Unit 8
Details and Misbehaviors Rhys Cannon, Colin Herperger
Year 2 Naomi De Barr, Kelly Frank, Egmontas Geras, Aqsa Iftikhar, Rikard Kahn, Wenya Liu, Priscilla Wong
The Bartlett School of Architecture 2014
Year 3 Charlotte Archer, Thomas Budd, Tik Chun (Zion) Chan, Emma Colthurst, Kar Tung (Karen) Ko, Ian Ng, Joshua Stevenson-Brown, Joshua Toh Kai Heng, Eleanor Daisy Ursell, Hoi Yiu (Carolyn) Wong Thanks to our critics: Abi Abdolwahabi, Ben Addy, Laura Allen, Alessandro Ayuso, Nat Chard, Sarah Custance, Bernadette Devilat, Richard Grimes, Phillip Hall-Patch, Jonathan Hill, Diony Kypraiou, Adrian Lahoud, Felipe Lanuza Rilling, Jack Newton, Alan Penn, Frosso Pimenides, Franco Pisani, Hugo Sands, Peter Scully, Matt Springett, Tomas Stokke, Natalija Subotincic, Mark West, and Fiona Zisch Special thanks to Scott Batty for his dedicated work as Year 3 Technical Tutor and also to Ness Lafoy, Steven Pippin and Marcus Stockton for sharing their works with the studio We are grateful to our sponsors Moxon Architects and Prandina
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We are interested in the beauty of the almost correct The Unit sets out to establish the importance of finding more within the world than that which is obvious. Intuition leads to invention but also demands risk taking. It is an uncertain area where the answers are not generally known. A sort of misbehaviour exists within the process of making that allows a character to emerge, somehow even richer. Architecture, and the development of any idea, frequently reveals these glitches or gremlins. If nurtured, these moments can give lead to a degree of character or personality, anthropomorphism even. The very fabric of a building can come alive and it can begin to exert an unexpected influence upon those that occupy and interact with it. The Unit considers such character by proposing architectures as players within a wider landscape and that ‘contextuality’ is the term for the interplay and conversation between them. The last few years have seen a proliferation of computer generated imagery and usage of digital techniques within student work. We seek to re-invigorate the use of handcrafted fabrication in parallel to this and better understand the application and transition to digital techniques within the design and production process. Physical models and objects have for centuries, represented one of the most engaging means to describe and declare architectural intention. Venice and northern Italy was our focal point of study and invention for the second term. Errors, mistakes and abnormalities were encouraged and these unexpected attributes of the making process of the first term’s work became the foundation of the building proposals. We paid homage to the craftsmanship and attention to detail within the works of Carlo Scarpa, the passion and precision engineering of Italian high-performance cars, and the sculptural concrete forms of Giovanni Michelucci’s churches. Examples of the Unit’s ambition are realised through a range of projects including: Joshua Toh’s ‘Cathedral of Craft’ which explores the extremes of cast concrete and fabric formwork with its performance and ability to be both monumental and delicate; Karen Ko’s ‘Venetto Town Hall’ examines the development and manipulation of traditional Venetian architecture and Josh Stevenson-Brown’s ‘Construction School’, an intimate examination of Venice stripped back to basics; as well as the careful observations, attention to detail, anomalies and quirks of culture found within Daisy Ursell’s ‘Venetian Film Studios’ and Tom Budd’s unexpected night in ‘Hotel Coletti’.