Aass unit 2

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AA SUMMER SCHOOL 2016 LONDON-TIME

SUBLIME OASIS IN-TRANSIT [1]

This Unit proposes a brave appropriation of London Green Continuum [2] as a potential habitat for contemporary and connective migrant citizens i [1]

Sublime Oasis

Londoners in-transit

[2]

SCENARIO i

SUBLIME OASIS

A site that exists only with reference to time

The city of London can be considered as the world’s largest urban forest with 8 millions of trees. More than 13.000 species -including humans-, inhabit 3.000 parks, 30.000 allotments, 3 million of gardens and 2 National Nature Reserves. Green space in Central London covers 47% of its area. It includes 8 Royal Parks, a large number of council-owned parks, many small garden squares (100 only in Kensington and Chelsea), and greenways such as Thames Path.

A wide variety of wildlife inhabits London because it contains a great mixture of different ecological conditions. Foxes inhabit the city since the 40s, and today there are more than 10.000. We can find squirrels and badgers in garden squares and backyards; deer on city outskirts; Otters in wasteland areas and canals; pigeons, gulls and peregrine falcons flying over the city. Tall buildings, abundant food sources and a lack of predators make London a natural habitat for many birds and animalsii.

It is heartbreaking, if not obscene to have to imagine here, a city (Rem Koolhaas, SMLXL, 1995) London is known as a green city. Its urban fabric includes a powerful network of green spaces that coexists together with the built landscape.

Parks, woodlands, wetlands, gardens, groves, brownfield sites, and other semi-natural habitats and areas reclaimed by nature. We will act in these -apparently untouchable and overprotected- urban environments. We are interested in the double condition -manufactured and natural- of these environments with its own cycles of generation and decay. We will focus on the ecological interest of these urban sites, specially those areas of interaction among -human and no human- ecosystems (ecotones) where intensity of components is maximum.

'Nature' is simply another 18th and 19th century fiction (Robert Smithson, 1968) We understand ‘nature’ as a product, a projection of humanity. Therefore, since it is a design, it can be manipulated and changed, and by establishing new strategic relationships with this reality of London, we will build up new protocols of design. Processes defined through diverse time scales and whose management recognises change as inevitable. We pursue a migration of concepts and techniques from Environmental Sciences, because they give consistent responses within a context simultaneously natural and artificialiii. So, we will talk about Architecture in terms of dynamic understanding of elements, growth models, entropy, lifespan, methods of ecological control, dynamics of occupation and levels of integration.

SCENARIO II

LONDONERS IN-TRANSIT

A population that exists only with reference to time

Sony's Walkman planted the notion that music can be mobile. The BlackBerry made e-mail on the go seems normal since 1999. The personal-computer era started in the 1980s with Apple's commercialisation of the “graphical user interface” and the mobile era exploded in 2007 whit the iPhone and its user-friendly touch interface. Today, Cloud computing, that provides shared processing resources and data on demand, becomes a super-intensive and hyper-connected system that is used by 80% of world’s population.

Surfers stays in the same (summer) place by moving in sequence with climatic progression, in order to stay in the same temperature year round (an endless summer). Offshore havens facilitate a new form of cartographical expertise to locate funds in legal subsidiaries by an ingenious planning of migration routes for funds. Retirees, workers tied to seasonal tourism or people suffering from seasonal affective disorder avoid cold temperatures of northern winter and invade Mediterranean Area. Avoiding citizenship, Perpetual Travellers pass through different countries fast enough that they don’t become legal resident status so no have legal obligations.

There is nothing like a dream to create the future (Victor Hugo, Les Miserables, 1862) A new social creature emerges from this global and increasily mobile world.

With the scale, the accessibility and the immediacy of contemporary global displacements, we have developed a more “liquid”iv relationship with places and people. We live in constant flux and we inhabit a global flow. Our identity is not defined through an own place or an own stuff, but we live on the go and we have fewer belongings and more sharing. Our relationship to time, to place and to other people is different. Environment provides us with what we need, and no matter where we are we can create our own “emotional space” without any place restrictionv.

Even the most striated city gives rise to smooth spaces: to live in the city as a nomad, or as a cave dweller (G. Deleuze & F. Guattari, 1987) London is constantly reshaped by new waves and changing tides of human migrants. The city is a valuable pit-stop for this rolling citizensvi that re-shape culture because of its mobility.

We will track these mobile populations moving among settled populations. They have been called nomads, migrants, travellers, neo-Bedouins, etc. but we will update this concept in terms of current (hyper)connectivity. They are “Londoners In-transit” -such as Snowbirds, Digital nomads, Urban Campers, Expatriates, Third Culture Kids, Techno-Bedouins or Perpetual Travellers. As Geographers, Ethnographers and Strategists, we will unveil their “transit space” vii, in terms of both time and place; as Anthropologists and Cultural Practitioners, we will identify their policies and identities; and finally will develop new spatial models according to their mobile culture –from urbanity to domesticity-.

AA SUMMER SCHOOL 2016 LONDON-TIME

METHODOLOGY ACCUMULATIVE CONTINUUM cabinet of wonders During the course, we will consider 2 scenarios in London: overprotected Oasis & Londoners In-transit / a potential site & an elusive inhabitant.

As creative explorers, we will collect evidence of these realities. Everything becomes data –documents, numbers, graphics, interviews, maps, images, objects, artefacts about climatology, history, politics, economics, art, technique, etc. Day by day, we will build up our CABINET OF WONDERS: an encyclopaedic collection of (extraordinary) objects that attempt to tell stories about the wonders and oddities of the (selected) world, of our Unit Microcosms. This is both an operative and accumulative tool, an ideological as well as technical construction. We will define it by an overlap of successive statesviii, and we will adopt an expertise role and use a different narrative tool per state.

SPECULATIVE CONTINUUM WALLPAPER OF REAL FANTASIES

Londoners in-transit will colonize Sublime Oasis: this is our dual scenario for specula(C)tion and here we start our game of reciproCITIES, in the way Sophie Calle and Paul Auster did with the character of Maria Turner in the book “Double Game”.

By using the collected documents and objects, together with certain fictional evidence, we will build up a succession of projective moments that will be arranged in a continuous and common WALLPAPER: a visual masterpiece between the fictional and the distilled real fragments of our cabinets, an artificial landscape where fiction and collection collideix . Horizon and scale are multiple, manipulating frame and disrupting linear sequence.

Narrative continuum SEQUENCE SHOT of INTERACTIVE DOCUMENTARY

This Wallpaper will be considered a performative space, sensitive and reactive. And we will explore its narrative potential by turning into an INTERACTIVE DOCUMENTARY: an interface that provides an in-depth tour through our “Sublime Oasis in-transit”, including texts, images even videos to enrich the storytelling. We will establish a sistematical and interconnective articulation of those projective and architectural moments, pursuing that hypermedia transgresses the logical boundaries of physical space/time/frame. This will be our collective construction of the “Sublime Oasis In-transit”, in the way of a complex system of individual events that are infrastructurally assembled. Finally, we will film one of the possible journeys in an uninterrupted shot of 10 minutes that constitutes an entire scene –SEQUENCE SHOT.

REFS: OLDEMAN Profile of a Forest/ GREENE Gardener’s Notebook/ REISER+UMEMOTO Global migration patterns of Surfers/ HAMILTON Just What Is It That Makes Today's Homes so Different, So Appealing?/ HAUS RUCKER Oasis nº7/ WUNDERKAMMER Ferrante Imperato/ DUCHAMP Box in Valise/ OMA-AMO Prada Wallpapers/ EAMES OFFICE: Moscow International Exposition 1959.

Schedule st

1 week SUBLIME OASIS

We will track those apparently untouchable and overprotected green spaces of London. We will unveal their botanical variety, climatic condictions, growth models, human and no-human inhabitants, patterns of occupation, cycles of generation and decay.

TAGS: OASIS - GARDEN - WILDLIFE - ECOLOGY - ECOTONE - NATURE/FICTION - NEW NATURALNESS - HUMANS&NO HUMANS - GARDENER EXPERIENCES & VISITS + EXPEDITION ‘GREEN LONDON’: we will explore and experience a green and wild city by visiting semi-natural habitats, such as The Royal Botanical Garden Kew, Thames Path, Serpentine Park and Pavillion, garden squares, community allotments and the Barbican Conservatory. + WILDLIFE GARDEN and CENTRE OF UK BIODIVERSITY, at Natural History Museum, with more than 2.600 species of British flora and fauna. + THE GREATER LONDON NATIONAL PARK CITY: through this campaign we will understand London as the world's first National Park City. We will be explorers at the way of Daniel Raven-Ellison, and will follow research about the capital's wildlife and wild spaces by London Wildlife Trust.

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week LONDONERS IN-TRANSIT

We wil discover the new creatures that inhabit this mobile world: Londoners in-transit. We will trace their migration routes (in place and time) and habits. We will collect the wonders and oddities of their migrant culture, the successive architectures that they inhabit, and the protocols of construction of their ‘emotional’ space here and there.

TAGS: MIGRANTS - NOMADS - PERIPATETIC - ROLLING - PITSTOP - FLOW - STOCK - WANDERLUST - MOBILITY - TRANSIT SPACE - LIQUID EXPERIENCES & VISITS + SIR JOHN SOANE’S MUSEUM: visit to this surprising ‘cabinet of curiosities’ in London. The historic house, museum and library of distinguished 19th century architect Sir John Soane, filled with his exceptional collection -artworks, sculptures, furniture and artefacts. + MARGARET CUBBAGE & GONZALO HERRERO DELICADO: Curators at Design Museum’s exhibitions department. They will show its Designers in Residence programme “Migration 2015”: a reflection of objects or processes that imply movement of shifting and cross-fertilising cultures. + IGNACIO GONZÁLEZ-GALÁN: Chief Curator of 2016 Oslo Architecture Triennale. He will introduce “After Belonging”, a transforming condition of belonging that examines both our attachment to places and collectivities as well as our relation to the objects we own, share, and exchange.

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week REAL FANTASIES

The ‘natural’ sites of London are available, and Londoners in-transit will colonize them. They will expand their migration routes through/into them, and include this spaces into their selection of pit-stops. We propose a migration of dynamics, protocols and spacial models from the built to the ‘natural’ environment of London.

TAGS: REAL FANTASIES – FICTIONALIZATION – INTERACTIVE DOCUMENTARY – STORYTELLING –SEQUENCE SHOT – HYPERMEDIA - HYPERLONDON

EXPERIENCES & VISITS + JEFFREY LUDLOW: Creative director of 2x4 Madrid. He will explain the design sytem –brand, experience and identity- of their Wallpaper concept for the Prada Broadway Epicenter store –“Trembled Blossoms”-, as part of the project 2016 SS Prada Real Fantasies by OMA/AMO. + DIEGO IGLESIAS & CRISTOBAL BAÑOS: Architect and web designer, authors of “HyperTokio”. Together with them we will build up “HyperLondon”, a virtual space of connected images, texts, diagrams and videos, in the way of an interactive documentary.

TO FINISH, AA SUMMER SCHOOL IS CORDIALLY INVITED TO THE PREMIERE OF OUR INTERACTIVE DOCUMENTARY: “sublime oasis IN-TRANSIT”

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AA SUMMER SCHOOL 2016 LONDON-TIME

UNIT STAFF TALLERDE2 ARANTZA & ALVARO Arantza Ozaeta and Alvaro Martin head the architecture office TallerDE2 since 2008 [ www.tallerde2.com ], which makes an ongoing commitment to research and knowledge, both in training and innovative practice. They do research on contemporary cultures pursuing the materialization of unsual discoveries. Their work has international scope, been recognized, published and awarded on several occasions.

Arantza Ozaeta and Alvaro Martín’s work is mainly developed between Spain, Germany, Italy and UK, where they combine professional activities with academic and research ones. They studied architecture at the TU Delft of The Netherlands and at the Madrid Polytechnic ETSAM. They have been teaching at the Architectural Association London (Summer School 2015 / 2014 / 2013), Politecnico di Milano (Italy), Hochschule Coburg University of Applied Sciences (Germany), FCU (Taiwan), Ural State Technical University of Ekaterimburg (Russia), and the Architectural Polytechnic University of Madrid (Spain), where currently teach as Associate Professor.

Arantza Ozaeta and Alvaro Martín completed work covers from Urban Regeneration Masterplans (Europan 9, Germany) to Public Facilities (Haus der Tagesmütter, Selb); from Ephemeral Urban Installations (Green Cave, Bilbao) to Domestic Spaces (The Meeting House, Zamora), from Industrial Architecture (ITV-Motto, La Rioja) to Refurbishment with Furniture Infill (The POP-UP House, Madrid). Among their awards, they have received the German ‘Bauwelt Prize 2013-First Works’; Finalists at the ‘XII Spanish Architecture and Urbanism Biennale 2013’; the prize ‘Architects Professional Association of Madrid-Luis M. Mansilla’ as the Best foreign project made by a Spanish office abroad. In 2015 their work has been selected for ‘Architectus Omnibus-Goethe Institute & Casa Cervantes’ to be exhibited in Berlin, and for ‘Export-Spanish Architecture Abroad’ in Madrid. The Spanish magazine ‘Arquitectura Viva’ has selected them as "one of the eight most representative young Spanish studios", and director Arantza Ozaeta was shorlisted “Emerging woman of the year 2014” from the British magazine AJ.

HAUS DER TAGESMUTTER: Urban Acupuncture. Germany 2013/ YOUTH CENTER: Social Club. Germany 2015/ AASS 2013: Inverse London/ GREEN CAVE: Temporary Urban Garden. Bilbao 2011/ THE POP-UP HOUSE: Residence for a Metropolitan Single. Madrid 2014/ AASS 2014: Mind the Gap!/ ITV-MOTTO La Rioja 2016/ IQ SOCIAL HOUSING: Germany 2016/ AASS 2015: Ordinary EccentriCITY.

INVITED GUESTS Daniel Raven-Ellison is a London based guerrilla geographer, creative explorer, educator and works leading the campaign to establish London as the world's first National Park City. He is one of National Geographic’s Emerging Explorers [ www.ravenellison.com ] Margaret Cubbage is a curator at the Design Museum in London, in charge of the programme Designers in Residence (2008-2011), colleague of Gonzalo Herrero Delicado, a London-based architect and writer of contemporary architecture and design. Since 2015, he is Curator at Design Museum, preparing together with Chief Curator Justin McGuirk the exhibition that will open the new museum in 2016 [ www.gonzaloherrero.eu ].

Ignacio G. Galan is a New York based architect and a PhD Candidate at Princeton University. Professor in Columbia University and Chief Curator of the 2016 Oslo Architecture Triennale “After Belonging”. Collaborator in the research project ‘Radical Pedagogies’, led by Beatriz Colomina at Princeton SOA [ www.ignaciogalan.com ] Jeffrey Ludlow is Principal and Creative Director of the global design consultancy 2x4 in Madrid. The focus of their work is brand strategy for cultural and commercial clients who value the power of design. Their wide range of clients includes OMA/AMO, Herzog & de Meuron, Kanye West, MoMA, Prada, Nike, and the Doha Film Institute [ www.2x4.org ] Cristóbal Baños is a Madrid-based graphic and web designer. Creative Director of the fashion communication agency Coolture Lab and cocreator of HYPER TOKYO [www.hypertokyo.net] together with Diego Iglesias, a Madrid-based architect, communication designer, editor [255.255.255] and cultural manager. Member of the Architectural Association for Innovative Pedagogies 100x10 and guest teacher at ETSAM.

XREFS BOOKS & ARTICLES + ÁBALOS, Iñaki. “Naturaleza y Artificio”, GG, 2009. + BAUMAN, Zygmunt. “Liquid Modernity”. Polity, 2000. + CALLE, Sophie and AUSTER, Paul. “Double Game”.

Violette, 1999. + EASTERLING, Keller. “Extrastatecraft: the power of infrastructure space”. Verso, 2014. + FONTCUBERTA, Joan. “The Kiss of Judas.

Photography and truth”. GG, Barcelona, 1997. + JAQUE, Andres. “Eco-Ordinary”. UEM, 2010. + KINGMANN, Anna. “Brandscapes: Architecture in the experience of economy”. MIT Press, 2007. i

Spaces”, by Gemma Hallam and Mathew Frith; “London Garden City?”, by Chloë Smith 2010; “For a Wilder City”, 2015-2020. + MAKIMOTO Tsugio, MANNERS David. “Digital Nomad”. Wiley, 1997. + MCLUHAN, Marshall; FIORE, Quentin; “The Medium is the Massage: an inventory of effects”. Bantam books, 1967. + OMA; Harvard GSD. “Project on the City 1”, “Project on the City 2”. Taschen, 2002.

+ BALLESTER, Jose Manuel. “Hidden Spaces”, 2008. + EAMES OFFICE. Multiscreen & Multimedia: “Glimpses of the U.S.”, 1959; “THINK”, 1964. + GREY LONDON. Spot “The Sundays Time Icons” 2014. + RYBCZYNSKI, Zbigniew. “Tango”. Poland 1980. + SOKÚROV Aleksandr. “Russian Ark”. 2002. + VAN HUIJSTEE, Pieter: “Jheronimus Bosch, The Garden of Earthly Delights” Interactive Documentary. + VINE CAMPAIGNS: Airbnb, Samsung, Sony, M&C Saatchi Sydney, Adidas, Disney, Volkswagen, etc.

Front-page image: The Garden of Earthly Delights triptych painted by Hieronymus BOSCH, oil on oak panels, 220 cm × 389 cm (87 in × 153 in), Museo del Prado, Madrid.

“47 per cent of London is green space: Is it time for our capital to become a national park?” Daniel Raven-Ellison, Independent website. September 2014/ “Urban Wildlife: when animals go

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FILMS & DOCUMENTARIES + LONDON WILD TRUST & GIGL research: “Wild

wild in the city”, Adam Vaughan, The Guardian website. March 2008/ Atlas of Novel Tectonics, Reiser + Umemoto, Princeton Arch. Press 2006. iii Iñaki ÁBALOS. Naturaleza y Artificio. El ideal Pintoresco en la Arquitectura y el Paisajismo Contemporáneos, Gustavo Gili, Barcelona, 2009. iv Zygmunt BAUMAN. Liquid Modernity, Polity Press, Cambridge, 2000. Text: “Individual and society in the liquid modernity” by Emma Palese. v Widianto UTOMO. Urban Nomads. A lifestyle transformation from passive to fully mobile integrated being, 2002. vi Notion of Rolling Society/City proposed by Andrés Jaque in the project “Rolling House For The Rolling Society” [www.andresjaque.net] vii Notion of “Transit” proposed by Widianto Utomo: referred to changes, uncertainties and insecurities, flexibility and mobility, transnational and familiar identities are superimposed on. viii “Plan and Section”, Federico Soriano. In SORIANO, Federico: 100 Hypermínimos. Escritos de Arquitectura Lampreave, Madrid, 2009. ix OMA/AMO 2016 SS Prada Real Fantasies. Project description [www.oma.eu]