AA

rc

hitec

tur

e 28

AArchitecture issue 28

news from the ArchitecturAl

AssociAtion

BoundarY

in recent years conversations concerning the demarcation of limits have taken on a different significance within our profession. Such conversations increasingly move beyond the inherent and requisite discussions surrounding boundaries of ownership, territory and physical material, calling into question the very containment and contemporary consequences of architecture as a whole.

As the means and skills by which architects professionally operate have become more widely available through the proliferation of online communication networks, the boundaries that define the architectural profession have become significantly more ambiguous and open to debate. At the same time architects are increasingly expected to be literate in an expanding range of media and as a consequence, the boundaries of architectural education appear to be rapidly shifting in a bid to keep up.

The limits that define what students worldwide are learning in preparation for the professional world are materially changing, evolving far beyond any prescriptive and vocational skill set. Additionally, boundaries of race, gender and economic status are increasingly being challenged – the architectural community at large is continuing to address historic inequalities, shifting the limits of what is possible for any individual.

AA

rchi

tect

ure

28

2

Such open and continuing discussion is forcing professionals and students alike to look hard at what is possible as an architect, to progressively review and redefine the boundaries that shape our collective search. however, the wider global context and political landscape that controls architectural education and defines the limits of our working potential upon graduation is, at present, moving towards an adverse position.

For the generation of students currently studying, who have unprecedented freedom of movement and international opportunities as ‘global citizens’ (particularly in a small and multicultural school such as the AA), the day-to-day political realities of life in 2016 are jarring reminders of the boundaries that move beyond our control. in the wake of recent national policy modifications increasing the minimum pay requirements for workers from outside the eu, arbitrary net reduction targets for overall immigration figures and increased stringency, legal complexity and the cost of hiring international labour, the horizons of opportunity for graduating architects are narrowing considerably and in uncomfortable contrast with the progressive demolition of boundaries within our profession as a whole.

in late March of this year with the loss of Zaha hadid, many of these issues were brought into razor sharp focus. Throughout her career as both a student and a qualified architect, Zaha challenged 3

the boundaries of architectural practice and study, pushing herself and the profession at large beyond established conventions of both aesthetic style and attainable recognition. in doing so, her achievement of such radical architectural redefinitions was predicated on a requisite process of breaking down significant entrenched barriers within the profession and the wider world that had hindered great architects before her and continue to affect many today. Zaha hadid was undoubtedly a pioneer in the transgression of boundaries and has cemented her position within the architectural canon, achieving a level of recognition and notoriety beyond what many would have thought possible for an architect today.

her passing serves as a potent reminder to architects and students alike that our boundaries should constantly be pushed, modified and redefined. The status quo has never been an object to be accepted or admired, but a fleeting delineation of a territory awaiting movement.

in issue 28, AArchitecture attempts to define and question both the internal and external boundaries that challenge the architectural profession – physically and conceptually across a wide range of scales: from the intimacy of the bedroom wall and the unknowing transgression of secrecy and privacy across physical barriers (Sofia Belenky, ‘Bedroom Walls’), through to the limits and boundaries of the architectural profession as a

AA

rchi

tect

ure

28

4

whole in a contemporary context in which there is a viable possibility that Donald trump may be elected commander-in-chief of the united States of America (Klaus Platzgummer, ‘entit(y)ies’).

By challenging the limits of expertise and the timeworn divisions between the fields of design, architecture may begin to rethink the boundaries of polity and territory that have for so long dictated the methods of its implementation and the extent of its effect. in a country that may soon decide to isolate itself from mainland europe in a bid for economic protectionism and border control, where do we stand as architects? Are we the exploited subjects of such monumental re-drawings or do we have the collective capacity to fundamentally affect large-scale change?

As a profession and an educational model we should aspire to continue to move progressively in liberating ourselves from boundaries of constraint and restriction that affect both individuals and our community as a whole. Though the limits of personal freedoms within our community continue to be reviewed, we must find a voice of unity to confront and affect progressive change in the wider global context in which we practise.

5

AArchitecture issue 28

news from the ArchitecturAl

AssociAtion

BoundaRY

Boundary

Contents

Beyond Objects and Fields: Boundaries for the Post-Wall Generation ...................................... 8Thin Walls ..................................................................... 16Watching Cops ............................................................. 22The Farm track .......................................................... 28Auto-da-fé .................................................................... 34entit(y)ies ..................................................................... 44traces of Passage ....................................................... 50Savage Architecture .................................................. 56Zaha hadid, 1950 – 2016 ........................................... 60

New From AA Publications ..................................... 64AA Bookshop’s recommended reading .............. 68AA News ........................................................................ 71AA Notices .................................................................... 79issue 29: Value ............................................................. 81

BeyOND OBjectS AND FielDS: BOuNDArieS FOr the POSt-WAll GeNerAtiON

— Maria Fedorchenko

Maria Fedorchenko (AA Diploma 8 unit Master) conceives of a new approach for addressing the boundaries of the architectural profession and its consequences to the contemporary urban condition.

www.dip8.aaschool.ac.uk

today, any mention of boundary operations – whether zoning, segregation or division – or its spatial apparatus (or the ghost of the ‘wall’!) brings about a host of negative associations and hurried qualifications. it appears as if boundaries are only made to be immediately traversed, blurred or turned into something else (from in-betweens to thresholds). Any project that declares an interest in constructing or reinforcing boundaries would be hailed as daring, dated or doomed. This profound unease vis-à-vis the boundary reveals much deeper disciplinary tensions – such as object versus field – that underlie the architectural project on the city.

let’s recall yet another recent system and network ‘fever’ that inflated diagrammatic abstraction, as well as the vengeful visual and material turn that followed. At first, responding to the theoretical constructions of the city as a dynamic and pervasive smooth space of infrastructural flows and residual fields, we aimed to disintegrate and dissolve the object. yet, we went on to generate not only increasingly more diffused design frameworks, but also singular images, shapes and plans. These overlaps didn’t just confuse our position or exacerbate our theoretical and practical anxieties. They produced a schism between contemporary urban challenges and dated architectural tool-kits. With architecture seen as an advanced mode of thinking about everything and everywhere, architects pondered their inherited erector Sets 9

Boundary

of elements with dismay because, let’s face it, all these envelopes and cores, walls and ceilings are better suited for articulating clear differences, divisions and limits, rather than those seductive yet elusive conditions (that sound something like ‘non-linear interactions within a-hierarchical accumulation of overlapping zones of ambiguities across multiplying urban plateaus’.)

Arguably, there is another way to approach these apparent tensions and inconsistencies within a broader disciplinary context. could we revisit the long-standing tension between urban fields and architectural objects? Do we evaluate our methods and tools against new problems and briefs? And do we tackle the boundary apparatus as our evolved ammunition?

From this perspective, our current dilemmas fit into a longer history of exchanges between city and architecture. if we focus on the twentieth century, besides the familiar wild swings between autonomy and contingency, object and system, form and function, those key moments of opposition and destabilisation would be followed by periods of reintegration and reformation (ensuring the discipline’s evolution and continuity). And what if we are now emerging from just such a period when the odd trials start to suggest qualitatively new approaches? By paying attention to transitional experiments, we could finally begin to move beyond those extreme positions – that imply that we must 10

AA

rchi

tect

ure

28

either oppose shifting fields and provisional connections with reinforced edges and structures or begin to simulate dynamic urban processes by moving from objects to fields, systems or ecologies.

With a bit of exaggeration, let’s outline these dispositions on the inter-generational battlefield. On one side, there is a parade of mega-objects and hyper-buildings; with their figured edges and tight boundaries, they retain the flow-, dross- and junk-spaces that rage upon the post-urban ground. The fortified and imploded bastions act as new generation of condensers/compressors – through densification and hybridisation. And on the other side are captives or defectors that indiscriminately welcome urban fields and flows across their perforated structures and edges. They begin to resemble the various infrastructural systems they contain. Weakening in hierarchy, resolution and border control, they now pose as gameboards, frameworks or artificial ecologies. But wait: to the side of the two opposing factions, we can also discern a small, third cluster, fed by the reinforcements from the east (ito, SANAA) and west fronts (tschumi, OMA, MVrDV). Apparently, they are in the best position to observe both sides and to adapt their strategies and tactics. it appears that these composite or swollen entities rely on two main diagrams, on two key scales. Originally, we detect the revival of the archipelago concept: agglomerations of bounded, thematically or 11

Boundary

OMA, Penang tropical city, Malaysia12

AA

rchi

tect

ure

28

typologically sorted platforms float within liquid suspensions and mixtures (the so-termed social soups or cultural milieus; landscape seas or industrial flotsam). Then, we also detect a negative version of the diagram: solidified chunks of post-urban fields and piles of generic matter as deep blocks and thick grounds, this time read against the foreign system of zones, sectors and voids (described as melted ice or holey cheese). Apparently, these dominant diagrams can be easily transplanted via ‘design models’, inverted through figure/ground and figure/figure conditions, or as re-scaled and layered – yielding endless variations on the original ‘soups’ and ‘cheeses’. islands can also feature as pavilions or cores within open interiors; solid and void can further trade places in large-scale urban landscapes and infrastructures. regardless, these field-objects and fields of objects suggest a new default for converging previously opposing approaches.

One cannot help but admire these solutions of the urbanistically minded yet architecturally committed practices that manage to both assimilate urban diagrams and to counteract them with the strategic use of built matter. however, recycling and repetition of the earlier models (from collages to mat-buildings) also suggests that we must confront the shortcuts and the shortcomings of the ‘materialist-diagrammatic’ generation in order to chart our future lines of enquiry. i suggest we proceed on three key levels: bypassing disciplinary 13

Boundary

oppositions; clarifying the distinctions between the design domains; and building up the catalogue of boundary elements.

First, we should aim to bypass the lingering oppositions and dialectics and aim towards new inclusive approaches. today, it is not simply an issue of working across the previously divided camps or handling their convergence. Neither is it about exploring various gradients and transitions within the same expanded project – the purview of the ‘projective’ strand (WW, WorkAc). We must proceed more aggressively. rather than simply lamenting their conflict, exploiting their co-presence, or resorting to emergency combos of field-objects, we should advance new conceptual categories and design models that include multiple sensibilities. Further, we could exploit the gaps between static products and dynamic processes, without sacrificing legibility of form or the intentions of programme. Admitting the impossibility of translating urban processes into architectural products, we should nevertheless pursue slow research and analyses to enrich our design thinking. We should also lift various taboos – from zoning and mono-functionality as well as densification and the overload of built boundaries – as new experimental pathways could originate in the excesses of determinacy and indeterminacy, separation and integration. Obviously, a crucial step in our conceptual liberation would be to recuperate those harmless actual walls, cuts and channels in view of the 14

AA

rchi

tect

ure

28

advanced infrastructures of social and spatial control. however, that doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t actively expand our architectural apparatus. We can begin to rebuild the taxonomy of boundaries and their spatial correlatives. Those smarter, looser and multi-tasking elements (as befitting the ‘post-wall’ generation) could help us condense and diffuse, divide and mediate, frame and contain. Perhaps these propositions begin to suggest a provisional agenda for those (that includes you, our hard-pressed AA students and future urban architects!) fated to sustain deeper conceptual exchanges between architecture and city and yet remain in the tough business of conceiving and constructing boundaries. let’s hope that we can finally come to terms with the unavoidable limitations to distinctly architectural modes of spatial production while charting the productive directions for our disciplinary project on the city – this time, with more precision and realism.

15

Boundary

thiN WAllS

— Sofia Pia Belenky

Sofia Pia Belenky (intermediate 14 Student) examines the consequences and experience of a city that has become an endless interior. Space is now thinly partitioned into bedrooms and rented weekly in order to maximise profits.

The flat is all walls. Through the internal office window, another wall. The partition is a sheet stapled to a beam, a piece of drywall. A shared, eight-bedroom, open-plan co-op-flat, invested in portions and rented weekly. As cities become more expensive and jobs less predictable, ownership no longer seems achievable, instead domestic space has become partitioned, packaged and rented as efficiently as possible. This can be understood as a move towards privatisation and the micro-scaling of traditional real estate investments – one which not only impacts us economically but also completely reorients how we are able to understand the future of the family. This micro-economic shift also adds to, and plays on, the increasing age people start families and settle into careers.

Our flatmates become family. The intimate horror of living in close quarters with strangers, the dirty dishes in the sink, the banal conversation, passive aggressive sticky notes on doors. So we build more walls, and the home once designed for the nuclear family becomes increasingly subdivided and shared. each additional enclosure, rented as a bedroom, relieves a portion of the monthly cost.

A recent study by the riBA found that the average one-bedroom flat in london is the same size as an underground tube carriage. We now rent bedrooms instead of homes, temporary storage units in our freelance lifestyle. 17

Boundary

A studio flat – 7m2, so small you can work the microwave from the bed – can be yours for £300 per week. A bedroom becomes the void beneath a staircase, the extra space at the foot of the bed, the garage. More and more apartments are being made without kitchens, and with shared bathrooms. Thirty-five per cent of londoners now work from the bed. Additionally there has been an increase in artificial lighting, as each bounded space requires individual light sources.

in a home of strangers, the only private space left is the bedroom. together but alone. The kitchen table was replaced by the sofa, meals in front of the television. in turn the sofa was replaced by the bed. its inhabitants can be found lying under the blue glow of a laptop screen.

We retreat to the private bedroom, enclosed by internal boundaries within the home: walls. This wall as a singular object has two sides. A conversation can be heard from the other side of the wall.

Overheard stories through thin walls from strangers (sourced from Amazon turk):

A few years ago, I occupied an apartment in a fairly old complex while attending college. The walls and floors were very thin, and almost seemed to amplify sound from above and below. My bedroom in particular had a very 18

AA

rchi

tect

ure

28

Neighbours 19

Boundary

thin floor. How thin, exactly? One morning my alarm clock went off to wake me for class, and, after crossing the room and turning it off, I clearly heard someone in the downstairs apartment say, ‘What was that?’ I used my cell phone as an alarm clock from then on.

When I lived in an apartment, the unit next to mine had a volatile couple living in it. The walls were paper-thin. I could hear them fighting practically every night, never over important things but over leaving the cap off the toothpaste. They would fight about hair on the floor. They would fight about leaving water in the sink. They would fight about flyers from the grocery store, or things left on the table. Neither one of them was particularly clean, so I never understood why they cared if there was a mess in the apartment. But they seemed to get along when we saw them outside. They never fought in front of other people.

Only two weeks ago I had to listen to my new upstairs neighbour, Aaron, having sex. My awesome new apartment, which is a really big old studio flat in Seattle, has really thin walls and there’s nothing I can do about it. It’s still something that I’m getting used to but really, it’s worth it, for all the charm my cool apartment has. Anyway, it sounded like pretty boring sex. Sounded like familiar sex, frankly. The music that I hear coming from their place is actually 20

AA

rchi

tect

ure

28

pretty good, I just wish I didn’t have to hear it at all. I actually had to ask him to turn the music down about a week after I moved in. I think I can hear them right now.

I once heard a guy in the next apartment telling a woman to just put it in. ‘No, no,’ she said, and he said, ‘Oh come on, it wouldn’t hurt anything.’ He kept trying to encourage her to do it and she kept saying no. Finally he said, ‘Fine I’ll put it in.’ ‘No, no,’ she said, ‘I’ll do it.’ I didn’t hear anything more after that. Later that evening I ran into him in the hall. I asked what was going on because I had heard all the back and forth about putting something in. He said, ‘Oh we were arguing about whether to put the chicken in the oven. We had company coming for dinner. My wife was worried that we were putting it in too soon.’

I stayed in a group house and could hear everything that happened in the hallway through the thin walls. There were eight rooms on the floor, and after living there for some months I could tell by the sounds alone who was coming or going and other details, like what they were carrying, if they were with another person, if they were in a good mood, etc. All of this came without any strong effort on my part. I wasn’t even trying to eavesdrop – I just picked up on all this through observation.

21

Boundary

WAtchiNG COPS

— joshua harskamp

Cops is one of the longest-running programmes on uS television. having grown up watching the show in its heyday, joshua harskamp (year Out AA Student) discusses its capacity to transgress architectural boundaries through the urban chase while obscuring clear divisions of social injustice and institutional failure as highly crafted entertainment.

www.jgharskamp.com

i was 11 years old and lying on the carpet watching television on a rainy afternoon when my father burst out of the kitchen and yelled, ‘i said turn that shit off!’ This was a regular occurrence in the 1990s when FOX’s television show Cops was in full swing in its coveted Saturday evening slot – a slice of time it still occupies today, although now on the man-centric network, Spike tV. Why did Cops draw my father’s ire so reliably? Because it was the most direct manifestation of what could go wrong in North American society: it showed brutal generational poverty, hard drug use, abuse of power, and above all, extraordinary violence (all wrapped up on either end by inner circles’ insanely catchy hit ‘Bad Boys’). Producer Dick herlan invented and enforced a reality that allowed the viewer to easily pick a side – bad boy or good boy – and then vicariously experience justice as athletic police officers chased men through destitute communities while screaming obscenities and violent threats. herlan is credited with inventing reality television, an achievement he has played down, but one that intentionally cut production costs by choosing righteous violence as its subject matter and thereby circumventing any writing strike American network employees could mount. herlan’s concrete narrative of Good Guy versus Bad Guy makes the victim of police violence, who is often a low-income person in possession of a negligible amount of narcotics, into a laughing stock. it’s like joey from Friends, but instead of being set in 23

Boundary

Monica’s chic loft, the plot takes place within America’s poorest communities. Were these communities the backdrop or generator of the reality Cops exploits? As architects i argue we can only see it as the latter because the radical disparities between what each North American understands as his or her ‘standard of living’ is mainly attributed to their zipcode. As architects, when we watch Cops we recognise that the viewer cannot leave certain neighbourhoods (except via high-speed chase), which should force us to reckon with the spatial qualities of the communities being filmed. They are immediately obvious as one-dimensional, almost coming across as film sets as crews parachute into precincts around the united States. Single-family, single-storey detached houses are repeatedly subjected to hand-held battering rams and blown open by police, screaming with their guns drawn. it is this grim typology that acts as the target for North America’s projection of every ideology of self determination – the new eden in the form of the planned submission, the promise of property ownership (previously mandatory for voting rights in the uS) and the personification of the nuclear hetero-centric family. Why does Cops operate unswervingly in what should have been the fertile ground of American society? Because that ground was poisoned from the beginning with existing institutionalised oppression that pre-dates the notion of single-family homes. With herlan’s narrative we can’t see the 24

AA

rchi

tect

ure

28

failure of housing schemes to deal with the realities of being born poor, of drug abuse, racism, the effects of incarceration for petty crime on families, or the crippling debt into which America’s most impoverished communities fell after the 2008 financial crisis. herlan understood that righteous violence against criminals was the pressure switch the uS badly needed in order to sidestep its historical negligence of class discrimination and generational poverty. in turn, the show’s ratings skyrocketed and have remained consistent for decades. As architects we must see these switches as shams and consider them in our work: the view of neatly planned suburbs from the helicopter during a police chase takes on a different quality when the officer is pursuing on foot. This May, as the world tunes in to watch Alejandro Aravena’s Venice Biennale, i would like to note that FOX has inadvertently been broadcasting the ‘front line’ of architecture for nearly three decades, to millions of Americans. But instead of the putting the architect in the role of the enactor of justice, we are simply spectators like everyone else. if you are new to Cops i recommend watching the 1988 pilot episode (available on youtube), which awkwardly shifts between scenes of canned domesticity, featuring officers who star in the show, and violent pursuits through the destitute neighbourhoods of Broward county, Florida.

25

Boundary

26

AA

rchi

tect

ure

28

27

Boundary

The walking path has long been a method and a means for demarcating boundaries and boundary relationships, in the form of easements or right-of-ways. in this article Alexandra Savtchenko-Belskaia (year Out AA Student) understands these walks as systems for the architectural mapping of boundaries.

the FArM trAcK

— Alexandra Savtchenko-Belskaia

7am. A damp farm track in the blue hue of the early morning. A barn at the end of a driveway, abandoned but not forgotten. in the distance, a couple walk their dog. As i contemplate further investigation they draw near with gumboot pragmatism and watchful eyes. The cool air compels me to enquire: ‘is it okay to look around?’ ‘No, it’s private,’ the woman quickly replies. And after a pause, ‘But you’re welcome to continue down the track. it’s public.’ There is a broken barbed-wire fence with coils and bramble mingling and a decrepit half-broken gate. Beyond these, open fields and poplars in patches on the hillsides, all the way to the horizon.

The couple disappeared from view but their words echoed. An experience of immediacy dawned, a closeness or palpable proximity between the words and the coarse gravel on the ground. Their words became spatial. its imperative form betrayed an order, still invisible yet already perceptible. As though it was only a matter of discerning it more clearly before it became physically present, i decided to stay here for a time.

isolated words began to appear, obscure and difficult to grasp: boundary, limit, line. Definition, a container, or a threshold? Sounding like hollow reproductions of profound thoughts, words barely brought about a real understanding. Sometimes to know a thing, one has to act it out.

29

Boundary

1 There are many examples of this, but one noted here comes from carl jung’s discussion on the significance of the mandala and the spiral ‘circumambulatio’ at the temple of Borobudur in java.2 Martin heidegger, Building Poetry, Language, Thought, Albert hofstadter, trans (New york, Ny: harper, 1971) p 154.

in the past, to set out a city, priests and kings would ritually walk the circumference of a place.1 The walk, later the wall, would protect the sacred place within, with a temple at the centre. On the symbolic plane, ‘the boundary is means of protecting the centre from being drawn out or influenced from outside’, as jung explained in his tavistock lectures. here the boundary is equal to its function of protecting that which it contains. But the adjacency of boundary to that which it contains goes deeper and has greater significance for space, for example heidegger’s definition of space itself (raum) as, ‘something that has been made room for, something that is cleared and free, namely within a boundary, Greek peras’.2 The boundary actually brings forth the presence of a thing – its ‘being in existence’. in this thought ‘freedom’ means being distinct in the world, and it depends on the boundary. Thus, the boundary itself, rather than that which is contained, is the object of observance. The boundary engenders the being, not the other way around. Without it, there could be no thing. When the couple spoke, rather

30

AA

rchi

tect

ure

28

The Farm track, photo Alexandra Savtchenko-Belskaia, 2015 31

Boundary

than protecting an old barn, they protected the presence of distinction, in this case between public and private space.

in Discovering the Vernacular Landscape, john Brinckerhoff jackson wrote that the formation of a community of responsible citizens begins by defining territory, and after, dividing it for individual members. ‘The most basic political element in any landscape is the boundary … Boundaries, unmistakable, permanent, inviolate boundaries, are essential.’ Only once a boundary is drawn can specific relations be formed, and a sense of place and presence be established.

continuing down the track, reflecting on this and that side of the concept, i entered the liminal space of the boundary. here in the rural setting, the structural relation of centre to periphery is loose. instead of centres there are endless repetitions of boundary conditions, some in brick, others in barbed wire, others indicated only by a printed word. Multiple lines drawn in the land like many abstract painterly contours and continuities, repetitions, simultaneous compressions and expansions. They seem abstract, arbitrary, indeterminate. however, the fact of their presence is anything but.

According to the Ordnance Survey glossary, public boundaries are not visible structures and can only be determined by relating them to features on 32

AA

rchi

tect

ure

28

the ground. A surveyor ‘meres’ the boundary by determining its relationship to ground features, and obtains agreement to the legal boundary line with all relevant parties. he or she ‘perambulates’ new and old boundaries to confirm the ground features still exist, and if they do not, adjusts the mereings to changed ground features. The walking of boundaries, as both legal practice and as pastime, is a tradition in Anglo-Saxon culture. it is known that the landscape changes and is subject to entropy. The ground moves! Boundaries, if not actively attended, dissipate, grow over, and even bricks and mortar fall apart. That is why to maintain and to know them, they are maintained as a matter of ritual and tradition.

After a long time, it appears that boundaries are not objects, and it’s not boundaries themselves that are inviolate and permanent. rather, its clear and definite distinction is the contained value, made free for giving the possibility of being. But before they are written or built, they are agreements between people who recognise each other’s presence before they are formalised by law and, in dense spaces, made material. As robert Frost wrote in his well-known poem, ‘Mending Wall’, ‘we keep the wall between us as we go.’ And that’s why good fences make good neighbours.

33

Boundary

AutO-DA-Fé

— james Anicich

A lot has been said about the encampments surrounding calais.A disservice that makes its everyday impenetrable from afar. reality in the camps conjures another world. As trajectories turn over, that long-standing obedience serves to make us realise it is simply another part of this world.

james Anicich is an AA Diploma 4 Student

36

AA

rchi

tect

ure

28

37

Boundary

38

AA

rchi

tect

ure

28

39

Boundary

40

AA

rchi

tect

ure

28

41

Boundary

42

AA

rchi

tect

ure

28

43

Boundary

eNtit(y)ieS

— Klaus Platzgummer

taking Donald trump’s rhetoric of ‘We have to figure our what is going on!’ as its starting point, this essay by Klaus Platzgummer (hct Student) examines the impact of rhetorical boundaries and mutually exclusive logics within architecture today.

hi, how are you, architecture? My status quo is poisoned. Migration of ideas is Mission Impossible; no osmosis of positions, no steps beyond ourselves. This is today. My metabolism is sick, my mind confused, filled and spoiled with dirt of past decades. Seriously, ‘We have to figure out, what is going on!’1 Not tomorrow, but now! let us face our precariat. it is time for relaxation, an exit from our nihilism. We want to be ‘united in Diversity?’2 But then really, we should now ‘figure out, what is going on!’3 Waves, everyday. Opinion-making hits us hard: i like, i don’t like. Our conversations use decor. Full with smilies, emoticons and hashtags… is this an end for judgement? All about taste. let us take it seriously? Aiming for coquetry in the selfie-age, chapeau! everything and everyone. We want to be so cool: normcore, ecocore and hardcore, core. cynicism is not enough. irony not the solution. escapism not the goal. let us stop the many Miraculix. This magic potion to elixir of life is nothing more than a toxic anaesthetic, brewed in the total fluid age!

1 ‘Donald trump Demands to Know “What’s Going On?”’, The huffington Post (2016).2 european union, ‘The eu Motto’, www.europa.eu/about-eu/basic-information/symbols/motto/index_en.htm, accessed 01.04.2016 3 ‘Donald trump Demands to Know “What’s Going On?”’, The huffington Post (2016). 45

Boundary

4 Anthony Vidler, ‘Architecture’s expanded Field’, Architecture between Spectacle and Use (Williamstown, MA: Sterling and Francine clark Art institute, 2008) pp 143–54.5 Wikipedia, ‘Schizophrenia’, www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schizophrenia, accessed 01.04.2016

it is true – we never got rid of dualisms. Still with us are Form vs Function, Utopia vs Reality, Historicism vs Abstraction, Structure vs Enclosure. No relaxation in sight. two decades of experientialism did not really break ground. The Biology-ism, the Landscape-ism, the Program-ism, our 1990s epiphanies.4 A glorious emergence of unifying principles? The contrary is present – a serious schizophrenia! Get rid of simplistic historicism. Anachronistic must be our thought. The expanded field of architecture is stretched – laid out between extremes. The discourse is not a discourse. And still, results are visible. We face a mental confusion. characterised by the ‘abnormal social behaviour’. We fail ‘to understand [today’s] reality!’5 The field is vast. Diplomacy is needed. This means not loss of any boundaries, but contact. Broader concepts are missing. The overview is blurred. continuously inventing terms. reductionism was set in motion. Architecture is paired with blindness. Daily ‘conversations’ oscillate in extremism. Again our trap is dualism: marxist vs. fascist, socialist vs capitalist, analogue vs digital, artificial vs. natural.

46

AA

rchi

tect

ure

28

6 Barry Smith, Achille Varzi, ‘Fiat and Bona Fide Boundaries’, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research (2000).

We need no more ‘politically correct’ assumptions. Architecture is not an election campaign for left or right. emancipation includes both: straights and curves. euclid is not Marx, Bézier not Thatcher! let us start to sharpen our cognition. ‘A boundary demarcates two entities, or two parts of the same entity, which are then said to be in contact with each other.’ Our minds are open? Our minds are closed? ‘how is this relation of contact to be explained?’6 it’s obvious: conversation! how about negotiation? Gossip is out. Game over. ‘how about a talk with enemies?’ yes, let us talk, but now. Not friendly coffee table chats, but serious.

47

Boundary

48

AA

rchi

tect

ure

28

Negotiations in Architecture, Founding of the ciAM congress, la Sarraz, 1927 (Source: gta archives, eth Zurich 49

Boundary

trAceS OF PASSAGe

— edward Bottoms, AA Archives

Otto Koenigsberger was a key figure in the establishing the AA’s Department of tropical Studies, a programme that would go on to have a massive impact in how the school understands and interacts across geographic and cultural boundaries. This essay gives a clear perspective into the life and work of Koenigsberger inside and outside the Architectural Association.

collections.aaschool.ac.ukcollectionsblog.aaschool.ac.uk

Visitors to the former British Viceregal lodge near Shimla, high up in the himalayan foothills, are customarily directed towards a large teak-panelled room situated on the ground floor. centre of attention is a circular mahogany table, its highly polished surface is bisected by a thin line marking the join of the table’s two halves. tradition has it that around this table the radcliffe commission sat in the summer of 1947 debating and hastily preparing to draw a line across the indian Subcontinent. A line and an act of partition, which would precipitate the largest, mass migration in history, displacing over 14 million Sikhs, Muslims and hindus, and resulting in the deaths of as many as one million people.

in the months following Partition, a young German architect named Otto Koenigsberger was appointed as india’s Federal Director of housing and asked with the responsibility of overseeing the resettlement of the refugees flooding across the border. Koenigsberger was no stranger to forced migration, a decade earlier he had been stripped of his job and forced to flee Nazi Germany, studying in egypt and then working as government architect to the Princely State of Mysore. his work in india in the late 1940s was, however, to a totally different scale and pace. Within the space of a few years he planned and oversaw the construction of four new towns, including Gandhidham and Bhubneshwar, and established a government housing factory in Delhi, complete with a programme for the mass 52

AA

rchi

tect

ure

28

Prefabricated government housing, New Delhi, c 1951 (AA Archives). Previous spread: Prime Minister jawaharlal Nehru, Otto Koenigsberger, health Minister rajkamari Amrit Kaur and lord louis Mountbatten, c 1950. (AA Archives). 53

Boundary

Otto Koenigsberger’s identity card, 1948 (AA Archives)54

AA

rchi

tect

ure

28

production of pre-fabricated houses, to be then rolled out across india.

The housing factory programme faltered in the early 1950s and Koenigsberger resigned and emigrated to the uK. For the next 40 years, Koenigsberger became a key figure in the network of transnational planning experts who emerged in the post-colonial world. Though base in london, he was involved in numerous uN missions, advisory programmes and initiatives, working alongside charles Abrams and ernest Weissman, and acting as a consultant to the governments of Nigeria, Ghana, Singapore, ceylon, Pakistan, the Philippines, Zambia, Brazil and israel. Alongside this advisory work, Koenigsberger helped establish the AA’s Department of tropical Studies, transforming its syllabus and attracting an incredibly diverse and talented student body, with graduates including ram Karmi, Muzharul islam and Valentine Gunasekara.

Visitors to the Bedford Square can now find Koenigsberger’s papers and drawings in the AA Archives. Bequeathed by his widow in 2012, the papers are remarkably intact and through them researchers can trace the entire span of his career and the expanding network of international students who emanated from his Department of tropical Architecture.

55

Boundary

SAVAGe Architecture

— exhibition review

www.campo.spacewww.black-square.eu

Savage Architecture, in the Front Members’ room, presents a four-chapter journey examining the boundary between anthropology and architecture. The exhibition starts with Gian Piero Frassinelli’s unpublished thesis project for an Anthropology research center (1968), before taking in the dystopian scenarios presented by Superstudio in The twelve ideal cities (1972). More recent collaborations with 2A+P/A for the Budapest ethnographic Museum (2014) and the central Archive of human cultures (2015) follow. Bisecting the room is a long, bright pink, table resting on four pairs of baby blue sawhorses – reminiscent of a communal work or dining table. As viewers enter and walk clockwise around the perimeter of the room, retracing the four projects, the table seems to act as the collective meeting point, displaying large yet elegant models and beautifully bound black books. This table bridges the gap between the four projects, specifically; ‘The 12 ideal cities’ on the south side and the more recent work with 2A+P/A on the north side. One can trace the trajectory of the projects and the process of continually refining their underlying ideas. Present throughout is the importance of working methods – where iterative processes impact the exhibition as a whole. ranging from furniture to the planetary scale, the grid produces a single environment rendered uniform. During the Savage Architecture symposium held at the italian cultural institute, an audience member asked Frassinelli of the 57

Boundary

grids’ significance in the work of Superstudio, which Frassinelli humbly responded, the grid was a product of the method and tools in the production of the perspective collages. The book, an exhibition in itself, recounts this trajectory in a series of in-depth essays focused on the relationship between anthropology and architecture. curated by Davide Sacconi and published by Black Square Press, the book is available online and in the AA bookshop.

58

AA

rchi

tect

ure

28

Photos Sue Barr 59

Boundary

ZAhA hADiD1950 – 2016

March 31 2016 marked a sad day and a loss, not only for the AA community, but for the architectural community at large. Zaha hadid was an inspiration and heroine from start to finish, as observed by her unit master, rem Koolhaas, in 1977:

‘Zaha’s performance during the fourth and fifth years was like that of a rocket that took off slowly to describe a constantly accelerating trajectory. Now she is a PLANET in her own inimitable orbit. That status has its own rewards and difficulties: due to the flamboyance and intensity of her work, it will be impossible [for her] to have a conventional career. She owes it to her talent to refine and develop it over the next few years.’

Koolhaas’s feedback could not have been more prescient with Zaha’s career to come, as she never ceased refining and developing her ideas, and her gravitational force continued to grow. The full impact of her contributions to architecture seems like that of an iceberg whose tip we’ve only just managed to see.

61

Boundary

62

AA

rchi

tect

ure

28

Zaha hadid in front of the trevi Fountain, romecourtesy Zaha hadid’s Family Archives 63

Boundary

NeW FrOM AA PuBlicAtiONS

AA Publications is one of the world’s leading architectural publishers. With an editorial programme including the launch of more than two dozen titles by architects, artists, AA tutors and students. The AA’s own Print Studio includes architectural editors, graphic designers and an art director. AA Publications incorporates an in-house imprint, Bedford Press, publishing books and ebooks at the intersection of architecture, visual art, graphic design and theory.

www.aaschool.ac.uk/publications

Paradise LostMark Campbell

This book explores the notion of architectural obsolescence through a study of the contemporary uS, once the world’s greatest economic, scientific and cultural force, now obsessed with its own decline. While our image of the uS reflects the heroic potential of production, this book examines the opposite – of that which isn’t work. Or, more pointedly, those abandoned pleasures and lost paradises that remain when there is no longer any work left to define them.

Introduction by Brett Steele, afterword by Pier Vittorio Aureli128 pp, 240 x 210 mm Colour & b / w ills, paperbackApril 2016978-1-907896-69-9£25

65

Boundary

AA Files 72

AA Files 72 features essays by irénée Scalbert on the nature of gothic, Davide Spina on casa Malaparte, Mario tedeschini-lalli on Saul Steinberg’s years in italy, emma letizia jones on Schinkel’s panoramas, laurent Stalder and Moritz Gleich on Stirling’s arrows, Nicolas Kemper on isaiah Berlin’s architectural responsibilities and a conversation with the russian paper architect Alexander Brodsky.

160 pp, 297 × 245 mm Extensive colour & b / w illsPaperbackJune 2016ISSN 0261 6823ISBN 978-1-907896-81-1£15

66

AA

rchi

tect

ure

28

AA Book 2016

AA Book 2016 offers an overview of the AA’s 2015 / 16 academic year. Accompanying the school’s end-of-year show, the book features hundreds of drawings, models, installations, photographs and other materials documenting the world’s most international and experimental school of architecture.

c 320 pp, 249 × 170 mm Colour & b / w ills, paperbackJune 2016ISSN 0265-4644ISBN 978-1-907896-79-8£25

67

Boundary

AA BOOKShOP’SrecOMMeNDeD reADiNG FOrBOuNDAry

The AA Bookshop is one of london’s leading specialist architecture bookshops. Order the following titles online, where a selection of new books, special offers and some backlist titles are available.

www.aabookshop.net

69

The Conflict Shoreline

in the on-going battle over the Negev, the village of al-‘Araqib has been destroyed and rebuilt more than 70 times. unlike other contested frontiers in the israel-Palestine conflict, this area is not demarcated by fences and walls but by shifting climatic conditions. eyal Weizman’s essay explores the Negev’s threshold as a ‘shoreline’ along which climate change and political conflict are deeply and dangerously entangled.

Eyal Weizman & Fazal Sheikh95 pp, 270 x 205 mm Hardback£25

69

Boundary

Interior Tales

Interior Tales was a research developed at Syracuse university School of Architecture, london Programme, in spring 2015. At its core, the research questions of the instruments with which the contemporary city is produced – as, arguably, architecture is not anymore its protagonist. Perhaps, the only possible project for the urban form of today does not lie in buildings, but rather in the interior space – in the ‘system of objects’ with the narratives and the subjectivity that it generates.

Francisco Sanin & Davide Sacconi147 pp, 140 x 170 mm Paperback£15

70

AA

rchi

tect

ure

28

AA News

AArchitecture wishes to amend an article from the previous issue, titled ‘The Supreme Achievement, a reflection’. The Supreme Achievement was a collective initiative and workshop by both campo (rome) and Black Square Press (london) – not solely campo. The residency would not have been possible without both parties and we look forward to seeing more exciting collaborations in the future.

Result of the Election of Officers and Council 2016/2017 in this year’s elections, there were seven vacancies among the ordinary membership of council, with 13 candidates competing for those vacancies. For the first time in at least 10 years, the elections have resulted in a tie for one of those vacancies. to resolve the tie, in accordance with the AA’s by-laws, there was a vote of the members in attendance at the Ordinary General Meeting held on 9 May 2016. Further details on the result of that vote are available online at www.aaschool.ac.uk The results of the election as at 5 May 2016 are as follows:robert Mull (373, elected), catherine du toit (306, elected), David Gloster (299, elected), Patty hopkins (292, elected), john Andrews

(276, elected), carlos Peters (261, elected), Mark Prizeman (241), Victoria Thornton (241), hilary French (208), Sofia Pia Belenky (168), hunter Doyle (152), jane horcajo rubi (150), edward hutchinson (145)

The AA’s Hooke Parke campus in Dorset was featured on CNN Style. hooke Park Director Martin Self discussed how hooke Park enables AA students to develop an intuition about how wood as a material performs, and looked at the relationship between architecture, material, and the rural landscape. hooke Parke’s woodchip barn was also featured on Dezeen. The article focused primarily on Design & Make students who completed a robotically fabricated barn, using timber harvested from the surrounding trees and creating an alternative to conventional timber construction, which relies on standardised parts.www.goo.gl/T2oqcJwww.goo.gl/t193EL

The AA is contributing to ePSrc-funded research on Aerial Additive Building Manufacturing (Aerial ABM). The research will develop an aerial robotic construction system that enables aerial robots to 3D print building structures autonomously. The grant involves researchers 71

Boundary

at rome. Kenneth Browne has donated a set of watercolour sketches made on this trip. www.collectionsblog.aaschool.ac.uk/aa-archives-donation-of-1949-leptis-magna-drawings

careers and Prizes

co-founder of Feilden Fowles, Edmund Fowles (AA Dip hons 2009 and AA Baylight Scholar), was recognised in the Building Design Architect of the year Awards 2016. his practice, Feilden Fowles, was awarded young Architect of the year, which recognises the most promising new architectural practice in the eu.

Special mention and congratulations to former AA tutor Takero Shimazaki for receiving the refurbishment Architect of the year Award.www.t-sa.co.ukwww.awards.bdonline.co.uk/the-2016-winners

A team of staff and students from the AA’s Sustainable environmental Design programme won the labgrade Sustainable Design competition 2016, held at the Fair of Milano, 15–18 March 2016. The team included Antonio Almeida, Irech Castrejon, Sheila Esteve, Irene Giglio, Andrea Rossi, Victoria Soto, Avgousta Stanitsa, Julia Torrubia, Pier Luigi

from a number of institutions including imperial college, the university of Bath, university college london and the AA School.www.goo.gl/BkBfgr

Peter Cave’s ‘Aquapad 1’ drawings were recently donated to AA Archives. One of the legendary juries of 1970 was conducted in a small flat near the tuc building, where Peter cave demonstrated a working prototype of what he termed Aquapad 1, which consisted ‘of an inflated mattress, a folding enclosure with its frame, a few water valves and some electrical apparatus. By means of simply moving about on the mattress, the user can control two different types of water spray, a fresh air supply, a light and the inflating mechanism for the mattress itself.’www.collectionsblog.aaschool.ac.uk/aa-archives-peter-cave-drawings-donated

The 1949 Leptis Magna drawings were also recently donated to AA Archives. On 1 july 1949 four AA students – Kenneth Browne, ian colquhoun, P r Davidson and herbert Morel – embarked on a journey across europe to rome and on to the ruins of leptis Magna, in tripoli where they took part in an archaeological dig led by john Bryan Ward-Perkins, Director of the British School 72

AA

rchi

tect

ure

28

Turco, and tutors Herman Calleja and Federico Montella.

Alvin Huang (AA Drl MArch 2004) was part of the team at Synthesis Design + Architecture to be awarded a certificate of excellence in the Best commercial/retail Project category at the 2015 A&D trophy Awards. The project is also in the running for Building of the year by american-architects.com.www.goo.gl/xoPiiIwww.goo.gl/j45zN8

Eduardo Rico, Director of AA landscape urbanism, and Enriqueta Llabres won the competition for landscape design of Play Park design in Ballyfermot, Dublin. The design combines skate park areas with a wide range of leisure activities in a coherent spatial whole made out of interlocking topographies and low-level grassed buffers.www.architecturefoundation.ie/activities/play-park-design-competition-winner-unveild

Sevil Yazici (AA Drl MArch 2003) won the Professional Achievement Award at the British council’s 2016 education uK Alumni Awards in turkey. This award recognises alumni who have distinguished themselves through exemplary leadership and achievements in their professional industry, and

who can demonstrate the highest level of integrity and character in their professional career.www.educationuk.org/global/articles/alumni-awards-2016-turkey-sevil-yazici

Tommy Hui (AADipl 2014) won the japan Wired creative hack Award 2015 for his work, ‘Bubble Membrane Painting Machine’.www.vimeo.com/144904144

The winning teams for the design ideas competition for Wakeford hall – to be designed and built in the heart of the AA’s hooke Park in Dorset – have been selected. congratulations to the winners: Natalie Ow (AA year Out student), Kien Pham (AA Dip 2012), Paul Loh (AA Drl MArch 2002), David Leggett and Amanda Ngieng (AA Member). two further entries, one by Joanna Gondek (AA Member) and one by John Ng (AA Dip 2011 and First year tutor) received design commendations.www.hookepark.aaschool.ac.uk/wakefordresults

Joseph Armakolas (AA Dip 2000) has received Special Mention by the Architizer A+Awards 2016 jury for his latest realised project, the BOX, a multi-purpose venue for the applied arts, which now hosts a vibrant community of emerging local artists. it is run by a private 73

Boundary

Published and exhibited

AA Phd candidate Arturo Revilla exhibited his work ‘Plastic Spatial Machine’ (PSM) at the cultural Festival of Santa catharina and the DecODe Design Festival in Monterrey, Mexico. The project attempts to bring architectural design closer to a material condition, which has become fundamental for understanding the conformation of our physical medium. With the help of Ricardo Sosa (MArch Drl 2010), PSM formed part of Arturo’s PhD thesis.

Miraj Ahmed (AA Dip 1 unit Master) recently exhibited a painting at the 10th Arte laguna Prize exhibition 2016 at the Arsenale, Venice. The exhibition ran from 19 March to 3 April 2016.www.cosmicdomestic.com/#!news/c1pw1www.artelagunaprize.com/exhibition15.16

AA Member Vesna Petresin curated the exhibition ‘Our Machines’, at The Observer Building Gallery in hastings from 13 February to 12 March 2016. The exhibition presented a selection of works by artists using digital video installation, celluloid film, light reactive sound, performance, 3D video, audio/noise, scratch video, error based software, robotics,

non-profit company, established to help young professionals connect, produce and showcase their work in Athens.www.architizer.com/projects/box-4www.josepharmakolas.com

Kasang Kajang (AA Dip 2012), founder of Ksquared, has been shortlisted as a finalist in the Art & About Festival Sydney 2015–16 for the project, ‘Arteria rainbow’.www.artandabout.com.auwww.ksquared.eu

Jae Seung David Koo (AA Dip 5 student) and Ahmad Altahhan (former AA student) were commissioned to design a table display for the launch of Karina iK’s Opus Magnum footwear collection.

Former AA student William Stanley has launched a company selling limited edition 3D-printed jewellery inspired by natural forms geometry and classical designs. he has also completed a private commission for a 3D-printed Skele-Structure sculpture.www.williamstanley.net

74

AA

rchi

tect

ure

28

telepresence, scientific cloud data, Go-Pro juggling, a Theremin and other objects.www.ourmachines.blogspot.co.uk

AA territories Think tank project ‘relaying compounds on rome’ was exhibited at MAXXi Museum in rome from 19 December 2015 to 17 january 2016. The project proposes to integrate some of the key compounds that are shaping public and intellectual life at the margins of the newly established roma capitale. The international workshop rOMA 20–25 is a collaboration of 25 international universities, the Metropolitan Government of roma capitale and MAXXi, analysing the contemporary dimensions of the italian capital over the last year. The AA territories team included graduates of AA Dip 4 Stavros Papavassiliou, Maria Radjenovic, Eleni Tzavellou Gavalla, Graham Smith and Tom Fox, with Dip 4 unit Masters John Palmesino and Ann-Sofi Rönnskog.www.goo.gl/6ieCYX

lectures and events

Jose Alfredo Ramirez (Director AA landscape urbanism) was the keynote speaker at the landscape as urbanism in the Americas lecture series. The event was organised by harvard university Graduate School of Design Office for urbanization, and harvard university David rockefeller center for latin American Studies, together with local universities and institutions in Medellin, Santiago, Brasilia.www.drclas.harvard.edu/landscape-as-urbanismwww.landscapeasurbanismamericas.net

Ali El-hashimi (AA inter 10 student) recently co-led a drawing workshop at the British Museum in collaboration with The Bridget riley Foundation. www.pnyx.aaschool.ac.uk/issue-11/www.conversations.aaschool.ac.uk/?s=El-hashimi www.goo.gl/xgRTcH

75

Boundary

the riBA council meeting in March.www.goo.gl/FhI4Erwww.goo.gl/SsB9ai

Emeritus Professor Patrick Hodgkinson (AADipl 1956) who has died aged 85 attended the AA from 1950 to 1956. he was considered by such distinguished architects and historians as Neave Brown and Ken Frampton as the most talented student of his generation. The obituary below was written by Brendan Woods for the riBA journal. Patrick hodgkinson was in the 1960s one of england’s most successful and influential architects. During this time he was the architect for the redevelopment of the Foundling estate (the Brunswick centre), having acquired the commission when he was working with leslie Martin in cambridge and during which time he designed harvey court, transforming an initial scheme by Martin and collin St. john Wilson into the canonical brick stepped section. This building exercised a considerable influence on a whole generation of architects and students and was described by a young cedric Price in Granta as a ‘c14 building with 13 amp plugs’, much to hodgkinson’s enjoyment. hodgkinson was one of an extraordinary group of students at the AA comprising Kenneth

Obituaries

The AA is saddened to report that former chairman and president of rMjM Sir Andrew Derbyshire (AA Dip hons 1952), has died aged 92. Derbyshire was born in Sheffield in 1923 and originally studied natural sciences at Queen’s cambridge, graduating during the Second World War. After serving with the Admiralty Scientific Service as an experimental officer (1944–46), he retrained as an architect and completed his studies at the Architectural Association in 1952. his joint final year thesis, now in the AA Archives, remains one of the most outstanding pieces of work of his time and has been widely published. Knighted for services to architecture in 1986, Derbyshire was responsible for a string of high profile buildings including Sheffield’s castle hill Market, when he was deputy city architect, and york university and hillingdon civic centre, for rMjM. Derbyshire served on the riBA council and contributed to the institute’s office survey, which led to the riBA Plan of Work. he was elected senior vice president in 1981. tributes have been posted by Building Design and Architects’ Journal. his son Ben, managing partner of htA Design, gave an address on his father’s life at 76

AA

rchi

tect

ure

28

Frampton, john Miller, David Gray, Adrian Gale and Neave Brown who has said that he was ‘the most prescient of his AA cohort. to Frampton he was ‘the most talented’ and for Miller ‘he stood out as a star’. his 1953 Brixton housing Project developed ideas in contradistinction to the then current lcc fashion for mixed development wherein he explored the ideas of low-rise high density in an attempt build on the precedent of the Georgian terrace. his ideas were subsequently developed by Martin and colleagues in the land use Built Form centre in cambridge. his relationship with the Brunswick centre came to an end when McAlpines, who had bought the site from the original developer, imposed an unrealistic programme for the working drawings and he felt he had no alternative but to resign. later he took a teaching post at the university of Bath where he carved out a role as a passionate and inspired teacher. in the late 1990s Allied london appointed him as architect for the refurbishment of the Brunswick centre. Assisted by levitt Bernstein and with the guidance of his former assistant David levitt, he masterminded a transformation of the then unloved and unpainted SS Brunswick into a more

intimately scaled and lively shopping concourse. i have lived in this building for over 20 years and have grown to appreciate what an extraordinary achievement it is. As Alan Powers wrote some years ago about the portico to Brunswick Square, ‘Against the evening light, or on a winter’s evening, the tall thin columns standing out against the chiaroscuro background provide one of the few genuinely sublime architectural sights of london’.

Emeritus Professor Geoffrey Spyer (AA Dip hons 1952) architect, artist, musician and teacher sadly passed away on 1st August 2015 aged 85. Spyer studied at the AA from 1947–52, a time he described as ‘a brief golden age in architectural education’. At the AA Spyer was involved in musical activities –he set up and conducted the AA Orchestra, established a madrigal choir and performed in a chamber orchestra and a pantomime troupe. he was elected chairman of the Student committee and joined a National union of Students delegation on a six-week official visit to the uSSr to represent students of the arts and architecture. When he graduated he was awarded the Medal of the Societé des Architect Diplomés par le Gouvernement, Paris, for best student of the 77

Boundary

in recent years Geoffrey dedicated himself to painting, music and reading – the great loves of this remarkable renaissance man. he is survived by his wife, Natalie-Ophra, two daughters and four grandchildren. Obituary submitted by daughter Carmel Spyer.

The AA was also informed of the deaths of alumni Anthony C Meats (AA Dip 1961); Robert Ian Chidlaw (AA Dip 1951); Kenneth Keer (Plan Dip AA 1971).

year. Spyer then worked as assistant architect in the city Architect’s department in copenhagen, before completing his National Service as leading coder Special in the royal Navy. in 1958 he joined Kenneth Scott Associates and for the next five years he spent much of his time living in in the newly independent Ghana working on major commissions. Spyer returned to london to establish his own practice (GSA), focusing on urban regeneration with a particular interest in housing and mixed-use developments, which he discussed in his book Architect and Community (1971). During this time Geoffrey also lectured at hornsey college of Art (later part of Middlesex university) and at Oxford Brookes School of Architecture. in 1985 Spyer became a full-time lecturer at Middlesex university and in 1987 was appointed head of the School of interior Design. he also developed and ran a Design Management course as part of the Business School’s MBA programme. in 1990 he became head of a new combined School of Product and Architectural Design and in 1992 became Professor of Architecture. he continued to run GSA undertaking private commissions and work for Middlesex university and churchill college, cambridge.78

AA

rchi

tect

ure

28

I left school when I was 15 years old with no formal education and spent the next five years travelling extensively and working in numerous occupations. Eventually I was accepted as a mature student at art school. I graduated with a BA in 1969 from Hornsey College of Art and was then awarded a scholarship to study at the Royal College of Art, where I graduated with an MA in 1972. I then went on to study at the Architectural Association and was awarded a Diploma in Architecture.

My education enabled me to diversify into various fields of design – from set design in the film industry to architecture and, more recently, marine design. Throughout my design career I always worked as a fine artist, completing numerous commissions as an illustrator and exhibiting my artwork in one-man exhibitions in London and the US.

I first visited Mount Athos in 2002, following a visit to the National Library in Athens and discovering a collection of books illustrating the magnificent architecture. I applied to the Holy Council to visit with a view to paint and draw a selection of the 20 monasteries. This portfolio of work took eight years to complete, and developed into a quest to follow in the footsteps of the traveller, pilgrim and meticulous researcher Vasili Grigorovich Barsky (1701–1747). During these years I visited all the monasteries, made many friends

Notices

Mount Athos is the monastic centre of the Greek Orthodox church, a state-within-a-state and a living museum and spiritual centre of Greece. it is the only state in the world where women are not allowed to enter. The one-off Mount Athos travel award being launched for AA students and graduates this Summer offers a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to access and draw one of the most remote and inaccessible parts of the world.

With the generous support of AA alumnus Doug Patterson, this summer the AA will be launching an award for a current student or graduate of the AA School to be granted exclusive access to Mount Athos for the purpose of recording this unique place in a portfolio of drawings and paintings. The £2,000 award will cover travel over a maximum of three separate visits, while food and accommodation will be provided for free by the monasteries. The work will be presented in an exhibition in Saloniki and published in an accompanying catalogue.

in an introduction to the award, Doug Patterson describes how a visit to Mount Athos changed his life.

79

Boundary

record of one of the most beautiful and spiritual places on the planet. As Buddha said, ‘To know the path you must become the path.’

The Mount Athos Award at the will be launched in june 2016. For more information visit www.aaschool.ac.uk/mountathos.

and experienced a spirituality which changed my life and my art.

The collection expanded and developed into a second portfolio of the 20 Dzongs of Bhutan, following the artist Samuel Davis (1760–1819) to the roof of the world, and finally a third collection following one of the greatest watercolourists, Hercules Brabazon Brabazon (1820–1904), to explore the Hindu and Muslim worlds of India, North Africa and the Middle East. The complete collection was exhibited at the National Theatre in London and the Mount Athos collection was exhibited at the Mount Athos Centre in Saloniki.

In 2013, with the support of the Mount Athos Centre and the Holy Council, we launched the Mount Athos Travelling Award at the RCA. Tim Vyner was selected among their graduates for his superb draughtsmanship and watercolour skill, coupled with a contemporary approach and personality. His portfolio is a beautiful and sensitive record of various journeys to the Holy Mountain during 2013 and 2014, capturing the ordinary daily chores of the brothers within the majesty of the architecture.

This year I have decided to offer the award to a student or graduate of the AA. This is one of the most diverse schools in the world, with alumni from around the globe, and I am thrilled to be able to provide an opportunity to create a unique 80

AA

rchi

tect

ure

28

iSSue 29VALuE

Both a measurement of economic worth and a judgment of principle, value is fundamentally bound to what we consider most important both in financial and ethical terms.

We are interested in your interpretation. essays, poems, drawings, sketches, diagrams or any other formats are welcome. Please submit a 100-word proposal by Friday 1 july 2016 to aarchitecture@aaschool.ac.uk 81

AArchitecture 28 / term 3, 2015–16www.aaschool.ac.uk

© 2016 All rights reservedPublished by the Architectural Association36 Bedford Square, london Wc1B 3eS

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

Student editorial team: hunter Doylerory Sherlock

Newsbrief and Obituaries:romana Suszko

editorial Board:Zak Kyes, AA Art DirectorAlex lorente, MembershipBrett Steele, AA School Director

Design: claire lyon, Boris Meister

cover images: Otto Koenigsberger’s identity card, 1948, courtesy AA Archive.

AA Photography:Valerie Bennett and Sue Barr

Printed by Blackmore, england

Architectural Association (inc)registered charity No 311083company limited by guaranteeregistered in england No 171402registered office as above

AA

rchi

tect

ure

28

cONtriButOrSjames Anicich

edward BottomsMaria Fedorchenkojoshua harskampSofia Pia Belenky

Klaus PlatzgummerAlexandra Savtchenko-Belskaia

eDitOrShunter Doylerory Sherlock

AA

rc

hitec

tur

e 28