AArchitecture 24

The desire to escape. As Baudelaire suggested ‘we are weighed down, every moment, by the conception and the sensation of time.

And there are but two means of escaping and forgetting this nightmare: pleasure and work.

Pleasure consumes us, work strengthens us.

Let us choose’. This AArchitecture has decided to choose both. As students and tutors of the school indulge in an exploration of what it means to escape, the question arises, can we ever cease to escape?

The story of an eccentric man in Hackney and his obsession with burrowing, presented to us by Álvaro Pérez, reveals the idea of escape as a lifestyle. Lili Carr takes us on an endless walk in order to discover contributions of a possible architecture, while Ricardo de Ostos and Nannette Jackowski transfer us to Sri Lanka and explain the turmoil of land use and disputes in the palace of Sigiriya. Stefan Popa delves into the sensual and escapes scholarly writing with a poem. The prisoner John Dillinger and his numerous attempts to flee, offer Lindsey Stamps an insight into a mathematical game of escape.

An Esc- very familiar to our daily lives prompts Anton Gorlenko to write a manifesto for a Plan for a Typical House based on computer keyboards while Moad Musbahi, Dor Schindler and Aleksander Stankovic present their first project of their first year at the AA thinking this could be their escape route. Jane Wong talks about non-escaping and

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News from the Architectural Association

/ AArchitecture

AArchitecture 24 / Term 2, 2014/15 www.aaschool.ac.uk © 2015 All rights reserved Published by the Architectural Association 36 Bedford Square, London WC1B 3ES

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

Student Editorial Team: Ema Kacar Costandis Kizis Konstantilenia Koulouri Moad Musbahi Buster Rönngren Jingming Wu Editorial Board: Zak Kyes, AA Art Director Alex Lorente, Membership Brett Steele, AA School Director Graphic Design: Claire Lyon AA Photography: Valerie Bennett and Sue Barr Newsbriefs and obituaries edited

by Bobby Jewell Printed by Blackmore, England Architectural Association (Inc) Registered Charity No 311083 Company limited by guarantee Registered in England No 171402 Registered office as above

Cover: For programming escape sequences the backslash character is generally used. For more information see en.wikipedia.org/wiki/escape_ sequence

The desire to escape. As Baudelaire suggested ‘we are weighed down, every moment, by the conception and the sensation of time.

And there are but two means of escaping and forgetting this nightmare: pleasure and work.

Pleasure consumes us, work strengthens us.

Let us choose’. This AArchitecture has decided to choose both. As students and tutors of the school indulge in an exploration of what it means to escape, the question arises, can we ever cease to escape?

The story of an eccentric man in Hackney and his obsession with burrowing, presented to us by Álvaro Pérez, reveals the idea of escape as a lifestyle. Lili Carr takes us on an endless walk in order to discover contributions of a possible architecture, while Ricardo de Ostos and Nannette Jackowski transfer us to Sri Lanka and explain the turmoil of land use and disputes in the palace of Sigiriya. Stefan Popa delves into the sensual and escapes scholarly writing with a poem. The prisoner John Dillinger and his numerous attempts to flee, offer Lindsey Stamps an insight into a mathematical game of escape.

An Esc- very familiar to our daily lives prompts Anton Gorlenko to write a manifesto for a Plan for a Typical House based on computer keyboards while Moad Musbahi, Dor Schindler and Aleksander Stankovic present their first project of their first year at the AA thinking this could be their escape route. Jane Wong talks about non-escaping and

24

News from the Architectural Association

AArchitecture

the terror of repeating a unit, and Jingming Wu interviews AA graduate Fergus Henderson on escaping the profession of architecture altogether and embarking as a chef.

Ultimately, the desire to escape is the endless desire for the infinite. So get drunk and stay that way. On wine, poetry, [architecture], whatever…

Student Editors: Ema Kacar – Intermediate 13, 3rd Year Costandis Kizis – PhD, 4th Year Konstantilenia Koulouri – Diploma 4, 4th Year Moad Musbahi – First Year Buster Rönngren – Intermediate 1, 3rd Year Jingming Wu – PhD, 3rd Year

Contents 2 Escape Acts 4 Sri Lanka: No Argument Zone 6 The Mole Man of Hackney 8 The Everything Everywhere Machine 10 Mount House 12 Watch Your Step 14 Under the Sign of R 16 Escape

Kuka KR Robotic Arm at Hooke Park

17 20 22 24 26 27 28 29

Notes on Plan for a Typical House Going for a Walk Escape is a mathematical game A happy chef and bored architect From Escapism to Real Life, and vice versa Recommended Reading AA Publications Bedford Press

30 News

Next Issue’s Theme School Announcement Student Announcement

In the Oxford English Thesaurus the word ‘escape’ has a number of suggested synonyms, including ‘skedaddle’, ‘fly the coop’, ‘vamoose’, ‘leg it’ and even ‘do a moonlight flit’. We have used 29 of these synonyms and added them as running footers to this issue of AArchitecture – their own moonlight flit of words – to underpin the theme of this issue, escapes.

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Escape Acts Chris Pierce, director of the AA Visiting School programme, discusses the magic of everyday escapes

get out

another way of exploiting their incredible, Banister Fletcher-defying acts of architectures.

However much I adore Harry, I must admit that the Visiting School is really constructed as an ‘everyday escape’ from somewhere and something you know to a place and practice you don’t. And while tall tales of ‘near’ escapes are already a feature of Visiting School folklore (although there was that moment in Petra, when our bus was held ‘hostage’ and Riyad and his brother were marched away by a mob of local stallholders, that I began to worry about how ‘tall’ all those tales I’d been told were), in the world of the Visiting School perhaps the greatest escape is to Aditnálta given that ‘the great day of the Fire-eater – or, should I say, the day of the great Fire-eater – has passed.’

For more info, please visit: www.aaschool.ac.uk/visitingschool

Perhaps it’s no surprise that one of Harry Houdini’s most infamous quips – ‘The greatest escape I ever made was when I left Appleton, Wisconsin’ – was based on getting the hell out of somewhere he knew to go somewhere he didn’t. I don’t know how much he learned from such an act, considering the location of his own untimely demise was just one state over, in Detroit, Michigan, but the sentiment is astute. In a single career that was no less varied than the entire line-up of the AA Visiting School, Houdini touted his unusual and eccentric talents on world tours from London to Melbourne and untold locales between.

The escape acts of the Great Houdini and those of the Visiting School aren’t quite as different as I first imagined. To date there are no Visiting Schools that technically involve being buried alive or getting thrown overboard in a box (with the exception of those students who spent their summer adrift on parametric ‘rafts’ in the Mediterranean or cargo ships in the South China Sea), trapped in a straitjacket (now claimed as a form of ‘nanotourism’ in Vitanje, Slovenia); suspended in a Chinese water torture cell (but does the copious consumption of wine in Barcelona’s sensorium chamber or rum in San Juan, all in the explicit name of research, equate?), locked in a milk can or belly of a whale (a few students have found themselves inside the DLab creature constructed in the Dorset forest and the ‘trans-computational’ membrane made in Madrid), or escaping from all kinds of ropes, chains and handcuffs – but all attempt to make the unbelievable a possibility. And all, like Houdini, are looking to filmmaking as

‘3D-Sleeping Instead of Escaping’ from Nanotourism, Vitanje, Slovenia, July 2014

3

run away

4

Sri Lanka: No Argument Zone Ricardo de Ostos and Nannette Jackowski of Intermediate 3, provoked by their student Assaf Kimmel, identify the challenges of situating oneself in relation to problems 8778 km away from London

To write a story, first one needs to have something to say, right?

Not really.

As the film ‘8 ½’ by Federico Fellini expresses so well, sometimes the work itself becomes the vent system for articulating the unsaid. Somewhere along the middle of its very non-linear cinematic narrative the confused movie director protagonist spills it out: I thought my ideas were so clear. I wanted to make an honest film. No lies whatsoever.

I thought I had something so simple to say.

Something useful to everybody. A film that could help bury forever all those dead things we carry within ourselves. Instead, I’m the one without the courage to bury anything at all. When did I go wrong? I really have nothing to say, but I want to say it all the same.

The lines above are less argumentative than confessional. In them a certain license for exploring someone’s maladies through a making experience transforms the film into a cathartic process, a space for figuring things out. In this space people, relationships, city buildings and friendly childhood locations become stranger as the minutes pass. The closer the troubled director gets to the source of his creative confusion the stranger his familiar life gets.

In this experiential world the phenomenon of living is connected to the realm of

run off

fundamental discoveries while the work of art, in this case Fellini’s film, is the stage for sharing the internal hell escapes.

Our recent visit to Sri Lanka counts on a similar belief. The idea of situating ourselves in relation to problems so distant from our bedrooms relies on articulating experiences rather than articulating arguments first. By visiting a country 8778 km away from London, Intermediate Unit 3 had a goal to study land through the lens of property and mythical ownership.

That was the academic purpose. However the pedagogical reason was another.

In the central province of Sri Lanka the ruins of the King’s Palace of Sigiriya are located 200 metres above the ground on top of a massive rock. Its bold ancient water gardens containing a highly sophisticated hydraulic system enabled King Kasyapa, his family and harem to live protected and comfortable during the country’s wet and dry seasons. From the top of the rock one can see the vastness of the surrounding forest landscape, now transformed into a nature reserve. Sigiriya itself is a Unesco World Heritage Site, one of eight in Sri Lanka. Such sites are now receiving a growing income from tourists since the country ended its thirty year civil war in 2009. Outside the complex, scattered in the red earth landscape, we could see a few Asian tour company buses. In less than five years the country has, together with foreign investors, established strong touristic infrastructures. Likewise in

For more information about Intermediate 3, please visit: aainter3.wordpress.com

Intermediate 3 visiting the ruins of the King’s Palace of Sigiriya. Photo Yonathan Moore

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Dambulla where we visited the Golden Temple, also a World Heritage Site, with its cave temples illuminated by golden Buddha statues and adorned with the smell of offerings left by the monks. Also placed high above ground, the architecture of the caves is contrasted with a colonial Portuguese-style white colonnade built not by the Portuguese colonisers but erected recently to accommodate tourists, as our monk guide explained. It is a truly incredible spot for looking at the city, now and then escaping the tourist hats and the layers of rubbish flowing down the mountain just behind the temple’s fences.

Sites like Sigiriya and Dambulla are amazingly evocative, full of stories, but also almost impossible to describe outside their touristic purpose. It seems that all stories are histories and while the dedication of the monks to maintaining ceremonies is serene and engaging, the monkeys scavenging the rubbish outside the rock temples are another alluring moment of land use.

Driving our white van further into the Sri Lankan mountains we encountered massive plots of land dedicated to animals.

National reserves for elephants, turtle hatcheries and also very long iguanas poking their bodies out on to the road are

part of the asphalt biosphere. After a few meetings we managed to visit a sapphire mine in a remote location near Ratnapura, Sri Lanka’s hotspot area for gems. In a strange village arrangement locals dig deep into the ground, approximately 50 metres, and spend most of their days in dark tunnels running as much as 150 metres in multiple directions. Guided by a local gem trader we were advised not to buy anything from the locals. When one group of ragged and smiley miners approached us to show us blue and yellow sapphires we were watched closely. Surrounding the mining areas a large network of trading has been established creating a multinational lucrative business. While looking around the students murmured that by the look of things locals are not part of the gem bonanza, the opposite seems true.

One can wander freely in Sri Lanka, except in certain areas where you should not be or at times when you should not roam around. It was presidential Election Day and we were advised by everyone to stay indoors since, whoever wins, a coup and violence may follow. This was rather strange especially in the week when Pope Francis arrived in Sri Lanka not to get votes but followers. The civil war may be officially over but the consequences and wounds are still far from healed. Travelling in Sri Lanka we experienced land disputes, physical and spiritual, power ownership struggles and the large geopolitical game so well illustrated by the tourists’ nationality statistics.

The trip to Sri Lanka was less of an escape to an exotic location where everything is radically different, but rather the experience of the tumult of different parties interacting in a unique setting. The arguments of land ownership in Sri Lanka between tourism, UNESCO, Buddhist monks, unemployed military personnel and local minority groups are all far from definitive. The tension of articulating a fraction of it in an architectural project, from the confusion of our own perspective, seems to be an enduring thought in the pedagogy of the Inter 3 unit trip this year.

bolt

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Álvaro Velasco Pérez (HCT 2014), talks about how a particular instance of escape only perpetuates the recurrence of the event, never quite achieving what one intends.

Stetson!

You who were with me in the ships at Mylae!

That corpse you planted last year in your garden, Has it begun to sprout? Will it bloom this year?

– T S Eliot, The Burial of Death, in

The Waste Land, 1922.

Earth-tinged oxide spreads corrosively along the corrugated iron fence in the corner at 121 Mortimer Road. Behind it, the bulldozers will soon start the construction of David Adjaye’s project: the renovation of a family home for Hackney-based artists Sue Webster and Tim Noble. In

beat a retreat

the digging process, the machinery will unearth the archeology of an unknown site. Buried under the semi-ruins of the current construction, there rests an intricate network of galleries running in all directions from the main house. The process of burrowing by William Lyttle – original owner of the house – was started as an undercover project more than forty years ago. It became a neighbourhoodconcern when tunnelling started affecting the stability of the building and the adjacent streets. After the actions taken by Hackney Council, it was estimated that Lyttle, aka ‘the Mole Man of Hackney’, had excavated more than a hundred cubic metres of soil in tunnels stretching for about twenty metres away from the house, indiscriminately. The subterranean labyrinth gained its author the acclaim of suburban legend, bringing to light what, otherwise, would have been a rickety hidden project of residential ‘extension’. Since then, an eerie aura has pervaded the decrepit structure and its former owner, presenting the plot almost as an incarnation of Poe’s Roderick Usher, ‘[whose] phantasmagoric conceptions(…) presented the interior of an immensely long and rectangular vault or tunnels, with low walls,(…) to convey the idea that this excavation lay at an exceeding depth below the surface of the earth.’ 1 An uncanny, do-it-yourself, off-grid project in a state of decadence that perfectly matches the neo-punk rubbish-works of Webster and Noble, however, perhaps, not as much the design lines of Adjaye. Nonetheless, if in

Cité climatisée – ‘Accès à l’Eden technique’ (Air conditioned city – ‘Access to technical Eden’), 1961. © Yves Klein and Claude Parent

The Mole Man of Hackney

F or more info on the David Adjaye project: www.adjaye.com/projects/residential/dirty-house

7 Poe’s tale architecture becomes the haunted device that imprisons Mr Usher, here it remains unclear what Mr Lyttle was trying to escape.

Certainly, at a smaller scale the interventions would not have been that different to the thousands of subterranean expansions that property developments are undergoing in the last few years. London is suffering a fever of excavation in a search for maximising profitability of the square metre. However, the over-extension of the burrow at Mortimer Road could be a home-made version of downwards architectonic proposals such as Yves Klein’s Climatisation de l’espace (1951), Kubrick’s Dr Strangelove (1964) or Superstudio’s Ceremony (1973). In them, architecture becomes a subterranean practice and the necessary lateral displacement of utopia changes to the vertical axis, in an effort to escape the excessively politicised ground surface.

However, it is the bloody-mindedness of the Mole Man that becomes surreal. Without logical pattern, the tunnelling doesn’t seem to aim at an end or to reach any specific terminus. For the Mole Man, there is only the act of digging, as if escaping had become a lifestyle. The escape ceases to be a transitional state and becomes a perpetual life-long project. Like the characters of an Antonioni film – the Mole Man could easily be one of them – whose condition is to be in suspension, in transit, before escape. In The Passenger (1975), Maria Schneider, joining the journey of the protagonist, wonders: ‘Can I ask you one question now?(…) Only one. Always the same: What are you running away from?’

To which Nicholson undoubtedly responds: ‘Turn your back to the front seat’. And Schneider leans against the back seat and contemplates the vanishing point of the road they are leaving behind. Escaping turns out to be a condition for abandoning the constrained past leading the protagonist towards liberation. However, for Antonioni this condition only accelerates the coming of the final destination. The film presents how the ‘running away’ does not break the

confinement but perpetuates it. The road they drive along only brings the death of Nicholson closer. In the same mood, in the frantic operation of carving his escape tunnels, the Mole Man was digging his own grave so to speak. Escaping does not bring evasion but imprisonment.

Ironically, the mining activities of the Mole Man have not destroyed the house.

They have left the corpse of the building albeit with a stronger presence. Even though the current structure seems dilapidated, it is the materialisation, a ruin, of the legend. Lyttle’s effort of escaping remains trapped in the detritus of the house. The current material condition of the abandoned structure, with its prosthetic scaffolding, misleads the casual observer because its presence in the neighbourhood has been perpetuated in the form of an underground landmark. This presence makes it stronger, even capable of informing Adjaye’s project, confining the new architecture under the guise of conservation. Adjaye’s effort of preserving the ‘layers of site history, both architectural and social’ 2 are all but continuing William Lyttle’s project. The new plan shows the difficulties of escaping the current obsession with restoration, that can be taken to the extreme of preserving a carcass in a state of ruin, recalling merely the madness of a suburban legend.

1. Poe, Edgar Allan, The Fall of the House of Usher and Other Writings, (Penguin Books, London, 2003) 98.

2. Adjaye Associates, 121 Mortimer Road, Planning Application. Design and Access Statement. August 2014.

In http://hackney.gov.uk

break out

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The Everything Everywhere Machine A diagram from the instruction chapter of the manual.

First Year students Moad Musbahi, Dor Schindler and Aleksander Stankovic create a Meta-Appliance for the AA

break free

For more information about the First Year programme, please visit: www.aafirstyear.com

9 The first brief of the first term of the first year… Escape quickly! Get out early!

As a project, we put forward a plan to insert/administer/inject an appliance, connecting all the service apparatuses throughout the school.

An appliance for appliances to service the services. Modelled by the analogy of the organ, this appliance would take over the school, and the mechanical organ player would play out the Events List as sheets of music.

Giving the control of the building back to itself and its automatic controller, the building’s output and production will be controlled by its mechanical systems, thus it does away with the need for subjective production of work, and the student body altogether!

Given the task to ‘intervene’ on an assigned space, we were challenged ‘to see a room as more than a simple empty volume.’ Instead of adding a foreign element into the space, we merely looked at the room as if you were to peel away the thin plaster veneer that surrounds it.

Reconfiguring the already present hidden elements of the room, we soon progressed on to the implication this would have across the whole building. Service adds function to the room, without services there are no rooms, there is no programme, no AA. We presented the work in the form of a manual.

I do not like ducts; I do not like pipes. I hate them really thoroughly, but because I hate them so thoroughly I feel they have to be given their place. If I just hated them and took no care, I think they would invade the building and completely destroy it.

– Louis I Kahn, Not for the Fainthearted (1971)

So why don’t we invade the building and completely destroy it? Invade the building with a new service logic and thus destroy the building as it currently functions.

Starting with simple pragmatic considerations; how do these services

intersect with the floors? What form should these components take? How does the form relate to the service provided? We began to conceive of a double system. A central rigid core that transports the appliances and service components vertically, up and down the building. An organic ‘membrane’ that surrounds this core and facilitates horizontal distribution of the parts. It is fluid and adaptive, modelled with the analogy of a leaf wall, it is scalable across the wall, and accommodates openings which eject and withdraw the required service. When pipes are not completely fastened down they begin to vibrate and a noise is produced. Variations in tone, amplitude and frequency are dependent on the diameter, flow and material of the pipe, wire or vent. With any unique and specific arrangement, there is an equally unique and specific cacophony of noises, vibrations and lights that are emitted. Using this logic, the building begins to emit this cacophony of sounds and effects in relation to the activities that are being held. Soon these events and programmes come to be written as a score. The school’s activity is played out mechanically and its life automatised.

Many scientists live in houses - they look at the plumbing, often find that the plumbing isn’t working, twiddle the knob and send for the plumber. You know as an architect that you do not design the plumbing that you buy. You design the superficial use and arrangement of fixtures which are designed by non-architects, and manufactured by commerce for you. You are free to choose the colouring of the bathroom tiles and the colouring of the fixtures. But what goes on behind the bathroom tile is not part of the architectural design… The fact is, the plumbing system, and the sewer system, have not been significantly changed in the last 4,500 years

– B Fuller

get free

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The introduction of modernism in the 1930s put the AA into a state of turbulence.

And though it could be said a certain level of chaos has endured, when the movement was first encountered it divided the school between the overwhelming desire of the student population to embrace it, and the more traditional figures that ran the School at the time. Sir Geoffrey Jellicoe was replaced by, the then nicknamed, ‘flat’ Frederick Gibberd. Along with these internal changes, the London campus was also being relocated. The war had necessitated certain changes. The AA’s book

break loose

collection and library were stored, partly in caves in the Welsh countryside and partly in the country manor of ex-president Harry Goodhart-Rendel. The school itself moved to the north of London, to Mount House near Barnet. Out of the period came some well known figures of post-war architecture: the likes of Geoffrey Powell, who with Chamberlin, Powell and Bonn, designed the Barbican; Phillip Powell, architect of Churchill Gardens and the Festival of Britian Skylon; and Neville Conder to name but a few.

More information on the AA’s past can be found in the Archive located in the basement of 32 Bedford Square.

Emergency prospectus distributed to AA Members, 1939, AA Archive

Mount House

AA students at Mount House during the Second World War, AA Photo Library

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make a break for it

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Watch Your Step

clear out

For more info, please visit: http://architectureoftransit.com Photos Sue Barr

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flee

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Jane Wong of Intermediate Unit 5, recounts her reasons for repeating Intermediate Unit 5

Within the terror of repeating, how to escape yourself?

Raymond Queneau in Exercises in Style embarks upon a mammoth marathon of retelling a man entering and exiting a bus in ninety-nine iterations.

In an ironic turn of sadist excess, Pier Paolo Pasolini’s Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom in its uncut form has been refused distribution for more than a hundred and twenty times since its release.

get away

Since 1965, Roman Opałka painted the process of counting, from one towards infinity. Day after day, continuing where he left off on the canvas. His final number was 5,607,249. The rest of infinity disappears with him.

A hat (unit) upon a hat (unit), Magritte with a Hat, Duane Michals, 1965

Under the Sign of R

15 There is a very corporeal implication to repeating a unit. One remains in the same space, that is given.

At another scale and order of things, the Ise Grand Shrine has been rebuilt sixty-two times, each rendition being constructed and burned every two decades.

The tyranny of the prefix. The dictionary entries for words beginning with ‘re’ count up to beyond four thousand. Four thousand oxymorons.

Said to be the most documented human life in history, Buckminster Fuller recorded his life every 15 minutes from 1920 to 1983 in the Dymaxion Chronofile.

One Thousand and One Nights reveries.

Foot, toes, spine, collarbone, pelvis, appendix et al. Frida Kahlo recovering from her thirty-five operations as a result of a bus collision. And three abortions.

The accident of repeating. Or the accident in repetition.

Jean-Luc Godard has rewritten the film-essay one hundred and thirteen times, the latest being Adieu au langage (2014).

To read the unit brief of Intermediate 5, please visit: www.aaschool.ac.uk/inter5brief

According to David Markson, Karl Marx reread the Oresteia once every year.

William Carlos Williams lived all his life within a ten-minute radius of where he was born.

A motionless voyage of many detours.

Lewis Baltz’s photographic prototypes.

Images of landscapes; landscapes of images.

Relegated to the level of ‘obsessive babble’ by Rosalind Krauss, Sol LeWitt’s one hundred and twentytwo successive reductions of the cube exhausts the formula of the form.

Re: CP 1 expired on 1 May 2006.

A project of repetition, or one that emerges out of the auspice of the same number 2. Repeating a unit is not merely repeating a unit, it is a project in itself of repeating. Between the ‘esc’ and ‘return’: ninety-nine keys. Apprentice again to the sign of R. R for reinvention, for reuse, for the man himself 3, but R, this time around, for the resistance of redundancy by the very virtue of repeating.

1. Price, Cedric, and Hans Ulrich Obrist. Re: CP. Basel: Birkhauser, 2003. The cover included the following: ‘Best before 1 May 2006’.

2. The number being five 3. Ryan Dillon

Raymond Roussel’s parenthesis-withinparenthesis regresses by an order of no less than five pairs – ie (((((…)))))

– spanning over two hundred lines; one completes each nesting pair after labyrinthine digressions.

The correspondence between Eisenman and Derrida.

take to one’s heels

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Escape

There is a certain icon so common in our culture.

It represents a person running towards an opening.

It is green, the colour of allowed things.

And it is often captioned to avoid misunderstanding: ‘Escape’ We live in a society where every human action is censored by the constant remembering of what could go wrong.

Architecture is too often conditioned by these restrictions for buildings can easily turn against their occupants.

Regulations.

Extreme measures of precaution.

The result is destruction of meaning in Design.

‘Escape’

fly

For more information about the History and Critical Thinking programme please visit hct.aaschool.ac.uk

Photo Stefan Popa

Stefan Popa, MA in History and Critical Thinking student, escapes from scholarly writing with a poem

Kuka KR Robotic Arm at Hooke Park

Hooke Park is the Architectural Association’s woodland site in Dorset, southwest England. The park hosts several educational programmes focused on architectural design, construction and timber research.

The forest campus constantly seeks to grow its facilities in order to accommodate workshops, construction and landscapefocused activities. A robotic fabrication cell has been recently installed in order to house a Kuka KR–150 robot arm. The industrial robot has a 2.7-metre reach and carries a router head.

This latest acquisition will be used to experiment with new digital construction technologies and develop innovative timber fabrication processes. The facility will be an integral part of the Design & Make programme and other research projects.

For more information please visit: www.aaschool.ac.uk/hookepark

Photo Valerie Bennett

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Notes on Plan for a Typical House Anton Gorlenko of Intermediate Unit 2, projects an architectural plan on the type of keys used

by Buster Rönngren to write this line

1. There are no new forms of architecture.

However, architectural form can be created anew. In the appropriation of any actual or virtual matter at hand, and through a concern with the process of translation, scale and programme, a form can end up at a beginning.

For more information about Intermediate 12, please visit: www.aaschool.ac.uk/intermediate12

2. The proposal of Plan for a Typical House is based on the composition and proportional relations of a standard computer keyboard, and exemplifies a model situation: when the tool of writing becomes the object of reading, and further, the device of translation, scale reference and system of programming.

3. Space is a verb.

3.1 The evidence of a linguistic nature to architecture is found, not in its syntactic attributes, but in the inherent capacity to define subject, predicate and adverbial modifiers of time and place.

3.2 The architectural open space, that attends to the potential of an infinitely complex trajectory, is invariant to an area of numbers and keys, that, in turn, presents us with infinite variables of writing. The open space, typically dealt with in plan, can be read as being encompassed by the functional keys or antechambers, that serve transitions, navigations and operations in text.

an act of leaving ends at its point of arrival.

That is to say, if the second room is not known before, then the action, and its functional key, would make a return. Thus, the scenario of a formal escape is a room situated by another room, that is, however, inaccessible from the same; a room that remains unknown while within the relation of rooms. An escape is typed out as being informed, by means of information, on the margin of types themselves. For forms anew.

In the words of Gilles Deleuze: […] when one does something, it’s also a question of moving out from it, simultaneously staying in it and getting out of it. […] I want to get out of philosophy by means of philosophy.

1. This project is dedicated to the work of Belgian architect Juliaan Lampens (b. 1926). Having studied the synthesis of works by Le Corbusier, Mies and Niemeyer, Lampens proposed his own version of the open plan, by radicalising and subverting the openness of living space.

Inhabited by small enclosed volumes, the spaces of his houses provide an escape from the complete openness of the plan – niches appear to have escaped their walls, to be animated as architectural characters.

4. The notion of escape, if described spatially, is the exit from one room to another. Drawing near the target of such,

take flight

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PLAN FOR T YPICAL HOUSE 1:100 11

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Explication of rooms 1. Escape 2. Balcony 3. Garage 4. Sleeping zone 5. Bathroom 6. Toilet 7. Lounge 8. Kitchen 9. Patio 10. Space 11. Terrace 12. Entrance 13. Backspace

5m

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Lili Carr, student of Dip14, talks about the possibilities of a walk with no foreseeable end, the chance of escape when the destination is left unknown.

make off

Screenshot from Patrick Keiller’s film Robinson In Ruins, 2010. Š BFI Video

Going for a Walk

21 In 2008, a marginalised individual sets out to avert global catastrophe, hoping to trigger the end of neoliberalism by going for a walk.

For more information on Lili Carr’s work see lilicarr.com

– Patrick Keiller, The Possibility of Life’s Survival on the Planet

What is a walk? Is it a directed line from A to B, or loop back round to the origin, to A again? The walk must have a beginning, certainly, but what about an end? What does it mean to simply keep on going?

I first knew of the Robinson Institute through the film Robinson in Ruins (2010), seen during the first year of the AA at the flat of a friend in which some of us had decided to stay. At that time we saw only a field of possibility about what our participation in this school would be.

We were at the beginning of something, and during the film I fell asleep, forgoing the witnessing of its conclusion. At school we had not yet organised ourselves into individuals operating project to project – discrete conclusions with closed ends.

Recently I was able to see the end of this film whose questions had remained with me quietly over the last several years. It forms the final part in a trilogy concerning the explorations of the researcher Robinson, whose business is with the ‘problem’ of dwelling in England and the question of what dwelling might be. It is a question that this year concerns much of the work in Diploma school, and a question to which possible answers are forthcoming. Projects are in production. Housing is once more on the agenda.

The Robinson film is slow and without urgency. It is a meandering wandering through chains of thought spurred by observations – visual noticings – on the English landscape. It is not a thesis or a narrative as such, but an essay; a complete work that expresses an attempt and an examination of a subject that, although precise in the minutiae of its articulations, throws itself open. The film can be read, just as a novel can be read, or even a landscape. And just as there is no end and

no answer, nor is there the niggling thought that something might have been missed or done better. What remains are questions posed.

The film suggests the possibility of the ‘good walk’ – a walk that could be considered a resistance in the sense that it turns outwards away from itself, without compromise and without the possibility of its becoming an object. There is a difference between suspension and the foregoing of a conclusion. And the good walk has the added advantage of a view towards the street, towards the contribution of a possible architecture.

In the 2012 film Prometheus, all seems wasted at the end, two characters decide to continue in a borrowed spaceship rather than return to Earth. The way out of the current situation (dwelling, and otherwise) requires a mechanism of escape – perhaps a borrowed vehicle; a proverbial ‘getaway car’ – to open up a third way, as of yet unknown.

The temptation to revisit something that has happened, constantly looping back to a signified start denies the possibility of escape, or rather, it implies that the possibility of escape is encoded somewhere along the past. The housing situation today is not a badly chosen path, it is a landscape.

And since our agenda is shared, perhaps we can agree to a collective action – a precise sense of purpose contained within an array of possibility – to forge ahead, on foot perhaps, taking care along the way.

take off

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Lindsey Stamps, recent graduate from the History and Critical Thinking programme at the AA (2014), delineates bank robber John Dillinger and his numerous and one attempts to escape the prison of a collective mind

The Federal Bureau of Investigation, the first American law enforcement agency permitted to pursue criminals across state borders, was created in direct response to the repeated escapes of the Dillinger gang. When John Dillinger, prisoner 12325, was arrested on 22 September 1933 following a bank robbery, a document was found in his possession mapping a jailbreak from Indiana State Prison.

decamp

On 26 September, eight of the Dillinger’s were liberated. Upon breaking out, the felons set a course, a best fit line, to the state border. Telegraphs and wanted posters were filled with descriptions of men defined by integers: age, height, weight, and prisoner identification number. Incarcerated again on 3 March 1934, Dillinger would soon break out of the ‘escape-proof’ Crown Point Jail, fleeing the scene in Sheriff

A diagram of John Dillinger’s last stakeout, © Federal Bureau of Investigation, U S Department of Justice

Escape is a mathematical game

To read more by Lindsey Stamps, please visit: http://issuu. com/aaschool/docs/lindsey_stamps_la_petite_mort

23 Holley’s Ford V8. John Dillinger was the greatest mathematician of our time.

Liberation is a form of calculation.

Emancipation requires a linear equation, solving for the value of x, where x equals the path out of the labyrinth. Determined by calculations of distance, surveys of natural and built barriers, measurements of latitude and longitude, escape is a line on a plan.

There must be a solvable equation given all the predetermined variables, the solution being the path out, the Spirit Line 1. Taking leave from the Dillinger Escape Plan 2, we can imagine a drawing as having two types of lines, superimposed. The hard lines in ink are predetermined boundaries to which sets of self-referential rules are applied, regulations assigned to certain territories. On top of the ink is pencil, quick, sharp, sketchy lines striking through the boundaries set beneath them. The two layers represent correlated functions in which a change in one variable, the barrier, incites a change in the dependent variable, the liberation. By this system, mathematical limits exist as a diagram.

Emancipation is dependent upon the physical breaking of mentally imposed barriers. What is diagrammed on the map is a guide; it is up to the confined to accept or reject the layout. John Dillinger was always able to solve the equation denying captivity 3. He understood fresh lines had to be drawn to find a way through the virtual brick wall. An element of imagination not often correlated with mathematical thinking makes successful deserters rare.

The new expression is not about breaking out but redrawing the limits, rewriting the linear equation rather than following the established set. The mathematician sees flaws in the matrix and is thus able to visualise a way out. The environment changes as borders become more solid, when the implied and imposed limits approach one another. In the instance of the penitentiary, the restrictions of law are manifested as iron bars. FBI jurisdiction was created as an outlet for police barricaded into a set of parameters, like dogs with

an electrified collar. Mathematicians understand better than law enforcement that rules are made to be challenged.

Their last attempt failed. The Chicago Police recorded the victory in the form of a numbered map. Each body, witnesses, officers and offender, were assigned a digit, direction and duration. The map is inked accurately because it is a posthumous drawing, a chalk-outline, rather than the embryonic sketch of plan in progress.

The game was lost as Dillinger failed to recognise one of his accomplices had become an informant, making his odds at the Biograph Theater greater than 12 to 1. There was a simple miscalculation and though one can navigate, there is no escape from the rules of mathematics. The equation is written: dollars missing from the bank, divided by convicts on flight, plus miles to the state line, minus witnesses at the Biograph Theater equal five bullets in public enemy number one.

1. Navajo tribes in the American West have a tradition of weaving patterns into textiles, especially rugs and wall-hangings. Experienced weavers leave a Spirit Line, a tiny red thread appearing as a mistake in the pattern allowing the soul a way out, so as not to remain trapped in the repetition of the pattern.

2. In 2000, three years after the disbanding of the hardcore punk band Arcane, the Dillinger Escape Plan, named from the document recovered from Dillinger on arrest, was formed as arguably the best mathcore band to date.

3. Jacques Mesrine, the French gangster, is the only other hooligan to approach Dillinger’s mathematical heights.

abscond

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A happy chef and bored architect Jingming Wu, AA PhD student, interviews Fergus Henderson, AA graduate and founder of St John restaurant, on escaping architecture

Fergus Henderson trained as an architect at the AA during the 1980s.

After graduating, his interest shifted into designing dishes and he soon became a renowned chef founding St John restaurant. Why did he give up architecture?

Did his architectural training continue to play a role in his second career?

His interview gives some interesting insights to students who want to escape architecture.

Jingming Wu: I am interested in your experience.

Why did you escape an architectural career?

Fergus Henderson: I have always been challenged by the kitchen.

I escaped to the kitchen because I always face happy challenges there … very happy. Making food for me is like creating space in architecture.

I am not referring to the architecture of the dish, but to an architecture of creating space by changing cooking ingredients and designing taste.

We tried your famous dish yesterday, bone marrow.

I feel that the dish has a style that matches the interior design of the restaurant.

The restaurant has an unintentional design. It is calm, ordinary … and the dishes become delights in space …

I heard you made models with spaghetti and noodles, may I see a photo?

I can’t remember! It was a long time ago. I feel architecture is … dull. It is designed in two dimensions and then constructed in three dimensions. It is a sort of construction of architectural shapes, but nothing is really happening… it is boring.

Why is architecture boring?

In some way buildings remain the same throughout time … but in the kitchen you can constantly make changes. The menu, the wines, the tables and the chairs become a show or a play. During show time, you can observe what is happening in these seats, through this space …

Like something magic?

Magic! Yes, magic in the restaurant. When we are not open for lunch, tables are tranquil. And then the show starts, then dinner is served.

make good one’s escape

Bone marrow, the famous dish of St John restaurant, looks brutal but tastes great. © St John Restaurant Press Team

25

The atmosphere is strange during Christmas. Loads of food is prepared, and there is a sense of ‘hoho’ in the restaurant, which is magical.

The constraint is waiting for the food, fish and shells require time to prepare. When we prepare dinner, the restaurant becomes a catwalk, which is fantastic. It is a really magical restaurant.

Is this the reason you gave up the superficial decoration of dishes?

Well, it is more elegant. It is civilised … It is simple happiness.

It is different from the French style which contains a lot of colours and a performance aspect.

French food is good. But mine is simple. You see, this room looks ordinary, natural …

For more information on St John Restaurant visit: www.stjohngroup.uk.com

Would you say it almost looks brutal?

Yes, exactly. But be careful of this concept. It is not that straightforward.

The magic is in progress.

Your dishes then, are influenced by brutalism, simple but powerful.

Yes, but you have to be careful. Some scandalous chefs cook lambs’ heads, split them into halves and serve them. These are brutal objects.

It is urghhh … it is really stupid and it annoys me. My dishes are more natural. We don’t seek something extreme. There have always been ideas of what a restaurant should be like and I always asked myself why.

I always thought you should strive to keep yourself happy with the dishes you make.

Keep yourself happy and keep the customers happy …

Well, hopefully. (laughs) Last question. What would you suggest to AA students who want to quit architecture?

You should always ask yourself why do you want to quit and what would you like to pursue instead. If you don’t know why you want to escape, stay there until at last you know why you are doing it. Then do it. Fine.

make a getaway

26

From Escapism to Real Life, and vice versa

Escapism is one of the basic needs of the human species.

Yet, the concept of escapism can be seen at the base of any theatre play. In fact, since ancient times, it has been possible to understand the need to entertain the audience and to divert the problems of everyday life with stories or myths more or less real. And it is with theatre that architecture has evolved, even at a smaller scale, by building worlds and scenographic landscapes with an incredible and continuous development. The relation between theatre and architecture is tied up to an ever-evolving historical culture; Robert Wilson’s work is a paradigmatic case of this union. The first encounter with Wilson’s theatre is overwhelming: it is 1969 in New York, where a completely new standard of performance is shown through new forms, crafting lights, ideas, music and language together to create the sensation of entering a completely different world.

The stage becomes a 1:1 set, and each set becomes a place in its own right formed by images, constructing a reality of visionary landscapes and montages, where time and events animate the scene with no apparent order.

Through the composition of the theatre stage, the public is trapped and dazed by an epic metaphysical extravaganza.

No one can say that it is unreal, you hear the sounds, you feel the space around you, you see the lights and immediately you are in medias res.

show a clean pair of heels

In theatre, as in life, myth and narrative intertwine, and it is not possible to recognise the real happening from the imaginary products of our mind. Theatre would not reach this level of reality without combining the fictional with the tangible, in other words without architecture.

It is in architecture that ‘escapism’ takes form.

Whatever we think, architecture creates it, and makes it possible to visualise it, to live in it, to believe in it. It is the landscape we inhabit.

As in theatre, when the show is repeated every night, architecture becomes a ritual: re-forming these images, they become something else, every time it is a different version and it is a different reality.

Through the re-enactment of each moment in the play, escapism emerges and appears as a real life event. These are fictions which surround us, and become our present. Shirley Jackson said: ‘No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality; even larks and katydids are supposed, by some, to dream.’ 1

So do we, and so does architecture.

1. Shirley Jackson, The Haunting of Hill House, (London, Penguin, 1984).

For more on Dip Unit 9 please visit dip9.aaschool.ac.uk

Sabrina Morreale (Diploma Unit 9) reflects on the reciprocity of theatre and real life, stimulated by the architectural qualities of Robert Wilson’s work.

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Order these titles online at aabookshop.net where a selection of new books, special offers and some backlist titles are available

Recommended Reading

The Inhabited Pathway – The Built Work of Alberto Ponis in Sardinia Edited by Sebastiano Brandolini 240pp, 250 x 150mm, illustrated, hardback Zürich, 2014 £50

Windowscape – Window Behaviourology Yoshiharu Tsukamoto 352pp, 210 x 150 mm Illustrated col & bw, paperback Tokyo, 2010 £38.50

This beautifully produced volume is the first comprehensive monograph on this original, yet little-known, architect. It documents his life, education and training, then delves into his extensive research on Sardinia – which focused in particular on the typical housing types of the island’s rural areas. Detailed examinations of eight selected buildings created between 1965 and 1998 trace the evolution of Ponis’s work and philosophy, while a concluding essay offers thoughts on the essence of his architecture.

Yoshiharu Tsukamoto of Atelier BowWow tours the world in a quest to seek out and analyse the behaviour of windows.

Through photographs of hundreds of these objects and their associated interior and exterior spaces – from the mundane to the beautiful and enigmatic – the book explores how windows can create uniquely cultural, urban and social spaces, as well as stimulate activities like rest, relaxation and rejuvenation. By focusing on this architectural typology, Tsukamoto offers commentary on the allure and fascination of windows and how they help to generate positive spaces within buildings, which in turns leads to an energising and refreshing sense of living.

run for it

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Small Architecture / Natural Architecture Kengo Kuma With an introduction by Thomas Daniell Two vols in slipcase, 192 pages 170 x 105 mm, ills, softcover April 2015 978-1-907896-51-4 c £15 This book combines two extended essays

by Japanese architect Kengo Kuma, which together provide an overview of his key built works and a summation of his ideas about architecture, developed over the course of his career to date. Originally published as two smaller books, and until now only available in Japanese, this edition comprises a lucid theoretical manifesto for humble, sustainable architecture sensitive to materials and to place. The writing has a particular poignancy in the wake of the 2011 tsunami that devastated parts of northern Japan.

disappear

Ludwig Leo: Ausschnitt Edited by Jack Burnett-Stuart, Gregor Harbusch, Michael von Matuschka, Antje Buchholz, Jürgen Patzak-Poor and Philip Kurz 160 pages, 332 x 240 mm, colour ills, softcover May 2015 978-1-907896-72-9 c £25 This book examines five projects by the Berlin architect Ludwig Leo (1924–2012), including the famous DLRG boathouse (1967–73) in Spandau and the pink Umlauftank in Berlin (1967–74). The book appears in conjunction with the Wüstenrot Stiftung’s exhibition of the same name, curated by BARarchitekten and Gregor Harbusch, and accompanies a new AA show in May 2015. The book is also the first to be published in English about the work of this enigmatic architect.

Illustrated with numerous drawings from the Ludwig Leo archive.

For further information on AA Publications or to order, visit www.aaschool.ac.uk/publications

AA Publications

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Bedford Press

Bedford Press is an imprint of AA Publications.

For further information visit www.bedfordpress.org

Auto-Destructive Art: Metzger at AA Gustav Metzger 42 pages, 297 x 210 mm, ills, softcover April 2015 978-1-907414-50-3 £10 ‘Auto-destructive art is a comprehensive theory for action in the field of the plastic arts in the post-Second World War period.

The action is not limited to theory of art and the production of art works. It includes social action. Auto-destructive art is committed to a left-wing revolutionary position in politics, and to struggles against future wars.’

– Gustav Metzger, introduction to Auto-Destructive Art: Metzger at AA Facsimile edition of a transcript originally published by A C C, following the lecture ‘Auto-Destructive Art’ given by Germanborn artist Gustav Metzger at the AA in February 1965.

MacLean 705 Edited by Joseph Grigely Contributions by: Åbäke, Fran Betters, Susan Bielstein, Sam Davis & Benjamin Chaffee, Nico Dockx, Yona Friedman & Jean-Baptiste Decavèle, Ryan Gander, Benjamin Robert Haydon, Ben Kinmont, Zak Kyes, Tara Lane, João Penalva Two vols in slipcase, 160 pages 215 x 140 mm, colour ills softcover with jacket June 2015 978-1-907414-48-0 £15 This publication documents an exhibition in twelve parts, organised by artist Joseph Grigely at MacLean 705, a small office atrium at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Twelve collaborators took part in this incremental exhibition, with each successive contribution adding to existing work and thereby unfolding a set of intertextual relations with each new installation.

sneak away

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AA News AA Referendum on the Re-appointment of Brett Steele Brett Steele was re-elected as Director of the AA School after a vote by the AA School Community on 12 December 2014. His new five-year term will commence on 1 August 2015.

The results of the election (with a turnout of 73%) were: 75.4% Yes 24.6% No Brett Steele sent this message to the AA School Community: Thank you for the clear and resounding result. I am overwhelmed and grateful and feel honoured to be able to maintain your confidence and support in my work leading the AA School and Membership. The greatest part of my job is serving in a school that requires I maintain that confidence and I believe it to be the defining quality of our school. I will continue to work hard to live up to your expectations during the next five years.

We have a tremendous five-year plan for continuing to strengthen the school and support our teachers, students and staff; to make our school more accessible; and to improve teaching and learning opportunities throughout the Association. We will continue to broaden the AA’s reach, impact and role in shaping the culture of architecture and education today.

More than anything, my deepest thanks go out to all of you for taking the time to participate in the referendum process in record numbers; for downloading and reading and providing feedback to me on my strategy plan; and for arranging and attending meetings during the past month to discuss and question where we are going and what we are doing as a school.

Work identified in the strategic aims contained in our five-year plan is already underway as we all enter into a fantastic next stage of our School and Association. It is one that will build strategically upon the tremendous

slip away

successes of the past few years, leading towards 2020 – the 100th anniversary of our Association’s creation of the AA Diploma.

To each and every one of you in the School Community: Thank you.

Kind Regards, Brett

Careers & Prizes The New Years Honours List 2015 has been announced with AA Council Member and former Unit Tutor Jane Wernick awarded a CBE. Other recipients included: John Quinlan Terry (AADipl 1961) who was awarded a CBE for services to Classical Architecture. Katherine Heron (AADipl 1972 & Former AA Staff), Professor of Architecture at the University of Westminster, was awarded an MBE for services to Architecture and Higher Education.

AA Honorary Member and former City of London Corporation’s chief planning officer Peter Wynne Rees was awarded an OBE for services to Architecture and Town Planning. www.gov.uk/government/uploads/ system/uploads/attachment_data/ file/393780/New_Years_ Honours_2015_Queens_List.pdf Laboratory of Explorative Architecture and Design (LEAD) the Office of Kristof Crolla (AA MArch DRL 2007), won third place in the anonymous international open competition for the design of two museums in Budapest. www.archdaily.com/tag/liget-budapest www.ligetbudapest.org www.l-e-a-d.pro The shortlist for The Architectural Journal’s Women In Architecture Awards 2015 has been announced.

Amongst those nominated for Emerging Woman Architect of the Year 2015 are founding partners of vPPR Architects Jessica Reynolds (AA Inter 13 Unit Master) and Tatiana von Preussen (NYLON Visiting School Director) as well as Sally Lewis (AA Professional Practice Student), who is the founding director of Stitch Architects. Clare Wright (AA Member) of Wright & Wright architects has been nominated for Woman Architect of the Year. www.architectsjournal.co.uk/ events/wia

At the Architectural Review’s Global Architecture Graduate Awards 2014, Jongwon Na (AA Year Out Student) was named overall winner with his project New Liberty Township.

Antonis Papamichael (AADipl 2014) was also shortlisted. www.architectural-education.club/ jongwon_na www.architectural-education.club/ antonis_papamichael www.architectural-review.com/ ar-awards/global-architecturegraduate-awards Kasang Kajang (AADipl 2012) was a finalist at both The Society of British and International Design Awards and The FX International Interior Design Awards 2014, for Sisterfields, a new café/bar in Bali, undertaken with Travis Walton Architects. www.traviswalton.org.uk Jite Brume (AADipl 2001) will be running a free earth building workshop in Lagos, Nigeria. Taking place in Spring 2015, the workshop will aim to construct an educational and cultural centre for a private foundation using innovative alternative techniques with earth as the primary material.

The project is in need of volunteers, spaces are limited to 15 people and on completion, there will be paid job opportunities for a selected number of trained participants (approximately 5–8 people). For more details contact lagos@moeaa.com.

Emanuel de Sousa (AA PhD 2013) has been awarded a Distinction at the BIAU 2014, Bienal Iberoamericana de Arquitectura y Urbanismo, Rosario, Argentina, for his Doctoral Thesis ‘Heterotopia: Reframing Spatial Practices and Boundaries, c 19682008’, concluded at the Architectural Association in 2013, with the support of Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia, Portugal, under the supervision of Dr Marina Lathouri (AA) and Prof Dr Edward Soja (UCLA/LSE).

Arturo Revilla (AA PhD candidate) won the competition for swimming pool facilities for the Club Campestre de Aguascalientes, Mexico. As part of the research for his PhD in Architectural Design, Arturo is also responsible for the BAGNET collective plastic bag installation at Instituto Cultural de Aguascalientes.

31 Britta Knobel Gupta (AA DRL MArch 2006), Founding Partner at Studio Symbiosis, has been selected for the ‘Europe 40 under 40’ award by The European Centre for Architecture Art Design and Urban Studies and The Chicago Athenaeum. Studio Symbiosis was also the winner of Iconic Award 2014 and received a special mention for the German Design Award 2015. www.europeanarch.eu/2-europe-40under-40.html www.studio-symbiosis.com Asif Khan’s (AADipl 2007) design for the new Guggenheim Museum in Helsinki has been selected as a finalist for Stage Two of the competition, beating over 1,700 submissions. www.asif-khan.com

Lectures & Events The AA was privileged to welcome the Prime Minister of Albania Edi Rama on 16 January 2015, who opened the exhibition ‘Potential Monuments of Unrealised Futures’ in the AA Gallery and joined a panel discussing the work on show. The exhibition was originally commissioned by the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Albania for the Albanian Pavilion at the Venice Biennale 2014 and features the work of Albanian artists Edi Hila and Adrian Paci. The exhibition was curated

by Beyond Entropy Balkans Jonida Turani and Stefano Rabolli Pansera (AADipl(Hons) 2006). www.aaschool.ac.uk/public/whatson/ exhibitions.php?item=301 AA SED’s Projects in India opened on Tuesday 16 December 2014 at CEPT University, Ahmedabad, India on the occasion of the PLEA 2014 International Conference held there on Sustainable Habitat for Developing Societies. AA SED Projects in India celebrates the work of twelve recent graduates of the AA School’s MSc and MArch in Sustainable Environmental Design. www.aaschool.ac.uk/downloads/news/ aa_sed_plea_2014_leaflet.pdf Theodore Spyropoulos (AA DRL Director) will be participating as a juror in the 2015 Digital Design category of D&AD Professional Awards. www.dandad.org/profiles/ person/675171/theodore-spyropoulos

Published & Exhibited The CALLIPOD pavilion made as part of the AA Summer DLab Visiting School 2014 was featured on the website ArchDaily in December.

Course co-directors Elif Erdine and Alexandros Kallegias were interviewed for the article. www.archdaily.com/582672/aa-dlab2014-the-natural-and-digital-worldscombine-with-root-like-callipodpavilion www.aaschool.ac.uk/dlab Rana Haddad (AADipl 1995) and Pascal Hachem exhibited recent works at the Carwan Gallery, Beirut.

‘0.91 Cubic Metre’ is the most recent show of work by 200 Grs – the metric nomenclature Haddad and Hachem chose for their collaboration. www.dailystar.com.lb/arts-and-ent/ culture/2014/dec-31/282676-derelictmodernism-in-your-salon.ashx#sthash. ldywmoyl.dpu www.carwangallery.com Dyvik Kahlen architects, the practice of Max Kahlen (AADipl(Hons) 2008) have designed the exhibition Magnificent Obsessions – The Artist as Collector which runs at the Barbican Art Gallery from 12 February 2015 to 25 May 2015. The show presents the personal collections of 14 postwar and contemporary artists such as Andy Warhol, Peter Blake and Martin Parr. www.barbican.org.uk/artgallery/eventdetail.asp?ID=17071 www.dyvikkahlen.com Professor Ralph Johannes (AA Member since 1957) has launched a new teaching model website, MADE (Model for Architectural Design Education). MADE is a didactically organised teaching model for the methodical and systematic design of structures, it is to be understood as one of the ‘tools of the trade’, with which intuitions can (and should) be properly crafted. This teaching/learning model was employed in the Architectural and Building Science Departments of the University of Essen, Germany. www.made-me.de

Cellular Morphology Facade is an algorithmically designed facade system that can be optimised for any climatic context and building typology, to control heat, light and visibility in a space. Located in both London and New Delhi, the studio aims to be the first independent research laboratory for design and architecture to implement cutting-edge computational technology in the discipline in India.

Jan Nauta (AADipl 2011) and Samantha Hardingham (AA Dipl 7 Unit Master) curated an exhibition on former AA Tutor Cedric Price in Maastricht, Netherlands. Cedric Price: The Dynamics of Time runs at the Bureau Europa from 13 December 2014 to 23 March 2015 and introduces the work of Price by presenting a crosssection of the elements of his inventive and singular practice: sketches, project drawings, recorded talks, first-hand accounts by staff, colleagues and friends. And a series of selected projects presents his innovative models for industry, education, government, tourism, ecology and the house. It is accompanied by contemporary work, reflecting both the critical attributes of Price’s practice and the concept of the exhibition itself. www.bureau-europa.nl/nl/ manifestations/cedric_price_the_ dynamics_of_time Sabrina Morreale (AA 4th Year student) launched SAME Architecture magazine as part of her unit work.

Titled ‘From copy to copyright’, the issue presented interviews from AA Diploma Honours 2012–14 students, tutors and other points of view regarding the appropriation of their work into her own project. The issue featured exclusive photography of the ‘originals’ and of the authentic work, as described by Sabrina. Anyone interested in the architectural side of the copyright law may find the magazine at the AA in late February.

Sushant Verma’s (AA MArch EmTech 2013) practice Rat[LAB] exhibits a large-scale prototype of ‘Cellular Morphology Facade’ at Alliance Française de Delhi, as a part of 20under35 Exhibition 2015.

scarper

32 Obituaries The AA is sad to report that AA student and teacher Professor Ranulph Glanville died of cancer on 20 December 2014. This obituary was written by AA Head of Computing, Julia Frazer who was his student in her first year at the AA in 1972.

Ranulph was an architect, cybernetician, design researcher, theorist, educator, prolific writer, musician, artist, chef and bon viveur – that is until the end of the 80s when he had to stop drinking. His formidable intellect and breadth of knowledge were legendary. He was a deeply serious intellectual who also knew how to play the fool. His musical compositions were taken sufficiently seriously to be played by Olivier Messiaen and known to Karlheinz Stockhausen and John Cage. He was also extremely knowledgeable about certain aspects of Architecture and, for example, he gave radio talks for the Open University on Alvar Aalto (Ranulph typically learned to speak Finnish) and he wrote a seminal essay about Aalto for the Makers of Modern Culture.

He was born in 1946 of AngloIrish descent and enjoyed a liberal Froebel Kindergarten, then Bryanston School and the Architectural Association (1964–71) where his contemporaries included Leon van Schaik, Grahame Shane, Stephen Gage, Robin Evans, Dick Bunt, Oliver Freeman and John Frazer. He went on to be awarded two PhDs by Brunel University first in Cybernetics 1975 and then Human Learning 1987.

Brunel awarded him the highest degree of DSc in Cybernetics and Design 2006.

His most important contribution was in cybernetics and in particular to bringing a unique form of architectural thinking to the development of what is known as second order cybernetics where the observer is fully involved in the system feedback loop – a very AA way of thinking. He played a very significant role in this notoriously arcane field being a close associate of key figures like Heinz von Foerster and Gordon Pask. Ranulph triumphed as President of the American Society for Cybernetics from 2008–14 and he was the first European to be elected to this prestigious position.

His other International posts and professorships were extensive and included: First year AA unit

vanish

master from 1971–78, lecturer at Portsmouth Polytechnic 1978–96. He was appointed Professor of Research in Innovation Design Engineering at the RCA and later as Professor of Research Design at LUCA in Belgium.

On a personal note Ranulph was an inspirational teacher who eased me in my first year at the AA from my first degree in Mathematics into the world of architecture, forming a bridge for me through our shared love of music and art. We also shared a love for fine wine and we would bid together at Sotheby’s. What a wonderful introduction for a student! Ranulph became a close friend and was best man at my wedding to John. He visited us in Ireland and went on to teach for John in Hong Kong and Australia. He visited us to say goodbye just two weeks before his death and was still talking enthusiastically and animatedly about the world of ideas.

He leaves his partner Aartje Hulstein and son Severi from his marriage to his first wife Tuulikki Leskinen. He also leaves a massive legacy of papers in the domains of architecture and cybernetics and many very loyal and grateful students and friends.

Note from the Archives: Ranulph’s archive of papers has been donated to the University of Vienna, where they will sit alongside those of both Gordon Pask and Heinz von Foerster. The AA Archives have been permitted to scan and make available on its online catalogue Ranulph’s architectural drawings and material created whilst studying and teaching at the AA. These are expected to be available online later in 2015.

The family of the architect, Tyler Jonathan Martiné (AA DRL MArch 2005), who passed away in May 2014, wished to forward on the following message to the AA community in celebration of his life.

‘Born in Chicago, Illinois in 1978 to Thomas Richard Martiné and Kathie Jean Bolin, Tyler was the beloved husband of Jennifer and father of Quentin Carter Martiné. Tyler was a successful architect with Skidmore, Owings & Merrill LLP and previously with WRNS Studio, designing commercial and residential buildings locally and internationally.

He achieved his undergraduate degree in architecture from the University of Kansas, and attained his Masters degree at the prestigious

Architectural Association School of Architecture in the AADRL programme, graduating in 2005.

Tyler was a member of the American Institute of Architects. He had a passion for golf, enjoyed camping, travelling, and preparing and enjoying terrific food with his wife Jennifer.

He also loved spending time with his 3 year old son Quentin, reading books and playing ball.’

A memorial service for Tyler was held in Alameda, California on 17 May 2014.

Donations may be sent to the Tyler Martiné Memorial Fund, Account Number 191275620101, C/O Bank of Marin, 2130 Otis Drive, Alameda, CA 94501.

Online condolences may be offered at www.greermortuary.com/obituaries/ tyler-jonathan-martine2092290208/#!/ tributewall The AA was informed that architect Anthony Harrison (AADipl(Hons) 1962) passed away in November 2013.

An AA Diploma Honours student who graduated in 1962, Harrison worked extensively in Africa following his graduation in the countries of Nigeria, Tunisia and Uganda. He returned to the UK in 1974, where he set up his own practice, Harrison Sutton Partnership in Totnes, Devon. An obituary was published in the Guardian in December 2013. theguardian.com/artanddesign/2013/ dec/23/anthony-harrison-obituary The AA is also saddened to report of the death of AA Graduate & Life Member Ian D F Picken 1914–2015 (AADipl 1937), one of the AA’s longest serving Members who had joined the AA as a student in the 1930s.

Brian Housden (AADipl 1956), 1930–2014, died in November 2014.

His family’s private home at 78 South Hill Park in Hampstead, designed by Housden, had only recently been listed as Grade II by English Heritage.

Roy Farren (AADipl 1981) 1956–2014, also passed away at the end of 2014, as did AA Life Member Michael Hewling (AADipl 1949) 1922–2014.

Next Issue’s Theme

Deadlines

Contributions to aarchitecture@aaschool.ac.uk

School Announcement

AA Collections

Celebrating the launch of the AA Collections blog

AA Collections is about to launch a blog, to let people know about developments in the Library, Photo Library and Archives.

Blog posts will include news items such as new acquisitions and recently catalogued items, and will also highlight the ways the collections are used, from loans, to exhibitions or to research topics. We’ll also use the blog to show some underused collections or gaps in our holdings. We hope the blog will help promote the collections not just internally, but also outside the School, to the wider world.

http://collectionsblog.aaschool.ac.uk

Student Announcement

Travelling Opportunities 2015 Deadline 4pm Friday 27 March Submissions to the Director’s Office See aaschool.ac.uk for application details

Kohn Pedersen Fox Travelling Fellowship 2015 Each year, Kohn Pedersen Fox presents three $10,000 awards to students who are in their penultimate year at one of the 26 design schools with whom KPF has chosen to partner. The goal of the award is to allow students to broaden their education through a summer of travel before their final year at school.

Two AA students will be nominated for the award and will then be put forward for consideration by the KPF Travelling Fellowship award jury.

Students in their penultimate year at the AA are eligible. They may be in either a Bachelor of Architecture or a Master of Architecture degree programme. The application is made by the student but must be approved by the director of the School who may nominate two students from the class.

Riba Norman Foster Travelling Scholarship 2015 The RIBA Norman Foster Travelling Scholarship, supported by Lord Foster and Foster + Partners, offers one travelling scholarship of £6,000 to a student of architecture to support international research on a topic and at locations of the student’s choosing. One AA student will be nominated for the award and will then be put forward for consideration by the RIBA Norman Foster Travelling Scholarship award jury.

Students must be enrolled in a RIBA validated degree programme or in a programme from a specially invited school (includes the AA) and must have successfully completed at least the first year of a Part 1 degree.

Full submission requirements for both awards are available from the Director’s Office

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