Crafted Narratives: matter & space

A Sort of Homecoming (recorded at Slane Castle, County Meath)

Background

One of the key political and social agendas at the beginning of 21st century in the UK as well as in the EU is the notion of ‘austerity’. Since the banking crisis in 2008, the challenges faced by the eurozone, and the direction taken by the UK coalition government the majority of UK residents have been forced to struggle to make ends meet due to the spending and production cuts. Like it or not, the recent economical situation is directing our culture to look at ‘what we have’ rather than ‘what we don’t have’. This is the case for both international ‘importing’ and ‘exporting’ in terms of products, skills and ideas. For example, a phrase, ‘locally produced’ now has added values and equally, specific home grown skills, technologies and ideas are being exported for overseas success in many sectors.

One positive dialogue, therefore, to come out of all of this has been the political, social and economical

shift in focus to look ‘within’ the UK for inspiration and production, including the food industry, fashion agendas and in some ways the construction industry, where a large number of European labour force have left the UK. Austerity Britain is forced to make the most of the home-grown products and talents. ‘Making’ the living (and our environments) within our means is now part of the necessity. Architects’ roles are also being challenged within all of this. This year’s Venice Biennale Director David Chipperfield has asked the international participants to consider the ‘Common Ground’ between the architects as well as the places, the ‘grounds’ we interact with. Referring to ‘the importance of buildings not as individual spectacles but as the manifestations of collective values and as the settings for daily life’, he says, ‘The tangible sense of context and history remind us that our built world is a testament to the continuous evolution of architectural language and critical to our understanding of the world around us’.

The social, economical and political challenges are demanding our re-think on our material and historical context and how as architects we can interact and intervene with it. It is with this background in mind that, Inter 2 very much focusing on the ‘building’ (and its location), will return from our travel explorations to Japan and Brazil in previous years, back to the UK and to investigate in and around the British Isles in search of Crafted Narratives, through matter & space for contemporary architecture.

As a focus of this study of the context and the ‘ground’ we will learn and employ the disciplined archaeological methods. We will also refer to the concept of ‘conglomerate ordering’ coined by the British architects Alison and Peter Smithson, a concept that describes an explicit contextual extension, defining complex relationships on various levels - an ensemble of different existing and new buildings that require imagined activities to complete a place.

Soho Dig, a reconfiguration of Soho’s clandestine activities through a rechanneling of its water system; wax, cement dust, sand, chalk, plywood support, steel tubes, copper tubes and moss, by Albane Duvillier (2012)

The Smithsons once said:

‘Things need to be ordinary and heroic at the same time.’ So how can we be heroic when the economy is being tightened and the trades limited? and how can we have an ordinary, shared agenda that is ‘Common’ through the focus on each locality, each site and each project maximising the qualities of what we find there?

Francis Allys, When Faith Moves Mountains (2002)

Let England Shake (recorded at Eype Church, Dorset)

Site

Our site for the year will be Kings Cross, London, England. Recently, Kings Cross has seen significant development plans and construction including the restoration of St. Pancras Station, originally designed by George Gilbert Scott and the expansion of Kings Cross station, moving the Eurostar ‘gate’ to north London from Waterloo. The new master-planned development area is one of the largest sites of construction in London at this moment, altering previous image of the area as an abandoned post industrial district with prostitution and drug abuse. There are many architectural and other creative studios based in the area benefitting from the area previously being abandoned. Also, there is the British Library, designed by Colin St John Wilson located next to St Pancras Station and Central St. Martins art college has also recently relocated there, designed by Stanton Williams.

We will start our focus on south of the station area along Gray’s Inn road, where it is a mixture of new and old outside of the masterplan. Here we still find the Georgian squares next to old pubs, juxtaposed against ITN building designed by Norman Foster as well as The Calthorpe community garden all in the same vicinity.

During the year, the Unit will travel around the British Isles for archaeological studies and inspiration regarding craft. Our references and inspirations will include Alison and Peter Smithson, Josef Beuys, O’Donnell & Tuomey, Glenn Adamson, as well as Denys Lasdun, and William Morris.

Abandoned Kings Cross

Kings Cross Masterplan

Typical Proposal wiping all evidence of previous materiality of the site.

OK Computer (recorded at St. Catherine’s Court, Bath)

Architecture

What does it mean to ‘craft’ today in architecture? The resources are scarce. Each material needs to be consciously selected and explored to its full potential. Each craft needs to be worked to its maximum. Each architecture we make is significant.

When designing additional structures at Bath University 6E wing, a building that links various parts like the streets of old cities, the Smithsons said, ‘the first duty is to the fabric of which it forms a part’. As in previous years, we will look at materials and processes. This year our method will be archaeological. Archaeology is a field that studies human activity through the analysis of material evidence found on site. We will collect and analyse materials from our site in Kings Cross and trace their political, social, economic, environmental implications.The understanding of past human activities in the area will constitute the model (or anti-model) for a radical transformation of the fabric Kings Cross. Our interventions will depart from the ground, interpreted here both literally and metaphorically, to reconstruct ‘the tangible sense of context and history’ of the area. The responses will be subtle and intricate, tactile and process-based. And they will accommodate human activities that respond positively to the challenges imposed on us by the sober conditions of the world today.

Paolo Rosselli, Athens (1972)

‘The now is the inmost image of what has been … in order for any modernity to be worthy of becoming

antiquity, the mysterious beauty that human life unwittingly puts into it must be extracted.’

(from Georges Didi-Huberman, ‘The Drapery of Sidewalks’)

Francesca Woodman, House 4 (1976)

matter & spaceterm one, site dig

In Term One we will get acquainted with the archaeological method. Through a series of guided visits to different sites, we will learn to employ archaeological procedures. Through a series of seminars, discussions and film screenings, we will undestand their physical, spatial, material, ideological, environmental implications.

The archaeological method is a rigorous process that involves a series of repeated, carefully measured gestures. Some of the data will be promptly revealed to your naked eye. Some will require more detained observation and the use of special instruments. Working in groups, you will tailor your own toolkit to perform your excavation, searching inspiration from optical devices, surveying tools and medical appliances. Your kit may respond to aspects as diverse as smell, sound waves, wear and tear, light levels.

By the end of the term you are expected to have a full archaeological recording of the site. This will include a photografic survey, plans and sections, your toolkit, a material catalogue and a model which records different temporal layers of the site.

week one, introductions, interviews, site visit, archive visitweek two, project development, field trip one

week three, craft workshop, seminar (how to perform an archaeological survey), project developmentweek four, seminar (archaeology, art, architecture), project development

week five, project development, critweek six, project development, open jury, trip to hooke park

week seven, film screening (Over your cities grass will grow),project developmentweek eight, seminar (archaeology & augmented reality), project development

week nine seminar (Pompei), film screening (Journey to Italy), project developmentweek ten, project development, field trip two

week eleven, project developmentweek twelve, project development, final jury

Joseph Beuys, Das Rudel (1969)

‘The rigours of the celebration of matter provide a way in which the history of the site does not disappear. Rather it remains a set of echoes in the building itself – echoes that cite the history of the site (…) and make audible an ongoing conversation with the ancient history contained

in the limestone of the site.’

(from Rebecca Schneider, ‘Housing Remains’)

Ana Mendieta, Untitled, Silueta series (1976)

matter & spaceterm two, ordinary and heroic buildings

‘One central issue is the idea of territory and the way architecture has a duty to collaborate in constructing this territory ... aspects of ‘weaving’, ‘connecting’ and ‘interlacing’ are looked

at again, as well as the bodily experience of architecture and of moving through space.

Max Risselada on the Smithson’s notion of ‘conglomerate ordering’

Our designs will be based on the notion of ‘conglomerate ordering’, as defined by the Smithsons. One aspect of conglomerate ordering is the quality of addition and subtraction as seen in the Bath 6E building, Hexenhaus, and also at Upper Lawn Pavilion building. The archaeological findings and recorded drawings, models and photographs will tell as much about our proposals as the existing and the past conditions. We will design in and around Gray’s Inn road, anchored at the Calthorpe gardens, where a community-led open garden currently exists. The proposition is to tie forces with existing institutions such as the British Library as an annex or the Calthorpe Project itself, providing spaces to sell, work, communicate and store.

The project will be shown as a continuation of specific methods developed by the Unit as archaeological tools and recordings. Drawings, models, photographs and the other ‘tools’ to be maximised to help create a sense of specific place and architecture that is ordinary and heroic.We will develop the proposals at 1:100, 1:200 and 1: 50 scales for the building. The site will be drawn mainly at 1:2000 and 1:1250.

week one, project developmentweek two, seminar (building, part one), project development

week three, seminar (building, part two), project developmentweek four, project development, combined tutorials

week five, project development, open juryweek six, project development, crit

week seven, seminar (building, part three), project development, hooke parkweek eight, seminar (building, part four), project development

week nine, ts interim juries, project developmentweek ten, project development, 2nd year final jury

week eleven, 3rd year previews

Alison and Peter Smithson, Patio at Hexenhaus (1986-2000)

Patricia Mato Mora (Inter 2), Puppet theatre (2010)

Jyri Eskola (Inter 2), Double Wall (2011)

6a Architects, Raven Row (renovation of a listed building), London (2009)

Enric Miralles and Benedetta Tagliabue, Diagonal Mar Park, Barcelona (2002)

Peter Zumthor, Kolumba (new wrapping the old) Cologne (2010)

Alison and Peter Smithson, Hexenhaus, Germany, 1984-2001

Alison and Peter Smithson, Upper Lawn Pavillion (1959-62)

matter & spacefield trip

the Unit will visit:

* archaeological sites accross Britain, ** Belfast in Ireland to visit buildings by O’Donnell & Tuomey***Germany to visit Hexenhaus and Tecta furniture factory by

Alison and Peter Smithson ****we will also visit other notable British- and European-

based architecture and arts of craft and archaeological nature

matter & spacetechnical studies: rigorous detailing

Our TS research this year will be focused on the notion of ‘rigorous detailing’. We will devise a series of building details that might allow certain phenomenon to take place, reacting to elements such as:

sound, light, touch, smell, use, weather

We will work through models and drawings as well as one-to-one prototyping. The effects of the elements will be rigorously tested and you will be asked to record the temporal aspects of your detailed features:

are they ephemeral or permanent? how do they change through time?

6a Architects, LC House, London (2012)

6a Architects, Raven Row, London (2009)

matter & spaceterm three: detail devices

During term 3, we will continue to develop the building proposals for the Grays’ Inn road sites. The additive and subtractive processes will lead to certain details encompassing the principle of each architectural proposition. The third year students will continue their detail investigations initiated in the Technical Studies. The second year students will choose one aspect of their intervention and design it rigorously.

We will develop, draw, model and build details and explore the spatial consequences that they bring. The details are to be in dialogue with the archaeological recordings and will enhance, contrast or provoke the context and its present and past materiality. The details may be devices for seeing, touching, preserving or celebrating.

Our design process will still be as disciplined, careful, and rigorous as our archaeological investigations. 1:5 detail drawings will be from the 1:20 cross sections across the building, showing uses and social implications within the drawings themselves. These will be supported by the models and photographs. Some 1:1 studies are also encouraged at this stage, where visceral qualities of the materials are expressed fully to implicate the imagined activities and narratives to occupy the site.

week one, project development, ts hand-inweek two, seminar (detail), project development

week three, project developmentweek four, juries week oneweek five, juries week two,

hooke parkweek six, project developmenweek seven, 2nd year reviews

week eight, final juries week nine, riba examinations

Doris Salcedo, Untitled (1992)

Hélène Solvay, Excentric, Superflous Entities Peacefully Protest Against the Efficient and Rational Takeover of Dean Street (2011)

Inter 2 Summer Show, 2009-10

Inter 2 Summer Show, 2010-11

matter & spacereading list

Deborah Aaronson, Design Like You Give a Damn [2], New York, Abrams, 2012. Glenn Adamson (ed.), The Craft Reader, Oxford, Berg, 2010. Lina Bo Bardi, Stones Against Diamonds, London, AA Publications, 2012. (forthcoming)Nicolas Bourriaud, Relational Aesthetics, Dijon, Les presses du réel, 2002. Victor Buchli (ed.), The Material Culture Reader, Oxford, Berg, 2002. Christopher Frayling, On Craftmanship: towards a new Bauhaus, London, Oberon, 2011. Tim Ingold, The Perception of the Environment: essays on livelihood, dwelling and skill, London and New York, Routledge, 2000.Indra Mc Ewen, Socrates’ Ancestor: an essay on architectural beginnings, Cambridge and London, MIT Press, 1993.Paula Orrell (ed.), Lucy + Jorge Orta: an introduction to collaborative practices, London, Black Dog, 2007.Alison and Peter Smithson, Charged Void: Architecture, New York, The Monacelli Press, 2005.Alison and Peter Smithson, Charged Void: Urbanism, New York, The Monacelli Press, 2001.Katie Lloyd Thomas, Material Matters: architecture and material practice, London, Routledge, 2007.Philip Ursprung (ed.), Herzog & de Meuron: Natural History, Baden, Lars Muller Publications, 2005.Olga Viso, Unseen Mendieta: the unpublished works of Ana Mendieta, Munich, Berlin, London and New York, Prestel, 2008. Peter Zumthor, Thinking Architecture, Basel, Boston, Berlin, Birkhauser, 2006.Bruno Krucker, Complex Ordinariness: The Upper Lawn Pavilion by Alison and Peter Smithson, gta Verlag, ETH Zurich, 2002.John Tuomey, Architecture, Craft and Culture, Cork, Ireland, Gandon Editions and the author, 2004.Max Risselada and Dirk van den Heuvel (ed.), Alison and Peter Smithson - from the House of the Future to a house of today, The Design Museum, The authers/010 Publishers, Rotterdam.As built, Caruso St John Architects, a+t ediciones, Vitoria-Gasteiz, Spain, 2005.Per Olaf Fjeld, Sverre Fehn, The Pattern of Thoughts, The Monacelli, New York, 2009.