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AA BOOK 2020

4 WELCOME 6 EDITORâ€™S NOTE 8 FOUNDATION 16 BEDFORD SQUARE 22 EXPERIMENTAL PROGRAMME 140 HOOKE PARK 146 DIPLOMA PROGRAMME 274 UNIT TRIPS 280 CORE STUDIES 304 VISITING SCHOOL 308 TAUGHT POSTGRADUATE PROGRAMMES 380 VIRTUAL AA 382 AA RESIDENCE 388 PUBLIC PROGRAMME 396 APPENDIX 404 LAST LINES

CONTENTS

Director’s Welcome

The AA Book 2020 is an opportunity to reflect on the wide scope of research and work that our association and school enables. It represents a compressed journey through the vast array of ideas and research that has been produced throughout the 2019 – 20 academic year, and invites us as readers to learn about past and future histories, modes of practice and, ultimately, action. Myriad topics and agendas, developed independently and in parallel with one another, afford students the technical, historical and disciplinary knowledge that they need to grow and flourish as architects. More importantly, the environment of the AA grants them a space in which to position themselves with respect to contemporary challenges from their own singular and collective experiences. At the beginning of the year, all of the courses and programmes of study throughout the school accepted the challenge of addressing issues relating to climate and ethics. As a community, we are committed to practising radical empathy; to considering the planet and the future; to listening; to asking; to sharing, discussing and debating; and, ultimately, to caring about the world in all of its manifestations. In the last few months, the world as we knew it has radically changed. Multiple different and interlinked crises, as those that preceded them, have demanded that we reimagine the world and break with inherited histories, legacies and traditions. They have forced us to identify a new set of priorities, new forms of action and new expertise. It is in moments of crisis that opportunities for redefinition emerge. Overnight, issues that have historically been important in the education of an architect became anachronistic, and lost some, if not all, of their intellectual and operational currency. Research and design areas that were once peripheral and disregarded have now become indispensable and urgent. New design problems, constraints,

WELCOME

desires and solutions have emerged at a range of scales, from the nanometric to the planetary. In many ways, from the poetic to the political and from the profitable to the equitable, architecture is changing. The challenge of our time is to re-envision how we want to live together. Throughout its history, the AA has produced relevant forms of inquiry, discourse and practice that have responded to the urgent questions of the time. The events currently unfolding around the world are undeniably momentous, and the challenges that we all face today as global citizens and as architects are numerous and monumental. Our institution is fortunate to have an extraordinary body of tutors, staff and students that are fully committed to articulating these issues and to redefining what our discipline can contribute to the world we live in while continuing to transform what the education of an architect both can and should be.

Eva Franch i Gilabert School Director

WELCOME

Editor’s note In recent history, the AA has been rooted at the heart of London in our homes on Bedford Square and in Hooke Park, Dorset. As a community, however, we use planet Earth as our testing ground: we input co-ordinates to travel and learn about the built environment in all its forms, visiting vibrant and complex cities, planned and rural towns and remote and sometimes harsh landscapes. Until recently, we always returned home. Now the school is dispersed across the world: learning takes place in living rooms, bedrooms, internet cafes and on virtual platforms, which has altered not only the way we teach and learn, but also how we live and see the world. The AA Book 2020 documents a year that saw incredible changes to our school and the world due to environmental instability, the Covid-19 pandemic and racial inequality. In the face of these challenges, our students demonstrated a determination and commitment to their work that was beyond inspiring, and the images, projects and drawings within this publication are representative of their fortitude. From traveling along London’s Metropolitan Line, delving deep into the forests of Java and investigating the Outer Ports of Norway to Internet immersion, North Sea exploration and perpetual mobility, the work at the school this year certainly has a sense of urgency – to not only address the immediate issues of our time, such as the environment, governmental structures of oppression and care, but to do so with an unquenchable optimism of provocative ideas and visionary architectures. Structured around the school curriculum, the book provides a cross-section of work that visually demonstrates the breadth of investigation, research, design and enquiry that each unit and programme explored during the 2019 – 20 academic year. The reader can explore the AA much like a student finding their way through the school: starting with the Foundation Course, one then enters the Experimental Programme, which shows the work of our first-, second- and third-year students, before moving on to the Diploma School and the work of the Core Studies courses. The final sections of the book showcase the diverse Taught Postgraduate programmes

EDITOR’S NOTE

at the AA and our extensive Public Programme. Dividing the sections are a series of intermissions that highlight the global nature of our association as a mapping and a timeline. An immense effort was required to make the launch of the AA Book 2020 – the first to be released digitally – a reality. To all of the staff that not only responded by sending material, but also collectively worked together with a single aim in mind to ensure we have a book to commemorate the year; to Eva, for bringing us together from around the world; and, most importantly, to my colleagues in Print Studio – Rory, Oliver, George and Matt – who put in countless hours and great dedication to see this through to its completion. Thank you. To all of the authors of the work shown – our students – your vision, determination and irrepressible passion is indefatigable, and the words on this page are not enough to show the requisite gratitude.

To everyone: be safe and well, Ryan Dillon

EDITOR’S NOTE

FOUND 8

FOUNDATION

DATION 9

The AA Foundation Course is a one-year introduction to an art and design education. Students are encouraged to develop their conceptual ideas through experiments with a wide range of media in an intimate, studio-based environment. Drawing on a number of different pedagogical practices and the knowledge of highlyexperienced tutors and visiting consultants, the Foundation Course offers dynamic, cross-disciplinary teaching within the context of a specialist architectural school.

foundation Who Do We Think We Are? What Do We Think We’re Doing? We Are Challenged in our assumptions Open to the unknown Exploratory of our territories Reaching back to precedents Projecting future prospects We Found Traces of Bauhaus in London streets We Heard Gossip in the penthouse at Highpoint Wandered the rooms of ‘Still Undead’ in Caruso St John’s Nottingham Contemporary We Walked Across Liverpool tracking the histories of Colonial power through colossal structures from the water’s edge to the city margins Wind whipped, from Swanage to Haysom Quarry and saw masses of Purbeck stonecut with industrial precision

We Assembled For tea and cake at Granby Four Streets Winter Garden We Understood The tender preservation of Croft Lodge, a ruin held together by ivy for decades, now wrapped in a corrugated coat We Measured Voids and under-crofts of the Havelock Estate We Made Paths from Sanford Housing Co-op around Millwall’s Den making fictional characters to play with We Played Backstage at the Mowlem Theatre as an audience to the sea’s sway

STAFF: Saskia Lewis (Head of Foundation), Juliet Haysom, George Massoud (Studio Masters), Chiyan Ho, Michael Ho (Tutors)

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS: Khaled Al-Bashir, Nena Aru, Sue Barr, Yoni Bentovim, Edward Bottoms, Mark Campbell, Fenella Collingridge, Ilsa Colsell, David Connor, Charlie Corry Wright, Georgie Corry Wright, Alison Crawshaw, Thomas Curtis, Kate Darby, Clancy Dawson, Ryan Dillon, Fran Edgerley, Magnus Englund, Cédric Fauq, Trevor Flynn, Pauline Forster, Theodora Giovanazzi, Mark Haysom, Matthew Haysom, Treleven Haysom, Eleanor Lee,

STUDENTS: Dana Ayad, Sapyr Dodi, Kenza El Aoud, Euan Goodbrand, Elias Lont, Marco Mantega, Edwina Marigliano, Or Naeh, Noah Ponte, Maria-Clara Radu, Allegra Sainsbury, Laure Ségur, Tommaso Vago, Ga Ho Geffery Yu, Elena Zannetou

We Occupied Our London Studio Thinking through making Downloaded our uploads Negotiated acquisitions Contorted plastics Impressed pressure Catalogued by colour Found flows of veins Traced smoke Uncorked bottles Filled voids Shot at desire Masked performance Nurtured mosses Revealed the hidden Drew a datum Traced a curve and Cast a net We Finish the year stretching conversations across the globe compiling questions for future debate…

FOUNDATION

Antoni Malinowski, Mark Morris, Luca Nostri, John Palmisano, Christopher Pierce, Claire Potter, Ann-Sofi Rönnskog, Trystrem Smith, John Spinks, Silvana Taher, Adrian Taylor, Laurence Westgaph, Nicola Wheeler, Haysom Purbeck Stone

FOUNDATION

1 When Solid Becomes Hollow, Or Naeh

FOUNDATION

2 3 4 5 6 7

Inside Out, Elena Zannetou Colours of a Life, Elias Lont Leg Cardiovascular System, Euan Goodbrand Leg Musculature Mechanism, Euan Goodbrand Foot Press, Kenza El Aoud Collage 1, Dana Ayad

FOUNDATION

8 The Gridded Guitar, Ga Ho Jeffery Yu 9 The Gridded Guitar, Ga Ho Jeffery Yu 10 Interconnection: Glasses Measured Drawing, Laure Segur 11 The Invisible Havelock Estate, Laure Segur 12 Skulls, Laure Segur 13 Movie Stills, Laure Segur

FOUNDATION

14 Green Headed, Maria-Clara Radu 15 Green Headed: Worn, Maria-Clara Radu 16 Living Through Green: People, Places and Plants, Allegra Sainsbury 17 Datum Line, Tommaso Vago

FOUNDATION

18 Target Practice Self Portrait Dress Up – 1:1, Noah Ponte 19 Dancing Corkscrew, Edwina Marigliano 20 Positive and Negative Space and the Aesthetics of the Incomplete, Or Naeh. 21 Marlboro’s Silhouette, Marco Mantega 22 Movement Ribcage Drawings, Sapyr Dodi 23 1:1 Coat Model, Sapyr Dodi

The AA, Dispersed Around the Globe Read as a mapping and a timeline, these dividing sections document the spaces and locations in which the AA has has operated throughout the 2019 – 20 academic year. This first section focuses on Bedford Square (51° 31′ 7″ N, 0° 7′ 52″ W), the row of Georgian terraced houses that forms the core of the association and its operations, which is reliant on the collision of productive and social space.

BEDF SQU

51° 31′ 7″ N, 0° 7′ 52″ W

FORD UARE 17

51° 31′ 7″ N, 0° 7′ 52″ W

experim progr 22

EXPERIMENTAL PROGRAMME

mental ramme 23

The AA Experimental Programme (BA(Hons)) is a three-year, full-time course. It allows students not only  to broaden the horizons of how architecture is physically manifested in the world, but also to holistically consider how we design our cities, to imagine a future for our environment and to redefine how we want to live together. The first year is characterised by its shared, open studio and defined by a learning-through-making approach that provides students with the tools and methods to foster an exploratory and intellectual interest in architecture. The studio encourages young architects to focus on the challenges of the 21st century while learning and challenging the foundational principles of architecture. Structured around the combination of studio-based design work and Core Studies, the crossover between seminars, workshops and debates in the first year allows students to learn collectively and think independently, and to constructively engage with different audiences by sharing their discoveries in a year-long portfolio: a comprehensive body of work that forms the basis of each student’s progress into the second year of study at the AA. Years two and three introduce students to the AA unit system, in which small design studios (12 – 14 students) operate a vertical structure of second- and third-years. Innovative approaches to the study of form, typology, programme, site, material, craft and fabrication sit side-by-side with the study of critical architectural theory, environmental and technical considerations, speculative studies and different modes of architectural practice.

first year This year we continued our exploration of how the world today can be engaged with and studied by constantly relating our discoveries to the richness of architecture, its past, its figures and its projects. How do we put forward a question, a visual work, a project? If a project is a speculation about something yet to come and if the present already encapsulates futures, then can we learn forms of engagement with the here and now? Are changes really occurring too fast while architecture is too slow to actualise them, or are we just simply unable to perceive the present for what it is; to read its hidden forces? Are we able to translate our direct experience of the built environment into speculations that are not just representations of our findings, but that are truly open to unexpected discoveries? The first three pages of this review show studentsâ€™ work that captures how we engaged with the architectural discipline by studying the built environment. We started by analysing references from the past, and then we moved into a reading of the present by capturing spatial conditions that are symptomatic of the world today. In the second part of the year, we explored how simple design choices can have contradictory consequences, for instance by limiting or enabling possibilities. Our final brief was an investigation into collective modes of life. The condition in which we all found ourselves, of being cut off from one another in our homes, provided the context for students to take a personal stand between capturing the state of isolation and embracing speculations about the collective moments that may be in our near future.

STAFF: Monia De Marchi (Head of First Year), Delfina Bocca, Pol Esteve, Giulia Furlan, Nacho MartĂ, Patricia Mato Mora, Anna Muzychak, John Ng, Sara Saleh, Erika Suzuki, Alexandra Vougia, Simon Withers ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS: Balkrishna Doshi, Maria Paez Gonzalez, Ismet Khambatta, Anna Mill, Julian Mogera, Shaun Murray, Thomas Parker, Bimal Patel, Raj Rewal, Suhrid Sarabhai, Ronak Shah, Abhinava Shukla, Sorina Siddall, Mohammad Suleiman, Ovidiu Suteu

STUDENTS: Selin Nisa Acikel, Tejal Agrawal, Abdullah Kahtan Al Kazaz, Jaymara da R. de Almeida Alberto, Eleonora Balestra, Simon Ballester, Juliette Bartsoen, Teodora Boskovic, Yasemin Cengic, Heeyun Chang, Kwan Ip Chau, Wai Sun Helen Cheung, Munsung Choi, Nikola Da Silva Azevedo, Maria Daher, Charles Oscar Dib, Sindi Dojaka, Daphne Esin, Alex Valentine Evdokimov, Yaming Fan, Chenjie Feng, Julian Fok, Kathleen Gagnier, Ekaterina Genkina, Aakarsh Ghai, Vasco Giovannoni, Varvara Gunchenko, Han Guo, John Michael Hadaway, Imogen Harrison, Yanling He, Seonghyuk Hong, Boya Hou, Blanche Howard, Shu Che Hu, Yulin Huang, Vladislav Iakovlev, Eunsoo Jang, Ying Jiang, Joon Sung Kim, Anna

FIRST YEAR

Marie Kloos, Kirill Korobkov, Satvi Kumar, Lai-lung Kuo, Reva Kushwah, Anushka Ladhani, Meng Hei Lao, Hilla Laufer, Sara Khalil Layoun, Anna Sofia Lekander, Hantao Li, Yingqi Li, Zhifei Liang, Ningwei Liu, Paula Martin Rivera, Dila Aden Meray, Zoe Mirkovic, Selin Oktem, Anastasia Papaspyrou, Elena Parfentseva, Eden Plaistowe, Benedetta Scollo, Asli Sezer, Sungmin Song, Tom Stepins, Thitaporn Sungsitivong, Peder Sveen, Pelin Tamay, Magdalene Monzie Tan, Elizaveta Trofimova, Kevin Vannucchi, Congyue Wang, Yiqi Wang, Tatiana Suzanne Watrelot, Lilian Wichmann, Guinevere Winesa, Stanley Wood, Jiaxu Wu, Yuxin Wu, Shuangyu Xu, Haoming Zheng, Qi Zhu, Arina Znamenskaya

FIRST YEAR

How do you study an architecture as building? The direct exposure to buildings and cities is a tangible tool for refining an individual perception of the richness of the architectural discipline, and for exposing the complexities of the present and its unexpected forces. We visited Le Corbusierâ€™s Mill Ownersâ€™ Association Building in Ahmedabad, India.

FIRST YEAR

Studentsâ€™ work addressing the question: how do you study an architectural reference? The 90 selected case studies varied from more to less well-known works of architecture, and an emphasis was placed on capturing particular spatial inventions through the conventions of drawing and model-making.

FIRST YEAR

Studentsâ€™ work exploring our second aim: to capture alternative spatial conditions that have been emerged in recent years, from buildings to manufactured landscapes. How is the present triggering unexpected spatial conditions? What enables alternative types of buildings or spaces?

FIRST YEAR

How do we inhabit the world? In the second part of the year, we explored what it is that defines a space. How are spaces designed, but also how are they then regulated? Do we construct pleasures or control behaviours? Through a series of design exercises, we explored the relationships between modes of life and spatial conventions.

FIRST YEAR

In the final part of the academic year, we returned to our initial question: the present already encapsulates future possibilities, but do we know how to pay attention to it? The condition of in which we all found ourselves, of being isolated in our homes, was the setting for our query: how can we define a collective moment? From imaginary tales of collective experiences to visual analyses of the current state of affairs, students shaped and crafted their own inquiries.

Building Stock The opportunity to study volume housebuilding as a presentation of Britain’s housing stock is more pertinent now than ever before. As the discourse surrounding the ‘housing crisis’ finds itself in a maelstrom, architects can no longer afford to ignore and disparage the impact and value of the Volume Housebuilding Project – a unique petri-dish of successes and failures. This unit encouraged a fresh, unbiased review of a phenomenon so ordinary that it warrants and deserves closer examination. The fluid relationship between suburbia and the inner city is now a condition of privilege. The 19th- and 20th-century dialogue between city and suburb has developed instead into a dialogue between city, suburb and exurb. A lack of affordable housing options now compels many would-be house buyers to migrate to the exurbs, rapidly raising demand for dwellings that the Volume Housebuilding Project has absorbed. This has generated an immediate, unchecked and untapped ecosystem that has so far eluded concerted appraisal. To make sense of this condition, the unit adopted a multi-disciplinary approach, departing from the exclusivity of architectural critique and looking to other fields such as art, history, archaeology, anthropology, philosophy and psychology to understand human behaviour. We explored the common misconceptions, aspirational hangovers, accepted norms and prevailing orthodoxies that inhibit societies from enacting meaningful change. As opposed to typology, we addressed typicality in search of alternative definitions of domesticity. Following the creation of a 1:1 piece of furniture that encouraged misbehaviour and redefined restrictive codes that shape our built environment, students designed buildings along the Metropolitan Railway line – the tract of land originally developed to alleviate London’s housing pressures. The unit sought alternative approaches to how we live with one another at all stages of our lives by exploring issues of mobility and hybridity, use and misuse, behaviour and misbehaviour, form and dysfunction.

STAFF: Jon Lopez and Hikaru Nissanke STUDENTS: Bolurin Adedipe, Thanida Buranasujja, Tung-Hua Chen, Zhuo Chen, Nata Dzhmukhadze, Danya Gittler, Nikola Kechrimpari, Julia Barbara Lubner, Jabir Mohamed, Chia Cheng Ng, Sapolachet Sankosik, Aude Grace Yiwalo Tollo

EXP 1

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS: Dawn Ades, Max Creasy, Pierre d’Avoine, Jon Day, Ryan Dillon, Winston Hampel, Takako Hasegawa, Kim Helmersen, Joseph Henry, Rory Hyde, Meneesha Kellay, Paol Kemp, Diana Ibanez Lopez, Lola Lozano, Samuel Lundberg, Bushra Mohammed, Mark Morris, Jorge Penadés, Christopher Pierce, Isabel Pietri, Paolo Emilio Pisano, Emily Priest, Fabien Reiner, Ingrid Schröder, Rory Sherlock, Jan Silberberger, Giles Smith, Manijeh Verghese, Siong Wang

EXPâ€Š 1

1 (Un)natural Suburbs, Nata Dzhmukhadze

EXPâ€Š 1

2 Garden Politics, Bolurin Adedipe 3 Imprinting Myself within a Party Wall, Jabir Mohamed 4 Building Therapy in a Time of Collective Amnesia, Danya Gittler

EXPâ€Š 1

5 Back of House, Chia Cheng Ng 6 The Private Life of Cities, Sapolachet Sankosik

EXPâ€Š 1

7 Gentle Protest: Reclaiming the Suburban Street, Aude Grace Yiwalo Tollo 8 Rail Ways, Tung-Hua Chen 9 Another Home: A Space of Contingency, Nikola Kechrimpari

EXPâ€Š 1

10 Living on an Industrial Hinterland, Thanida Buranasujja 11 A Civic Field, Zhuo Chen 12 Hole 8.5: A Fairer Way, Julia Barbara Lubner

Celacanto What does it mean for architecture to be ethical? This year we set out to reflect on this and other questions in responding to a site based in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil: the Parque Lage School of Visual Arts. The school is housed in a heritage-listed eclectic mansion, located in what is left of the Atlantic rainforest that once surrounded the place – the Tijuca National Park. Many of the most iconic Brazilian contemporary artists, including Adriana Varejão, Ernesto Neto, Lucia Laguna and Beatriz Milhazes studied there. Aside from housing the school, Parque Lage has hosted and continues to host important cultural and counter-cultural events happening in the city. This was an inspiring setting from which to ask the question of whether – and how – architecture can play a role in starting to rehabilitate a social and political structure that seems to have been fundamentally damaged. Rio de Janeiro is one of the most complex and fascinating cities in the world. It is a place of stark contrasts, with sprawling favelas set against luxurious gated communities, and a lush nature that insists on making itself present against growing urbanisation. The problems of Rio are local as well as global. While reflecting the particularities of a specific culture, they resonate with some of the most urgent challenges confronting our contemporary society, including social inequality, urban violence, the crisis of democracy and environmental issues. We collectively learnt about the complex situation there through a site visit and through the analysis of specific films, documentaries and artworks. Responding to this first impression, each student was invited to dig deeper into a chosen topic in order to create a vocabulary for an architectural intervention. Making use of this vocabulary, they created their scheme, sometimes challenging the site and brief they were given.

STAFF: Ana Araujo

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS: Osvaldo Luiz Emery, Giacomo Pirazzoli, Fabio Szwarcwald

STUDENTS: Tsolmon Bat-Enkh, Carmen Maria Bisono Turull, Beatrice Boselli, Tuya Naz Duzagac, Serge El Douaihy, Anastasia Fedotova, Vasundhara Goyal, Lynn-Sacha Hanna, Beatriz Marco Sanchez-Peral, Maria Setia Muliati Putri, Shivank Sareen, Mariana Valenzuela Lombera, Xinyi Zhang

EXP 2

EXPâ€Š 2

1 Shivank Sareen. Volume study for Music Pavilion. 2 Anastasia Fedotova. Section study for Library at PUC University. 3 Vasundhara Goyal. FaĂ§ade study for Lace Pavilion. 4 Beatrice Boselli. Performance for the creation of a ceramic floor.

EXPâ€Š 2

5 Tuya Naz Duzagac. Section study of Theatre Pavilion. 6 Lynn-Sacha Hanna. Monkeyscape. 7 Tsolmon Bat-Enkh. Section study for mixed-use building at the Copacabana beach front. 8 Mariana Lombera. View of kitchen floor in the School of Domestic Science (PUC University).

EXPâ€Š 2

9 Beatriz Sanchez-Peral. View of barbecue area of Tijuca Festival. 10 Carmen Turull. View of open corridor at Parque Lage Hotel. 11 Serge El Douaihy. View of Favela Gallery at Parque Lage.

EXPâ€Š 2

12 Maria Putri. Parque Lage Spa floor plan. 13 Maria Putri. Parque Lage Spa section.

EXPâ€Š 2

14 Maria Putri. Parque Lage Spa dining area. 15 Maria Putri. Parque Lage Spa bathing room.

Myths of the New Forest What is the Future Forest? As architects, we are used to examining the nature of the city and incorporating aspects of the natural world through cycles and technologies of sustainability. As an alternative approach, EXP3 looks at the built environment from the point of view of culture; how people’s traditions, habits and biases shape their surroundings. We look at the forest as the future of the city. This year, we entered the rabbit hole of the mythological forest and its creatures, rituals and stories. We researched the forest as a resource and a place of extraction, and explored the technologies that monitor the planet, from satellites to military drones. Moving between forests in the UK and Indonesia, students discussed their ideas with foresters, zoologists, environmental engineers, storytellers, vernacular specialists and speculative architects. Each student chose their approach from initial readings, guest seminars and group discussions. In order to stimulate early creative responses, the unit worked with imaginative drawings and time-based models considering the role of time, forests and culture. By starting from people and culture, students speculated on future places that connect to non-standard practices. Xiaoya He studied how forest fires could be used in a sustainable way and in accordance with the Javanese rural villages and local cultures to help the forest grow healthier. Adelina Garifyanova tied rituals to the processes of reforestation by creating a building in Karangasem village, Indonesia that facilitates both reforesting and seasonal celebrations. In the UK, Rik Koster transformed London’s St Pancras area into a multi-layered pine tree forest to reshape peoples’ Christmas habits. Thanks to all our partners’ and colleagues’ efforts and generosity in the UK and Indonesia. The resulting projects show many exciting ideas about the Future Forest. But mostly they reveal glimpses into what students’ passion, determination and talent can achieve, even in unprecedented circumstances.

STAFF: Nannette Jackowski and Ricardo de Ostos STUDENTS: Anthony Flouty, Nethra Ganesan, Adelina Garifyanova, Tara Malek Gilani, Xiaoya Yolanda He, Rik Koster, Ssu Kuo Oscar Lo, Alexandria Peralta, Maria Alejandra, Bigott Picasso, Noah Robinson-Stanier Celine Topsakal, Oleksandra Viazmitinova

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS: Shaeron Santosa Attan, Simon Beames, Ignatio Bhaskara, Javier Castañón, Peter Cook, Martin Detoeuf, Marie Helene Fabre, Yogi Ferdinand, Raphael Fogel, Wolfgang Frese, Jorge Godoy, Tom Gray, Erik Hoffmann, Mamoru Hoshi, David Hutama, Margaret Jo, Alex Kaiser, Lim Masulin, Zachary Mollica, Christopher Pierce, Eko Prawoto, Yulianto Prihatmaji, Jez Ralph Putra, Yael Resiner, Eduardo Rico, Theodore Spyropoulos, Julia Dewi Sudradjat, Phil Wilkes, Kechao Xiang, Yeena Yoon, Nicholas Zembashi

EXPâ€Š 3

1 Take Away Forest: A Christmas Tradition, Rik Koster. A Christmas tree production farm at Kings Cross. A Forest during the year, a ritual during Christmas.

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2 3 4 5 6

Forest Dreamer/People’s Fool, Xiaoya Yolanda He Fireline, Xiaoya Yolanda He Forest of Symbols, Celine Topsakal Smart Forest, Oleksandra Viazmitinova The Curated River, Tara Malek Gilani

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7 Rejuvenating Tonyamang’s Cacao Forest: An Agroforestry Settlement, Alexandria Peralta. An axonometric representation of Tonyamang’s dry spell period, in which cacao is harvested and the celebration begins. Due to the frequent drought conditions, water-capturing meshes are placed above the canopies, roofs and water channels for energy production. 8 Forest of Reconnection, Adelina Garifyanova. The Cultural Hub, a congregational ground at the edge of Telaga Sunut.

EXPâ€Š 3

9 The Land of Consolidate Trees, Anthony Flouty 10 The Edible Forest, Maria Alejandra Bigott Picasso 11 Stagings of Nature and Culture, Nethra Ganesan 12 Rejuvenating Tonyamangâ€™s Cacao Forest: An Agroforestry Settlement, Alexandria Peralta

EXPâ€Š 3

13 Forest of Hedonistic Symbiosis, Ssu Kuo Oscar Lo. The project explores how social networks and augmented reality can be utilised to reforest a Mangrove area in Jakarta, Indonesia. 14 The Predator Forest, Noah Robinson-Stanier. The tannery forms a hub for resource collection and education for farmers transitioning into forestry.

From Tectonics to Fusion The Austrian art historian Alois Riegl wrote of a radical change taking place at the beginning of the 20th century – a transition from the veneration of historical value to an appreciation of newness. This reflected the shift in early modern Europe towards innovation and the belief that the creation of novel, artificial materials could trigger the creation of capital in newly industrialised countries. A century later, material innovation and production now occur at a startlingly rapid rate and in virtual environments, as opposed to the physical sites of the research lab. In effect, this is initiating a Neo-Cambrian explosion. New material hybrids are being concocted every day – virtually, theoretically and in infinite combinations. In architecture, however, Semper’s 19th-century separation of types of construction into tectonics and stereotomics (the cutting and assembly of discrete parts), remains the prevalent method of constructing buildings – it has a long way to go to catch up with today’s exponentially advancing material hybridisations. In this context, our objective this year has been to align with these developments and generate a new architecture in sync with contemporary material advances. More specifically, we focused on a particular type of materials, termed fused or multi-materials, that are just beginning to make their way into architecture and design. Their game-changing implications for architecture lie in that they can replace parts and mechanical connections in buildings. Replacing parts with continuous materials promises a much more direct, immediate and orderly way of building. It effectively bypasses capitalist modes of production and generates radical cost, material and energy savings. Our aim in effect has been to explore new procedures for designing and building with material gradients – casting, pouring and fusing matter in its fluid, pliable form in order to generate continuous topologies and novel forms of space. The outputs of this process were prototypical agglomerates of materials in the form of small buildings or urban inserts; more than just a collection of individual parts, these visions speculated on a new type of architecture that has finally caught up with the future.

STAFF: Kostas Grigoriadis, Lizy Huyghe, Guan Lee STUDENTS: Emre Bekisoglu, Defne Cengic, Hsiao Tzu-Chiang, Nursel Burce Gecit, Elsa Jacob, Dongki Kang, Iro Davlanti-Lo, Natalia Miskelly, Rojan Nekourouymotlagh, Huang Puze, Pakki Shen, Dajeong Yoon, Weina Zhang

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS: Nuria Alvarez Lombardero, Leong Nin Chan, Andy Bow, Samuel Esses, Elizabeth Gilligan, Eleanor Hill, Lily Jencks, Alexandros Kallegias, Philipp Längst, Katya Larina, Elizabeth Low, Ignacio Martí, Mark Morris, Anna Muzychak, Claudia Orsetti, Christopher Pierce, Naiara Vegara, Laura Vitzthum Daniel Widrig, Andrew Yau, Li Zhang

EXPâ€Š 4

1 Bypass Landscapes: A Moving Life, Dajeong Yoon. Top view of the multi-fabric module public landscape.

EXPâ€Š 4

2 Metal X Bamboo, Pakki Shen. Urban plan of the Shikumen inserts. 3 Undulating Terrain of the Senses, Iro Davlanti-Lo. Perspectival plan of the reconfigurable public space. 4 Living Under (Environmental) Siege, Weina Zhang. Urban view of the graded fibreglass rooftop canopies.

EXPâ€Š 4

5 Multi-bricks, Dongki Kang. Urban view and 3D section of the onsite workers accommodation. 6 Bypass Landscapes: A Moving Life, Dajeong Yoon. 3D section of the worker housing spaces. 7 Marble-ised Landscapes, Emre Bekisoglu. 3D section of the re-landscaped Bund.

EXPâ€Š 4

8 The Wasted Space of Shanghai, Natalia Miskelly. Porous metal casts. 9 Marble-ised Landscapes, Emre Bekisoglu. Acid carved marble prototypes. 10 The Solarconch, Tzu Chiang Hsiao. Environmentally responsive, graded concrete prototype.

EXPâ€Š 4

11 Lilong Fused Community, Puze Huang. Graded glass studies. 12 Meanwhile Waste, Burce Gecit. Shredded plastic waste and resin vault prototypes.

Road to Nowhere A reordering of measurement with time… 7. [Sonia] Declaration: authorship = imperishable, materiality = ephemeral. Building delisted = existential time valued. WORKING WITH death to quantify, implementation of expiration date: 2320. Re(construct)ing conservation to liberate attachment. 11. [Luca] Encrypt yourself from their devices, From the pounds of control. LONDON’S streets are auctioned off, time to show your presence Whether they want or not! 10. [Hyunuk] 120m/s between 86 billion neurons – a brain time is yours. Caring Incubators rewire URBAN RINGS, a sharing fragmented of individuals, wellness stays with us tomorrow. 6. [Kelly] Our craft built the City, in ritual time forgot why, behind OUR ARCHITECTURES we hid. They recollect not the Companies! Survived by those they illude… 8. [Oz] A museum of fragmenting history – in abandoned UK heritage sites. An ATTEMPT TO GO on: an experience-driven learning model. Architecture times an active role. 2. [Ife] A manifesto for recycling plastic, which should not be demonised. Plastic is everywhere, ANYWHERE AND can reshape the home-workshop Into a plasticity over time. 9. [Sabrina] Connection of wireless network makes Time and places matter less…EVERYWHERE becomes the same now. Between physical and digital, Beambo Will change that with architecture. 4. [Zhi Wee] When buildings sense; and all time is WARPING THE FOURTH, as evidence of a collective dream. Actualising that things are ‘status quo’ is the catastrophe. 13. [Reina] Singularity, a point in time That continues to approach us Either that is FIFTH ∞ TENTH Periods after from the present We must neatly be braced 5. [Ferial] Winding routes draw new links. Willingly they lose, confuse, exclude. Weathermen connecting DIMENSIONS AND predictions Webs of information timely delivered, Weaving a poetics of logistics. 3. [Tetsuya] Forthcoming time with cultured meat. Meat AIMING TO GO ethical. Or ethicality turning human absurd. 68,000,000 mouths minus 600,000 vegans. 1 institution, 22 grandly cows. 12. [Ammara] And if we Google ‘where’, and time takes us no(where), that leaves us every(where) and no(where); so, we are genuinely left to be any(where), but some(where).

STAFF: Ryan Dillon and David Greene STUDENTS: Ammara Asdar, Luca Haberstock de Carvalho, Oz Caspi, Hyunuk Kim, Sabrina Hoi Ching Lee, Zhi Wee Lee, Ferial Massoud, Reina Su Yeon Mun, Tetsuya Saito, Ifeoluwasimi Somefun, Sonia Syed, Kelly Van Homrigh

EXP 5

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS: Yoni Bentovim, Valentin Bontjes van Beek, Edward Bottoms, Barbara-Ann CampbellLange, Charlie Corry-Wright, Georgie Corry-Wright, Arantza Ozaeta Cortázar, Kate Davies, Eddie Farrell, Didier Faustino, Kenneth Fraser, Samantha Hardingham, Lara Lesmes, Oliver Long, Tyen Masten, Inigo Minns, Mark Morris, Anna Muzychak, Joel Newman,

Hikaru Nissanke, Christopher Pierce, Matthew Roberts, Rory Sherlock, Theodore Spyropoulos, Silvana Taher, Manijeh Verghese, Carlos Villanueva Brandt, Shawn Wang, Simon Withers

EXPâ€Š 5

1 An object was selected to object. A collection of images extracted from student films made during Term 1. These one-minute shorts attempted to transform a physical, technological object through the medium of film to make a political statement.

EXPâ€Š 5

2 Plastic is Fantastic: A Manifesto for a Plastic Home, Ifeoluwasimi Somefun 3 A Palace for 22 Royal Cows: A Laboratory for a Post-Meat Society, Tetsuya Saito 4 A Dreamlike Streetscape: An Experience to Awaken Slumbering London, Zhi Wee Lee

EXPâ€Š 5

5 The Wind Market: Typological Studies that Alter the Trading of Wind, Ferial Massoud 6 Reconstructing Conservation: A 300-year Construction Project, Sonia Syed 7 Will-oâ€™-the-Wisp: A City of London Livery Company for the 21st Century, Kelly Van Homrigh 8 Museum of Fragmenting Histories: A Traveling Learning Experience for UK Heritage, Oz Caspi

EXPâ€Š 5

9 Beambo: An Architecture for the Electromagnetic Using the Digital to Enable the Physical, Sabrina Hoi Ching Lee 10 Wellness Exhibition: A New Ring of Preventative Healthcare in London, Hyunuk Kim

EXPâ€Š 5

11 Error_Not in Full: An Encryption of Urban Perceptions, Luca Haberstock de Carvalho 12 Pondside Views M25: An Architecture Located within the Misalignments of Google, Ammara Asdar 13 The Mine of Humanism: An Architectural Vision for Technological Singularity, Reina Su Yeon Mun

Eros in the Void This year, EXP6 developed architectures that tend towards being non-typological: ‘generic’ and yet precise, substantial buildings that do not assume, plan or idealise future forms of daily life and the self, but instead establish a stage for its collective reinvention. Each student conducted an extensive close reading of at least two different subjects or groups through drawing and writing. One exemplified an emerging or established status quo, and the other rejected it. We wrote short genealogies of the historical emergence of these subjects and their spaces, and drew anatomies of their architecture, objects, routines, rituals and habits. What we learned together from that research and brought into the projects of the unit was that people are always ‘misappropriating’ and ‘misusing’ the city, its architectures and infrastructures, and consequently ‘profaning’ them from their intended, idealised, canonical, ‘sacred’ and instrumentalising functions. In other words, the city is always being freed from its capture in the ‘plan’ and the ‘spectacle’ – it is collectively (re)appropriated, and its forms are opened to free, unforeseen and un-‘designable’ uses that are in a perpetual state of common, negotiated becoming. Our projects strive not to get trapped in the image or problem-solving per se. They do not even reject contemporary ‘superficiality’, nihilism, depoliticisation or the continued breakdown of historical forms of community. These phenomena, though intimately entangled with new forms of instrumentalising domination, are also negating its historical instantiations – ‘where danger grows, grows too saving power’. Despite our best intentions, we architects have been complicit in shutting down the possibility of a radically different world and of a ‘pure potentiality’ that characterises our common humanity. The greatest ambition of EXP6 is therefore to affirm this essential ‘openness’ and think about how we can use architectural form to welcome the emergence of a politics, a community and an individual that can never be designed.

STAFF: Brendon Carlin and James Kwang Ho Chung STUDENTS: Iunia Borsa, Joanna Man Hey Chau, Cheryl Wan Xuan Cheah, Shanna Sim Ler Chung, Ella Yue Jiang, Vedika Kapur, Leo Yingqi Li, Matthew Ka Kiu Lin, William Jianfeng Liu, Kyungjoo Min, Ania Vang Anh Tran, Sean He Wang, Mark Tzu-shuo Wu

EXP 6

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS: Taeko Abe, Tim Berge, Doreen Bernath, Roberto Boetteger, Alex Butterworth, Barbara-Ann Campbell-Lange, Minsuk Cho, Wook Choi, Youngsam Chung, Francesca Dell’Aglio, Maria Paez Gonzalez, Tim Heide, Jinhong Jeon, Na Jongwon, Yuwon Kang, Hyun Jun Kim, Tae Young Kim, Yunju Kim, Anja Kirchbaum, Nauka Kirschner, Jaehyub Ko, Jaeseung Koo, Jakub Kowaleswski, Yoojin Lee, Olivia Neves Marra, Rory Sherlock, Giles Smith, Ozan ToksozBlauel, Kai Wertel

EXP 6

1 Jungle House, Iunia Borsa. A house for 30 precarious white or no-collar New York workers in which the core architecture and ‘living space’ is a dense, artificial jungle. There are no walls, ceilings or even floors per se, and there are only intermittent signs of domestic familiarity. It is accessed through ritual ‘cleansing’ spaces that tightly script form, movement and activity.

EXP 6

2 Inauspicious House, Cheryl Wan Xuan Cheah. A Yokohamabased ‘dormitory’ for 80 ‘rental family’ actor-workers composed of typical and ‘traditional’ Japanese houses as ‘stages’ for the waged playing out of family roles. 3 Architecture Praxis House, Ania Vang Anh Tran. A renovation of an abandoned brick warehouse to form a house, studio and commons for 30 architects and designers near Limehouse, London.

EXP 6

4 Swimming with Painting House, Leo Yingqi Li. A summer-long exhibition, for which the ‘public’ is invited to pick up and arrange living spaces for themselves from a selection of domestic living objects, art production objects and light architectural elements. 5 Whatever Bang, Kyungjoo Min. A sanga – a massive building type that has blacked out windows (or none at all) and is comprised of matrices of endless bangs (rooms), the themes and contents of which rapidly mutate – as a house for 3000 people.

EXP 6

6 (Anti)Domestic Incubator, Ella Yue Jiang. A floating platform that is added to existing typical apartment blocks and operates as a state-financed incubator for new forms of living and working. 7 Inauspicious House, Cheryl Wan Xuan Cheah. Outside of hours that they spend acting out the roles of mother, daughter, wife, father, grandson, etc as rental family employees, the workers invent their forms of life together, (mis)using typical forms of housing. 8 K-Pop Permanent Idol House, Shanna Sim Ler Chung. A house for 50 ‘random-play’ K-Pop dancers, in which the main ‘living space’ is an enclosed but open park bounded by small but functionally undefined private rooms for each inhabitant.

EXP 6

9 Inside-out City House, Mark Tzu-shuo Wu. A series of occupiable walls and layers of space that turn an existing apartment complex near a large school in into a giant house for 500 people that does not have any defined functions or a ‘plan’. 10 Jungle House, Iunia Borsa. Shelf-rooms, accessed by rolling ladders, can be seen through the thick vegetation. Here, inhabitants can store objects, furniture, projects, etc. 11 Highway House, Matthew Ka Kiu Lin. A collective house that uses the universality, generic-ness and clear form of the motorway to create a platform for life, city and politics to emerge in negotiation with one another.

Alba Gu Bràth: Scotland Forever Glasgow, once second city of the British Empire, has spent much of the late 20th century attempting to reconstruct its economic and social infrastructure amongst the ruins of heavy industry, with deep class divisions layered over new currents of cultural and political change. A strident nationalist but left-leaning leadership pushes against the Westminster-led government and towards policies that are compatible with greater climate and social justice, whilst communities continue to campaign against top-down, disorganised, tabula rasa regeneration at a local level. This year, the students of EXP7 started by developing a collective body of video, photographic and survey work, created in Glasgow over two weekends. They then worked to relate this immediate learning about the local with wider material and economic infrastructures within which architecture operates. How do architects negotiate the relationship between our responsibilities to the present and local and our responsibilities to the planetary and the future? Each student then chose their own site and developed their own brief which allowed them to direct their explorations of the questions raised by the unit. They worked with independence to find their own ways to investigate their chosen site and context, and explore the wider implications of their work. The unit is hugely indebted to a much wider collective conversation brought by collaborators from other schools, disciplines and units, as well as the film work of Andrea Arnold and the writing of Darren McGarvey.

STAFF: Amica Dall, Anthony Engi Meacock, Giles Smith STUDENTS: Anna Soonchi Der, Gaetano Drago, Melis Gurdal, Ho Sung Joo, Barbara Koch, Yu Lian, Natalia Pereverzina, Deri Mungo Russell, Daphna Turbowicz, James Wallis, Yasemin Yesilipek, Zhongshan Zou

EXP 7

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS: Seyi Adelekun, Roo Angel, Eddie Blake, Valentin Bontjes van Beek, George Bruce, Barbara-Ann Campbell-Lange, James Kwang Ho Chung, Will Cooper, Alison Crawshaw, Pierre d’Avoine, Will Davies, Mark Gavigan, Ambrose Gillick, Alexandra Gomes, Jamie Goring, Paloma Gormley, Aidan Hall, Winston Hampel, Summer Islam, Tom James, Harry Johnson, Alan Kennedy, Robert Kennedy, Margit Kraft, Nicolò Lewanski, Jon Lopez, Lola Lozano, Taneli Mansikkamäki, Quentin Martin,

Neil McGuire, Ryan McStay, Aram Mooradian, Rob Morrison, Hikaru Nissanke, Toby O’Connor, Kester Rattenbury, Simon Rix, Philipp Rode, Davide Sacconi, Irénée Scalbert, Nick Seaton, Kaye Song, Helen Teeling, Onur Teymor, Matina Theodoropoulou, Patrick Ueberbacher, Martin Wecke, Emily Wickham, Abigale Wilson, Milly Wood, Agile City, Baltic Street Adventure Playground, First Steps Future Training, Unit 01, Bartlett

EXPâ€Š 7

1 Sludge and Rocks. In tribute to Thomas Thwaites, each of these is an everyday object that the students have attempted to make from scratch.

EXPâ€Š 7

2 Gourock Outdoor Pool, Anna Soonchi Der. A lido at Gourock, on the mouth of the River Clyde. 3 The Glasgow Road, Deri Mungo Russell. A photograph of the old road to Glasgow as it passes Clune Park in Port Glasgow.

EXPâ€Š 7

4 Forward Towards Love, Anna Soonchi Der 5 Community Bathhouse, Yu Lian 6 Clune Park, Deri Mungo Russell 7 Stay at Home, Yasemin Yesilipek 8 Care for the Existing, Zhongshan Zou 9 Govan Docks Studios, Melis Gurdal 10 Digging In, Barbara Koch 11 Walkable Cities, Daphna Turbowicz 12 Pitch Next Door, Ho Sung Joo

EXPâ€Š 7

13 Care for the Existing, Zhongshan Zou. A view from the courtyard of the refurbished Dundasvale Court showing the repair infrastructure in use as social spaces for the residents. 14 Point Solace, James Wallis. Sectional perspective through the communal space of the rehabilitation centre.

EXPâ€Š 7

15 Belligerent Landscapes, Natalia Pereverzina. Sectional perspective through the terraformed landscape and jetty showing the increased intertidal area and its relationship to the space for collection and processing of the mussels and seaweed. 16 A New Yard for Dalmarnock, Gaetano Drago. Studies of the existing yards of Dalmarnock inhabited by the travelling community for working and living. 17 Forward Towards Love, Anna Soonchi Der. A section through the Cairo house.

Politics of the Barter Block: Kinship, Exchange and Resilience Throughout this academic year, EXP8 has been exploring alternative models of collective housing, departing from a reflection on Cuba’s particular tradition of home swapping (‘permuta’ or ‘barter’). Distributed across Cuba’s overstressed capital – the city of Havana – these new models act as prototypes that infiltrate, restructure or re-empower the existing socio-spatial urban fabric. For this purpose, each student has developed her or his work by focusing on one pre-existing block within Havana’s historical city grids (Havana Vieja, Havana Centro and Vedado). Through a close understanding of the selected site – its community, as well as its social, cultural and physical context – and the translation of these into operative documents (drawings, photographs, interviews, diagrams), allowed students to develop highly specific responses. These in-depth site investigations also unveiled particular social, ecological and idiosyncratic dynamics initiated during the post-soviet scarcity years of the so-called ‘Special Period’. Interestingly, many of these dynamics are still in place today, working as systems that sustain Cuban living, while adapting to the changing scenarios related to globalisation and US embargo. Kinship and reciprocity bonds between different members of the community, collective forms of construction called microbrigadas and urban agriculture fields or organoponicos, have been operating since then for social survival, and were taken on board by students’ proposals. Giving this very contextual condition, the unit also developed an interest in working with material systems derived from different traditions installed into Cuban context, including imported concrete panel systems, long-established wooden craftsmanship and traditional rammed earth constructions. Students’ proposals studied these material traditions, drawing from them more sustainable approaches to the management of our built environment, and designed updated building versions to create more resilient contemporary housing models.

STAFF: Nuria Alvarez Lombardero and Francisco González de Canales STUDENTS: Kamal El Kharrat, Isabel Gonzalez, Solveig Lola Audrey Jappy, Laetitia Khachwajian, Mathilda Mazkour, Lana Atef Nsouli, Nikitas Papadopoulos, Malgorzata Tchorzewska, Tommaso Tugnoli, Iren Turkkan, Carlos Uribe, Marine Marie Zovighian

EXP 8

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS: José Flores Mola, Universo García Lorenzo, Marta Garcilaso de la Vega, Ricardo Machado Jardo, Ruslan Muñoz Hernández and Ada Portero Ricolat CUJAE (Instituto José Antonio Echevarria), and Sebastián Andia, Pierandrea Angius, Ana Araujo, Larry Barth, Simon Beames, Doreen Bernath, Marion Delaporte, Pol Esteve, Kenneth Fraser, Gabriela García de Cortazar, Jacobo García-Germán, Kostas Grigoriadis, Marina Gubbins,

Matej Hosek, Alexandros Kallegias, Costandis Kizis, Lara Lesmes, Guillermo López, Nacho Martí, Amar Mehta, Jaime de Miguel, Alex Mitea, Marie-Isabel de Monseignat, Israel Nagore, Alicia Nahmad, John Ng, Mira Otkay, Diego Ricalde, Rodolfo Acevedo Rodríguez, Anna Shapiro, Iulia Statica, Silvana Taher, Amelia Viaplana, Alexandra Vougia

EXP 8

1 The Family Room, Carlos Uribe. The role of family in the survival of the Cuban culture. 2 ‘No Para Venta’, Nikitas Papadopoulos. A case for personalisation in inhabitation within a co-operative framework. 3 Santa Clara’s Convent Craftsmanship Community, Tommaso Tugnoli. A polycentric set of guilds as an alternative to the tourism-based city.

EXPâ€Š 8

4 Malgorzata Tchorzewska. Restating communities by a collaborative self-construction practice. 5 Flexibility in a Static Environment, Kamal El Kharrat. A reinvention of a perpetuated imported concrete panel system for a flexible way of living. 6 New Self-Built Housing Typology for an Off-Grid Havana Collective, Lana Atef Nsouli 7 Vertical Densification, Iren Turkkan. Intersecting typologies. 8 The Symbiotic Mogotes, Solveig Lola Audrey Jappy. A self-built self-sustained community in Havana, based on urban agriculture production.

EXPâ€Š 8

9 The Symbiotic Mogotes, Solveig Lola Audrey Jappy. A self-built self-sustained community in Havana, based on urban agriculture production. 10 Malgorzata Tchorzewska. Enabling communities by infiltrating the existing block with new formal fabric. 11 Laetitia Khachwajian. Formal interconnectivity for generating dynamic transitional spaces. 12 Tommaso Tugnoli. Formal approach for the collection of different craftsman clusters constructed from taipal (rammed earth).

EXPâ€Š 8

13 Carlos Uribe. Reorganisation of an existing site through the introduction of family rooms as cores. 14 Off.grid, Lana Atef Nsouli. Deconstructing imposed typologies through a self-build framework. 15 Laetitia Khachwajian. A creative hub to regenerate local craftsmanship and an artistic milieu

EXPâ€Š 8

16 Mathilda Mazkour. A new company town inserted into Havana Centre. 17 Nikitas Papadopoulos. Rearticulating existing deteriorated urban tissue by introducing a new communal core. 18 Sustainable Co-Living, Marine Marie Zovighian. A tree-house community inserted into Havanaâ€™s city centre. 19 Tommaso Tugnoli. The core of a craftsmanship community. 20 Pueblo Urbano, Isabel Gonzalez. An urban agriculture community in Havana Centro.

CITY IN TRANSITION: CONVERTERS This year, the unit pursued its long-term project on the European city, generating urban visions as directly informed by built and historical contexts. We used architecture to engage urban transitions – new infrastructures, commercial developments and post-industrial conversions – while respecting local identities and traditions. With Milan as our case study, we exaggerated such core tensions on a series of contested sites, outlining three key sub-areas of investigation and student responses. First, we addressed the transit flow and exchange, testing how infrastructures could affect the city borders and portals. We reimagined rail terminuses and highway interchanges as programmatically-rich gateways. Operating as logistical transfers as well as cultural microcosms, they are driven by both global and local, migrant and resident worlds. But as the influx of users and programmes further strains the notorious palimpsest sites, we also looked into the processes of ‘evolution’ and accumulation over time. Thus, many projects exploit the convergence of multiple systems, plans and typologies. These thick and inclusive urban grounds also act as programmatic ‘accumulators’, and help to mediate between the needs for trade and exhibition, industry and education. Finally, with all the collisions and overlaps, we had to reconsider the rigid zones and the distinct elements of the architectural project itself. And here, we focused on the extended ‘thresholds’ and gradients that make up our artificial ecologies. Beyond nature and city, landscape and building, we experimented with plantation walls and gardens of houses. These interim and ‘crossover’ spaces also suggested alternatives to the environmental and housing strains and the productive obsession of the city. Collectively, all of these transfers, mediators and crossovers reveal our interest in the project as a ‘converter’ for the historical city, dealing with divergent timelines, social practices and built forms. They suggest ways to catalyse both preservation and development from within a multi-modal present, and the conceptual ‘consistency’ of their design frameworks welcome the discontinuity and multiplicity of the city.

STAFF: Maria Fedorchenko, Bozar Ben-Zeev (Collaborator), Lorenzo Perri (Visiting Tutor) STUDENTS: Muhittin Can Binan, Tianyi Chen, Isabelle Doumet, Lap Min Norman Fong, Jeff Huang, Veronika Kaneva, Nicolaos Moustroufis, Julia Pawlowska, Linden Seddon, Ron-Fu Yeh, Ziyi Yuan, Elena Zubareva

EXP 9

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS: Miraj Ahmed, Brendon Carlin, Minh Duc Le, Andrea Dutto, Kenneth Fraser, Fredrik Hellberg, Theo Sarantoglou Lalis, Lara Lesmes, Jon Charles Lopez, Alessandro Magliani, Filip Mesko, Mark Morris, Ryan Neiheiser, Christopher Pierce, Maria Radjenovic, Gleb Sheykin, Theodore Spyropoulos, Sebastian Tiew, Antoine Vaxelaire, Carlos Villanueva Brandt, Ivana Wingham, Andrew Yau and all of our critics and guests

EXPâ€Š 9

1 The Garden of Houses, Ron-Fu Yeh. The project re-imagines the past residential utopia of Giambellino as an open-ended and pluralistic project; in its multi-track design experiment, familiar typologies of the detached dwelling, apartment and room transform in direct dialogue with the site landscape. The project redefines the relationship between the green and the built, the house and the garden, and blurs their distinctions in further â€˜minorâ€™ spaces, such as over-flow private and interim collective elements.

EXPâ€Š 9

2 Diffusing the University: Theatrical Accumulators, Veronika Kaneva. The project diffuses the future collaborations of the Polytecnico di Milano with local designers and manufacturers into the surrounding residential courtyards, making them condensers of programme and catalysts for development. The architectural strategy focuses on new types of â€˜urban theatresâ€™ to help mediate between small laboratories, rotating educational activities and informal social gatherings.

EXP 9

3 Urban Knots and Architectural Surgery, Jeff Huang. The urban strategy involves first carefully unravelling diverse social ‘threads’ and movement trajectories, and then new ways of ‘knotting’ them to support local sub-centres such as Porta Volta. Through a series of strategic incisions and enhancements, new architectural platforms can provide further spaces for collision and collaboration to support multiple interests and agencies.

EXP 9

4 Ortica Gardens, Isabelle Doumet. A critical project driven by both the rampant pace of modernisation at Milan’s periphery and superficial ‘greening’ in response to ecological concerns. Restoring an historical gardening function within the future Ortica cultural district, it is encircled by ‘farming and plantation walls’ and ‘towers of flows’. 5 Intelligent Industry, Julia Pawlowska. As an alternative to the indiscriminate conversion of post-industrial sheds such as those on the vast Innocenti site, the project, which is located in the prototypical factory, condenses scattered production processes into a new AI-controlled, robotic and environmentally ‘clean’ hub.

EXP 9

6 Highway Microcosms, Linden Seddon. The project rethinks the role of the peripheral ring road, and acts as a ‘filter’ between new communities and the established cultural centre. 7 The New Strategy of the Void, Tianyi Chen. The project proposes urban ‘voids’ as not only spaces excluded from immediate development, but also as media portals into alternative urban futures. 8 The Exposition Lobby, Elena Zubareva. The proposal incorporates cultural installations and business platforms, and promotes a more sustainable transition between the historical ground of the old exhibition area and the new high-rises of the City-Life District.

Plot All architecture starts with a plot – be that a piece of land lying dormant and waiting to be discovered, a sly scheme, a model for how to realise one’s ideas or a good piece of narration. This year, EX10 used the plot as its point of departure, and focused on the interplay between the term’s different facets: context, strategy and exposition. In more cases than one, however, we found ourselves stumbling upon the plot, rather than departing from it; often emerging along one of many tangents – whether as an accidental discovery of forgotten grounds within London or a local’s account of an untold narrative in an Italian piazza. Throughout the year, we explored the potential of the grey zone between description and invention, and occasionally diverged into far-off hues without warning. While we attempted to capture as-found conditions as sincerely as possible, we supplemented observations with interpretation and even invention, filling in the blind spots to complete a latent picture. This form of site-anamnesis was a critical tool, and was utilised both in London and during our time abroad – on German trains with obscure destinations, trailing spazzini over Venetian bridges, in the corridors of a Portuguese housing estate – to generate a language and common ground, to discuss a precise architectural condition (both existing and imagined) on paper. Invariably, the city has been our playing field; a habitat dominated by the artificial, in which people and architecture are in constant interaction: from urban agricultural fields to spaces of performance atop railways, from river-side hotels to raised cemeteries, from an archive of the forgotten to forgotten estates, from light industrial units to street markets, from contested artefacts to tourist buses. However, no habitat is immune to the haphazard impact of the biological – there is no logic that can be superimposed on a city in survival mode, and the emergence of Covid-19 has directly altered both the context in which we operate and that which we operate from.

STAFF: Valentin Bontjes van Beek and Winston Hampel STUDENTS: Valentina Bacci, Armaan Bansal, Alice Baseian, Alessia Broggini, Yoav Carmon, Laetitia Chauveau, Judi Diab, Sheer Gritzerstein, Seonwoo Kim, Logan Paine, Hiroaki Yamane, Riyad Yassine

EXP 1 0

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS: Nuria Álvarez Lombardero, Ana Arujo, George Barer, Simon Beames, Frank Boehm, Esther Brizard, Barbara-Ann Campbell-Lange, Paul Crosby, Amica Dall, Ryan Dillon, Florian Dirschedl, Eleanor Dodman, Shin Egashira, Carl Fraser, Kenneth Fraser, Wolfgang Frese, Georgia Hablützel, Sarah Handelman, Juliet Haysom, Fredrik Hellberg, Platon Issaias, Max Kahlen, Kostantinos Kizis,

Nicholas de Klerk, Jun Wai Koh, Julian Krüger, Frederik Künzel, Jörg Leeser, Georges Massoud, Anna Mestre, Aram Moorand, Mark Morris, Ana Maria Nicolaescu, Hikaru Nissanke, Timothy O’Hare, Will Orr, John Palmesino, Shaeron Santosa, Dor Schindler, Rory Sherlock, Giles Smith, Max Turnheim, Carlos Villanueva Brandt, Ungers Archiv für Architekturwissenschaft

EXPâ€Š 1 0

1 Yoav Carmon and Laetitia Chauveau. The product of eccentric obsession: a taken-apart typewriter folds an unfolded paper plane cut-out. 2 Alice Baseian and Hiroaki Yamane. A joint between a pair of binoculars and a ray of light, the result of which deemed both objects incapacitated. 3 Sheer Gritzerstein and Judi Diab. A cryptic dialogue generated by the sporadic collisions between a sliced-up pendulum and the grounds of a snapped-up keyboard. 4 Alessia Broggini and Valentina Bacci. Fragments of a chicken and of a wheel of cheese engage in a quarrel, and the conclusion is not served on a platter. 5 Riyad Yassine and Seonwoo Kim. Pigment from a discarded printer travels through the filter of a strip of carpet and finally lands on the ground, drawing a new threshold. 6 Armaan Bansal and Logan Paine. The combination of a discarded mattress (with a questionable history) and a circuit board from a vintage radio provides a seat for an involuntary listener.

EXP 1 0

7 Alessia Broggini. Activating dead ends through threshold elements, creating a second or third point of entrance. 8 Alice Baseian. The occupation of the Rialto Fish Market throughout the day. 9 Armaan Bansal. An abandoned mattress lies destined for the dump – are we sleeping on its potential? 10 Hiroaki Yamane. A 360º glimpse of the site foreshore and a series of articles found by the mudlarker.

EXPâ€Š 1 0

11 Riyad Yassine. A sly invitation to a burial ground in the heart of East London. 12 Logan Paine. Stage one of flooding the Thamesmead estate â€“ the fabric must adapt as water becomes the new interface. 13 Judi Diab. The domain of landless property as a stage set.

EXPâ€Š 1 0

14 Seonwoo Kim. The mobile residents of the San Michele Cemetery. 15 Sheer Gritzerstein. An imagined transition between life in London and death in Waterloo. 16 Yoav Carmon. The manoeuvres of the spazzini â€“ a hasty procession across narrow calles, trailing staircases and crowded bridges.

EXPâ€Š 1 0

17 Laetitia Chauveau. The choreographed dissection of an enduring typewriter. 18 Valentina Bacci. A sketchy depiction of a low-maintenance combination of plants within the urban agricultural parkscape.

Homo Facit Saltum The relationship between Man and Nature is a curious one. In modern rhetoric, the two are often defined as being one and the same; Man is of Nature. And yet, as we increasingly admit the advent of the Anthropocene, one can’t help but wonder if, in our current era, it might not be more accurate to describe Nature as being of Man. That is to say, in the case of the former, it is nature that created us, and in the case of the later, it is us that creates Nature. This year, we asked students to confront a paradigm shift. When both the City and Nature become the project of Man, our architectural language must evolve to encompass both. As much as we are called on to design space for human inhabitation, we must now also design spaces of natural inhabitation. These two have become one and the same, and thus a new form of architectural enquiry, driven by evolutionary logic, emerges. The logic of a new form of urban architecture presupposes a new form of urban living. Therefore, we studied not only the spatial transformations of the existing city, but also the performative ones in which new rituals of everyday life are created. EXP11 has taken Charles Darwin’s mantra – ‘natura non facit saltum’, meaning Nature does nothing in jumps – as its modus operandi, in order to propose an alternative approach: that if nature does not act through jumps, then we must. ‘Homo facit saltum’. We have worked within the Canada Water Area Action Plan in an effort to re-imagine how the existing cityscape can be transformed.

STAFF: Matilde Cassani and Silvana Taher STUDENTS: Andrea Agostini, Naz Babaoglu, Hanna Fastrich, Thomas Germain-Pendry, Seongsoo Han, Finnegan Harries, Laura Hepp, Cesar Jucker, Sari King, Sofia Krivashina, Raluca Scheusan, Jiaqi Sun, Le Qian Toby Tang

EXP 1 1

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS: Nuria Alvarez Lombardero, Yoni Bentovim, Leonhard Clemens, Elisa Commanay, Alison Crawshaw, Ryan Dillon, Shin Egashira, Juliet Haysom, Conrad Koslowsky, John Lopez, Taneli Mansikkamäki, George Massoud, Ryan Nieheiser, Hikaru Nissanke, Maria-Chiara Piccinelli, Bart Schoonderbeek, Michael Smythe, Theo Spyropoulos, Yee Fei Tan, Thomas Thwaites

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1 Domesticity in the Anthropocene: From Primitive Hut and Over-Protective House of Today, to an In-Between, Andrea Agostini

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2 Forgotten Landscapes, Cesar Jucker 3 Tidal Promenade, Sofia Krivashina 4 Deconstructing the Rituals of Consumer Culture, Sari King

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5 Meanwhile in the In-Between: Breaching the Human/Nature Separation, Thomas Germain-Pendry 6 Excavated Landscape, Seongsoo Han 7 Tidal Clock, Naz Babaoglu 8 Communal Living in the Anthropocene: Rebuilding and Sharing the Green Wall, Raluca Scheusan

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9 Network of Contemporary Health, Hanna Fastrich 10 Interrelate: The Floating Forest, Laura Hepp

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11 Hylomorphic Symbiosis: Architecture for the Anthropocene, Finnegan Harries 12 New City Farm in the Anthropocene, Jiaqi Sun 13 Uncovering Water and History, Le Qian Toby Tang 14 New City Farm in the Anthropocene, Jiaqi Sun

Moon River Draw me a house. A job for a four-year-old. A pitched roof, a family situation, smoke coming out of a chimney and a tree with curly hair. ‘But kid, I asked for a house. Why’d you draw a home?’ Why is the house deeply associated with a place of permanent residency? A plethora of ‘homes’ exist. Velázquez’s Meninas depicts a home. The cave of Lascaux was ‘home’ to something. But a house stands by itself. It stands as proof that your model is a functioning one. Of course, therein lies the problem. The house in itself constitutes an accusation against the world. It says out loud: ‘under my dominion, peace ensues.’ What are the attributes of such an object? What defines a house? At this stage, we have three directions to explore. As mentioned before, the first avenue is the link between the built archetype of the house and its symbolic social counterpart, the home. The second is the sheltering quality of such a structure. As a rupture to its surroundings, the house not only provides protection at a high environmental cost, but also proposes an escape from determinism; we need it to stay alive. While at first the roof appears to be the most representative element of this aspect, the lock also bares a significant role in managing our relationship with the outside. The third concerns its economic value of the house: together with the land it is built on, it is considered to be a stable – if not increasing – financial asset. Not only does it store the physical belongings of its owner – it also stores its own value on the market. It is therefore inevitable that we look at the divergence between the house’s use value and its exchange value. Over the course of the 2019 – 20 academic year, rocked by a global pandemic and a global uprising, the participants of EXP12 have produced 12 projects for a contemporary house.

STAFF: Taneli Mansikkamäki and Max Turnheim STUDENTS: Aiden Domican, Michal Klonecki, Aida Aghayeva, Jang-hee Lee, Despoina Charalampidou, Deniz Özcan, Alejandro Del Castillo, Ghita Zahid, Daniel Swarovski, Sherif Shehata, Polina Aleshkina, Leo Sun

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS: Laura Amann, Ana Araujo, Daniel Ayat, Amica Dall, Anthony Engi-Meacock, Damjan Jovanovic, Korey Kromm, Jon Lopez, Hikaru Nissanke, Kim Nørgaard Helmersen, Octave Perrault, Thomas Raynaud, Casey Rehm, Jack Self, Giles Smith, Dora Sweijd, Silvana Taher, Antoine Vaxelaire

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1 ‘This is only temporary – I’ve just moved in…’, Daniel Swarovski

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2 HouseWork: Production in the House of Today, Aiden Domican 3 A Proposal for a Collective House for the Women of San Gabriel, Ghita Zahid

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4 Nostalgia Ultra: Housing the Youth in Suburban Los Angeles, Aida Aghayeva 5 CollabHouse for Living and Broadcasting the Life Within, Alejandro Del Castillo

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6 The Frank Communal Courtyard House: The Perks of Being Isolated Together, Leo Sun 7 Extension of the Case Study House #17B, Jang-hee Lee 8 Inhabiting the Historic Site of the Eames House Museum, Polina Aleshkina

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9 Case Study House Converted to a Commune for Living and Working, Jang-hee Lee 10 Pin-up and a discussion between EXP12 students, researchers from ETH ZĂźrich and the AA. 11 Using Hedge as a Partitioning Tool to Enhance Biodiversity in Suburban Realm, Michal Klonecki

Some Like it Hot: Exhibiting in a Warming Climate The Museum of Unnatural Histories, The Museum of Sharing, The Museum of Lost Stories, The Museum of Wilding, The Museum of Future Plants, The Museum of Weather, The Museum of Future Geologies, The Museum of Lending, The Museum of Hyde Park, The Tate River Museum, The Museum for Birds, The Museum of the River Thames and The Local Museum. What is the role of museums in the environmental emergency? Do we need new museums, or can we catalyse new institutions within existing ones? How can we design them to create new public audiences? Can we abolish the carbon-heavy iconic building and dissolve the museum into the community? What kind of museum collection can galvanise active citizens, rather than providing passive viewing? Continuing our research into the cultural production of the city, EXP13 explored the future of museums in the light of the current environmental crisis. Starting with an in-depth study of the Soane Museum, each student developed an ‘architectural obsession’ that was rigorously explored at the urban, architectural and detail scales in their final proposals. A trip to New York exposed the group to many museum typologies, and a workshop at GSAPP was held on the topic. Students then selected their own sites in London and chose collections that would form their programmes. Some students worked with existing collections, such as the V&A and The Natural History Museum, while others curated new content for the Anthropocene. As part of the unit’s agenda to tackle real issues and find engagement beyond the academy, we collaborated with Lucia Pietroiusti from the Serpentine Gallery’s General Ecology Project and held a roundtable event with Nick Merriman from the Horniman Museum, Catherine Ince from the V&A and Camilla Tham from the Natural History Museum to debate radical collections and audience engagement.

STAFF: Lily Jencks and Jessica Reynolds STUDENTS: Anvi Aggarwal, Alanood Alkhayat, Ishita Arora, Alexandra Golovina, Jean-Pierre Issa, Tamar Kraft, Won Ho Lee, Yue Li, Guanyu Lin, Edmee Orombelli, Jungwoong Park, Kin Ho Tse, Pei-Cheng Wu

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS: Miraj Ahmed, Ana Araujo, Eddie Blake, Alex Butterworth, Stephanie Choi, James Kwang Ho Chung, Alison Crawshaw, Robert Cresswell, Nerma Cridge, Tom Dale, Piers Gough, Kostas Grigoriadis, Judy el-Hajjar, Catherine Ince, David Kohn, Sofia Krimizi, Lara Lesmes, Melodie Leung, Roberta Marcaccio, Inigo Mimms, Ryan Neiheiser, Catherine Pease, Lucia Pietroiusti, Tatiana von Preussen, James Pulman, Adam Ritchie, Giles Smith, Manijeh Verghese

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1 The Museum of Lending, Alanood Alkhayat. The new V&A East and Here East are attempts to bring more of the V&A collection out of storage and make it accessible to the public. The Museum of Lending goes much further by distributing the collection to libraries around Stratford and allowing the public to borrow items for display in their own homes.

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2 The Museum of Unnatural Histories, Pei-Cheng Wu. As we enter the Anthropocene, the Natural History Museum should be the place where we understand and learn from the past in order to debate and plan the future of the natural world. This museum adds new cloning laboratories within the galleries of the building, which are accompanied by debating chambers and libraries.

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3 The Museum of Weathers, Jean-Pierre Issa. The churches in the City of London are under-used spaces. This project proposes to turn them into new museums of climate and thus activate their role as places to engage with the largest issues that mankind faces once again. As climate fear is on the rise, new community venues are needed to plan and debate our collective future.

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4 Edmee Orombelli, The Museum of Wilding. This museum acts as a new viewing device for nature, creating a pocket of wildness in the middle of the city. The museum is incubated in a post-industrial building and unfolds along a new wild route of the canal system through London, creating a networked landscape corridor for animals and people to come into close contact. Like the wild nature that it frames and exhibits, the museum itself is in a constant process of change. Over time nature actively subsumes the man-made structures along this green infrastructure, increasing biodiversity, soil carbon sequestration and the pleasure of proximity to the wild.

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5 The Museum of Future Plants, Jungwoong Park. This museum grows from the fumes of the city. Using CO2 from the most polluting building in London, it cultivates and exhibits not only new plants grown through grafting techniques, but also extinct ones that can survive in a hot climate. Part greenhouse and part train station, it points to a hopeful future for hybrid spaces between industry and nature.

Hoary Building The work of EXP14 asserts that architecture and architects have the power to redefine place by adjusting our way of looking at any given context. We insist that the way new buildings, additions and renovations grow out of a context does not need to depend on mimicry, nostalgia or nationalism, but instead ought to respond imaginatively to contemporary life and culture in order to generate a visual and material language of place and context that is not merely about familiarity. This year we focused on the Norwegian Outer Ports, which are located along the south-eastern coast of Norway. This constellation of islands, peninsulas, towns and communities, defined by distinct vernacular timber buildings, has come together to consider making an application for UNESCO World Heritage status, which in architectural terms is tantamount to selfimmolation when it comes to innovation, inhabitation and sustainability. We studied three of these settlements in-depth: Lyngør, Loshavn and Merdø. The fate of these communities (and the countless others like them around the world pursuing the double-edged sword of UNESCO status) would seem to hang in the balance, both creatively and financially. We departed from the UNESCO report’s conclusions that the future of these communities is dependent on building toilets, shops, cafes and meeting spaces for the hordes of cruise-ship visitors who will inevitably come. We radically reimagined existing buildings in this particular context by carrying out typological transformations, material reconfigurations, spatial re-imaginings and contextual re-interpretations in reaction to changing times. We embraced our own cultural diversity and acknowledged that people and ideas flow, and that every place exists as part of a temporal, spatial and cultural continuum. We looked to discover and grow these hybrid languages by de-emphasising form and prioritising material and atmosphere in our architecture.

STAFF: Amandine Kastler, Aram Mooradian, Christopher Pierce, Erlend Skjeseth STUDENTS: Florencia Bacci, Won Ho Chi, Ching-han Chiang, Jean-Baptiste Octavien Constant Coulomb, Ryan Darius, James Emery, Igne Jurgaityte, Kah Ling Kong, Emma Magnusson, Qing Nan Meng, Qian Yang

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS: To all the wonderful and imaginative colleagues, friends and enemies who have contributed to and influenced the direction of the work this year – thank you.

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1 Ryan Darius

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2 Igne Jurgaityte 3 Florencia Bacci

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4 James Emery 5 Kah Ling Kong

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6 Lyngør, Norway 7 Qian Yang 8 James Emery

ETS Paper materiality experiment Paper mimcry model (Artefact 2) Mimcry

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9 Jean-Baptiste Octavien Constant Coulomb 10 Emma Magnusson 11 Qing Nan Meng

CITY/ HALL ‘The global is local at all points’ – Bruno Latour, We Have Never Been Modern In a moment of widespread populist extremism, resurgent nationalism and precarious, transnational unions, we turned our attention to the politics of the local. We reasserted the value of the city as a primary site of collective identity, citizenship and resource management, and asked how we might reinvent the forms and logics of its primary political institution – the City Hall. Collective identity, a shared sense of public life, emerges only when multiple perspectives engage (however provisionally) in a common space – when people see ‘sameness in utter diversity’. We instinctively travel to the centre of our cities to discover, challenge, debate and confirm our collective self. The institution of the City Hall has, as the identifiable locus of urban governance, traditionally offered us at least some sense of where that centre is located and, at best, provided a forum for collective political expression. In Sert, Leger, and Giedion’s famous position paper, Nine Points on Monumentality, they argue for modern architecture’s necessary role in fostering community through the design of legible civic centres. EXP15 extended this provocation, but instead of singular, monumental gestures we have produced multiple contingent forms of symbolic expression; a newer monumentality that is dependent on active interpretation and collective inhabitation. As we redefined the architecture of the City Hall, we also expanded the concept of ecology in order to recalibrate the constituents of our politics. To become relevant again, the City Hall must empower its citizens to actively participate in the continual remaking of the polis: its education, its healthcare, its environment, its culture – its past, present and future. In this way, EXP15 has aimed nothing less than a new architecture of political space – one that reasserts our sense of a local, ecological and collective future.

STAFF: Xristina Argyros and Ryan Neiheiser STUDENTS: Mia Aoun, Sebastian Cheng Ge Cornwell, Banu Gaffari, Burton-hart Olson Nour Edouard Lamore, Elisa Paneni, Charlotte Li Wen Phang, William Keaton Seddon, Tareq Shakhshir, Joana Tavira, Hongxin Yang, Lok Sze Rachelle Yau

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS: Shumi Bose, Pol Esteve, Helen Evans, Hannes Livers Gutberlet, Gabu Heindl, Platon Issaias, Nicholas Kehagias, Katerina Kourkoula, Sofia Krimizi, Vincent Lacovara, John Ng, Ilias Papageorgiou, Michael Riebel, Bryony Roberts, Nikolas von Schwabe Don Shillingburg, Silvana Taher, Carlos Villanueva Brandt

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1 Southwark City Hall: Collective Platforms for Informal Expression, Hongxin Yang 2 Civic Slice, William Keaton Seddon 3 A Platform for the People, Sebastian Cheng Ge Cornwell

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4 H_our Town Hall, Joana Tavira 5 Communal Void: A New City Hall for Islington, Elisa Paneni

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6 The Civic Theatre, Lok Sze Rachelle Yau 7 Symbiosis: Collective Living Rooms for Wandsworth, Charlotte Li Wen Phang

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8 Reclaiming Camden: The Town Hall as Urban Landscape, Mia Aoun 9 Common Ground: Art Space as Political Space, Burton-hart Olson Nour Edouard Lamore

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10 Fish and Kebab: A New City Hall for Hackney, Banu Gaffari 11 A City Hall for All, Tareq Shakhshir

Latent Territories Over the last couple of years, the work of the unit has evolved along two main lines of enquiry: firstly, the design of architectural form for its capacity to engage the body and the collective, and secondly, the politics of construction and the role of the architect. Technology affects our way of thinking, our social relations and our culture as it permeates all aspects of our lives. In architecture we are witnessing the ceaseless development of digital tools that are drastically transforming architectural thinking, practice and concretisation. In certain cases, the development of new design techniques and construction methods has proven emancipatory. In others, however, they embed forms of inequality, divisions of labour and other forms of alienation. This year, we aimed to problematise the role of technique and to investigate both the positive and perverse aspects of such techniques at a social, ethical and environmental level. We started the year by completely rethinking the design and construction of architectural elements. This preliminary work was grounded in historical precedents, and combined intense design and material experimentation. As a collective we developed elaborate but affordable production strategies with a social purpose. This also enabled a critique and reassessment of industrialisation at this moment in time, when the dependence on transnational supply chains poses important environmental, as well as socio-economic, problems. These tectonic systems formed the basis of larger cultural projects. We developed speculative proposals at the intersection between architecture, landscape and land art. Through the use of ‘detournement’ we subverted digital fabrication techniques in search of spaces for collective emancipation, individual fulfilment and pleasure.

STAFF: Theo Sarantoglou Lalis and Dora Sweijd STUDENTS: Malek Arif, Jiaxin Cao, Edouard Joiris de Caussin, Lucia Martinez-Botas Herrera,Yuyi Jiang, Bora Malko, Ivan Solianik, Ruoning Wu, Yan Ying Zhang, Qinyuan Zhou

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS: Sebastián Andía, Jocelyn Arnold, Edouard Cabay, Jonathan Cheng, Shin Egashira, Maria Fedorchenko, Kenneth Fraser, Francisco Gonzales de Canales, Angel Lara Moreira, Melodie Leung, Mark Morris, John Ng, John Palmesino, Christopher Pierce, Matthijs la Roi, Luis Sacristan, Silvana Taher, Simone Tchonova, Andrew Yau

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1 Sand Choreography, Edouard de Caussin

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2 Timeframe, Yuyi Jiang 3 The Presence of Absence, Malek Arif

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4 Civic Centre, Ivan Solianik 5 In Bamboo, Jiaxin Cao

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6 Layers Cultural Centre, Qinyuan Zhou 7 Inflated Steel Cushion Wall, Ruoning Wu 8 The Presence of Absence, Malek Arif. Self-demoulded inhabitable core.

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9 Civic Centre, Ivan Solianik. Tectonic Axo. 10 Inflated Steel Cushion Wall, Ruoning Wu. Detail.

The Object of Ecology Contemporary practices of ecological architecture and urbanism tend increasingly and autocratically towards performance targets, systemic design, vegetation integration and hyper-engineering. EXP17 attempts to disrupt this trend and focuses instead on spatial sensibilities, physical experiences, architectural effects and theatricality. Throughout the year, students have formulated and situated new architectural objects and objectives for the field of ecology in a fast-moving, culturally complex and technologically advanced context. The unit this year questioned what our role is as citizens of a global-local living ecology, how the built environment influences the way we live today and how architecture as an ecological construct might offer new forms of urban formation. Together we explored and investigated the craft of ecological tectonics and technology, while every student reformulated and speculated on various progressive futures for new ecological living towards a re-generative resilience. EXP17 is a design-oriented unit – we believe in the act of building as the prime medium of architecture and treasure architectural conceptualisation and experimentation through physical constructs, drawings and digital design processes. Students have developed their own repertoire of design skills, employing highly specific environmental technologies, tectonics, construction techniques and formal strategies to move beyond contemporary ecological design practices and develop experiential architectural projects in both the domestic environment and the public, cultural domain.

STAFF: Jonas Lundberg and Andrew Yau STUDENTS: Youngchae Ahn, Keqin Arista Cao, Xiaotian Candice Cao, Yi Hin Harvey Chan, Siying Alison Chen, William Hedley, Jiayi Tina Lin, Yimyung Peter Roh, Karina Taran, Shengqi Wang, Jin Xie, Peixuan Hailey Zhang, Lingfei Zhao

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS: Eduardo Barata, Adelina Chan, Kevin Ka Yu Chan, David Cole, Kerry Dickinson, Dalia Frontini, Kostas Grigoriadis, Theodoros Kanellopoulos, Jin Ho Kim, Nathaniel Kobe, Theo Sarantoglou Lalis, Shiqi Li, Ignacio Martí, Harpreet Marway John Naylor, Peng Qin, Jessica Reynolds, Kengo Skorick, Rebecca Spencer, Tuan Anh Tran, Royce Tsang, Kai Yang

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The Architectural Object of Cleansing, Alison Siying Chen Nuisance Flooding and The New Waterfront, Youngchae Ahn Wobble Porosity: Worker Quarter in Tokyo Bay, Lingfei Zhao Curation of Vibrancy, Arista Keqin Cao

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5 Soft Adaptation, Karina Taran 6 Living The Interiority of Festivals, Shengqi Wang

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7 Living The Interiority of Festivals, Shengqi Wang 8 Soft Adaptation, Karina Taran 9 Earth House, Tina Jiayi Lin

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10 Social Interface: Inhabit a Topography, Hailey Peixuan Zhang 11 Nuisance Flooding and The New Waterfront, Youngchae Ahn 12 Curation of Vibrancy, Arista Keqin Cao

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13 The Architectural Object of Cleansing, Alison Siying Chen

Mix-Up: Tall Towers as Catalysts for Social Interaction EXP18 explores the interrelationship between tall towers and the creation of places for social interaction and production. The design of such buildings has been shaped and governed over time by a matrix of civic agendas, as well as financial and physical forces, which have resulted in a differentiated skyline that reflects greater and more intensified urban density yet remains isolated and minimally connected. In an era of increasingly limited natural resources, how can vertically arranged physical spaces be responsibly informed by and encourage contemporary forms of social communication? Can towers maintain the connective qualities and scale of a village community with the energy of an active and global metropolis? The unit began by collectively researching existing tower typologies â€“ examples of residential, commercial and mixed use structures in various cities around the world. The framework for their analysis and design centred on the interrelated systems of structure, enclosure and movement. With this understanding, an alternative set of programmes was then investigated using sites that have the potential to be arranged vertically. Projects were located within the City of London, and designs for areas of connectivity gave particular attention to the ground and below-ground conditions, amenities and the possibilities and challenges that are afforded by vertical atria, nested public and private spaces and a mixed programme. The results of this process were critically assessed against existing models of performance, function and efficiency. Each student developed their design proposal as a synthesis of the existing tower typology enfolded with the alternative, vertically arranged programmes as a process of exploration to understand if the architecture of tall buildings can provide improved humanand community-scale hubs in which to work, live and socialise.

STAFF: Melodie Leung, Viviana Muscettola, Nhan Vo STUDENTS: Margherita Canali, Jihyun Choi, Sungho Choi, Brian Chung, Diana Dulina, Zeena Ismail, Damian Kam, Angelina Kiryukhina, Vian Rasool, Elliot Watt, Pierre Zebouni, Sofya Zhuravleva

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS: Ana Araujo, Chris Caroll, Paul Edwards, Alvin Huang, James Khamsi, Faaiza Lalji, Leonora Lang, Peter Murray, Jack Newton, Javier Quintara de Una, Patrik Schumacher, Vince Ugarow, Marco Vanucci, Steve Watts

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1 Fashion Highwalk: Axonometric Section, Damian Kam 2 Grow-Rise: Intertwined Journeys, Margherita Canali

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3 a-hub: Spaces for Art Exhibition and Education, Diana Dulina 4 The Digital Zoo: Exterior Perspective, Brian Chung

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5 The Sanctuary: Diagrammatic Model Highlighting Negative Space in Relation to Context, Pierre Zebouni 6 CoWork, CoLearn, CoCreate: Programme Arrangement Diagram, Sofya Zhuravlev 7 24-hour Start-up Accelerator: Night Section, Elliot Watt 8 The Digital Zoo: Physical Testing of Exoskeleton, Brian Chung

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9 Southbank Delivery Centre and Housing: Circulation Diagram, Angelina Kiryukhina 10 BUSINESSing NET: Spatial Hierarchy Axonometric, Jihyun Choi

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11 Museum for the Senses: Sections, Vian Rasool 12 Constructed Landscapes: Horizontal and Vertical Allotment Gardens, Sungho Choi

The AA, Dispersed Around the Globe Read as a mapping and a timeline, these dividing sections document the spaces and locations in which the AA has has operated throughout the 2019 – 20 academic year. This second section focuses on Hooke Park, Dorset (50° 47′ 31.2″ N, 2° 40′ 44.4″ W), our 350-acre working forest. The rural landscape provides a unique counterpoint to the urban context and the focus of architectural study in the metropolis.

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