1Cities are not machines, built once and for all, but remarkable organisms. Like a coral reef, the city is always becoming a product, but that is because, first of all, it is a process.

- Roy Porter, London: A Social History

To live in LONDON is a question of pace. Here today, gone tomorrow, the city is constantly

changing to the point where if you listen closely you might almost hear the thrum of its vibrant

rhythm. With Londons quick step, we city dwellers have the fortune of the unexpected surprise,

that serendipity of a new pop-up cafe, cinema or bar just around the corner. This year, we have

the OLYMPICS - a strange architectural creature whose silhouette has appeared on the eastern

horizon, seemingly out of nowhere, like one of the pop-up books many of us played with as

children.

The pop-up book is an appropriate device in describing the ever-changing nature of London, but

there is also something in many childrens toys that lends itself to spatially innovative discussions

about architecture. The pop-up book, nesting dolls, Jacobs ladder; there is a TRANSFORMATIVE

quality in these devices which not only speaks to the imaginary worlds we create as children, but

also to how we can form and inhabit space into a variety of constellations over time.

In our POP-UP CITY, we will use a handful of carefully selected childrens TOYS to explore

questions of scale, inversion, movement, aggregation, and insertion at the scale of the object

and then reinterpret them to create our own MINI-METROPOLIS within London. These objects will

be deconstructed and reconfigured to understand their inner workings and their potential to be

translated into architecture. Building proposals will first develop in isolation before being inserted

into the city and designed in the context of other projects within the unit to form a collective

proposal for the Olympic legacy site. In this exploration, we will tackle not only the sudden

insertion of a new mini-city NESTED within a city as in the Olympic Village, but also grapple with

what kind of legacy we leave behind once weve made our mark. Let the GAMES begin.

Pop Up by Liddy Scheffknecht and A

rmin B. W

agner

APRS CITYAA Summer School 2012

2POP-UP CITYShaelena Morley & Manijeh Verghese

WEEK 1:UNMAKE/ REMAKE

Students will work in pairs to research, deconstruct and

reconstruct a toy to understand its spatial potential and

envision how it could be inhabited and manipulated

at the building scale. Students will make presentations

to the rest of the group to record their findings at the

end of the week using the original toy, small sketch

models, images and drawings.

There will be a trip to the Toy Museum and a seminar

with a former Toy-maker.

WEEK 2: LOCATE / SPECULATE

After understanding the potential of their toy, students will

now choose a site within the Olympic footprint to locate their

intervention. Programming their buildings accordingly, they

will look at how the object is inserted within the urban fabric

of London and what routes, landscaping and infrastructure

will be necessitated by locating their pop-up proposals here.

A trip to the Building Centre to locate our scale proposals

within their model of London and a visit to the Olympic site.

There will also be a discussion with photographer Giles Price

MID-REVIEW: INSERT/ CONSTRUCT

For the mid-review, students will present their initial

toy research and study models along with their

speculations on how they are appropriated and

transformed into a miniature city.

We will explore the city through models, drawings,

thoughtful image making and collage.

The mid-review will include initial research, study

models, site elevations and plans

WEEK 3: TOY CITY/ APRS CITY

In the final week, students will work in collaboration to bring

together their models, collages and drawings to construct a

combined site proposal. This hybrid drawing will connect

each speculative project to the context it sits within and to

one other. We will discuss the construction, lifespan and

deconstruction of these proposals and envision ways to

capture this through our unit meta-drawing.

We will have a drawing/ collage workshop with Dip 11

graduate Yuma Yamamoto.

The

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acroscopic Olym

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AA

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Cabinet of C

urious Living, Shaelena Morley 2012

3APRS CITYAA Summer School 2012

Each of the toys we have chosen can be manipulated to change their

spatial configuration. In doing so, there is a sensory change in how

we interact/ experience them.

TOYS:

FLIP BOOK

Animating objects by moving paper was the most primitive form of the

animated movies we see today. Creating space through a series of flat

images, the book as an object is situated somewhere in between. As a

pop-up, it has the potential to be chameleon-like through how it can

change its appearance sequentially over time.

JACOBS LADDER

A deceivingly simple device, the Jacobs Ladder plays with stacking

and alternating front and back sidedness which allows multiple

spatial configurations through a seemingly planar system. By flipping

one element, the entire set of planes transforms through a domino

effect, one which could be carefully controlled to create a thickened

boundary that negotiates between spaces on site.

MAGIC CUBE

Through a series of simple manipulations this cubic object can tell

multiple stories through inversion and reconfiguration. With eight

smaller cubes brought together to make the larger cube, the faces of

each tell a small part of multiple stories which create the larger whole.

It has the potential to invert volumes creating interesting shifts between

public and private or interior and exterior spaces.

POP UP BOOK

The ability of making a 3-dimensional form magically appear from

planes of paper simply by turning the page is the joy of reading a

pop-up book. The detailed mechanisms of paper engineering that

make this possible have the potential to work at a much larger scale to

create space, reconfigure it or even cause it to disappear altogether!

RUSSIAN DOLLS

The nesting of a smaller object within a larger object raises questions

of how the same form needs to be abstracted as it decreases in scale

but also how the fundamental design of the object can work at every

scale. As a pop-up it could be installed at varying scales throughout

the site, harnessing its formal similarities yet potential programmatic

differences.

4POP-UP CITYShaelena Morley & Manijeh Verghese

Shaelena Morley AADipl 2012; BSc 2008

After studying in Boston and London for the past 9 years, Shaelena is very excited about recently becoming a

graduate! Her most recent academic work was an investigation of cultural site generated through collection

and how it shapes context. It was during this investigation that she discovered her love of childrens toys and

the spatial potential they have. In addition to her studies she has contributed to student publications at the AA.

She has also taught architecture in Oxford as part of the Oxbridge Academic Summer Programmes. Shaelena

is interested in pop up architecture because of its ability to transform a neighbourhood with maximum impact

using minimal gestures and its potential portability in the city.

Manijeh Verghese AADipl(Hons) 2012; BA 2007

Manijeh recently graduated from the AA and has a degree in Architecture and Mathematics from Wellesley

College. She has worked for large and small practices in London and Boston, with two years experience at

Foster + Partners. She spent the last two years exploring the idea of context through books of various formats.

Her final project was a detective case file challenging the scalar notions of the room and the city. She is a

writer for various architectural publications including Icon and is the website editor of Disegno Magazine. She

also edits the AAs triannual newsletter, AArchitecture. Manijeh likes the idea of combining the permanence of

architecture with the transient nature of the pop-up book to unfold new urban scenarios that we can inhabit.

http://www.londonpopups.com/

Inverting Schwitters Merzbau through Merzcube, part of Shaelenas 5th year project

Unfolding the route through Studio 54, part of Manijehs 5th year project