UD
MArch Urban Design 2014-2015
The Bartlett School of Architecture UCL
UD
MArch Urban Design 2014-2015
Image: Urban Morphogenesis Lab field trip to UAE
Contents
6 Introduction FrĂŠdĂŠric Migayrou, Bob Sheil 10 MArch Urban Design Adrian Lahoud 12 City and Urban Infrastructures Lab Adrian Lahoud
The Bartlett School of Architecture 2015
14 City and Urban Infrastructures Lab RC11 The City, The Territory, The Planetary Sam Jacoby, Adrian Lahoud 30 City and Urban Infrastructures Lab RC14 Bodies/Landscapes/Commodities: On Tourism and War Platon Issaias, Camila Sotomayor 46 City and Urban Infrastructures Lab RC15 Axiomatic Earth Godofredo Pereira, Samaneh Moafi 62 Urban Morphogenesis Lab Claudia Pasquero with Zachary Fluker, Enriqueta Llabres, Maj Plemenitas, 94 98 100 102 104 105 106
Staff Biographies Staff and Consultants Bartlett Lectures 175 Anniversary New Programmes Bartlett Short Courses Bartlett School of Architecture Publications
3
Image: B-Pro Show 2014, City and Urban Infrastructures Lab
Introduction
The Bartlett School of Architecture 2015
Professor Frédéric Migayrou Chair, Bartlett Professor of Architecture Director of B-Pro For three years, B-Pro, Bartlett Prospective, has been organised as a global postgraduate entity within The Bartlett School of Architecture comprising two advanced courses: the MArch Architectural Design (AD), led by Alisa Andrasek, providing access to the most sophisticated research in design and fabrication; and the MArch Urban Design (UD), led by Adrian Lahoud, opening critical and theoretical strategies in urbanism and offering new approaches to creating cities. The one-year B-Pro programmes welcome a diverse international student cohort and offer highly structured access to the realisation and application of research, and to the production of new schemes of conception and construction in architecture and urbanism. B-Pro has developed numerous lectures, seminars and workshops to underpin these ideas and promote a broad dialogue. In 2015 the B-Pro programmes were divided into a series of Labs driven by their respective academic leaders, offering students the opportunity to choose a field of enquiry. Each Lab follows a unique approach with regular inter-lab debate, creative exchange, and vibrant discussion. The Labs are seen as a suite of distinct research entities that set new research agendas in their respective fields. In AD, the Labs are Wonderlab, led by Alisa Andrasek, BiotA Lab, led by Professor Marcos Cruz and Richard Beckett, and Interactive Architecture Lab, led by Ruairi Glynn. Within this, Research Clusters pursued specific research in a number of domains, and offered the opportunity to gain access to new computational tools and a new culture of scripting, directly connected to tools of fabrication. Inspired by, and directly related to, the current scene of international architecture creation, the teaching of supercomputing and software packages such as Maya, Grasshopper, Arduino, Processing and 6
other generative platforms, comes from the perspective of an innovative idea of conception and fabrication in association with new digital production facilities (robots, SLS printing, advanced CNC tools etc). MArch UD is organised around two Labs, City and Urban Infrastructures Lab, led by Adrian Lahoud, and Urban Morphogenesis Lab, led by Claudia Pasquero. Based on a global overview of the Mediterranean context, the City and Urban Infrastructures Lab offered new theoretical schemes to analyse this complex social, cultural, economical and political territory. Alternative proposals based on new morphological concepts and protocols were developed in response to urban field studies. The Urban Morphogenesis Lab engaged urban design as a computational practice to prefigure alternative models of the city represented as a complex dynamic system. The ambition of the Lab is to stimulate a transdisciplinary discourse that reaches wider academic research networks as well as scientific organisations involved in the study of the city as a living system, and in the development of future bio-digital technologies. The Bartlett International Lecture Series – with numerous speakers, architects, historians and theoreticians, supported by the Fletcher Priest Trust – presented the opportunity for students to encounter the main streams of research that will be influential in the near future. Alongside their cutting-edge research, UD and AD organised numerous seminars, theoretical workshops and public events The school’s production facilities are enhanced by B-Made, a multidisciplinary centre that strives to foster the next generation of thinkers, designers and makers. Students’ work evolved through different crit sessions and the B-Pro Show in the new temporary location of Hampstead Road, with the presentation of drawings, models and animations, all of a very high quality, which clearly demonstrate the intense activity undertaken throughout the year.
Professor Bob Sheil Director of The Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL 2014-15 has witnessed and delivered another significant progression in the evolution of our MArch Architectural Design and MArch Urban Design Programmes, that fit within the organisational structure of B-Pro (Bartlett Prospective). By introducing our new substructure of Labs, the relationship between research, education and enterprise is fundamentally addressed and placed in the foreground of the School’s everyday activity. Each Lab is now provided with the platform to develop their own unique bias and profile, whilst offering the opportunity of linkage across the School through other complementary programmes and groups. This signifies a profound shift in the way that education will be approached in the decade ahead, where more nimble, agile and inventive approaches are allowed breathing space to experiment and test the status quo. With new premises and programmes ahead, The Bartlett School of Architecture is embarking on its greatest transformation in forty years. Our short time in Hampstead Road will be seen in the near future as an historic gear shift in the operations of this renowned institution. My congratulations to all staff and students associated with the work on display in this volume; it has been an inspiring year and a significant one to build on.
7
The Bartlett School of Architecture 2015
Through the federative idea of creative architecture, B-Pro is an opportunity for students to find a way to participate in a new community and to affirm the originality of individual talents. These programmes are not only an open door to advanced architecture but also the base from which each student can define a singular practice and invent a strategy to find a position in the professional world. Looking ahead, 2015-16 will mark a significant year in the School’s history. It will be our last year in refitted temporary premises at 140 Hampstead Road while UCL invests over £40m in extending and refurbishing our Bloomsbury home at 22 Gordon Street. Along with UCL Engineering, we will also be expanding into premises at Here East on the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park in early 2016. 10-metre-high studio spaces will be used to undertake groundbreaking research in areas including design, infrastructure, transport, robotics, manufacturing and environmental measurement. B-Pro is now housed alongside the School’s professional programmes, presenting greater opportunities for collaborative working. B-Pro is currently developing links with The Bartlett’s MArch Architectural History Programme and the new MRes programme in Architecture and Digital Theory to extend the field of research between each area. Finally, in 2016, it will be 175 years since architectural education began at UCL, following the appointment of Thomas Leverton Donaldson as UCL’s first Professor of Architecture in 1841. We will be planning and announcing a series of celebrations soon, not least the opening of our new buildings on Gordon Street and in East London. The 2015 B-Pro exhibition and the publication of this book provide an excellent overview of the depth of quality and the intensity of the teaching of The Bartlett’s tutors. What they also showcase is the passion of all the students involved.
Image: Urban Morphogenesis Lab field trip to UAE
MArch Urban Design Programme Leader: Dr Adrian Lahoud
The Bartlett School of Architecture 2015
The MArch Urban Design (UD) is a 12-month studio-based programme that brings together a new generation of designers and thinkers from across the world. It provides a rich and challenging environment for long-term research on the challenges of global urbanisation and the creative potential of speculative design. Urban design is a particular form of enquiry into the nature of the city, its form and function. It seeks to understand the city as a place of human coexistence and to devise strategies and projects to guide its future development and evolution. Throughout the UD course, students are encouraged to innovate and explore new ideas in design and theory. They are introduced to design skills and techniques, critical enquiry and related technologies. They use this experience to shape polemic interventions, and through the design portfolio and thesis, develop speculative projects on a variety of scales. Students are encouraged to explore and understand their host city whilst in residence, a city that arguably is one of the richest and most diverse in the world. This is first and foremost a design-led course that culminates in a major project and thesis, where cities and regions are usually chosen as the basis for study. The year is underpinned by a lecture series in the history and theory of urban design, and a high proportion of time is devoted to studio-based design enquiry, supported through tutorials from designers and experts in associated fields such as computing, drawing, and making. The curriculum introduces students to diverse fields such as archaeology, anthropology, design theory, ecological history, advanced computing, governance, law, media, philosophy, planning and political theory. Environmental and ecological questions are given high priority within a critical structure that embraces the dispersed, often paradoxical nature of contemporary urbanism, and the challenge in resolving complex issues facing populations, public space, land use, and building typologies through innovative design strategies. 10
The MArch UD programme sits alongside the Architectural Design (AD) programme within the overarching structure of B-Pro, led by Professor Frédéric Migayrou, Chair of the School of Architecture. In addition to dedicated teaching and support, both programmes are supported by complementary resources such as open lectures, classes, project reviews, and publications. Students participate in a joint exhibition in early September each year. This year the course was divided into two Labs, offering students the opportunity to choose a distinct field of enquiry: Students work within one of two focused Labs: City and Urban Infrastructures Lab Led by Adrian Lahoud Urban Morphogenesis Lab Led by Claudia Pasquero Each Lab follows a unique approach with regular inter-lab debate, creative exchange, and vibrant discussion.
Image: B-Pro Show 2014
City and Urban Infrastructures Lab Adrian Lahoud
The Bartlett School of Architecture 2015
In September 2014 the City and Urban Infrastructures Lab embarked on the final year of an ambitious three-year project of design research titled ‘The Mediterranean Project’. Over three years, a total of 15 year-long design studios, comprising over 200 students and numerous teachers, architects and researchers dedicated themselves to the question of how to use design as an instrument of social and political transformation. Only a year before, in 2011, the Mediterranean nations seemed on the verge of new and unexpected possibilities. From Tunisia, a revolutionary moment of popular expression spread to the squares of Egypt. Old passions were revived and injected with new languages and tactics. By the conclusion of the project in 2015, this nascent promise has seemed to wane. The number of people trying to cross the Mediterranean at enormous risk to their lives has reached unprecedented proportions. A violent resurgence of counter-revolutions and conflict has followed the outbursts of popular sovereignty. Yet, despite the pervading sense of malaise, in cities like Aleppo, Amman, Beirut, Cairo, Istanbul, Gaza, Tunis, Athens and Madrid, there are the most astonishing signs of survival, resistance and invention to be found. Around the Mediterranean, attempts to build a different kind of life still flicker like lights against the night sky. From new coalitions on human rights in Lebanon, to proposals for democratic federalism in South Eastern Anatolia and autonomous neighborhood assemblies in beleaguered Syrian cities; from demands for the right to the city in Spain, to the rise of social movements in southern Europe, we see vital attempts to experiment with social ties, political organisation and new kinds of institutions. This project proposes the following answer: when the regimes are brought down, and after the people have expressed their demands, the revolution will survive in the design of the city, in the arrangements of rooms, its public spaces and its organisation of infrastructure – that is to 12
say, in the very materiality of the design project. In the new habits of life its elements call into existence, the legacy of social transformation is kept alive. Through developing experimental morphologies for settlements in areas of future desertification, through building typologies that mediate earthquake risk and land expropriation, to new territorial organisations that bring together agricultural productivity and tourism, urban design has been deployed as a tool to help liberate latent potentials for new social organisation.
Image: Petra, Jordan. Photo by Evdokia Spyropoulou
RC11
City and Urban Infrastructures Lab The City, The Territory, The Planetary Sam Jacoby, Adrian Lahoud
Students Nasser Alemadi, Yuting Chen, Ni Ding, Yan Geng, Stella Habipi, Wei Li, Zhongge Lin, Liting Lu, Akarachai Padlom, Eleftherios Sergios, Jana Shamseddine, Evdokia Spyropoulou, Yiwen Xu, Yulun Zheng, Hang Zou
The Bartlett School of Architecture 2015
Project teams Faith Estates Nasser Alemadi, Akarachai Padlom, Eleftherios Sergios States in a City Stella Habipi, Jana Shamseddine, Evdokia Spyropoulou, Yulun Zheng Fifty Cities of Suez Hang Zou, Wei Li, Yan Geng, Yiwen Xu Non-State Paradigm Yuting Chen, Ni Ding, Zhongge Lin, Liting Lu Foster + Partners Urban Design bursary recipient Eleftherios Sergios Teaching Assistant Lara Yegenoglu Thanks to our consultants and critics Pier Vittorio Aureli, Carlo Castelli, Eray Çayli, Jonathan Hill, Marina Otero, Peg Rawes, Jonathan Rose, Francisco Sanin, Martino Tattara, Eyal Weizman
14
Research Cluster 11’s brief is a philosophical polemic about scale: ‘In the war against contradiction, consistency is the secret affinity that ties all to all. To be against consistency is to be against reason itself, to deny coherence perhaps even logic. The principle of non-contradiction is a “first principle”, perhaps the first principle – a fundamental philosophical axiomatic on which all rationality must rest. If we can’t distinguish a man from a jaguar we have no basis for reasoned discussion, or so the argument goes. Though this first principle assumes a domain of relevance that is universal in its scope, not all societies partition the world in the same way. Different cosmologies make their own ontological distinctions, distinctions that are no less operative within their own contexts, no less useful at sense making or organising social relations than the belief systems that underlie and animate the various societies of the West. ‘Because contradiction is grounded in the supposed same recognition of difference, and this recognition is not universal, contradiction is immanent to a specific domain. The assumption that every social group valorises the same aspects of the world in the same way assumes a planet that is unified and consistent in its cognitive and epistemological structures. At its outset, moving beyond the principle of non-contradiction means moving beyond a universalist concept of reason, acknowledging a multiplicity of rationalities and according to them a limited horizon of action – that is to say, a scale. The multi-perspectival character of these various forms of knowledge production do not resolve to form a single picture – let alone a dialectical unity of opposites – let alone a globe. There is no single map upon which each point can finally be plotted, each blank space filled. Difference pertains, and it pertains in such a way as to prevent making one thing the measure of all others.’ The brief consciously avoids specifying site or theme in order to encourage students to cultivate their own autonomy in the formulation of a complex large-scale design problem in which conflicts across different scales must be negotiated. The projects of 2014-15 are exemplary in this regard, demonstrating a series of brave interventions in difficult situations based on a profound and deep understanding of context. In ambitious and in modest ways, every project attempts to reimagine the possibility of life and how it might be led for a diverse range of constituencies.
Amman
City and Urban Infrastructures Lab Research Cluster 11
Jericho
Jerusalem
Madaba
Bethlehem
The Bartlett School of Architecture 2015
Hebron
Asphalt Sea
1.0
15
City and Urban Infrastructures Lab Research Cluster 11
1.1 The Bartlett School of Architecture 2015
1.2 Figs. 1.0 – 1.4 Faith Estates ‘Re-inventing tourism around the Dead Sea’. The excavation and mobilisation of religious remains forms a powerful weapon in territorial disputes. This project imagines a new form of mass religious tourism around the Dead Sea in the context of its existing territorial and ideological conflicts. The idea of a ‘Holy Land’ is taken literally. Everything might be a sacred ground, a relic in waiting, needing only to be excavated, exhibited, and circulated to animate desires and their attendant political claims. In a ‘Faith Estate’ the sacred and the profane are symbiotic (or maybe territorial expansion is just what religion does best), a faith estate describes the way that real estate markets animate religious sentiment, and especially the way that tourists and the pilgrims can be unwittingly appropriated within a larger political territorial 16
project. Fig. 1.0 Geopolitical Map and pilgrimage routes across the Dead Sea, created from GIS datasets. This project proposes a new set of pilgrimage routes starting at Machaerus in Jordan where they begin to follow the steep valleys down towards the shore of the Dead Sea. From here they connect to the opposite shore of the Dead Sea on the West Bank in Occupied Palestine. Each site along the new pilgrimage route strategically recombines a political pedagogical project organised around the excavation of holy sites with mass tourist resorts based on leisure activities. Fig. 1.1. Aerial view of new pilgrimage route from Machaerus to the Dead Sea. Each station on the route is marked by a v-shaped excavation forming a void oriented toward a view of Machaerus or Jerusalem. The excavation is understood as a fundamental
City and Urban Infrastructures Lab Research Cluster 11
1.3 The Bartlett School of Architecture 2015
1.4 in the liberation of the Holy Land and its animation within Christian ritual. Fig. 1.2. Dead Sea Resort view from the shoreline. Each station in the pilgrimage route establishes a relation between the religious communities meant to oversee the ‘sacred’ character of the site, lend it authenticity, and simultaneously host temporary visitors in the form of mass tourism. Fig. 1.3. Machaerus Resort view from hotel room. Each room within the v-shaped excavation is oriented toward Machaerus. Rooms are inspired by monastic dormitories. Fig. 1.4. Machaerus Resort view from ground floor toward sacred site.
17
City and Urban Infrastructures Lab Research Cluster 11
The Bartlett School of Architecture 2015
1.5
18
City and Urban Infrastructures Lab Research Cluster 11
The Bartlett School of Architecture 2015
19
City and Urban Infrastructures Lab Research Cluster 11 The Bartlett School of Architecture 2015
1.6 Figs. 1.5 – 1.8 States in a City ‘Addressing a post-war reconstruction strategy in Aleppo, Syria’. This project explores the problem of post-war reconstruction by proposing a new model using the city of Aleppo as a case study. The project challenges the typical distinctions between conflict and non-conflict as they apply to the pre-war, war, and post-war conditions. It argues that the post-war condition both inherits and continues conflicts whose origin can be found in the pre-war and war periods. In doing so, we propose that war is both a pretext for urban transformation, while urban transformation is often a continuation of the aims of war, albeit by different means. We claim that existing models of post-war reconstruction are under-theorised and now follow similar formulas, dominated by large-scale, extra state, 20
private real estate interests typically leading to a widespread, violent expropriation of land. We aim to ascertain whether an alternative set of priorities and structures can become effective within the post-war condition, without relying on the presumption of a unified Syrian state, or a single entity supplying the necessary foreign capital. The proposal begins with a nascent scale of governance that has emerged during the Syrian civil war, the neighbourhood assembly. A new development model is proposed whereby areas of dense land ownership are prioritised if they exist next to undeveloped parcels. This allows for a non-violent expropriation of land and the granting of additional development rights to fund reconstruction.
rkey
d Tu
te
ly
pp
Rou
war
To
City and Urban Infrastructures Lab Research Cluster 11
Towa rd
Sheikh Na
rkey
jar Ind
d Tu war To
ustria
l Cit
y
Su
Toward Turke
y
Aleppo - Raqqa Road
Aleppo
- Idlib Road
ad
nal
Ro
io
at
sN
cu
as
o-
p lep
Dam
A
war
To
Legend Aleppo Legal Housing Aleppo Illegal Housing - Poverty Belt
Old Road
1.7
Rou
Aleppo - Hamah
rkey
d Tu
te
ly
pp
Su
Main Public Use Existing Pre-War Voids Road Network Railway Network Kueik River
Scale 1:20,000
Pre-War Condition, Aleppo
250m
500m
1000m
jar Ind
ilw ay
Line
ikh Na
rkey
d Tu war To
ustria
l Cit
y
0
Ra
Pr op
os
Towa
rd She
ed
Toward Turke
y
The Bartlett School of Architecture 2015
EXISTING VOIDS
2000m
Aleppo - Raqqa Road
Aleppo
- Idlib Road
ad
nal
Ro
io
at
sN
cu
as
o-
pp
Ale
Dam
Legend Development Under Education Category
Aleppo - Hamah
Development Under Industrial Category Flexible developments Category Existing Pre-War Voids Proposed Railway Line
Old Road
Road Network Railway Network Kueik River
1.8 Development Strategy
Post- War Proposal, Aleppo Fig. 1.5 Geopolitical map indicating existing water and takes an alternative view, recommending smaller centres of hydrocarbon infrastructure. Fig. 1.6 Geopolitical map productivity at the scale of the neighbourhood that can take indicating extent of front lines between Syrian Regime, advantage of existing infrastructure. Free Syrian Army, Daesh, Jabhat al-Nusra in late 2014. Fig. 1.7 Analysis of existing voids, areas of destruction and ownership density in Aleppo. A comparison of post-war development models in Beirut, Kabul, Rotterdam and Sarajevo demonstrates a continual failure to establish a broader range of priorities in the reconstruction process. With the exception of Warsaw, reconstruction processes focus on the most valuable parts of the city, for example areas of historical significance that can play a role in generating future tourist revenue. Fig. 1.8 Proposed strategic plan for reconstruction indicating neighborhoods and consolidated land parcels. This proposal Scale 1:20,000
0
250m
500m
1000m
21
2000m
City and Urban Infrastructures Lab Research Cluster 11
The Bartlett School of Architecture 2015
1.9
22
City and Urban Infrastructures Lab Research Cluster 11
The Bartlett School of Architecture 2015
23
City and Urban Infrastructures Lab Research Cluster 11
The Bartlett School of Architecture 2015
1.10
24
City and Urban Infrastructures Lab Research Cluster 11 The Bartlett School of Architecture 2015
1.11 Figs. 1.9 – 1.11 Fifty Cities of Suez This project is a response to a recent plan by the Egyptian government to construct a city for seven million people between Cairo and the Suez Canal, which repeats a now conventional image of the city in which architecture is reduced to producing spectacular images to raise foreign capital. In opposition to this, we propose a new urban model that sets out to disaggregate the proposed population into fifty new cities that re-territorialise the canal infrastructure, turning it into a new Nile. The cities explore a new development control organised around the section in which the building envelope is understood as a means of ‘exterior conditioning’ – something able to control the ambient climate of public spaces. Fig. 1.9 Geopolitical map indicating existing soil and water conditions as well as new hydrological
infrastructure in the Suez area. Fig. 1.10 Proposed Territorial masterplan indicating the new network of cities and sub-centres. Fig. 1.11 Proposed city masterplan indicating interpenetration of various agricultural systems and the system of lines that are used to regulate the sectional characteristics of building envelopes.
25
City and Urban Infrastructures Lab Research Cluster 11
The Bartlett School of Architecture 2015
1.12
26
City and Urban Infrastructures Lab Research Cluster 11
The Bartlett School of Architecture 2015
27
City and Urban Infrastructures Lab Research Cluster 11 The Bartlett School of Architecture 2015
4 2
1
3
1.13 Figs. 1.12 – 1.14 Non-State Paradigm ‘Institutional houses in which the living environment is understood as Architecture for Diyarbakir’. Beginning with the aspiration for the primary vehicle of an alternative Kurdish modernisation. democratic confederation by the Kurdish people, the project 1. LaundryFig House1.12 Geopolitical map. Fig 1.13 Exploded axonometric and 2. Cooperative explores how architecture can be used to institutionalise the3. Tea House plan of new institutional type based on the Eyvan. Fig. 1.14 various communal spaces that currently exist either formally 4. Kiosk Masterplan showing new rail station, housing and cultural or informally within Diyarbakir. Democratic autonomy is built infrastructure. on grassroots participation, the idea of Kurdish identity is posed against processes of ‘Turkification’ – the use of environmental deprivation as a counter-insurgency tactic. Examples in include the use of TOKI (Toplu Konut Idaresi/ Housing Development Administration) and the transformation of regional hydrology through dams and relocation. It draws on the everyday experiences of collectivity within various socio-spatial encounters, such as the laundry and condolence 28
City and Urban Infrastructures Lab Research Cluster 11
The Bartlett School of Architecture 2015
0
1.14
60m
29
RC14
City and Urban Infrastructures Lab
Bodies/Landscapes/Commodities: On Tourism and War Platon Issaias, Camila Sotomayor Our special thanks to Professor Peter Bishop for his teaching this year. Students Patricio Escobar Contreras, Yongzhou Liang, Bingjie Liu, Rebecca Macklis, Nadia Mendez Guevara, Androulla Papadopoulou, Yuanyuan Qiu, Orn-Uma Sukhaboon, Aurelien Wasem, Dan Wu, Meng Yi Xu
The Bartlett School of Architecture 2015
Project teams Trojan Horse: Water pipe and refugee properties in Cyprus Nadia Mendez Guevara, Androulla Papadopoulou, Orn-Uma Sukhaboon Grids: Agriculture and tourism in Crete Yongzhou Liang, Bingjie Liu, Aurelien Wasem, Meng Yi Xu The Unbuilt as Infrastructure: Regulating sprawl in Thessaloniki Patricio Escobar Contreras, Rebecca Macklis Skeletons: Property, agriculture and rural development in Thessaloniki Yuanyuan Qiu, Dan Wu Thanks to our critics and consultants Pier Vittorio Aureli, Nick Axel, Jacob Burns, Eray Çayli, Chrysanthe Constantinou, Elias Constantopoulos, Maria S. Giudici, Dimitris Hatzopoulos, Jonathan Hill, Beth Hughes, Sam Jacoby, Hamed Khosravi, Adrian Lahoud, Anna Marangou, Samaneh Moafi, Prodromos Nikiforidis, Godofredo Pereira, Lorenzo Pezzani, Panayiota Pyla, João Prates Ruivo, Francisco Sanin, Davide Sacconi, Francesco Sebregondi, Douglas Spencer, Socrates Stratis, Eyal Weizman, Alexandra Yerolymbos
30
Research Cluster 14 starts with a provocation. In order to enter a project for the Mediterranean, we begin by embracing the violent truths that coagulate into the phenomena of ‘tourism’ and ‘war’, both contemporary forms of conquest. Our goal is to discuss and propose projects that could bring these two rather different activities, forms and practices of territorial expansion and colonisation together within the same plane. To do so, we understand their implications on multiple scales. Scales that reach from the geopolitical to systems of transnational or local jurisdictions, to the extraction and management of resources to that of urban administration, and to the scale of architecture that relates to that of the human body. Military conflicts, political violence, human displacement and movement occurring at an unprecedented rate define the Mediterranean and its coast together with a much larger territory that expands from the Balkans to Sudan and Mali and from the Canary Islands to the Gulf. Three types of ‘securitisation’ emerge simultaneously: from the immateriality of financial products to ‘moderate’ typologies of debt, to the scales of real estate speculation and privatisation based on previously secured mortgages, to Frontex and the military apparatus of EU and NATO that ‘guarantee’ all of the above. What emerges here is the control of the territory through various regimes of abstraction, where forms of power reconfigure conflict in different typologies of representation, legislation and warfare. At the same time, governments all over the Mediterranean, especially under the guidance of the IMF, are in the process of drastically revising the current legislation regarding coastal development. In various cases, this would not only allow for the unprecedented takeover of public land by the private sector, but, moreover for the profound transformation of the landscape and its social ecology. Our provocation is not how to design any typical tourist accommodation, but to enter into a series of problems regarding the territory, the urban and architecture from within this dialectical pair, tourism and warfare. Apart from the multi-scalar understanding of the different spatio-political apparatuses, this implies a different kind of thinking about how collectivity is formalised, how a given landscape could be used, against any conventional idea of ownership or profit. This possibly assumes an alternative way of living and shared understanding of life, the common and the necessary that could initiate a project where pleasure is accepted not as an individual practice but as the foundation of the collective.
City and Urban Infrastructures Lab Research Cluster 14
The Bartlett School of Architecture 2015
1.15
31
City and Urban Infrastructures Lab Research Cluster 14
1.16
1.17 The Bartlett School of Architecture 2015
1.18
1.19
Figs. 1.15 – 1.21 Trojan Horse: Water pipe and refugee properties in Cyprus Four projects about movement, resources and geopolitics. Fig. 1.15 Map of the southeast Mediterranean. Figs. 1.20 – 1.21 The project assumes that an economic cooperation will happen in Cyprus (exchanging water with oil) and a Fourth Territory will emerge. The project considers that the water pipeline will be used by Turkey as a tool of ‘contemporary colonisation’, a ‘Trojan Horse’ with interests beyond its simple economics. In that sense, the only way to secure the refugee land is to create a new institution that will take control of properties before the exchange begins. In this scenario, the Fourth Territory will be taken as a test ground for unification where refugees from both sites gain property rights through bi-communal settlements. The project attempts to
trigger a new imagination for the island, introducing an alternative way of living. It proposes a domestic unit that operates beyond the notion of private and public, challenging the main colonial consequences in terms of private ownership defined by a project of suburbanisation. An idea of proximity is manifested through a series of intersections at different scales, from the infrastructural line cutting across the demarcation line, to the way that a cross organises the courtyard system. The project takes as its tool the infrastructure to craft new territorial conditions where a decolonised system of living will be introduced, and in some way, to make the conflict productive.
32
City and Urban Infrastructures Lab Research Cluster 14
The Bartlett School of Architecture 2015
1.20
33
City and Urban Infrastructures Lab Research Cluster 14
The Bartlett School of Architecture 2015
1.21
34
City and Urban Infrastructures Lab Research Cluster 14
The Bartlett School of Architecture 2015
35
City and Urban Infrastructures Lab Research Cluster 14
1.22 14.8 The Bartlett School of Architecture 2015
1.23 Figs. 1.22 – 1.25 Skeletons: Property, agriculture and rural development in Thessaloniki The project tests a system of architectural structures and small-scale farming devices within a paradigmatic rural area in Thessaloniki, Greece. Proposing a circular infrastructural network, a new irrigation system and basic utilities to regularise property and facilitate agriculture and rural, low-income tourism in the area of Aggelohori. The premise of the proposal is to operate as a welfare project, a system that would allow small-scale farmers, unemployed locals, and migrants that live in the area to sustain the catastrophic effects of the current economic crisis that has a profound effect on housing construction and the property regime in Greece. 36
City and Urban Infrastructures Lab Research Cluster 14
1.24 14.10
The Bartlett School of Architecture 2015
1.25
37
City and Urban Infrastructures Lab Research Cluster 14
1.26
The Bartlett School of Architecture 2015
1.27
1.28 Figs. 1.26 – 1.29 The Unbuilt as Infrastructure: Regulating sprawl in Thessaloniki Figs. 1.26 – 1.28 Concept diagram, development model. Fig. 1.29 Territorial masterplan. This project is about property, specifically how property effects and constructs the peri-urban edge of the city. It proposes to deploy a regulatory system that operates with specific educational, industrial and domestic programmes. It constructs thus a device that negotiates activity and property along both the contemporary urban edge of Thessaloniki and along existing networks of infrastructure. We are interested not in stopping sprawl, but rather, how to handle the byproducts: the unformulated edges and the defunct spaces left behind. 1.29 38
City and Urban Infrastructures Lab Research Cluster 14
The Bartlett School of Architecture 2015
39
City and Urban Infrastructures Lab Research Cluster 14
The Bartlett School of Architecture 2015
1.30
40
City and Urban Infrastructures Lab Research Cluster 14
1.31
1.32 The Bartlett School of Architecture 2015
1.33 Figs. 1.30 – 1.33 The Unbuilt as Infrastructure: Regulating sprawl in Thessaloniki The project constitutes a criticism, a reaction to the existing model of urban expansion in Thessaloniki and Greece as a whole. Each iterated political regime and moment of crisis within the region has created a scar on the urban landscape, resulting in the current crisis: a fragmented yet rigid urban and peri-urban expanse. Thus, a new way to define the urban and peri-urban growth of the region is a contemporary necessity. The project engages with the city by systematically redefining the relationship between the elements of property, activity, and development in conflict. It aims to frame a space within which a new subjectivity could start to be formalised, a new method of inhabitation and production in the city. It constructs the city from the point
of view of its stakeholders, and the clusters of activity and property they promote. It also works with the relationship between networks of infrastructure and natural barriers while developing a strategy of rationing the landscape to control existing systems and structures. The project initiates an alternative strategy to intervene in the relationship between built, unbuilt, and industry to control the next phase of expansion in the region. Fig. 1.30 Matrix of spatial devices, from domestic to industrial and education facilities. Fig. 1.31 Interior courtyard of the educational cluster, perspective detail. Fig. 1.32 Plan, detail of the educational cluster. Fig. 1.33 Bird’s-eye view, lineal development.
41
City and Urban Infrastructures Lab Research Cluster 14
1.34
1.35 The Bartlett School of Architecture 2015
1.36
1.37
1.38
Figs. 1.34 – 1.38 Grids: Agriculture and tourism in Crete This project investigates the possibility of proposing different modes of collaboration between owners, workers and visitors, active in agriculture and tourism at different scales. The aim is not to resolve all conflicts between these two activities, but rather to explore how Crete could become a testing ground for a new form of collective life organised around subjects sharing a different understanding of what agriculture and tourism can be. A view that holds architectural space to be where bodies are rearranged beyond a traditional understanding of the notions of ownership and property. This vision is deployed across three different scales. It allows us to speculate upon alternative systems where tourism, agriculture and different modes of living could be collectivised, and how these systems
could be deployed in the Cretan landscape. The project develops an understanding of Crete through the dialectic between the seasonal patterns of production in relation to a set of permanent geological, topographical, or geographical conditions. The paradigmatic way the island operates aims to manipulate relations between elements and structures and recombine them within an architectural dimension. Here the architectural type is a design that allows local and visiting subjects to relate and interact in a much closer way, projecting themselves beyond the traditional social conventions perpetuated by the commodification of the two activities. Within each of their spheres, these two activities include bodies that facilitate the network of collaboration and resource redistribution. Here is an opportunity to frame the
42
City and Urban Infrastructures Lab Research Cluster 14 The Bartlett School of Architecture 2015
relationship between worker and visitor differently, in the hope that visitors would project themselves beyond a definition of tourists per se to become temporal actors of the social fabric of the island. The project envisages a possibility for local subjects to experience and perpetually revisit the island in a different way through this network of interaction. Ultimately this creates a system wherein visitors can access a condition that goes beyond the pure consumerism of the landscape and its resources, and locals can surpass the reality of their – at times undignified – position as ‘providers’. Settlements play a key role in the system, containing the facilities necessary to accommodate activities of local subjects and also hosting the visiting subjects. Figs. 1.34 – 1.37 Interior and exterior perspectives of the domestic units for locals and visitors.
Figs. 1.38 Model masterplan for a new settlement in the west of the city of Herakleion on the north coast of Crete.
43
City and Urban Infrastructures Lab Research Cluster 14 The Bartlett School of Architecture 2015
1.39 Figs. 1.39 – 1.40 Grids: Agriculture and Tourism in Crete Axonometric detail of model settlement in the west of the city of Herakleion. The core idea driving this design is the distinction between the fixed and unfixed elements of architecture that adapt to the seasonality of tourism and agriculture. The design starts with a basic domestic unit including a room and a balcony. By combining this unit in different ways, a variety of spaces, ranging in scales from a single-height stacked floor to a larger shared courtyard. In parallel, temporary elements such as stairs, corridors and pathways are added in order to adapt to the needs of both agricultural and touristic seasonal activities. This emphasises an idea of sharing infrastructure and resources. Temporary structures become important elements that intervene in reshaping the landscape through the various seasons. 44
Agricultural elements go beyond their production function and enter into cooperation with structural elements to create accessible spaces imbricated with circulation. Fig. 1.40 Territorial Map of the Herakleion-Kokkinos Corridor, created from GIS datasets. The territorial masterplan shows the development of the project in a series of different zones, environmental conditions and social ecologies.
City and Urban Infrastructures Lab Research Cluster 14
The Bartlett School of Architecture 2015
1.40
45
RC15
City and Urban Infrastructures Lab Axiomatic Earth
Godofredo Pereira, Samaneh Moafi
Students Prutha Chiddarwar, Luxi Deng, Kailun Fan, Shan He, Shucheng Huang, Yanti Jiang, Ziyang Jiang, Bingqian Liu, Longning Qi, Haochen Wang, Jian Wang, Xinqi Wang, Zeqing Wang, Zhiwen Wei, Qinhe Yi, Bolin Zhang
The Bartlett School of Architecture 2015
Project teams A Common Sun Kailun Fan, Yanti Jiang, Ziyang Jiang, Bolin Zhang Seismic Grounds Prutha Chiddarwar, Luxi Deng, Haochen Wang, Qinhe Yi Crude Line Shan He, Shucheng Huang, Xinqi Wang, Zeqing Wang The Grand Canal Bingqian Liu, Longning Qi, Jian Wang, Zhiwen Wei Thanks to our critics and consultants Ross Exo Adams, Nick Axel, Pier Vittorio Aureli, Peter Bishop, Jacob Burns, Eray Çayli, Mehran Gharleghi, Maria Giudici, Richard Goodwin, Saleh Hijazi, Beth Hughes, Platon Issaias, Sam Jacoby, Adrian Lahoud, Guillem Pons, Andrew Porter, Francesco Sebregondi, Vicente Soler, Eyal Weizman
46
Research Cluster 15 focuses on resource extraction and its influence over the urban. It does so to address the ways in which urbanisation is increasingly affected by the a-signifying semiotics of techno-scientific classifications and financial operations. We are concerned with two extreme forms of extraction at the same time: a material one, incessantly surveying and classifying the earth’s underground to its minute biologic scales and whose aim is the extraction of precious materials; the other, a financial one, much smoother, abstracting both the Earth and the extraction machines themselves in its game of producing surplus-value from differential relations between abstracted quantities. We argue that today the urban is increasingly affected by the multiplication of these extractive machines. However, the relation between urban form and its affecting forces is perceptually vague. In both cases, neither the consequences of a stratigraphic section through the underground, nor the effects of variations in the graphs of high-frequency trading, evidence a direct causal relation to urban development. Yet we claim they increasingly do so, as the whole Earth has become an object of capitalist axiomatisation, whose consequences mineralise in urban forms. Forms that even before achieving material consistency are already being traded, bundled or sold as future values. Identifying a continuity from the sensing of underground oil reservoirs to the millisecond mutations of trading opens possibilities for political reimagination. Be it problems of resolution deficits or noise, be it disputes between different modes of classification or alternative profit strategies, the realisation of every axiomatic cannot but allow the reinsertion of a problematic. In this sense, techno-scientific tools can be harnessed, to political effect. These are tools that carry a power from which alternative urban imaginations might be derived: allowing different modes of seeing or measuring, they do not simply present an improved perspective over the world. Instead they present a different world, and thus allow the formulation of different problems. They open the possibility of a different aesthetics and of a radical reformulation of the politics of inhabiting the Earth. From this possibility our cluster begins, looking at techno-science and its abstraction of the Earth as a possibility for the invention of political constituencies and new subjectivities.
City and Urban Infrastructures Lab Research Cluster 15
The Bartlett School of Architecture 2015
1.41
47
City and Urban Infrastructures Lab Research Cluster 15
1.42 The Bartlett School of Architecture 2015
1.43 Figs. 1.41 – 1.47 A Common Sun ‘A Project for Experimental Agricultural Cooperatives in Almeria’. The region of Almeria in the south of Spain is occupied by a plastic sea of greenhouses. Its unique climate conditions, particularly its high levels of solar radiation, have been integral for such development. Despite their spatial and economic advantages, the greenhouses are inseparable from poor labour conditions and problematic environmental consequences and therefore require the imagination of an alternative modes of production. In this context, the project proposes the creation of an experimental zone where multiple agricultural cooperatives would be developed. Instead of prioritising profit it uses a mode of agriculture based on labour-intensive crops, so as to provide jobs for both local and migrant populations. This 48
provides an opportunity to imagine new forms of social organisation, cooperation and dwelling. Fig. 1.41 Satellite image of Almeria, with greenhouse areas in yellow. Fig. 1.42 Perspective view of proposed cooperative accommodation. Fig. 1.43 Perspective view of proposed multi-use service points in farmlands.
City and Urban Infrastructures Lab Research Cluster 15
1.45
1.46
1.47
The Bartlett School of Architecture 2015
1.44
Figs. 1.44 – 1.47 Seasonality plays an integral role in the project. According to the various agricultural seasons, different activities take place within the cooperatives. To allow for both programmatic and climatic variations, the project uses a flexible structural system with prefabricated galvanised steel and multiple types of cover sheets. Figs. 1.44 – 1.45 In the harvest season the semi-open spaces under the light steel frames become additional spaces for the stacking of crops, the parking of farm tractors, and the extension of logistics. Figs. 1.46 – 1.47 A large local agricultural fair is typically held in September. In this instance the extra spaces will operate as a pavilion for exhibitions and markets; the light frame will be covered with tensile sun protection sheets and shading systems. 49
City and Urban Infrastructures Lab Research Cluster 15 The Bartlett School of Architecture 2015 EARTHQUAKE RISK AND FORCED EVICTION PREDICTED NUMBER OF HEAVILY DAMAGED BUILDINGS PER MAHALLE
EVICTION AREA IDENTIFIED BY THE GOVERNMENT
200-500 SIDE WALL FAULT LINE 100-200 NORMAL FAULT LINE 50-100 MAIN ROADS SOIL LIQUEFACTION POTENTIAL 11 22 33 44
VERY HIGH RELATIVELY HIGH RELATIVELY LOW VERY LOW
1.48 50
MINOR ROADS RIVER
City and Urban Infrastructures Lab Research Cluster 15
1.49 The Bartlett School of Architecture 2015
1.50 Figs. 1.48 – 1.50 Seismic Grounds ‘Earthquake Risk and Community-building in Istanbul’. The project investigates how earthquake risk calculations become tools of urban design and transformation. The project builds on a series of laws from 2005 that were deployed by the Turkish Government as legal weapons for evicting large areas of Istanbul. Its site is one of the eviction zones. It argues that the political mobilisation currently emerging from the struggles against eviction carries a constituent capacity to develop new forms of collective action and living. The proposed project reverts the existing processes and mobilises earthquake risk laws towards an alternative model of urban development and living. To begin with, risk calculations are used as tools to redefine the ownership structure on the land. Consequently, the project
proposes to develop a co-operative system of ownership and investment, which progressively replaces buildings at risk with new collective housing and co-working programmes. Fig. 1.48 GIS map of Istanbul correlating several earthquake risk maps with eviction areas. Fig. 1.49 Perspective view of one of the proposed community centres Fig. 1.50 Perspective view of communal workshop areas.
51
City and Urban Infrastructures Lab Research Cluster 15 The Bartlett School of Architecture 2015
1.51
1.52 Figs 1.51 – 1.53 Seismic Grounds ‘Earthquake Risk and Community-building in Istanbul’. Fig. 1.51 Plan of the proposed project at the scale of the neighbourhood. The project is developed in two phases. In phase 1, new buildings are constructed on existing available open spaces as accommodation for the people whose houses are demolished. In phase 2, new buildings are constructed on the demolition sites for residents and phase 1 houses are sold to the new population. Fig. 1.52 The Government uses GIS risk maps for demolition of entire neighbourhoods. The proposal uses the same technology to demolish only the buildings at high risk and to retrofit others by adding structures in between the buildings. Fig. 1.53 Axonometric drawing of the proposed buildings in phase 1. As well as accommodation, the new 52
buildings house communal programmes like workshops, vocational training, community halls, etc. These are always located in the plinths of the new buildings and are collectively owned by the cooperative.
City and Urban Infrastructures Lab Research Cluster 15
The Bartlett School of Architecture 2015
1.53
53
City and Urban Infrastructures Lab Research Cluster 15
The Bartlett School of Architecture 2015
1.54
54
1.56
1.55
City and Urban Infrastructures Lab Research Cluster 15 The Bartlett School of Architecture 2015
1.57 Figs. 1.54 – 1.60 The Crude Line ‘Cutting Across the Palestinian Archipelago’. The project responds to the request for proposals for the state of Palestine’s Rantis-1 oil block, which was announced by the Palestinian Authority in 2014. The Rantis oil field is located under the Green Line separating Israel from the West Bank. The proposal by the Palestinian Authority of extracting oil from the Rantis oil fields takes place in the context of the violent disputes over land between Israel and Palestine. Today, the implementation of Israeli road systems connecting settlements and military bases has drastically deprived Palestinians from any freedom of movement inside a territory that is, supposedly, theirs. Addressing this dramatic condition, this project proposes an oil pipeline that crosses the width of the West Bank. Under the cover of an oil maintenance
road, the project introduces a public bus system, a series of bus terminals and stations, and even motels. Its purpose is firstly to cut across the archipelago and to facilitate the circulation of people, but more importantly, to promote a future line of continuous urbanisation. Fig. 1.54 Territorial map showing the proposed oil pipeline and bus transport system. Fig. 1.55 Geopolitical map showing the proposed pipeline in the larger network of oil transportation around Palestine. Fig. 1.56 Axonometric drawing showing the underground location of Rantis oil field. Fig. 1.57 Geological section through the Rantis oil field. Fig. 1.58 Map of Bir Zeit showing the proposed pipeline, consultation zone and bus transport system. Figs. 1.59 – 1.60 Exploded axonometric drawing and interior render of the Bir Zeit bus terminal. 55
City and Urban Infrastructures Lab Research Cluster 15
The Bartlett School of Architecture 2015
15.09
1.58
56
City and Urban Infrastructures Lab Research Cluster 15
The Bartlett School of Architecture 2015
1.59
1.60
57
City and Urban Infrastructures Lab Research Cluster 15
The Bartlett School of Architecture 2015
58
15.1
1.61
City and Urban Infrastructures Lab Research Cluster 15 The Bartlett School of Architecture 2015
1.62 Figs. 1.61 – 1.62 The Grand Canal ‘The Architecture of Water and Resistance’. The project begins by tracing the conflict between Israel and Palestine through a history of water disputes. It argues that water itself is a medium of conflict that is weaponised for land appropriation in the occupied areas of the West Bank. Today, the West Bank is progressively becoming a barren land since Israel restricts Palestinians’ access to natural water sources such as the Jordan River or springs. The water shortage has forced Palestinians to abandon their agricultural lands whilst enabling Israel to categorise such lands as ‘barren’ and hence to occupy them. These processes have contributed to the conversion of the West Bank into an archipelago. This project develops a way to address these processes. To resist the Israeli land
appropriations, it proposes a system of water canals for the Palestinian archipelago. At the territorial scale, the islands of the Palestinian archipelago will be linked to one another through irrigation systems. Inside these islands, each canal will irrigate large agricultural fields. And at the urban scale, a series of reservoirs and community centres are placed along the canal. At these various scales, water – with its symbolic significance in Islamic culture – will once again become capable of initiating solidarity. Fig. 1.61 Geopolitical map of Israel and Palestine showing the location of underground water resources. Fig. 1.62 Territorial map showing the proposed grand canal in Yatta.
59
City and Urban Infrastructures Lab Research Cluster 15
1.63 The Bartlett School of Architecture 2015
1.64 Figs. 1.63 – 1.67 The Grand Canal ‘The Architecture of Water and Resistance’. Fig. 1.63 Perspective of a water distribution centre and agriculture school located under the Grand Canal. Fig. 1.64 Axonometric drawing of the Grand Canal in Yatta, focusing on its relationship to the existing topography (underground, overpasses) and areas of irrigated farmlands.
60
City and Urban Infrastructures Lab Research Cluster 15
1.65 The Bartlett School of Architecture 2015
15.4 1.66
1.67
Fig. 1.65 Perspective of a water distribution centre and agriculture school located under the Grand Canal. Fig. 1.66 Detailed plan of a water distribution centre located above one of the underground sections of the canal. This centre is combined with a market and a fish farm. Fig. 1.67 Detailed plan of a water distribution centre that is combined with an agricultural school and experimental agricultural fields.
61
Urban Morphogenesis Lab Claudia Pasquero with Zachary Fluker, Enriqueta Llabres, Maj Plemenitas, Eduardo Rico
The Bartlett School of Architecture 2015
Students Sora Chang, Junyi Chen, Chunyi Chen, Qianxin Deng, Junyi Jia, Ting Jiang, Ying Hu, Yiran Hu, Boliang Liu, Han Liu, Shengyu Meng, Israel Luna Mino, Shah Muhaymin, Dongming Sun, Ge Sun, Jiateng Sun, Liran Sun, Fei Tong, Bona Wang, Shiyang Wang, Yichao Wang, Zhuoran Xie, Luyao Xu, Min Xue, Xuyuan Yao, Wenzhe Ye, Tianxue Zang, Yifei Zhao, Yilin Zhou, Lumeng Xiao Computation Tutors Manuele Gaioni, Immanuel Koh, Antonios Lalos, Enriqueta Llabres, Iker Mugarra, Maj Plemenitas History Theory Tutors Sara Franceschelli, Emmanouil Zaroukas Thanks to our critics and consultants Caterina Albertucci, Alessandro Bava, Richard Beckett, Roberto Bottazzi, Carole Collet, Marcos Cruz, Gina Fellendorf-Perkins, Stuart Maggs, Marco Poletto, Simon Park, Alfredo Ramirez, Gilles Retsin, Liz Tatarintseva Thank you to our partners European Space Agency (ESA) and the International Nanotechnologies Laboratory (INL)
62
The Urban Morphogenesis Lab engages urban design as a computational practice to prefigure alternative models of the city represented as a complex dynamic system. The ambition of the Lab is to stimulate a transdisciplinary discourse that reaches wider academic research networks and scientific organisations involved in the study of the city as a living system, and to develop future bio-digital technologies. The Lab adopts computational, analogue, biological and digital design methods to draw terrains of negotiation between strategic and tactical forms of intervention. Coding enables the study of biological models, generating a multiplicity of effects at scales ranging from the molecular to the territorial, from the quasi-instantaneous to the geological. The Lab’s work is largely studio-based and students are encouraged to work in teams and to engage design as a form of research. Current research focuses on the urban application of models of collective intelligence inspired by slime mould’s biological algorithms and mycelium fungi, on the development of resilient and distributed bio-energy infrastructures, on the engineering of bio-digital soil remediation and articulation as well as on the material articulation of adaptive water management territories. Students have been investigating computational processes, mastering the use of digital simulation as an analytical design tool, investigating the relationship between the physical and the digital. Initial abstract studies were informed through the recursive processes that have been gradually introducing context, providing a wide range of specific data, internal and external conditions, limitations and potentials for design intervention. The main focus has been on processes as well as intermediate and finite states of morphogenetic design studies. Analogue modelling is used extensively in the Lab. Students have developed wet models and living test-beds where digital morphologies are inoculated with living organisms. These biotechnological hybrids allow us to test the local metabolic manipulation of flows of renewable energy, information and matter, as well as the emergence of urban networks of collective exchange. These experiments have been making use of physical computing as well as remote sensate data to create a live communication stream between wet models, the living organism and the digital urban simulation codes. Urban protocols are re-described as interactive design toolkits. The students work on the development of tools that help understand design as a collective project where negotiation and tactics drive the generation of urban morphologies in real time. Feedback is captured in a set of visual outputs, such as video interfaces, time-lapse photography and parametric drawings.
Urban Morphogenesis Lab The Bartlett School of Architecture 2015
Project teams Group 1: Physa City – Sabkha Urbanism Students: Sora Chang, Ting Jiang, Boliang Liu, Shengyu Meng, Ge Sun, Bona Wang Tutors: Claudia Pasquero, Maj Plementias, Eduardo Rico Group 2: B.1/0.CEMENT City – Material Urbanism Chunyi Chen, Ying Hu, Han Liu, Yilin Zhou, Wenzhe Ye Tutors: Zach Fluker, Claudia Pasquero, Maj Plementias Group 3: Re-metabolising Oil Spillage into Urban Structure in Fujairah Junyi Jia, Shiyang Wang, Min Xue, Yifei Zhao, Tianxue Zang Tutors: Zach Fluker, Enriqueta Llabres, Claudia Pasquero Group 4: Bio-electric City – The Internet of Energy Shah Muhaymin, Dongming Sun, Liran Sun, Lumeng Xiao Tutors: Zach Fluker, Claudia Pasquero, Maj Plementias Group 5: Tidal City – Relational Urban Model Jiateng Sun, Xuyuan Yao, Junyi Chen, Yiran Hu Tutors: Enriqueta Llabres, Maj Plemenitas, Eduardo Rico Group 6: Urban S.Alt (Urban Systemic Alternatives) Qianxin Deng, Israel Luna Mino, Fei Tong, Yichao Wang, Zhuoran Xie, Luyao Xu Tutors: Enriqueta Llabres, Claudia Pasquero, Eduardo Rico
2.1 63
Urban Morphogenesis Lab
2.2 The Bartlett School of Architecture 2015
2.3 Figs. 2.1 – 2.4 Group 1: Physa City – Sabkha Urbanism The group researched the application of Physarum Polycephalum as a biological algorithm to compute and design novel mechanisms of energy redistribution, material accumulation and emergent urban morphologies in Liwa Oasis City, The Rub Al Kahli Desert, UAE. Fig. 2.1 In this observation students are looking for correlations between the behaviour of pre-industrial human settelments and the capacity of slime mould to optimise networks and redistribute resources. This particular image is caputuring the phase called plasmodium. Fig. 2.2 Slime mould is investigated as a biological algorithm; satellite data constitutes the ‘input’ which gets processed and provides as ‘output’ a set of instructions for material redistribution on site. This redistribution of material, 64
in particular of salt as a source of energy, is actuated by a swarm of territorial machines operating in Liwa Oasis, at the edge of the Rub Al Khali desert, UAE. Fig. 2.3 This image presents an experiment to calibrate the behaviour of slime mould as a biological algorithm. Fig. 2.4 The slime mould logic has been expanded at the local scale of the Sabkha by means of digital simulation. Resources have been computed and reorganised locally to define emergent urban morphologies.
Urban Morphogenesis Lab
The Bartlett School of Architecture 2015
2.4
65
Urban Morphogenesis Lab
2.5 The Bartlett School of Architecture 2015
2.6
2.7
Figs. 2.5 – 2.9 Group 1: Physa City – Sabkha Urbanism Fig. 2.5 Salt is removed from the Sabkha and accumulated in specific places giving them the possibility to become micro-power stations. Land with its salt removed can be used for agriculture. The transformation of the Sabkha landscape from salty to polarised is carried forward in this project by a set of territorial machines: these are small robots able to detect and accumulate Sabkha salt in a differentiated manner guided by slime mould, which acts as an artificial brain for the system. Fig. 2.6 Digital morphologies. Material system studies. Attraction and repulsion forces have been set up between fibres to study the behaviour of a new composite made of starch (from local dates), fibres (from palm leaves) and salt (energy provider from the Sabkha). Fig. 2.7 Analogue
morphologies. Material system studies. A new form of fibrous composite is tested, originating from local resources, such as starch, cyanobacteria and palm leaves. Fig. 2.8 The tested material systems have been extended to the scale of multiple Sabkha. Indexing the differentiation present in the territory provides a first simulation of how material trasformation will actualise in specific morphologies. Fig. 2.9 Micro-urban scenario. This image presents an instance in the material, as well as the transformation of Liwa territory from a water oasis to an energy oasis.
66
Urban Morphogenesis Lab
The Bartlett School of Architecture 2015
2.8
67
Urban Morphogenesis Lab
The Bartlett School of Architecture 2015
2.9
68
Urban Morphogenesis Lab
The Bartlett School of Architecture 2015
69
Urban Morphogenesis Lab The Bartlett School of Architecture 2015
2.10 Figs. 2.10 – 2.12 Group 2: B.1/0.CEMENT City – Material Urbanism The application of micro-algae as a medium for material transformation of the urban territory. The project explores the possibilities of evolving the urban social fabric of Liwa Oasis through geomorphologic transformations, triggered by the exploitations of local bio-materials and the implementation of virtual protocols of participation. Fig. 2.10 Morphological studies. Digital computing. Students have been simulating processes of binding due to cyanobacteria, as well as processing of erosion due to the presence of wind. The combination of these forces defines the first set of morphological studies. Figs. 2.11 – 2.12 Morphological studies. Analogue computing. 70
Urban Morphogenesis Lab
2.11
The Bartlett School of Architecture 2015
2.12
71
Urban Morphogenesis Lab
The Bartlett School of Architecture 2015
2.13
72
Urban Morphogenesis Lab
2.14 The Bartlett School of Architecture 2015
2.15 Figs. 2.13 – 2.16 Group 2: B.1/0.CEMENT City – Material scenario. By looking at one of the stages of the formalisation Urbanism Action plan. Once the logic of material deposition, process we can start to visualise some of the final morphologies. coagulation and erosion has been set up, it is realised at a larger territorial scale. Working on this stage of realisation, the students take into consideration not only internal material property, but also site characteristics (such as topography and wind) and the relationship between the density of cyanobacteria onsite and the volume of inabitable space that could emerge. Fig. 2.14 Territorial machines. Working on the possibility of using drones as a means to distribute bacteria onsite. Fig. 2.15 Setting up a dynamic interface as an instrument of negotation between different actors and social groups. This interface will enable different types of users to be part of the formalisation process. Fig. 2.16 Microurban 73
Urban Morphogenesis Lab
The Bartlett School of Architecture 2015
2.16
74
Urban Morphogenesis Lab
The Bartlett School of Architecture 2015
75
Urban Morphogenesis Lab
2.17 The Bartlett School of Architecture 2015
2.18
76
Urban Morphogenesis Lab The Bartlett School of Architecture 2015
2.19 Fig. 2.17 Group 2: B.1/0.CEMENT City – Material Urbanism Micro-landscapes. Microscopic observation of cyanobacteria growth. Figs. 2.18 – 2.19 Group 4: Bio-electric City - The Internet of Energy An algae-based energy regime adhered to non-hierarchical protocols that create a series of novel urban fibrous morphologies, while affecting a restructuring of energy’s production-distribution-consumption system from a corporate-centralised to a collective-decentralised one. Fig. 2.18 This model tests the possible articulation of algae farming as a system to cultivate microalgae and define spatial organisation and structural stability. Fig. 2.19 Dynamic simulation of algae blooming on the Arabian Gulf in front of Al Ruwais City. The simulation has been tuned using real-time satellite data provided by the European Space Agency (ESA). 77
Urban Morphogenesis Lab
The Bartlett School of Architecture 2015
2.20
78
Urban Morphogenesis Lab The Bartlett School of Architecture 2015
2.21 Figs. 2.20 – 2.21 Group 4: Bio-electric City - The Internet of Energy Fig. 2.20 Simulated morphologies. Plan view. The image shows the first stage of the team’s simulation. In this phase it is possible to see the appropriate locations for a network of algae farming to be developed over the sea’s surface and in conjunction with the sea dynamic. Fig. 2.21 Simulated morphologies. Perspective view. This image shows one of the final stages of the algae farming realisation onsite. In terms of morphological development, further steps will imply differentiation of use, as well as integration of systems.
79
Urban Morphogenesis Lab
2.22 The Bartlett School of Architecture 2015
2.23 Figs. 2.22 – 2.25 Group 3: Re-metabolising Oil Spillage into Urban Structure in Fujairah, UAE By reprogramming the qualities and capacities of a local fungi, mycelium, the project aims to create a structural capable material that will enable a re-metabolisation of spillage into urban structure. Fig. 2.22 Mycelium growth study. Exploring the possibility of using mycelium as a medium for oil spillage remediation, as well as a material system onsite. Fig. 2.23 Oil spillage in Fujairah. Fig. 2.24 The project develops an interface that can do two things: enable different social groups to interact with the morphological and ecological transformation of the site; and map the presence of oil onsite as necessary input for the proposed morphological changes. Fig. 2.25 Material is articulated on the site as a set of morphologies robotically 80
defined in relationship to the parameters of oil spillage and resource availability onsite.
Urban Morphogenesis Lab
2.24
The Bartlett School of Architecture 2015
2.25
81
Urban Morphogenesis Lab
2.26 The Bartlett School of Architecture 2015
2.27 Figs. 2.26 – 2.30 Group 5: Tidal City - Relational Urban Model The project aims to redefine the relationship between land and sea on Abu Dhabi’s coast by allowing multiple agents to engage with information on reclamation in order to coordinate various decisions with emissions trading regulations. Fig. 2.26 Development of interface. A time-based simulation of the erosion and deposition process that shapes the coast of Abu Dhabi based on tidal forces. Fig. 2.27 Time-based evolution of emerging islands after location of initial obstacles, provoking differential accretion/erosion in the intertidal area. Fig. 2.28 Section of the interface. Showcasing the development of negotiation around ecosystem provision and potential land-use transfer across various islands. Fig. 2.29 Combination of ecological and economic 82
model for a section of the site. Ecological systems are modelled through a prey/predator system, while economic systems are based on input/output models. Fig. 2.30 Development of urban networks in stabilised environments and a newly created island.
Urban Morphogenesis Lab
2.28
The Bartlett School of Architecture 2015
2.29
83
Urban Morphogenesis Lab
The Bartlett School of Architecture 2015
2.30
84
Urban Morphogenesis Lab
The Bartlett School of Architecture 2015
85
Urban Morphogenesis Lab
The Bartlett School of Architecture 2015
2.31
86
Urban Morphogenesis Lab
2.32 The Bartlett School of Architecture 2015
2.33 Figs. 2.31 – 2.33 Group 6: Urban S.Alt. (Urban Systemic Alternatives) The proposal develops an interactive and participatory model aiming to systematically modulate the geomorphological surface in order to harvest water and differentiate salinity locally through redirection while generating material transformations for the emergence of urban territory. Fig. 2.31 Close-up view of a biorock formation after one week. Fig. 2.32 Site context presenting the definition of catchment areas and water distribution between the Al Ain Oasis and the Oman mountains. Fig. 2.33 Site context showing potential negotiation principles to redestribute water within the catchment across the parcel around the city.
87
Urban Morphogenesis Lab The Bartlett School of Architecture 2015
2.34 Figs. 2.34 – 2.37 Group 6: Urban S.Alt. (Urban Systemic Alternatives) Fig. 2.35 Model created through jet grouting using resin in sand injections Studies of distances, rate of injection as well as angle for the generation of underground structures. Fig. 2.35 Integration of biorock structure with jet grouting piles studied through a model of salt accretion. Fig. 2.36 Digital simulation of urban scenario realised by three phases of material transformation: jet grouting, water diversion and biorock formation. Fig. 2.37 Context of stakeholder participation around the productive parcels of the city with the aim of distributing the appropriate usage of water.
88
Urban Morphogenesis Lab
2.35
The Bartlett School of Architecture 2015
2.36
89
Urban Morphogenesis Lab
Caption/text to appear on preceeding page (do not put text over image)
The Bartlett School of Architecture 2015
2.37 90
Urban Morphogenesis Lab
The Bartlett School of Architecture 2015
91
Image: B-Pro Show 2014
Staff Biographies
The Bartlett School of Architecture 2015
Professor Frédéric Migayrou B-Pro Director Frédéric Migayrou is Chair, Bartlett Professor of Architecture at The Bartlett School of Architecture and Deputy Director of the MNAM-CCI (Musée National d’Art Moderne, Centre de Création Industrielle) at the Centre Pompidou Paris. He was the founder of the Frac Center Collection and of ArchiLab, the international festival of Prospective Architecture in Orléans. Apart from recent publications and exhibitions (De Stijl, Centre Pompidou, 2011; La Tendenza, Centre Pompidou, 2012; Bernard Tschumi, Centre Pompidou, 2013; Frank Gehry, Centre Pompidou 2014; Le Corbusier, Centre Pompidou 2015), he was the curator of Non Standard Architectures at the Centre Pompidou in 2003, the first exposition devoted to architecture, computation and fabrication. More recently, he co-organised the exhibition Naturalising Architecture (ArchiLab, Orléans 2013), presenting prototypes and commissions by 40 teams of architects working with new generative computational tools, defining new interrelations between materiality, biotechnology and fabrication. In 2012 he founded B-Pro, The Bartlett’s umbrella structure for post-professional architecture programmes.
Andrew Porter B-Pro Deputy Director Andrew Porter studied at The Bartlett School of Architecture, winning the Banister Fletcher Medal and the RIBA Silver Medal for his graduation project. He has collaborated on projects with Sir Peter Cook and Christine Hawley CBE, and was the project architect for the Gifu Housing project in Japan. He practises with Abigail Ashton as Ashton Porter Architects and has completed a number of award-winning commissions in the UK as well as prizewinning competitions in the UK and abroad. Andrew is co-tutor of The Bartlett’s MArch Architecture Unit 21, has been a visiting Professor at the Staedel Academy, Frankfurt and guest critic at SCI-Arc, Los Angeles and Parsons New School, New York. Dr Adrian Lahoud MArch UD Programme Leader City and Urban Infrastructures Lab Leader Adrian Lahoud is an architect, researcher and educator. He has taught at the Architectural Association and Goldsmiths in London and the University of Technology, Sydney. His work sets out a philosophical, scientific and architectural history of scale using case studies of post-war urban planning, territorial governance and climate modeling. He lectures and exhibits internationally and has written extensively on questions of climate change, spatial politics and urban conflict with a focus on the Arab world and Africa. Professor Peter Bishop Professor of Urban Design Peter Bishop was Director of Design for London, advisor to the Mayor and deputy CEO of the London Development Agency. He has worked on regeneration projects including Kings Cross and the Olympics. He is a director at Allies and Morrison and author of The Bishop Review and The Temporary City, an exploration of temporary urbanism.
94
Sam Jacoby City and Urban Infrastructures Lab RC11 Tutor Sam Jacoby is a chartered architect with an AA Diploma and a doctorate from the Technische Universität Berlin. He has worked in the UK, USA, and Malaysia and taught at the AA, the University of Nottingham and The Bartlett.
Platon Issaias City and Urban Infrastructures Lab RC14 Tutor History Theory Tutor Platon Issaias is an architect. He holds an MSc in Advanced Architectural Design from GSAPP, Columbia University and a PhD from TU Delft. His doctoral dissertation ‘Beyond the Informal City’ focuses on the history of planning in Athens and the relation between conflict, urban management and architectural form. Camila E. Sotomayor City and Urban Infrastructures Lab RC14 Tutor Camila Sotomayor explores ruins as contemporary zones of architectural reanimation. Her PhD in Architectural Design at The Bartlett is investigating time-based design through material decay at the microscopic scale. She is the founder and director of Department of Decay and has been a Unit tutor for the MArch UD programme since 2010.
Godofredo Pereira City and Urban Infrastructures Lab RC15 Tutor History Theory Module Coordinator History Theory Tutor Godofredo Pereira is an architect and researcher based in London. He holds an MArch from The Bartlett School of Architecture and a PhD from the Centre for Research Architecture, Goldsmiths University. His research ‘The Underground Frontier’ investigates political and territorial conflicts within the planetary race for underground resources. He edited the book Savage Objects in 2012. Claudia Pasquero Urban Morphogenesis Lab Leader Claudia Pasquero, leader of the Urban Morphogenesis Lab and co-founder of ecoLogicStudio in London, is an architect, author and educator. She has been Unit Master at the AA in London, Senior Tutor at the IAAC in Barcelona and a visiting critic at Cornell University. Her projects have been published and exhibited throughout the world, at various Biennales such as Venice, Seville, Prague, London and Istanbul, at EXPO Milano 2015, at the Frac in Orléans, at the ZKM in Karlsruhe. She is co-author of Systemic Architecture: Operating manual for the selforganizing city, published by Routledge.
95
The Bartlett School of Architecture 2015
Lara Yegenoglu City and Urban Infrastructures Lab RC11 Teaching Assistant Lara Yegenoglu is a London-based architectural designer and has completed her Diploma in Architecture at the Architectural Association in London. She has worked for Serie Architects in London on projects of various scales as well as for Sevgili Yapı in Istanbul on the transformation of residential units. Lara has previously taught design and drawing workshops at the AA and The Bartlett.
Samaneh Moafi City and Urban Infrastructures Lab RC15 Tutor Samaneh Moafi is an architect, researcher and educator. She holds an MArch from University of Technology, Sydney in Australia. Her work is focused on urbanism and human settlements and her current PhD research ‘Housing the Masses’ explores the spatial and economic role of resources in social and governmental projects of mass housing.
Zachary Fluker Urban Morphogenesis Lab Tutor Zachary Fluker is an architect, industrial designer, and cabinet-maker. He graduated from Emily Carr University of Art and Design and the AA. His research into interfacing digital with physical environments and computational fabrication has led him to collaborate with several practices in the UK and Canada including Philip Beesley Architect.
The Bartlett School of Architecture 2015
Enriqueta Llabres Urban Morphogenesis Lab Tutor Enriqueta Llabres is an architect, social scientist and researcher with an MSc in Local Economic Development from The London School of Economics. In 2009 she founded award-winning practice Relational Urbanism. She is a design critic in Landscape Architecture at Harvard and has collaborated with institutions worldwide as a critic and lecturer. Maj Plemenitas Urban Morphogenesis Lab Tutor Maj Plemenitas is an experimental architectural and cross-scale design practitioner, researcher and educator, and founder and director of award-winning design research practice LINKSCALE. He carries out research, exhibits his work and lectures internationally. Eduardo Rico Urban Morphogenesis Lab Tutor Eduardo Rico is a Civil Engineer and MA Landscape Urbanism graduate and a member of design practices including Groundlab and Relational Urbanism. He is currently engaged in strategic advice on infrastructure and transportation for urban masterplanning at Arup. His work is focused on alternative design practices feeding infrastructural inputs into architectural urbanism.
Sara Franceschelli History Theory Tutor Sara Franceschelli is associate professor in epistemology at the Ecole Normale Sup茅rieure de Lyon, and a member of the IXXI, Rh么ne Alpes Complex Systems Institute. She trained as a physicist at the University of Bologna and holds a PhD in epistemology and history of science on the construction of physical meaning for the transition to turbulence. Lorenzo Pezzani History Theory Tutor Lorenzo Pezzani is an architect based in London. Since 2011, he has been working on Forensic Oceanography, a project that critically investigates the geography of the Mediterranean Sea as frontier. He is completing his PhD at the Centre for Research Architecture at Goldsmiths, University of London. Emmanouil Zaroukas History Theory Tutor Emmanouil Zaroukas holds a diploma in Architecture from Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece, and a postgraduate degree in Digital Architecture Production from the IAAC, Spain. He is a PhD Candidate at the University of East London, where he is researching artificial cognitive processes and neural networks.
Image: B-Pro Show 2014 96
Staff and Consultants
MArch UD Professor Frédéric Migayrou Director of B-Pro Andrew Porter Deputy Director of B-Pro Dr Adrian Lahoud MArch UD Programme Leader
Lab Leaders, Tutors and Teaching Assistants The Bartlett School of Architecture 2015
City and Urban Infrastructures Lab Leader: Dr Adrian Lahoud RC11 Sam Jacoby Dr Adrian Lahoud Teaching Assistant: Lara Yegenoglu RC14 Platon Issaias Camila E. Sotomayor RC15 Godofredo Pereira Samaneh Moafi Urban Morphogenesis Lab Leader: Claudia Pasquero Tutors: Zachary Fluker, Enriqueta Llabres, Claudia Pasquero, Maj Plementias, Eduardo Rico History Theory Module Coordinator Godofredo Pereira History Theory Tutors Platon Issaias Godofredo Pereira Lorenzo Pezzani Sara Franceschelli Emmanouil Zaroukas
External Examiners Professor Bart Lootsma Professor Tom Verebes Professor Mark Wasiuta Professor Mark Burry Critics, Consultants and Technical Tutors Ross Exo Adams Caterina Albertucci Pier Vittorio Aureli Nick Axel Alessandro Bava Roberto Bottazzi Jacob Burns Carlo Castelli Eray Çayli Carole Collet Chrysanthe Constantinou Elias Constantopoulos Gina Fellendorf-Perkins Manuele Gaioni Mehran Gharleghi Maria S. Giudici Richard Goodwin Dimitris Hatzopoulos Saleh Hijazi Beth Hughes Hamed Khosravi Immanuel Koh Antonios Lalos Enriqueta Llabres Stuart Maggs Anna Marangou Iker Mugarra Prodromos Nikiforidis Marina Otero João Prates Ruivo Simon Park Marco Poletto Guillem Pons Panayiota Pyla Alfredo Ramirez Jonathan Rose Davide Sacconi Francisco Sanin Francesco Sebregondi Douglas Spencer Socrates Stratis Liz Tatarintseva Martino Tattara Alexandra Yerolymbos Eyal Weizman
Bartlett School of Architecture Chair of School Professor Frédéric Migayrou Bartlett Professor of Architecture Director of B-Pro Director of School Professor Bob Sheil Professor of Architecture and Design through Production Director of Technology
Professors, Visiting Professors and Stream Directors Robert Aish Visiting Professor in Computation Laura Allen Senior Lecturer Director of Special Projects Professor Peter Bishop Professor of Urban Design Director of Enterprise Professor Iain Borden Professor of Architecture & Urban Culture Vice Dean of Education Andy Bow Visiting Professor Professor Mario Carpo Reyner Banham Professor of Architectural History & Theory Director of History & Theory Professor Nat Chard BSc Architecture Year 1 Co-Director Professor of Experimental Architecture Dr Marjan Colletti Senior Lecturer Director of Computing Professor Peter Cook Emeritus Professor
98
Professor Marcos Cruz Professor of Innovative Environments Professor Adrian Forty Professor of Architectural History Professor Murray Fraser Professor of Architecture & Global Culture Vice Dean of Research Professor Stephen Gage Emeritus Professor of Innovative Technology Professor Christine Hawley Professor of Architectural Studies Director of Design Professor Jonathan Hill Professor of Architecture & Visual Theory MPhil/PhD by Design Programme Director Carlos Jiménez Cenamor BSc Architecture Year 1 Co-Director Professor CJ Lim Professor of Architecture & Cultural Design Vice Dean of International Affairs Dr Yeoryia Manolopoulou Senior Lecturer Director of Architectural Research Josep Miàs Visiting Professor Níall McLaughlin Visiting Professor Dr Emmanuel Petit Sir Banister Fletcher Visiting Professor Frosso Pimenides Senior Lecturer BSc Architecture Year 1 Co-Director
Dr Peg Rawes Senior Lecturer Associate Director of Architectural Research MArch Architectural History Programme Director
Dirk Krolikowski Lecturer in Innovative Technology & Design Practice Associate Coordinator of Year 4 Design Realisation
Professor Jane Rendell Professor of Architecture & Art
Dr Adrian Lahoud Reader in Urban Design MArch UD Programme Leader
Susan Ware Sub-Dean and Faculty Tutor Director of Professional Studies Part 3 Programme Director
James O’Leary Lecturer in Innovative Technology & Design Practice Coordinator of Year 4 Design Realisation
Oliver Wilton Director of Education Senior Lecturer in Environmental Design
Dr Barbara Penner Senior Lecturer BSc Architectural Studies Programme Co-Leader MPhil/PhD History & Theory Programme Director
Mark Whitby Visiting Professor in Structural Engineering
Programme Directors/ Leaders and Coordinators
Julia Backhaus MArch Architecture Programme Leader Matthew Butcher Lecturer in Architecture and Performance BSc Architecture Programme Co-Leader Dr Ben Campkin Senior Lecturer in History & Theory Director of Urban Lab Coordinator of Year 3 History & Theory Mollie Claypool BSc Architecture Programme Co-Leader Dr Edward Denison Research Associate MPhil/PhD History & Theory Programme Director (Sabbatical cover) Elizabeth Dow BSc Architectural Studies Programme Co-Leader Dr Penelope Haralambidou Lecturer in Architecture Coordinator of MPhil / PhD by Design
Andrew Porter Principal Teaching Fellow B-Pro Deputy Director Peter Scully Technical Director of B-made Dr Tania Sengupta Lecturer in Architectural History & Theory Departmental Tutor Coordinator of Year 4 History & Theory Mark Smout Senior Lecturer Coordinator of Year 5 Thesis Patrick Weber Senior Lecturer Coordinator of Pedagogic Affairs
Academic and Honorary Staff Yannis Aesopos Affiliate Academic Abeer Al-Saud Affiliate Academic Tom Dyckhoff Honorary Research Fellow Ruairi Glynn Lecturer in Interactive Architecture Tim Lucas Lecturer in Structural Design
Izaskun Chinchilla Moreno Senior Research Fellow Peter Guillery Senior Research Associate Survey of London Sally Hart Research Assistant Helen Jones Research Associate Survey of London Dr Hilary Powell Research Fellow Aileen Reid Research Associate Survey of London
Bartlett Manufacturing and Design Exchange (B-Made) Abi Abdolwahabi Richard Beckett William Bondin Matt Bowles Martyn Carter Bim Burton Inigo Dodd Justin Goodyer Richard Grimes Olga Linardou Johnny Martin Robert Randall Peter Scully Matthew Shaw Paul Smoothy Tom Svilans Will Trossell Emmanuel Vercruysse Nick Westby
Harriet Richardson Research Associate Survey of London Andrew Saint Principal Research Associate Survey of London
The Bartlett School of Architecture 2015
Alisa Andrasek Reader in Architecture and Computation MArch AD Programme Leader
Frosso Pimenides Senior Lecturer BSc Architecture Year 1 Co-Director
Research Fellows and Associates
Philip Temple Senior Research Associate Survey of London Andrew Thom Senior Research Associate Survey of London
Professional Services Professional Services Administration Meredith Wilson Academic Services Administration Izzy Blackburn Michelle Bush Emer Girling James Lancaster Tom Mole Research Mark Burgess Luis Rego Kimberley Steed German Communications and Website Laura Cherry Jean Garrett Michelle Lukins Finance and HR Stoll Michael Faizah Nadeem Rita Prajapati Facilities Graeme Kennett Bernie Ococ 99
Bartlett Lectures
The Bartlett International Lecture Series Featuring speakers from across the world. Lectures in the series are open to the public and free to attend. This year’s speakers included:
The Bartlett School of Architecture 2015
Tatiana Bilbao Kendra Byrne Peter Cook Neil Denari Liz Diller Keller Easterling Frida Escobedo John Frazer Arthur Ganson Greyshed Efrén Garcia Grinda Adrian Lahoud CJ Lim Adam Lowe Lucy McRae Frédéric Migayrou Cristina Díaz Moreno Vo Trong Nghia Emmanuel Petit Steven Pippin Raj Rewal ScanLAB Benedetta Tagliabue Peter Testa Mette Ramsgaard Thomsen James Wines The Bartlett International Lecture Series is generously supported by the Fletcher Priest Trust.
A range of smaller lecture series attracted a wide range of speakers, including: Bartlett Plexus Paul Bavister, Richard Beckett, Tom Beddard, Niccolo Casas, Sam Conran, Xavier De Kestelier, Felix Faire, Filamentrics, Daniel Franke, Kostas Grigoriadis, Soomeen Hahm, Alex Haw, Istvan, Saša Jokic, Tobias Klein, Kreider + O’Leary, Samantha Lee, Owen Lloyd, Andy Lomas, Oliviu Lugojan-Ghenciu, Marshmallow Laser Feast, Emma-Kate Matthews, Ricardo O’Nascimento, Clemens Preisinger, David Reeves, Yuri Suzuki, Frederik Vanhoutte Material Matters Adrian Bowyer, Vincent Loubière, Sophie de Oliveira Barata, Aran Chadwick Jan Knippers, Edwin Stokes, Daniel Cardoso Llach, Sara Klomps Designing for Sound Paul Bavister, Mike Harding, Benjamin Hebbert, Ian Knowles, John Levack Drever, Tomas Mendez, David McAlpine Situating Architecture Peter Bishop, Iain Borden, Ben Campkin, Mario Carpo, Claire Colebrook, Edward Denison, Murray Fraser, Stephen Loo, Clare Melhuish, Frédéric Migayrou, Barbara Penner, Emmanuel Petit, Sophia Psarra, Peg Rawes, Jane Rendell, Harriet Richardson, Tania Sengupta, Nina Vollenbröker, Robin Wilson
Image: PhD Projects Conference 2015 100
In 2016 we will be 175 years old
In 1841 Thomas Leverton Donaldson was appointed UCL’s first Chair in Architecture, one of the first in the UK, founding what later became The Bartlett School of Architecture. To celebrate this milestone, in 2016 we will be organising a year of special events and activities:
The Bartlett School of Architecture 2015
The inaugural Donaldson Lecture, a major new annual lecture by a household name, which aims to draw links between the Built Environment sector and the wider world.
A special publication in conjunction with Architectural Review, celebrating the history of the School and the work of notable staff and alumni.
The inaugural Drawing Futures conference, an international peer-reviewed conference examining the critical role of drawing in relation to technology, contemporary architectural practice and beyond.
The 2016 conference of the Association of Architectural Educators, a major international conference on the theme of ‘Research-Based Education’.
The launch of a series of anniversary bursaries funded by alumni and supporters, to support promising students who may not otherwise be able to study with us.
Our newly refurbished home, 22 Gordon Street, will reopen with a series of special exhibitions and events.
Alumni will be invited to attend one-off reunion events and dinners in grand and unexpected spaces in the UK and overseas, to hear from guest speakers, network and reunite with old friends.
In addition, our International Lecture Series and Summer and Autumn student shows will feature extra activities and stellar guest appearances.
Find out more and get involved at bit.ly/Bartlett175
Image: Visiting lecturer Buckminster Fuller instructs students on building a Geodesic Dome, 1962. Photo: Guy Hawkins 102
The Bartlett School of Architecture 2015
103
New Programmes
The Bartlett School of Architecture 2015
MRes Architecture & Digital Theory The new Masters by Research (MRes) Architecture & Digital Theory is dedicated to the theory, history, and criticism of digital design and digital fabrication. The intensive 12-month programme provides a grounding in research for students either trained in the design professions, or with a primary background in digital technology or the digital humanities, who are aiming at furthering their understanding of digital innovation. It is expected that in its inaugural years the programme will focus in particular on the challenge of complexity in computational design, and on its aesthetic, technological, economic and epistemological implications. Research topics currently under consideration include: agent-based conception; the new sciences of simulation, optimisation and form-finding; the transdisciplinary scalability of computational models; robotics and the engineering and modelisation of new materials and of variable property materials; and the history of digital notations and the demise of notational processes in the current data-driven computational environment. bit.ly/mresarchdigi
104
MA Architecture & Historic Urban Environments The MA Architecture & Historic Urban Environments pioneers the development of a more diverse and creative approach to the reinterpretation and reuse of historical environments in cities around the world, such as through imaginative architectural designs and urban strategies, and including issues of cultural heritage. This 12-month programme is exceptional in linking the core research challenge of innovative design with in-depth processes of urban surveying, recording, mapping and analysis. As such, the programme has a strong international component, viewing cities around the world as fascinating laboratories for investigations into architectural and historic urban environments, with London being the prime example. Core modules include: Design Practice for Historic Environments; Design Research Methods for Historic Environments; Issues in Historic Urban Environments; Surveying and Recording of Cities and Urban Redevelopment for Historic Environments. bit.ly/maarchhistoric
Bartlett Short Courses
The Bartlett School of Architecture’s short courses are aimed at school leavers, university students and professionals wishing to hone their skills, the courses give students a chance to experience life within the UK’s leading architecture school giving them access to cutting-edge facilities and staff. Courses include:
Summer Studio This tailored short course offers students already studying Architecture at different universities, or undertaking similar creative programmes, the opportunity to diversify their skills in a range of areas. Summer Skill-ups The Summer Skill-ups are intensive 5-day courses offering a wide range of computer and portfolio training to hone existing skills and develop new ones. These can be taken in conjunction with the longer Bartlett Summer Studio programme or as stand-alone courses.
Peter Cook Masterclass This is a new intensive studio specifically designed for Architects who wish extend the range of their work, under the guidance of Professor Sir Peter Cook RA. Pop-up Collaboration A series of tailor-made programmes offered to schools and universities wanting to gain an insight into the design approaches taught at The Bartlett School of Architecture. Postgraduate Certificate in Advanced Architectural Research (pgCAAR) This programme enables postgraduate students to take their work to a higher level of design and theoretical development in preparation for further study. bit.ly/b-shortcourses
105
The Bartlett School of Architecture 2015
Summer School This 10-day design-based course gives participants a first taste of studying architecture at UCL. The course attracts both young people still in their secondary education and school leavers considering creative careers.
Summer Special These specialist short courses offer students already studying Architecture at different universities, or undertaking similar creative programmes, the opportunity to diversify their skills in a particular field.
Bartlett School of Architecture Publications Read online at issuu.com/bartlettarchucl Buy in print at bit.ly/Bbooks
The Bartlett School of Architecture 2015
Bartlett Design Research Folios The Bartlett School of Architecture has launched a new publication series dedicated to design research produced by its own staff. The series is a free online resource showcasing original and experimental works by established and early career design researchers in the school. Each folio focuses on a single project, offering an in-depth visual and textual description of its research questions, methods and outcomes. The result is an illuminating series that highlights the creative role of design practice in architectural research. Online at bartlettdesignresearchfolios.com
PhD Research Projects The catalogue from the annual conference and exhibition showcasing doctoral research at The Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL, published in early Spring each year. Each edition features a selection of presentations from students who are starting, developing or concluding their research. The 2015 publication includes contributions from MPhil and PhD students at the Royal College of Music, as part of an ongoing interdisciplinary collaboration. Online at issuu.com/bartlettarchucl
106
The Bartlett Book Released each Summer, The Bartlett Book is a comprehensive catalogue of student work, focusing on the BSc and MArch Architecture (ARB/RIBA Part 1 and Part 2) programmes at The Bartlett School of Architecture. The publication is illustrated in full colour and includes a description of each Design Unit’s agenda and output, a summary of the School’s other programmes, and dissertation and thesis excerpts. The Bartlett School of Architecture 2015
Buy in print at bit.ly/Bbooks
LOBBY A vibrant new publication produced by Bartlett School of Architecture students, LOBBY aims to open dialogue and stimulate debate. Each themed issue includes contributions from members of the architectural community beyond The Bartlett alongside and in response to work generated inside the school. LOBBY #3, Defiance, features Carme Pinós, David Adjaye and Mario Botta. Buy in print at bit.ly/Bbooks Online at bartlettlobby.com
107
B-Pro Show 2015 Lighting Supporter
Image: City and Urban Infrastructures Lab workshop with Forensic Architecture Goldsmiths and Amnesty International, ‘Amnesty international report onto Human rights violation during the 2014 Gaza War’. 2014
bartlett.ucl.ac.uk/architecture
Publisher The Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL Editors Frédéric Migayrou, Andrew Porter Editorial Coordination Laura Cherry, Michelle Lukins Graphic Design Patrick Morrissey, Unlimited weareunlimited.co.uk Photography Stonehouse Photographic Copyright 2015 The Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. ISBN 978-0-9929485-6-6
For more information on all the programmes and modules at The Bartlett Faculty of the Built Environment, UCL, visit bartlett.ucl.ac.uk The Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL 140 Hampstead Road London NW1 2BX +44 (0)20 3108 9646 architecture@ucl.ac.uk Twitter: @BartlettArchUCL Facebook: facebook.com/BartlettArchitectureUCL Instagram: bartlettarchucl Vimeo: vimeo.com/bartlettarchucl
bartlett.ucl.ac.uk/architecture
9 780992 948566