HandBin

Architectural Performance: People Watching People

2011-12-19T07:14:00.000Z

An animated description of four spaces of performance, where through the passive agency of precisely calibrated architectures, the emphasis is as much on the space surrounding and between the spectators themselves as on the stage/dais itself.

Almere Workshop

2011-11-24T07:21:00.001Z

Last week, together with Karel Wuytack and Catherine Menge, I ran a workshop for the 1st and 2nd year graduate Urbanism students in Sint Lucas University. The subject of study was the new city of Almere in Holland, facing Amsterdam in the most recently built dutch polder of Flevoland. Each group, of around 10-14 students was given a site of study in that sprawling non-place, and asked to analyse it's current condition, critique its imminent plans for development (the city is planning to double its population in a couple of decades), research its history, and ultimately imagine what they would propose differently. Exhausting treasure hunts on the ground, intense discussions and debates, and endless hours of formulating concepts and pinning them down to the political and infrastructural situation on the ground, eventually had to be turned into an "autonomous presentation", or a film that would convey, in as clear and simple a manner as possible, their opinions and ideas on and for their sites, and more generally on Almere as a whole. Below are the four groups' films.

Above is the group who were looking at the city centre, and its OMA master-planned core, which they found oppressively monotonous in terms of content, but formally thrilling.

The above looked at the A6, the motorway spine of the city which is planned to be doubled in capacity in anticipation of future population growth. They looked at ways in which by tweaking the 1970s tree-diagram layout of roads (where peripheral roads that join to different centres, even if next to one another do not connect in order to keep them free of congestion, meaning one must use the motorway to access what is spatially a near neighbour), and other such tactics, they could ameliorate the need for expansion.

The group above looked at a large agricultural area that the city is planning to build on, and imagined that a new work-live-eat economic system (including canal-boat markets launching from the site to fill the canals of Amsterdam every week with fresh produce, as well as greenhouse-housing farmsteads, and agricultural solar-power towers...) could be tested in those fields instead of the kind of Dutch-suburbia present elsewhere.

And finally, in the incomplete but potentially interesting film above, one of the groups looked at introducing a network of super-sized infrastructure for extremely large programs that are inherently temporary, like expos, world cups, Olympics etc, making a virtue for Almere out of their rapid redundancy by making the city into an expert in their construction, hosting, but most importantly their sustainable disassembly. This was to be contrasted on the site with the development of the surrounding and interlocking land as a pastoral/suburban idyll of intimate scale, who's qualities would stand out the more for their contrast with giant int'l scale forever hovering in the background...

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A big thanks to all the students, who were all fab. The names in each group are on the youtube pages of their videos. And again a big thank you to Michael Callant and Ruben Deleersnyder for all their help...

Interior 3

2011-11-13T10:32:00.001Z

Other Place 1: Terry Farrell Mausoleum

Jewelry Crane

2011-10-17T07:32:00.001+01:00

Swanky Hangman: a portable support for the hanging jewelry case I posted previously.

Made of silver, it screws on to any 1.5litre evian bottle, using the weight of the water to remain stable.

It is thin, 1mm throughout the arch, and gently distorts as the jewelry case swings.

The fins joining the arch to the bottle top, and the bar at the base of each side of the arch, restrain it just enough that it flexes, but is secure.

Complex 2: Peripaterium

2011-10-09T18:35:00.001+01:00

A precinct is marked out. With the cleanliness of a pilgrimage without purpose there is the walk, the infinite repetition of a basic movement that frees the mind from its quotidian subjection to the body. Thinking, the destination doesn't matter, the place is neither here nor there, just limpid ghosts, half remembered forms where you begin again, physical commas that punctuate an internal scrutiny whose rhythm is that of a hundred thousand treads. The lost anchorite searching for something, peeling away illusions, digging underneath appearances in a mental archaeology of sentiments, each wandering step sounding sharply out as it ricochets between panels and niches, orderly, decorous and resigned, reconciled both to the absolute need for the endless march, and its timeless futility.

Leicester Waterside Adaptable Neighbourhood

2011-09-19T07:42:00.001+01:00

A short film I made together with Marialena Kassimidi and Simon Rochowski over at AshSakula, for the Moving Architecture conference at the Building Centre on the 8th September that was focussed on adaptability in Architecture and Urbanism. The film was shown following a presentation about the theory, genesis and current state of the project by Cany Ash.

Arcadian Drift

2011-08-24T06:52:00.001+01:00

A video installation (large projection with surround sound speakers) commissioned as part of the Visionary Trading Project, Hackney, with the support of the Arts Council England, the National Lottery, and Resonance FM.

The piece is a video collaboration with Ilona Dorota Sagar (sound by Doug Haywood), creating a gentle dreamscape set in London Fields and Broadway Market, constructed entirely out of language taken from advertisements for gentrification housing developments in the area, and variously footage of found scenes of people in the park and market at various times of day and week, as well as partially constructed moments within the same territories.

for the text see this post over on TextBin

The Church Of Perpetual Experimentation Film (full version)

2011-08-14T15:32:00.002+01:00

Thanks to youtube's new up-to-15min allowance Im following up the posting of Objectification with the full version of the Church of Perpetual Experimentation, which I had only posted previously either in chunks, or as a reduced and sped-up version which sounded like it was being read out by a breathless helium-addict.
Further images and drawings can be seen here in a previous post. The blurb from the youtube page below...
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A sprawling new church in the southern Roman suburb of EUR, set within the fictitious context of a new pontificate that is devoted to the massive restructuring and expansion of the church, its liturgies and its architecture. The site in EUR is set aside by the new pope as a field of experimentation, where the doctrinal and liturgical innovations being developed over the Tiber in the Vatican are immediately put to test and trial with the practising -- and non-practising -- public. All development in the work is structured around the theme of Assemblage, so that all scales, from structural unit, through to the composition of those units into spaces, and then the arrangement of those spaces themselves, are governed by a logic of assemblage, aggregation, and eventually in time (the project evolves over many postulated years) recombination. The eventual recombination being made possible by each type of space being constructed out of discrete units which themselves are durable and easy to re-use.

The project achieved High-Pass in Technical studies and involved the fabrication of numerous models that were at once structural and aesthetic experimentations, as well as technical drawings, and large drawings that describe the spaces involved, their development, and their implicit narratives, and this video that pulls the drawings, models and narrative together into one complete, architectural story.

Complex 1

2011-07-05T15:43:00.002+01:00

If Randolph Hearst had collected authentic pieces of original 21st century malls, from around the New World's latest economic frontiers...

Furniture 2

2011-05-25T15:32:00.000+01:00

The Tower Of Cubicle.

Building 6

2011-05-10T11:11:00.001+01:00

Digital Ceramics 2

2011-05-09T20:42:00.002+01:00

Term2 of Madam's course at the AA saw students exploring ways of producing 3d objects using the rapid prototyping equipment, and the old-school workshop, with lots of hands-on crafting action involving glazing, building, firing etc.

The work featured here was produced by the stellar Jason Chernak, who incorporated parametric modeling techniques into his process in order to array various ornamental motifs over the surface of his objects, which themselves were designed so that they stack three dimensionally, regardless of their various surface finishes.

See HERE for his thorough and exhaustive PDF booklet describing the full design and fabrication process.

Below are images taken from the PDF booklet.
Previous term here & here.

"Her Chambre Bleue" in Art-Licks Magazine

2011-04-23T08:32:00.000+01:00

"Her Chambre Bleue", a piece first performed in The Hospital Club at the end of last year, and that I worked on with Ilona Dorota Sagar, has been featured in the third issue of ArtLicks magazine, a copy of which can be ordered from here, as well as being featured on HiveLondon.

Ilona has worked up the video below of the performance, incorporating some of the text, which thankfully replaces my previously posted temporary hatchet-job. The text is a part of what several "plain-clothes-performers" were intently telling people over a glass of wine as they moved around the performance space, the full text of which can be read on a post over on TextBin.

MONUMENTALITY

2011-03-29T09:26:00.002+01:00

This is a proposal by Madam for an installation at the inaugural exhibition at the Shanghai Architectural Culture Centre (designed by Ando), for which several practices were invited to develop responses to a given theme in relation to China and its architecture. We were given the theme monumentality, with the explanation:
"The desire for monumentality roots deeply in the spatial politics of China. All design techniques of creating monumentality in history, from ancient Egypt to 19th century new classicism, can be found, adapted to buildings throughout the nation. The aim is to embody the power and imagination of a regime."
We have been asked to alter the content and presentation of our proposal. Whilst we are happy to develop the formal themes of the work -the frame of its content- we are not willing to water down the main thrust of the installation, so we have posted the idea here.

........................................................................................................

MONUMENTALITY

Monumentality is a quality derived from a combination of two factors being inherent in a phenomenon. The first is that its existence affects an unusually large number of people. The second is that those people who it affects are marked in some way deeply and permanently by it. Physical scale is not key -although often present- because Monumentality exists by virtue of the quantity of people and the degree to which they are influence. So for example, while a large building may affect only its immediate residents and environment, a small piece of parchment in the British Library, the Magna Carta, is referred to as the origins of all democracy in the Anglo Saxon world, and is revered, talked about, and Monumentalised by hundreds of millions across four continents.

^Magna Carta
The greatest edifice of our late modern world itself has even less physical presence than the Magna Carta, but similarly the Internet is transforming, for good or bad we do not know, the very structure of our relationships to each other, to our governments, to our society, and between cultures. Judged in effect, its scale is titanic, representing unprecedented opportunities for freedom of thought, expression and exchange of ideas without the need for physical movement. In this immaterial world of potential freedoms, the Chinese government have erected an equally colossal immaterial barrier, one that in scale of affect is proportionate to the internet itself. The Great Firewall of China restricts every single internet user within the borders of China, controlling what information they can share and access, what they can see, and what they can know.

^Map Of The Internet
The Berlin Wall held captive generations of Berliners, highlighting in its oppressive and ubiquitous presence their dreams and hopes for freedom of movement within their own city. At Checkpoint Charlie residents could peer longingly across to another world, and imagine life on the other side. The collective power of the checkpoint, the monumental longing that it encapsulated (bearing no relationship to its diminutive dimensions), was directly proportional to the scale and pervasiveness of the Wall, and the insidious system of control it was a part of.

^The Berlin Wall
The Great Firewall of China directly affects 500million Chinese Citizens, and more indirectly. This is no doubt colossal, but we propose that by adding one computer which bypasses this system of control entirely, one computer that is a gateway through the Great Firewall, publicly accessible to whoever wishes to use it, in a public space in Shanghai, that by doing this we would be allowing something Monumental to take place. Like Checkpoint Charlie, the power of this one computer and the freedoms, uncertainties, excitement and fear it encapsulates, will be in direct proportion to the scale of China’s censorship at any given moment during the laptop’s existence.

^The Installation was to be at the base of the main staircase of the museum
Our installation will be a gateway through The Great Firewall of China. At once solemn and celebratory, ecstatic and terrified, individual and universal, we propose a small but intense space to contain the censor-free-link.

This aedicule, or small gateway shrine, is placed at the centre of the museum’s circulation space, where in full sight, one person at a time, any visitor can step down an aisle of waiting observers, to explore on Chinese soil, exploration without limits.

...KISS ME: TEMPLE OF THE FAT LIPS

2011-03-17T13:56:00.002Z

FAT-LIP

FONT

TEMPLE

Somnium Quinti

SUPERFICE 01

2011-03-09T13:26:00.002Z

A piece that I made in response to a call by TBC collective for new work responding to the theme "Hybrid", and which was published in the fourth issue of the online Journal 12Pages (edited by Beverley Bennett). It is a heavily made-up self-portrait vignette that is at the same time an architectural capriccio and a rather histrionic still-life tableau. The scene is made out of paper models, whose textures were drawn on computer.
The scene was then photographed, which in turn was then reworked in photoshop, and drawn on to create an altar-like appearance, fitting the composition of the objects in the scene.

I've included the paper cut-out templates, above of the Horrified Peacock Spoon (the standard ikea tea-spoon slotting in at the base), below of the Facebox and below that of the SharpRoom.

And an image of the set below, which is around 400 by 400mm

Building 5

2011-03-06T20:41:00.000Z

Furniture 1

2011-03-02T16:39:00.000Z

OBJECTIFICATION

2011-02-25T15:14:00.003Z

This was easily the video that I had the most fun making in the past five years, and now that I can upload it in one piece to youtube I can present it here for easy viewing. Its a fictional architectural tale (from 2007) about the forces of tourism and consumption. About how they transform locations of historical significance, setting up tense but productive relationships between a place's factual past, its current economic imperatives, and the private engagement of both visitors and inhabitants with their own version of its importance. The parable is told through the journey of one character who brings to life, and weaves together the issues explored in the work, eventually turning into a sort of contemporary architectural ruin factory. The full film below:

The explanation film below runs through all the concepts and ideas that fed into and structured both the film, and the architectural explorations around it. The previous year I had gotten rather wound up by some of Baudrillard's writing (oddly enough, Im reading a new edition of America right now), and this work was something of a reaction to his gloomy paradoxes about contemporary culture... i had wanted to approach the kitsch of tourism with an appreciative eye. Even though overall it maybe a somewhat despairing tale about the misapprehension of substantive relationships between form and meaning, it does locate points of interest within that ubiquitous way of approaching places and things, which eventually led in more propositional forms to the following project, the Church of Perpetual Experimentation, and subsequent investigations.

These are some of the models, and one drawing (more here) from the work's development.

Object 8

2011-02-23T16:17:00.000Z

Souvenir Architecture: cardiff vertical studio 2011

2011-02-03T08:41:00.001Z

SOUVENIR ARCHITECTURE

make a place worth remembering

Adam Nathaniel Furman and Marco Ginex

^Printed paper model of Howl's Moving Castle

“After a tumultuous night traversing strange lands full of wondrous halls, bedecked both with maidens and vaults in equal profusion, as well as terrifying precipices crisscrossed by folding bridges and twisted towers, David awoke to the sight of the ancient and inscrutable map he kept across from his bed, and about which he had always wondered as to its referents, realising that once again he must have been speculating in his sleep as to the worlds contained therein, until as he rolled over to sleep again, he found a strange object under his sheets which had not been there before, a polychromous confection of forms that could only have come from where he had just awakened.”

Extract from Madam’s Miscellanea

CONCEPT

Souvenirs mark the boundaries between the real and the imagined, and concretize their interdependence. They are small, surreal, yet physical and real. As direct outcomes of globalization they are themselves ubiquitous from Machu Pichu to Cebu, and yet they operate counter to that seriality, paradoxically using every new technology and mode of production available to be popularly evocative, and operate within the scope of collective and individual illusions. As a type they act as gateways into less uniform, more tranquil, more spectacular, or even, more futuristic times.

Souvenir Architecture marks the rupture between real space and all the potentialities of the architectural imagination, acting as physical proof that what you see around you is definitely not all there needs to be to it. Souvenir Architecture proposes and suggests, integrating itself into the weft of everyday life, broadening the scope of potential futures by weaving questions and dreams into the fabric of the quotidian. What is the difference between what you are working on at your desk at Foster’s during the day, and those tumultuous, ecstatic places you escape to when you sleep at night? It is the sum of the two that precisely delineates the form of souvenir architecture.

^Nikolai Sutyagin's House in Arkhangelsk

FRAMEWORK

Souvenir Architecture will be our way to design an alluring and allusive tectonic, which will develop by expanding on four formal and representational principles taken from the world of the souvenir.

Through Miniaturization we will individualise the monumental, privatise time, and by creating allusive tableaus bring supposedly lost “thens” into the now, the once exotic “theres” over here, and utopic “futures” back into the present.

Through Pop and Partiality we will unite the universal and the unique, the popular and the private by speaking doubly, in both a universal pictorial language of immediate communicability -a figural Esperanto understood by all- and in a complementary syntax of complex partialities, that opens up the possibility of being supplemented and completed by narrative discourse.

Through Saturation and Detail we will depart from the abstract and anonymous language of architectural representation by swapping quantitative verisimilitude for qualitative effect, employing the over-saturation of affective signs and intelligible detail in order to elicit a giddy and explicit engagement.

Through Context and Alter-Contexts we will sever any links to a specific origin, instead residing in the dual space between the room the model is in, and the range of alternative contexts designed from the precise intermingling of universal archetypes, from the playful image of childhood, to the mythic allure of the antique, the distant excitement of the exotic, the hopeful ideals of future utopias, and comforting dreams of the pastoral.

PROGRAM

The course will be structured around two short mini briefs, which will help us to understand the precise ways in which souvenirs are constructed, and how to use those techniques as a method to build up a blend of tightly related formal and narrative explorations, followed by a longer brief aimed at the development of final models and sets of drawings.

1.1 Analysis

The first brief will be to deconstruct and analyse a given commercial souvenir into its component parts, into those deliberate choices which have made it not an exact architectural representation, but an allusive and storied object that refers to, but goes far beyond, the original.

1.2 Object

The second mini brief will be to instrumentalise the qualities and techniques located in the studied souvenir, and use them to transform an un-built building, its history, its architect and its formal characteristics, into a portable object-souvenir. This will be a miniaturized, pop-partialised, highly saturated, and alter-contextualised tableau that inversely pumps more analysis and content into what it reduces and reconfigures.

1.3 Architecture

The main thrust of the work will revolve around the building of one, ever evolving, obsessively explored and documented Model, a self-generating architectural history, a souvenir of souvenirs, which will be documented in one set of equally layered architectural drawings which will evolve in parallel to the model. Through the twinning of model and drawing, we will delve in and out of the students’ miniature worlds as they grow, elaborating framed moments from their interiors, expanding them into sequential chapters in a complex form of architectural production, representation and narration. The set of drawings will evolve in parallel to the main model, and will collect and contain concepts, research, narrative explorations and digressions in both images and text, as well as theoretical research.

OUTPUT

So as the course ends, and we step back –dazed- out into the world of Tesco and Value Engineering, we will be left with strange and complete souvenirs, chunks of fantastic floating castles in the air that have broken off, and fallen to the Cardiff ground, large, indiscrete constructions and layered drawings that ask to be explored, peeled back and uncovered, to reveal the stories hidden within.

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This will be Madam's second academic brief exploring this topic, following its unit at the AA Tel Aviv summer program 2010.

Interior 2

2011-01-24T19:37:00.000Z

Busby Berkeley meets the Hampstead South End Green annual Fair, with Pierrot hanging out melancholically behind the scenes somewhere.

Interior 1

2011-01-22T00:14:00.000Z

Building 4

2011-01-20T23:32:00.001Z

Corn-On-The-Cob reaches for the skies.

Buildings 2 & 3

2011-01-03T01:12:00.000Z

Building 2:

Curtain Call Pilgrimage

Building 3:

Acropolis in the grass

Building 1

2010-12-31T13:50:00.000Z

Pastel pillboxes, florid piles, some indeterminate in between and a door somewhere, inside.

Aoyama Tower

2010-12-19T19:28:00.000Z

An image from a speculative proposal for a tower on Omotesando Street, designed over @ Madam. Full info here.

Digital Ceramics: Architectural Tiles and 1:1 Prototypes

2010-12-05T13:22:00.001Z

^Michael Wetmore's wall

Phase 1 of Madam's Digital Ceramics course at the AA just concluded with a final presentation last wednesday (see here for the page @Madam). Each student fabricated a 1:1 section of a ceramic wall, from computer design, through the whole process of milling of the negative mold, repeated casting, glazing, firing, and eventual assembly of their piece, including the design and implementation of a mechanical, and preferably removable ad adjustable system of attachment.

^Thomas Michael's book

The design and fabrication process was documented in a book, one of which above, which was where they could archive the series of experiments, revisions, conclusions, successes and failures that led to their final process. I have uploaded Michael Wetmore's book as an online pdf HERE.

^Anna Muzychak's self-supporting tiles

In response to the brief's requirement that the attachment of the tiles be a designed system, Ana above created a wall of tiles that can hold itself up as a screen without the need of additional support beyond the joints between each unit.

^Minh Van's Turquoise and Gold

While some students attempted to make their tiles as three dimensionally symmetrical as possible, Greta here focussed on making the joints between tiles disappear as much as possible, creating variation in density across large areas with a series of three tiles.

^Alexandria Mathieu and her wall

^Michael Presenting His tiles

^Christina Dreibholz's wall

^Akhil Bakhta's work

Look out for the faces...

^Anny Stephanou

^Fortuné Penniman

^Thomas Michael

Thomas developed a system for attaching his tiles which used Guitar machine-heads, in order that he could continue to adjust the position of, and relative strength with which the tiles were held to his panel.

Graceful Gets Immortalized

2010-11-26T17:04:00.001Z

Episode IV

After trials and tribulations, Graceful's sweet smelling mortal coil is laid to rest in a grove, later triumphantly built over, for eternal recollections of the indecent elegance, the lascivious beauty and erotic oblivion of martydom.

Tottenham Court Road Redux

2010-11-06T12:13:00.002Z

An additional interior image for Madam Studio's alternative Crossrail proposal for Tottenham Court Road station, a three dimensional free for all micro-void in London's sclerotic and ill-advised planning system, and a space protected from the city's single ownership super-estates, where regulations keep themselves strictly quantitative, and the liminal qualities of additive urban space, built, designed and owned by multiple landlords, can sprout over the city's yawning skyline...

Clip of "Her Chambre Bleue", Performed at The Hospital Club

2010-10-28T15:59:00.001+01:00

A performance of two discrete but simultaneous parts by Ilona Dorota Sagar with text and spoken word by me, whic you can see in full here over on TextBin. Dancers dressed in blue moved around the space (a bar and socialising space in a relatively exclusive members club in Covent Garden, London) blocking people's paths, dividing the crowd, slipping between and under people, and splaying themselves along the walls, bar and carpet; at the same time four actors dressed anonymously approached people as if they were acquainted, and eagerly told them a strange tale (which was my contribution to the performance) about the dancers, the room they were in, and how, in some way, its sagging velour walls and velvet ropes were all lit in the critical blue light of the Salons of old, of the bright and refined conversations of the Hotel de Rambouillet, its cashmere and marble fittings, and its sparkling wits.
The video is a short snippet (all that my camera's CF card could hold) of one moment of the performance when the dancers were weaving their way through the crowd, after just having just divided the room in two. The actor, whose conversation piece I caught a second of in the film, started talking to a person behind me just as this was going on.

Graceful Gets Martyred

2010-10-11T16:47:00.001+01:00

Episode III.

Following encounters with Incubus & Succubus, Graceful learns to find ecstasy in his own pain. Angelic guardians and devilish Corbels assist him in his journey to the stake.

Corbels to the right and left, and Guardians (actually a rather effete Neptune, and a very well proportioned Demeter) in the centre.

Digital Ceramics

2010-10-02T17:24:00.000+01:00

Madam will be teaching two courses of Digital Ceramics at the AA this coming academic year, where students will embark on a rather messy path of experimentation in plaster, clay and glazes.

Term 1 will be pushing the limits of what can be done working with press and 1-part moulds, with the following term breaking out into objects more fully three dimensional, and using 2, 3 or more part moulds.

After designing in the computer, we will have free access to the school's smaller cnc milling suite, and will test what the limits and idiosyncracies of the machine can bring to the clay-forming process.

Before the start of the course, we ran through a few tests with these two Madam tile-types.

Restraining ourselves to an unusually monochrome sheen, so that we could test the fundamental procedure from milling machine to kiln, the series that we produced came out looking rather techno-hokey.

So there will be a good 6 months period during which the aa will be seeing lots of painted clay, tiles and proliferating ceramic forms and architectural elements, as well as Marco and I hanging around quite a bit as assistants to Diploma 9.

Graceful Gets Indecent

2010-09-25T13:09:00.001+01:00

Graceful (the porcelain figurine) gets naughty and discovers Tweedle-Dee, Tweedle-Dum (the blue heads below), and Incubus & Succubus (the hanging figures below).

See here for the article over on Bi-Blog where the miniature protagonist first got singled-out.

His journey shall continue...

Exquisite Souvenirs: Madam Studio at AA Tel Aviv Visiting School 2010

2010-09-16T17:53:00.000+01:00

Marco Ginex and I taught a unit at this year's Architectural Association Visiting School at Tel Aviv university -a 10day workshop- with a brief whose starting point was a found drawing -a large ice-flow survey map of Alexander Island in Antarctica- which was cut into a grid of smaller maps for the students to use as a starting point for their projects. The students were not told what the map was representing, but its rich layers of information necessarily implied the presence of some sort of organising legend, and they were invited to invent their own, but of a twofold kind: first a mythic legend that described a scenario, at a given scale, in the place they imagined to be defined by the various lines on the drawing, and only secondly a quantitative legend that elaborated the form and delineations of that places contents. A process of manual and digital collaging and layering, together with story-writing helped them to enrich their given square in their own way, as well as developing techniques that were immediately taken up in 3d models and larger drawings, culminating in their final, conclusive Souvenirs.

The Intro to the brief is below.

^ before and after the "storm" by Dori Sagan

EXQUISITE SOUVENIRS: GATEWAYS TO THE PLACES BEHIND THE MAPS

“After a tumultuous night traversing strange lands full of wondrous halls, bedecked both with maidens and vaults in equal profusion, as well as terrifying precipices criss‐crossed by folding bridges and twisted towers, David awoke to the sight of the ancient and inscrutable map he kept across from his bed, and about which he had always wondered as to its referents, realising that once again he must have been speculating in his sleep as to the worlds contained therein, until as he rolled over to sleep again, he found a strange object under his sheets which had not been there before, a white confection of forms that could only have come from where he had just awakened. ”

Maps, scientific surveys, even the most pedestrian ones, contain legends and myths. It is in their perfect abstract clarity, their utter extraction of detail and digression that they stimulate our instinct to embellish, elaborate, imagine. And so as contemporary archaeologists of the map, the story, and the machine, we will construct architectural souvenirs of the worlds that we see existing in the interstices of representational abstraction. We will create strange physical artefacts that summarise an imagined hinterland, and which together act as a gateway to a lost/just‐discovered world.

Above are Dori's three stages. The colourful model was his interpretive stage, leading to the black and white drawing that became the map of his storm-space, a detritus laden landscape watched over by huge rusting watch-towers, of indeterminate occupancy, that was drawn up in the two first drawings (and others not shown that depict a full sequence), and modeled through the folded and laser-cut model above.

Noga Smerkowitz's project, which is also the purple-and-yellow model at the bottom, repeated a set of motifs, including a rotated oval, extruded sine and cosine waves, and the curvilenear profiles of topography, across three scales simultaneously: that of the ritual cultic object, that of a building, and that of the landscape. So that her legend was defined by intermingling and cross-referencing objects like the one above which was both a religious object, as well as a vast architectural intervention (purple and yellow model below), and the shape of the ground on which all of these sit.

This colourful beast is Yasmin Schmidt's psychedelic cavern of lurid melancholy, which she navigated through by creating a comic strip that follows the journey of a prototypical subject of this over saturated enviroment, who begins high up surveying the lay of the land, but who unfortunately ends up tumbling helplessly, and endlessly, through the fractal-like fronds of yellow perspex.

Nitzan Sharon produced one piece of a larger game that he was designing on his computer, a three dimensional puzzle garden consisting of grottoes, waterfalls, follies, avenues, and paddocks contained within various cubes whose sides rotate to match up with the sides of their adjacent element, becoming something different depending on which way up they are.

The six images above are of Noa Kedar's exploration of how images and models can simultaneously be seen to be of a vast scale, whilst also being apparently tiny, a bit like the strange scenes one sometimes sees under the microscope where it is not only palpable that there are whole worlds within the head of a pin, but that they look very similar to lunar landscapes, forests, cities...

Below is the intermediate scale of Noga's rotated oval, where the landscale penetrates the interior of what was once able to fit in the plam of a hand, and creates a cascade of iconographic terraces.

A big thank you to all the students, to Chris Pierce for organising the programme, Chris Matthews and Aaron Sprecher for their support, Ruth Kedar and Arthur Mamou-Mani for being so much fun and such inspirations, and to Eran Neuman for bringing the AA in.

Teasing Tastes: Vertical Studio at Cardiff University

2010-06-28T17:10:00.000+01:00

This summer term Amita Kulkarni (director of Studio Amita Vikrant) and I (invited by Sergio Pineda and Sam Clark) taught a Vertical Studio during which students were asked to fill a box with a series of scale models. The architectural scenes had to start from found objects, building up imagined scenarios revolving around the articles of daily life, hopefully opening up small ruptures in the students' ways of seeing everyday environments. The boxes themselves, using lighting, and a copious profusion of surface treatments, had to create explicit atmospheres, and eloquently imply intriguing narratives, which could be further clarified -opening up a world of stories and events- upon inspection of the respective student's book, which is used to catalogue the imagined breadth of the world frozen in the architectural representation of the box (one of which can be seen here in pdf form). After a couple of test runs, all the boxes rapidly evolved into theatrical story-telling sets.

Hopefully, in a small way, allowing students to use their imagination to explore alternative narratives of the present, of everyday life and its strangeness, of how to question what is and isn't real, and how architecture can stretch accepted narratives to physically contain some of the freedoms and alternate realities so freely available in theatre and literature, we introduced a little of what Salman Rushdie described in his reading of Terry Gilliam's film Brazil, later maybe also to creep into their later work: "This idea -the opposition of art to politics- is of great importance, because it reminds us that we are not helpless; that to dream is to have power. And I suggest that the true location of Brazil is the other great tradition in art, the one in which techniques of comedy, metaphor, heightened imagery, fantasy and so on are used to break down our conventional, habit-dulled certainties about what the world is and has to be. Unreality is the only weapon with which reality can be smashed, so that is may subsequently be reconstructed."

Venturing furthest into the realm of an entirely constructed fictional universe, the photo above and the four photos below are of Phin Harper's project in which he slays a God on behalf of a fictional race of miniature people -here in the form of a dying pigeon he found and pinned to a cross in his box- and together with a cute stuffed toy he found, and soft shapes he made which variously defy their hidden serrated edges and dangerous sinister hearts with the outward signs of friendliness, he created a buried world of crossed signals, a hidden series of vaults where the old God of the race of little white people had carefully arranged -and kept away from the unsuspecting people- all spaces in the cosmos that contradicted themselves, that were not what they seemed to be, that beckoned people in with warm colours and soft forms whilst hacking them to death upon entry. He had tidied up the universe, but just as Phin sacrificed the pigeon, so they killed their God and aeons later they have rediscovered the catalogue of rooms, and are digging them out, studying them, puzzling over them, re-finding their plethora of contradictions, taming them.

See here for a fragment of Phin's text. Everything white and at the scale of the little white men are interventions by them, passageways, bridges, study rooms, visitor centres and archives that chart their movement of discovery through the subterranean world of the old God's monstrous catalogue.

Below is the box by Jihui Cao, a 3dimensional board game of twisting perspectival grids, in which the Joker has taken control of a pack of cards, and is busily engaged in the process of rewriting the rules of play through his own particularly acidic sense of humour.

The photo above and the six below are of Zoe Spittle's box, which is both a journey through her morning, as felt by her in her half awake state, and also a fascinating layered space, chock full of allusive imagery and overlapping spatialised stories rendered in planes of delicately marked paper; and it switches between these two states via the addition or removal of a screen she built for the front of the scene (seen above lit up from outside, and below from inside) which has numbered 'viewing canons' that frame very precisely each moment from waking to eating to showering, taking you through them sequentially and separating them in space as well as time. When the screen is taken off the discrete scenes all bleed into one another, existing simultaneously in the same space, both creating a compound and rich atmosphere, whilst also allowing one to meander through the various elements, stringing stories and links between them at will.

Zoe was the student who kept most closely to very specific real, quotidian experiences, using a clear and simple technique of simile overlaid onto everyday routines, giving them the magical quality that things acquire when they are associated with unrelated phenomena and integrated visually, as with the best children's book illustrations which essentially make the fantastical immediately intimate.

For an early version of her text, which actually came somewhere in the middle of her development of the scenes and their arrangement, see here.

The two photos below are of Lingyan Kong's box, a digital-analogue Manga inspired space in which an Android boy has created a whole range of flora and fauna that vary in degree between the mechanical, the biological, digital and analogue, and flat and 3dimensional. This is the boy's petri dish where he dreams his Pinocchio dream of being a real boy, whilst actively experimenting to make it happen. See more here.

And last, but definitely not least is the miniature epic by Matt Smith that all began when an apple got shot by a toy soldier (or rather the apple had a bite taken out of it, and got positioned next to the toy soldier so that it looked very much as if that is what had happened), and the General from an old comic-book which Matt found in a car-boot sale took up where the toy soldier had left off, mobilising many others just like him to take part in a fight to the death with all Apples, all happening in the space between the floorboards of an innocuous bedroom (the territory of the apples), and the world beneath them (the home-ground of the toy soldiers). The box is rendered after-the-event, with clear traces of all the major moments in the history of the war carefully laid out, and through which the jury was expertly taken through during the presentation by Matt (accompanied by 'Ride of the Valkyries' that punctuated the presentation), and which is beautifully preserved in his Book, which can be seen here in PDF format. I would put more photographs up of his box, and others, but unfortunately the Flash card of my camera which had all my photos on it was accidentally wiped.

A big thank you to all the students who chose Teasing Tastes for their 2010 Vertical Studio:

Andra Antone
Sidha Mogha
Phineas Harper
Katherine Hart
Christina Ntetsika
Matthew Smith
Jihui Cao
Zoe Spittle
Lingyan Kong

Hanging-Masks Jewellery Box

2010-05-31T13:42:00.000+01:00

Designed in the same series as the "Mannered-Man-Pendant", this jewellery box is also hominoidal, with a series of four faces with different moods on each of its sides, and also hangs, but here more like a pendulum than a pendant.

The video above is cut to half its width by the blog, see here for the full version

It hangs from a chain, and can be suspended from any hook or ledge, swinging gently since all of its joints are movable. There will also be a foldable armature from which it can be hung when travelling.

There are two spheres of silver, above and below the main box, which act to maintain its centre of gravity so that it never leans out of line, whilst the lower, larger sphere is connected to the base of the box by a silver bar, which when held between two fingers, steadies the box so that its door can be opened with the other hand.

Slightly recessed inside the door is a lipped shelf, so that the case is divided vertically into two sections, and can contain several rings, and earrings.

The main box is made of 9ct gold which has been laser-cut and then hand-assembled and finished. The bars, joints and spheres are silver.

Below are some photos of the first assembly.

Two Follies

2010-04-17T20:27:00.000+01:00

Two small silver objects, one with gold-plating to its upper interior, from a range that includes this castle-bridge-ring, and an indefinite number of other potential variations.

They were both made from hand-carved wax using lost-wax casting

and are intended to multiply, populating the nooks and crannies of a home

turning its bookshelves, wainscotting, treads and cupboard-tops into a Penguin paperback and Ikea flatpack

interior romantic garden, through which eyes tired from the strain of the computer screen can go for jaunty mid-afternoon saunters, wandering over worktops, and between lampshades, occasionaly taking refuge under the light whimsy of a minute folly.

Chinese Whispers Drawing

2010-04-07T20:20:00.000+01:00

A student from Central Saint Martins' MA course "Creative Practices for Narrative Environments" sent me a package with two pieces of folded A2 paper, three pens, and a little instructions slip (above). One person had to draw on a third of one of the pages, then jot down any relevant notes or sketches on the second; the package was then to be given to another person to do the same, and then onto a third who would complete the two pages and send the pack back to the original sender.

I eventually ended up with the drawing pictured above (and detailed below), of a potentially extensive series of collected elements that relate to a particular mixture of memories -specifically those related to forms, surfaces and objects- which for me define a rather fondly recalled summer, long since past. A summer that looms larger the further away I get from it, and whose constituent buildings and experiences become proportionately more potent, and full of longing as they retreat from the lacklustre present.

Below is a photo of the 'notes page' on which I made a remark about the desire to reaffirm the instinctive pre-training judgement of the unburdened eye, and drew a quick sketch before embarking on the main drawing.

The pack was then given to Marcel Rahm, Director of the fantabulous Milk Studio Architects, who you can see busily drawing away in the photo below.

I look forward to seeing the results.

"Cluster On Me" An Alternative development above Tottenham Court Road Crossrail Station

2010-03-17T17:48:00.000Z

This was a project done over at Madam Studio, with Rebecca Harral and Marco Ginex.

We are situated in Soho, and are quite horrified at the lack of Programmatic and architectural ingenuity being shown by the proposals for what will replace the two chunks of Soho that are being/have been demolished to make way for the TotCrtRd Crossrail interchange. A rich mix of music venues, night-clubs, offices, restaurants, accomodation, schools, and buildings ranging from the eighteenth century to the 70s (hilariously the whole development is in a conservation zone) are being lost, from the area around The End and Denmark Street, to the block that housed the Ghetto, The Astoria, Dionysus and Metro, to a whole slice of Dean Street, where the old Black Gardenia, with its wooden stools and oddly dressed attendants (always made me think of Johnny Depp), and Spaccanapoli (pizzas by the metre) are all gone, only to be replaced by office blocks with token subsidised space for "culture".

We wanted to incorporate the capital benefits of both monolithic skyscraper projects, like one Canada Square, as well as the kind of groundscraper they are planning to build on the site, with the qualities of architectural and programmatic diversity that we like so much in Soho. To do this we felt that spaces needed to be found in which there was freedom for a variety of architectures, and programmes, as well as ownerships to evolve on their own course, with these "voids", or lacunae-of-design being anchored by a certain quantity of large, defined elements that would insure an economy of scale sufficient to initiate the development.

^View of Tower at Final Stage From The Corner Of Oxford Street and Hanway Place

More After The Break...

^Context and Contradiction

We proposed a vertical infrastructure above the station which would be part financed by the construction of the three large Anchor Tenants. The infrastructure would service the key tenants, but would also create a framework, both structural and in terms of routes and connections, for the volumetric space between the key occupiers.

^Diagram of Stages of Growth in Relation To Infrastructure
Traffic is drawn up into the space above the station in three velocities (by the elevators, of which there are only two, by the escalators which connect between the elevators, and by the stairs, which access all spaces between the escalators), and at points along those lines of acces (which are themselves lengthened, although not inconveniently so), ruptures are introduced that lead out onto empty "lots".

^catalogue of volumes and prgrammes contained in the voids of the plot

These "lots" are defined Volumetricaly, with only their points of access, the entry and exit of services, and their basic form being prescribed. Their form is managed to insure light and air reaches every lot in the space of the site, but what is designed within, or on that envelope, is up to the owner and architect of the plot.

^Perspectival Section. Conjecture of how the areas would be filled.
As well as a rich Architectural mix, which is something we are very interested in -namely the point at which an urban/architectural framework becomes a mechanism that both fosters stylistic plurality while also giving it form and coherence- we also wanted to propose a level of inherent economic and spatial redundancy. As Jane Jacobs kept pointing out in the Death and Life of Great American Cities, it is vital that an area have a building stock that is composed of buildings of varying ages and states of repair. It is through that range of building-states that a variety of enterprises can pool together (small start-ups have a chance of finding cut-throat cheap digs, small music venues take up dank basements, and are happily frequented by business people working down the road in Class A office blocks), sharing common facilities and generating a vibrant, balanced and flexible local economy, culture, and consequently: Architecture.

^Breakdown of one volumetric "lot" that has been divided and sold to different owner occupiers, and modified by various designers/architects
This situation exists in Soho,because unlike most of the rest of Central London, which is owned as large assets by families like the Bedfords, Grosvenors and the Howard De Walden Estate, Soho is owned by multiple landlords, building by building, street by street. Often the buildings in the main London Estates are leased out on long leaseholds (25, 50, or 99 years), with large rounds of investment occuring when the leases come up for renewal, meaning that the stock is maintained uniformly, with the kinds of tenants being just as unrelentingly homogenous (as a palliative the Howard De Walden Estate creates a fictive image of diversity by allowing certain "atmospheric" shops to have artificially lower rents. They call this "nurturing"). The leases on Soho's building are constantly coming up for renewal, plots are always being bought, sold, redeveloped, or left to decay, and correspodingly the life and architecture of the place is sparkling.

^Plans

We tried to develop a similar scenario to the one found in Soho, but 3dimensionaly disposed, not stacked but more like a fractured honeycomb, into whose voids gets squeezed a range of privately owned properties, supported and connected by a communaly managed framework. The current Derwent London proposals for the site create a Howard De Walden type scenario, with a large single ownership area of building, punctuated only by the image of diversity (a small space is being kept in the new office complex for an etiolated "cultural" space that is supposed to make up for everything that was wiped away), effectively giving bones to the threat of "cleaning up" that have been leveled at the apparently scruffy and "tacky" area for some years now (if the GLA and politicians consider this part of London scruffy, god help us).

^Breakdown

We dreamed a little of large sums of money being spent on building prominent spaces where things could get as "tacky" as need and wants be, and where possibly, maybe even, Madam Studio, and some of our mates, could find an affordable (but not subsidised!) Central London studio, in which we could hole ourselves up (and build something that can be seen not only from the street, shock-horror, but from all over town), and have some fun in. Off to Berlin?

All images © Madam Studio Ltd 2010

Barbican Film

2010-02-26T14:24:00.000Z

Below is part of a film about, and starring, the Barbican called "Degrees Of Enclosure". It was created by the Artist Ilona Sagar, with text written by me, read by Joel Sams, and with performances by the dancers Georgina Hay, Aneta Hymka, Elizabeth Streeter, Elaine Thomas.

The film was exhibited at the event Architectural Playgrounds, at the Barbican Galleries, and will be shown again at the Design vs Art evening on the 29th April.

For more details about how the project germinated and developed, as well as a full copy of the text, please see this post over on TextBin.

Documenting and Designing for Louvain-La-Neuve

2009-12-01T12:59:00.000Z

masterplan of Louvain La Neuve
Workshop group in front of LLN model from the 70s, after a lecture by the head of Planning at LLN University
Karel Wuytack and I recently taught a design/research workshop, to the full final year of Urbanism students studying at Sint Lucas' two campuses of Gent and Brussels.

Railway and Road entrances into and under LLN

The topic of study was the University City of Louvain La Neuve, a piece of Utopic, pedestrianised, Brutalist New Urbanism, from the late 1960s that grew out of the need to resolve (by removal and relocation) old Flemish-French tensions in Leuven University proper. A site in between Leuven and Brussels, in Wallon Brabant, was chosen.

Street in LLN
more after the break...

Clear attempts were made to resemble the scale and texture of Old Leuven's city centre, rendering a little bit less traumatic the unnatural extraction from 600years of located history, whilst also using the opportunity of being built from scratch to go one 'better' than the original, and bury all infrastructure and parking in a huge plinth (up to four floors deep in places), called "La Dalle", that sits under the entire city centre.

Edge of La Dalle
The project, which is unfinished in many places, leaves several edges of La Dalle unconcluded, with the expecting party-walls of scattered apartment buildings hanging unclaimed at the edges of its idyllic streets; a girdling wall-like Back-end to a city that was designed at its street levels as a large three dimensional interior, a cosy and human-scaled labyryinth sustained by the Disney-Like support infrastructure feeding it from within the plinth, an infrastructural section which is laid bare at the points where it was never completed, was left in its unfinished state. Laid bare also by these moments as a fundamental miscalculation, in that this was not realy a city, it never needed, and was never going to need thousands upon thousands of parking spaces and endless concrete ramps, as well as entire subterranean by-pass tunnels, for its few university departments and its several clusters of little villas, let alone at an initial cost of 24000Euros per parking space. The whole plinth has long since become a liability, and the city is having to rely on a large new shopping centre, that draws shoppers from all over the Brabant region, in order to maintain much of the parking area, which has otherwise become slowly decaying left-over volumes, been creatively occupied (a snooker hall for instance), or has been cleaned up and left innaccessible due to high charges, and only ever at best reaching a 40percent occupancy rate.

An un-renovated access to subterranean parking

The city has also been adding new elements to itself in the form of the out of scale shopping centre, a large glass box tellingly called the "Magna Aula", a new shapely museum about the comic, and national hero, Herge (author of "TinTin" and "Quick and Flupke"), by Christian de Potzamparc, sprawling Science Parks and a bog-standard series of suburban enclaves. They each face the fabric of the original masterplan in their own way, either trying to smooth over any discontinuity, as in the case of the mall (its entrance from the street is blended into the figure-ground of LLN as a low, semi-circular piazza), separating themselves completely as with the new residential streets oriented towards the city's scenic lake, or else deal with their ambiguous context by suggestively playing with the given scenario, as Potzamparc does, mooring his ship outside the dock-edge of Louvain La Neuve's unconcluded expansion.

Musee Herge by Christian De Potzamparc

Students in Louvain La NeuveWe asked students, in groups of 6, to approach the city and look for situations where the original masterplan, and the circumstances that have occured during its realisation, have produced unusual situations that are both locally contingent and generaly relevant. We asked them to creatively document these conditions using film and photography, during a two day trip to the the city, and then over a two day studio in Ghent, to form a film presentation that would tell the story of what they had discovered, its links to the history of the overall projet of Louvain La Neuve, and then to speculate on the potentials of the unique qualities they had pinpointed, as possible strategies for extending and/or intensifying the area's incipient urbanity.

Storyboarding and constructing positions

Starting with the text "Reinventing the Urban Project in Rotterdam; In Search of a New Credibility for Architecture and Planning After the Financial Crisis of 2008" by Crimson Architectural Historians, we decided to take up the idea of seeing this city "itself as a source of solutions and new ideas, instead of as a passive body waiting to be operated on by specialists", and look for a way to recognize "the fundamental specifity of each city", from within the city itself. However where Crimson call for a piecemeal and pragmatic approach to urbanism based on practicable case-studies, whose "straightforwardness [] could be the antidote to the degradation of meaning and credibility that the Big Plan has brought to the profession of architecture and urban planning", we wanted the workshop students to look for contradictory and vital singularities, but rather than approaching them as a series of real, solvable projects, treat them instead as possible urban principles which if extended, could be the vital ingredients in the overall development of the city.

learning to communicate in video

Beginning with research on the ground, and an awareness of the site's history, the students were asked to imagine how Louvain La Neuve might develop in a manner that deepens the generic and reinforces its possibilties to absorb singularity.

The group showing the footage on the laptop above worked on an analysis of the public-private interfaces in the old masterplanned areas, and drew up an idea for a planning framework that liberated the stylistic and quantitative zoning of the city, but prescribed in detail the qualitative relationship between the built fabric and the street. This would allow for a strong quality of public space to extend beyond the University-owned, and University-developed centre, to the majority privately developed environs.

Below are the video presentations of three of the other groups. The first is an exploration of the complex interior of The Plinth (La Dalle), its relationship to the city above, and its potential development and conquest by anything from Meat Processing to wildlife:

The second is a proposal where the unfinished edge of the city, its revealed section, is celebrated and used as a generator for a marked growth that embeds an internal, active archaeology within the expansion of the city:

A drawing by the Edge groupThe third is a group that looked at the new urban entities that have been moored within the masterplan of LLN, and explores how they can be used as linchpins for a hybrid development that actively emphasises and uses the gaps and contradictions between the scale and layout of the 1960s plan, and its recent, unplanned additions:

The final group (who's video is not online) worked on a way to extend the University's system of Kot'a'Projets (dorms where students come to live together with similar interests, and are given funding to arrange events and activities), into an urban scale network of 'bottom up' architectural production and activity development, which if given distinct locations around the city, could also involve residents.

Informal Housing in La Baraque

This required research into La Baraque, an alternative settlement started by students from the University in the 70s who did not wish to live in the Masterplanned areas, instead building their own, semi-official, community. The students proposed bringing similar concessions (the land on which the Baraque sits belongs to the University, but they willingly tolerate the 120 permanent 'squatters') into the centre itself, as communaly organised zones where University regulation is suspended.

To conclude, a short process video by the group that did the interior of La Dalle:

Thanks to all the students,
also to Michael Callant, Ruben De Leersnyder, Jef Pottier, and Kobe Stroobants for their superb and fun support

Peripetics by Zeitguised

2009-11-03T15:00:00.000Z

A remarkable animation made by Zeitguised, with sound by Michael Fakesch, and commisioned by Zirkel Gallery.

Peripetics by ZEITGUISED from NotForPaper on Vimeo.

An Other Place

2009-10-22T17:40:00.000+01:00

Two images of spaces taken from within the world outlined in this storied proposal "Breaches, and Other Places" over on TextBin.

"Cine-Doche" AAIS Hooke Park Goodbye Film

2009-10-11T17:22:00.000+01:00

The final trip (the first without external commitments) of the AAIS group was to Hooke Park, a forest in Dorset owned by the AA, where we inflated our pavilion and spent a couple of days writing, filming, eating and drinking.
This is the outcome, a goodbye to the pavilion (which we designed and worked with for so many months), to the Bauhaus (which we both collaborated with, and studied), and to the AAIS (for which we were the test Bunnies).
Made with Catharine Patha, Kate Mactiernan, Parastoo Anoushehpour, and Takako Hasegawa.

And a big thankyou to the bemused but ever-helpful Jean-Francois.

Animation Of a Multi-Nave

2009-09-21T18:17:00.000+01:00

A test animation using rhino's bongo animator, and edited on Adobe Premiere.
Quite happy with it, except for the awful quality of the youtube upload.

The video above is cut to half its width by Blogger, go here for the full version
The music is part of a song called "Painter" from Momus' 1991 album Hippopotamomus, which you can download here, thanks to the man also known as Nick Currie.

Above is an image of the main space that is in the animation.

"Digital Hinterlands" Exhibition

2009-09-12T20:28:00.000+01:00

At Arup's new exhibition space on Charlotte Street in Fitzrovia, Digital Hinterlands, curated by Ruari Glynn as part of London Digital Week, is a collection of recent graduate work that uses digital tools in new and unexpected ways. The exhibition's aesthetic of laser-cut, and then bent, aluminium panels makes it feel a little bit as if a klingon will jump out from behind one of them at any moment, a playful atmosphere which is a pleasant contrast to the bland seriousness of the rest of the ground floor, with its hung ceilings, reception desk, and glass entrance barriers.

The work is all of a high standard, and I would recommend popping by to choose your own favourites, but I am going to allow my biases to draw me towards two of the exhibitors.

Hanging Panels

Firstly, and briefly, Tarek Shamma's exquisitely crafted Coptic church in Cairo, the Circus Lumens, a powerful and impossible statement of that religion's continuing presence in a city that forbids it to construct new places of worship. Click here for Tarek's blog for the project.

Circus Lumens

Secondly Jordon Hodgson grabbed my eye, the first time whilst sitting folded in on himself on the floor, simultaneously talking on his mobile and dropping tiny pink beads onto the model of his politely kitsch, and delightful, inhabitable chandelier (pictured below), whilst also somehow managing to look short and delicate, which meant that when I met him later that day at the opening, I almost didnt recognise him for his immense height.

Jordan Hodgson
His project, the Workhouse Of The Infrastructural Counter Reformation, produced last year whilst at the RCA, has a thread of fun, humility, and general delight running through it, woven together with a descriptive verve that makes an impossible future world seem as tangible as one presented in an immersive movie (workhouse meets credit crunch, and the fiscal boost of infrastructure spending, to bring a bout a new urban typology aimed at a British economic renaissance, but entirely drenched in victoriana to ease the anxieties associated with its birth). The models hover on the edge of tackiness, and yet by virtue of the obvious consideration, and serious thought, that has gone into their composition, and the success with which some of them, especially the chandelier, convey a sense of structure, they remain very much within the realm of appreciation.

Inhabited Chandelier

The plan was definitely the most engaging part of the project represented in the exhibition. It was like Piranesi's Ichnographiam Campi Martii, but made entirely of doilies, and used to describe the infrastructure of some sort of large, florid and ornate lunar settlement.

Plan of The Project

Then, around the corner from him was the table displaying some of the models from my final year project, The Church Of Perpetual Experimentation.

With a film next to it, describing the project whose intro can be seen here, and the main film here.

Monument to Porcelain 1

2009-09-05T19:27:00.000+01:00

The version below is cut to half its width by blogger, go here for the full version

Things that Lurk in old Hard Drives: Design for Serpentine Pavilion 2003

2009-08-03T16:44:00.000+01:00

What things can be unearthed from the dusty interiors of ancient Hard Drives once presumed broken!

I found this video that I had forgotten I had ever made on an old hard drive that I was about to throw away, since it hadnt worked for about 5years. I plugged it in one last time, to find that it hummed gently, and happily gave up its contents, all of which I had thought forever lost, including this startlingly mechanical and monochrome fly-through of my final design in 2003, (a proposal for a Serpentine Pavilion) for Charles Walker's first year at the AA Intermediate School; a unit that is now spawning a prodigious quantity of pavilions in Bedford Square. I designed an Excel Spreadsheet that would generate all the panels according to a few parameters, and several bell curve formulas (for height gradation and grid distortion, both in plan and section). The next year (2004) the project turned up in a sheet of 'influences' for Jurgen Mayer's Seville 'Metropol Parasol', along with a couple of other projects from other architects.

I do not like the design, but the insanely geeky and thorough process of designing my own parametric 'program' from scratch on Excel was an experience that I do not regret; and besides, doing this design for the Serpentine Pavilion took so long, and was generaly so unnatural to my inclinations, and so out of keeping with a context I loved so much, that there was a whole year of pent-up ideas, and continuously frustrated desires for the site and the programme, that simply burst forth with a vengeance when somehow, through luck, I ended up in Rotterdam, working on the 2006 OMA/Rem Koolhaas Serpentine Pavilion. It was such a joy to be able to work on a real design for the same site, a real design together with a team (notably the eminent Mr Karel Wuytack) and an architect, who were interested in so many of the things I had suffered from a lack of, in Charles' strange tool-based technocracy; namely the pavilion's relationship to the historicity of the place, its quality of allusion and its enmeshment with the events planned to occur within it.

DomestiCity: Conclusion of Unit1

2009-08-02T11:22:00.000+01:00

Unit 1 of the 2009 Summer School concluded with one film, presented while the students sat on a long table in front of the audience, drawing in the light of the projection above them, a final concluding storyboard/mindmap of their experience, which, as the film finished was presented to the jurors sitting directly in front of the table.

the students drawing during the screening of the film, which was projected just over their heads.

Part 1 of the Film:

Part 2 of the Film:

The storyboard

They worked in three separate teams filming and editing footage, while one member of each team represented the rest in daily meetings in which the overall narrative was gradually worked out, which then defined further work in image drawing, animation making, and sound editing for each of the teams.

Heres a little, silly, "outtake film"

Thank you especially to Peter Carl and Catharine Patha for your interest in the work and your insightful comments as the students presented for the last time, and, of course, thank you students:

Nathaniel Bengio
Alicja Chola
Noa Gonzales
Rachel Delargy
Cecilia Hui
Maria Koufalioti
Jan Ledwon
Vanessa Mitrapanou
Lap Fat (Morris) Ngai
Sandy Stuchfield
Chun Ping Yip
Taylor Zhou
Daria Tarawneh

DomestiCITY: AA Summer School Unit 1 Introduction

2009-07-11T23:30:00.000+01:00

This is the Presentation that Marie Isabel de Monseignat and I will be making day after tomorrow to the AA's Summer School's students, hoping that it will be interesting enough for them to choose.
Bring on the Domestic-in-the-City!

Naughty Gordon...

"Salon" Exhibition

2009-05-25T12:26:00.000+01:00

photos by Takako Hasegawa

I had the honour of organising this exhibition of 'works in progress' at the AA for its Inter Professional Studio (a studio set up to bring professionals from outside of architecture into the aa to experiment). It runs through the month of may and the space has been designed to be used for a programme of events which included a wonderful theatre performance (Erin and Florian) by Vier Theatre on the 21st; a series of 3 conversations about collaboration (Catharine Patha) on the 19th, 26th, and the 27th, with guests including Hans Ulrich Obrist, Richard Wentworth and Gavin Turk; a symposium of the AA's Interprofessional studio and the works in progress which are exhibited in the Salon; and a lecture and workshop by Canadian artist Emma Waltraud Howes.

Emma Waltraud-Howes talking about the development of her work over the past three years

The poster for "Erin and Florian"

Erin and Florian being performed

The exhibition was organised as a decorative ensemble of images hung in a relaxed fashion on walls which were painted a warm grey-red. Explanations of individual works were available as tear-off sheets hung near the works, but the main intention was to create an atmosphere composed of our works, rather than organise the room as a descriptive exhibit. The centre of the room is taken up by a large table (used as a round-table in the conversations) composed of seven smaller tables which can be sperated to take out of the room, in the case of Erin and Florian, or broken up and used as stands for drinks and canapes.

Participants:
Laura Boffi
Will Martyr
Adam Nathaniel Furman
Catharine Patha
Takako Hasegawa
Heather Lyons
Jan Brueggermeier
Parastoo Anoushehpour
Kate Mactiernan

The opening party:

The tables:

These were designed and made by me and Kate Mactiernan (pictured above).

Curtains by Laura Boffi:

models of the AAIS pavilion in Germany:

avi corner:

Hans Ulrich Obrist discussing Failed Collaborations with Mark Cousins

Brett Steele talking about the AA's programme of diversified forums for discussion, and Mike Weinstock across the table.

Dr Ken Arnold (Director of Public Programmes at the Wellcome Collection), and David Cotterell discussing the remarkable work David produced for the Wellcome Collection

Richard Wentworth and Kit Grover talking about their experiences of working together

Subjective Cartographies

2009-04-26T11:40:00.000+01:00

This is the whole of the film which "Two Men and Their Monuments" is from. It explores (in a fun, collaborative fashion) the notion that a city and its physical fabric can be spatially mapped from a perspective other than the quantitative analysis of its statistised components. A sort of literary cartography, an urban plan in which the legend would correlate and compare densities of footfall and the prices of available rent-controlled accomodation in any area equally with the relative quality of its outlets selling japanese cat-food brands... it is half in french, half in english

Unit 6 of the AA Summer School 2008

2009-04-17T14:29:00.000+01:00

Marie Isabel De Monseignat and I taught Unit6 in last year's Summer School. The theme for the year was "London Disasters", and our brief proposed to create a Factory for the Recycling of London's discarded passe architecture (a form of disaster prevention). We wanted a brief that would allow the students to bounce backwards and forwards between zany story-making, fun sessions of impromptu designing, and periods of serious discussion and debate and deliberation about the points where their work was navigating through interesting and relevant topics. Each student spent a week on an individual project, which was then critiqued in an internal jury. That work was then concluded while the whole unit embarked on pulling their individual thoughts and designs into one working factory.

This is most of the Introduction which we played for all the students on the first day of the Summer School, the other bit being an explanation of the schedule and way of working (so i left that out). Students watched all 6 Units present, and then filled in ballot papers to choose the unit they wished to attend... as you can see we were extremely fortunate with the students who chose us:

These are some images of the final model (scale 1:50), and the final drawing, which were the vehicles through which the students combined their disparate ideas into one functioning project... it was very interesting to watch how the group production of these drawings and models ingnited several discussions which kept running (and nourishing) all the way through the course and culminated in a couple of rather long, tiring, but ultimately fascinating debates which tied-up the unit's work in a way that showed how engaged everyone had been, how the students had really been drawn into the work and the collaboration both intellectually and emotionally, which all resulted in a sort of strangely ecstatic mood by the time we made our final presentation, a mood which I took as resulting from the feeling that together the group had produced something that could never have been done separately, a sort of bond of successfully materialised creativity.

The whole model of the factory

The whole final drawing

a zoomed in area of the final drawing

a zoomed in area of the final drawing

image of the factory in the site, with reclamation-copter leaving to go and fetch passe fragments...

reclamation-copter carrying Dimitar's recombined product

Students working on final model

This was the unit just after presenting in the mid-Jury. You can see the collaboration on the model has begun in teams of four to each part, and the individual projects are on the wall to the left...

A film of a small part of the final Jury presentation, which we made into a bit of a performance, costumes and all:

everyone just after the presentation

The wall of our studio

The students' rather forbidden way of saying thank you

me and marie after the last dinner/drinks

We also exhibited the unit's work in a month long exhibition at the AA in October of the same year. Here are the only surviving images:

And a random addition (it was on one of the films, and you can see me all dressed up for the final presentation at the end), me and marie visiting our Diploma 9 Projects Review exhibition, which used as a base the stairs from my Church of Perpetual Experimentation project:

Performative Space I

2009-04-13T10:30:00.000+01:00

This is the Image which is going to go with my films of 'People Watching People' and 'Recollections From Within The Crowd', in the AASALON exhibition which will open on May 1st.

This is the text that goes with it:

It expanded, pulsing like a dead body heaving with unescaped noxious gases, breaking out with scars, patches and wounds of colour as if bacterial mould and mildew were painting the bowels of this torrid place with the florid marks of a tropical disease. Seats tipped over and disappeared into the folds between columns that began to bulge like the faces of men having heart attacks, swollen beyond use and marked across, slashed all over with tattoos as desperate in their relentless acreage as the panting breaths of a suffocating dog. The stage was lacerated until it bled red and was then hurled over to a place where it lay, sinking into the Technicolor mess that groaned and swelled around it.

3 Recollections from within the crowd

2009-04-05T13:15:00.001+01:00

This is the film of overlapping narratives from within the audience space of an auditorium. It didnt really work with several "mes", so the lovely Kate Mactiernan (who I am doing the tables with), and the beautiful Catharine Patha (who I developed the thoughts about performative audiences with), stepped in to add a little feminine insight to the work.

This has been made for the Jena Theater Festival and is meant to be a sort of decorative 'white noise', a background to the reception area of the TheaterHaus which contains snippets of discernable spatial narrative, but which in no way demands to be listened to, rather forming a peripheral and repetitive moving image relating to what occurs within the confines of performance spaces in general.

Triangle Table I

2009-04-01T08:22:00.001+01:00

This is the prototype for the tables that will be used in an exhibition in May (the theme is "Salon" and the tables will be used for canapes etc). When the workshop re-opens in a few weeks there will hopefully be time to make around 6 more of them...
The project is a collaboration with Kate Mactiernan.
more after the break...

Bestiary

2009-03-28T12:05:00.000Z

The animals I am currently sharing my days with.
Illustrations that came from Character I in LifeBin

Folly Ring

2009-03-22T13:29:00.000Z

A bridge spanning a finger, gatekeeper to the hand, and a Castle-with-a-hole decorating the landscape of a living-room's shelf.

Recollections From Within The Crowd

2009-03-18T16:10:00.001Z

A little story adapted from Character I and Character II over on LifeBin
This is the final version of this edit with one narrator:

This is the film undoubled (original cut). The final edit will come at some point in the next couple of months and will ideally have me as three separate narrators in the screen, each telling a different story, and overlapping each other in the way the the same image overlaps itself in this version. The sound will switch from one narrator to the next leaving the last silent speaker gesticulating together with the next to speak in what will hopefully be a visual display that jars slightly with what is being said, but not to the point of rendering it incomprehensible, while adding an atmosphere which alludes to the point of the work: namely the layering of a space with multiple viewpoints/subjective perspectives.

People Watching People

2009-03-15T08:48:00.000Z

Im chuffed like Thomas the Tank Engine with this one. Heiko Kalmbach suggested that I make an architecturaly oriented graphical animation to go with the spoken word of a text I wrote on LifeBin that is about four spaces of performance where emphasis is as much on the space surrounding and between the spectators themselves as on the stage. The result is this, replete with chalk-board diagram aesthetic, rotating lines, and opportune dip-to-blacks at moments of nice text...

The Church Of Perpetual Experimentation

2009-03-14T14:20:00.000Z

"The Church of Perpetual Experimentation" was my final year project in Diploma 9 under Natasha Sandmeier and Monia DeMarchi, and involved the design of a sprawling new Church in the southern Roman suburb of EUR, set within the fictive context of a new pontificate that is devoted to the massive restucturing and expansion of the church, its liturgies and its architecture. The site in EUR is set aside by the new pope as a field of experimentation where the doctrinal and liturgical innovations being developed over the Tiber in the Vatican are put immediately to test and trial with the practising -and non-practising- public. The project was developed in many directions at the same time, and while having a strong technical basis which was pulled right through to 1:1 fragments being manufactured, it was also surrounded by an elaborate mythology which was explored through alot of writings (relating to the inventions of the theologians and the presentation of their ideas in a sort of Council of Trent set of guidelines, as well as the chains of consequences and events surrounding the whole endeavour), and many drawings that contained silent spatial narratives. The final presentation was through the film below which pulled everything together into a short explanation. The original version was alot more story-based, but I remade it with a stronger emphasis on formal issues.

This is the intr0duction to the Film:

This is the film which presents in a compressed form the story of the whole project:

This is the Pope's Inaugural Speech that initiated the experiment:

When waking with the sun and then ploughing fields or tending to sheep or sweating in the smithy all day until the sun set was the breadth of man’s horizon;
When the written word was a mystical cypher of which man knew nothing;
When Nature was vast, terrifying, dangerous and inexplicable;
When death wasn’t only an idea -something one knew would happen one day- but was a smell to be avoided in the streets;
When the body was so often a burden of pain to be suffered and from which there was no respite;
When life was such a narrow path of tedium peppered with horror and misery, the Church proclaimed the transcendence of every individual beyond his sores and abscesses; the Church placed man’s life and his death within an inimitable and beautiful plan of salvation beyond the stink of corpses; the Church extracted man from his narrow and incessant toil to celebrate creation and existence, which, rather than being cursed for its hardship, was glorified and illuminated in ceremony and stone. Man was overwhelmed by the intoxicating mixture of liturgy, icon, statue and story; he was convinced through the mysteries of the Church and their representations that life indeed did have meaning, that indeed there was something magical and profound about existence, about life, and also about pain and suffering.
But now that the rising of the sun has little significance, man wakes as he pleases, where he pleases, and knows that during the coming day his horizons may extend to embrace the globe;
Now that knowledge clings to each man as thickly as an odour, as thickly as a smell that emanates from the autopsy table on which lies the dissected, analysed, categorised and preserved remnants of Nature’s mysteries;
Now that death and pain have been marginalised to the periphery of vision, to specially quarantined buildings;
Now that the body is so often a collection of parts to be perfected or changed at will;
Now that magic and representation have haemorrhaged into every corner of the Real, and stand for nothing but distraction;
Now that life is such a vast landscape of endless choice peppered with information, opportunity and answers, the Church must proclaim the transcendence of every individual beyond the boredom of perfection; the Church must place man’s boundless freedom and his unlimited emptiness back within a plan of salvation beyond the cadaver of mystery. The Church must rediscover and reclaim the magic of representation and re-inject it with an amazement of existence. The Church must plunge itself into the contemporary world to find the raw material, the techniques with which it can once again convince man that indeed life does have meaning, that indeed there is something magical and profound about existence: that man’s great plague -the blight of meaninglessness- is no different today than it was when pain and suffering ruled, only now it is impossible to seduce man into belief with only ceremony and stone.
A lot more is needed, man is waiting, and to that effect, on the eve of my election I am announcing the convention of the Third Vatican Council. The Grand Conciglio will no doubt continue to examine our faith in great depth for many years to come, and beyond my time in the pontificate. Taking this into consideration I will be focusing my efforts on the formation of a sub-council which will endeavour to re-engage the laity through a direct, and possibly radical reconstruction of our tangible presence in their lives. In order that the ideas and decisions of this sub-council do not remain as exciting intention imprisoned on paper, in order that from the first steps of this Grand Council we will lead by concrete example, in order that the laity may engage with us while we are proceeding, in order for these things to happen I have set aside a parcel of land in this very city, the heart of our faith, so that it may become the physical register of our will to change.
I hereby convene the Third Vatican Council, convene and chair the First Committee for the Architecture of Ecclesiastical Engagement, and I hereby initiate the founding of the Church of Perpetual Experimentation.

An image of an interior area in the Church after many years of Experimentation:

The vaults under construction with a performance of Spectacular Mass happening below:

The main chapters of the Committee's publication as a monument:

A drawing explaining the sequence of events and developments in the life of the Church (including a controversial visit by Giorgia):

The Technical plate of the church's vaults:

Three sections running through the site:

The plan, cut at several levels, and sometimes looking up, sometimes down:

A drawing of the Spectacular Staircases:

Interior views of a Recorporation Room and Corridor, both in the subterranean realm of the Recorpisteries:

A piece of one of the Mausochapeleum towers:

A model of the Altar-floats that move around the Spectacular Staircases celebrating Mass:

One of the Climbing-Frame chandeliers, and Building-Block columns in the Multi-Nave area:

These are some of the models through which I developed the structural integrity of the vaulting system of the church and aligned their decorative schemes (tiling and profile carving) with that logic:

Two voussoirs were taken from one of the vaults and built out of Travertine in collaboration with Porcelli-Marmi in Pietrasanta, Tuscany:

The landscape of the Spectacular Staircases that run through the church were made by Cordek with a huge milling machine into an 8metre long foam sculpture which was shipped to the AA in London as the base for our unit's end of year exhibition:

Everyone painting the foam in Bedford Square:

The final crazy exhibition. We called the landscape the "Altar", there was a space underneath it called the "crypt" and the wall of images was the "Iconostasis". For better images see the AADIP9 blog .

Altar, Crypt and Exhibition headers:

The exhibition:

In October there was the AAHonours exhibition and this was my display (with my mother watching the movie, and thats me talking to Jake Choi in the second pic):

Stop-Start Animations With Objects

2009-03-12T18:03:00.001Z

These two clips and the clip of me in the mirror are actually a part of an 8minute long film which cannot be uploaded to youtube because it has copyrighted music on it (and the film doesnt work at all w/out the soundtrack)... oh well!

The first

And the second:

In The Mirror In The Morning

2009-03-12T17:52:00.000Z

an extract from the film that the rotation animation above were taken from.

One Way To Look At Capri

2009-03-12T17:18:00.000Z

This is the short film I made as a response to a week and a half visit to the island of Capri in the bay of naples. I felt that its strength as a circumscribed unit was immense. The conveyance of its many particularly singular historic moments, geographical delights, architectural relics and present comfortable, but ever allusive atmosphere was constant and thorough; whether through the numerous architectural details or the incessant spiel of the locals, Capri expressed itself constantly and clearly as a discernable atmosphere, historical ecology, and object...

This had all culminated in a two day search (and then a day filming, of which footage I only used about 10seconds!) for the place from where all the hotels and holiday homes bought their fake godesses, Marys, Tiberiuses, doric and ionic columns. It was a large, intriguing place on the road from Anacapri to the lighthouse on the eastern end of the island, and just packed full of all the items which the island itself, by 2007, was totally packed full of -and builders were busily loading more and more of the stuff on the backs of their little specially altered piaggio-cum-trucks, to take away and fill the tiny island even more.

This film was incorporated into Objectification later on.

a diagram:

Objectification: A Parable of Posession

2009-03-09T08:06:00.000Z

This is the tale of a man, his life's only journey, his only passionate love, and the solitude at its end...

The Film in Two Parts:

A Summary/Explanation:

Some images of the work on show at the moment in the Corridor Gallery, Hackney Road (you can see the film at the top of the stairs on the tv). I would like to say a big thank you to Amita, Vicky, Emma and Christoph for inviting me to show there:

A diagram of the general plot structure:

and a note on the title:

The sculptures (as with most work on the blog) are available in a limited series. Please contact me if you are interested in purchasing one.

Two Men and their Monuments

2009-03-06T11:42:00.000Z

These are two short stories taken from a film about different ways to map and experience a city, the film is half french and half english, and I seem to have lost the version with the subtitles so Im just going to post the two in English which are about two men who are in different ways infatuated with different monuments in their city. Monuments of the kind that are hosts to daily visits by hundreds of busloads of tourists going on those mad whistlestop tours of Europe.

One Way To Look At An Empty Shop (Film)

2009-03-03T12:12:00.000Z

youtube description:
"Taking the moment in a scene in Godard's LeMepris when the camera pans around a statue of Zeus as a starting point, I imagined the director, prior to the film's conception, walking into a bric-a-brac shop with nobody in it and full of old statues and furniture, and beginning to form his ideas of the overall plot and characters in the film through the items scattered around him."

HandBin description:
This was the second film that I made, and its quite dear to me as it was around the making of it that I began to be fascinated by the presence of highly constructed artifacts, by the ability of objects, films, paintings, and buildings to acquire a life of their own more than, but relying on, and complementary to, their materiality. A life that is affirmed and vivified by the attention and contemplation of observers, but which cannot exist without, and relies entirely upon an efficacy which stems from the level of completeness bestowed upon the item by its creator, a form of conclusiveness which encloses the object in on itself as a contained unity of meaning that is entirely independent of its origin, of the artist. Like the unexplainable moment of liquefaction that is unique to every material, I imagine that there is a point for each artist, for each object that he makes when it reaches independence and sets sail on its own as something more than his or her creation, and something more than the material it is made up of, something that is so strongly of-itself that all future gazes, all future thoughts stemming from apprehending its forms, will, although necessarily each developing thoughts stemming from the observer's own experiences and mind, nonetheless catch a glimmer of the light which the object will give off like the radiation released over the course of its aesthetic half-life. The film imagines Jean-Luc Godard reaching the moment when the characters, plot, colours, scenes, and atmospheres of his film Le Mepris coalesce in his mind to start forming the image of the kind of completeness described above. This happens in a bric-a-brac shop full of pitiful and mundane objects, but things that nonetheless together act as a static reflection of what is forming in his mind, and aids and accompanies the events of intuition taking their own course in his head…

oh, and I starting looking at duration in regards to observing the object, so coming at it from both ends, the initila creative act and the later apprehension of the object in time by an observer... you can have a look at what I wrote on the second page with drawings and text below the movie.

and a couple of explanatory pages:

Chapters, Shapes and Synapses

2009-03-02T08:25:00.000Z

Images from two projects, the first (Mr A) involved the mapping out of the daily routine of a rather defeated man, and then inverting it throught the construction of a dream world space in which the architecture serves to take him on a roller coaster ride that unravels the absurd hermeticism of his environment. The next project (the Bs) follows the relationship of a newly married couple and their relationship with their new house, and architect over twenty years. They re-build their terrace house bit by bit, as money becomes available over the years, and develop certain excentricities in their habits which partially come from the eccentricities in their architecture, and partially feed into the next architectural phase making it even odder, and so on until they end up with a house so idiosyncratic it is impossible to sell.

Two Drawings

2009-02-27T12:46:00.000Z

The first drawing was a catalyst/excuse for a rather long investigation into centralised spaces based on primary geometries and hierarchical subdivisions both vertical and lateral; I mde models and learnt how to project for domical forms, sections of cones etc, and ended up with this large decoratie drawing which I have always wanted to turn into a dining table.... any takers!? :0)

The next one was just a preamble to the drawings for "MyHotel" below in another post...

Shelves

2009-02-26T10:07:00.000Z

Some shelves I designed for my old flat. Copper panels sitting flush in steel frames of varying thickness depending on the size of the books that were to be sitting on them.

Architectural Objects

2009-02-24T11:33:00.000Z

Mannered Man Pendant

2009-02-23T19:13:00.000Z

A pair of Pendants designed using a traditional mannerist strap-work motif, combined with an ensconced face, turned upside down with disproportionate legs and arms, so that the figure looks up at the wearer, waving all the while, but still having his feet firmly pointed to the ground.

Laser-cut, hand-finished 18ct gold

Graphical Thingy

2009-02-23T13:40:00.000Z

Did this in a fit of boredome at some point in the last few months. I think those are the Petronas towers?

"Building Blocks" Film, Drawings and Sculpture 'thing'

2009-02-23T10:27:00.000Z

the first film I ever made. It was the starting point for a lot of drawings/investigations into the traces left by things when they are destroyed... here the traces being the memories of various past games played with a set of buildings blocks and whether they are present during each new game played; later, the drawings and models harbour and trace narratives that were developed through play and writing which enriched and tied together the various stages of experimentation.

'Ark' drawings at 'MyHotel' Bloomsbury

2009-02-23T09:22:00.000Z

Two large drawings done for a bar on Bedford Square in WC1