MArch Architecture, Year 1
2012-2013 @ The Bartlett, University College London
TUTORS://
Jonathan Hill,
Elizabeth Dow,
Matthew Butcher
PROGRAM:// FACTUAL FICTIONS
‘Context is not only topographical and physical, it is also historical … My concern for context is as an agent of architectural transformation. The place you build actually has formative influences on the nature of the building. And when the building is there it has formative influences and effects on the place it is made.’ Denys Lasdun
Histories and novels both need to be convincing but in different ways. Although no history is completely objective, to have any validity it must appear truthful to the past. A novel may be believable but not true. But recognising the overlaps between two literary genres, Malcolm Bradbury notably described his novel The History Man, 1975, as ‘a total invention with delusory approximations to historical reality, just as is history itself’. Objective as well as subjective, a design is a reinterpretation of the past that is meaningful to the present, transforming both, like a history. Equally, a design is equivalent to a novel, convincing the user to suspend disbelief. Part-novelist, part-historian, the architect creates ‘factual fictions’.
Reactive Architectures and Sites of History
‘A work can become modern only if it is first postmodern. Postmodernism thus understood is not modernism at its end but in the nascent state.’ Jean-François Lyotard
The history of architecture could be argued to centre on the need for individuals, or movements, to contradict, reinvent, distort¾as well as enforce¾the style and philosophical orthodoxy of any one era. From classicism to mannerism, from modernism to postmodernism, from minimalism to post minimalism. These shifts can be said to be necessary for the discipline to respond to changing social and cultural needs. Other arguments may suggest that these changes stem from a human desire for reinvention, which in turn affects directions in cultural discourse. Students of Unit 12 this year will be asked to challenge and expand an orthodoxy: to determine and understand a particular stylistic movement or aesthetic position, and to create a personally driven shift in that stance. You will be asked to generate an individually tailored ‘reactive’ or ‘active’ architecture¾ to shift a paradigm and to be essentially critical and creative.
Specification and Craft
‘Whether you prefer the smooth unmarked surface of film faced ply, the subtle flecks of untreated birch, the heavy graininess of sawn timber, the marble softness of polythene-lined plywood, there is so much variety choice and opportunity to experiment that there is something to suit everyone’s taste and predilections.’ David Bennett, Architectural Insitu Concrete
In Unit 12 this year you will propose and understand the specification and craft of your architecture in detail. For a factual fiction to be believable there needs to be more than a few strands of truth interwoven with supposition and imagination. A laminate of sorts. To propose a shift from a particular stylistic movement or aesthetic position there needs to be a real understanding of the language, detail and materials of that movement to allow the subsequent testing and development through facsimile and substitution. The materials and detail of your architecture need to not only have a clear architectural provenance but an appreciation of the future political, cultural and meteorological climate in which you will expect them to thrive. Alongside other scales, this year you will make and test your architecture at 1:1.
Industries and Infrastructures for an Independent London
Even in the eighteenth century, London was ten times the size of the second largest English city. Today, it is culturally, socially and economically distinct from the UK and has more in common with New York and Shanghai than Cardiff and Manchester. Proposing that London should have the degree of autonomy given to Catalonia in Spain or Scotland in the UK, we will ask you to design industries and infrastructures for an independent London.