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SCI-ARC WALK AROUND UNDERGRADUATE THESIS Peter Cook
1. Undergraduate Thesis Review Robert Gilson presents Quarentena to jurors. 2. Elana Pappoff Wither and Wield… a technological fairytale… Advisor: Devyn Weiser Special Advisor: Peter Cook Robert Gilson Quarentena Advisor: Devyn Weiser 3. Leigh Jester The Labyrinth and the Sectional Object Advisor: Andrew Zago Jaitip Srisomburanananont The Meat Locker: A Narrative of Irreconcilable Figures Advisor: Florencia Pita 4. Joanna-Maria Helinurm Crystal Parasol Constructions of Mind into Architecture Advisor: Michael Rotondi Special Advisor: Eric Owen Moss Phillip Ramirez Interval Space Advisor: Herwig Baumgartner Michael Young A Home Within A Home Advisor: Hernan Diaz Alonso Naureen Meyer The Cosmetic Limit Advisor: Andrew Zago 5. Graduate Thesis Review Yu-Shan Wu presents Sectional Figures to Thom Mayne and Elena Manferdini.
Sir Peter Cook Sir Peter Cook has been a SCI-Arc visiting faculty member since 1979. He is a founder of Archigram and former Director of the Institute for Contemporary Arts and the Bartlett School of Architecture in London. His enduring relationship with the school has included lecturers and visits with students from the Architectural Association, the Staedelschule School in Frankfurt and the Bartlett. In 2009, Cook curated the London Eight exhibition in the SCI-Arc Library Gallery. Last year, his inspiring graduation commencement speech was elusively titled, Let’s Fly—It’s Architecture.
Johanna-Maria Helinurm’s project is really fascinating. I eavesdropped the last few minutes of the discussion and was surprised by how ‘crabby’ everybody was being. It’s a really fantastic project— and not easy to do. Earlier Thom (Mayne) whispered to me “Hey, that one in the corner, that’s a real ‘Bartlett’ project, isn’t it?” So maybe it suits my taste—his wasn’t a loose remark. I like its fullness of fine detail. It can, in a curious way, be compared with the Ramirez project—with the stacked-up theatres—that was praised with enthusiasm. But if you praise that one to the hills then you should praise this one to the hills? No? I’ve been struck many times in these last three days by what I would call ‘culture’ issues. If the kids on both sides of the Atlantic are using the same tools, reading the same blogs and books, there are cultural differences that are more noticeable. Let’s just, for the moment, say that there is a certain irritation on the part of Americans with intricacy, even a distaste for it. There was a project for a building on an avenue in São Paulo which everybody else on the jury really liked by the ‘Americanised’ Brazilian, especially its ‘money-shot.’ I found it a-la-mode and terribly bland. So I suspect American psychology is very comfortable with the reassurance of blandness. There is bland architecture and bland spiel. Which is far worse. It came out in bundles from the so-called Power to the People contraption by Belson and Cuadra. Loads of advertising-like rhetoric and a silly twisted armature that wasn’t even pretty. Yet miraculously (strangely) it was put in the end-of-day ‘prime-time’ slot with an all-star jury. Now what are we to deduce from that? Then there was nervousness about narrative—which I really do not share. Narrative, in the last thirty years, has led to some very interesting Thesis propositions, or their equivalent. Resistance to narrative, probably, has to do with its implicit passing of Doctrine. Many teachers, including some of the best, are secretly fearful of interference with their Doctrine. Myself, I’m fascinated by other peoples’ value-systems or observances. It extends me and helps me sharpen my own value systems. Undoubtedly one of the best Theses this year, Elana Pappoff, stuck to her guns, stuck to her narrative and produced a real Thesis procedure. The drawings were intricate, but clear, and intelligently complemented by an animation video. The fact that this was not digitally produced, but fashioned out of a plasticine material, rendered it more pungent than a slick run of animation. This seemed to unnerve Hernan (Diaz Alonso)—who has set his mind on the invincibility of the digital procedure. On the other hand, Neil Denari—who remains one of my favourite calm and objective critics, kept calling us back to the fact that the clue of sensitivity and response lay directly in the model. Such critics as these (and several others during the day) are gold dust. Seriously creative talents who can inspire students and articulate, without posture, come thicker on the ground at SCIArc juries than anywhere else right now. I was amused to hear the sound of the guitar wafting across the room (Adrian Ariosa, Experimental Dissonance Amplifier 009: Vienna Music Performance Laboratory): certainly extending the language of architecture! Another real ‘original’ was Peter Welsh with his baseball hall of fame in a small Eastern town. He irritated the hell out of some of the critics, but I feel he was better than they were making out. He was politically incorrect in that he was a PERSONALITY, very macho, very clear and very enthusiastic. Amongst some academic critics there’s a reaction to his clarity and that he says, “Great. This is what I’m doing and I’m enjoying it.” Surely one should be flexible in the discussion of projects. I’m always interested in the story about the student or the personality behind the motivation. Like Gilson with his amazing graphic ability and his weird scenario of putting people who are wicked with the environment into kind of ‘spherical prison cells.’ He’s from Northern California, so the environment and the valley condition is very normal to him. Northern and Southern California are also
Peter Cook
culturally loaded: Elana is proud of being from Orange County, so in the same small room you have Northern and Southern California. I like people who use their cultural confidence in a positive way. Johanna-Maria comes from Estonia and it makes her competitive in a certain way. It’s also Estonia via the class of Greg Lynn (at the University of Applied Arts in Vienna). Yet it’s not a Greg Lynn type of project. A piece of well-developed design by Christine Forster who had been a seamstress in Berlin, From Fold To Furrow, led to a serious and enjoyable discussion of approach, system, parts and maneuvers— prompted by a student who really knew about folding. It helps to have met all these people twice before and watched the development of the projects—leaving one somewhat critical of the coercion that seems to prevail—towards producing the big-board ‘money shot’ panel. In her case, this was quite unnecessary and forced. At the Bartlett, the AA, in Australia (and many American schools) the Asians come and try picking the nuances of ‘the game’. Like Li Wang from Shanghai who made a semi-conceptual ‘street’ project for Shanghai. At the final stage, a potentially interesting idea from the middle stage was dropped in favour of a Sejima-like building. Chickening-out for something that was more orthodox: I guess because she’s nervous to return home with something ‘weirdo’: she needs a job, she needs recognition from her (local) peers and that’s a definite factor. I think this affects graduate schools even more. Some Asians are very adept at capturing a cultural brick, but few are able to throw it back. It makes the more sophisticated or oblique layers of teaching and criticism unavailable. We have to avoid setting them up, yet we should not fall into the trap of simply giving them formulae. As many ask me how to do ‘Bartlett Style’ as you have people wanting to do ‘SCI-Arc Architecture.’ It’s particularly difficult in a good school—but all too disarmingly easy in a crap school. Don’t give up—and anyway, any minute they’re going to breed their own good schools, their own architecture, their own devious and wonderful value-systems and architecture: their culture is ready to surprise us.