Bartlett Design Anthology | PG14

Design Anthology PG14

Architecture MArch (ARB/RIBA Part 2) Compiled from Bartlett Summer Show Books

Our Design DNA

At The Bartlett School of Architecture, we have been publishing annual exhibition catalogues for each of our design-based programmes for more than a decade. These catalogues, amounting to thousands of pages, illustrate the best of our students’ extraordinary work. Our Design Anthology series brings together the annual catalogue pages for each of our renowned units, clusters, and labs, to give an overview of how their practice and research has evolved.

Throughout this time some teaching partnerships have remained constant, others have changed. Students have also progressed from one programme to another. Nevertheless, the way in which design is taught and explored at The Bartlett School of Architecture is in our DNA. Now with almost 50 units, clusters and labs in the school across our programmes, the Design Anthology series shows how we define, progress and reinvent our agendas and themes from year to year.

2022 Spatial Tectonic

Jakub Klaska, Dirk Krolikowski

2021 Inner Form

Jakub Klaska, Dirk Krolikowski

2020 Systemic Impact

Jakub Klaska, Dirk Krolikowski

2019 Modern Courage

Jakub Klaska, Dirk Krolikowski

2018 Pioneering Sentiment

Jakub Klaska, Dirk Krolikowski

2017 Disruptive Technology

Evan Greenberg, Dirk Krolikowski

2014 Metamorphosis: Architectures of Ingenuity

Paul Bavister, James O’Leary

2013 Interface Architecture

Paul Bavister, James O’Leary

2012 Chronotopia

Paul Bavister, James O’Leary

2011 Disruptive Technology

Paul Bavister, Jason Bruges

2010 The Experimental Toy Factory

Stephen Gage, Richard Roberts

2009 The Real Thing

Phil Ayres, Stephen Gage, Richard Roberts

2008 Experiments in Time

Phil Ayres, Stephen Gage, James O’Leary

2007 The Theatre of Mistakes

Phil Ayres, Stephen Gage, James O’Leary

2006 Architecture is Magic

Phil

Ayres, Stephen Gage, James O’Leary

2005 The Interactive Architecture Workshop

Phil Ayres, Stephen Gage, Usman Haque

2004

Shadows of the Past Can be Cast Into the Future

Phil Ayres, Stephen Gage, Usman Haque

Spatial Tectonic

Jakub Klaska, Dirk Krolikowski

Spatial Tectonic

Jakub Klaska, Dirk Krolikowski

PG14 is a testbed for exploration and innovation, examining the role of the architect in an environment of continuous change. We are in search of the new: leveraging technologies, workflows and modes of production seen in disciplines outside our own. We test ideas systematically by means of digital as well as physical drawings, models and prototypes. Our work evolves around technological speculation with a research-driven core, generating momentum through the astute synthesis of both.

Our propositions are ultimately made through the design of buildings and in-depth consideration of structural formation and tectonic constituents. This, coupled with a strong research ethos, generates new and unprecedented, viable and spectacular proposals. They are beautiful because of their intelligence, their extraordinary findings and the artful integration of these into architecture.

The focus of this year’s work evolved around the concept of ‘spatial tectonic’. This term describes architectural space as a result of the highest degree of synthesis of all underlying principles.

Constructional logic, spatial innovation, typological organisation and environmental and structural performance are all negotiated in an iterative process driven by architectural investigation. These inherent principles of organisational intelligence can be observed in both biotic and abiotic systems, in all spatial arrangements where it is critical for the overall performance of any developed order. Ultimately such principles suggest that the arrangement of constituents provides intelligence as well as advantage to the whole.

Through a deep understanding of architectural ingredients, students generated highly developed architectural systems in which spatial organisation arose as a result of sets of mutual interactions. These interactions were understood through targeted iterations of spatial models, uncovering logical links while generating ambitious and speculative arrangements. Sequential testing and the enriching of abstract yet architectural systems were the basis of architectural form – communicating the relationship of all logical dependencies, roles and performances within the system.

Year 4

Alysia Arnold, Muhammad (Fazeel) Babur, Dominic Benzecry, Sebastian Birch, Joel Jones, Kishan Mulji, Matthew Needham

Year 5

Teodor Andonov, Vegard Elseth, Holly Hearne, Ryan Moss, Benjamin Norris, Kacper Pach, Svenja Siever, Chen-Ru Sung

Technical tutors and consultants: Damian Eley, Florian Gauss

Thesis supervisors: Hector Altamirano, Andrew Barnett, Tim Lucas, Michael Stacey, Oliver Wilton

Critics: Andrew Abdulezer, Barbara-Ann CampbellLange, Xavier De Kestelier, Damian Eley, Charlie Harris, Ho-Yin Ng, Ricardo Carvalho De Ostos, Saman Saffarian, Dan Wright

Sponsors: HASSELL (main sponsor), RSHP, ALA, DKFS, Expedition Engineering, knippershelbig, Seth Stein Architects, ZHA

14.1, 14.23 Ryan Moss, Y5 ‘Power for London’. As Transport for London searches for new localised electricity sources, the project attempts to civilise nuclear power production with a small modular reactor sited in a new underground station entrance at Bank Junction. The building takes inspiration from the Gothic innovation of masonry construction, with mass timber sheet material taking on new forms through folding and pleating.

14.2, 14.21 Kacper Pach, Y5 ‘Train Station Katowice Główne’. The project explores a novel timber structural system for a new train station in Katowice, Poland. Through its materiality, dense vegetation and wider pedestrianised public space, the station redefines a new open and green image of the city, embodied within sustainable public transport infrastructure.

14.3, 14.12 Vegard Elseth, Y5 ‘Fjordbyen City’. Located at the fjord of Oslo’s old port line below Akershus Fortress, the project proposes an extension of the city’s tramline, and the embedment of this within cultural infrastructure in order to activate Oslo’s ‘Fjord City’. Based on nautical technological investigations, stepped profiles evolve into a sweeping roof span, which is formed of block lamination derived directly from the material’s production possibilities.

14.4, 14.9 Teodor Andonov, Y5 ‘Tech-Folk New Urban Vernacular’. The project proposes an independent town hall for Plovdiv, Bulgaria, where technocratic innovation and vernacular lifestyle fuse in a new civic model. The developed structural system synthesises the character of the local vernacular with material innovation, through a new design-to-fabrication computational methodology for freeform timber frames based on 2D CNC milling.

14.5 Chen-Ru Sung, Y5 ‘Sumo_X’. The project explores the structural potential of a folding oriented strand board (OSB) plate system to design a robotic sumo arena in Tokyo. A layering strategy is adopted to maximise structural efficiency and reduce material waste. The proposal provides novel entertaining experiences for the audience and explores a new typology for arenas after the pandemic to counter the challenges of an ageing society and social isolation that Japan currently faces.

14.6, 14.22 Sebastian Birch, Y4 ‘The Carpenter’s Guildhouse’. The project imagines a future guild house for timber framers, sited in the German city of Lübeck, building on the history of this obsolete but formerly valuable typology. The project speculates on the development of glued laminated timber (glulam) fabrication technologies with a focus on nodal connections. By leveraging the expressive possibilities of the system, the project draws on the traditions of craftsperson organisation in Germany and a future typology influenced by digital possibilities.

14.7, 14.19 Svenja Siever, Y5 ‘The Lindworm Festival’. The project examines the optimisation of large-span glulam structures in Munich, Germany. The brief investigates the economic and cultural ties between Germany and China within the Bavarian context. Taking the concept of the diverse ‘Volksgarten’, the project helps to facilitate international exchange while bringing back greenery to a site that was once lush grassland. Spatial qualities are investigated through subdivision surface modelling (SubD). A glulam frame structure is projected onto the typology, while material is saved using a Lindenmayer system.

14.8, 14.18 Holly Hearne, Y5 ‘Cycle Line’. Consisting of two branches, the High Line and the Under Line, the new Cycle Line is a solution to the rapid post-pandemic cycling boom. The High Line proposes a new elevated cycling network, while the Under Line will regenerate London’s disused underground tunnels into cycle paths. This new network culminates in a central interchange, allowing cyclists to move seamlessly from an elevated

network to a subterranean network, and out to the ground level and the city beyond.

14.10 Muhammad (Fazeel) Babur, Y4 ‘Reimagining the Manchester Piccadilly Entertainment District’. Reinvigorating Piccadilly Gardens for public leisure, the project reimagines it as a series of accessible performance venues for use by under-represented artists in the city, who can capitalise on the passing public as their audience. Architecturally it takes its precedent from the Piccadilly Entertainment District, a 1960s scheme proposed for the site which never came to fruition.

14.11 Kishan Mulji, Y4 ‘Lhuentse School of Crafts’. The proposal brings together the Himalayan construction technique of Kath Khuni – characterised by the systematic layering of bands of timber and dry stone – with a hybrid user group of foreign exchange students and native craftspeople. Through the introduction of a crafts-based educational programme in eastern Bhutan, the scheme celebrates the region’s historical infrastructure, reframing the heavily spiritualised lens through which the Himalayas is normally viewed.

14.13 Benjamin Norris, Y5 ‘Freedom Valley’. The project proposes the systemic reuse of the under-utilised Los Angeles River for varying clusters of communityled public infrastructure that play host to cultural production in a coming age of mass technological unemployment. In response to the increasing gentrification of creative districts within the city, makers’ spaces, workshops and garages cantilever over and cut into the disused concrete embankment that is reimagined as a national park for creatives from the city and beyond to connect and create.

14.14, 14.17 Dominic Benzecry, Y4 ‘Gammur Sviðslistamiðstöð’. The project introduces cultural infrastructure to a remote northern region of Iceland in the form of a performing arts centre which responds to a centralised economy, a growing music industry and rich landscape folklore. The architecture sits in harmony with and in contrast to the landscape, with a stone pedestal created from milled basalt blocks and a prefabricated steel semi-monocoque structure sitting above. The central space is carved into the landscape, with a performance hall surrounded by a gallery, workshops, geothermal pools and accommodation for both staff and visitors.

14.15 Joel Jones, Y4 ‘Thistle and the Burr’. In response to the Scottish independence movement, the project proposes a new British Embassy located in Edinburgh. Designed in a Neo-Tudor style, the project acts as a physical manifestation of ‘Britishness’, helping to create a new partnership with an autonomous, sovereign Scotland following the dissolution of the union.

14.16 Alysia Arnold, Y4 ‘New Nordic Federation’. The project speculates on the formation of a new federal union between the Scandinavian countries to form a single socio-economic development area. Situated on the western Danish hinterland, the project proposes a new transport node embedded within cultural infrastructure, which will provide rapid connectivity between the hinterlands and the wider Scandinavian cities.

14.20 Matthew Needham, Y4 ‘The Liverpool Docks’. Situated in the historical Salisbury Dock in Liverpool, the project proposes an entrepreneurial trade hub embedded within a robotic greyhound racing stadium. The proposal regenerates the docking area that has come to ruin, with the stadium being crafted around the procession of the race day events.

Inner Form Jakub Klaska, Dirk Krolikowski

Inner Form

Jakub Klaska, Dirk Krolikowski

PG14 is a test bed for architectural exploration and innovation. Our students examine the role of the architect in an environment of continuous change. As a unit, we are in search of new leveraging technologies, workflows and modes of production seen in disciplines outside our own. We test ideas systematically by means of digital and physical drawings, models and prototypes. Our work evolves around technological speculation and design research, generating momentum through astute synthesis. Our propositions are ultimately made through the design of buildings and the in-depth consideration of structural formation and tectonic constituents. This, coupled with a strong research ethos, generates new, unprecedented, viable and spectacular proposals.

At the centre of this year’s academic exploration was Buckminster Fuller’s ‘comprehensive designer’: a master-builder who follows Renaissance principles and a holistic approach. Like Fuller, PG14 students are opportunists in search of new ideas and architectural synthesis. They explored the concept of ‘inner form’, referring to the underlying and invisible but existing logic of formalisation, which is only accessible to those who understand the whole system, its constituents and the relationships between.

This year’s projects explored the places where culture and technology interrelate to generate constructional systems. Societal, technological, cultural, economic and political developments propelled our investigations and enabled us to project near-future scenarios, for which we designed comprehensive visions. Our methodology employed both bottom-up and top-down strategies in order to build sophisticated architectural systems. Pivotal to this process was practical experimentation and intense exploration using both digital and physical models to assess system performance and application in architectural space.

Year 4 Teodor Andonov, Vegard Elseth, Holly Hearne, Ryan Moss, Benjamin Norris, Alasdair Sheldon, Svenja Siever, Chenru Sung

Year 5

Daniel Boran, Austen Goodman, Ivan Hewitt, Andre Hoelzle de Moraes, Nnenna Itanyi, Connor James, Jack Lettice

Technical tutors and consultants: Damian Eley, Charles Harris, Martin Gsandtner

Thesis supervisors: Andrew Barnett, Carolina Batram, Tania Sengupta, Michael Stacey, Oliver Wilton

Critics: Andrew Abdulezer, Vishu Booshan, Florian Gauss, Thorsten Helbig, Manuel Jiménez Garcia, DaeWha Kang, Xavier de Kastelier, Saman Saffarian, Patrik Schumacher, Charles Walker, Dan Wright

14.1, 14.3 Austen Goodman, Y5 ‘St’á7mes Microhub’.

The project focusses on the performative properties of structurally folded cross-laminated timber for the use of column-free assemblies. It considers the current state of the engineered timber industry and speculates on what future build-ups can achieve with the proposed technological advancements. Located in Squamish, Canada, the proposal speculates that local forest industries, in partnership with the First Nations peoples of Canada, can incentivise growth in the engineered timber industry.

14.2, 14.20 Connor James, Y5 ‘London Gateway’. The project investigates freeports as a mechanism for post-Brexit and post-Covid-19 economic recovery, while considering the developing global climate crisis. To synthesise these competing narratives into an architectural hybrid speculation, a new urban zone and satellite port, facilitating trade in physical and intangible service assets, sits atop a flood-defence system. A slowdown in the global economy since the financial crisis of 2008 has fed international efforts to provide favourable conditions for economic growth; special economic zones (SEZs) are part of this international incentive strategy. Freeports are situated within a nation’s borders but include legislative exemptions; this specific condition allows for speculation towards hyper freemarket conditions and their spatial manifestation.

14.4, 14.5 Ryan Moss, Y4 ‘The Commonwealth Assembly’. Concrete and timber as a material hybrid has unrealised potential, overlooked and restricted by its opposing material sensitivities. The research develops strandwoven bamboo as a concrete reinforcement that can be applied in fully integrated composite construction. The Commonwealth Assembly is formed through the consolidation of colonial outcomes found in Hong Kong society, which remain cherished today, manifesting in a new political structure that serves as a catalyst for citizens to subvert the current governance of the city.

14.6, 14.7 Andre Hoelzle de Moraes, Y5 ‘New Complexes of the Brazilian Amazônia.’ A proposal for using sustainable timber (hardwood), produced within a tropical agroforestry system and applied to build whole communities. Situated within the most deforested regions of the Amazon, the design offers an alternative to current industrial farming practices.

14.8, 14.10 Nnenna Itanyi, Y5 ‘Wombs in the Desert’. The project reimagines a desert site on the outskirts of Timbuktu, Mali, in 2063. Constructed to achieve the aims of the African Union’s Agenda 2063 on inclusive and sustainable development, the infrastructure contains an urban settlement bolstered by the presence of a High-Speed Network and Great Green Wall Scheme. 14.9 Teodor Andonov, Y4 ‘Folkloria: Reimagining the Bulgarian folk-house’. Situated in the mountains of Bulgaria, the project synthesises a new vernacular based on traditional folk houses. Villages are reactivated by an influx of remote-working professionals, creating a modern worker village lifestyle that is achieved by applying a holistic tectonic system, which draws inspiration from the country’s architectural vernacular, and is optimised using local materials, fabrication techniques and labour. ‘Folkloria’ is a prototype for a hyper-local and hyper-global way of life.

14.11 Chenru Sung, Y4 ‘Bundling Bamboo’. Explores the structural potential of bundled bamboo in the construction of train stations. Bamboo is a fast-growing, natural and sustainable construction material and the project site in Taiwan has an abundant local supply. Adopting a modular structure that utilises the material’s tensile strength and flexibility, the project proposes a lightweight and affordable solution for future train stations.

14.12 Vegard Elseth, Y4 ‘Equinor Fornebu’. The project follows a meta-driven approach to design and reparametrises a structural system for a traditional stacking method, recognised in Scandinavia as ‘lafting’. By scaling a lumber profile linearly and mixing in a range of new wood properties and dimensions, the lafting profile becomes stronger in regions where it previously performed poorly. The new timber composite is tested as a headquarter cross-pollinated with an open-end headquarter, to establish the Norwegian economic model as an architectural proposition.

14.13 Benjamin Norris, Y4 ‘Nordicloop Nyhavn’. This project explores the potential of a future mixed-modal bicycle and hyperloop pod, and the role this emerging typology could have in our cities. Rather than siloing inter-city transport infrastructure to the outskirts, like the majority of airport terminals around the world, the project highlights the need for a future distributed network of mixed-modal 3D public infrastructures, which are embedded within the central fabric of urban life.

14.14 Holly Hearne, Y4 ‘Uncharted Waters’. Develops a structural system using high-performance concretes that are both durable and sustainable. To minimise the impact the construction process has on the landscape, the project explores prefabrication and the possibility of creating a fully integrated precast panel system. Situated in a coastal context, it adopts a sinuous curving form to provide structural rigidity, which acts as a defence mechanism to protect against harsh and extreme weather conditions.

14.15 Ivan Hewitt, Y5 ‘Integrated Urban Stadia’. Typically, sports stadiums stand idle for long periods of time. Sited along the Oslo waterfront in Norway, a new stadium integrates a highly differentiated context to create a frequently used urban space with increased social, cultural and economic activity.

14.16, 14.17 Jack Lettice, Y5 ‘Luna 2121’. A building on the Moon must be shaped by the hazards of the lunar landscape, which has a surface gravity 1/6th of Earth. The project explores the architecture of a new lunar culture and how it diverges from our preconceptions of what a building should be.

14.18 Svenja Siever, Y4 ‘The Living Powerhouse’. Explores ways to achieve differentiated spaces in civil construction and makes industrial architecture exciting to explore and inhabit. In line with Energy Strategy 2050, a centralised fish-trading hub on the outskirts of Geneva, Switzerland, is made self-sufficient using a hydroelectric dam. Through the analysis of computational fluid dynamics (CFD), the dam’s sheer walls are adapted to the unequal horizontal pressures acting on them. This material distribution method creates cavities within the walls and generates the dam spillway, allowing water to flow through specific programmes.

14.19 Daniel Boran, Y5 ‘Unorthodox Union’. The project identifies key structural problems of timber used in Russian orthodox churches, and substitutes it with brick while retaining the original construction method. The project is situated in 2050. Putin is no longer in power and infighting about who should be the next president has left the state fragile and unable to effectively govern regions outside the larger cities. In contrast, the Russian Orthodox Church has been growing in power since the last days of the USSR and has stepped in as a temporary governing authority. A single monastery holds regional power in rural areas and aims to instil a positive and spiritual way of life.

Systemic Impact

Jakub Klaska, Dirk Krolikowski

Systemic Impact

Jakub Klaska, Dirk Krolikowski

At the centre of PG14’s academic exploration lies Buckminster Fuller’s ideal of ‘the comprehensive designer’, a master builder who follows Renaissance principles and a holistic approach.1 Fuller (1895-1983) referred to this ideal of the designer as somebody who is capable of comprehending the ‘integrateable significance’ of specialised findings, and is able to ‘coordinate and realise the commonwealth potentials’ of these discoveries while not disappearing into a career of expertise. 2 Like Fuller, we are opportunists in search of new ideas and their benefits via architectural synthesis. Our work evolves around technological speculation with a research-driven core, generating momentum through astute synthesis. Our propositions are ultimately made through the design of buildings and through the in-depth consideration of structural formation and tectonic constituents.

Systemic Impact

The focus of this year’s work is the awareness that architecture can affect society at a deep systemic level3 and the understanding that architectural proposition is in itself a system of interrelated constituents where the findings of interdisciplinary systems theory apply. This knowledge opens a way to a method-driven approach that can materialise in architecture of great performance and considered expression while driving architectural authorship and novelty. Societal, technological, cultural, economic and political developments propel our investigations with a deep understanding of how they interlink. This shapes our strategies and heuristics,4 driving synthesis. The observation and re-examination of developments within civilisation enables us to project near-future scenarios and position ourselves as avant-garde in the process of designing a comprehensive vision for the future. This speculation has the potential to inspire significant change.

Our methodology employs both bottom-up and top-down strategies in order to build up sophisticated architectural systems, and is tailored to the individual problem. Pivotal to this process and to fighting charlatanism is the concept of practical experimentation: in this case intense exploration through both digital and physical models that aims to assess system performance and its direct application to architectural space.

Testbed and territory are critical to our proposals. Possible sites are both global and specific to the work. The brief and site are part of the individual designs, which demonstrate that the contribution of an architect – and architecture – to the progress of technology, and science is one of the keystones in shaping our society and the development of our culture in the future.

Year 4

Daniel Boran, Austen Goodman, Jack Hastie, Ivan Hewitt, Connor James, Jack Lettice, Andre Moraes

Year 5 Lap Yan (Justin) Chow, Andrei-Ciprian Cojocaru, Iago Natan Ferreira Souza, Michael Forward, Rupinder Gidar, Adrian Hong, Myfyr Jones-Evans, Fan (Lisa) Wu, Qiming (Douglas) Yang

Thanks to our consultants Joao Alves, Rasti Bartek, Younha Rhee

Thank you to our critics

Andrew Abdulezer, Joao Alves, Rasti Bartek, Shajay Bhooshan, Barbara-Ann Campbell-Lange, Florian Gauss, Martin Gsandtner, Thorsten Helbig, DaeWha Kang, Jan Klaska, Sara Klomps, Ho-Yin Ng, Igor Pantic, Saman Saffarian, Michal Wojtkiewicz, Dan Wright, Lei Zheng

1. R. Buckminster Fuller, Ideas and Integrities (Baden: Lars Müller), 1963/2010, pp229-239

2. Ibid. p98

3. ‘Systemic’ refers to something that is spread throughout, system-wide, affecting a group or system, such as a body, economy, market or society as a whole

4. ‘Heuristic’ describes an approach to problem solving or self-discovery that employs a practical method, not guaranteed to be optimal, perfect, or rational, but instead sufficient for reaching an immediate goal

14.1, 14.5, 14.20 Qiming (Douglas) Yang, Y5 ‘Reimagining Chinese Timber Frame ’. Based on research into the principles of the traditional Chinese timber frame, the project reinterprets the ‘Dougong’ system into a large-scale prototypical timber structure. Sited on the border of Malaysia and Singapore, the proposal brings traditional Chinese architectural language into a foreign tropical environment. As the result of China’s growing global influence, this project offers a vision of a neocolonial typology that is elegant and efficient.

14.2, 14.3, 14.17 Michael Forward, Y5 ‘Blackfriars Rail Bridge’. Comprehensive research into the historic applications of different timber species was a catalyst for systemic development. The project challenges the application of differentiated timber species in composite for performative objectives, tested upon a prototypical Blackfriars Rail Bridge. It develops an optimised system for structure and durability while considering circulatory aspects, presenting a large-scale timber infrastructure within London.

14.4, 14.10 Jack Lettice, Y4 ‘A New Airport For London’. Airports today are poorly integrated into cities, their size and noise leaving them stranded outside the urban core, poorly connected to wider networks. But if the aircraft of tomorrow were silent and clean, operating vertically, the airport could be something very different. London Victoria becomes a compact intermodal hub, as part of a distributed network of air terminals across the capital.

14.6 Jack Hastie, Y4 ‘A New Prototype for TfL’. The proliferation of materials like concrete has put a strain the environments they are sourced from. This project uncovers the importance of local material sourcing and the impacts of extraction. In the proposal, Transport for London utilises waste material from improvements and extensions to the current rail system, using much of this London clay in a new prototype station.

14.7, 14.11 Myfyr Jones-Evans, Y5 ‘Tŷ Pobl – A New Welsh Organic Architecture’. The ‘Gorsedd’ are the custodians of Wales’ Bardic heritage. The proposal is the first home for them and a centre of learning open to all – ‘Tŷ Pobl’. A building of such significansce has to be a monument to its land and people. By studying the Welsh vernacular architecture and finding strong parallels with the organic architecture of Frank Lloyd Wright, a ‘new Welsh organic architecture’ has been created.

14.8 Fan (Lisa) Wu, Y5 ‘Alibaba Wunderkammer’. Responding to the urban development of modern port cities, global capital flow and the New Silk Road initiative, a new Alibaba Group headquarters is born in Hamburg, Germany, combining futuristic logistics with a public Expo market. The design reinterprets traditional Chinese timber architecture as Vierendeel truss walls and engineered timber mega-cores, creating a new design within the existing building parameters, whilst retaining the warehouse district’s original neo-Gothic facade.

14.9, 14.16 Iago Natan Ferreira Souza, Y5 ‘Jutaí Explorer 3’. A carbon fibre reinforced plastic research centre hung from the canopy layer of the Amazon rainforest. The project reacts to the current political atmosphere in Brazil and the future of its rainforest. The design intends to give researchers access to unexplored areas by innovating lightweight architecture focusing on form, material and integration.

14.12 Andrei-Ciprian Cojocaru, Y5 ‘Eternum’. As a response to the critical scarcity of burial spaces within London, ‘Eternum’ is a proposal for a large urban cemetery located in Hyde Park. To be developed over 20 years, the building offers a range of burial options and allows extension in phases. The large number of spaces required are accommodated underground, integrating the structure into its context.

14.13 Ivan Hewitt, Y4 ‘Embankment as It Could Be’. The proposal envisions a new social interface with the River Thames. Hydraulic cover hatches enable the activation of the river’s edge in response to ever-changing environmental conditions. Tectonic investigations explored how folded sheet steel structures could withstand hydrostatic pressure, while integrating key services to facilitate the performance arena and wine bar which inhabits the excavated spaces.

14.14, 14.23 Austen Goodman, Y4 ‘Operation Klondike’. This project explores complex Kerfing – using research developed at the University of British Columbia called zippering. Zippering is the result of mating two pieces of timber to create a rigid structural member. Applying this structure to the Canadian lodge typology led to the development of a prototype which exhibits intent through performative structural design.

14.15 Andre Moraes, Y4 ‘Manaus Timber Market ’. Situated in the capital city of the Brazilian Amazon rainforest, the market is not only a trading centre for tropical hardwoods but also a catalyst for the use of engineered timber in Brazil. The proposal addresses ongoing mass deforestation through its structure and programme. Exclusive auctions of native species will be made possible by high rates and government support, with the proceeds from these inflated prices put directly back into replanting and maintaining the forest.

14.18 Connor James, Y4 ‘Monastic Outpost’. This speculative merging of cultural and industrial infrastructure is situated within the Russian High Arctic, and responds to the international commodification of previously inaccessible resources. This approach of assimilating two basic human needs derives from the notion that the race to the Arctic is a modern gold rush. Where the context is one of escalation, the programmatic and structural strategy aims to respond through means of reduction, drawing on almost elemental construction typologies, such as the stacking and interlocking of engineered timber members.

14.19 Rupinder Gidar, Y5 ‘The Barking Reach Wholesale Market Hub’. A vision for the future of London’s wholesale markets, combining them to create the UK’s largest wholesale market, sited in Barking & Dagenham. The project investigates the use of concrete, rebar and 3D-printed stainless steel to create large spanning structures which adopt funicular geometry. The digitally developed geometry, specific material properties and integration of these materials results in a system which achieves a state of equilibrium.

14.21 Lap Yan (Justin) Chow, Y5 ‘Neo-Mongkok’. A cluster of 400m tall ‘Pencil Towers’, this proposed Autonomous District in Hong Kong stitches together existing context through a terraced podium layer. The city’s land deficiency has prompted the integration of transit into residential high-rise towers. Structural analysis and CFD Modelling of the relationship between tower and podium allows even greater density of cultural and civic programmes along these elevated arteries. Autonomous vehicles and amenities inhabit the ground floor, servicing the pedestrianised upper levels.

14.22 Daniel Boran, Y4 ‘Community Spirit’. This project is a whisky distillery bridge over a gorge deep in the Scottish Highlands, directly linking hiking trails to two previously remote communities. The shape of the bridge is determined by the swing method, which involves constructing the bridge on one side, rotating it around a pivot point and finally locking it into place at the opposite end. The lower deck houses the whisky machinery whilst the upper is reserved for pedestrian use.

Modern Courage

Jakub Klaska, Dirk Krolikowski

Modern Courage

Jakub Klaska, Dirk Krolikowski

At the centre of PG14’s academic exploration is Buckminster Fuller’s ideal of the ‘the comprehensive designer’: a master builder who follows Renaissance principles and a holistic approach.1 Fuller (1895-1983), referred to this ideal of the designer as somebody who is capable of comprehending the ‘integratable significance’ of specialised findings, and is able to realise and coordinate the commonwealth potentials of these discoveries, whilst not disappearing into a career of expertise. 2 Like Fuller, we are opportunists in search of new ideas and their benefits via architectural synthesis and, as such, PG14 is a testbed for exploration and innovation, examining the role of the architect in an environment of continuous change.

We are in search of the new, leveraging technologies, workflows and modes of production seen in disciplines outside our own. We test ideas systematically by means of digital and physical drawings, models and prototypes. Our work evolves around technological speculation with a research-driven core, generating momentum through astute synthesis. We believe in the multi-objectivity of our design process, where the negotiation of different objectives becomes a source of architectural novelty and authorship. Our propositions are ultimately made through the design of buildings and the in-depth consideration of structural formation and tectonic constituents. This, coupled with a strong research ethos, generates new, unprecedented, viable and spectacular proposals.

This year, inspired by the audacity of the modernist mind, the unit’s work aspired to reinstate the designer’s engagement with all aspects of our profession. The observation and re-examination of developments in civilisation enabled us to project near-future scenarios and to position work as avant-garde, in the process of designing a comprehensive vision for the future. We explored how societal, technological, cultural, economic and political developments interlink, to shape strategies and determine a design approach. We investigated how human endeavour, desire and visionary thought interrelate to advance cultural and technological means, and drive civilisation. The underlying principle and observation of our investigations was that speculation can inspire and ultimately bring about significant change. The unit’s work searches for modernist courage and aims to grow found nuclei into imaginative tales, with architectural visions fuelled by speculation.

Year 4

Iago natan Ferreira Souza, Michael Forward, Rupinder Gidar, Myfyr Jones-Evans, Ioannis Saravelos, Fan (Lisa) Wu, Qiming (Douglas) Yang

Year 5

Heidi Yat Ning Au-Yeung, Finbar Charleson, Matthew Gabe, Docho Georgiev, Charles Harris, Boyan Hristov, Sophie Tait, Nimrod Wong

Thanks to: RSHP, Zaha

Hadid Architects, DKFS Architects, Heatherwick Studio, Amanda Levete Architects, Seth Stein Architects, Cundal Engineering, DaeWha Kang Design, Uni Stuttgart ITKE

Thanks to our critics and consultants: Andrew Abdulezer, Rasti Bartek, Barbara-Ann Campbell-Lange, Paulo Flores, Martin Gsandtner, DaeWha Kang, Jan Klaska, Melodie Leung, Filippo Nassetti, Ho-Yin Ng, Igor Pantic, Sam Saffarian, Ondrej Tichy, Charles Walker, Dan Wright, Bogdan Zaha

1. R. Buckminster Fuller, Ideas and Integrities (Baden: Lars Müller), 1963/2010, pp229-239

2. Ibid. p98

14.1, 14.13, 14.22 Finbar Charleson, Y5 ‘London Euston’. With comprehensive research into engineered timber as the primary design driver, this project draws upon historical references to situate what would be the first transit terminal structure constructed from wood. Experiments in wood lamination draw from a rich history, synthesising research into material science, sculpture, furniture design, naval architecture and aviation.

14.2, 14.9 Iago Natan Ferreira Souza, Y4 ‘The Campaign Pavilion’. This project uses airship technology to democratise the celebration of presidential campaigns in America. This new transportation method enables US presidential candidates to reach not just major cities in swing states but also the smaller towns in between. The design of the airship uses carbon fibre as a replacement to the existing, outdated, aluminium frame of modern airships.

14.3, 14.6, 14.7 Charles Harris, Y5 ‘Destination Docklands’. This project speculates a new ‘multi-objective’ approach to infrastructure for the 21st century, providing a core function with a locationally differentiated ancillary programme and contextual configuration.

14.4, 14.16 Matthew Gabe, Y5 ‘The London Philharmonic Hall’. A proposal for a new philharmonic hall on London’s Southbank, which brings the grandeur of a night at the opera to modern music. A primary concert hall and external performance venue split the site, surrounded by public realm and covered by a timber canopy, which links the external and internal spaces.

14.5, 14.18 Heidi Yat Ning Au-Yeung , Y5 ‘Interstitial Play’. This project proposes a new typology of urban expansion as a critique of Hong Kong’s current sea reclamation methods, easing the acute land shortage.

14.8 Sophie Tait, Y5 ‘Euroloop Leipzig’. This project proposes a ‘European Hyperloop Network’ – a new mode of transport that aims to enhance social, cultural and political solidarity amongst European countries. Carrying both goods and passengers, it travels up to 1200km per hour and enables the development of the European Single Market by creating better movement of goods, labour and services.

14.10 Ioannis Saravelos, Y4 ‘Googleplex Old Street’. This project speculates on an urban, privately-funded high-rise typology with intermediate pockets of public space. In this speculative context, the project funder is Google, being at the forefront of public space regeneration. The site is the Old Street Roundabout, tapping into the infrastructural opportunities and existing public space framework.

14.11–14.12 Michael Forward, Y4 ‘The Arctic Tap’. Situated in Tromsø in Norway, within the Arctic circle, ‘The Arctic Tap’ responds to the current cultural, climatic and economic position of the city. In partnership with Mack – the world’s northernmost brewery – it is a modern take on the traditional railway pub, and serves as a gateway to the Arctic and a meeting point for locals, tourists, and educational and economic migrants.

14.14 Docho Georgiev, Y5 ‘Liberating Olympics’. The research aim of this project is to propose an architectural solution to the decreasing popularity of the Olympic Games, triggered by the negative financial and social impacts of purpose-built sports venues. Focusing on the design of the Olympic Stadium, it proposes a lightweight portable version, owned by the International Olympic Committee, to be hired by each host city.

14.15 Rupinder Gidar, Y4 ‘The British Leyland Transport Hub’. A proposal for a tower that sits on the proposed site for the HS2 terminal in Birmingham city centre. A subscription-based environment is imagined where individuals pay for access to the ‘Future Type’ vehicle instead of owning their own. The tower provides a system which uses packing algorithms and swarm behaviour to rapidly collect and dispense vehicles in the future-based context of 2040.

14.17 Boyan Hristov, Y5 ‘Warsaw High Speed’. This project speculates on an EU-funded regeneration of derelict pockets within Poland’s central urban fabric using a bespoke mass-customised concrete construction. Cross-programming a new high-speed rail terminal with a food-market public plaza, it argues that typologies such as train stations are evolving to expand and include other programmatic uses, especially if situated within a dense urban area.

14.19 Qiming (Douglas) Yang, Y4 ‘Re-Occupying Gibraltar’. Gibraltar is the only British oversea territory that has a physical border with the EU. After Brexit, it is proposed that the UK government will tighten the strings for Commonwealth member states, and will seek new trading opportunities. Inspired by Boris Johnson’s suggestion of a ‘flagship’ to strike deals around the world, this project proposes a ‘Commonwealth Deal Making Headquarter’ in Gibraltar, focusing on African trade deals.

14.20 Myfyr Jones-Evans, Y4 ‘e-Race Wales’. The ‘Centre for e-Racing’ aims to provide a post-Brexit beacon of research and development in e-technology in the heart of post-industrial Wales. Proposed to increase employment, provide apprenticeships and educational opportunities, improve the local economy, as well as the climate of innovation, the centre will also promote clean energy.

14.21 Nimrod Wong, Y5 ‘The International Trade Centre for the One Belt One Road Nations’. This new organisation is proposed as a reaction to recent incidents, protests and trade injunctions caused by the Basic Rate Interface (BRI). The new scheme serves as a democratic mediating arena that aims to foster multinational relationships, as well as regulate economic activity. The proposed ‘International Trade Centre’ (ITCOBORN) aims to capitalise on Chinese President Xi Jinping’s trillion-dollar foreign policy offering improved integration of socio-economic interests to developing countries and emerging economies along the historic Silk Road route.

14.23 Fan (Lisa) Wu, Y4 ‘Chongwenmen Amateur Wine Gate’ This project proposes rebuilding Beijing’s city wall as fully enclosed highways for electric autonomous vehicles. The wall exterior is plugged with living modules, whilst the top is a belt of urban garden. The highway wall lifts off the ground in the locations of the old gates, allowing pedestrians to access the inner city from ground level. The nine gates are brought back as nodes, where different cultural or civic programmes are inserted, depending on their location and historical context. The gates are also transportation hubs, giving people access to the underground subway lines.

Pioneering Sentiment

Jakub Klaska, Dirk Krolikowski

Year 4

Yat Ning Au-Yeung, Daniel Avilan Medina, Finbar Charleson, Matthew Gabe, Charles Harris, Boyan Hristov, Dimitar Stoynev

Year 5

Ryan Lee Blackford, Alexander Bramhill, Paddy Fernandez, Maggie Lan, Natasha Marks, Thomas Michael Smith, Joshua James Thomson, Simon Wimble, Christopher Singh

Thank you to our consultants and critics: Andrew Abdulezer, Julia Backhaus, Barbara-Ann Campbell-Lange, Paul Clemens Bart, Rasti Bartek, Monika Bilska, Damian Eley, Michela Falcone, Martin Gsandtner, Manuel Jimenez Garcia, Will Jefferies, Eva Jiřičná, DaeWha Kang, Filippo Nassetti, Ho-Yin Ng, Gilles Retsin, Michal Wojtkiewicz, Daniel Wright

Pioneering Sentiment

Jakub Klaska, Dirk Krolikowski

At the centre of Unit 14’s academic exploration lies Buckminster Fuller’s ideal of the ‘the Comprehensive Designer’, a master builder who follows Renaissance principles and takes a holistic approach. Fuller refers to this ideal of the designer as somebody who is capable of comprehending the ‘integratable significance’ of specialised findings and is able to realise and coordinate the potentials of these discoveries. Like Fuller, we are opportunists in search of new ideas and their benefits via architectural synthesis. Unit 14 is a testbed for exploration and innovation, examining the role of the architect in an environment of continuous change. We are in search of the new: leveraging technologies, workflows and modes of production seen in disciplines outside our own. We test ideas systematically by means of digital as well as physical drawings, models and prototypes. Our work evolves around technological speculation with a research-driven core, generating momentum through the astute synthesis of both.

Our propositions are ultimately made through the design of buildings and through the in-depth consideration of structural formation and tectonic constituents. This, coupled with a strong research ethos, generates new and unprecedented, viable and spectacular proposals. They are beautiful because of their intelligence: their extraordinary findings and the artful integration of these into architecture.

This year Unit 14’s focus shifted, to examine moments of ‘pioneering sentiment’. We researched how human endeavour, deep desire and visionary thought interrelate to advance culture and technology, and drive civilisation. We searched for pioneering sentiment and expanded our findings into imaginative tales with architectural visions fuelled by speculation. The underlying principle and observation of our investigations is that speculation inspires and ultimately brings about significant change. We looked to the work of the Californian artist and designer Syd Mead who envisages and has scripted a holistic vision of the future with his designs.

The testbeds and territories for our investigations and proposals are as universal as our interests. Possible sites may be global or specific to our visits, according to what individual investigations suggest and the opportunities that arise. Unit 14 is supported by a working relationship with innovators across design. We liaise with experts from practice and engage specialists, but remain generalists ourselves, synthesising knowledge towards novel ways of thinking, making and communicating architecture.

The Bartlett School of Architecture 2018

Fig. 14.1 Paddy Fernandez Y5,‘Mitsubishi Mariculture’. Depiction of a first encounter with synthetic tuna in a vision for the new Tokyo Fish Market, which imagines a future for the Japanese market less reliant on the depletion of the oceans. Fig. 14.2 Ryan Lee Blackford Y5, ‘Amexica’. A new nation, free trade zone and glitch in the system on the American/Mexican border in the form of the Great American Wall. Here, Midway City Marina, part of the flagship development of Midway City within El Paso, offers recreational opportunities for Amexican residents in a ‘rocky cove’-style environment. The reservoir also provides valuable water storage and an outlet for the Rio Grande, located on the American side for security reasons. Restaurants and high-end apartments encircle the marina itself while a delivery depot occupies the strip of land adjacent

to the Mexican side. Fig. 14.3 Paddy Fernandez Y5, ‘Mitsubishi Mariculture’. Section through the market with its destinct tectonic deriven from an interpretation of traditional Japanese joinery. Fig. 14.4 Yat Ning Au-Yeung Y4, ‘Piccadilly Circus’. Piccadilly is a node, with one of the deepest tube stations and multiple music venues as well as existing theatres situated underground. The proposed structure taps into the literal underground culture scene, speculating on the pedestrianisation of the West End. Key to the retaining system is a ring acting in compression to resist the ground forces. Optimised beam structures double up as circulation routes across the site and into the neighbouring basements. The project introduces a new urban typology, integrating transport and cultural infrastructure.

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Fig. 14.5 Alex Bramhill Y5, ‘Duisburg Chinatown’. China is looking to open a direct transportation route to the heart of Europe. Entitled the ‘New Silk Road’, the final terminus is set to be Duisburg, Germany. The project explores the resultant influx of trade and frames the New Silk Road in the context of the Hanseatic League; a powerful medieval trade league that utilised the Rhine river network and North Sea, now creating a new modern Hansestadt at the heart of Duisburg. The megastructure is a new city, a melting pot of Eastern and Western culture.

Fig. 14.6 Paddy Fernandez Y5, ‘Mitsubishi Mariculture’. A tectonic fragment of the new structure exploring the integration of technology, programme and structural system.

Fig. 14.7 Thomas Michael Smith Y5, ‘Kings Cross Airport’. The project speculates on the unifying and disruptive nature of the aviation industry. The intended outcome is for the airport typology to take on a greater civic role. Key future technologies are two patents released by Boeing in 2017, these being a proposal for a commercial jet with the capacity to take off vertically, which will allow the airport to move further into the city centre as it disregards the need for a runway.

Fig. 14.8 Maggie Lan Y5, ‘The Good Water Corporation’. The project investigates the future of Los Angeles, where water has become an extraordinarily valuable commodity. The right

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to water is highly commercialised and regulated by the Good Water Corporation, which stores the valuable liquid in the covered LA River bed. The project critically questions private ownership of one of the most essential resources.

Fig. 14.9 Simon Wimble Y5, ‘The Deutsche Bank Museum of Unexpected Objects, New York’. The project envisions a hyper-commercialised cultural infrastructure in the future. The protagonists generate value through public exposure and publicity, utilising Duchamp’s principle of the readymade. It critically debates a scenario where our cultural infrastructure has been ransomed by corporate interests and where institutions exist, not under the directorship of cultural output, but to satisfy the requirements and promote business.

The Bartlett School of Architecture 2018

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Fig. 14.10 Yat Ning Au-Yeung, ‘Piccadilly Circus’. The project explores the potential of excavating the space inbetween ground surface and tube level at Picadilly Circus down to level five as a spatial opportunity for the increasingly dense city of London. Fig. 14.11 Ryan Lee Blackford Y5, ‘Amexica’. Within the 4000-mile long state The ‘Amex’ Stadium is situated adjacent to large public parks on either side of the border and aims aims to unite and collide both cultures. As part of the Olympic bid for Amexica to kick start its role as a centre of unique culture, the stadium is a unique investment opportunity and kickstarter for Amexican development in general. Featuring a raised sports pitch along with shared services such as kitchens and toilets, it maintains border separation between all three nations.

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Fig. 14.12 Dimitar Stoynev Y4, ‘Euro Place’. The City of London is known as the banking district of the UK, holding the biggest cross-border banking sector in the world. Although no one can predict the outcome of the events of Brexit, the project suggests another alternative: The City of London leaves the UK. This union will be marked with the establishment of a new bigger base for the European Court of Human Rights, which will serve as a celebration of the bond with EU and will maintain EU influence and interest in the City of London together with a new Eurostar Station. Fig. 14.13 Matthew Gabe Y4, ‘Hanson Robotics Center’. Central to the project is the relationship between man and robotics. It envisages a future in Hong Kong where humanoid robots are treated as a commodity and the robotic staff of the building become part of the servicing

strategy with their own circulation space. Fig. 14.14 Charles Harris Y4, ‘Queensboro Culture’. Returning to Manhattan’s legacy infrastructure, the project is located below Queensboro Bridge, intensifying under-used space. The scheme houses a large-scale, cellular meat facility, offering affordable meat products and ‘bio-allotments’. In the pioneering spirit of Manhattan’s infrastructure, the long-span structural system is biomimetically informed, developing a typical box girder to a central spine system, which is highly differentiated in response to load conditions and programmatic requirements.

Fig. 14.15 Natasha Marks Y5, ‘United Seoul’. The project explores the scenario of a future reunited Korea, which is becoming increasingly likely. Assumed mass migration from North to South Korea will cause a population surge in Seoul.

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As an alternative solution to high-rises to achieve densification, canyon-like urban arrangements below existing street level create an additional city. These canyons make use of the low-use negative space between buildings in the city centre. Daylight analysis as well as Depthmap is used as a tool to aid decision-making and the integration of Seoul’s street networks. It results in an intense speculation on how ultra-densification could be achieved with alternative strategies.

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Fig. 14.16 Boyan Hristov Y4, ‘Amazon Greyhound’. Proposal of a new bridge typology exploring the synergy of an AmazonGreyhound terminal as a new social node with a saloon within the heart of the American landscape. Figs. 14.17 – 14.18

Finbar Charleson Y4, ‘Totem Tower’. Located in the heart of Vancouver, the timber structure is envisaged to be owned by the Hul’qumi’num Treaty Group, an association of indeginous tribes and First Nations, as a key element in their legal battle for territorial and cultural rights. It is the speculative climax of the repossession of owed territories with a structure that fuses the iconography of the North American high-rise with the cultural significance of the longhouse and totem pole entrance. Tattoos historically signify tribal resilience and represented an invaluable tool against the breakdown and

cultural dispossession of indigenous tradition. The project translates the tradition of expressive surface marking onto the building where the load-bearing timber elements receive ‘structural tattoos’ in the form of scorched lines which mirror the structural stress lines of the system.

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Fig. 14.19 Christopher Singh Y5, ‘Circus Maximus’. The project intends to revive The Circus Maximus, a Roman chariot-racing stadium as a prototype for proactive preservation and to challenge existing conservation strategies towards the ancient relics of Rome. The stadium has been adapted for today with regards to programme and tectonics. The proposal attempts to invigorate the development of the next programme phase in the form of a Piaggio electric test track.

Fig. 14.20 Daniel Avilan Medina Y4, ‘Occupy Vitkov’. Section through the conversion of the Czech National Monument Vitkov, once occupied by Nazi and Soviet regimes, into the Czech National Brewery in pursuit of the monument’s democratisation. Fig. 14.21 Paddy Fernandez Y5, ‘Mitsubishi Mariculture’. The Sakura Terrace. Perspective looking towards

the northern edge of the building. The sakura is in full bloom and the movements of the inner market are semi-visible through the Laminated Veneer Lumber (LVL) slats, with a subtle effect of figures gently appearing and dissolving from view.

Disruptive Technology

Evan Greenberg, Dirk Krolikowski

Disruptive Technology

Evan Greenberg, Dirk Krolikowski

Year 4

Ryan Blackford, Alexander Bramhill, George Courtauld, Maggie Lan, Natasha Marks, Christopher Singh, Yan Kee (Adrian) Siu, Thomas Smith, Joshua Thomson, Simon Wimble

Year 5

Joshua Honeysett, Yi Lu, Cassidy Reid, Anthony Williams, Jonathan Wren

Thank you to:

Andrew Abdulezer (Seth Stein Architects), Julia Backhaus (BSA), Barbara-Ann Campbell-Lange (CampbellLange Workshop), Mike Davies (Rogers Stirk Harbour + Partners), Xavier de Kestelier (Foster + Partners), Ryan Dillon (AA), Elif Erdine (AA), Damian Eley (ARUP), Ashley Fridd (BSA), Fernanda Fiuza (Rogers Stirk Harbour + Partners), Stephen Gage (BSA), Jan Güell (NIKKEN SEKKEI), Laura Hannigan (AKTII), Will Jefferies (Rogers Stirk Harbour + Partners), Alexandros Kallegias (Zaha Hadid Architects), Antiopi Koronaki (University of Bath), Guan Lee (BSA), Nacho Martí (AA), Jack Newton (Rogers Stirk Harbour + Partners), Mario Pirwitz (JSWD), Bob Sheil (BSA), Falko Schmitt (DKFS Architects), Alican Sungur (Pattern Architects), Marco Vanucci (AA), Michael Weinstock (AA)

Unit 14 is a test bed for exploration and innovation, examining the role of the architect in an environment of continuous change. We are in search of the new, leveraging technologies, workflows and modes of production seen in disciplines outside our own. We test ideas systematically by means of digital as well as physical drawings, models and prototypes. Our work evolves around technological speculation with a research-driven core, generating momentum through astute synthesis.

Our propositions are ultimately made through the design of buildings and through the in-depth consideration of structural formation and tectonic constituents. This, coupled with a strong research ethos, has generated new proposals which are both viable and spectacular.

This year, Unit 14 examined the way in which culture relates to technology and how technology is a constituent part as well as a driver for radical cultural change. As a laboratory for these investigations, Unit 14 situated itself within Europe and its rich and diverse cultural context. It is shaped by separation, unification and deformation as well as reformation – and at its core, humanist Renaissance thinking is embedded in its architecture, traditions and progress. Thriving on competent research, the rich cultural environment of Europe, as well as speculation and vision, we accept that technology changes the way we think, live and work.

To probe Europe’s rich cultural legacy, we travelled to Vienna, the heart of Central Europe and what was once the capital of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. From Vienna’s central station, we departed late at night via a sleeper train, riding through the Czech Republic and Slovakia to wake up in Krakow, the intellectual centre of Poland, deeply embedded within the continent, in search of the wild and wonderful, the scientific and science fictional.

While we dream of the unexpected we pursue innovation as part of our culture, and in doing so we create architectures which have the potential to disrupt and augment what we think we know about Europe.

The Bartlett School of Architecture 2017

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Fig. 14.1 Ryan Blackford Y4, ‘Motherboard Russia’. A proposal for a Russian state-sponsored cyber operations centre, tasked with disrupting Europe’s political landscape through fake news, hack attacks and phishing scams on an unprecedented scale. Through a covert occupation of Vienna’s most iconic landmark, the operation combines the notion of ‘hacking’ as a contemporary political strategy with ‘hacking’ as a spatial strategy for architectural intervention. Fig. 14.2 Natasha Marks Y4, ‘High Altitude Training Basecamp‘. Located at 3,700m in the Sierra Nevada mountains of Spain, the Civil Guards use the camp to increase their fitness through a series of hypoxic (low oxygen) environments. Each of these is serviced by a robotic care compartment to assist and monitor the Guards in this extreme location. Fig. 14.3 Maggie Lan Y4, ‘Swiss

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Glaciology Base Station’. Situated on the fastest retreating glacier in Switzerland, the Great Aletsch Glacier. The building will work in conjunction with GLAMOS to better understand the connections between glaciers and the global climate system by analysing ice core samples and investigating the interactions between the glacial ice and the glacier bed. Fig. 14.4 Anthony Williams Y5, ‘Cultured [Meat]ropolis’. The project embraces and celebrates a widespread overconsumption of meat by integrating the innovative and sustainable technology of biofabrication into our urban centres. Using Munich as a prototype, we will redefine regional food production through the introduction of a new urban meat-producing typology: the ‘Brathaus’. Fig. 14.5 Thomas Smith Y4, ‘Oslo City Airport’. The project proposes a new type of airport for Oslo city centre.

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The airport is based on speculations around two patents released by Boeing in 2016, which allow the airport to move into Oslo city centre and become part of the public realm. Fig. 14.6 Simon Wimble Y4, ‘Water from Amsterdam'. Desalinating sea water in a context of fresh water scarcity is an opportunity for the Dutch to utilise a new agricultural landscape when 55% of their land is lost to the rise in sea levels. This commodity is traded in the Amsterdam Watermarkt, where the Dutch cultural traditions of markets and commerce define the architectural intervention.

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Fig. 14.7 Joshua Thomson Y4, ‘Doggerbank: Le Grand Projet’. A 'Grand Project' for Europe to reveal the historic lost land of Doggerbank and provide the home for a newly reformed and united EU. Fig. 14.8 Yan Kee (Adrian) Siu Y4, ‘Autonomous Anonymous: Sanctuary for the Petrolheads’. Under the dominance of autonomous vehicles in 2030, petrolheads in Cologne hijack the proposed carport as their secret sanctuary to worship petrol automobiles and rebel against the ban of combustion engines in Germany. Fig. 14.9 Jonathan Wren Y5, ‘Swissfish’. Swissfish is an Alpine fishery and genebank, responding to uniquely Swiss environmental conditions, such as water security and fish altitude migration. The dismantable building aims to ensure sustainable and economic methods of food production, whilst using Switzerland’s waterways for fish

distribution and building relocation. Fig. 14.10 Cassidy Reid Y5, ‘Pan-European Corridor’. The design proposal aims to uncover and enhance Europe’s cultural corridor. By leveraging highly efficient technology, the Hyperloop will enable this corridor to become easily accessible. This route will in turn have the potential to become Europe’s backbone of free trade and free movement.

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Bartlett

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Fig. 14.11 Joshua Honeysett Y5, ‘Paris Interchange, 2054’. The project speculates on a radical future for urban transportation in Paris. It envisions a world where cars and elevators have become streamlined into a singular multidirectional elevator network, VTOL aircrafts have become commercially viable, and the Hyperloop has been realised. The extensive transport network is housed underground, freeing the streets of Paris to become landscaped public space/parks. Fig. 14.12 Alex Bramhill Y4, ‘Il Viaggio Nella Democrazia (The Journey Into Democracy)’. ‘The Journey into Democracy' explores the reformation of the corrupt Italian political system through the creation of a mobile political vessel. This new travelling ‘direct democracy’ vessel places power into the hands of the populace, addressing how to retain

Italy’s national identity whilst undergoing political devolution. Fig. 14.13 Christopher Singh Y4, ‘The Porta Alpina Revival’. A prototype transport hub as part of a wider sub-Alpine transportation network, made possible by advanced excavation technologies – a vehicle for the democratisation of the Alps.

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Fig. 14.14 Yi Lu Y5, ‘Prototype for a Clay Village’. Using clay through innovative folding techniques, ‘Prototype for a Clay Village', situated in Valencia, Spain, challenges the image of traditional clay building and introduces architecture through innovative form and environmental performance. Fig. 14.15 George Courtauld Y4, ‘Opera / Night Club’. Music has always been about the communal act of sharing ideas and experiences. In a time when we are losing cultural infrastructure, this project aims to tap into the democratisation of music, culture and our city streets through technology.

The Bartlett School of Architecture 2017

The Bartlett School of Architecture 2017

Metamorphosis: Architectures of Ingenuity

Paul Bavister, James O’Leary

Year 4

Jiang Dong, Calum Alexander Macdonald, Heather McVicar, Louise Schmidt, Greg Storrar

Year 5

Kyveli Anastasiad, Seonghwan Cho, Petr Anthony Esposito, Yuan Ning, Alyssa Ohse , Jia Yuan Shen, Kok Kian Tew, Andrew Walker

We are grateful to our sponsors Kite & Laslett

Thank you to Dan Wright, our Design Realisation Tutor, structural consultant Andy Toohey, our environmental consultant Max Fordham and to our collaborators at Royal Holloway

Thanks also to our critics: Wesley Aelbrecht, Julia Backhaus, Gem Barton, Konstantinos Chalaris, Nat Chard, Illugi Eysteinsson, Ilona Gaynor, Alison Gibb, Ruairi Glynn, Fred Guttfield, Usman Haque, Christine Hawley, Sebastian Kite, Kristen Kreider, Tim Lucas, Patrick Lynch, Sam McElhinney, Mitch Mc Ewan, Ellen Page, Ollie Palmer, Bakul Patki, Eliot Payne, Price & Myers, Sophia Psarra, Kulveer Ranger, Richard Roberts, Rogers, Stirk Harbour + Partners, Florian Rothmayer, Ilona Sagar, Peter Scully, Catrina Stewart, Andy Toohey, Nick Wakefield, Melissa Woolford, Staff at Mike Kelley’s Mobile Homestead and all Detroit activists. A special thank you is reserved for all Bartlett workshop staff

Metamorphosis: Architectures of Ingenuity

Paul Bavister, James O’Leary

The post-industrial stage of capitalism has long-term implications for the cities we live in. Previously seen through the optimistic lens of modernist representation, the clean and fresh streets of architects’ visualisations are, in some extreme cases, turning into living dystopias. Some of the more established cities of the industrial era that have lost their economic momentum are now blighted with swathes of urban necrosis, with previously lively neighbourhoods disappearing, reclaimed by nature, and growing wild. Today’s cities are living organisms, a collection of autonomous components responding to localised conditions, each component thriving on the next, feeding on influxes of investment and societal needs. If left untended and starved of resource, areas of a city can die, leading to inevitable decay and the exodus of its host society.

Yet with maintenance, sensitivity and care, these areas can be revitalised, bringing change and rebirth to fading urban conditions. This year, Unit 14 has been investigating strategies and tactics for replanting seeds of sustainable growth in the urban environment. We have been instigating modes of regeneration by way of critical interaction with a host environment. Using appropriate technologies, and working at 1:1 immersive scale, we seek to question existing design methodologies in the wider context of a macroeconomic reality. How can intelligent architectural systems help to promote sustainable growth in these areas? What are the components that can define a sustainable response system? How can physical actions engender change outside of the studio environment?

There is nowhere on the planet at present where the problems of the post-industrial city are laid bare more starkly than in the ‘Motor City’ of Detroit. The Unit visited Detroit to see first-hand examples of experimental work that aims toward a more sustainable urban future, meeting local artists and architects who are working to develop resilient forms of urban communities in challenging economic circumstances. We then travelled to New York, moving from a city in current state of dereliction to one in a condition of renaissance, stopping off along the way at architecture and design departments at Cranbrook, Cornell, Yale and Cooper Union. We conducted field research to see how ideas currently being tested in the urban laboratory of America’s cities are changing their immediate environment.

On our return to London, our Year 4 students developed new architectural propositions for sites located in Detroit. Our Year 5 students worked on highly tactical insertions, designing architectures of ingenuity that can engender new spatio-temporal conditions in the city, bringing about radical change. Architectural proposals from our research were tested through interventions, installations, prototypes, time-based media and drawings, leading to further speculative representations at an urban scale.

The Bartlett School of Architecture 2014

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Fig. 14.1 Andrew Walker Y5. ‘Edge Condition’. Situated in darkness, a bespoke system of interactive drawing machines equipped with dynamic, electroluminescent armatures translate occupant behaviour into a sequence of light events, transforming the space around them from a scotopic labyrinth to an inhabitable diagram of their own perception. Chance superimpositions of afterimages suggest edges and surfaces that exist as Illusory sub-architectures occupying the interstice between imagination, memory and objective reality.

Fig. 14.2 – 14.4 Jia Yuan Shen Y5, ‘Co-operative Architecture’. A series of reconfigurable and extendable components designed to enable occupants to develop shared microgardening spaces through local co-operation. When erected, the structure is entirely self-contained, with irrigation systems

powered by solar cells within the structure. Fig. 14.5 Alyssa Ohse Y5, ‘A Caring Room’. The project investigates the role of responsive architecture within the healthcare system. A series of intelligent objects are created that work in ensemble to bring the sense of external conditions – light, sound, smell, the sky, to the interior space of a bed-bound patient. In the case illustrated here, a ceiling mounted array of actuated feathers reflects the motion of clouds scudding overhead.

The Bartlett School of Architecture 2014

The Bartlett School of Architecture

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Fig. 14.6 Seonghwan Cho Y5, ‘PolySpace’. A head-mounted device that overlays projected images from one urban space (Detroit) over the reality of another (Times Square, New York). Fig. 14.7 – 14.8 Seonghwan Cho Y5, The project developed from these initial studies to a proposal for an architectural façade that is configured to translate and replay the actions of the BBC Symphony Orchestra in Maida Vale, London to the streetscape outside. Fig. 14.9 – 14.11 Kyveli Anastasiad Y5, ‘Occupying Momentum’. A process of spatial analysis and creation that explores ‘physical thinking’ as a process of representation and making architectural spaces through data derived from interactions between a performer and a site. The resulting information – drawings, scans or sculptures – is used as a cognitive map of observed spatial

data and subsequently redefined as a set of instructions of how to design, inhabit or perform a given space. This is a form of examination and enquiry that is derived from the ‘thinking body’, where no external representation exists.

The Bartlett School of Architecture 2014

The Bartlett School of Architecture 2014

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Fig. 14.12 Louise Schmidt Y4, ‘Paper Trails’. Drawn to the cavernous and sprawling interior of the disused Packard car production plant in Detroit, the project investigates techniques for delicately defining and guiding human occupancy within the interior. Paper is used as a marker and modelling tool that suggests new architectural configurations with site-led material investigations. Fig. 14.13 Calum Alexander Macdonald Y4, ‘Practice Gallery’. Exploded Axonometric tracing the incremental development and subtle modification of various tectonic components throughout the course of this project’s construction phase. Fig. 14.14 Heather McVicar Y4, ‘Photography Gallery with Dispersed Satellite Studios’. A series of architectural interventions that seeks to engage people in the act of reimaging Detroit. Located on the roof of Michigan

Central Station – the most photographed ruin in Detroit, the architecture of the gallery is constructed physically and symbolically as a journey which redirects the contemporary ‘ruin gaze’ back into the living city. This image above is constructed using a camera obscura that was made in London and deployed in various sites around Detroit to document their spatial and atmospheric conditions.

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Fig. 14.15 Jiang Dong Y4, ‘Floating in the Ruins’. An acoustic sentinel that ‘listens’ for sounds of occupation and approach within an abandoned factory in Detroit. This has been developed into a 1:1 prototype as illustrated here.

Fig. 14.16 – 14.17 Greg Storrar Y4, ‘Share Detroit’. Siting the project firmly in the growing landscape of digital information, Greg develops a series of interface objects that encourage and collate information based on site and localised conditions. Actively seeking interaction from local users, a roaming QR code projector and Twitter response harvesting website are developed to generate discussion around the architectural direction of particular areas of the city.

Fig. 14.18 Petr Anthony Esposito Y5, ‘Scattered Domesticity’. The project investigates an architecture developed to better the lives of people caught in a situation of either temporary or chronic homelessness. The project proposed a network of micro-architectures – a ‘scattered domesticity’ both for houseless and housed across the city creating spaces of inclusivity. The architecture activates their chosen sites, challenging existing or forgotten uses with the aim of provoking discussion about the role of social architecture in the urban fabric. Fig. 14.19 Yuan Ning Y5, ‘Camden Time Folly’. The project seeks to unify a location’s past with an ever-changing present. It proposes a building that houses a series of immersive spaces that gave viewers and occupants new readings of the site via light-responsive panels and effects.

The content of the folly is created using both hand-crafted casting processes, and contemporary digital manufacturing techniques. Fig. 14.20 Kok Kian Tew Y5, ‘Theatre of Displacement’. An installation explores the notion of displacement through the use of surveillance technology. Live events and images are captured and manipulated, inviting an occupant to inhabit two spaces at a time through a series of spatialised projections and experiences. The installation takes the form of a deployable structure that is able to provide a new kind of psychological shelter and shared memory repository that can present images of a lost space that has meaning to an occupant.

The Bartlett School of Architecture 2014

Interface Architecture

Paul Bavister, James O’Leary

The Bartlett School of Architecture

Unit 14 Interface Architecture

James O’Leary, Paul Bavister

2013

Contemporary architecture is a space of information exchange. Increasingly, architectural environments are communicative spaces where historical and contemporary architectural layers happily coexist; where spaces are crammed with competing signs that generate rich and dynamic semiotics; where the architectural object and the user fuse into a kind of composite that is locked in a continuous exchange of information. This begs a number of questions: How do we design immersive architectural spaces for this new paradigm? Of what would its materiality consist? How would we envision the parameters for such spaces? How do we make these spaces ‘live’? Underlying these questions are two primary concerns: firstly, the changing nature of the material and technological layering of architectural space, and secondly, the evolving interrelationship between architecture and the user experience.

Unit 14 explores contemporary architecture as a space of communication, where architectural environments become legible spaces that can be read and interpreted by its users. Unit 14 develops tools and processes to allow students to understand and control this complex architectural matrix. We are interested in the relationships between technology, media and architecture as systems that construct spaces of meaning within a political and social realm. Here, ‘soft’ technological systems, as well as the ‘hard’ material stuff of architecture are the focus of design.

In order to explore and exploit this design potential, the Unit travelled to Mesoamerica in order to witness the Dia de los Muertos (The Day of the Dead) where death is celebrated as a catalyst for rebirth. We visited Mexico City, the largest metropolitan area in the western hemisphere and the ultimate city in transition, before visiting the ruined cities of the pre-Columbian societies of the Maya. Our journey fused the vibrant street life of downtown Mexico City with the ancient ruins of the Pyramids of the Sun and Moon in Teotihuacan. We began to understand Mexico as a complex terrain of overlain, inter-related

systems – some native, some imposed. The culture has evolved into a masterpiece of syncretic practice, where seemingly contradictory beliefs and practices are merged together into an inclusive unified whole. We found this profoundly inspirational. Perceptions and recordings of these conditions, whether political, conceptual or material, were crucial in gaining a critical understanding of the context of the work. We immersed ourselves in the complex semiotics of this space in the transitional time of the Mayan Fifth Sun. We were told the world would end. We never believed this for a second, but had a giant party just in case!

Message: Architecture as Semiotic Domain

At the beginning of the year the Unit worked together in a group project to establish parameters of operation, in the physical realm and the visual. The first project was a simple installation that acted as an interface to the students’ interests: architectural, philosophical and personal. This week-long project established ideas and aesthetic themes that could be drawn upon throughout the course of the year.

Material: Site as Palimpsest

Thematic development then split with the fourth years developing a more complex ‘interface architecture’ dealing with interaction and behavioural memes that had to be sited in the city, acting as an interface between occupant and site. The interface would become an integrated object, responding to localised conditions and behavioural patterns. The finished piece was then installed and tested onsite, with the students evaluating and recording the experience. The fifth years were free to continue and develop their own themes and ideas in the context of the Unit’s agenda.

Field Trip: Mexico

The fourth year building project continued ideas of semiotics and interface through a building program of the students choosing, sited in Mexico City. This led to a variety of building typologies and programs

responding to the individual ideas developed by each student.

Between Message and Material: a Composite Space

The final part of the year was spent developing a 1:1 detail of the building or a thematic model or installation that had a resonance with themes of semiotics and interface architecture that were tied back to the building project. Students were free to develop ideas and themes that could be carried on to Year 5. This led to the construction of 1:1 architectural fragments and details, responsive prototypes, and performance prosthesis.

Unit 14 would like to thank: Alessandro Ayuso, Dr Ana Araujo, Jason Bruges, Michelle Bush, Sam Causer, Professor Nat Chard, Susie Clapham, Dr Marjan Colletti, Kate Davies, Geraldine Denning, Illugi Eysteinsson, Darren Farrell, Jason Flanagan, Professor Stephen Gage, Ruairi Glynn, Andrew Hamilton, Bill Hodgson, Dr Kristen Kreider, Tim Lucas, Sam McElhinney, Will McLean, Dirk Krowlikowski, Chris Leung, Ollie Palmer, Price & Myers, Caroline Rabourdin, Professor Bob Sheil, Andy Toohey, Andy Whiting, Graeme Williamson, Dan Wright, Emmanuel Vercruysse, and all the wonderful staff in the Bartlett workshops.

Year 4

Kyveli Anastasiadi, Aleksandra Cicha, Petr Esposito, Yuan Ning, Sang Yong Seok, Hwan Cho Seong, Jia Yuan Shen, Michael Slade, Kok Kian Tew, Atilla Ali Tasan

Year 5

Suyang Xu, Hong-Jin (Chace) Leow unit-14.net kreider-oleary.net audialsense.com

Fig. 14.1 – 14.4 Suyang Xu , Y5, Light Narratives. The project aims to investigate how narrative can be constructed in architectural spaces through manipulation and control of light and text. Light is used to communicate with occupants and navigate them through spaces with controlled sequences to experience successive events, both physical and emotional. Focussing on the rhythm of natural and artificial lighting in Sir John Soane’s architecture, the project uses analysis of the quality and quantity of light in relation to surface and space to develop a series of architectural devices to engender a controlled spatial experience. Based on real events in Soane’s life, the correlation between effect, light sources, light modulators and light envelopes is examined through physical experiments, forming a series of light experiences installed in

Soane’s Pitzhanger Manor in May 2013. Fig. 14.1 Suyang Xu , Y5, Prototype light modulator Type 02. The bifurcating light from this architectural intervention depicted the fracturing relationship between Soane and his sons, who were reluctant to pursue careers in architecture. Fig. 14.2 Suyang Xu , Y5, Studies and analysis of the Sir John Soane’s Museum. These studies were the basis of the performance criteria for the prototypes that followed. Fig. 14.3 Suyang Xu , Y5, Time-based representation of light modulator on site. As an occupant interacts with the modulator, the output changes, retelling the narrative. Fig. 14.4 Suyang Xu , Y5, Light modulator Type 01. The light from this architectural intervention reflects the early career success of Soane.

Bartlett

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Fig. 14.5 – 14.8 Chace Leow, Y5, Meta-Sensory Architecture. This project explores the possibilities of layering and merging intangible aspects of human experience over separate sites in Mexico and London, defining cultural boundaries and historical aspects specific to each society. This has been developed through the use architectural devices that propagate specific olfactory zones to engender a psychological response in the occupant. Following on from ideas generated in Mexico, Chace then looked at merging sites separated not by geography, but by time, to create site specific immersive experiences defined by historical events particular the that site. The installation shown here, an ‘Extension to the Monument’, recreates the sound and smell of moments of the great Fire of London, juxtaposed over the contemporaneous experience of the

City of London in 2013. Fig. 14.5 Chace Leow, Y5, Detail of interaction of final 4m high installation showing architectural devices that propagate specific olfactory outputs through the use of low-frequency sound. Fig. 14.6 Chace Leow, Y5, Constructing an intangible personal architecture through the propagation of smell. Fig. 14.7 Chace Leow, Y5, The spatial extents described by the rotation of initial test armatures that generate new personal space through olfactory cues that change subtly over time. Fig. 14.8 Chace Leow, Y5, A sequence of video stills taken from a HD Video documenting a performance of the armature in Zocalo Square in Mexico City with the local ‘Grupo Ollin Cuauhtemotzin’ performing a smoke cleansing ritual: ‘The Celebration of Limpiador’.

Fig. 14.9 Mike Slade, Y4, Marigold Oil Production Centre. Mike’s project takes the Cempazuchitl Flower (African Marigold), a symbolic and integral element in the rituals of the Mexican Day of the Dead Festival, as the starting point for the designs of an essential oil production centre in the heart of Mexico City’s largest flower market. Fig. 14.10 Kyveli Anastasiadi, Y4,. Sinking Sound Museum, Tlateloco. A museum designed to slowly sink into the Mexico City soil for over 60 years, in a continual archeological dig. Sound is used to amplify the sense of the building moving, which is explored here through performance. Fig. 14.11 Hwan Cho Seong, Y4, Museum of One Minute. An archive of the Tlateloco massacre of 1971 in Mexico City. A charged space, enabling visitors to listen to first hand audio and video accounts of the student

uprising, and subsequent government action. The surfaces of the archive act as an interface to an evolving generative compositional acoustic environment, the surface of which responds to gesture as an input. Fig. 14.12 Petr Esposito, Y4, #iamstudent132. The project seeks to comment on the state of news and media outlets in Mexico through the student protest group #yosoy132. The device plays spliced media content which is presented in different forms through lenticular lenses. The media changes relative to your point of view. Fig. 14.13 Jia Yuan Shen, Y4, A homeless shelter in Mexico City. The installation shown here, is based on notions of shadow theater, constructing in abstract figures the stories of the occupants of the centre.

The Bartlett School of Architecture 2013

The Bartlett School of Architecture 2013

Fig. 14.14 Aleksandra Cicha, Y4, A prosthesis that seeks to capture the movement of the wearer, modulating the space that contains the action. Aleksandra’s work this year has dealt with ideas of the familiar and the uncanny. Fig. 14.15 Atilla Ali Tasan, Y4, Old Street Sensory Interface: A prototype for a large scale interface sited in the centre of Old Street roundabout. The structure shrouds itself in fog, transmitting and receiving information. It is a field of semiotic and sensory messages, gathering and distributing data from the site. Fig. 14.16 Sang Yong Seok, Y4, Wind Collector in Teotihuacan. An Aeolian interface to a façade in a collection of artists studios in Teotihuacan, Mexico. The device collects environmental data via wind, and turns this into an ‘information feed’ through sound. Fig. 14.17 Kok Kian Tew, Y4, Axonometric of a Culinary

Art Academy that allows individual cultural elements to be rearticulated and reconstituted through the sharing and controlled distribution of secret recipes through a series of carefully calibrated spaces. Fig. 14.18 Yuan Ning, Y4, Edinburgh Drama School – An open-air theatre sited in the heart of Edinburgh. The theater seeks to synthesize ideas of site and proscenium, where the theater allows views not only of staged productions, but also frames the living city as an act of theatre itself. The image shown here, is a fragment of the skin of the building developed as a 1:1 installation, a fabric canopy responding to occupancy and environmental change, leading to new forms and behavioural patterns.

The Bartlett School of Architecture 2013

Chronotopia

Paul Bavister, James O’Leary

Unit 14

CHRONOTOPIA

James O’Leary, Paul Bavister

“We will give the name chronotope (literally, ‘time-space’) to the intrinsic connectedness of temporal and spatial relationships. In the artistic chronotope, spatial and temporal indicators are fused into one carefully thought-out, concrete whole. Time, as it were, thickens, takes on flesh, becomes artistically visible; likewise; space becomes charged and responsive to the movements of time, plot, and history.”

Unit 14 explores the creation of architectures of temporal awareness and sensitivity that are situated in an expanding field of architectural practiceone that touches the edges of related disciplines such as art installation, film, performance, interaction and experience design. We are interested in architecture that is developed through the realms of the phenomenal, the atmospheric and the ephemeral to engender spaces that are as focussed on the magic of the experiential, as much as the logic of the constructional.

In parallel with this immersive approach to architectural design, we are interested in the evident necessity to develop new tools and approaches to architectural representation required to project forward into this condition. Here, developments in performative scoring, storyboarding and time-based drawing take on more of an active role in the design process. Beyond the representational, the Unit is focused on the pursuit of the tangible in architectural design processes through rigorous testing of various material, tectonic and technological realities. Through building on the Units’ culture of making, testing, fabrication and live projects, we aim to promote awareness of innovations in communications, sustainability and technology in architectural practice. We are interested in developing and promoting collaborative approaches to design that integrate teaching, learning and research practice; cultivating a rich context of architectural enquiry that is at ease with the critical thinking and reflection required to address a broad range of contemporary architectural issues.

We started the year with the development of the ‘Chronotope’, where we explored the idea of THICK TIME where ‘Time, as it were, thickens, takes on flesh, becomes artistically visible’. Year 4 students collaborated with Year 5 students for an introductory project linking programme and process through a series of 600 mm cubic volumes. The aim of the project was to pass an electrical current from one corner of the complete volume to the other — answering the question “How many architects does it take to switch on a light bulb”? Between switch and bulb are student-devised circuits of handshaking machines, processors, hammers, connectors, weights, couplings and the like, all operating in manic collaboration toward the shared goal of mutual illumination.

Mikhail Bakhtin, The Dialogical Imagination (1975)

For our Field Trip we journeyed to Scandinavia, travelling from Stockholm to Copenhagen; a 7-hour drive stretched in duration to 7 days. On our travels, we encountered projects with mesmerising connections between architecture and landscape, culture and nature. Amongst the most special were works by Gunnar Asplund, Sigurd Lewerentz, Tham & Videgård Hansson, Rafael Moneo, Jorn Utzon and Wohlert + Bo. We attended a conference on ‘Architecture & Cybernetics’ at CITA — Copenhagen, before returning to the UK, where all of our projects were sited. Year 4 students selected various sites around the environs of Snape Maltings in Suffolk, while Year 5 students had more varied site choices, depending on the conceptual, architectural or political intent of the project.

The next phase of work tackled the idea of CHARGED SPACE, where ‘Space becomes charged and responsive to the movements of time, plot, and history.’ Year 4 students progressed through their Design Realisation Project and Year 5 students evolved their Prototype Projects, before elaborating on these exercises for the final phase of the year, entitled THE DREAM OF THE UNIFIED FIELD. This expansive title, suggested by a book of poetry by Jorie Graham, became a touchstone for all final works this year.

What is evident from the work is that increasingly, the Unit is committed to exploring contemporary architecture as a space of flux and communication. Whether through narrative environments, reflexive spaces, cinematic architectures, perceptual fields, immaterial surfaces, augmented realities or dynamic structures, students this year have been fascinated by the endless possibilities of how spaces of meaning can be constructed through the strategic deployment of technology, media and material within an increasingly charged political and social realm.

The unit would like to thank: Dr. Ana Araujo, Phil Ayres, Julia Backhaus, Matthew Butcher, Jason Bruges, Dr. Marcos Cruz, Kate Davies, Prof. Stephen Gage, Ruairi Glynn, Simon Herron, Prof. Jonathan Hill, Bill Hodgson, Dr. Kristen Kreider, Dirk Krowlikowski, Chris Leung, Ollie Palmer, Dr. Vesna Petresin-Robert, Bob Sheil, Jason Slocombe, Emmanuel Vercruysse and Liam Young.

Design realization tutor: Dan Wright of Rogers Stirk Harbour + Partners. Structural Engineering support: Andy Toohey of Price & Myers.

Year 4: Ruben Alonso, Joohoon Kim, Chace Hong-Jin Leow, Andrew Walker, Suyang Xu

Year 5: Ariff Abd-Hamid, Jonathan Cohen, Matthew Donkersley, Sahar Fikouhi, Lewis James

Fig. 14.01 Jonathan Cohen, Intangible Fields. The project proposes a tangible yet immaterial sub-architecture that defines new dynamic spatial conditions within an existing environment. This sub-architecture consists of user-actuated phenomena perceived through aural and visual means. The proposal comprises of an arrayed field of ‘enabling nodes’ creating a distributed interface which is activated by an occupants’ proximity. In operation, the Field establishes a set of continually changing boundary thresholds defined through the observer’s interaction. Intangible Field deployed at night on Primrose Hill. Fig. 14.02 Jonathan Cohen, Intangible Fields. The limits of deployability of the Field are tested in Bayhurst Wood in North London. Fig. 14.03 Jonathan Cohen, Intangible Fields. Intangible Field tested at UCL’s Research

Department of Genetics, Evolution and Environment. Fig. 14.04 Jonathan Cohen, Intangible Fields. Constructing the interactive nodes of the Field at the Bartlett Workshop.

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Fig. 14.05 Joohoon Kim, Snape landscape observations. Joohoon’s scheme analysed the idea of theatre as a site of multiple layered encounters between the scale of the personal and the scale of the landscape. Fig. 14.06 Joohoon Kim, Shadow puppet Theatre. Initial studies of figure, lighting, staging apparatus and procenium. Fig. 14.07 Ruben Alonso, Active facade study. Ruben’s proposal for a forum for Snape Maltings sought to reconcile differing attitudes to urbanism in a historic setting. The facade becomes a wing sheltering various activities that are locked to the spine of the project. Fig. 14.08 Chace Leow, Experience-Machine studies. Chace investigated the possibilities of steam acting as an architectural element, through rigourous qualitative tests of visual and environmental control in his Fenland steam bath project.

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Fig. 14.09 Suyang Xu, Cinematic Space in The House of Moments. Suyang’s project uses personal experience to develop a series of spatial environments that both archive and exhibit documentation of carefully calibrated moments on the site, from sunrise over the Alde to sunset at mid-winter. Fig. 14.10 Suyang Xu, Entrance Foyer Study for The House of Moments Fig. 14.11 Andrew Walker, Axonometric study of constructional elements of the Homeostatic Brewery. Andrew’s project develops a systems-based architectural proposal that seeks to balance the relationship between the provider and inbiber of alcohol through the use of monitoring and projection technology. Fig. 14.12 Andrew Walker, Plan study of servant and served spaces of the Homeostatic Brewery. Fig. 14.13 Andrew Walker, Study of intelligent projector.

By manipulating the porosity, elasticity and kinetic energy of soft edge conditions using roaming robotic projectors one can create ephemeral, diffuse and adaptive in-between zones of occupation. Fig. 14.14 Andrew Walker, Study of projection space. By setting these agents in an endoscopic landscape of brewing, they disseminate the hidden processes of alcohol production by projecting the footage back onto the system itself .

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Fig. 14.15 Matt Donkersley, Haggerston Research Facility. The project seeks to fuse an existing industrial landscape with a creative and experimental local community by proposing a speculative platform for experimental building and materials research. Through the deployment of a flexible infrastructure, multiple test-sites play host to an ever-changing landscape upon which research, free experimentation and real world testing can be continually manifest. View of Gasworks materials bay showing rotating platforms. Fig. 14.16 Matt Donkersley, Haggerston Research Facility. Material experiments are continually monitored by a system of communicating drones. Fig. 14.17 Matt Donkersley, Haggerston Research Facility. A live landscape of continuously evolving architectural ‘gardens’ that are in constant flux, perpetually

remaking themselves and acting as an interface to the future of material science and architectural construction. Fig. 14.18 Matt Donkersley, Haggerston Research Facility. Exploded Axonometric of site components. Fig. 14.19 Matt Donkersley, Haggerston Research Facility. View of ponding in the garden of redundant material tests. Fig. 14.20 Matt Donkersley, Haggerston Research Facility. View of the Haggerston Research Facility from the Regents Canal.

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Fig. 14.21 Lewis James, A Catylytic Architecture Lewis proposes a temporary, flexible architecture developed to reanimate mothballed sites across London. The proposal utilizes automated systems to create an architecture with an indeterminate lifespan. These roaming devices spray clay slip on to fabric formwork, solidifying forms, which create new visual and acoustic enclosures that can be inhabited by the public, and assessed for practicality over time. Roaming devices generate new architectural forms. Fig. 14.22 Lewis James, A Catylytic Architecture. Over time the clay shells crack and decay opening up new spatial possibilities for the system to begin again. The spectacle of decay is used as a catalyst to advertise the space and encourage use. Fig. 14.23 Sahar Fikouhi,

Detonator: Augmented Reality Playgrounds. Sahar’s proposal creates gaming hot spots which utilize augmented reality to transform the city into a series of interactive playgrounds. The game design is based on key data relating to the use of landmines during war in many regions of the world, as well as the continued refusal of countries that have not joined an international convention to ban the use of landmines. Once the game is completed, the user is asked to sign a petition for the eradication of landmines throughout the world. Advertising the Detonator. Scan the QR code for a web download. Fig. 14.24 — 14.26 Sahar Fikouhi, Detonator: Augmented Reality Playgrounds. Deploying detonator in politically charged areas of London.

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Disruptive Technology

Paul Bavister, Jason Bruges

DISRUPTIVE TECHNOLOGY

This year we looked at disruptive innovation, developments in technology that are culturally, artistically and technologically straightforward, offthe-shelf components put together in a way that is often simpler than prior approaches. This sense of ‘disruption’ is positive; offering less expectation in established fields and as such, are rarely employed Disruption in this context can range from an augmentation that eclipses a host, to a curve ball innovation completely redefining a previously accepted field

The program remained true to, and built upon, the core values established by previous iterations of Unit 14, The Bartlett Interactive Workshop. We aim to explore the systemic and the interactive, whilst looking at the relationship between the man-made and the natural

We started the year with a live group installation project, divided in set groups, each taking the role of performers, observers, trackers, learners and disruptors. The installation took place at the Londonnewcastle project space on Redchurch street EC2

The Unit then went to Mumbai, touring sites such as the Dahavi slum and vast ship yards, looking at recycling/dissembling/re-appropriation from the micro, to the macro

Our 4th years then looked at the integration of interactive system behaviour in the world of performance spaces. Spaces that are woven into the fabric of the everyday, from speakers’

corners to national opera houses They can be representative of the establishment and also forums for, and expressions of, disruption, either positive or negative. We asked our students to design a ‘performance space’, spatial and functional However, the notion of ‘performance’ was not prescriptive; students were free to explore notions of expression and performance within a spatial and unit-based context.

Our students in year 5 had complete freedom to establish their own areas of interest and their own approach to techniques of representation and testing. We feel strongly that ideas about contextual response and perception are best examined by constructing 1:1 fragments or complete installations Where appropriate, students were encouraged to do this

Practice Tutor: Daniel Wright

Unit 14 would like to thank: Stephen Gage, Paul Finch, Bob Sheil, Ruairi Glynn, David Roesenberg, Simon Bowden, David Di Duca, Sam McElhinney, Elie Lakin, Chris Leung, Ben Godber, Peter Allen, Rob Soning, Ross Philips, Stefan Dzisiewski-Smith, Jonty Craig, Eva Rucki and Sam Ellis

Year 4: Jonathan Cohen, Matthew Donkersley, Shao Jun Fan, Benjamin Gough, Eleanor Hedley, Lewis James, Alyssa Ohse, Kaleigh Tirone Nunes Year 5: Tim Bradford, Mo Huen Chong, Lei Guo, Caroline Lundin, Ammar Mirjan, Heechan Park, David Scott, Asako Sengoku, Elena Thatcher

Fig. 14.1 Group project Performers A series of independently actuated inflatable units, with behavioural qualities As occupants moved within the field, the objects responded to their presence with subtle movements and gestures

Fig. 14.2 Tracking Group project, A series of responsive machines tracking ‘presence’ creating drawings made by mark marking on charcoal pages Fig 14 3 Elena Thatcher A project dealing with the design and speculation of a network of ‘sonic place bridge’ installations Each installation allows an occupant to bridge spaces within our memory and imagination The resultant effect of this is a dual existence within both the physical place and literal time and the memory space and time This dual occupation will help open up unforeseen possibilities within the immediate urban environment, whilst simultaneously creating place and an understanding of space Fig. 14.4 Helen Chong Helen’s work looks at and speculates on the idea of creating time with architecture, by slowing down movements and rhythms of people and reinforcing responsive behaviours through the use of interactive objects and

notations The idea was put into test in a form of an installation, which took place at St Pancras Church A series of six performative objects was designed as a mean of choreographing movements and behaviours along a designed journey of the site Fig. 14.5 Lei Guo The translocation of immateriality Lei has focused on the translation of the colours generated through real time web cam feeds into inhabitable installations Fig. 14.6 Learning Group Project Users ‘played’ with computer visualisation through a tactile interface The host system monitored behaviour, rejecting repetitive or boring patterns made by the player, encouraging new behavioural routines This relationship was then represented in a woven pattern, created in real time Fig. 14.7 Alyssa Ohse, Alyssa’s work has focused on relationships between performance and observation, a n d the mechanics of

‘proscenium’ Fig. 14.8 Matt Donkersley In this image, virtual simulation is used to explore and inform the potential application of future adaptive (bio-synthetic) environments seeking performative goals and responding to social issues, principally through the disruption and enhancement of patterns of occupation and conditioning of social interaction Fig. 14.9 David Scott, David’s project presents a contemporary interpretation of the Panopticon as a responsive environment and dataveillance system As visitors interact with the space, a computer vision ‘gaoler’ observes and analyses their occupation of the site The traces they leave are used to animate the ‘prisoners’, kinetic automata, physical manifestations of our ever proliferating digital representations or ‘data-doubles’ Fig. 14.10 Tim Bradford Machines in conversation Tim’s work has focused on the spatial dynamics that can be

created from the output of two machines in a co-operative dialogue The output of the machines creates soundfields that can be occupied and interacted with but occupancy Fig. 14.11 Caroline Lundin, Architectural Apparel Caroline’s work is a study of a body and space Instructions for performers are given, with the resultant performance being further instructions for the development of an indeterminate new architecture

Fig 14 12 Hee Chan Park An architectural time machine Hee’s work explored the relationship between machines and architecture The machines developed, created a time based architectural experience blowing smoke and scent into a space The resultant yet fleeting phenomena can be interacted with in physical and spatial terms Fig. 14.13 Ammar Mirjan, Soft Boundaries Ammars’ work investigates the dynamic relationship between intensity and extensity and the intersection between attraction and repulsion A long-standing interest in time-based inflatables culminated in a 1:1 installation with a series of hybrid devices performing temporary occupations They are soft and sharp, flexible and hard, inflated and deflated, open and closed, attractive and repulsive, indeterminate configuring and reconfiguring the spatial situation Fig 14 14 Asako Sengoku Encounter Weaving

Conversations Asaco’s work deals with the architecture of conversation Can a space respond to the subtleties of local conversation, and can this response be read in a meaningful way by the occupants of a room? This was answered by a full sized weaving machine that responded to localised behaviours, creating differing patterns of fabric, defining the history of the conversation

The Experimental Toy Factory Stephen Gage, Richard Roberts

Yr

The Experimental Toy Factory

We returned to the theme of ‘doing it for real’ with The Experimental Toy Factory. Toys are part of a wider range of social objects that are used by children and adults to construct and maintain their appreciation and understanding of the worlds that they inhabit. They can often contain extreme examples of cutting edge technology mass-produced at very low cost. What useful purpose is served by shipping these inanimate objects from one side of the world to the other when they can be devised and tested closer to home? Students were asked to design an experimental factory where toys are invented, prototyped, tested and (possibly) made. They were then asked to develop a key idea so that it became a personal experimental toy.

Unit 14’s aim was to support individual original work of exceptionally high quality within the framework of time-based architecture, architecture that is designed and understood in four dimensions. The unit explored how architecture responds to the natural and man-made physical world and how this response is perceived by human users and observers, each with a wealth of prior experience and knowledge. This year we specifically examined how architecture coexists with the world of invention. For our field trip, we went to Copenhagen to see the city and present work at the Danish Royal Academy of Fine Art.

Special thanks to our critics: Jason Bruges, Usman Haque, Dominic Harris, Ruairi Glynn, Mette Thomsen and Phil Ayres.

Yr 4: Sophie George, Ammar Mirjan, Heechan Park, David Scott, Elena Thatcher

5: Jonathan Craig, David DiDuca, Subomi Fapohunda, Elenor Lakin, Chin Lye, Maxine Pringle, Guy Woodhouse

Stephen Gage & Richard Roberts

Top left to bottom Right: Sophie George, Ammar Mirjan, Heechan Park, David Scott, Elena Thatcher, Jonathan Craig, David DiDuca, Subomi Fapohunda, Elenor Lakin, Chin Lye, Maxine Pringle, Guy Woodhouse.

Maxine Pringle Year 5, A Wearable Architecture. Max has taken a long-standing interest in the relationship between architecture and fashion forward to a performance project based on the idea of an architectural ‘promenade’.

Top: Guy Woodhouse, Reconfigurable Van Eyck. Guy Was interested in the interlocking geometries of Aldo Van Eyck and how these relate to the creation of social space. He linked these ideas to the construction of drivable street furniture that manipulated social space according to time of day/day of the week and occupancy.

Bottom: David DiDuca, Year 5, A Framework for Affordance. Dave looked at the perception of illusion in architecture, asking how this is constructed into ‘reality’ by observers. A number of 1:1 experiments culminated in an installation that presented variable depth illusions, testing ideas about the inherent richness in ambiguity

Elenor Lakin, Year 5, Newtonian Experiments in Perception, Taking her cue from Vitruvius 10.1.4 Elie has spent the year designing and making machinery that makes the intersection between electromagnetic radiation and gravity visible. The image shows a a gravity driven rotation arm that traces three sine waves onto a luminous film.

Top: Jonathan Craig, Year 5, Me Myself and You. Jonty investigated the architectural implications of image, self -mage and reflection initially through digital images before working with large dynamic mirrors that responded to observers and their location. Middle and Bottom: Subomi Fapohunda, Year 5, Constructing a Performative Architecture. Subomi worked on active statues that interacted with each other and observers. The movements of the statues were modeled on fencing positions.

This Page: Chin Lye, Year 5, Expression and Perception through Puppetry. Chin developed an exquisite set of devices, derived from origami, that articulate wall surfaces and interact with observers using protocols derived from puppetry. The implicit knowledge of working puppeteers was captured using potentiometers in the driving servos .

The Real Thing

Phil Ayres, Stephen Gage, Richard Roberts

Dip/MArch Unit 14

Yr 4: Jonathan Craig, David DiDuca, Subomi Fapohunda, Helen Floate, Geraldine Holland, Eleanor Lakin, Chin Lye, Maxine Pringle, Guy Woodhouse.

Yr 5: Michael Hammock, Sam McElhinney, Tetsuro Nagata, Chris Rodrigues, Declan Shaw, Andrew Usher, Nick Westby. MArch: Sam Walker.

The Real Thing

Unit 14 is experimental. Our aim is to support individual original work of exceptionally high quality within the framework of time-based architecture, architecture that is designed and understood in 4 dimensions. The unit explores how architecture can be designed to respond to change in the natural and man-made physical world and how this response can be perceived by observers. In 08-09 we specifically examined how architecture coexists with the natural world in the context of the city.

Some of the most successful Unit 14 projects have existed in the form of drawn and animated representation. However many important ideas about response and perception can only be examined by constructing “the real thing” i.e. 1:1 fragments or complete installations

FIELD TRIPS: In October the unit travelled to the Venice Biennale. The 2008 theme “Out There: Architecture Beyond Building” seemed particularly appropriate to the unit agenda. There was a second trip in April to Aarhus in Denmark when students presented their work at the School of Architecture and when Phil Ayres presented (and gained) his doctorate.

YEAR 4 - Beyond the Garden: Phoenix Gardens is an urban park in the centre of London. One of the main functions of the park is to provide a resource for local workers and local residents, especially urban children to interpret and enjoy the natural world. The brief is to design a building that can help observers learn about the natural world using every kind of device and design that can be invented. Students then developed a key idea to become a 1:1 installation.

YEAR 5 - Individual Agendas: Students in year 5 should have freedom to establish their own area of interest and their own approach to techniques of representation and testing.

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Stephen Gage, Phil Ayres and Richard Roberts

Top: Chin Lye, Defoming: A lattice skin, stiffened using rigid panels, is driven to display automatic and reactive behaviours.

Bottom: Elie Lakin, Electro Magnetic Typewriter: The typewriter senses mobile phone messages and, using a set of cams and cranks, writes out a response. Following page, top row, Left: Dave Di Duca, Building As Wall: Dave’s theme is to investigate the use of illusion

architecture.

is a proposal for a building that deploys out of a wall. Right: Jonty Craig, Rise and Fall: Jonty

working with the subtleties of level difference, to define specific interactions between objects and their observer/users.

Centre row, Left: Max Pringle, Wearable Buildings: Max is following a long standing interest in the boundaries between architecture, furniture design and fashion. This project is part of a “collection” and proposes a wearable table cloth that is shared between two people. Bottom Row, Left: Subomi Fapohunda, Fencester: Subomi’s theme is to invent buildings and objects that are choreographed to interact with each other and with observers. This is part of a series of studies into fencing. Right: Guy Woodhouse, Cabinet Architecture: Guy proposes an architecture of small things, where spaces are made (and unmade) by the incidental relationships between specially designed elements.

Top row: Nick Westby, Parametric Tensegrity: Nick studies reconfiguring tensegrity structures that change shape by changing spar length. Centre row, Left: Helen Floate: ‘Bashful’. This is a study of a shy interactive object. Right: Chris Rodrigues, 1 Lux World: Chris takes the need for energy demand reduction and uses it as a spur to examine how safe and delightful night time worlds can be created with low light levels to give an architecture that avoids light pollution at a local and an urban scale. Bottom: Sam Walker, Sound and Vision: Sam has been working with Beau Lotto at UCL’s Institute of Ophthalmology to construct objects that ‘read’ and ‘play back’ spaces and their inhabitants as sound in real time.

Top: Tetsuro Nagata, Memories of Self: Tet explores 7 different interpretations of long and short term memory. His final installation is a memory theatre that detaches shadow, delays reflection and embeds observer image in a 1:1 array. Bottom Right & Centre: Andrew Usher, The Intelligent Heliostat: Andrew creates an intelligent heliostat that takes sunlight falling in a shaft and directs it to cheer up individual users working in deep office plans. Bottom Left: Declan Shaw, Waiting: Declan creates a virtual 3D landscape traversed by virtual songbirds that respond to the actions of observers. The intention is to enhance moments of involuntary waiting, for example moments of waiting in hospitals and airports.

Sam McElhinney, Switchable Labyrinths: Sam develops a maze by switching between monocursal labyrinth forms. This is investigated digitally through the creation of intelligent maze forms populated by intelligent agents and then at 1:1 as an interactive maze.

Mike Hammock, The Quarry: Mike investigates how digital data collection and digital evolutionary form finding can relate to the dynamic “wet world” evolution of an abandoned quarry that is used as a nature trail by local children.

Experiments in Time

Phil Ayres, Stephen Gage, James O’Leary

Year 4: Michael Hammock, Sam McElhinney, Tetsuro Nagata, Declan Shaw, Andrew Usher. Year 5: Thomas Evans, Paula Friar, David Gouldstone, Kieran Hawkins, Henry Parr, Rion Willard. MArch: Ruairi Glynn, Richard Roberts.

Experiments in Time

Experiments In Time: Unit 14 is experimental. We continue to support individual original work of exceptionally high quality within the framework of timebased architecture; architecture that is designed in 4 dimensions. To illustrate this concept we have used the metaphor of a restaurant and a meal (2004), natural and stage magic (2005), performance art (2006), and this year, The Garden (of Earthly Delights). A garden is a place that changes throughout the year and from year to year. The gardener is working with an emergent system that is continually surprising in its possibilities of unexpected delight.

Programme Year 4: The Garden (of Earthly Delights) Students began the year by developing their understanding of the relationship between architecture and interior landscape. The project produced a series of enclosed urban gardens that offered solace, refreshment and delight to the weary urban traveler. This was taken to a detailed resolution in projects sited adjacent to the Dominion Theatre in London’s Tottenham Court Road. Year 4 students then worked together to construct a pavilion to demonstrate the possibilities of a dynamic shade/insulation system. This pavilion is one of the two Unit 14 contributions to the London Festival of Architecture 2008. Year 4 students then developed preliminary agendas for their individual work in year 5

Programme Year 5: Powers of Ten. Time based projects varied from the intimate 1:1 (Paula Friar, Rion Willard) to the opulently and gelatinously gastronomic 1:1 (Harry Parr), to a park cafe (Dave Gouldstone) to urban scale interventions (Tom Evans, Kieran Hawkins).

Stephen Gage, Phil Ayres and James O’Leary

Top: Flying Planter (Fledge) preliminary sketches. The Fledge was developed as part of the Garden Of Earthly Delights building project undertaken by Mike Hammock and Andy Usher at the start of the year Mike and Andy then went on to develop a demonstration prototype. Bottom: Urban Syncopation. Tetsuro Nagata constructed a range of tappers that work with a vision system to play back parts of the city according to the behavior of passers by. Prototype tappers and a sample of the Arduino code that controls them are shown.

Pask Present In Vienna. Unit 14 students constructed an exhibition in Vienna that celebrated the legendary Cybernetician, Gordon Pask. Students and ex students presented work at this exhibition, at a jury in the Angewandte School of Architecture and at the EMSCR conference where two students from Unit 14 won best paper awards.

Left: Prototype Fledge showing the rise and fall mechanism and the drivable ‘keel’ that orientates the fledge surface to the sun.Top centre and top right: Epigenetic Creature: Sam McElhinney explores tactility and drivable pneumatics by creating a noisy but endearing androgynous object. Bottom center: Pask Present In Vienna. Unit 14 students constructed an exhibition in Vienna that celebrated the legendary Cybernetician, Gordon Pask. Students and ex-students presented work at this exhibition, at a jury in the Angewandte School of Architecture and at the EMSCR conference where two students from Unit 14 won best paper awards. Bottom Right: Beckett’s Frogs. Declan Shaw takes a poem from Beckett that describes the pattern in the croaking of three frogs and constructs an installation that uses the sounds of dripping water to create a similar effect.

Left: Dover Remade .Tom Evans looks at the way that Dover Harbour has progressively destroyed Dover over the past 50 years and proposes an alternative urban strategy. He then looks at ways of persuading the Local people, the Harbour Board and the planners that this is a viable idea.

Right Stratford City. Kieran Hawkins takes the view that the main entrance to the 2012 Olympics should be treated as a temporary and a permanent landscape linked by entrance bridges. The permanent landscape is a performance park.

Left: Trance Spaces. Extensive research into rhythm, suggestion and pattern takes Rion Willard into the world ot hypnosis, behaviour induction and trance. The second of his two installations is a space that is driven by a performance artist.

Right: Volumetric Feedback. Paula Friar Has constructed a range of environmental feedback instruments over the year. These look at the way that the volume of the instrument and the volume of the space in which it is placed can be used to create sounds of strange and haunting beauty.

Architectural Banquets 1 And 2: Harry Parr explores the relationship between architectural space and food in two installations. The first installation, A Victorian Breakfast was situated in Warwick Castle. His next installation will culminate in a Jelly Banquet in The UCL Portico during The London Festival of Architecture.

The Greasy Spoon: Dave Gouldstone spent the early part of the year studying the ambiguity inherent in the Soane Museum, comparing this with the explicit nature of the exhibits in the Huntarian Museum opposite. His project is sited in the centre of Lincolns Inn Fields between the

The Theatre of Mistakes

Phil Ayres, Stephen Gage, James O’Leary

Dip Unit 14

Yr 4: Thomas Evans, David Gouldstone, Kieran Hawkins, Henry Parr, Matthew Seaber, Nick Westby, Rion Willard. Yr 5: Paul Burres, Wei Shan Chia, Ruairi Glynn, Fred Guttfield, Harriet Lee, Joe Moorhouse, Ellen Page, Elliot Payne, Vasilis Polydorou, Richard Roberts.

The Theatre of Mistakes

It is clear that an aesthetically potent environment should have the following attributes:

a) It must offer sufficient variety to provide the potentially controllable novelty required by a man (however, it must not swamp him with variety – if it did, the environment would merely be unintelligible).

b) It must contain forms that a man can interpret or learn to interpret at various levels of abstraction

c) It must provide cues or tacitly state instructions to guide the learning and abstractive process.

d) It may, in addition, respond to a man, engage him in conversation and adapt its characteristics to the prevailing mode of discourse.

Gordon Pask, 1968, A comment, a case history and a plan

Unit 14 is the Interactive Architecture Workshop. In 2005/06 we explored the relationships between the environment, architecture, transformation and time through metaphors taken from the craft of magic and the science of perception. In 2006/07 we looked at these relationships in the context of performance.

Many of our critical understandings are derived from second order cybernetics, especially the work of Heinz Von Foerster, Gregory Bateson and Gordon Pask. Gordon Pask was also a writer, producer and director of theatrical events.

The unit went to New York’s Eyebeam Gallery in February 2007 where this year’s graduating Yr 5 students presented their work in progress at an international colloquium.

Stephen Gage, Phil Ayres and James O’Leary

Top and middle: Henry Parr, Matthew Seaber and Rion Willard, The project shows how a mime school can be integrated with a vertical performance space where both observer and observed from part of a wider spectacle

Yr 4: The Theatre of Mistakes

All of Pask’s ‘performances’, including the interactive mechanical performance that was created for the Cybernetics Serendipity Exhibition in 1968, were based on consequential logical systems. The same approach was adopted by the ‘Theatre of Mistakes’ (Michael Greenhall, Anthony Howell, Glenys Johnson, Peter Stickland and Fiona Templeton). This was the title for the Yr 4 building study on the site of Pollock’s Toy Museum in Fitzrovia.

Yr 4 students then undertook further design exercises to help identify individual areas of interest in preparation for Yr 5.

Top: David Gouldstone and Kieran Hawkins, The existing building is demolished so that a radical debating club can be built to celebrate the long-standing tradition of dissent and pamphleteering in the area. Two differently distinct circulations both separate and unite debaters and the visiting public. Bottom: Thomas Evans and Nick Westby, The site is developed to become a highly interactive and competitive karaoke club. Extreme mechanisms expose successful singers to the occupants of the building as a whole, who occupy the surrounding bars and gathering spaces

Fred Gutfield, Re-engaging with the Natural World: In a landscape project Fred explores how mechanical objects can engage an observer so that their perception of the natural world is enhanced. Fred starts from the position that we are increasingly dissociated from the world that surrounds us that a positive effort must be made to help people understand and interpret the actuality of their surroundings

Paul Burres, Artificial life and the Hong Kong Project: Paul investigated the psychological , cybernetic and formal nature of life systems – firstly in the context of the creation of an artificial creature and secondly as a proposal for a symbiotic population of giant artificial plants that coexist with late 21st Century Hong Kong

Wei Shan Chia, Enfolding a Ritual: Wei Shan stared the year by developing a technique for the comparative notation of ritual, while looking at deployable structures as a means of creating ritual objects. The final proposal is the creation of a ‘good luck’ ritual space situated in UCL’s north cloisters

Joe Moorhouse, Inhaling the City: Starting from an investigation into 21st Century urban air pollution and a study of the varying topology of clean and dirty public spaces, Joe has created proposals for large pieces of animated street furniture that make the invisible world of air pollution visible to drivers and pedestrians

Top: Paul Burres. Middle: Fred Guttfield. Bottom left: Joe Moorhouse; right: Wei Shan Chia.

Harriet Lee, Drawing the Landscape: Harriet explores how techniques of drawing and painting can be directly applied to a landscape. She reconstructs a world of childhood memory on a Thames island using 1:1 instruments, some at a huge scale

Vasilis Polydorou, The Debating Field: Holden’s unfinished master plan for the University of London included a grand open space to the north of Senate House. The site currently contains a mix of plant rooms and the unloved backs of buildings. Vas has prepared a proposal for a University agora, open- air theatre and set of meeting towers

Top: Harriet Lee. Bottom: Vasilis Polydorou.

Ellen Page, Surviving the Great Flood of 2035: Using the technique of ‘Backcasting’ Ellen shows how London might survive a major rise in sea level by creating refuge structures and by embedding emergency strategies in urban carnivals over the next 20 years. The work is based in a simultaneous understanding of the technical and cultural issues that surround this increasingly plausible future

Ruairi Glynn, Gesture and Conversation: Ruairi explored making and encoding and mechanical gesture in the context of object: object and object: human interaction and the construction of gesture based conversations.

Starting with an interactive wand he then developed a population of objects that sensed each other and their human visitors using a facial recognition system. Increasingly complex behaviours are built up using a genetic algorithm

Richard Roberts, Analogue Sound Spaces: Richard has created a set of instrument that control feedback so that spaces generate their own sound patterns that are then manipulated by their occupants. Every moment in space becomes a unique acoustic event in time

Elliot Payne, Waterwealth: Suburban life becomes challenged as the south of England face increasingly hot and dry summers. Elliot has created a buffer water reservoir system that both demonstrates water wealth and acts as a microclimate modifier for the suburban garden

This page: Richard Roberts. Facing page, top: Ellen Page; middle: Ruairi Glynn; bottom: Elliot Payne.

Architecture is Magic

Phil Ayres, Stephen Gage, James O’Leary

Dip Unit 14

Yr 4: Paul Burres, Wei Shan Chia, Ruairi Glynn, Fred Guttfield, Harriet Lee, Joe Moorhouse, Ellen Page, Elliot Payne, Anthony Polydorou. Yr 5: Ian Laurence, Toby Carr, Andreas Dopfer, Toby Neilson, Karl Normanton, Nicholas Rich, Frances Taylor.

Architecture is Magic

Unit 14 is the interactive architecture workshop.

Many of our critical understandings are derived from second order cybernetics, especially the work of Gordon Pask, Francisco Varela and Heinz von Foersterwho was also a magician. Interactive Architecture, like magic, is based in differentiating types of perception - there are three broad types.

Natural Magic

Architecture can be constructed to reflect our understanding of the way that the physical world works and the beauty and functionality that we find in it.

The Magic of Illusion Architecture can be constructed to reflect and exploit our understanding of the way that people perceive objects and spaces.

Real Magic

Architecture can be constructed to create completely new realities that encompass human and object behaviour, space and place.

We work by experiment, in drawings, animations, models and 1:1 installations.

Thanks to: Paul Bavister, Jason Bruges, Ranulph Glanville, Usman Haque, Dominic Harris, Kristen Kreider, Stefan Kueppers, Nick Kyriakides, Christian Nold, Luke Olsen, Ron Packman, Peter Strickland, The Bartlett Workshop and The Bartlett CADCAMWorkshop.

Stephen Gage, Phil Ayres and James O’Leary

This and facing page: Ian Laurence and Karl Normanton.

Ian Laurence and Karl Normanton, ‘The Graduation’: a complex and subtle series of projects explore the relationship between Architecture and Performance. Drawings, Maquettes and full sized installations including gigantic costumes are used to see how far objects can tell a story and define space. The site is the UCL main quadrangle. In early exercises Ian and Karl created 1:1 objects, which formally “mapped “ the space for them.

7 characters were then created; each character represented aspects of each UCL faculty. All of these objects were described in drawing and maquettes. Four of them were built full size. These were then used by performance artists to describe the most inevitable movements implicit in the objects. Karl then developed a notation system and a review of the performative properties of the objects as a special research subject. Ian examined the issues of lightweight fabrication, body attachment and the psychological and physiological aspects of prosthetics as a parallel research paper.

These investigations then led to a final piece involving three characters called “the Graduation of Sylph and the Merchant “.

Toby Carr, ‘The Anxious Lounge’: An investigation into the way that active furniture might share space with people. Each piece of furniture has it's own goal set. Toby's work is an extension of his paper ‘…Emergent Voyeurisms in the Performative space of Architecture and Cinematography’ in which he explores interactive environments by comparing these with typical hyper real structures in Bertold Brecht's plays.

Nick Rich, ‘Light Transformations’: An investigation into our everyday experience of natural magic. Light phenomena transform space to create places of intrigue and contemplation. Flat surfaces appear curved, moving grids produce changing moiré patterns and water lenses create warped images. Light is transformed through very carefully designed louver and prism systems to create magical spaces.

Toby Neilson, ‘Active space, interactive occupants’: the old pickpocket's trick of creating a diversion in a space can be used to mask spatial transformations so that these can surprise and delight. Pairs of active objects are placed in a space to interact with each other and observers while the space itself transforms in colour and brightness. When the interaction ceases the space is seen to be transformed.

Top: Toby Carr. Bottom left: Nicholas Rich; right: Toby Neilson.

Top left: Toby Carr; right: Frances Taylor. Middle: Andreas Dopfer. Bottom: Nicholas Rich.

Frances Taylor, ‘Future proofing’: Frances investigated how a 19th century school could be wrapped to become an appropriate teaching environment when London becomes as hot as Marseilles is today

Andreas Dopfer, ‘Music Space’: Almost everyone carries their own acoustic environment with them, and a choice in music is a potent expression of mood. Andreas looks at what might happen if a part of the city could sense this and develops a project around the design and ethical implications of responding to this type of inaudible information.

The Magic Club

Harriet Lee and Anthony Polydorou: The existing building is demolished and is replaced by a centre to remember the rapidly declining Greek population in the area. The building consists of meeting space, side chapels and honey processing spaces.

Ellen Page, Joe Moorhouse. Wei Shan Chia: The existing building is replaced by a story telling centre. Parents leave their offspring to climb through a set of story telling spaces while they retire to a basement bar. Their children are returned to them via a helter skelter, which winds around the building

Fred Guttfield and Elliot Payne: The existing building is demolished piecemeal and a vertical landscape is created devoted to the magic of gardening, home brewing and the garden shed

Ruairi Glynn and Paul Burres: The existing building is replaced by a building which encourages the magic of conversation. The building is entirely interactive augmenting conversation through ‘Angels’ (flying robots) that reconfigure spatial conditions including boundaries, lighting, and acoustic conditions.

Top: Harriet Lee and Anthony Polydorou. Bottom: Paul Burres and Ruairi Glynn.

Top left:Harriet Lee and Anthony Polydorou; right: Paul Burres and Ruairi Glynn. Middle left to right: Wei Shan Chia; Ellen Pag e: Joe Moorhouse. Bottom left: Elliot Payne; right Fred Guttfield.

The Interactive Architecture Workshop Phil Ayres, Stephen Gage, Usman Haque

Dip Unit 14

Yr 4: Toby Carr, Ian Laurence, Toby Neilson, Karl Normanton, Nicholas Rich, Frances Taylor Yr 5: Folashade Abdul, Rashika Botejue, Nicholas Browne, Dimitrios Kapotas, Hsian-Ern Ernie Lew, Thomas Lindner, Martin Broby, Peck Leong Jackson Tan, Ernest Tsui, Emmanuel Vercruysse

The Interactive Architecture Workshop

The Bartlett Interactive Architecture Workshop explores time-based architecture, in representation and at 1:1

SLOW:FOOD FRESH:FOOD THE PIESHOP

Year 4 students started the year by creating a meal and designing a restaurant before entering more speculative territory

SKY:CEILINGS

FAN:CONVERSATIONS

HEAT:TRAPPING STATIC:CULTURES

SHAPES:DANCING FRAMES:REFORMED REFLECTIONS:REMEMBERED DANCING:DATASETS

Year 5 students developed their personal research interests through speculative drawings, animations and working 1:1 installations

Phil Ayres, Stephen Gage and Usman Haque

Clockwise from top: Emmanuel Vercruysse, Jackson Tan, Rashika Botejue, Folashade Abdul

Clockwise from top left: Toby Neilson, Martin Broby, Toby Carr, Francis Taylor, Hsian-Ern Ernie Lew, Ernest Tsui, Ian Laurence, Nicholas Rich Overleaf, left: (group project) Ian Laurence + Karl Normanton + Francis Taylor, right: Nicholas Browne

Shadows of the Past Can be Cast Into the Future

Phil Ayres, Stephen Gage, Usman Haque

Yr 4: Shade Abdul, Nicholas Browne , Dimitrios Kapotas, Ioannis Ktistakis, Ernie Lew, Thomas Lindner, Bilal Mian, Jackson Tan, Ernest Tsui, Olga Wukounig Yr 5: Dominique Chan, Kaoru Yamazaki, Andrew Kesson, Amalthea Leung, Daniel Maloney, Gabby Shawcross, Guvenc Topcuoglu

MArch Architecture: Richard Pierce

Shadows of the Past Can Be Cast Into the Future

• It is impossible to separate architecture from occupancy

• All forms of occupancy require architecture to exist in time as well as space

• An occupied architecture will always interact with its environment

• Some occupants can be intelligent without being animate

The twentieth century distinction between real and virtual is as antiquated as the nineteenth century distinction between body and mind

Unit 14 is a place where students define their own territory and undertake their own design research Territories include small and large-scale architectural propositions, interactive installations, choreographed performances and animation

Phil Ayres, Stephen Gage and Usman Haque

Clockwise from top: Gabby Shawcross, Gabby Shawcross, Dominique Chan

Clockwise from top: Kaoru Yamazaki, Daniel Maloney Kaoru Yamazaki, Guvenc Topcuoglu