undergraduate
intermediate 11
Latent Territories Intermediate Unit 11 will look at the contemporary European metropolis, focusing on the rich potential for experimentation that is emerging from the residual urban spaces around transport networks such as airports, harbours, rail and highway interchanges. Liberated from the tyranny of building codes, historical preservation and existing property law, these territories were originally planned for the periphery but have gradually been absorbed into the city. Inter 11 will explore the previously inaccessible archipelago of traffic islands adjacent to a highway interchange, investigating its potential new building typologies, programmatic and organisational opportunities and defining the level of connection with the surrounding city. The unit will pursue its design methodology through the production of architectural prototypes at the small scale. This research will form the basis for the vocabulary, material strategy and distinctive aesthetic that will later be deployed at the urban scale of the archipelago. Such an approach was common practice in twentieth-century art movements, from de Stijl to Superstudio, through the development of environments, design/art or sculptural pieces. The unit is interested in the synergy between the critical engagement and playfulness of 60s/70s
Unit Staff Theo Sarantoglou Lalis and Dora Sweijd are the principals of LA.S.S.A, a design practice based in London and Brussels working on international projects ranging from furniture and architecture to landscape urbanism. The office is focusing on
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commissions in Egypt, Greece and Korea as well as entering international competitions. Theo Sarantoglou Lalis studied in Brussels and at the Bartlett. He has taught at Columbia and Harvard and prior to founding LA.S.S.A he
Unit Staff Theo Sarantoglou Lalis Dora Sweijd
undergraduate
architectural avant-gardes and today’s enthusiasm for computation and new manufacturing processes. The year’s research will be structured in two complementary phases. During the first, students will be encouraged to develop personal research agendas through architectural prototypes, which will be produced in the form of physical models and design/art pieces or constructed environments. A series of workshops will introduce the digital design and fabrication techniques that will act as the catalysts for materialising these creative explorations. As part of the unit’s interest in the transfer of technologies, we will organise a series of short trips across Europe where we will be visiting artists’ and design studios as well as their fabricators from the aerospace, automotive and naval industries. During phase two, each student will investigate strategies for deploying the architectural prototypes in more complex geometrical organisations. Conceptual models and material studies developed in phase one will have to mutate into an architectural proposition able to respond to different criteria such as programme, adjacencies and site conditions (disconnection, speed and flow, 3D infrastructure, wind, sound, etc.) as well as each student’s vision for inhabiting the latent territories.
worked at Future Systems and Asymptote in NYC. In 2008 he led Asymptote’s European office as well as being one of the directors in charge of Yas Marina Hotel in Abu Dhabi. He has also lectured internationally, led workshops and taught undergraduate studios in LTU Sweden.
Dora Sweijd graduated from the Bartlett. She previously worked at a number of practices in London and NYC including REX and Foster + Partners where she worked on the World Trade Center project. Andreas Gursky, Bahrain, 2005
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