Jessica Morley Portfolio

J E S S I C A M O R L EY Part 1 Architectural Assistant Architecture BA(Hons), Oxford Brookes muchofmorley.tumblr.com cargocollective.com/much_of_morley

EXPERIMENTAL DRAWING Evening Class 2015 Oxford Brookes University

P R O J E CT L I ST 1.

Part 1 Placement Work

2.

BA Third Year: The Street Shadow Theatre

3.

BA Third Year: The Hidden Pottery

4.

BA Second Year: The Barometer

5.

BA Second Year: Gathering Gardens

6.

BA First Year: House for a Sound Collector

7.

BA Third Year Dissertation Extract: A Question of Craft

J E S S I C A M O R L EY Part 1 Architectural Assistant Architecture BA(Hons), Oxford Brookes muchofmorley.tumblr.com cargocollective.com/much_of_morley

The Hidden Pottery development sketches: Section and idea for a window detail

T H E H I D D E N P OTT E RY ‘Playtime’, film by Jacques Tati The first project used Jacques Tati’s film ‘Playtime’ (1967) as a starting point and site. In ‘Playtime’ we see how an architecture driven by standardised components, mass production and rigid boxes obstructs the organic nature of daily life and human interaction. We see an architecture that has forgotten to consider material, place or time.

‘The Hidden Pottery’ explores the refuge of a fugitive craftsman secretly making, yet disguised behind perspectival illusion of the seemingly endless corridor.

Model development

Corridor sketch plan

The pottery: hidden by day, Illuminated by night

The pottery entrance behind the corridor

(above): film still of the corridor in Jacques Tati’s ‘Playtime’ (1967) (left): The Hidden Pottery existing secretly behind the corridor (below): illuminated section

A1sized layered section ‘The Hidden Pottery’

Development sketch section: Street Shadow Theatre

ST R E ET S HA D OW S T H EAT R E Marrakech Set in the busy streets of Marrakech, the Street Shadows Theatre explores the juxtaposition between privacy and performance found throughout daily life in the ancient Medina.

The project started with analysis of the composition of the city, the traditional courtyard Riad dwellings and the style of traditional story-telling and public performance.

Constructed by local craftsmen out of bamboo and rammed earth, the theatre reaches across the street. It is designed to be adaptable for different performances with moving parts and screens that can be manipulated and controlled by the performers like the joints of a puppet.

Public Space: Jemaa el fna and Rahba Kedima squares Site location: Knikat Rahba

The Medina, Marrakech

Performance diagrams: The Story-tellers of the Medina

Learning about Moroccan Craftsmen from the derelict Riad: Zouaki woodwork, clay brick making and zellige tiles

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Knikat Rahba Existing site elevations

Street shadows theatre development sketch

Development of moveable screens

Shadow stage development model

Developing the bamboo construction for performance spaces

Street shadows theatre model

Hanging screens

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3 1 2

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10m

1 1. main street stage 2. indoor shadow puppet stage 3. projection courtyard

Performance at street level

Stage and street level at night

Street Shadows model

Reflectoscope (unfolded): Device to study the ecology on the damaged mining landscape

T H E BA R O M ET E R

Outpost for Mining Landscape Repair, Honister Pass Slate Mine The first project of year 2 explored the idea of repair and rejuvenation in a landscape damaged and scarred by mining.

Set in amongst the slate mine at Honister Pass in the Lake District the structure acts as a beacon, growing facility and meeting place for walkers and hikers - a place for them to learn about the landscape before they enter it.

Mining destroyed many species of plants in the once rich landscape. The aim of the Barometer is to promote and restore the landscape with growing terraces to trial plants before being reintroduced into the landscape in which they once flourished.

The Barometer is built out of the materials from the site and through the growing of the plants will , over time, become part of the site itself.

Reflectoscope

Existing site section

Existing landscape plan

Development montage of landscape terraces

Sketchbook development pages

Barometer in the landscape sketch

Development sketches Site layout and steel frame and glass detail

GAT H E R I N G G A R D E N S

Centre for Mining Landscape Repair, Keswick Continuing from the Barometer project, Gathering Gardens is situated out of the landscape and in the town of Keswick. It is an exhibition and research centre that acts as the head-quarters and nucleus of the countywide ‘Barometer’ landscape repair scheme.

The building is a catalyst for the re-growth and repair of the landscape and for rejuvenation the town centre.

The building is concerned with the interplay between inside exhibition space and northfacing exterior ‘Crevice Gardens’. These recreate habitats where plants can be studied and grown before being reintroduced to the individual ‘Barometers’ on the sites where they once flourished before industry.

Entrance / welcome area sketch

Research and growing laboratories are situated on the second floor, while the exhibition spaces are on the ground and first floors in-between the exterior ‘Crevice Gardens’. There is also a welcome area, shop and cafe, contributing to an environment where people can gather, learn about and celebrate the ecology and landscape surrounding them.

Existing site plan

Development sketch

First floor plan

Ground floor plan

Section through gallery spaces

Section through the museum and crevice garden

Gallery space

Front elevation from the street

Back elevation from the crevice gardens

Crevice gardens close-up

House for a Sound Collector: Development model

HOUSE FOR A SOUND COLLECTOR Warneford Meadow, Oxford

Warneford Meadow is an overgrown and forgotten public meadow set behind a large residential area and adjacent to one of the many large hospital complexes in Oxford.

The brief was to design an ‘Oratory’ for an Orator to live and work in. I chose to design a dwelling, studio and display space for a visiting ‘Sound Collector’. This could be an artist, writer or creative who would travel to collect sounds and then bring them back to their studio in the meadow. They would then produce installations, works or art to be seen or heard in the meadow and would remain there even after a new ‘Sound Collector’ as taken residency. The meadow becomes an ever-changing ‘sculpture park’ of sound.

The building was designed to exist in harmony with the meadow and be low impact on the surrounding landscape. It is like a musical box with openings to release sound into the environment.

Collecting sounds from the meadow

Development model

Front elevation

1:1 Story Telling Chair: Group work

Section through the Sound Collector’s House

Pallant House Gallery

DISSERTATION EXTRACT ‘A Question of Craft’ During my study of Architecture at university I became very interested in the relationship between ‘making’ and ‘thinking’ and how this is shown in the changes in the relationship between Architect and the Craftsman over time. I began to research this somewhat expansive topic for my third year dissertation.

In my dissertation I analysed Pallant House, a Modern Art Gallery in my home town of Chichester. I found this building interesting as in 2006 Colin StJohn Wilson along with Long & Kentish Architects designed a modern extension to the original Queen Anne town house built in 1712. I used this building as a lens through which to explore the changes in the roles of the Architect and the Craftsman by comparing the design, construction and materials of new extension and the original house.

An extract from one of the chapters in my dissertation is included in the following pages, along with some of the sketches of the gallery that illustrated my text.

E XT RA CT Chapter 3: Material contradictions Paramount to an understanding of craftsmanship is the relationship between the craftsman, his tools and the material that he works. This chapter looks at the extensive use of brick in the construction of the eighteenth century Pallant House and its twenty-first century extension. A discussion of the associations and contradictions in the use of this seemingly simple material serves as a vehicle through which to explore issues of labour, embodied knowledge and the relationship of the architect to the craftsman. ....

The connotations of this seemingly simple material are not straightforward, as there exists a fundamental paradox between the hands of the craftsman and their relationship to the brick itself. The classification of the craftsman in this instance is unclear – is it Wilson the ‘thinking’ architect who chooses and specifies the materials use? Or should it be the brick-layer who handles each module and makes the wall brick by brick? In reality there is no physical interaction between the architect’s hands and the brick itself; yet the limited role of the builder in the modern building industry combined with the mechanisation of material production can detach this character from the intimacies crucial to a craftsman’s relationship with a material. This can

also mean that the associations placed on a particular material do not correspond to the realities of its production or construction. For instance: the brick can represent the values of Craftsmanship, ideas about the handmade and the direct engagement of the bricklayer at the human scale. Conversely, it is also an infinitely reproducible product that can speak of industrialisation and conversely represent the loss of human engagement in its production process and the wider act of building and ‘making’.

When brick production first began to be mechanised and mass produced it discarded the difficult and skilled craft of hand-making on site. With it went the control of the mason over his project and the individualism of each brick, creating cheap and uniform bricks, made rapidly, but ultimately detached from the hands of a human maker. With the bricks standardised and sterile, less skill is required in the role of the bricklayer. His main work had been degraded by automation to revolve around the speed by which he can build with these alien bricks delivered on site – without requiring the flexibility, control and on-the-spot skills that the eighteenth century bricklayer would have exercised. It could be suggested that industrialisation has trapped the builder in his work, with his actions forced to resemble a machines – driven by the priorities of speed and efficiency over his own specialised skills and tacit material knowledge. This depersonalisation of the ‘making’ process is discussed by Sennett, who warns that eliminating the procedure of learning and developing skill through hands-on experience impairs “conceptual human powers” (2008, p.39) and is detrimental to the continuing development of the craft in anything other than speed.

The limitations in the new role of the modern bricklayer is reminiscent to the confinements of Arendt’s (1998) distinction between the labour of the hands and the labour of the head - which she discusses further through an exploration of animal laborans and homo faber. The act of labouring as animal laborans constitutes being “enslaved by necessity” (1998, p83), always focusing on the work itself and never reaching a resolution as the efforts of the process are quickly consumed for the continuation of life itself. Similarly the brick layer never has the satisfaction of completing a building; but is instead forced to fulfil his prescribed task and then start again on the next project in order to make his living. In contrast, the creation of a final and finished product is central to the role of the architect – this characteristic immediately differentiating him from, the blind maker, animal laborans to be more comparable to the state of homo faber (Sennett, 2008).

It is vital, in order for a design to finally be realised, that the architect make few compromises that would stray from the ‘architectural intent’ of the project (McVicar, 2012). This involves compiling a rigorous specification where “precise instructions are imperative” (Caruso St John in MacVicar, 2010, p.219). These instructions are based around the ‘architectural intentions’ of the project which are made up of ‘conceptual, ideological, historical and technological intentions’ going beyond the absolute necessity of the project brief. Like the categorisation of homo faber – the architect questions ‘why?’ something is designed exploring the reasons behind decisions and assessing alternative options. In contrast, animal laborans is obsessed with asking “how?” and like the bricklayer who rarely has the opportunity to never see beyond the act of bricklaying itself to consider the wider implications concerned with the use, meaning or purpose of the actions.

The role of the architect has been progressively elevated from a hands-on ‘maker’ to a ‘formgiver and ‘creator’ through the incorporation of intellectual pursuits such as science and oratory (Lloyd-Thomas, p.4). The separation of the manual act of building and the intellectualisation of

the architect is an issue identified by members of the profession themselves, David Chipperfield for instance recognises that “we are detached …from the very act of making”. He describes how the architect is left to “indicate and give instruction” (1994, p. 31); but is ultimately reliant on an “army of surrogate hands” (Pallasmaa) to physically realise their graphically represented designs. For the architect to directly influence the built product he must control and oversee in the manner of the architect Lewerentz towards the metal-worker on one of his building projects. Wilson explains how, in order to achieve the exact result he desired, Lewerentz stayed and watched the craftsman work instructing “all I know is that you are not going to do it the way you normally do” (Wilson, 1992, p. 111). This severance of the two roles leaves little freedom for the maker on site to divert, change or even think for themselves beyond the practicalities of fulfilling the task.

It can be argued that far from elevating and freeing the architect, whilst trapping and degrading the builder – the separation of the combined role of simultaneous ‘thinking’ and ‘making’ is fundamentally detrimental to both realms. Sennett (2008) clearly differentiates his views on Craftsmanship and the distinction between ‘making’ and ‘thinking’ from Arendt (once his tutor).

For him, Arendt’s views on the maker in terms of animal laborans and homo faber seem false, too restrictive and not demonstrative of the realities of making – for how can we say that the practical man is incapable of thought? Central to Sennett’s stance is that the mind does not only begin to engage after labour has finished, but that thinking and making are integrated and inseparable from the concept of “thinking and feeling whilst making” (2008, p.7).This is supported by the woodcarver Esterley who states ““You invent whilst you make…you think with your hands. The carving thinks with your hands” (2012, p138). Sennett (2008) advocates that the dialogue between the thinking and making does not have to occur between multiple people but can instead be embodied between the craftsman himself and his materials and techniques.

Esterley documents this embodied dialogue of the craftsman through the act of woodcarving “you enter into the private life of the wood and sense its grain structure” (2012, p138). Esterley admires the skill of Grinling Gibbons and argues that his skill was due to “the hand that holds the pencil has held a chisel” (2012, p.113), implying that he achieved great work due to his skills as a designer working in conjunction with his skills as a carver excelling in both the realms of ‘making’ and ‘thinking’.

Chichester Cathedral, Mixed Media

THE END M A NY T H A N K S