WHO’S ON WHAT? Institutional space is so intimately entangled with an image of the ‘collective body’ that whilst we predicate universities, museums, offices and governments as obvious sites for radical disruption, these spaces simultaneously and surreptitiously reconfigure themselves in our interpersonal relationships, societal norms, ethics and aesthetics. Consequently, in architecture, the attempt to intervene in institutional space regularly misconstrues the transformation of social structures as the replacement of loadbearing ones. This year, EXP4 challenged students to practice infrastructurally as a radical alternative to, or appropriation of, the architectures of institutionalism. An infrastructural practice is one that dissipates and decentralises resource, creating spaces in which ‘access’ is perpetually a verb, not a noun, and in which resilient communities of care are centred. These types of practice, and the people who shape them, do not exist outside of institutional space per se, but rather exhibit nuanced, creative and even whimsical topological relationships to it. They are both inside and outside, marginal and centred, within and without. The unit began with cartography as a means of defining institution, and students each developed a site-specific approach within their immediate locale through a variety of means, from deep-listening exercises to car-camera hacking. These approaches were then developed into dynamic architectural methodologies and interventions, which both highlighted and interrogated the institutions they had defined. Students then scaled up to create spatial proposals capturing the complex socio-historical entanglements of their sites and respective cities, addressing phenomena as broad as degenerative road infrastructures in Hendon, London and the endless possibilities of ‘the night’ in Moabit, Berlin. As students continued to learn from their sites, incorporating a range of qualitative and quantitative research methods, their proposals took on a uniquely situated form – working intimately with both human and material resources on site. The resulting range of projects challenge not
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only various institutional behaviours in the students’ local areas, but also the very position of architecture in reifying and probing institutional space. STAFF
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Akil Scafe-Smith,
Tom Selby, Joseph Zeal Henry, George
Seth Amani Scafe-Smith
Kafka (Unit Collaborators), Shawn Adams, Umi Baden-Powell, Matthew
STUDENTS
Blunderfield, Mark Breeze, Suzi Hall,
Anvi Aggrawal, Connor Shu Che, Nick
Winston Hampel, Melissa Haniff,
Tzu Chiang, Sung Ho Choi, Kate Gagnier,
Joseph Zeal Henry, Sahar Ibrahim,
Stoyan Gerchev, Thomas Germain-
George Kafka, David Kohn, Bushra
Pendry, Alexandra Golovina, Julia
Mohamed, Mark Morris, Arman Nouri,
Barbara Lubner, Kyungdo Oh, Beatriz
Deborah Saunt, Tom Selby, Selasi
Marco Sanchez-Peral, Aayushi Singal,
Setufe, Nathaniel Telmaque, Max
Celine Topsakal
Turnheim, Manijeh Verghese, Mark Warren (Jury Guests), Shawn Adams, Yoav Caspi, Martha Dallyn, Tahmineh Hooshyar Emami, EYESORE: Arman Nouri, Michael Price, Ragavendran Gowrisankar, Joseph Zeal Henry, George Kafka, Joel De Mowbray, Vineetha Nalla, Rose Nordin, Toby Parsloe, Mark Warren (Unit Presentations)
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RESOURCE
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Experimental 4