. Borasi, G. & Zardini. M. Imperfect Health – The Medicalization of Architecture (2012) Stephenson, N. Snow Crash (1992) McLean, W. A-Z of Health and Architecture (draft document - 2015) Digital Things: World information

www.newspapermap.com http://demographics.coopercenter.org/DotMap/index.html Robotics

www.festo.com http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2014/aug/12/robot-­‐art-­‐tour-­‐tate-­‐

britain-­‐at-­‐night  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jkVBg_-­‐OviI  

Editing Video Co-pilot

https://vimeo.com/90150897 High-rise http://highrise.nfb.ca/prologue The British Textile technology Group http://www.bttg.co.uk The Building Research Establishment http://www.bre.co.uk http://tunnellingjournal.com/ Miscellaneous TED talks

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SSION Clown http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lW_tXgGrVu0 Vlogumentary http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gVvCA-q64Oo youtube /Cargo spotter http://www.skyboximaging.com/  http://www.bbc.co.uk/go/em/fr/-­‐/news/magazine-­‐22487281

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-29087184

TV Things Panorama – NHS The Perfect Storm (BBC iplayer 2015) All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace – series on DVD directed by Adam Curtis. (2011) Beast TV BBC Horizon ITV4 Unreported World Intermediate Unit 5 previous work 2012/13 - http://www.aaschool.ac.uk/STUDY/UNDERGRADUATE/?name=int5 Diploma 7 microsite. http://www.aaschool.ac.uk/PORTFOLIO/MICROSITES/microsite.php?title=Diploma%207&return=../../STUDY/UNDERGRADUATE/?name=dip7&url=dip7.aaschool.ac.uk