AA Summer School 2017 - The Future is Now

AA summer school 2017

stu¡ plime - a log book -

by christy ho

AA summer school

Architectural Association School of Architecture Summer School 2017 UNIT 1 MINIMOU – Land of Stublimeness Tutors: Antoine Vaxelaire and Ariadna Barthe

christy ho

contents + the future is now

1

+ w h at i s “s t u p l i m e” ?

3

+ c r e at i n g “s t u p l i m e l a n d”

11

+ presentation

16

AA summer school

the future is now The brief of this year’s summer school urges us to ask ourselves this question: What is architecture NOW, today? What is contemporary?

We architects spend so much of our critical and intellectual efforts looking either to the past or the future, we often have little left to reflect on what architecture is now, and what it can be at a time in which nostalgia is an Instagram filter and the future is a shiny smoothing effect.

The construction of Minimou starts with the fundamental idea that architectural culture can only exist as the complex interweaving of multiple inputs.

Minimou will take this reality literally and weave a carpet during three weeks.

1

christy ho

day 1: team “Minimou”

2

AA summer school

w h at i s “s t u p l i m e” ?

The moment of the stuplime is here. The synthesis of the sublime and stupere. Sublime.

Awe inspiring, transcendental excellence, elevated beyond the definitions of everyday life, the process of a solid becoming a vapour. Used by Romanticist painters of the nineteenth century to describe the terrifying beauty of man’s position in the natural world.

Of Latin origin: Sub + Limus ascension to an unclear and evasive entity Sub + Limen ­an experiential transition Stupere. Latin.

To be amazed, disoriented and stunned. Etymological root of ‘stupid.’

The awe, the doubts and the disorientation as the world stublimates from the tangible to the intangible.

Stublime is the Now.

3

christy ho

group dicussion of “what is NOW?”

quarter review “twisting density” 4

AA summer school

constructing the atlas of “NOW”

5

christy ho

a method of recording: Atlas We see our atlas as our backbone, which gives support to our ideas about the stupid and the sublime by allowing us to navigate them in an open-structured, dynamic and ever evolving way.

It expresses of the eclecticness of the now and how the stupid and the sublime interrelate in a multilayered way.

In Minimou we think of our atlas as a living organism that expresses the constantly changing nature of the now.

6

the full atlas - near completion

AA summer school

9

christy ho

translating the atlas onto the carpet

10

AA summer school

c r e at i n g “s t u p l i m e l a n d�

From all these mini stories, we have started threading. These stories constantly feed our carpet with moments and intentions. Atlas and carpet exist simultaneously, going from one state to another.

Basically the carpet is our own interpretation of the Altas in other words, of our NOW. If the atlas was one possible representation of the now, the carpet is another form of representing the stretching of the time. In a world where everything goes fast, the carpet introduces the stretching of our time resulting an infinity of nows and possibilities.

This is the only way of abstracting the now and taking it to its deepest meaning.

This now, is not quantified by hours or seconds, its not a city or a countryside, it has no boundaries in time or space.

So it is embracing the unknown conditions of the carpet, that we have constructed, designed and integrated the NOW as an infinite story.

11

threading technique

threading materials

12

collective threading work

thread details on carpet: minion, emoji, low battery sign

13

interim review

14

AA summer school

15

sleepless nights on threading

christy ho

presentation During a three-week period, we collectively worked towards a common land of the Now. All our individual work are inseparable from the rest of the unit and it reaches its full potential once placed within the large Land of Stublimeness: Minimou.

16

AA summer school

morning prepartions of final review

17

christy ho

final review with Madelon Vriesendorp at the front seat

18

AA summer school 2017

thank you unit 1.