Issue 10News from the Architectural Association

AARCHITECTURE

First Works PG 10

Adhering to the Rules PG 6

Isn’t a brief and a bibliography just for the faint-hearted?

Projects Review 2009 PG 16

Korea Visiting School PG 2

AA|FAB PG 8

Nicholas Boas Travel Award PG 12

AARCHITECTURENews from the Architectural AssociationIssue 10 / Autumn 2009aaschool.ac.uk

©2009All rights reservedPublished by the Architectural Association, 36 Bedford Square, London WC1B 3ES

Contact:contribute@aaschool.ac.ukNicola Quinn +44 (0)20 7887 4033

Please send your news items for the next issue to news@aaschool.ac.uk

EDITORIAL BOARDAlex Lorente, MembershipBrett Steele, AA School DirectorZak Kyes, AA Art Director

EDITORIAL TEAMNicola Quinn, Managing EditorWayne Daly and Claire McManus, Graphic DesignersScrap Marshall, Student Editor

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTSIoseb AndrazashviliValerie BennettLuisa MillerLee ReganCharles Tashima

Printed by Cassochrome, Belgium

Architectural Association (Inc.)Registered Charity No. 311083Company limited by guaranteeRegistered in England No. 171402Registered office as above

CONTRIBUTORSShumon Basar shumon91@hotmail.com

Alan Dempsey a.dempsey@aaschool.ac.uk

Braden Engel braden.r.engel@gmail.com

Peter Ferretto peter.ferretto@gmail.com

Eugene Han eugenehan@aaschool.ac.uk

Francisco Gonzales de Canales francisco.gonzalezdecanales@ aaschool.ac.uk

Olaf Kneer kneer_ol@aaschool.ac.uk

Chris Matthews info@pastinamatthews.co.uk

Marianne Mueller marianne.mueller@aaschool.ac.uk

Nathalie Rozencwajg r.nathalie@aaschool.ac.uk

Christopher Pierce pierce_ch@aaschool.ac.uk

Ali Seghatoleslami office@p-s-a.org

Deyan Sudjic

Tom Verebes global@aaschool.ac.uk

Liam Youngliamyoung@ tomorrowsthoughtstoday.com

VERSO

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2 AA Visiting School, Summer 2009 Courses6 Adhering to the Rules8 AA|FAB Designing Fabrication10 First Works12 Nicholas Boas Travel Award14 David Chipperfield at the AA16 Projects Review 2009 in Pictures18 Interior Project Lawyer’s Office Extension by PSA 19 AA Publications 20 MA Histories & Theories Thesis Presentations 200922 Reading List 24 David Medd26 Thrilling Wonder Stories27 News29 News Briefs

AARCHITECTURE ISSUE 10

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AA Visiting School, Summer 2009

The AA Visiting School features a wide variety of courses, programmes and workshops for visiting and international students, both in London and abroad. The AA’s Summer Architecture School, held over three weeks every July, is aimed at those who wish to explore a possible career in architecture, enhance their existing studies, or contemplate a change in their current career by sampling the AA’s way of teaching and learning. Now in its fifth year, the Summer dLab is a well recognised two-week workshop in early August that introduces and advances digital and computational design and fabrication skills. In June each year the AA Visiting Teachers’ Programme provides an opportunity for teachers from around the world to experience at first hand the AA’s unique teaching and learning strategies. In 2007/08 the AA launched an exciting new initiative for a series of Global Schools. Attended by a mix of local students, architects and designers and visiting overseas participants (including current or recent AA graduates), these intensive courses are based around a tightly focused design programme and supported by a series of seminars and presentations by AA and eminent local experts on topics related to the setting. In the coming year, Santiago de Chile, Beijing, Bangalore and Tokyo are among the new destinations joining the ones featured here. To obtain further information and register for any of the programmes listed here please go to the Visiting School section of the AA website or contact the Visiting School Co-ordinator, Sandra Sanna, at visitingschool@aaschool.ac.uk

Mini City Summer Architecture SchoolAfter years of what seemed like incessant growth the world over, the radical slowdown seems to have hit the construction sector the hardest. MINICITY, the 2009 Summer Architecture School, turned its attention to a reinvigorated examination of the micro and the modest. It explored the idea that a city like London might be understood as the aggregation of miniature moments instead of heroic accounts and iconic projects. One unit took this to a rationalist extreme by exploiting the legislative loopholes in the London Borough of Croydon’s planning documents, discovering an unexpected design freedom where

there was assumed to be none. Other students produced cautionary tales about a city where all its inhabitants have to forage for food. On the final presentation day, a huge temporary monument created by 100 people brought together some of the most famous images of the past in a participatory event. There was a fashion show that derived the ideas for its dresses from the Barbican complex, films and sound montages based on tiny patches of urban space and a diorama containing incidental observations from Elephant and Castle. Critics at the final presentation noted that this direction signalled a promising development: in times of economic difficulties, where resources and money are harder to come by, we make use of what we already have: our bodies, our actions and the actions we can elicit from others.

By Shumon Basar, Head of AACP and co-director of the Summer School and Natasha Sandmeier, Unit Master, Diploma Unit 9 and co-director of the Summer School.

dLabThe AA Summer dLab has recently completed its fourth year, continuing a programme that stimulates its participants with learning, experimentation and discussion of progressive workflows for contemporary architecture. Developing prototypical studies for complex geometric systems, this year the programme was driven by two units, headed by Toni Kotnik with Lorenz Lachauer, and Chikara Inamura with Shajay Bhooshan. Among the resources at the school used by the dLab, the AA Digital Prototyping Lab was integrated in close relation to the programme work, allowing for rapid development of computational processes that stressed fabrication with informed digital studies. New to this year and true to the goal of the programme, beyond the standard enrolment of students the dLab included selected students from the AA’s graduate programmes, allowing for the development of related architectural concepts to take place in an accelerated and mutually beneficial manner. By combining students and practitioners from a range of international backgrounds in close working proximity with those already accustomed to the practices of the AA, knowledge and the application of computational systems was rapidly shared and its

AA Visiting School, Summer 2009 Courses

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Summer Architecture School. Photo Valerie Bennett

Tel Aviv Workshop. Photo Christopher Pierce

Korea Workshop. Photo Peter Ferretto

Berlin Workshop. Photo Marianne Mueller

AA Summer dLab. Photo Eugene Han

AA Summer dLab work by Elora Brahmachari, Pierluigi D’Acunto and Edward Pearce

Singapore Workshop. Photo Michel da Costa Goncalves

Shanghai Workshop. Photo Tom Verebes

Beijing Workshop. Photo Brett Steele.

conclusions were tested to full effect within the concentrated time range of the programme, resulting in an exciting and truly landmark year for the AA Summer dLab.

By Eugene Han, Head of Media Studies, Unit Master, Intermediate Unit 8 and dLab co-ordinator

AA CSI 2009: Connections, Surfaces, InfrastructuresFrom 8–17 July 2009 in the David Azrieli School of Architecture at Tel Aviv University 40 international students, architects and designers worked in an intensive studio setting, many for the first time with Rhino, Maya and Solid Works, to produce an extraordinary atlas of unusual objects using Objet Geometries state-of-the-art ‘Connex 500’ liquid 3D printer. This was the first of three annual summer workshops exploring the architectural applications of Objet’s technology by blurring the boundary between drawing and 3D printing. Participants worked in four separate design units to a two-stage programme geared to achieving a daily 3D print. Fortunately, the printing schedule also afforded opportunities for a few trips to the city’s endlessly sunny and sandy beaches. What for the first four days became an almost unbearable lesson in overcoming Rhino’s ‘bad mesh’ and ‘naked edges’ without Magics, by the tenth day developed into a complex exploration of the limitations of the technology – defined by the workshop’s focus on connections, surfaces and infrastructures. The programme was punctuated with evening presentations by former and current AA design staff and students and eminent Israeli architects, all of whom, along with students and staff from Jerusalem and Haifa, attended the workshop’s spectacular rooftop final jury and exhibition at the ‘Hub’. To see a record of AA CSI 2009 go to: misarchitecture.co.uk/#/mis/projects/category/2009/ To join us at AA CSI 2010 go to: aaschool.ac.uk/visitingschool/telaviv

By Christopher Pierce, Visiting Schools co-ordinator, co-cordinator of the Tel Aviv Workshop and Unit Master, Intermediate Unit 9.

AA Visiting Workshop in Singapore – July 2009Fresh from completing our academic year, the Singapore Workshop provided us with a singular opportunity to move to the other side of ‘the fence’ and use the knowledge we gained in our unit experiences to provide workshop participants with tutorial and technical assistance.

Each unit was assigned nine sites, together with nine geographical elements, which were brought to life though a series of mappings, analyses and proposed scenarios and strategies. For the vast majority of the time the class became a creative – airconditioned – haven in the humid atmosphere of Singapore. Over the ten days each student began to express their own personality, and each group’s approach to work gave us a lot to learn from. Overseeing the rapid prototyping equipment gave us a new insight into the sheer amount of models that could be produced over such a short period of time, and how these could rapidly advance the project. It was also enlightening and challenging to be helping students establish coherent lines of thought. The workshop concluded on a high note where the immense amount of work and the enthusiasm of the students caught everyone by surprise.

By AA students assisting the workshop (Calvin Vhua, Kai Ong, John Naylor)

KoreaIn August 2009 the Architectural Association joined forces with SAKIA (School of Architecture, Korean Institute of Architects), to hold a collaborative workshop at Daejeon University entitled ‘The Rebirth of the River’. The event was hosted in the acclaimed Hyewha Cultural Centre and spanned a period of eight days. The combination of these two academic schools brought to light a refreshing view of highly complex and critical issues which currently face not only Korea but also the wider world, for instance how to re-engage with natural infrastructural systems, such as river networks, which for decades have been engulfed, forgotten and eroded by (monstrous) civil engineering projects. Students and staff deliberated intensely, seeking to return to the DNA of the issue – how to initiate public engagement with the river, and with water generally. The workshop was attended by more than 60 students (both international and Korean) and approximately 20 staff from both SAKIA and the AA.

By Peter Ferretto, Director of the Korean Visiting School and Former Intermediate Unit Master

AA Shanghai Summer School 2009Hosted at the University of Hong Kong Faculty of Architecture Shanghai Study Centre

In August 2009, the Architectural Association held its third consecutive AA Shanghai Summer School, hosted by the the University of Hong Kong Shanghai

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Study Centre HKU SSC. The programme was taught jointly by AA and HKU staff, and included 52 students, from 20 countries, across five continents. This studio-based course was supported by lectures, seminars, a symposium and a field trip, aiming to connect the realms of contemporary urban theory with cutting-edge computational design techniques in the context of one of the fastest-growing, most densely occupied cities in the world. Shanghai was both the setting and topic of our work during the course, serving as a twenty-first-century live model. Students investigated code-based modelling and simulation techniques capable of generating multiple, sequential and recursive vehicles in this field of experimentation on prototypical forms of high-density, high-rise urbanism. This prototype-based approach targeted the development of new social, spatial, structural and material systems, as well as towards formulating new discourses on contemporary computation and production in the disciplines of architecture and urbanism. These new tools and concepts were applied to the creation of dynamic architectural scenarios and urban models in relationship to a prominent site in the Pudong district of Shanghai, as the test-bed for team-based design exercises.

By Tom Verebes, Director, AA Shanghai Summer School

Berlin LaboratoryAA Berlin Laboratory took place from 4–12 September 2009 at Aedes Network Campus in vibrant East Berlin. In the true spirit of the AA the workshop attracted 32 students from 17 different countries. Post-wall Berlin, a major player for contemporary cultural production within Europe if not the world, is a unique laboratory of life styles and modes of production currently gathering an influential community of highly creative people from around the globe. AA Berlin Laboratory harvested this exceptional moment in time. AA Intermediate Unit Master Stefano Rabolli Pansera collaborated with Berlin-based composer and vibraphonist Christopher Dell. Their unit searched for a performative paradigm for Berlin. Award winning architect Jens Casper collaborated with art/architecture collaborator and AA workshop leader Sven Pfeiffer investigating the dynamic relationship between the art world and the urban fabric of the city. Visits to artists’ studios included Canadian Larissa Fassler, German shooting star Jorinde Voigt, Olafur Eliasson and a special walk along the Avus racetrack with landscape artist Bertram Weisshaar. The workshop was accompanied by a public programme with participants from architecture,

science and art. The experimental Jazz trio ‘dra’ gave an open rehearsal, allowing us insight into the complex structures of their compositions. Prof Hans Jörg Rheinberger from Max Planck Institute for the History of Sciences talked about the history of the experiment. Canadian travel writer Rory McLean shared his experiences of a city he had fallen in and out of love with for over 30 years. The Laboratory was rounded off by an open presentation with invited guests and concluded with a spontaneous one-off concert by tutor Christopher Dell.

By Marianne Mueller and Olaf Kneer, Unit Masters Diploma Unit 1 and Berlin Laboratory Programme Directors

AA BJ Symposium, Beijing Experimental Education in China: Architecture, Landscape and Urban DesignEducation has been a relentless topic in China for decades. In response to the desire to bring new thoughts to the architectural education in China, as well as the pedagogic agenda of the AA, the first BJ symposium entitled ‘Experimental Education in China’ took place in a 400-year-old temple along the central axis of Beijing. The fusion of experimental education trends in a global academic context with the eagerness to imbue creativity in Chinese architectural schools was expected to stimulate a unique pedagogical and practical synthesis. Consequently, a high profile symposium was initiated in Beijing with the co-operation of the AA. The symposium was divided into two sessions, Current Trends and Future Visions. In the first session, lecturers led by AA director, Brett Steele, demonstrated a series of past and ongoing experimental courses within and outside of China with the emphasis on current experimental education trends in both a global and local context, and aimed to demonstrate the latest educational trends in China and compare them to the global stream. In the second session, a variety of avant-garde practitioners and academic pioneers speculated on the future vision of experimental education in Chinese architectural schools by linking academic teaching and learning with professional performance in the context of the ‘nothing is impossible’ attitude prevalent in China, as well as the influence and contribution to contemporary Chinese architectural practice.

By Yan Gao, Global Workshop Programme Director, Beijing

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AA School Projects

At the end of ‘Breaking the Rules’, our short piece in AArchitecture 6, Chris and I (now aka Mr and Mr Smith) harmlessly concluded that the ‘world of design really has no rules’. But the AA does! We ended our second year on a higher note than the first and the 14 perfunctory ‘rules’ that we arrived with in September 2007 have mutated into an altogether clearer set of criteria (at least from our skewed perspective). Looking back, we’ve unconsciously become a part of 36 Bedford Square (now actually 34–39 Bedford Square and half of Morwell Street), however much we donned a faint air of Napoleonic resistance. You’d be right to say that we showed about as much resolve as Vicky did with Juan Antonio, although we’re still giving a wide berth to drunken spiders. Just about the first thing that happened two years ago is that Chris and I got to know another new guy named Jeroen van Ameijde. We mistakenly thought Jeroen was a typically benign Chocomel drinking Dutchman in the guise of the School’s digital prototyping lab. We couldn’t imagine how all the chemical dust flying about in his ‘lab’ could make any impression on our self-professed refined drawing process. However, it wasn’t long before Jeroen was reeling us in and our precious 2D drawings started having thickness. First, before Christmas 2007, a few of our students started with a safe (though mesmerising) activity using a laser cutter and 4mm cardboard. Then, in a literal and figurative decampment to the ‘other side’, for seven days last November at Hooke Park all 14 of our students produced 2m x 4m birch ply CNC panels. In 12 months, we went from comfortably spending £500 in the climatically controlled conditions of Mediashore to wearing overalls, working all night and spending the same amount of money transporting half a dozen oversized ‘thick 2D’ doors from Dorset to our hallowed halls in the back of a beat-up white van, though we got a lot from it other than just splinters! We presented the six panels for three weeks in the Back Members’ Room, which showed just how good Shin’s timberwork in 3D can be and just how far we still were from converting ‘surface’ to ‘site’. We weren’t done with Jeroen yet, or more likely he wasn’t (and still isn’t) done with us. Like a lot of our colleagues, we pitched an AA Global School to Brett in September, looking to broaden our new-found interest in exotic beaches and cities – another way the AA has happily opened our eyes to life outside Albion. Then, before we realised it (and before Chris M had a

chance to move it to Norway), we’d struck a deal with an Israeli 3D printing outfit and Jeroen was joining us on the tarmac at Ben Gurion to launch a visiting school at Tel Aviv University. After five days Chris and I didn’t even recognise it. Jeroen made all the girls swoon with his advanced Maya and Rhino tutorials (so he was typically Dutch after all, which I guess is for the best because we’re married), while Chris and I just got into deeper 3D water. Fortunately for us, on day six we packed him off to Singapore – just about in time to rediscover the drawing in all of the models . . . or what we keep forgetting/trying to tell ourselves are actually 3D prints. That’s only half the story. Although what we call ‘blurring the boundary between drawing and 3D printing’ has become a unit mantra, we came to the School as 90s adversaries of typologies and sites. And really, isn’t a brief and a bibliography just for the faint-hearted? Now we’ve got four (well not quite) buildings (according to our Pevsnerian critics). It wasn’t easy. In the first year we didn’t go for a site or a programme. To our students’ relief we reluctantly selected a sort-of-site in April, but to their dismay we never gave in to programme. In the second year, we did our utmost to select the most untypological of typologies, a market, which to the chagrin of our Asian students their parents didn’t consider a building. This year we’re doing a stadium. If Pevsner were alive (imagine that) that would surely be on his latest list. And while we’ve gone from selecting a site without any boundaries to two sites, this year it’s just the one – Camp Nou. At the same time, our brief is turning into a manual. It’s transformed from a few vague A4 pages to nine Technicolor descriptive ones that can be found online, to incorporating a programme outfoxing Ben van Berkel’s penchant for diagrams and formulae. Who knows, at this rate maybe one day we’ll finally get that book we’ve always hankered after!

Christopher Pierce and Christopher Matthews are Unit Masters of Intermediate Unit 9

Adhering to the RulesBy Christopher Pierce and Christopher Matthews

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3D Print, ‘Mercat Mesas’, Edith Wunsch

AA Research Clusters

AA|FAB Designing FabricationBy Alan Dempsey

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Team in Hooke Park constructing Urban Toys Prototype using stretched fabric formwork to make minimal surface from fibre-cement. Photo Shin Egashira

FAB exhibition ‘Village Underground Workspace’. Photos Valerie Bennett

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‘Designing Fabrication’ was an exhibition presenting the work of the AA|FAB Research Cluster during the London Design Festival, 21–26 September 2009. For the last two years the FAB initiative has acted as an agency to foster interdisciplinary exchange and collaboration between members of the school community and outside partners in the emerging application of digital design and fabrication technologies within architecture. The programme was initiated with Yusuke Obuchi and has been led by myself and Kristine Mun. With generous support from some of the leading companies in the UK and Europe, AA|FAB established an annual Awards programme that has provided funding and resources for specific innovative research projects that explore the potential impact of digital technologies within the discipline of architecture. Our 2008 Awards entitled ‘Prototyping Design’ were open to all full-time AA students and staff. They offered a rare opportunity to pursue a project to an advanced stage of development and establish direct collaboration with a wider network of industry specialists. Four projects were selected and two eventually given full Research Awards: Urban Toys by Shin Egashira, Rubens Avezedo and their team, and Inflatable Pneus by Mehran Gharleghi and Amin Sadeghi. Their research and development work over the last year formed the centrepiece of the exhibition, culminating in full-scale prototypes alongside a series of smaller models and mock-ups completed over the course of their projects. The Awards in 2009 were entitled ‘Designing Fabrication’ and our intention was to place the research work going on within the AA in a wider context. To this end we made an open call to designers around the world to submit recently built projects that exemplify the innovative integration of design and fabrication processes through digitally driven design systems and protocols. Six awards were made for exceptional projects in either an interior or exterior context. The Award recipients included: Re-Purpose Ply by Jason Griffiths and SALA Students The Morning Line by Matthew Ritchie with Aranda/Lasch and Daniel Bosia Muscular Synergy by Josiah Barnes and Pablo Rica Ceiling Cloud by Andrew Vrana, Joe Meppelink and Scott Marble Green Void by Chris Bosse, Tobias Wallisser, Alexander Rieck, LAVA Allotropic System by Nicholas Bruscia These projects were presented in the show through large format prints and rapid prototype models. In addition to the eight award recipients, a further 18 built projects from around the world submitted to

the programme were selected for exhibition and presented in large format prints. In all, the work came from four continents and made up a heterogeneous selection that is just as diverse in form, scale, technical complexity, environmental response and budget. However, all of the projects share a common commitment to pushing the boundaries of the possible through the pioneering use of digital design and fabrication technology. The work on display demonstrated a resurgent tendency of the designer to reach further into the production and fabrication process in order to extend the possibilities of design. Many projects in the show have been the result of direct collaboration with material and manufacturing specialists and the actual information required for their construction is increasingly coming directly from the designer to computer controlled fabrication tools. An equally important tendency is the use of digital design tools to enable a closer communication with client, consultants and even end-users that suggests a shift in the role of the architect from the auteur to something closer to the director, while still maintaining the ability to produce innovative and highly distinctive work. The exhibition demonstrated that these kinds of working processes have the potential to expand design possibilities, improve operational performance and construction efficiency, which suggests they will become more routine within architecture in the future. As such, fundamental questions about aesthetics, performance, control, risk and reward will have to be addressed, which we believe will have a profound and positive impact on the future definition of our discipline. The success of the FAB programme has made it evident that it is important to be able to facilitate research streams within the school that are not subject to the constraints of the formal curriculum. We are currently busy preparing the next cycle of the programme to enable such research and plan to formally launch it early in the second term.

Alan Dempsey is the curator of the FAB Research Cluster and a former Intermediate Unit Tutor.

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AA Exhibition, 6 November – 18 December 2009

First Works By Francisco González de Canales

‘First Works’ re-assesses the beginnings of some of today’s most acclaimed practices through a selection of early projects from the 1960s and 1970s. It includes works by Robert Venturi, Archigram, Cedric Price, Alvaro Siza, Aldo Rossi, Norman Foster + Richard Rogers, Paul Virilio + Claude Parent, Rafael Moneo, Archizoom, Renzo Piano, Peter Eisenman, Coop Himmelb(l)au, Toyo Ito, Rem Koolhaas, Morphosis, Bernard Tschumi, Steven Holl, Daniel Libeskind, Herzog & de Meuron and Zaha Hadid. The idea of presenting these first works as a group show has the clear intent of problematising their originality. This task seems particularly crucial today, when such investigations of origins tend to deify their subjects, going far beyond a simple interrogation of their formative means and influences. First, it is misleading to assert that the architect-genius is born ex nihilo. The point of origin may instead be thought of as a departure from a delimited condition, which gives the work a distinctiveness and autonomy; this departure reverberates through time, making it impossible to establish any stable reference ground. Second, the condition of being original does not necessarily confer any special validity or authority upon the work. The conception that the original is of greater value than something reproduced or hybrid is a principle long disproved – and not just in post-colonial or media studies. In a discipline like architecture – which is shaped as much by external forces and exchanges as by its own internal traditions – such a concept of the ‘originality of the origin’ seems

equally illusory. Third, it seems just as tenuous that any putative originality should invariably be confined to the beginnings of an architect’s career: on the contrary, it is much more likely that innovation will arise continually, as a product of the evolution of the architect’s work and the refining and development of methods and tools. If the relevance of these first works is not determined by their originality, what, then, are this publication and exhibition about? After the mythical and heroic layers have been stripped away from these works, what remains is the struggle to define a singular approach to the discipline of architecture. The question is not just about beginnings, in the strict sense of the word; it’s more about how these architects have developed their own ways of dealing with the centripetal detours and inevitable constraints of the discipline. Consequently, the focus is on early projects that represent fundamental stages in this journey, exemplifying a work in progress. We want to show that the beginnings (and endings) of these architectures have not been so clear-cut, but have instead unfolded as a continual experiment in which persistence, drive and precedents are more important than a blind search for novelty.

Francisco González de Canales is Unit Master, Intermediate Unit 8, AA H&T MA Course Tutor and AACP Exhibitions Curator

See page 19 for details on the First Works publication

First Works: Emerging Architectural Experimentation of the 1960s and 1970s cover and spread showing Cedric Price’s London Zoo Aviary, 1965

11First Works, selected spreads. Clockwise from top: Team 4, The Retreat, 1963; Rafael Moneo, Diestre Transformer Factory, 1967; Herzog & de Meuron, Blue House, 1980; Coop Himmelb(l)au, Villa Rosa, 1968

Madelon Vriesendorp, Rem Koolhaas, Elia Zenghelis and Zoe Zenghelis in Central Park, New York, 1978

Thom Mayne and Michael Rotondi at the Morphosis office in 1974 © Morphosis Architects

Toyo Ito and friends in Italy in the early 1970s © Toyo Ito Associates

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AA Awards

For nearly a hundred years the British School at Rome has been the temporary home and base of numerous visiting scholars, researchers and artists from within the British Commonwealth during their stay in the Italian capital. The school offers both accommodation and facilities for post-graduate and post-doctoral research into the historical and contempoary study of the city of Rome, its relationship and influence in the visual arts (including architecture) and broader issues of Italian culture. For the past 11 years, however, thanks to the Nicholas Boas Award, international students from across the AA (First Year through Graduate School) have had the opportunity to make the British School at Rome their own base for speculative research projects. Set up by the Boas family in memory of their son Nicholas, a promising student who studied at the AA between 1995 and 1998, the annual award provides three students with the opportunity to stay at the school in the summer and to use its facilities and benefit from its prime position – both physically in the city and academically – in their own work. Each spring, a panel including members of the Boas family, AA tutors and past recipients interviews applicants drawn from the submitted proposals. However, unlike the weighty academic demands often associated with scholarship programmes, the Boas award is primarily concerned with offering students new experiences and impressions of the historic city as opposed to searching for definite or concrete academic ‘results’. AA First Year Studio Master Valentin Bontjes van Beek, a panel member on several occasions, reiterates the point that it is ‘the experience of the trip and the knowledge gained from this experience that form an important part of the award’s goal’. Increasingly it seems that this principle has become a catalyst for the production of work that is as interesting as it is varied. The dozens of trips taken by AA students during the award’s history have yielded sketches, drawings, paintings, essays, films and photography, all expressing their experiences of their stay in Rome. In the same way, existing or continuing projects or studies already started by students in London are taken and projected into this new context, investigated and notated. For many students, briefs set in their proposals quickly change and the projects and exploratory techniques become directly influenced by the city. For Conrad Koslowsky, a 2008 Boas award recipient, the line of interest and techniques of

investigation became intrinsically linked; Hockney-style montages stitch together the fragmented history packed into the streets and alleyways of Rome. Centuries of layering and stacking expose both the material and social history. The images collected into several small books show both a horizontal and a vertical slice through the city. In many circumstances the photographs taken on the trips are far simpler and have been just as important and revealing in the students’ research. Many of these images have become a valuable part of the collection of the AA Photo Library. Images by past recipient Umberto Bellardi Ricci are on display as part of its current exhibition. An image of the sacristy ceiling in S. Pudenzia, taken by William Hailiang Chen during his 2002 stay is reproduced as an AA postcard, and he continues to add photographic work to the collection. For Uliana Apatina, a 2009 winner of the award, taking the trip in July of this year, the school and its place in the city provides the condition for a very different kind of learning experience. Continuing her work from the previous school year on lighting conditions, she insists that discussions with both school staff and visiting researchers at the dinner table were as vital as sketching and painting the shadows cast in the many churches of Rome. The opportunity to discuss her interests with archaeologists and artists as well as architectural historians gave her invaluable help in her own work. She insists that the school provides a ‘highly inspirational and extremely productive atmosphere’, much as you’d find in a family with no external pressure; ‘the only stipulation is that you yourself create, under your own control and with your own motivation’. Obviously the trips affect each individual differently: several find the school foreboding at first, and the rigorous timing of lunch and dinner quirky in a frantic modern world, while others see it as a quiet retreat; a home away from home. The unique opportunity for the AA to send students to this outpost every year, however, is not in question and the award is a hugely valuable asset to both students and the school itself. Thanks must go to the Boas family for their continued support to students of the AA and their firm belief that there is still much to be learned from the city of Rome.

Scrap Marshall is a third year student and student editor of AArchitecture

Nicholas Boas Travel AwardBy Scrap Marshall

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Top: Renzo Piano’s Auditorium Parco della Musica. Photo Umberto Bellardi Ricci

Working Painting by Uliana Apatina Layers of Roman History in Montage by Conrad Koslowsky

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AA Membership event at the Design Museum

David Chipperfield at the AA By Deyan Sudjic

Architecture is a key part of the Design Museum’s programme. Over the last three years we have staged retrospectives successively on a range of key figures: Zaha Hadid, Richard Rogers and now David Chipperfield. Next year we will be exhibiting the work of John Pawson. So far, they have all been architects who are based in Britain, but of course that’s not a precondition, and it is interesting to note how all of them have had as much, if not more, recognition outside Britain as they have here. They have a range of positions that demonstrate the many possible meanings of contemporary architecture. It is a selection that is addressed not just to the architectural community but attempts to engage with a wider public. Perhaps the most unexpected thing that the subjects have in common is that they were all students at the Architectural Association. Chipperfield began his architectural education at what was then Kingston Polytechnic in 1971. He had been brought up on a farm, where he first saw the appeal of construction when his father set out to build an extension. His parents emigrated to Australia, but Chipperfield opted to stay, and went to the Kingston school of architecture at Knights Park, sharing a campus with painters and illustrators, industrial designers and fashion students. Chipperfield moved to the AA after two years, arriving in Bedford Square at a time when the school still retained vestiges of its original incarnation as a quintessentially British school. He got his AA diploma in 1980, to emerge into a climate perhaps even more difficult than the one that faces architecture graduates this year, working in the offices of Richard Rogers and Douglas Stephen. Alvin Boyarsky had yet to dispose of the AA’s own cricket ground in order to raise funds for a cash-strapped school. Many local authorities were reluctant to fund student grants there, preferring to support more conventional architectural schools. It was a reluctance that was to transform the AA into the most international of schools while British students without wealthy parents stayed away. The Architectural Association in the 1970s was not on the face of it a place that was promoting the kind of approach to architecture with which the Chipperfield of the Barcelona Law Courts or the German Museum of Literature at Marbach would have been expected to feel comfortable. It was a school that was apparently inventing post-modernism in a flamboyant range of incarnations. It was a place that could accommodate Leon Krier, who was busy

distancing himself from his former mentor, James Stirling, and setting himself up as a kind of 20th-century Pugin, as well as Peter Cook and his psychedelic architecture and Rem Koolhaas who was looking back to the explosive roots of modernism. It was where Brian Anson was able to launch the Architects Revolutionary Council, and to run a unit that he claimed was dedicated to teaching his students never to pass what he called the ‘obscenity’ of Centrepoint without understanding why they would never work for the kind of firm that would build it. He was tutored among others by Su Rogers. But this was also a time when Piers Gough was creating provocative explorations of the limits of architecture, when video and McLuhan were reshaping the definitions of architecture. In the face of all this exuberance, Chipperfield was already setting himself up as an oppositionist. The idea of architecture as a consumer not-so-durable did not appeal, nor did the idea that it could become a theatrical pastiche, or a political statement. What Chipperfield emerged with from his time at the Architectural Association was a certain rigour, and the personal perspective to be able to bide his time. It was an essential skill in a climate in which there was so little work that most architectural discourse centred around competition entries rather than finished buildings, and in which the AA functioned as a kind of underground opposition to the everyday reality of a built environment where Hillingdon town hall, designed by RMJM as a monument to the suburban villa, could be regarded as the most talked about event of the year. Chipperfield’s experience at the AA was to leave him more interested in rigour than in immediate impact, and in finding ways to reintroduce some of the emotional aspects that traditional ideas of modernism had expunged from architecture, within the aesthetic range of modernism. Thirty years later, it is an attitude whose time has come.

Deyan Sudjic is Director of the Design Museum and represented the AA Council as a Search Committee Member to appoint a new Director in 2004/05.

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David Chipperfield and Jan Kaplický Exhibitions at the Design Museum, 26 October 2009AA Members were treated to an exclusive double private view of the exhibitions,‘David Chipperfield: Form Matters’, with an introduction by David Chipperfield himself and ‘Remembering Jan Kaplický: Architect of the Future’, with an introduction by Amanda Levete at the Design Museum on Monday 26 October 2009. The David Chipperfield exhibition celebrates his work for the first time in the UK and spans his entire career to date, including such acclaimed projects as the River and Rowing Museum in Henley-on-Thames, and the Museum of Modern Literature in Marbach, Germany, winner of the RIBA Stirling Prize

for Architecture 2007. The exhibition also illustrates important public commissions including the reconstruction of the Neues Museum in Berlin, and the Hepworth Wakefield gallery. The exhibition continues until 31 January 2010. Jan Kaplický, a former AA tutor who died earlier this year aged 71, was the Czech architect responsible for some of the most remarkable buildings that Britain has ever seen. This exhibition celebrated Kaplický’s career, his influences and unique futuristic vision for building design. For information on future Members’ Events, please contact Luisa Miller 020 7887 4034 or e-mail events@aaschool.ac.uk

David Chipperfield Architects, Museum of Modern Literature, Marbach am Neckar, Germany 2007 Photo Christian Richters

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AA Live Spaces

Projects Review 2009 in Pictures

Driftwood, Intermediate 2 Pavilion. Photo Valerie Bennett

Scale Material Models from Diploma 11. Photo Sue Barr

Strawberry table designed by Miraj AhmedPhoto Valerie Bennett

Emtech’s canopy on the Terrace. Photo Sue Barr

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PSA (Pschill Seghatoleslami Architektur) was founded in Vienna in 2004 by Lilli Pschill (MSc), who studied at the Technical University in Vienna, and me (also MSc). We define the practice as an architectural studio where project-specific solutions with a strong emphasis on technological and design innovation are sought. In July 2008 construction finished on our extension of the offices of the law-firm Schuppich, Sporn & Winischhofer in Vienna. The project, consisting of office space and conference rooms, responds to the client’s need to more fully integrate the circulation of the office and extend into a neighbouring unit. Given the constraints of the site the project could not be realised as a purely circular lobby area. Instead the proposal uses a ‘wall’ as a principal constituent of architectural negotiation, mediating between the macro-scalar pre-defined ‘corridor’ space and the adjacent array of office-spaces. Through a continuous differentiated manipulation of the two wall-structures, the project provides the adjacent spaces with highly articulated extensions; apron-areas for gatherings after meetings, a bar for breaks during working hours. Waiting areas across the reception intertwine and enrich the visual experience of an area of transit along its spatial, programmatic and metaphoric capacities. Since the structure consisted of more than 543 individually CNC-milled parts, the main task became

the automation of the assembly. The individual parts were assembled in doubly overlapping ‘sediments’ which act as though self-positioned through a set of CNC-pre-drilled dowels. This allowed for a high level of precision and a reduced assembly time; in addition no material cut-off waste in the milling phase allowed the use of high-value construction materials like Corian. To emphasise the material qualities of the wall-structures we employed complementary construction materials, surface effects and patterns. The relief-patterns across the wall structures vary, resonating the effects of a ‘structural ornament’ throughout the entire project. The material operations acting on the walls result in the production of a specific interstitial space. A seamless luminous ceiling eliminated any material code of a light source and is programmable according to the different requirements of the functional areas, and the floor is made of a seamless cement-based material and extends beyond the field of the ‘corridor’ to connect all adjacent spaces. All services and infrastructure are integrated into the continuous wall systems.

Ali Seghatoleslami is a former student of the AAp-s-a.org

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AA Former Student Projects

Interior Project Lawyer’s Office Extension by PSA

By Ali Seghatoleslami

View along corridor with bar and cupboard Photo Hertha Hurnaus

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AA Publications

First Works: Emerging Architectural Experimentation of the 1960s & 1970s284 pp, extensive col. & b/w ills297 x 210 mm, hardcover November 2009978-1-902902-81-4£40

During a tumultuous period in the 1960s and 70s, a new generation of architects began their careers amidst a period of profound social change, new conditions for architecture and the city and lasting changes to popular and critical forms of cultural production. First Works tells the story of this period and reassesses the conditions of architecture and the beginnings of architectural careers through a selection of projects undertaken during the 60s and 70s. The book, accompanying a major travelling exhibition, presents a single key early project, in the form of models, sketches, photographs and drawings, by 20 young architectural practices: Archigram, Archizoom, Aldo Rossi, Alvaro Siza, Cedric Price, Robert Venturi, Norman Foster and Richard Rogers, Paul Virilio and Claude Parent, Rafael Moneo, Renzo Piano, Peter Eisenman, Coop Himmelb(l)au, Toyo Ito, Rem Koolhaas, Daniel Libeskind, Morphosis, Bernard Tschumi, Herzog & de Meuron, Steven Holl and Zaha Hadid. Alongside these ‘first works’, 20 invited critics, including Kenneth Frampton, Sylvia Lavin and Pier Vittorio Aureli, offer contemporary commentaries on these projects and their place within the architects’ subsequent careers.

Architecture Words: Supercritical Peter Eisenman & Rem KoolhaasPeter Eisenman, Rem Koolhaas, Jeffrey Kipnis, Robert Somol156 pp, b/w ills180 x 110 mm, paperbackDecember 2009978-1-902902-51-7£12

In January 2006 Peter Eisenman and Rem Koolhaas came to the AA for an evening of conversation about architecture, ideology and the city. Their dialogue is the centrepiece of the first volume of ‘Architecture Words’, a series that emphasises the written word as the basis for critical debate by contemporary architects and theorists. Each architect states his own views about the terms of architecture, including its theories and relationship to the city and other forms of critical and cultural practice. A number of responses from the audience follow these statements and the book is introduced with an essay from AA Director Brett Steele.

AA Publications

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AA School Programmes

The AA’s graduate Histories & Theories of Architecture course gathered on 23 and 24 June this year to formally present their thesis research. Each student then had the summer to turn their work into a written dissertation due in September. Co-directed by Mark Cousins and Marina Lathouri, this year’s course consisted of 15 candidates from various backgrounds. They were confronted with criticism and guidance by a group of judges made up of Robert Maxwell, Brian Hatton, David Dunster, Murray Fraser, Douglas Spencer, Kirk Wooller, Emanuel de Sousa and myself. Because the presentations come at a pivotal moment between research and writing, the manner in which each student prepares for and departs from the event is absolutely crucial to their thesis, as well as to their general education. This vital moment renders the student a fulcrum upon which the weight of their thesis lies. Balancing on the fulcrum is what I call the interface of presentation. The interface is that invisible and dimensionless barrier between the presenter and those to whom he presents. The goal, obviously, is to communicate as clearly and succinctly as possible the primary issues or topics of the thesis, while letting the argument unfold equally persuasively. The interface is shaped upon criticism and questioning. Depending on how the student handles each blow from the jury, the interface is pierced, shifted and bent, sometimes entirely tipping over and shattering. But the students are in control of their presentations, and the hope is that they maintain a balance that preserves and even strengthens their support of the thesis. What remains is an impressed and perforated interface standing on the fulcrum. I speak of this from experience, having com-pleted the same course in 2008. This year’s class was much bigger than the year before, and one advantage of this was a greater diversity of thesis topics. The theses generally took the form of theoretical investiga-tions, examinations of ‘the city’, historical research and critiques of various techniques and practices within the discipline of architecture. Each inevitably overlapped with others while maintaining an impres-sive individuality in the student’s particular topic, as well as in their research methods. The theoretical investigations, while diverse in content, were similar in their emphasis on the

discourse of architecture and what it means to conduct a thesis within it. The discourse on the object (and subject) in the city, architectural effects, the influence of Colin Rowe, and the development of critical theory in architectural education were all addressed, indicating the focus on the role of theory in the 20th century. Examinations of ‘the city’ – a justifiable enterprise in itself due to the ambiguity of the term – more or less took the form of providing different means by which to understand the city within the architectural discipline. From ‘urban boundaries’ and ‘forms of urbanity’ to formal conceptions of the city and the role of infrastructure in typology, the particularity of each thesis was carefully mapped and dictated by the student’s own rigorous analysis. While the topic of architecture in early 20th-century Iran was the most straightforward example of ‘historical’ research, it touched on several themes just as the other theses operated within historiography themselves. Not the least of which were the various critical views given on techniques and practices largely taken for granted in architecture today. Such theses addressed the influence of the architectural brief, the joint or connection in art and architecture, photography, drawing and even comics. At the end of the day the student is left with an interface that bears the record of a play of criticism, scepticism, questioning and answering. How each student utilises it will show in their written dissertation. The interface of presentation, after the event, is a clue to the final development of the thesis; for it is not only an interval between presenter and jury, but also research and writing. All the theses were presented professionally, with class, which is testament to both the influence of the tutors as well as the confidence and modesty of each student, ensuring a good finish to their course as a new one now begins. 2009 MA Histories & Theories candidates: Imelda Akmal, Beatriz Cifuentes, Mollie E. Claypool, Ryan T. Dillon, Ronny Ford, Kevin Gu, Srivalli Pradeepthi Ikkurthy, Niloofar Kakhi, Natasha Lyons, Marlie Mul, Lorcan O’Herlihy, Aldo Urbinati, Natre Wannathepsakul, Ishraq Zahra, Zaynab Dena Ziari.

Braden Engel is a former Histories and Theories MA (Dist) student and a former tutor in the AA Undergraduate Histories and Theories Course

MA Histories & Theories Thesis Presentations 2009

By Braden Engel

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Histories and Theories Final Crit 2009. Photos Valerie Bennett

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AA Staff Projects

Reading ListCompiled by Zak Kyes

TASK NEWSLETTER, ISSUE 2NOT WHAT IF, WHAT IF NOT?

Task Newsletter uses design as a perspective, designed objects as evidence of larger systems, and designers as researchers. Conceived as continuing education for graphic designers, the second issue of Task presents an inquiry into issues in science fiction. It examines ideas circulating in the genre and their connections to designers and design practice. Designed and edited by Emmet Byrne, Alex DeArmond, Jon Sueda. tasknewsletter.com

VOIDS – A RETROSPECTIVE

Voids – A Retrospective is a paradoxical exhibition: by re-actualisingnine ‘empty exhibitions’, it is simultaneously an experimental project that refuses the classical rules of the visual arts and an historical object which confronts the projects of Art & Language, Robert Barry, Stanley

Brouwn, Maria Eichhorn, Bethan Huws, Robert Irwin, Yves Klein, Roman Ondák, and Laurie Parsons. Edited by John Armleder, Mathieu Copeland, Laurent Le Bon, Gustav Metzger, Mai-Thu Perret, Clive Phillpot, Philippe Pirotte Published by jrp|ringier

PARADE?In collaboration with the American illustrator Johan Olander, Philippe Parreno has created this children’s book. Sixteen monsters are presented, described, and illustrated. In the form of a fable written by the artist, the parade of monsters confronts the reader with figures such as Propaganda Rabbit, Beamer, Audiotron, and Reality. By Philippe Parreno and Johan Olander Published by jrp|ringier

FILE MEGAZINE GENERAL IDEA

FILE Megazine occupies a very unique position: between 1972 and 1989, the celebrated Canadian artists collaborative General Idea published 26 issues of this sophisticated, though self-published, magazine, which had a distribution extending far beyond its Toronto underground origins. Reproduced page by page, in a slightly modified format. FILE Megazine General Idea provides the rare opportunity for an art, design, and

culture-orientated audience to own these long out-of-print and much sought-after magazines in a complete box-set edition. Edited by Beatrix Ruf Published by jrp|ringier

THE ART OF HUNTING

Young Swiss designer Régis Tosetti presents an enhanced version of his thesis for ECAL in the form of an artist’s book. Located somewhere between ethnographic investigation, and photo-novel, L’Art de la Chasse (The Art of Hunting) explores the universe of hunting with an extensive series of photographs produced in collaboration with Yann Gross, and concludes with texts introducing a selection of trophy-pictures written in collaboration with Joël Vacheron. Edited by Régis Tosetti Published by jrp|ringier

SURFACES, DEPTHSThe exhibition ‘Surfaces, Depths’ at Kunsthalle Vienna features Ruff’s works from the last 25 years including his series of large-format portraits from the 1980s, and his architectural photographs of buildings by Herzog & de Meuron. Ruff explores the notions of the exemplary, of reality, and of the zeitgeist. By Thomas Ruff Published by Verlag für moderne Kunst Nürnberg

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ULTRA MERA COMMONPLACE

‘Commonplace: a book in which one records passages to be remembered or referred to’. Systems, working techniques and observations from various professions, positioned to address our needs as graphic designers. Contributors include Adam & Joe, Stephen Bayley, Alex Burrett, Paul Elliman, Ryan Gander, John Chris Jones, Bruno Munari, Hans Ulrich Obrist, Falke Pisano and Cedric Price. By Eva Kellenberger and Sebastian White Published by Rollo Press

THE WIZARD OF OZ

Curated by Jens Hoffmann for the CCA Wattis Institute of Contemporary Arts, The Wizard of Oz takes L. Frank Baum’s The Wonderful Wizard of Oz as an entry point to examine the connections between this iconic novel and contemporary art. Many have interpreted the story as a metaphor for the political, economic and social events of America of the 1890s. Designed by Jon Sueda CCA Wattis Institute of Contemporary Arts wattis.org/exhibitions/oz

GRAPHIC

GRAPHIC(ISSN 1975-7905) is a quarterly magazine published in Seoul, Korea. First published in January 2006, it focuses its attention on trends of graphic design that are different from the mainstream. It has an in-depth approach, treating one theme in each issue. Designed by Na Kim graphicmag.kr

UTOPIA OR OBLIVION

Utopia or Oblivion, a reprint of the original edition from 1969, is a provocative blueprint for the future. This comprehensive volume is composed of essays derived from the lectures he gave all over the world during the 1960s. Fuller’s thesis is that humanity – for the first time in its history – has the opportunity to create a world where the needs of 100% of humanity are met. By Buckminster Fuller Edited by Jaime Snyder Reprint, original edition 1969

IN & OUT OF AMSTERDAMTRAVELS IN CONCEPTUAL ART, 1960-1976

During the 1960s and 1970s, Amsterdam was a nexus of intense art activity, attracting artists from all over the world. As a result, a dynamic cross-pollination of ideas and influences developed between artists of different nationalities. Many artists produced works directly related to the notion of travel, and to Amsterdam, the city that fostered them. This publication accompanies an eponymous exhibition at The Museum of Modern Art. By Christophe Cherix

Zak Kyes is Art Director of the AA

Books can be ordered from the AA Bookshop.

AA Bookshopaabookshop.netbookshop@aabookshop.netT +44 (0)20 7887 4041F +44 (0)20 7887 4048

AA Membership

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David Medd OBE (AADipl(Hons)1940) passed away in April 2009. What follows is a short extract from Andrew Saint’s obituary), published in The Guardian on 14 April 2009, reprinted here with permission.

The great ideal of public-sector design, to bond architecture inextricably with social progress, seems remote now, a dream from the halcyon years of the welfare state. David Medd, who has died at 91, was its supreme exponent. For 30 years he was the world’s most influential and enlightened creator of primary schools. Yet beyond a small circle of architects, educationists and admirers Medd was unknown. All craftsman and designer, he had no pretensions to stardom or high public office. The dissemination he won for his ideas about educational building came through example, passion and persistence. David was a living example of how the Arts and Crafts Movement could transmute into modernism with minimal adjustment. His uncle Harry had

worked with Lutyens and designed a fine church in Delhi. His father, a pattern-maker by training, had a home workshop where David spent days in his youth. At school (latterly Oundle) he won prizes for his Meccano models, ideal training for manipulating prefabricated structures. He hoped to be a furniture designer, and indeed made a box bought by Haile Selassie, but Gordon Russell discouraged him. So he went in 1937 to the Architectural Association, then a hotbed of agitation. David was not a political animal, but his liberal-radical sympathies dated from that time. A seminal experience was an investigation he and two others conducted at Lubetkin’s behest into how the services fitted into the Finsbury Health Centre, then in construction. […]

(c) Andrew Saint/Guardian News & Media 2009Read the full article at: guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2009/apr/14/david-medd-obituary-archi

David Medd

David Medd, pictured 1949Photo Architectural Press Archive / RIBA Library Photographs Collection

Museum and Art Gallery, 1937, with B Martin and T Bennet

Little Green School, Croxley Green, Herts, early 1980s Photo Martin Charles

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David Medd was interviewed by Louise Brodie in 1998 for the Architects’ Lives project run by National Life Stories, the oral history fieldwork charity based at the British Library Sound Archive. This ten-hour life story recording (catalogue reference C467/30) can be accessed at the British Library, as can all Architects’ Lives recordings without access restrictions. For more information visit bl.uk/oralhistory and bl.uk/nls.

David Medd: At the beginning of the second year we had to do a house design. I remember there were 13 or 14 of us in the unit. All the drawings were pinned up afterwards, and they usually got an outside critic to come in to talk about them. And low and behold – this is what’s so great about the AA – they got Lubetkin! You know who I mean, you’re obviously au fait with the architectural world – we had Lubetkin in! We straightened our ties and … so on, and at the end of the crit he said, ‘I want you and you and you to come to see me’. We didn’t know if we were in for caning or what. He picked Bruce Martin, still a friend of mine now, John Madge, brother of Charles Madge the poet and me. And he said, ‘would you like to work with me for a bit?’ I don’t know how exactly he put it, but we said ‘Yes! Certainly!’ This was extraordinary! He told us, ‘I’m very concerned about the difference between what I put on my drawings and what actually gets built on the site. We have to alter so much and the builders have problems getting there and following the drawings, we have to abandon the drawings and make alterations and so on; I want you to investigate this dichotomy between the drawing and what goes on in the building’. And we thought, we’d never heard of this before, it sounds fascinating.

The three of us worked with Lubetkin continuously throughout our AA course until the war came. I mention this at meetings of the RIBA. This is the way to educate architects – combine school work with practical work. You’re actually, literally combining it, you see. You’re getting the best of the old atelier apprentice method and the scholastic world, you’re getting them combined.

We went to all the key lectures and we had lots of free time, and instead of going to the Dominion Cinema we went down to the Finsbury Health Centre (the project on which we were working). And what Lubetkin did was, he said, ‘I think it would be a good idea if you specialised, one person do heating, another do

electrics and another do plumbing’ or something ... it was all the services anyhow, I know I did heating. And he introduced us to all the sub-contractors. We had all their panels of drawings which we had to plough through, we examined the drawings, we went to the site, we saw the building going up and we commented and reported on all the difficulties that they had. For example, on the electrics, Lubetkin used pressed steel door frames which were very narrow and he wanted the switches to be within the architrave of the door, and they had a hell of a job getting them in; cutting their fingers to get the wires down.

This may sound trivial to you, but that experience was extraordinarily important because it gave us as students the idea of architecture – architectural precepts – getting on in the way of practicalities. That experience … I’ll never forget it.

Louise Brodie: Did you get paid for this?

DM: No, that was the great thing, we were not paid. I think that’s so important. LB: Why?

DM: We were doing it because we wanted to do it. We were getting far more out of it than he was. He was nice, he said it was very useful. I think this business of people doing nothing unless they’re paid is awful.

That was a great experience, indirectly due to the AA, but nothing to do with the AA curriculum. (…) It was marvellous training, not because of the geniuses behind the curriculum so much as the opportunities it gave, it gave us these extracurricular experiences, like going back to school. You see the AA was, to my way of thinking, the centre of the profession in England. That’s where idols went, you found them in the common room there, you could talk to them there. They didn’t go to the RIBA, well, they might do occasionally but the RIBA was a cold place, remote; the AA was a hot spot... it was real somehow.

Reprinted courtesy of the British Library Board, catalogue reference C467/30/01

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AA Symposium, 29 May 2009

Thrilling Wonder Stories By Liam Young

‘Everything is becoming science fiction. From the margins of an almost invisible literature has sprung the intact reality of the 20th century.’ J G Ballard

We have always regaled ourselves with speculative tales of a day yet to come. In these polemic visions we furnish the fictional spaces of the near future with objects and ideas that at the same time chronicle the contradictions, inconsistencies, flaws and frailties of the everyday. Slipping suggestively between the real and the imagined they offer a distanced view from which to survey the consequences of various social, environmental and technological scenarios. The Thrilling Wonder stories symposium brought together speculative practitioners from such fields as gaming, film, comics, animation, literature and art to

present alternative working models as test sites for the deployment of the wondrous possibilities and dark cautionary tales of our own architectural imaginings. The event was coordinated by myself and BLDGBLOG’s Geoff Manaugh. Speakers included Archigram luminary Peter Cook, art director for the ground breaking computer game Half Life 2 Viktor Antonov, recent winner of the Arthur C Clarke award for science fiction author Ian Mcleoad, architect Francois Rio and comicbook author Warren Ellis. The event took place on Friday 29 May and was streamed live on the AA website, as well as being live blogged on tomorrowsthoughtstoday.com of which I am the Director.

Liam Young is a Unit Mater of Intermediate Unit 7

Half Life 2 art director Viktor Antonov and games theorist Jim Rossignol in conversation with BLDGBLOG’s Geoff Manaugh. Photo Valerie Bennett

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DESIGN + MAKE

Ioseb Andrazashvili (Year Out Student) winner of the AA Product Design-Make Prize (featured in issue 7 of AArchitec-ture), exhibited a prototype of his design at this year’s Salone del Mobile in Milan; the first piece in a limited series showcased by design label Designers-block. Ioseb is currently on his year out in Moscow where he is set to develop the pieces and present them in September 2010. The prize was created and sponsored by former AA student Ping-Kern Ng.

NEW UNITS AND ACADEMIC STAFF

The Academic Year 2009/2010 sees several new staff joining the under-graduate school. The new units are:Inter 1 Deane Simpson and Mark CampbellInter 8 Francisco Gonzalez de Canales and Nuria Alvarez LombardoInter 11 Theodore Sarantoglou Lalis and Dora SweijdInter 12 Sam Jacob and Tomas KlassnikInter 13 Miraj Ahmed and Martin JamesonDiploma 4 John Palmesino and Ann-Sofi RönnskogDiploma 5 Cristina Diaz Moreno and Efrén Garcia GrindaDiploma 14 Pier Vittorio Aureli, Barbara Campbell and Fenella Collingridge In addition two former Intermediate Units have become Diploma Units this year: Diploma 1 Marianne Mueller and Olaf Kneer; Diploma 8 Eugene Han and Chris Yoo. And William Martyr, Takako Hasegawa and Matthew Butcher join the Foundation Studio. Robert Stuart-Smith (who also teaches in DRL) joins the First Year Studio. Goswin Schwendinger (who also teaches on the Media Studies course) joins Inter 5. Fukimo Kato joins Inter 6 and Dagobert Bergmans returns. Tristan Simmonds joins Diploma 13

APPOINTMENT OF NEW ACADEMIC HEAD

AArchitecture is pleased to report that Charles Tashima has been appointed the new Academic Head of the AA. Charles is an architect, photographer and teacher. Upon receiving his Masters of Architecture from Harvard University Graduate School of Design, he graduated with honours and received the Thesis Prize, and was also awarded the Harvard Kennedy Traveling Fellowship to study vernacular architecture and the landscape for one year in Eastern Europe, Turkey, Greece and Italy. From 1993-1996 he was a design tutor with Marcel Meili and Markus Peter at the Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule (ETH-Zürich). He then taught at the AA as Unit Master in both the Intermediate and Diploma Schools until 2006. He has been a Visiting Professor in 2006 at the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, external examiner at the Amsterdam Academy, Fachhochschule Luzern and Fachhochscule Leichtenstein. He has worked in practices in the US, Switzerland and Germany. In addition to photographic work on architecture and landscape he has his own practice in London, currently focusing on residential work with a strong interest in reclaimed materials. While at the AA, Charles’s Unit work focused on design strategies that engaged material systems and structures through a method governed by an historical and emergent process of elaboration.

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APPOINTMENT OF DIRECTOR OF DESIGN + MAKE

Martin Self has been appointed as the course director of AA Design + Make, the new MArch programme based at Hooke Park. Martin has been teaching in the school since 2004 - running, with Charles Walker, the pavilion agenda of Intermediate Unit 2. He holds degrees in engineering and architectural theory. Having initially studied aerospace engineering at Bristol University and working for Airbus, he moved to Arup, where he was involved in several millennium landmark projects. In 2001 he joined Arup’s Lightweight Structures group that evolved, under Cecil Balmond and Charles Walker, into the Advanced Geometry Unit. Projects included collaborations with UNStudio, OMA, Shigeru Ban, and artists including Chris Ofili and Anish Kapoor. He was responsible for the construction of the 2005 Serpentine Pavilion by Alvaro Siza and Eduardo Soutao de Moura. He was also a member of the design team for the exemplary self-sufficient Druk White Lotus School in Himalayan Ladakh, being resident there for the 2004 building season. More recent work includes consultancy to Zaha Hadid Architects and Anthony Gormley Studio. He completed the AA’s Histories and Theories MA course in 2007, and subsequently teaches a HTS course in Diploma school. This year, with Inter 2 designing the caretaker’s house at Hooke, Martin will move to Dorset to direct the development of Hooke Park’s infrastructure in preparation for Design + Make.

APPOINTMENT OF FIONA DUGGAN AND FID LTD.

Fiona Duggan (and her firm FID Ltd.) has been appointed as a strategic space planning consultant and began working with the AA in July, shaping a brief for future space planning, usage and needs. Fiona, who has a background in architecture and psychology, and her team were unanimously chosen by the building committee in a process that included last-stage interviews with three of the UK’s most experienced and distinguished space planners. Fiona and her team have started work by consulting with administrative staff over the summer, ahead of a wider consultation with academic staff, students and members. FID Ltd. brings great experience to this task, having worked with other leading schools and cultural institutions. The proposal for undertaking this task conforms to the AA’s budget, scope of work and schedule, which broadly seeks by the beginning of 2010 the delivery of a client ‘brief’ that will be used for appointing an architect in 2010 to create a design strategy for developing our campus. The remainder of 2009 will be spent by FID in anticipation of that project, seeking out the best possible ideas for defining a brief of AA space usage, needs and priorities. This selection of a space planning consultant is a major step in the AA’s already exciting period of change. Alongside this work the AA is continuing negotiations for additional properties that, combined with the buildings we secured this past year, will provide the basis for an incredible and historic transformation of the AA into a single integrated and expanded campus built around our historic home at Bedford Square, as a school truly ready for the twenty-first century.

APOLOGY

We apologise for the quote from the Landscape Urbanism Guest Series which appeared on the cover of issue 9 of AArchiteture. The quote was taken from the summary of David Cunningham’s lecture and we acknowledge that the extract was taken out of context, and did not mean to imply that it was representative of David Cunningham’s views or indeed the views of the Landscape Urbanism Course. The quote in full (as it appeared in the article) should have read ‘Offering a timely and pertinent corrective to the notion that in seeking the solutions to environmental and social crises, the answer might be found in any return to pre-metropolitan conditions of inhabitation, he argued that the potential for “new kinds of relation between individual and collective subjectivity” exists within the given conditions of metropolitan life.’

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Superfusionlab, the practice created by Nate Kolbe (AA DRL MArch 2000 and Former Intermediate Unit Master), Lida Charsouli, Yas Mostashari and Djordie Stojanovic (all AA DRL MArch 2000) have recently had their project New England Biolaboratory published in the Italian magazine Complessità e sostenibilità: il territorio e l’architettura. gangemi.com/scheda.asp?id=8849216211

Clara Oloriz (AA Member), Alfredo Ramírez (AA LU tutor) and Felipe García have won an ideas competition for the regeneration of the Av Barcelona in Miami Platja, Catalonia. The project, which encompasses an area of 93, 933 square metres, revives the concept of rambla to reconnect the coastline with the city through a braided network of greenery, open space, pathways, cycle-paths, transport system and public programme. mont-roig.cat/actualitat/noticia/88

Chips, a block of flats in New Islington, Manchester, designed by Alsop Architects, the practice of Will Alsop (AADipl 1973 and Former AA Councillor) was featured in a lengthy article in the 21 May issue of the AJ. It is one of the first projects to be completed on the site.

Sturgis Associates, the practice of Simon Sturgis (AADipl 1980) was invited to discuss their pioneering new approach, CARBON PROFILING™ with members of the International Parliamentary Conference on Climate Change from 5–11 July 2009. Carbon Profiling tells how much carbon dioxide has been put into the atmosphere to enable the use of space and evaluates the carbon used both to build and operate an asset over time.

Llewelyn Davies Yeang, the practice of Richard Llewelyn-Davies and Ken Yeang (AADipl 1972 and Former AA Councillor) and Davis Langdon, Tribal and the University of Cambridge are currently developing a research project relating to the design of green hospitals in the UK.

Eric Parry (AA Dipl 1979 and Former President of the AA) won the architecture prize of the 2009 RA Summer Exhibition. The exhibition ran from 8 June to 16 August and the winning entry was featured in the 4 June 2009 issue of the AJ.

Gonçalo Furtado (AA Member), professor at Porto University’s Faculty of Architecture (FAUP), co-curated the exhibition Gordon Pask on Science and Art at the Faculty with Albert Müller, a historian with the University of Vienna and archivist of the Pask collection (1 –15 June 2009). The opening was accompanied by a public address by the Vice-dean of the Faculty, Rui Póvoas (a co-organiser of the exhibition) and Gonçalo and Albert and the three of them have co-edited a book entitled Gordon Pask on Science and Art, published by FAUP. Gonçalo will also moderate the session Architecture, Systems Research and Computational Sciences at the next International Colloquium on Architecture and Mathematics for Nexus 2010, and has recently written the books Gordon Pask’s Encounters: From a Childhood Curiosity to the Envisioning of an Evolving Environment published by Echoram, and Cedric Price’s Generator for FAUP. An introduction to Gonçalo’s work on Gordon Pask, Cedric Price and John Frazer was published in issue 8 of AArchitecture. David Chipperfield (AA Dipl 1980) Architects had The City of Justice in Barcelona featured on the cover and in a 10 page spread in the 18 June 2009 issue of the AJ. The practice won an invited

competition to design the project in 2002 and it was built in partnership with local practice b720.

Barking Central Phase 2 in East London was the Specifier’s Choice in the June 2009 AJ Specification supplement. The project was the work of Allford Hall Monaghan Morris the practice of Simon Allford (Former Vice President of the AA) and Paul Monaghan (GradDiplCons AA 1989), and covered six buildings in the town centre of Barking.

Vandana Baweja (AA H&T MA 1999) has just joined the School of Architecture at the University of Florida, Gainesville as a tenure track faculty member. In addition Vandana presented a paper entitled Koenigsberger’s Exile in Mysore and Tropical Architecture at the Society of Architectural Historians (SAH) Annual Meeting at Pasadena in LA in April 2009 and organised a symposium on South Asian Architectural and Urban Histories at Oberlin College in May 2009.

Beatriz Minguez de Molina (AA Dipl 2005) has been working as a stage design assistant for architect Benedetta Tagliabue on the design and production for the Merce Cunningham Dance Company show Nearly Ninety commemorating the 90th birthday of renowned choreographer Merce Cunningham. The premiere was held at the Brooklyn Academy of Music on 16 April 2009. She was also the architectural assistant of Robert Wilson for the exhibition Confines which opened on 28 May at IVAM (Institut Valencia d’Art Modern), Valencia, Spain. merce.org mirallestagliabue.com ivam.es

Damián Figueras and Fernanda Arrillaga (both AADipl 2008) have started a new architectural practice in Mexico.

The Intermediate 2 AA Summer pavilion was pictured in the 2 July issue of the AJ. The pavilion was entitled Driftwood.

Terry Farrell (AA Member and Former Academic Staff ) and Partners were featured on the cover and inside the 9 July issue of the AJ for the Great North Museum. The project is a refurbishment and extension of the former Hancock Museum in Newcastle.

The August 2009 Specification supplement of the AJ features a rug designed by David Adjaye (Former Diploma Unit Master and Former AA Councillor) in a spread on Designer Products. The rug was designed for Habitat’s Very Important Products collection.

Eugenia Fratzeskou (AA Member) had work on display at the Arsenale Novissimo in Venice during the 53rd Venice Biennale from 4 June – 19 July 2009 as part of the Rietveld Arsenale: The One Minute Train. The One Minute Train comprises videos of landscapes passing by, shot through the window of a moving train. A journey through 30 countries starts with one minute in Italy, then on to Switzerland, the Netherlands, Russia, China, India and America before returning to Europe. geocities.com/eugenfratz/mypage.html

Wilkinson Eyre, the practice of Chris Wilkinson (AA Member) and Jim Eyre (AA Councillor and Former President of the AA) had their bus station in Bath featured in the 17 September 2009 issue of the AJ.

Team Shampoo comprising Kostas Grigoriadis, Alex Robles-Palacio, Irene Shamma and Pavlos Fereos (all AA DRL MArch 2009) exhibited their model Parametric Urbanism III: Housing Proposal for New York at the Royal Academy of Arts Summer Exhibition from 8 June to 16 August 2009. The team also took part in the Digital Hinterlands exhibition, a selection of the best digital architecture work from London schools over the past three years, at the Arup Gallery on Fitzroy Street from 8 September to 2 October 2009.royalacademy.org.uk/exhibitions/summer-exhibitionshampooo.netdigital-architecture.org/hinterlands

Patrick Usborne (Fifth Year Student) also had his fourth year project featured in the Digital Hinterlands exhibition.

The Institute for Computational Design at the Faculty of Architecture and Urban Planning, University of Stuttgart has been newly founded under the direction of Achim Menges (AADipl(Hons) 2002) and former EmTech Course Master). The scientific team, led by Achim, have been employed since the beginning of the year and are investigating the possibilities of an architectural design process that navigates the complex interactions of material, shape, structure and environment through generative, computational processes. On 9 July 2009 Achim, in his inaugural lecture, described the plans for teaching and research at the Institute. As part of the event, Brett Steele (AA Director) lectured on the future challenges of architectural training and practice.

Mogbolahan Koya-Oyagbola (former AA student) is self publishing a collection of short stories. The book will be available from Amazon.mogbolahan-koya-oyagbola.webs.com

Eugene Leung (AADRL MArch 2006) has this year been granted a patent by the UK Intellectual Property Office for his DRL thesis project entitled Intelligent Bistable Structure. Other members in the team were Stella Nikolakaki, Sevil Yazici and Jesse Chima (all AA DRL MArch 2006). The project explores the material behaviour of Bistable Structure, curved spring metal found in common slap bracelets. Through rapid internal collapse, it possesses the capacity to deploy new architectural boundaries. As a result, the thesis proposal is an adaptive workplace, capable of self spatial reconfiguration based on changes in business structure, for information technology companies. It was also featured in Dezeen.com on 17 January 2009, and in Frame Magazine issue #68.

Maria Fedorchenko (AA H&U Course Master) gave an invited lecture on Urban Diagnostics and Activation: Diagrammatic Strategies for Infrastructural Practices at the Main Architectural and Planning Administration of Moscow (GlavAPU) on August 6, 2009. Linking her research project on non-linear exchanges between commercial and transportation systems with the study on experimental visual techniques, Maria demonstrated the advantages of diagrammatic analysis for utilising hidden potentials of urban infrastructures, including activation of new transfer nodes and programmatic intensification of transit links. In order to account for the specifics of Russian planning practices, Maria also conducted a specialist workshop for the North-East Division of GlavAPU on applying advanced techniques for urban diagramming.

Stephanie Edwards (Fifth Year Student) was awarded the first prize for the Domus Academy competition Defining a Creative Hub.

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Hajir Alttahir (AA Member) was awarded a travel fellowship and second prize for her essay in the 2009 Berkeley Undergraduate Prize for Architectural Design Excellence. The essay, Mesopotamian Peace Park, discussed the possible revival of sustainable vernacular architecture in the effort to rebuild Iraq, reverse the disappearance of the Mesopotamian Marshlands and re-house the indigenous refugee population.berkeleyprize.org

Andrew Pilkington (AADipl 1982) received a RIBA 2009 regional award for a small Garden Pavilion, and under that title it was open to view with London Open House on 20 September 2009.londonopenhouse.org

Ana Cocho (AA DRL MArch 2006) presented, on behalf of her team [An_D], their DRL project Emergency Deployable at the International Symposium File to Factory: The Design and Fabrication of Innovative Forms in a Continuum, hosted by the Centre for Mediterranean Architecture, Chania, Crete on 3-4 September 2009.f2f-continuum.eu Abhishek Bij (AA DRL MArch 2009) led the design team for the Urban Design Competition, to design a new campus for the School of Planning and Architecture, New Delhi, as an associate architect with Design Plus. Of the more than 250 entries that were submitted, 30 entries were exhibited at SPA, ITO campus from 1 to 7 June 2009. The project highlighted the important distinction between Urbanism and Urbanisation, and proposed the Urban Ground; a model of urbanism that attempts to dilute the extremities between the natural and the human imposed context. Abhishek also took part in the Roaming Workshop charette at Sushant School of Art and Architecture and the School of Planning

and Architecture, which discussed the topics of Field and Topology as an Urban Planning and a Form Finding tool, in February and September 2009. He explored ideas involving densification, stressing on developments of prototypes and consequent families as a module for the housing sector.designplus.org.inspa.ac.inurbanground-ab.blogspot.com

Pavel Hladik (AA EmTech MA 2006) and Filip Dubsky of Nolimat were awarded first prize in the Family House category by GRAND PRIX 2009, an annual competition organised by the Society of Czech Architects and the Czech Chamber of Architects, for their project Weekend House, in Rudoltice. The house involves the idea of a temporary used property expressed in the form of a closed/open container. The house is divided into overlapping zones with specific environmental requirements and therefore custom made features.nolimat.comgrandprix-architektu.cz/en/grandprix-architektu/current-exibition-cycle/awards/c1261

Wyssem Nochi (AA H&U MA 2002) Cécile Nochi showed an installation entitled Dark Matter at the Superstudio Piu Museum, Milan, 22–27 April 2009, and their R6 (chair in rattan) was one of the semi-finalists of the One Good Chair Design Competition, organised by the Sustainable Furnishings Council and World Market Center, Las Vegas. wyssemnochi.comonegoodchair.com/home

Sliding House by dRMM, the practice of Alex de Rijke (External Examiner and Former Intermediate Unit Master), Sadie Morgan (AA Councillor and Former Intermediate Unit Master) and Philip Marsh (Former Intermediate Unit Tutor) has won several awards

so far this year, including an RIBA East Award, and it is shortlisted for a Manser Medal. The project is also in the running for a World Architecture Festival Award, as are two more dRMM projects, Clapham Manor Primary School and the Timber Stadium, exhibited at last year’s AA exhibition Future Non-Future. dRMM director Alex de Rijke describes the research project as ‘setting new standards for the potential scale of carbon negative timber structures’.

Nuria Alvarez Lombardero (AA H&U MA 2008 and Unit Master Intermediate Unit 8) and Canales & Lombardero work has been included at the Metalocus X >10 exhibition in Madrid. Francisco González de Canales (Unit Master Intermediate Unit 8, MA H&T Course Tutor and AACP Exhibitions Curator) presented a paper entitled From Po-Mo to Digital at the Critical Digital Conference, Harvard Graduate School of Design. He also co-organised the symposium Creative Cities at the University of Seville.

Pedro Ignacio Alonso (AA H&T MA Course Tutor) and the Atacama Desert Centre (CDA) in Chile are collaborating in the Extreme Weather Project: Integrated Design in the Atacama Desert. An international seminar was held at the Catholic University in Chile with participation of CDA experts and Pablo Lazo, Associate Director at Arup’s Urban Design in London. The Extreme Weather project aims at investigating the design of urban settlements constrained by extreme weather conditions and scarce energy resources. In search of an industrial ecology for the region, it addresses integrated design strategies within worst case scenario conditions from the integration of innovative technologies, urban strategies, and design. climaextremo.org

Darryl Chen (AA H&U MA(Dist) 2004) and Liam Young (Unit Master, Intermediate Unit 7) (Tomorrow’sThoughtsToday) exhibited at the Power of 8 exhibition as part of London Design Week, at Waterman’s Gallery 23 September–14 October 2009. They also spoke at the ThisIsNotAGateway 2009 Festival of Urbanism 23–25 October, and will be speaking at the Minimum or Maximum Cities symposium at Cambridge University on 26 November.

Claudio Araneda (AA PhD 2008) has had his PhD thesis published as a monograph by the German academic publishing house VDM.amazon.co.uk/Dis-Information-Information-City-Claudio-Araneda/dp/3639163370/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1251211939&sr=1-1

Max Hacke (Third Year student) won the Alexander Memorial Travel Fund award in 2009 for his second year project, Mr. Spiegelhalter - the Life and Protest of a Watchmaker. The project articulates the narrative of the struggle that small individual workshops are facing in today’s world of commercialised mass production. The proposal was to bring back to life the beauty of custom made objects, the knowledge of who one’s customers are and therefore the identity of a place.

Nikolaus Hirsch (Former Diploma Unit Master) appeared in conversation with Maria Lind at the e-flux reading room in New York on 23 September 2009 at the launch of the book Institution Building, which he co-edited. The other editors were Phillip Misselwitz (AADipl 2001), Markus Miessen (AADipl(Hons) and former Intermediate Unit Master) and Matthias Goerlich, and the book features contributions from Shumon Basar (AA Dipl 2000, Head of AACP, co-director of the AA Summer School

and Former Intermediate Unit Master) and Eyal Weizman (AA Dipl 1998).

Ludovico Lombardi (AA DRL MArch 2008) and Valentin Bontjes van Beek (AA Dipl 1998 and First Year Master) were invited to lead a workshop ‘Architate’ at Tate Britain as part of the LoudTate event on 26 September 2009.ldvc.net

Phillipe Rahm (Former Diploma Unit Master) has been giving a series of lectures. He was at the Faculty of Architecture, TU Delft on 29 September, the University of Alicante on 2 October, the Barcelona Institute of Architecture on 31 October and will be at the Department of Architecture, ETH, Zurich on 10 November 2009.

Bedford Press (Zak Kyes & Wayne Daly) recently participated in a number of publishing events, including Unter Dem Motto, 5 September at Motto Bookstore, Berlin; Publish and Be Damned, 27 September at Oxford House, London; and Salon Light #6, 6–8 November at Cneai, Paris.

With regret we announce that Melanie Richardson (AA Member and AADipl 1974), and the former head of School, University of Leicester, Jamaica passed away in August in Barnsley, Yorkshire.

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Fireworks 2009 is an architectural event conceived by Bernard Tschumi for the exhibition First Works: Emergent Architectural Practices of the 1960s & 1970s, curated by Brett Steele and Francisco González de Canales. The event is a re-enactment of a fireworks show realised in 1974 at the AA by Tschumi and a group of tutors and students including Nigel Coates. The work was originally shown at the RCA for the exhibition Space: A Thousand Words together with a short text, and later published in 1978 as the first of Bernard Tschumi’s Architectural Manifestoes. More than thirty years later, Fireworks 2009 brings back Tschumi’s first obsessions about decoding the close-knit relations between events, actions and spaces, and how this could be deployed through complex notation systems which have seduced several generations of architects.

Back cover: Bernard Tschumi, Fireworks 2009, 3D visualisation. The First Works exhibition opened on Friday 6 November 2009 with a restaging of Bernard Tschumi’s 1974 fireworks display – Architectural Manifesto 1.

FIREWORKS, 2009,ARCHITECTURAL ASSOCIATION,

LONDONBernard Tschumi

The first fireworks event took place in 1974. We did it with our group of tutors and students (including Nigel Coates) at the Architectural Association. It was conceived as making a point about the pleasure of architecture and the beauty of its uselessness, and realised through a détournement (or creative misuse) of Guy Fawkes Day. We documented the mini-event and I showed it in the exhibition ‘Space: A Thousand Words’, together with a short text. The second fireworks event took place in 1985, at the Parc de la Villette. It was a much bigger and more professional affair, with more than ten thousand viewers. We designed a three-dimensional version of the park, with follies in the sky, and vertical promenades zooming in with great speed and noise. We actually had invented a specific mode of notation for performing fireworks, but the technicians felt it was quite incomprehensible, and suggested that we describe them with words like ‘bright’, ‘red’ and ‘bang bang bang’. So we did. The fireworks were a great popular success. The third and current fireworks is an improvised reenactment of the idea of the second one, returning it to the place – the AA – where it was originally conceived.

Phase IFirst part: lines 250 metres high. 15 seconds

Second part: surfaces 250 metres high. 15 seconds

Third part: points 250 metres high. 15 seconds

Fourth part: superimposition, points, lines, surfaces 250 metres high. 15 seconds

Phase IIFirst part: lines 50 metres, 150 metres, 250 metres high. 15 seconds

Second part: surfaces 50 metres, 150 metres, 250 metres high. 15 seconds

Third part: points 50 metres, 150 metres, 250 metres high. 15 seconds

Fourth part: superimposition, points, lines, surfaces 50 metres, 150 metres, 250 metres high. 15 seconds

Phase IIIFirst part: lines. 15 seconds

Second part: surfaces. 15 seconds

Third part: points. 15 seconds

Fourth part: superimposition, points, lines, surfaces. 15 seconds

Total time: three minutes