Unit 18 Carving a Giant Nannette Jackowski, Ricardo de Ostos
Year 4 Christina Dahdaleh, Jingsi (Joyce) Li, Chi Hoon Seong, Shao Wang, Zhiying (Sean) Xu, Liang Zhou Year 5 Sonal Balasuriya, Sing Sun (Ryan) Cheng, Anthony D’Auria, Anna Maria Janiak, Haaris Ramzan, Liang Shang, Anthanasios Varnavas The Bartlett School of Architecture 2014
Thank you to our consultants: Ross Exo Adams, Ricardo Baptista, Jan Birksted, Anis Wan Kamaruddin, Sara Klomps, Guan Lee, Rob Partridge, Tania Sengupta, Simon Withers, Saman Ziaie Thanks also to our guest critics: Jeroen van Armeijde, Julia Backhaus, Brendon Carlin, Ryan Dillon, Oliver Domeisen, Lawrence Friesen, Oliviu Lugojan-Ghenciu, Christine Hawley, Megha Chand Inglis, Manuel Jimenez, Sebastian Kite, Sara Klomps, Alice Labourel, Stephen Lau, Abel Maciel, Kaleigh Tirone Nunes, Claudia Pasquero, Vesna Petresin, Khyle Raja, Yael Reisner, Tania Sengupta, Marilena Skavara, Bob Sheil, Ellie Stathaki, Catrina Stewart, Robert StuartSmith, Aris Theodoropoulos, Lorenzo Vianello, Sam Welham, Young Wei Yang Chiu, Tim Yue, Brendan Woods generationalphantoms.co.uk
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This year Unit 18, or Generational Phantoms, continued to explore relationships between digital technologies and social structures. Furthering last year’s understanding of cryptology as a way to generate architecture we specifically focused on the notion of the human body and its encryption into ornament. Firstly students investigated how in recent decades the body has been a fundamental benchmark for encoding information into buildings – as proportion, ornamentation, but also to communicate social structures. Utilising digital software and fabrication techniques students then developed their own concepts of the body, generating small-scale ornaments such as a vestigial rubber wisdom tooth, typewriter skins and a Morse Code hand ornament based on encryption strategies. In order to expand the notion of the individual body to the idea of a collective or collaborative body, we voyaged to Rajasthan, India to experience places of production and to study its social structures, known as guilds. We visited India’s largest salt lake; a marble-extracting town covered by a thick layer of white marble dust; a city specialised in marble processing; a neighbourhood of storefront artisans; a clay brick factory whose kiln is made of the bricks that are being burnt; and an important trading region known for its ornately decorated residences. For the final project, students reconsidered their understanding of the body and the ornament in order to create a collaborative network in the form of a guild. To choose a context, students analysed specific scenarios of material extraction and manufacturing places in India where workers, corporations and more sophisticated fabrication methods overlap with endemic urban organisations and social inequalities. The ‘Spiritual Guild’ project by Sonal investigated a seasonal interaction between marble sculptors, Makrana city and its quarries. A series of narrow shafts allow for new places of production to rise directly out of the quarry, housing three generations of marble sculptors who make popular mini-temples using stone remains left on site. Athanasios created a compelling spatial narrative by designing an experiential journey along the Makrana quarry site rooted on India’s rich mystical stories. Utilising earthworks, metal and concrete to shape each other and the idea of a vestigial ornament Anthony rearticulated the trade and technological possibilities of a nomadic guild, the Gadulia Lohar, by generating a building that is as much a shelter as a political space for identity. Along the journey, departing from the notion of the body, students uncovered a few architectural corpses and effected many digital autopsies, creating a dossier of projects where material and architecture go beyond the idea of the catalogue. Instead, material, technology and social networks opened new ways to the new collaborations between the visible and the invisible.