Visiting sites studied in the first term we assessed the appropriateness of both the remote readings and subsequent proposals. Gaining first-hand experience of the scale of the city and the true context at ground level, we compared and contrasted all we thought we knew about LA to the reality we found.
Year 3 Chiara de Stavola Barrett, Leo Boscherini, Jiongjiong (Joanne) Chen, Daniel Scoulding, Saijel Anil Taank
The Bartlett School of Architecture 2013
Unit 4 continued to push students to question the mediums by which architecture is transmitted, with projects engaging notions such as a ‘Google Picturesque’ comprised of ruptured error-spaces that led to architectural aesthetics of the momentary glitch. We explored the relationship between remote viewing and ground conditions, from proposing scanned digital/physical material hybrids through to drone-operated strategies for breaking up the LA river, promoting new ecological development. Students developed strategies for tapping into abandoned oil infrastructure, produced ersatz landscapes for police training and incrementally improved regulations for emergency response buildings in a city of gridlock. We compared dromoscopic viewpoints from the car to the shifting accuracy of GPS guidance and questioned the potential changes to the urban landscape of LA with the legalisation of autonomous vehicles in California. The unit endeavoured to create architectures that contrast and speculate not only on the way we read a city, but on the nature of the reading tool itself as a potential approach for design.
Year 2 Charlotte Archer, Matthew Bovingdon-Downe, Thomas Budd, Emma Colthurst, Chloe Ellis, Christian Georcelin, Isobel Parnell, Sarah Stone, Joshua Toh Kai Heng, Daisy Urcell
We would like to thank Bryan Cantley, Neil Denari, Wes Jones and Morphosis (with special thanks to Natalia Traverso Caluana) for being so welcoming in LA. We would also like to thank the critics this year for their invaluable feedback: Laura Allen, Abigail Ashton, Johan Bergland, Matthew Butcher, Nick Elias, Will Jefferies, Nicholas Hockley, CJ Lim, Andrew Porter, Peg Rawes, Gavin Hutchison and Rae Whittow-Williams. 83